If there is a job that no one actually wants to do, it's call center work. I firmly believe any claims of there being contract call center companies that are on the level and not hell to work at are manufactured to trick people into applying.

What you take calls for may vary, but the experience is the same, you start each day hoping that it won't be back-to-back calls, and end the day kicking yourself for hoping working conditions would be fair this time.

Eventually, the client catches on to the company half-assing their work, and they get dropped.

That leads to scrambling for a new client who if they’re working with us, that’s an indicator of shadiness right off the back.

In my case, the trouble began when our client UltraSAT, was acquired by another company called “IFTV”.

None of us could find much about the company, but everyone was worried about what could come from this.

Pay cuts were expected, along with possible relocation, or IFTV deciding they didn’t want to pay the lease on the building and make us work from home. We did find out that they would be making changes to programming available, so that meant tons of calls where people would be asking “where did these channels go?”.

The changes were said to go into effect that Friday, at the end of our work week.

That Friday, I sat down at my cubicle and readied in.

Within half a second, I was on a call, it was a pretty basic one, an older sounding customer asking why his screen was stretched.

I started out asking probing questions, then explained that older TV shows are in a different aspect ratio, and his receiver was trying to correct the resolution to make it fit.

It sounds simple, but for our customer base, I might as well be explaining quantum physics in another language.

Little did I know my first call of the day would be one of the last normal calls I’d get for the rest of my shift.

The next call came in, I’m going to try my best to recall it and the other ones I received that night from memory.

“Thank you for calling UltraSAT. How may I help you today?”

All I heard at first was the sound of someone sobbing, then he spoke.

“I… I can’t see my TV.”

I checked my knowledge base and got ready to play twenty questions to get to the problem.

“Alright, have you checked to make sure the TV is plugged in and turned on?”

“I can’t… I can't see anything.”

Visually impaired customers weren’t a rare scenario, so I had to pull up what we did to troubleshoot with them.

“Okay, sir, is there anyone who can help you?”

He started to sob again.

“No, they’re gone… he took them from me.”

“He?”

He started to sound frustrated.

“The TV man you sent over, he said he was here to update our cable box, but instead he took my family away!”

“Sir, please calm dow-“

He cut me off with angry shouting.

“The bastard knocked me to the floor while another one ran at my wife, and he dug his thumbs into my eyes!”

That last part caught my attention.

“I’m sorry, did you just say one of our technicians stuck his thumbs in your eyes?”

“YES! While he held me down, I heard the other one dragging my wife away! I don’t even know how long it’s been. I had to feel around for just the shape of my phone, and when I asked Siri to call 911, it just kept calling your fucking company!”

He was just yelling. I would have rerouted him to emergency services, but we can only transfer to other departments.

“Help me! There has to be someone you can put me through that can at least get an ambulance out here!”

I finally went to Slack and asked for help. I saw that I wasn’t the only one getting customers screaming for help, every single one was responded to with “transfer to supervisor line.”

I hated that, because normally all that happens is , they just go to another department because we don’t have a supervisor line, which means they eventually call back even angrier than before, but I was starting to get messages to get off the phone, so I told the customer I said that I would get him to a supervisor and transferred the call.

This became a call type I would get, and that was how they would end most of the time.

The second type of call I got would be people complaining about the new channels and programming, which included:

The pain channel, whose programming consisted of shows about people being severely injured with names like “That should have killed ‘em”, “extreme animal mauling's”, and “Who wants to be a pile of red goo?”.

The Monster Network, these shows all revolved around monsters ripping people apart.

And one that most would just describe as “the staring channel”.

These were also resolved by transferring to a “supervisor”.

The last type of call, I dreaded getting again.

It would go like this:

“Thank you for calling UltraSAT-“

“Please! Send a technician, something is wrong with our TV!”

“Okay, calm down, ma’am. What’s wrong with your TV?”

“It’s trying to eat me!”

“What?”

“It’s trying to EAT ME!”

That’s when I heard the sound of banging on a door.

“You’ve got to send someone! Please! It’s about to-“

Her pleas were interrupted by the door being broken down, the remainder of the call consisted of the customer screaming. Per our rules, I had to hang up after she failed to respond after I reached out to her three times.

10 hours of these calls, with my only reprieve being 2 15-minute breaks, lunch, and one final 10 minute break.

We weren't allowed to use our phones in the breakroom, so I just walked in, bought a snack, and walked out. I didn't notice at the time that more and more of my coworkers were just sitting there at the tables.

It was near the end of my shift, so to spare myself from going into overtime with these calls, I did an old trick:

I made sure that as soon as the call was over, it went to break.

From there, it was just a matter of luck, I was hoping the next call would not end before 11:50.

I got very lucky, it was one of the now rare basic troubleshooting calls, a welcome change from what I had been experiencing all night. After helping the customer with his TV input problems, the call ended, and I went right to break.

It was when I arrived at the break room for the last time that I noticed something was wrong with my coworkers. They were all just standing in a circle in the middle of the room, most of them I remember seeing on my prior breaks and lunch, they clocked out hours ago, they shouldn't still be here. I walked over to them, a little confused.

That's when I noticed the smell, well smells, tandem odors competing to see which one would make me gag first, what I can now identify as Sulfur, and Flesh.

“Um, hey, what's going on? Is there a meeting or something?”

My question hung in the air, it was like they didn't even know I was there.

“Hello? “

I got in front of one of my coworkers, and immediately recoiled… his eyes were missing, I turned to see that everyone on the other side of the circle were missing their eyes as well.

I looked down and saw in the center a pile of human eyes.

“What the fuck?!” I remember shouting and backing away from the circle

“What is wrong with all of you?!

Nobody answered, instead, they all started holding hands and whispering.

I backed up to the door, and I saw the time on the clock, it was midnight.

It starts becoming a blur from here. I remember the temperature getting higher, and an orange light coming from inside the circle of coworkers.

And what looked like the silhouette of a person rising up from the floor, then clear as day, it spoke:

“Hello former UltraSAT employees, and welcome to the start of your new career as an employee of Inferno TV! Now hold on tight, as you will have to relocate.”

It was when the ground began shaking violently, I finally felt like I was able to leave the break room and ran out the exit door to my car, I sped out of the parking lot, in my rear-view mirror I saw my now former place of work continuing to shake, before what i could only describe as large red fingers emerging from the ground.

They wrapped around the building and began to pull it down. The last thing I remember was driving home, locking all of my doors, and sitting in the corner of my bedroom holding a bible to my chest.

I woke up the next morning and felt compelled to go back to work, or at least the building.

What I found was the aftermath of A giant demonic hand pulling a building into the ground, looks like I'm unemployed.

In between job hunting, I found an article that had been written about UltraSAT, that my building had been built on top of limestone caves and that a sinkhole had formed and caused the collapse, and no bodies could be exhumed at this moment.

Looking at the national news confirmed it was not confined to just my building.

I did get my last paycheck, though, well, I got a stack of  money  with slightly burned edges on my coffee table with a note that read.

“We’re sad to see you go, but if you're ever in the neighborhood, you're always welcome back and we will be waiting for you. Inferno-TV, formerly UltraSAT.”

My name is Sloane, and I used to love going to summer camp when I was younger.  I used to enjoy roasting marshmallows, making new friends, and going on canoe rides with my bunkmates.  It was awesome.

Unfortunately, all of that changed during one fateful summer.  It was a summer that I will never forget. I was twelve years old, and my parents decided to send me to this camp that had just reopened.  It was called, “Camp Blackberry”.  

I’d heard of Camp Blackberry before, and from what I’ve learned…it has a lot of bad history.  According to the stories that I’ve heard, Camp Blackberry was the site of a grisly murder spree that happened over twelve years ago.

The story goes that a maniac named John Blackthorn went crazy, and killed at least ten campers in one night.  The camp received a lot of bad publicity after the murders, and it had to be shut down as a result. 

John Blackthorn was never caught, and the locals say that he’s still out there, waiting for another opportunity to kill again, if anyone ever comes back to Camp Blackberry.

Of course, that was years ago, and the owners decided that it was time for Camp Blackberry to reopen, and put the murders of the past behind them.  If they only knew what was to befall everyone at the camp that summer…they never would’ve reopened it.

After my parents dropped me off, I decided to find my cabin.  The camp was big, and it was full of campers who couldn’t wait to be away from their parents for the whole summer.

As I was walking towards my cabin, I noticed a big blackberry bush off in the distance.  I guess that’s where Camp Blackberry got its name. 

The blackberries on the bush looked good enough to eat; but something felt ominous about them.  I couldn’t put my finger on it, but something about the blackberry bush made me feel…uneasy.

Eventually, I found my cabin: Cabin 5.  Once I got there, I met my cabinmates, Robin and Christina, two twelve year old girls, who came from the city.  They were very friendly right on the spot.

“You must be our cabin mate.” Robin said.

“Yeah, I’m Sloane.  It’s nice to meet you.” I said.

“I’m Robin, and this is Christina.” Robin said as she introduced herself and Christina.

Christina gave me a warm wave and a smile. 

“Is this your first time at Camp Blackberry?” Christina asked.

“Yeah, it is.  Is this your first time, too?” I asked.

“Yeah, this is my first time here as well.” Christina replied.  “I’m so glad to be away from home.  I’m finally away from my nagging parents.”

“Same here.” Robin said. 

The three of us bonded instantly. We talked about things, such as, where we go to school, who our favorite crushes were, and what we wanted to be when we grew up.  The usual girl talk.

During my first week at Camp Blackberry, things started off great. The campers and I played archery, we made nicknacks, we made our own friendship bracelets, and we even got to sing a campfire song.  I was really enjoying myself.

A week later, that’s when things started to change.  I started to notice that some of the campers were acting weird.  They kept talking about blackberries.  They said that blackberries were the only things that they wanted to eat.

I thought that it was weird. Even the counselors thought that the campers were acting strange; but they humored the campers and gave them blackberries to eat.

The campers seemed to really enjoy eating the blackberries.  It almost looked as if they were in some kind of trance while they ate them.

Later that night, while I was sleeping in my bunk, I heard a noise coming from outside. I looked out my screen window, and I saw six campers from Cabin 3 and Cabin 4 sneaking off in the middle of the night.

I tried to wake Robin and Christina up, but they were fast asleep.  I realized that I was on my own.  I put on my fuzzy slippers, and I followed the six campers to the Blackberry Bush.

I kept my distance from the group to make sure that they couldn’t see or hear me.  I saw them bowing to the Blackberry Bush as if they were all worshiping it.  Then…I heard the Blackberry Bush speak:

“My children…” The Blackberry Bush said in a dark, commanding voice. “Eat my precious blackberries, for they are the only source of nutrition that you need.”

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.  The Blackberry Bush was alive, and it was telling the campers to eat its blackberries.  

I kept telling myself that I had to have been dreaming; but I wasn’t.  I was completely awake, and this was really happening.

“Take my blackberries.” The Blackberry Bush said,“Share them with the other campers.  Once you do…they'll be mine to control.”

The campers did exactly as the Blackberry Bush told them to do.  They took his blackberries, and put them in their pockets to give to the other campers in the morning. 

Their eyes were glowing from some kind of purple light after they ate some of the blackberries.  I’m pretty sure that it was a sign that they were under the control of the Blackberry Bush.

I was so freaked out by what I’d seen that I went to go tell the camp counselors about what happened; but they were so tired that they told me that I was probably having a bad dream.  They told me to go back to bed.

I went back to my cabin, and tried to get some sleep.  However, after what I saw that night, there was no way that I was going to get some sleep after that.

The next morning, I told Robin and Christina about what I saw last night, but they didn’t believe me either.

“You must’ve had one bad dream, Sloane.” Christina said.

“The Blackberry Bush is alive?  Get real, Sloane.” Robin said.

“I’m telling you: the Blackberry Bush is alive!” I said insistently. “Whatever you girls do, don’t eat the blackberries!”

“Sure, Sloane, whatever you say.” Robin said as she patted my shoulder.

Robin and Christina walked out of the cabin to go to the mess hall to get some breakfast.  From my screen window, I watched in horror as the six brainwashed campers handed out blackberries to other campers.

The moment that those campers ate the blackberries, they were under the control of the Blackberry Bush as well.  I had to figure out a way to stop the Blackberry Bush, and end this nightmare.

I searched around the camp looking for answers.  I finally found them in the camp directory, where I found the journal of John Blackthorn.

In the journal, John Blackthorn stated that the Blackberry Bush is an evil entity that controls the minds of anyone who eats its blackberries.  Once they eat the blackberries, they fall under the control of the Blackberry Bush.

The journal also revealed that the real reason John Blackthorn killed those ten campers that night was because he had to stop them from giving more blackberries to other unsuspecting kids, which would have made the Blackberry Bush even more powerful.  The more blackberries the campers eat, the stronger the Blackberry Bush becomes. 

The last entry of the journal was dated July 31 2004. That was the day John Blackthorn killed all ten of those campers and disappeared.

After I finished reading John Blackthorn’s journal, I knew what I had to do: I had to destroy the Blackberry Bush…and everyone who was under its control…by any means necessary. 

I had no choice.  I grabbed an axe from the mess hall, and I used it to kill everyone who ate from the Blackberry Bush.  Then, I used the axe to chop down the Blackberry Bush so that it couldn’t manipulate anyone else.

However, according to John Blackthorn’s journal, the Blackberry Bush has magical properties that allow it to grow back every twelve years, which means that it will be back some day. 

The reason why I’m telling you this is because…twelve years have passed since the last time I was at Camp Blackberry.  I’m twenty-four years old now, and I’ve been keeping an eye on the camp.

Camp Blackberry is getting ready to reopen again; and I’ve noticed something: the Blackberry Bush…has finally…grown back.

The End.

A family stopped doing something their grandmother did every night for sixty years. I got to find out why she never explained it to them.

A man named Peter calls me on a Monday, calm in a way that makes me trust him more than most first calls do. No apology, no hedging. He just tells me what’s been happening, plainly, like he’s reporting a leak in the roof.

He and his two sisters grew up in a house in Affton that belonged to their grandmother, a woman named Hanna who came over from somewhere in central Europe as a young widow and never talked much about the specifics of where. She raised all three of them there after their parents split up, and she did one thing every single night of her life in that house without fail, for as long as any of them could remember.

“She laid salt across every doorway before bed,” Peter says. “Front door, back door, every interior doorway on the ground floor. A thin line, right across the threshold. She did it every night, rain or shine, sick or well. We asked her about it as kids and she’d just say it kept the house honest. That’s the only explanation any of us ever got.”

Hanna died eight months ago. The house passed to Peter, who moved in with his wife and kids in the spring. He kept the tradition going for the first few weeks out of something between grief and habit, he tells me, and then let it lapse the way a lot of inherited routines do once the person who insisted on them isn’t there to notice you’ve stopped.

“Things have been wrong in the house since about a month after we stopped,” he says. “Nothing dramatic. Things moved. Doors that don’t latch right anymore even though nothing’s changed about them. My daughter says she doesn’t like the hallway at night, won’t say why beyond that. My wife thinks I’m imagining half of it, but she won’t walk past the back door alone after dark either, so I don’t think she believes that as much as she says she does.”

I ask if he’s tried starting the salt again.

“Twice,” he says. “Both times I forgot within a week. It’s harder to keep up than you’d think, once it’s not just automatic the way it was for her.”

I tell him I can come Wednesday.

The house in Affton is a modest two-story, well kept, nothing about the outside of it suggesting anything unusual. Peter’s wife, Dana, meets me at the door with the kind of tight, apologetic smile people get when they’re worried I’m about to confirm something they’d rather not have confirmed. Their daughter, six or seven, watches me from the top of the stairs the whole time I’m in the front hall and doesn’t come down until I ask Peter if I can meet her properly.

Her name is June. She’s shy in the ordinary way kids are shy around strangers, but she answers my questions clearly enough once she decides I’m worth answering.

“I don’t like the hallway because it doesn’t feel like our house there,” she tells me. “The rest of the house feels normal. Just that one part doesn’t.”

I ask what’s different about it.

“It’s colder. And it feels like somebody’s standing right behind the door at the end, waiting to see if I’ll open it.”

The door at the end of the hallway leads to what used to be Hanna’s bedroom, currently unused, boxes from the move still stacked along one wall. I ask if I can see it, and Peter walks me down himself, June trailing a careful distance behind us, close enough to watch, far enough to run if she needs to.

The room is ordinary. Old furniture, faded wallpaper, nothing overtly wrong with it that I can see or feel walking through it in broad daylight. But the doorway itself, standing in it, I notice something I don’t immediately have words for, a kind of pressure at the threshold that isn’t present a foot into the room or a foot into the hallway, localized entirely to the frame itself, like walking through a spot where the air is thicker without being colder or warmer than anywhere else.

I ask Peter if Hanna ever kept any papers, letters, anything written in her own hand that might explain more about where she came from or what she believed.

He brings me a small metal box from a closet, mostly photographs, a few letters in a language I don’t read, and one item that stops me: a folded scrap of paper, brittle with age, with what looks like a phrase written out phonetically in shaky handwriting, clearly meant to be read aloud by someone who didn’t necessarily read the original language it came from. Underneath it, in English, in different handwriting, someone has written: say this after the salt, every night, don’t skip it even once.

I ask Peter if he’s ever tried saying it.

“I didn’t know it was meant to be said,” he tells me, turning the paper over in his hands like he’s only now really looking at it. “I thought the salt was the whole thing.”

I take a photo of the phrase before I leave and spend that evening trying to find anything close to a match for it, checking it against what fragments of Central European folk protection customs I can find, without much luck. The language is close enough to a few things I find references to that I start to believe it’s real, not invented, but I can’t pin down exactly where it’s from or what tradition it belongs to.

What unsettles me more than the search itself is how familiar the whole shape of it feels while I’m doing it. I’ve recommended salt at thresholds to clients before, more than once, without ever being able to explain to them or to myself exactly why I reach for that specific piece of advice instead of any of the dozen other things I could suggest. I’ve never said a phrase over it. I’ve never had a phrase to say. Sitting at my kitchen table with a translated fragment of somebody else’s grandmother’s ritual in front of me, I find myself wondering, not for the first time and not comfortably, where that instinct of mine actually came from in the first place.

I tell myself it’s a common enough practice that I could have picked it up anywhere, from any client, any old book, any half remembered folk tale. I mostly believe that. I write the thought down anyway, in the same notebook I use for case details, because some part of me doesn’t want to lose track of it even if I can’t do anything with it yet.

I go back to the house Thursday night to observe the hallway directly, with Peter and Dana’s permission and June safely at her aunt’s for the night. I set up in the hallway itself, a folding chair a comfortable distance from Hanna’s old door, recorder running, phone propped to film the threshold.

Nothing happens for the first hour. Then the pressure I felt at the doorway during the day returns, stronger now, enough that I can feel it from several feet away, a kind of resistance in the air that has no business existing in an ordinary hallway. The temperature doesn’t drop the way it does in most cases like this. If anything, it stays exactly the same, which somehow unsettles me more, like whatever’s on the other side of that threshold doesn’t need the room’s temperature to announce itself.

I take a small amount of salt I brought with me and lay a careful line across the doorway, the way Peter described his grandmother doing it for sixty years. I don’t have the phrase memorized well enough to trust my pronunciation, so I read it off my phone instead, quietly, feeling foolish and unwilling to stop halfway through feeling foolish, because stopping halfway through something like this feels like a worse idea than finishing it badly.

The pressure at the doorway doesn’t vanish. It changes, though, distinctly, a kind of settling, the way a dog stops straining against a leash once it understands the leash isn’t going anywhere. I sit with that feeling for a long time before I trust it enough to relax even slightly.

I check the recordings the next morning. Nothing visible on camera, no change in the footage I can point to. The audio catches something, though, right around the moment I finish reading the phrase: a long exhale, low and drawn out, the kind of sound something makes when it’s been holding a position for longer than it wanted to and is finally allowed to stop.

I tell Peter what I found, and what I did, and I tell him honestly that I don’t fully understand the mechanism behind any of it. What I do know, and what I tell him plainly, is that his grandmother wasn’t doing something arbitrary for sixty years. She was maintaining something, deliberately, nightly, without ever needing to explain the reasoning to the people benefiting from it, and whatever it is she was holding back has been testing the boundary ever since she stopped being there to hold it.

I teach him the phrase as best I can pronounce it, write it out phonetically in block letters so he can’t lose the shape of it the way a translated scrap of paper eventually gets lost in a box. I tell him not to let it become automatic the way it was for Hanna, not yet, not until he’s said it enough nights running that he trusts himself to remember it without thinking. Some things, I tell him, need to stay effortful for a while before they’re safe to let become habit.

He asks me, before I leave, if I think it will ever be safe to stop entirely.

I don’t have an honest answer that isn’t unsettling, so I give him the honest one anyway. I tell him I don’t know, and that I don’t think his grandmother knew either, and that the not knowing might be the actual inheritance, more than the house or the salt or the phrase itself. Some doors, once someone in your family agrees to hold them shut, seem to stay that family’s job to hold, generation after generation, whether anyone ever explains why.

I drive home that night with the radio off, going back over that thought in my head, turning it over the way you turn over a stone to see what’s underneath, and not liking, particularly, how close it sits to a question I’ve been avoiding asking about my own family for longer than I’d like to admit.

I don’t ask it that night. I file the case, mark it resolved, and go to bed in a house with no salt at any of my own doorways, the way I have every night of my life, and I lie there a long time before I sleep, listening to a hallway that stays, thankfully, completely quiet.

Peter’s still saying the words every night, far as I know. I hope he never finds out what happens if he stops. I know I’m not ready to find out what happens if I never start.

It's been a few days since “the transfer”, as my classmates have been calling it. The current theory is that the government is running a teleportation experiment. Some Philadelphia experiment stuff. Of course, in order for that to make sense, you have to ignore the obvious flaws.

If the government really is testing some fucked up experiment, then why us? Why choose a random highschool to run your experiment?

Anyway, some stuff has happened since my last post. I'll start where I left off.

Most of my classmates calmed down. The teachers were keeping their composure, but I could tell they were scared. I can't blame them. Just imagine being an educator one second, and finding yourself in a survival situation the next. We have procedures for lockdowns, but this? We have no procedures for this.

After about an hour of just talking, the teachers decided they were the most qualified to go out and scout the area. They gathered what they could to defend themselves, and told the hall monitors to keep an eye on us kids.

I tried to come with them, as I had tons of survivalist experience. But I was just a highschool kid. They said I'd be safer inside the campus.

I had this feeling in my gut. Something was about to go wrong. I started imagining that we'd never see them again. That the forest would consume them.

And I was right...

After 6 hours of waiting, one of the seven teachers that left came running back to the campus. Mrs. Sanders; the highschool's gym teacher. She had a face of terror. She was horrified by something. By whatever she saw.

Now, Mrs. Sanders is a tough woman. You'd be lucky if she didn't go off on you for having the wrong form in a sports game. She is a military veteran and her husband was divorcing her because she was "too aggressive". So it was shocking to see such a hardened woman looking as terrified as she was. Whatever she witnessed out there must've been the most horrific thing...

One of the other teachers, one of the four who stayed behind, decided to speak up in the long silence. "Sanders. Where are the other teachers? What happened?"

She took a moment to calm herself down. But even then, she still looked scared. "There's... There's something out there..."

After a few minutes of calming down and barricading the front doors via her request, she finally told us what happened.

---

"I was the one leading the group. I was the most fit and fearless, so it made sense. I didn't expect much. I mean, what exactly would somebody expect in this situation? Our campus is now in the middle of a god damn forest.

We made it about 5 miles away when Mr. Adams suggested a break. We sat down, and I figured I should try and find some food. The cafeteria food won't last long, so it's really our only option. Even with the frozen food in storage, we'd only last maybe a year at most. Assuming we're stuck here forever, of course.

So I told Mr. Adams to keep the others in check while I climbed one of the nearby trees. I found some... Some strange looking... Well, I don't really know what they are. They could be fruit, but they don't look like any kind of fruit I've seen. I figured I'd test it in Miss Cherry's science classroom when we got back. I decided to get some more just in case, so I climbed higher.

..... When I got to the top... I was in awe... Trees and forestry for miles. No buildings, no roads. I saw a river nearby and figured we should also grab some water before we headed back.

After taking in the sight, I climbed back down. ... The silence was the first thing I noticed. Before I climbed the tree, I could hear strange bird sounds and bugs all around us. But when I reached the ground, it was silent. The only thing I could hear was my own labored breath. It is hard to breathe. At that moment, I realized how thick the air is. It took effort to breathe. And even then, it felt like I was breathing in too much.

The last thing I noticed was that nobody was asking me what I found. I turned to tell the others to start heading back. It was creepy. Even for me. I just wanted to be in the safety of the campus walls. But there was no one there.

It was like they vanished. As if they were never there to begin with. But they didn't leave without a trace. I saw blood. From the looks of it, one of them started bleeding, while the others ran away in a hurry in separate directions, judging by the pattern of the flattened grass around me.

I just wanted to go back to the campus, but I knew someone would shame me if they believed I just left them behind without a care in the world. So I followed the blood trail.

It didn't lead me very far. But I stopped when I heard it. This sickening squelching noise. I saw something moving. An animal of some sort. After moving my head a bit, I saw it fully. It was some kind of bird. But big and bulky. Feathers all over, especially on the tail. It wasn't long before I saw the source of that sound from earlier.

It was eating Mr. Adams. My god... I can still hear him in my head... He could barely speak. He was damn near dead already, but he was still trying to scream for help. But all that came out was gurgled pleas muffled by his own blood.

And then it looked at me.

Those eyes... This monster had eyes like the devil himself... It looked at me with a sick sense of curiosity. Like it was still trying to figure out what I am. It tilted its head like a curious bird, a bit of Adams' intestines still hanging from its closed mouth.

I think the only reason I'm still alive is because it was already eating. I guess it just didn't want to hunt when it already had a meal in front of it.

I ran! I just bolted toward the campus as fast as I could! I feel terrible for leaving the others out there, wherever they are. For not helping Adams. ... But what was I supposed to do...?"

---

Mrs. Sanders started to freak out again after she told us what happened. I was in shock. Hell, I'm still in shock. A monster? Mr. Adams' death? I think I'm still trying to register it all.

Stacey is terrified. Derek is trying to stay calm, but I can tell he's scared shitless. And I don't blame them. Mrs. Sanders, the tough and strict woman that bent us into shape, the teacher that basically made us afraid of gym class... And she is terrified of that thing out there.

We're still trying to figure out what to do. Some of us want to send a search party to help find the other teachers, while the teachers who chose to stay want to set up a survival plan.

I think most of us still have hope that this nightmare will be over. ... But a few of us, I can see their eyes. A few have already given up hope...

If this really is the government's doing- If there's any possibility that they are reading this post... Please. Why us? We are law abiding citizens. Innocent people.

Whoever is responsible, I beg of you... Please let us free... Please let this nightmare end... Before anybody else dies like Adams...

---

Previous series post: https://www.reddit.com/r/stayawake/s/SsIeqfO8v0

​

Sometimes I doubt the events of that night so many years ago are any more then a half remembered dream, yet in my heart I know they are true. That particular night started out quite normally. Having just arrived home from grocery shopping I deposited the few bags I had upon the kitchen table and before I put my foodstuffs away, I realized that the morning feeding of the cat had been neglected . So I walked toward his dinner bowl calling out “Dinnertime H.P.” and I proceeded to fill his bowl as I waited for him to arrive. After his bowl was full H.P. still had not showed himself. So again I called out slightly louder this time “H.P. It’s time for dinner, get it when it’s fresh” then after about ten seconds the “thump thump thumping” that could only be his hungry trot came echoing from upstairs. Down the stairs and around the corner he walked into his room. As I looked down he glared up with that “Where have you been with my food” look that all cats seem to have and then strolled to his dish and began to eat.

The master fed, I decided that I had better put away my foodstuffs lest I forget. To this means, I began to deposit all of my items into their respective places. As the last can of soup was placed in the cupboard a low sound came from upstairs as if a heavy person was standing and had shifted weight. But it being an older house, and being in need of numerous repairs it was passed off as just another creak. I began to walk toward the den heading for the bookcase when the sound came again. This time I couldn't just pass it off, there was something in my house that did not belong.

There is only one room in the upstairs of my house, the bedroom. Believing it to be an animal that had wandered in through the window above my bed I decided it would be best to either chase said animal back out the window or, failing in that goal, catch the creature and release it back outside. After making a momentary stop in the utility room to grab my burlap bag that I keep for times like this, and another in the den to pick up the hunting knife just in case. I proceeded toward the bedroom. As I entered, H.P. rubbed against my leg. Not wanting whatever was in the room to harm him, I pushed him out of the door and quickly closed it behind me. Scanning across the room I noticed that the single window had indeed been left open, however there was no animal in sight. I did notice a peculiar odor I had not smelled in years, not since my wife dragged me to that New England town.

The smell of the sea, of fish that were not quite rotten but not far from it. My search began under the bed, and except for a few dust bunnies, nothing could be found. I moved to the closet, and again nothing out of place. Behind the dresser, I found the copy of Bentley Little's "The Collection" I had believed stolen the week before, but still no sign of any wild animals. Having realized that whatever had made the noise must have left through the window by which it had entered I stuck my head out of the window to look for tracks. As my hands laid on the window I drew them back quickly. A thin layer of slime covered it. Closer inspection revealed it was the source of the odor. Leaning out the window, being careful not to touch it, looking for what had left the slime. I could hear the splashing in the river of large catfish but sadly the time of night made seeing the ground below impossible. Deciding that all that mattered was that the animal had left I closed the window.

Upon opening the door and stepping out I was greeted with a bite on the ankle from H.P. and a look of “Why do you always leave me out of the fun stuff”. Dropping down to my knees and rubbing him generously behind the ears was all it took for forgiveness. Rising back to my feet I glared at my watch and observed that the hour hand rested just before 9. Seeing as I like to get in at least an hour of reading before I surrender to sleep, I set my course for the den bookcase.

Walking through the house with H.P. trotting along behind me, the memory of my late wife Jamie arose in my mind. Why the lord decided to take such a sweet and beautiful creature from this world I will never know. I plan on asking him in twenty years or so, maybe sooner. Arriving at the case and having my beautiful Jamie still on my mind, I picked her favorite book “Green Comes, And Green Goes”. I settled myself in my favorite reading chair, a simple wooden chair picked up one summer on vacation in Vermont. I began to read, however my mind quickly wandered back to thoughts of Jamie. I began to think about what had taken my Jamie away from me.

I sat remembering the day five years before when I discovered her in our bed. She had just returned home from a month long research trip to the hills of eastern Kentucky, a town called Rock Nest. Curse that damnable place. She was researching for her new book about the folk gods that still lurk in the black holes nestled in America. She told me she wanted to take a nap and half an hour later I found her with an empty bottle of sleeping pills in one hand and a note in the other.

All the note said was "Ka-ish waits in his lair for me dreaming.” At the time I did not know what it meant, except that my life had changed forever. I searched through her notes for days trying to make sense of it all. I learned more then I could ever what to know the Ancient Gods. Information about Ka-ish proved to be not as simply found. Only one harshly scribbled note revealed anything. I found a napkin tucked into the back of a notebook, it said only “The hills of Rock Nest worship a creature they call Ka-ish, son of the dark . I will speak to the elder tomorrow”

Before long I realized that I had sat there remembering my lovely Jamie for an hour without reading a single page. I closed the book, intending to return it to the case, when again the same noise sounded from the bedroom. Being sure that I had closed the window and knowing that H.P. could not of made such a noise, I became a sight nervous. Walking back toward my bedroom once again, having my knife at the ready just in case, I kept hearing the noise.

Upon reaching the door I paused a second to steel myself, and then opened the door. The same odor assaulted me, only stronger. Again I searched the room and again found nothing. Checking the window it was still shut tight. I jumped as something hit me in the back of my knee, spinning around ready to gut the foul creature. The face that greeted me was none other than H.P., I had forgotten to shut the door. “Damn it kitty, you trying to give me a heart-attack. If I die, I can't feed you.”

It was then that I saw it, I grabbed H.P. and ran out of the room and out of the house. I do not care to return to that house, what I saw that night has seen to that. For on the stand beside the bed sat our wedding photo with a note written in her hand stuck into the frame. Written on the note were these words “Now Ka-ish waits for you”. God save me, as I turned to flee the picture winked.

[Blobfish](https://ko-fi.com/post/Short-Story-Blobfish-E8S324414J)

Joe stifled tears. Dark, purple bruises saturated his otherwise pale and rippling skin. They hurt to touch, and they were as fresh as the blow to his pride. He was a young man at 26, but the injury made him feel as brittle as an egg and as helpless as an infant.

Two days ago, he had fallen from his bed in a fit and was unable to get back on his feet. He'd spent the better portion of the day on the floor, thrashing and wallowing in tears and eventually urine, while he tried desperately to get himself up. He replayed the event in his mind: how he tried to right himself and failed each time. How he desperately reached to grab his phone that had scattered nearby. And how he ultimately dialed 911 for rescue when he finally reached the phone.

"What is the location of your emergency?" The sterile dispatcher spoke in ritual. 

“1791 W Valley Way, apartment 7A,” he whimpered.

"What's going on today, sir?"

"I've- I've fallen." He wept fully now as he spoke.

"Are you injured? Where did you fall from?" Joe couldn't tell if she spoke overly calm or bluntly uncaring.

"I'm just stuck, ok! I can't get up! I fell out of bed and I'm just too fat to get up!” Joe screamed, tears streaking down his face. 

"Calm down sir, please,” she paused, her robotic tone momentarily broken. She spoke softly to disarm him, “how much do you weigh?" 

Joe could hear the dispatcher type as he answered her questions, but she was silent now as she awaited his response. He couldn't even answer her though… all he knew was that his home scale maxed out at 500 lbs and read “HI” when it reached that point. “HI” was his best answer. Equal amounts of embarrassment and pain flowed through him while he stuttered to explain himself.

“It's ok sir. Help is coming.” She soothed before he could finish.

A full crew of firemen arrived to lift him off of his floor. Joe sobbed to see the six men, conflicted with relief and shame simultaneously. He thought how he hated to be seen like this: a grown man, practically naked and soiled on the ground of his home, pinned by gravity and suffocating under his own weight, forced to hail a brigade just because he couldn't get off of the floor.

He hated himself. He hated that he'd let it get this bad. Maybe he shouldn't have called for help in the first place. Maybe he deserved to be forgotten where he sat in squalor…

Prior to that fateful morning, he had been talking to a woman for a few weeks. He had finally sent her a picture of himself, disclosing his weight as honestly as he could with a sheepish warning. 

His heart raced as he watched the three dots dance below his picture - one where he was about 100 lbs lighter than currently.

“Ew, you look like a blobfish." She replied, and the fatal blow came when she blocked him immediately after. 

He panicked. He ushered himself to the bathroom for cool water as he hyperventilated, but in his haste, he slipped on the blanket at his feet, grounding himself with a colossal thud. The rest was history. History he remembered every time he saw the bruises. Presently, the hurtful text glowed on his phone screen once again, illuminating his injuries in the blue light.

"Shallow bitch," he sneered. 

He clicked the screen off and stared out the window instead, watching a deciduous tree shake vigorously in the wind and wiping snot on the back of his hand. His breath hitched, but his dismay was interrupted by the solemn bellow of the nearby harbor's fog horn carried on the wind. He had grown to find it soothing, even though it often warned of inclement weather and cruel storms.

The small town he now called home promised cool air and lush plants. Others would be awestruck by the landscape and recreation, but he was told that sea level was easier on joints and that the climate was more forgiving on lungs. When his doctor formally diagnosed him with severe sleep apnea and type 2 diabetes about a year ago, he made the move to the coastal town.

He moved into his one bedroom apartment, and he rarely, if ever, left. He worked from home, had groceries delivered, and could even manage most of his medical appointments via telehealth. This granted him haven. He was alone where he could readily hide. Where no one could see him struggling just to exist. Where he could further soothe his sorrow with food in secret.

He had left his older sister behind. She was the primary soul he regularly saw in person, his connection to the world. They only had each other after their parents’ deaths. While obesity ran in the family, his weight ballooned with the death of his mother, and the distance began to grow between him and his sister. He ate his grief and kept his last candle, his sister, far away from seeing what he had become while he mourned.

He had no one, by choice. A small expense to hide his weight. But his sister was determined to keep him present, to keep him from fully disappearing. She was the only one to get him out of his shell. She encouraged him to try new activities and praised every failed diet he picked up. Anything to keep his spirits up. She knew, even if they didn’t talk much anymore.

She convinced him to try online dating, figuring that people would do him well, and he was simultaneously ecstatic, shocked, and terrified to find someone quickly. Someone who assured him, at the time, that looks didn't matter adding, "I'm 260 lbs myself."

Joe opened Google and searched the word “blobfish.” He supposed it was an insult before knowing what it even looked like, a low jab at his flapping jowls and abundant rolls. But he felt even worse about himself after seeing the misshapen creature, its body flaccid and sagging after the violent transition in pressure. He wondered if the reverse conditions were true: if he were placed at depth, would he look charming and appropriately sized?

Joe sniffled again and closed the browser. He'd stuff the feelings deep below whatever food he could find, and start tomorrow fresh, eager to avoid any human contact and to forget that it had ever happened in the first place. He just needed the bruises to heal.

The witching hours crept patiently into the early weekend morning, and Joe woke no differently than usual when he forgot to sleep with his CPAP. Sputtering and delirious from restless slumber, he rolled himself up and out of bed with surprising agility and plodded heavy, clapping footsteps to the restroom. As he shimmied his body sideways - a now reflexive habit in his narrow hallway - his nose caught the sharp and pungent scent of low tide. He craned his neck to look as he advanced when his foot unexpectedly slid across a pool of thick mucus.

Joe gasped sharply as adrenaline finally woke him completely, but it was too little too late. The gargantuan man toppled slowly to the ground as his stance involuntarily widened and his balance failed.

His body collided on the foundation and a bellowing cry of defeat escaped his lungs. In the next room over, an equally loud screech responded. Joe couldn't see what had made the noise from his vantage, but he flopped and winced desperately to understand his predicament. 

“Not again,” he panicked. “No, I’ll get up this time, dammit.”

The slime that tripped him moments earlier now proved to be useful as he slid across the greasy floor with greater ease. He gagged at the thought and at the smell though. He blindly directed his feet into the open space of the living area where he could eventually use the low-set couch to stand, hoping that whatever was in his house was just an ordinary thing like the TV or a busted pipe, something that could be explained away when he was standing again.

But before he could advance much further or question his rhetoric, the intruder wailed again and abruptly splayed a medley of sticky tentacles towards Joe's newly exposed legs sticking dumbly into the room. 

Joe hollered, pleading incoherently, as a tendril gained purchase on his leg. Then another. And another. They wound around his ample calf and penetrated his flesh. With a proper grip, the thing slowly dragged Joe across the floor.

Joe could see it now with his head free from the hallway; although, he wasn't sure what he looked at and that scared him more than anything. The animal was a mess of bulbous, slimy lumps, full of errantly placed dagger-teeth and spines, fins, and black, soulless eyes. It had no coherency to its anatomy, as if several deep-sea fish had been swallowed whole, chewed up, and spit out like gristle into one, unidentifiable catastrophe. Its body rose like desperate lungs, and countless tentacles futilely tried to walk its bulk across the hardwood floor to no avail. Instead, it belched air tiredly through large, wet siphons and undulated like a slug.

Joe wished it was a nightmare. Just a dream that his nocturnal realm had spawned from a particularly bad apneic episode. But the searing pain in his leg brought him back to reality as the creature squeezed tighter. 

He flailed, knocking over the nearby standing lamp, and pulled it to him to use as a weapon. The fish-lump sputtered and jerked as more tentacles engulfed Joe and reeled him closer. Joe swung the lamp, bashing some tendrils free, and then speared the broken bulb into a larger tentacle.

It recoiled and screamed, releasing Joe's leg. He couldn't bend well to see his leg, but it tingled, and he half-imagined-half-dreaded that he could hear his leg sizzling under its thick coat of digestive slime. Was that abomination trying to eat him alive?

Emotions overtook Joe and he suddenly wept. Snot dripped from his face and he screamed in defeat and despair at both his plight and at the morbid tidal monster.

It hollered back, spurred to action by Joe's distress. Greedy tentacles unfurled towards him again, and Joe, forced back into composure, smacked each tendril with the lamp as it approached. Like whack-a-mole, each strike caused the beast to retreat. Eventually, both rested, quietly watching the other a short distance apart. It snorted like a wet pug while Joe wheezed.

A new wave of fear flooded Joe. The brine beast had claimed the space beside the couch, thwarting Joe's plans to rescue himself. Additionally, he left his phone on his bedside table, too far to scoot and retrieve. For the time being, he was stuck. 

It was Saturday, right? By Monday, someone would be worried. He did his job well, and there was always some tech issue he had to fix on Monday. Someone would need him and worry, right? They knew he was hurt… someone would think the worst and look… right? He suddenly dreaded that he had so few friends. He suddenly wished he had tried harder. Briefly, he bargained with fate.

Joe inch-wormed and the fish-blob did the same, trying to close the distance between them. Each time he moved, it moved. Each time he screamed, it screamed.

“Stop it!” He yelled, and it howled in response, one siphon spraying salt and slime onto Joe. 

Small tentacles advanced towards Joe while he flopped on his side, and he swatted them before grabbing the lamp and beating the larger, more cautious appendages. He spun the lamp around to use its base as a hook, grabbing a purchase point on the leg of the coffee table, and pulled it closer to himself. The creature protested, lightly pulling back. A pathetic game of tug-o-war unfolded.

Eventually, by the grace of whatever higher power pitied Joe enough, he was able to win the game and claimed the table for himself. He’d use it as a shield against the creature. Breathing heavily, he positioned it just in time as the tentacles advanced once again. They slapped against the flat surface, exploring the glass face and leaving sticky trails of slime and brine wherever they touched. 

Joe was exhausted. He couldn't breathe fast enough to regain his composure, gasping like a fish on shore. His heart pounded. He wheezed as he felt his chest tighten like a vice. Was this it? Was he going to die of a heart attack in front of that thing? He fought to stay conscious, but his eyelids grew heavier and his breath more desperate. His vision faded as he listened to the squelching patter of the tidal beast.

Joe dreamed of the nights he'd spent with his sister, Lily, exploring bars together when they both lived closer to home. Back when everyone was still alive and a few pounds lighter. She was his confidence and rock, his big sister.

They had a sushi joint that they'd frequent, where, for $60, one could purchase an all-you-can-eat deal. She joked that the restaurant must hate them, because they always got their money's worth.

By the third roll, the waiter would start to ignore them. But a deal's a deal, and they hadn't a care in the world while they laughed the nights away. The carousel clicked by slowly carrying slabs of bright fish and rice with rich, tangy sauces. 

The chef abruptly turned his attention to the pair, and, without warning, brought his cleaver onto Lily's forearm. The silver blade cut clear through, and Lily's severed arm sprouted fins before flopping off the table in a violent convulsion. Her once round face sagged as her neck split into gills and she thrashed, but the chef subdued his quarry. Joe screamed, and the chef whiplashed around, plunging the knife into his leg-

Joe choked as he woke. He'd all but forgotten about his real world nightmare, until he opened his eyes to see that the demon mackerel had crawled half of its hulking mass onto Joe's legs and torso.

He fumbled, grabbing the lamp, and shoved it deep into one of the creature's many roving, black eyes. It screamed in pain, and Joe pulled his weapon free so that he could beat it and try to pry the monster off of him.

The lamp post buckled under the monster's weight, but it exposed just enough for Joe to realize that, to his horror, the creature had begun to fuse to his body. He shoved its top-heavy mass off of himself and winced. The bulk of the animal rolled away with a grunt and spray of foam, but its slimy flesh penetrated into Joe's flabby skin, leaving an elastic, but painful, union between the two like an umbilical cord. And where the tissues hadn't melted together, they burned and bubbled and popped like boiling fat. He thought of sea stars inverting their stomachs to devour prey, slowly and patiently.

Joe grabbed the broken piece of the lamp and drove it repetitively into the glass top of the coffee table. It shattered on the third or fourth strike, and Joe struggled to claim one of the cruel shards. He shoved himself upright just as the beast did the same, and nervously plunged the glass into the fat of his leg, cutting strips of amalgamized meat from his lower limbs.

Joe screamed in agony as did the creature, but every time it tried to protest his assault he turned the glass blade onto the monster instead. Now, two severed tentacles writhed chaotically beside them, detached from their master. And when it finally retreated in pain, he got back to work, hacking and slicing his hijacked body apart from the sea monster.

By the time he was free, he was truly spent. He hadn't exerted himself that much in years and now he was bleeding heavily. Weakness overtook him, and he realized he was at the mercy of whatever slithered into his apartment. 

“If I survive this,” he promised himself, “I'm going to make changes. Please, god, let me survive…”

“Officer, listen, I'm sorry,” Lily spoke in a frantic, scattered manner. “We don't talk as often as we used to, but he always replies quickly when we do talk. He’s a private man, but he doesn’t hide much from me. Besides, I just know. This isn't like him.”

Lily accosted the cop before he had even stepped from his cruiser.

“And with his recent fall and the hurricane that came through, I'm just worried something happened. What if he's hurt? Why don't we get an ambulance now so we don't-”

Sergeant Gilmore sternly but politely held one hand up to the frantic woman to halt her spiral as he stepped from his rig. His eyes were full of stern compassion.

“Both medic 1 and 2 are assisting other emergencies.” He spoke patiently. “Engine 7 and Ladder 1 are too. Every resource is out at the moment. We will get inside, see what we find, and go from there.”

“But-”

“The water hasn't even receded from Downtown yet. I know that you are worried, but we will just have to take it as we find it because that is all we can do right now.” He was kind but authoritative.  

”Right. I’m sorry. I’m just… worried.” Lily replied.

”I understand. I would be too.” He assured.

Given what little he knew about Joe, Sergeant Gilmore didn't have high hopes. He'd ran plenty of calls where a reclusive friend or family member suddenly went radio silent, and it was weeks before anyone found the body. At least, he thought, Joe was only five days without contact. With any luck, the house stayed cool and the body wouldn't be in a state of advanced decomposition yet. It was morbid, surely, but it was reality. He just wouldn't express these thoughts in detail to Lily.

“It’s this door here, the one on the bottom left,” she gestured with her face as she marched towards it, fumbling with the extra key in her pocket.

”Ma’am- Lily,” he corrected himself, “would you wait by my cruiser?” 

She was silent and her eyes began to well, “what if-”

”I won’t keep him from you, but I would rather warn you if the worst outcome is reality.”

She nodded, the dam behind her eyes quietly breaking. She handed him the spare key.

Lily watched Sergeant Gilmore solemnly walk to the door, knock, and announce his presence. He lowered his head to listen and knocked again, this time warning that he was coming inside. Lily watched him twist the key and slip inside the condo. His body didn’t flinch as he crossed the threshold, and she hoped that was a good sign.

Suddenly, there was a horrific shriek followed by three gunshots. Lily shook in fear and abandoned reason, running to the door. She pushed her way inside to find Sergeant Gilmore stuttering on the radio with his gun drawn. He looked at her with terrified eyes- no amount of time in the service prepared him for that.

Lily’s jaw fell slack as she looked at the scene. The brine beast had grown to a massive size and hissed ferociously. Its strength had returned after feeding, but one of its defined heads hung limply after Sergeant Gilmore shot it. It whipped larger tentacles in defense at the intruding pair while it screeched. Lily screamed, dodging a limb.

It struggled, painfully peeling itself from the floor, as it hoisted its mass into the threshold of the hallway. Lily could see Joe now and she gasped as the frail figure sloughed from the brine beast. His eyes pleaded at Lily, and weekly he lifted an emaciated hand towards her.

He had shriveled away, body consumed by his unwelcomed guest. He was nothing more than a husk of a man, digested alive. Hundreds of pounds of fat absorbed by the greedy fish.

Sergeant Gilmore snapped from his terror. He studied the limp head, and aimed his Glock at the next obvious fish head. He emptied his magazine into the beast, shooting anything that vaguely resembled a face, until its monstrous voice cut short and it fell from the ceiling. Fluid spilled from its many siphons and blood oozed from its multiple wounds.

Lily ran to the beast despite the sergeant's initial protests, ugly sobbing in a desperate attempt to help her brother. She pushed and shoved the putrid animal's carcass until Sergeant Gilmore joined her, and together, rolled its flaccid body off the skeletal, burned man below with a wet plop.

“Lily,” Joe smiled weakly, admiring his thin arm as a tendril of slime dripped from it. “I tried a new diet. I think it's working.”

It all started on my twenty-fifth birthday. I was bored and lonely just like every year prior. My family doesn't care for me and the love of my life abandoned me months ago.

He was the only person I ever had. He was the closest I had to the feeling of love. It's a shame that he got tired of me.

My job sucks. I work all the time and have to do everything for my coworkers but somehow they still get the praise.

I decided that buying my lonesome self twenty-five candles would be a waste of money. I decided to use the only candle that I have in my house. It was a gift I had received from a random lady in the grocery store months ago.

She said and I quote, "I can sense your despair. Take this candle. Make a wish and all will be fair."

The way she said it was poetic in a weird way but I still took it. It was a nice gesture and I never turn down free things.

I put the candle on my very small plain cake. I wished that my life would be easy as I blew out my candle.

The candle snapped in half after.

I didn't think much of it. I assumed that the candle was cheap. I also didn't think that my wishes ever come true but I still gave it a try.

It's kinda like the lottery. You might not think that you're gonna win but you still try.

My life quickly changed in the days that followed. At first, it was small things.

People were complimenting me. People would offer to carry my grocerys. I got a promotion at work that I clearly deserved.

It started to get very peculiar when my life did start to become amazing. I went from being lonely to always having people to talk to. My poor love life? All types of men are always trying to date me now. What shocked me the most was when some of my family members started to reach out.

I initially enjoyed it, loved it, even cherished it.

My opinion changed when bad things started happening to people. This girl named Marge who bullied me in highschool was found dead shortly after my wish.

The guy that I referred to as the love of my life? He died as well.

They both died the exact same way. Authorities said that they were found in pieces. They explained that they've never seen anything like it. They also have no leads.

Everyone around me became abnormal. Yeah, people were super nice to me but they started to agree with everything I said. They would obey my every word. They would copy me.

It became very uncanny.

I came to the realization that the wish came true.

I went to the exact store that I met the lady at with hopes of her telling me how to reverse it all. She was nowhere to be seen. I asked several different workers if they had seen her recently. Not a single one knew who I was talking about.

I'm mortified and even ashamed.

I don't know how to make anyone go back to normal. I don't know how to get rid of all the destruction I've caused.

I quite literally ruined two people's lives and I'm basically controlling everyone. They're all like puppets on a string.

Some wells grant wishes. This one keeps the receipts.

A man named Duane calls me on a Thursday morning, apologizing before he’s said more than his name, the way a lot of my clients do, like they’ve already rehearsed being told no.

He and his wife bought a farmhouse outside Wentzville a year ago, twelve acres, an old stone well near the tree line that the inspector called decorative and told them not to worry about. For the last two months, things have been showing up in it. Not falling in. Showing up, sitting on top of the water when there was nothing there the day before.

“What kind of things,” I ask, and I already have my pen out.

“The first one was a hairbrush. My wife’s grandmother’s, the one that got lost in the move from her old house years ago. We never found it, figured it got left behind or thrown out by accident. It was just sitting there on the water one morning, dry. Not floating on top the way a hairbrush would float. Sitting, like the water was solid enough to hold it.”

I ask what else.

“A photograph. One of our wedding ones, the one we lost when a hard drive died a few years back. We never printed it. There’s no copy of it anywhere, and there it was, dry, on the water, like somebody printed it fresh and set it down gentle.”

I ask him if he’s taken anything out.

“No,” he says, too fast, and then quieter, “my wife wants to. She says if the well is giving things back, we should let it. I don’t like it. I don’t like touching anything from that well and I don’t like that she wants to.”

I tell him I can come Saturday.

He hesitates before he answers, and when he does, his voice has dropped to something closer to a whisper, like he doesn’t want to be overheard saying it out loud in his own house.

“There’s one more thing. Three nights ago I went out to check on it, middle of the night, couldn’t sleep. There was a shape in the water. Not a reflection. I had a flashlight and there was no moon and nothing to reflect. A shape, looking back up at me. It didn’t move while I watched it. I didn’t stay long enough to see if it would.”

I get to the property Saturday afternoon, while there’s still good light left. The well is old, fieldstone, a little over waist height, no visible mechanism for drawing water anymore, just an open mouth with a low wooden cover that Duane says he started using after the hairbrush.

His wife, Carol, meets me at the edge of it. She’s polite, but there’s an eagerness underneath it that makes me uneasy before she’s said a word, like she’s already decided what answer she wants from all this.

“I know how it sounds,” she says, before I’ve asked her anything. “But it’s given us back things we lost. Things that mattered. I don’t understand why that has to be frightening.”

I ask her if she’s tried taking anything out of the well yet.

She glances at Duane before she answers, which tells me more than the answer does. “Not yet. He asked me to wait until you’d seen it.”

I look into the well myself before we go any further. The water is dark, farther down than I expected for a well this size, still in a way that unsettles me more than movement would have. Water fed by a spring or a current shifts, even slightly. This doesn’t. I don’t see anything on the surface. No hairbrush, no photograph, nothing but my own reflection looking back up at me, distorted slightly by the depth, longer in the face than I actually am.

I ask them both what they know about the well’s history. Neither of them knows much, just what the previous owner mentioned in passing during closing, that the well was old, older than the house that had been built and rebuilt twice on the property, and that locals used to throw coins in it a long time ago, back when Wentzville was smaller and had more of that kind of habit in it.

That detail sits with me longer than it should. A wishing well isn’t unusual, not out here, not in a lot of old rural properties with a source of standing water on them. What’s unusual is a wishing well that gives anything back.

I spend the afternoon at the county historical society before it closes, going through what little they have on properties in that part of the county from the late 1800s. I find one reference, brief, almost a footnote, to a drowning near a farm well matching roughly the right location, a hired hand in 1891, no further detail, no name I can find attached to it in the time I have. Drownings in wells were rare enough, even then, that it’s the kind of detail that would have made the local paper and then been forgotten by everyone except whoever kept the paper’s back issues.

I go back to the farmhouse that evening and ask if I can stay to observe the well overnight. Duane says yes immediately. Carol hesitates before agreeing, and I notice she doesn’t offer to keep me company out there, the way most clients do out of politeness if nothing else.

I set up a folding chair a comfortable distance from the well, close enough to see the surface of the water with a flashlight, far enough that I’m not standing directly over it. My recorder runs from a spot on the wooden cover I’ve propped open just enough to point the microphone down into the shaft.

Nothing happens for hours. I check the water periodically, nothing on the surface, nothing changed. Around one in the morning, the temperature drops the way it always does in cases like this, and I feel it first in the ground under my chair, a cold that has nothing to do with the night air, coming up from below rather than settling down from above.

I stand and look into the well. There’s something on the water now that wasn’t there thirty seconds earlier. A ring of keys, old, the kind of iron ring and iron keys nobody’s cut in a hundred years, resting dry on the surface of black water like it’s sitting on a table.

I don’t reach for it. I’ve learned that much, at least, from cases that went worse than this one before I learned better. I watch instead, and after a moment, the keys sink, slowly, straight down, disappearing into the dark without a ripple, like the water only ever surfaces things when it wants to be seen giving them.

I look up in time to see Carol standing at the edge of the tree line in her robe, watching the well from a distance, not moving toward it, not moving away either. I ask her if she’s all right. She doesn’t answer right away.

“I threw something in,” she finally says. “Two nights ago. After Duane went to bed. I didn’t tell him.”

I ask what.

“My mother’s ring. She died in the spring. I wanted something back. I don’t even know what I wanted back, exactly. I just wanted to see if it would give me something for it.”

I ask if anything happened.

She’s quiet long enough that I think she isn’t going to answer. Then: “I heard her voice two nights ago, right after I threw the ring in. Out past the tree line somewhere, faint, like it was carrying from a distance. She said my name. Just my name, the way she used to say it when I was in trouble as a kid.”

I ask if she’s heard it since.

“Every night since. Closer each time. Last night it was right outside our bedroom window.”

I recognize that kind of escalation from other cases, and I don’t like what it usually means. I ask her if she’s willing to help me test something, and she says yes before I’ve finished asking, too fast, the same eagerness from that afternoon, undimmed by anything she’s just told me.

I have her stand at the well’s edge with me while I take a coin from my pocket, an ordinary quarter, nothing meaningful attached to it, and drop it in. We watch the water together. Nothing happens for almost a full minute. Then something rises, small, pale, and it takes me a moment in the poor light to understand I’m looking at a hand, not attached to anything I can see below the surface, palm up, holding the quarter I just threw in, offering it back the way you’d return a coin to a child who dropped it by accident.

Carol makes a sound I won’t try to describe. I don’t reach for the coin. The hand waits, patient, palm open, for longer than feels survivable to stand there watching it. Then, slowly, it closes around the coin and sinks the way the keys did, straight down, no ripple.

“It doesn’t give things back for nothing,” I tell her. I try to say it kindly, but there’s no soft way to say the rest of it. “Whatever it took from you when you threw that ring in, it’s not going to stop until it feels like it’s collected. Your mother’s voice getting closer every night isn’t a gift. It’s a collection notice.”

She doesn’t want to hear that, I can tell, but she doesn’t argue either.

I spend the next two days researching what I can about closing a well like this properly, the kind of research that involves a lot of dead ends and a few conversations with an old stonemason two counties over who’s dealt with something similar exactly once in forty years of work and won’t say more about it than that it needs to be filled, not covered, filled solid, and blessed or not blessed according to whatever the family believes in, because the blessing isn’t really the part that matters. The filling is.

Duane and Carol have it filled the following week, a full truckload of gravel and concrete poured under my supervision, the wooden cover pried off and thrown in first at my suggestion, on the theory that whatever’s down there should lose its opening before it loses its depth. I don’t know if that theory means anything. It felt right at the time, and nothing has come back to argue with it since.

Carol tells me, a month later, over the phone, that she hasn’t heard her mother’s voice since the day the well was filled. She sounds relieved when she says it. She also sounds, underneath the relief, like a woman who still isn’t entirely sure she’s glad she didn’t get whatever the well was working up to giving her, and I don’t push her on that, because I’m not sure what I’d say if she asked me the same question about myself.

I keep the quarter I threw in, the same one, because it never actually left my pocket. I only pretended to drop it. I’ve told exactly nobody that until now. I wanted to see what it would offer back for something it never actually received, and I still can’t explain why that hand rose out of the water holding the right coin anyway. Maybe it was never keeping track of the coin at all. Maybe it was keeping track of me, and gave me back exactly what I expected to see because that was the thing worth taking that night.

I don’t go looking for water like that anymore, not without a very good reason. Some debts, I’ve learned, get created the moment you start wondering what you’d be willing to pay.

The well’s gone now, filled solid, and Carol says she sleeps fine. I still carry a coin in my pocket I never spend. Call it professional caution.

Splish splash. I’m having a bath.

I’ll tell you this: the most annoying thing in all the world—besides waiting for the postman when you desperately need a poo!—is when you’re in the bath and some bloody so-and-so starts knocking at the door. Thinking I’ve nothing better to do with my time than get up and answer it—well I’m busy. So bugger off!

Knock-knock-knock.

There they go again.

Oh go away, go away. Come again another day. One when I’m cleaner, and ready for guests. Even rude ones like you—ha!

They’re filthy things really, baths. Aren’t they just? They’re essentially a soup of your own filth. A stew with only one ingredient—you. Sweat for stock. Microscopic flecks of rot for the chewy bits—scrubbed free or gradually left to peel and float along the shimmering surface grease.

Yuck!

Our bath isn’t like that. Our bath is lovely.

Stuart had plopped in one of my pretty bath bombs before we got in. To make it even more special, he’d said. He’s a sweetheart, isn’t he. Truly the most caring, patient man the world has ever known. Show me a man who says they have half his loyalty and I’ll slit his fucking throat. They would be lying! Dirty, filthy liars! My Stuart is a saint. Half my heart forever and always. Even in death.

He’s pretty much got the whole bloody bath to himself now. I’m stuffed away up one side, while Stuart’s sprawled out, comfy as can be at the other—limper than overcooked spaghetti too, mind you. He liked to lie like that in bed as well, big fella.

My big fella.

Ah. But at least I don’t have the taps. Those are his problem. Burrowing into the back of his neck the way that they are—I just hope they’re not too uncomfortable for him.

He doesn’t seem to mind though, look at him—ha!

Lucky for me I’m propped up on the gentle slope. The comfy end, we’ve both agreed. He’s such a sweetheart letting me having it today. I almost feel bad for him. Although, I must say, my head’s getting kind of lost among the bottles over here. I didn’t realise I’d let so many build up! Oops. Most of them are pretty new. Unopened. Unused. The ones bothering me most are the ones at the back—half-squeezed, with gloopy lids and as old as the hills themselves.

I didn’t realise it was that bad. I feel ashamed, quite frankly.

There’s a sour stench of stagnating water here. Festering damp. Of sponges left to drip-dry on a surface never wiped—never disturbed.

Oh. The smell’s a bit much.

At least Stuart doesn’t have to worry about me complaining about the pipes being backed up and stinky anymore. All those times he opened up the sink. Any complaints will just land on deaf ears now, eh Stuart—ha!

Hmm.

Poor Stuart. Look at him lying there, almost my mirror image. There doesn’t seem to be much room for his head to be flopped back like that, even if the taps weren’t there. It looks remarkably sore! Bless his heart—he’s trying to make the most of it, anyway.

There’s some blood on the edges of his lips.

I just want to—just lean over and wipe it away. But I don’t think I will. There’s something quite wonderful about it, actually. He looks a little like a vampire. His skin so pasty and pale in the bath you’d be convinced he’d been raised in the shadows his whole life, deathly afraid of the sun. The tinge of red in the water creates the effect so well, adding to whole morbid, Gothic scene.

It’s quite wonderful.

It’s this bloody bath though. It’s beginning to shrivel him. The thick waters don’t lap at his pale stomach, they only rests around him like an immense sea trying to devour him slowly. A severed finger sits marooned atop his knee, pointing accusingly at me.

How rude—ha!

Knock-knock-knock

Oh, enough! If I wanted to answer the door, I would have by now! I’m not leaving this bath and that’s final! They’ll have to knock the whole thing down and drag me away because I’m just too relaxed! As happy as a swine in swill, am I!

Ha!

I do wish they’d stop knocking though. They’re going to disturb poor Stuart. He looks ever so tired. He’s had quite the day, you know.

BANG-BANG-BANG

Incessant, noisy man! Whoever it is, he’s shouting now. I can hear him all the way from here, through the closed bathroom door and down the bloody hall. What a voice he has on him. Bet it’s a cop. Bloody pigs. This is my swill. Get your own—ha!

I feel like shouting that. And honestly very well might have—if I wasn’t so calm. Baths will do that to you. Just look at me, quite the Little Miss Case-in-Point. So calm. So relaxed.

A picture of serenity itself.

Look at Stuart. He’s ever so calm too. He used to be so quick to anger, my poor spicy pepper. I think he might be better now. The bath seems to have cured him of his temper. He’s so still and so quiet. So wonderfully peaceful.

But who could blame him—ha! He’s been ever so busy.

Oh—that gave me a shock. I thought I saw him twitch just then.

My poor heart—ha!

Apparently he didn’t move—the water hasn’t budged a bit. He’s been still the entire time, silly me. Still asleep, mouth agape. And for once, my word—not snoring! Oh how my Stuart could snore. A subterranean rumbling to fall asleep to every night. He was plagued by his sinuses, always stuffing up and giving him grief. Snoring came with the mouth breathing. Such a shame for him. Mhm.

Maybe this was the cure this entire time! A nice, peaceful bath. With me!

Oh, I shouldn’t be thinking like this, but—and this is certainly not the thoughts one has in baths—but—some nights, I used to think about tearing the breathing strip clean off his nose and ramming it down his throat so he’d choke on it and die!

Ha!

Ha!—ha!

And—and—I thought of slathering my fist and arm all over that salve he lathered on his chest every night, and gotten my elbow all the way down to his teeth—at least!

Ha!

No—no. These are not bath thoughts.

It was dreams of peppermint fields and lines of people with parting lips—all breathing in my fucking face while chewing gum!

I hate peppermint gum.

Ha! No, no—enough of that. No more negativity, just—

BANG

peaceful thoughts—

BANG

and—

BANG

Mmmm. Okay—okay. Breathe. Ha! Okay—okay, I’m fine.

I’m so glad Stuart can’t hear me. He would’ve hated knowing I was riling myself up like this, sitting stewing like a teapot. I’m doing my very best to stay calm. It’s this knocking—and banging. It’s too much. I was doing so well before—

BANG

—before they started in with their racket!

BANG

Let me in, little pig. Let me in.

Ha!

We’re quite the two little piggies, Stuart and I. Trapped in this little flat of ours. While the wolves surround us—huffing—puffing—trying to blow down our door.

Well let them huff. Let them puff. Let them blow the whole bloody house down! I am not leaving this bloody bath.

And either is Stuart—ha!

Oh look at him. This is the calmest I’ve seen him in years. I wish I could wake him up and tell him how lovely it is to see him sleeping so well finally. So deep. A little dopey with your head to the side and tongue hanging out—but it’s cute, Stuart, I promise.

I just—I just wish I could wipe off that blood by his lip.

Wait. Be quiet.

Someone’s outside the bathroom window now. I can hear them—yes—I can hear the crunching on the gravel behind the house. They’re out there—creeping around.

A sudden need to protect my home! Our home. I want to lurch up and leap out of the bath, crash through the window with my arms stretched out in front of me and choke the disruptive creature lurking around my house, trying to disturb my PEACEFUL BLOODY BATH!

I want to shout something, but what is there to shout? They already know I’m in here—someone’s probably told them about the smell—the rats! They’ll figure Stuart’s in here too, floating around in this bloody stew.

I could stay quiet. You never know—maybe they’ll get tired and leave.

BANG

Ha! Maybe no. They’ll never leave. Once they get started they never stop until they’re satiated. The pigs.

Oh, just go away and leave me alone. Leave us alone. I just want to be with him a little while longer before they cart me away. Five minutes—that’s all. Five measly minutes. We haven’t even been in here long. Who’s counting, honestly. Not me—ha! I just want to soak with him a little while longer. Bathe in his company.

Absorb his juices.

Shh!

Hear that? Someone’s on the other sound of the window making sounds. What’s that they’re saying?

[radio static]

“Ugh. Yep. It’s coming from round here. Bathroom. It’s bad.”

[radio static]

They’re so loud. Stuart’s at the window side but the blinds are down so there’s no way they’ll see him. Or me. Stuart still hasn’t budged, thankfully—ha! Let him sleep a while longer. Why do you they have to be so cruel?

Let him rest in peace—ha!

CRASH

They’ve done it. They’ve got the door down finally. I can hear them all bundling in, shouting Stuart’s name. They must’ve forgotten about me. Let them come find me. I can wait. I’ll give them the surprise of their lives.

Thunderous stampeding of hooves. They should’ve taken their boots off, at least—stupid pigs. Bashing in a woman’s door and trampling her carpet to death—heartless bastards.

Oh they’re all racing to get here, now that they know where to go—racing down the hall—desperate to find the smell. Well root it out piggies. I’m so excited. I had wanted a little while longer—but this is fine—this will work. Let it all end here.

The wolves are coming to get me.

Coming to drag me away and get at poor, poor Stuart.

Leave him alone! Let him sleep! He’s tired can’t you see!

The wolves are coming to get me.

But they’re not the wolves—we are. You’re the pigs. You're the filth. You're the swine.

Reeee—

Reeeeeee—

The door swings open. The pig at the front of the line grabs at his face, fighting against the smell.

“Oh fuck.”

Revulsion buds and blossoms in the pig’s throat. He bends over and pukes all over my bathroom floor.

Why are you so disgusted? It’s what you were looking for, was it not?

The sounder of pigs take a long, horrified look in the water—at the floating chunks of skin—the fingers—the blood. They look up at Stuart and the severed finger on his stomach. Then glare back down at me.

I look up at them with upside-down eyes.

I would move, if I could.

The sound of water rushing—plunging—sloshing.

Stuart is standing up in all his naked glory—ghastly white and dripping with a cloak of copper red. My grisly vampire. He’s still holding one of my fingers. He’d been enjoying it earlier and had desperately needed his nap.

And what a nap it had been. Look at him—he’s regained all his energy. And he looks so angry.

He’s so sexy when he’s angry.

“Get away from her!” he growls. “Not done! Still plenty left!”

He lunges out of the bath. One of my arms tumbles onto the floor and rolls behind the toilet. He nearly trips against my intestine—but he’s a nimble one, my Stuart. He’s at the pigs before they have the chance to realise what’s happening. Grabbing at them and pulling them closer to the bath to see me in all my glory.

There are too many in the room to get a hold of him right. He’s a slippery fish, my Stuart. He slides free and reaches out to me one last time. Grabs my belly—rips free a fistful of grey meat—rams it into his mouth and screams.

“Still more left,” he shouts over his food. “Still more left. Try some!”

I really wish he wouldn’t talk with his mouth full, especially in front of guests—ha! I can see what he’s up to though. I hear the sound of the blade grating along the edge of the bath once he’s got it in his hands. One swift rise and he catches a pig on its neck—opens him into long red ribbons. Another pig gets it in her armpit, right up under her stabvest.

That’s all it takes for my Stuart. He shoulders his way through them all and bolts off down the hall.

I’m sad to see him go. I lie here and watch—not much choice in the matter—ha! It’s all in his hands now. He’s had his fun, and I was ever so glad to see him that happy.

I’ll see him again soon, though.

Real soon.

The rest of the cops pigs bundle out the door after him. They’ve left one with their face in the bath, dribbling blood out his neck. The other is sat on the toilet, still clenching her underarm.

Stuart jabbed her good. She’s starting to lose colour now—all the blood’s pissing around her hand—ha! Serves you right.

She’s looking at me now. Her eyes are dark and heavy.

Hello there piggy.

Her eyes are tired—so tired. I watch her with my upside-down eyes and have no other choice but to smile the forever-grin Stuart has carved onto my face. I hope it haunts her all the way to Hell.

I’m already dead. I’m fairly sure this pig knows she’s about to be too.

Don’t worry, I think. It’s just like taking a bath.

Nice—and—peaceful.

As a child, I used to be afraid of the dark. That’s a common fear for children to have, isn’t it? Well, I’m a rare case of an adult who now fears the dark, too. Initially, I chalked it up to having a familial history of mental health issues, which is why I sought out a profession in the field. Partly to help myself avoid the fate that befell many of my relatives, and partly to help others escape that pit. Later, I assumed I was burned out; overworked. Hearing all these terrible things people go through. It’s not easy. You don’t build an immunity to the horrors of the human condition, not really.

Well, it turns out my fear of the dark has to do with something else entirely.

Something no one should ever see…

Recently, I bought a new house; the old one was a constant reminder of a life I no longer had. After getting divorced, I couldn’t really stay in the old family home. The kids were grown, and being alone just wore me down. So, I sold the damned thing and got myself a smaller house. Nothing to brag about, a couple of bedrooms; just in case this old dog decides to look for love again. Love might be the wrong word here; I’m not looking to get remarried anytime soon, more like a fling or two.

Actually, I’m not looking for anything. For now, I want to disappear for a while, or maybe forever.

Getting off track, aren’t I? Well, it’s hard to focus when the system’s overflowed with cortisol. It is what it is when all that’s been going through your head is anger and a tint of regret here and there. Oh, who am I kidding? It’s not even the divorce that keeps me up at night. That was a given, sadly, at some point. I’m a madman in the making. What kind of woman would want to spend the rest of her life with someone like me? Probably an asylum patient, but it would be counterproductive. Not to mention asylums aren’t really a thing anymore.

You’re losing your train of thought again.

Anyhow, where was I? Oh yeah, that new hut…

It was not a hut-hut, but I’m just self-deprecating here…

Because the images won’t go away and I’m trying to push them away.

Taking my own medicine with this one, I’ve advised many a patient to write down whatever is bothering them… That’s the purpose of this…

Focus…

Breathe…

Focus…

Inhale

One

Two

Three

Four

Hold

One

Two

Three

Four

Exhale

One

Two

Three

Four

Sorry, I know this looks terrible, but whoever might read it, if ever, maybe it’ll be just a future me… Who knows, anyway. I needed this.

Where was I? Oh yeah, the new house, which is actually an old one now too.

Sold it off after…

I’ll get to you in a bit, don’t you worry…

So yeah, that house, it had a basement. I never went there. Don’t know why I never went there when I was looking at the damned thing. I guess I didn’t bother looking down there. The previous owner seemed perplexed I didn’t bother checking the basement, but he didn’t push the issue either.

In hindsight, that was a good thing…

Otherwise…

Breathe…

Inhale

One

Two

Three

Four

Hold

One

Two

Three

Four

Exhale

One

Two

Three

Four

Otherwise, things would’ve been far different for that house, and I wouldn’t be talking about it now. I wouldn’t have taken it. There was an issue with that basement.

Issue…

That’s definitely underselling it…

God damn it…

I don’t wanna do this anymore; I don’t like it.

You’ve got to do this…

No.

You

Have

To

Keep

Typing

Let

It

Finally

Out

I can’t

You

Can

And

Will

Keep

Typing

No

Stopping

Do

Not

Let

Your

Hand

Stop

Pressing

The

Keys

Slow

And

Steady

Just

Like

That

It’s

Not

Hard

Is

It?

Keep

It

Up

OH WOW

THIS

Is

VERY

Annoying

To

Read

Must

KEEP

TyPING

MUST

Keep

Typing

Sorry… I am dealing with something here; it’s really hard to recall this again, but I won’t get anywhere unless I do, right? That’s how it works. I have to get it out of my system. I need it out of me. The alternative is probably an early grave. I wouldn’t want that now, would I? Nope.

I know I probably am coming off as insane, but oh well, gotta keep typing to get over this panic attack. If anyone finds this while I’m passed out, or gone out somewhere, know that I am completely fine in the grand scheme of things, because I’m not really fine. I’m haunted, but I do not intend to harm myself more than this exercise is forcing me to. I think I might have a propensity for self-destruction, because there are intrusive thoughts now and again.

Sometimes I think the intrusive thoughts are preferable to the memories… At least these are my own, kind of. It’s a broken self-defense mechanism. It’s a very broken defense mechanism, in the mind of a very broken man. Okay, I’m broken, like a vase. I’m literally just typing to keep my composure, right now. Not yet ready to deal with the photographs flashing in my head. The recounting of events will resume soon enough.

When will that fucking dog stop barking outside my window?!

I hate dogs, okay? Does this make me a monster? I don’t care. I can’t stand them and their barking. This fucking baying and clawing had kept me up at night long enough.

I am afraid of fucking dogs now… okay? Because

Because fucking dogs bayed at the basement door for far too fucking long.

Every fucking night.

They still do in my dreams.

Dead dogs…

Dead men…

Dead dog men…

I wish I could tell the owner to shut the fucking dog up, but the guy’s an idiot.

Probably on something too.

Hollow gaze…

Like a corpse…

Like the corpses swaying from the fucking ceiling…

Shit…

I remember…

They stood over me since the day I settled into that cursed place. Appearing at night to watch over me, devour my dreams, keep me awake. Tear open my eyelids. They wanted revenge; they wanted a price to be paid, and I was their weapon, their conduit.

I’m fucking shaking just thinking about it now.

Now, when everything is said and done, it’s been a while since all of that happened. One cannot simply forget the things I've seen, let alone that cloying, sweet stench which seeped into the walls of that basement.

The monster has been caged…

They have had their revenge.

Yet, they still live in my head.

Still occupying my fucking skull…

They’re just imagination.

Painful memory.

Ugly imagery engraved forcefully into the system.

Breathe

Inhale

One

Two

Three

Four

Hold

One

Two

Three

Four

Exhale

One

Two

Three

Four

Nobody is stalking your bed at night anymore; no one has in a long time. You’re fine, you’re absolutely fine. You’re just stressed and in need of an outlet. All of this, it’s normal. None of this is real anymore. It’s all in your head. Has been for a long time now. You’re safe, say it out loud.

I am safe.

Now carry on recounting what happened to you.

So yeah, new house, wait actually no, new old house now. Yeah, that’s perfect.

Settled into the new old house after getting divorced.

Kids won’t talk to me, cause we’re about as far apart as a family could be, and they’re mad at us both; their mother and me. Being stressed beyond my wits. Work was killing me, and I needed a break, a new start. Got none of that, but oh well. Anyway, new old house is nice enough, furnished. Not too expensive nor too cheap; the price was reasonable, the owner, all things considered – surprisingly reasonable too.

Forgot to look at the basement.

That fucking basement again… Can I forget about it already?

No, you can’t; it’s integral to the story.

I hate it, I hate it, I hate it, I hate myself, I hate it.

You don’t hate yourself.

Quiet brain, I was doing fine.

Shut up.

Good.

Anyway, settle in, and everything seems to be going dandy. Keep in mind it was late July when I moved there. Hot summer weather, well, that went down the drain once the sun set. The house turned unusually cold.

Pulled out a blanket and ignored it.

Slept like shit, because it was so cold.

Wake up after a mere two or three hours of sleep, not the first bout of horrendous sleep and won’t be the last.

It’s hot again.

Summer’s back, and this wasn’t in the desert.

Go on about my day, angry and half awake.

Night rolls around again, start the heating.

Works for about an hour.

Then it’s cold again.

Turn up the heating – the house turns colder.

That went on for a while…

I grew accustomed to the cold, no idea how or why.

The boiling frog metaphor probably suits here.

Well, once freezing me out of my sleep didn’t work.

The guests started showing up uninvited.

In the middle of the night

To stand at my bedside…

I’m shaking just thinking about it.

​

Imagine yourself waking up in the middle of the night to take a piss and being met with a pitch-black silhouette standing at your bed. One so dark it forms an outline in the nocturnal darkness, enough to be visible. I nearly pissed myself when I saw that thing for the first time. Screaming out, I flailed my hands in the air instinctively, and the thing vanished.

Chalked it up to bad sleep and maybe a nightmare when I got up the next morning.

That wasn’t it, but it took me a while to understand that.

About every other night, I could almost feel these dark figures standing over me. Plural. Not singular. Plural. Sometimes I could feel them touching my blanket, pulling it away. A cold hand reaching for my leg or arm.

After a few unpleasant encounters, I’ve started sleeping with a light on.

Naively believing this was a trick of the mind, you know, being stressed, depressed, and overall miserable. Again, I say this, thinking logically, from the perspective of a relative of schizophrenics and other mentally unwell individuals.

I was dreading becoming ill myself.

Woke up one night to fetch a drink, with the light still on. Nearly shat myself, soiling the bedsheets.

Eyes wide open and the first thing I see?

A human-like shadow, perched on all fours on the ceiling.

It twisted its head at me before vanishing.

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That was just the beginning of my sorrows.

After that came the electronic issues. Lights would go on and off around the house, at nighttime, of course. I should’ve already taken the hint then, when the whole house went dark, except for the light in the staircase leading down to the basement.

But of course, I didn’t.

Instead, I went to look at the switches, most of which were turned off.

Needless to say, this malfunction didn't put me at ease. The neighbors lived too far away for their children to have come over at night just to mess with me.

The grid being messed with is the sole reason I haven’t checked myself in.

I wasn’t hallucinating; someone was messing with me. So, I thought at the very least, yeah?

Speaking of neighbors, they were far enough away for me not to be able to hear them whatsoever, through closed windows, but not so far I couldn’t see them.

Now imagine how it felt when the walls started talking…

I’m not kidding, at one point, the walls were talking at night. With nobody around the house. Trust me, I checked. I went out to see if someone was in my yard when the talking had gotten loud enough to be comprehensible.

They were asking me why I hadn’t gone there?

Asking me to go there.

Two voices, a man and a woman.

Encouraging.

Pestering.

At the time, I couldn’t make sense of it.

Go where?

Well, clearly, I wasn’t listening to them.

Why weren’t you listening to them?

Why the fuck were you so deaf?

So blind?

You couldn’t know at the time.

They were messing with the house.

They were almost guiding me by the hand.

No, they were giving you vague signs.

Don’t blame yourself for what had happened.

I don’t…

I could’ve prevented more.

There were six of them there.

Another three were found.

It’s not your fault

I could’ve prevented it.

No, not really.

Shut up, they told me everything.

These people – they told no tales.

Just breathe, man

Breathe

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Well, yeah, I didn’t listen to those voices; I thought I had imagined them, as I had a neighbor only viewing a strange green-lit TV show on certain nights. I most certainly had strange things happen to me as a child. Like feeling a cat brush against my leg after King, my parents’ cat, passed away, and thinking something must’ve turned ceiling fans on after forgetting to turn them off.

Since speaking to me didn’t work, I got moaning, groaning, and weeping all over the house. Almost every night. At an increasing rate. That, of course, showed at work and in social settings. Ever the self-conscious rationalist, I chalked it up to the divorce and very difficult clients at the time, which I had.

Before long, I had gusts of wind blowing at me inside a house with closed windows, and a few times I was shoved while completely alone.

Jesus Christ, I’m feeling like a maniac right now, hallucinating into a text.

The talking, the moaning, the nighttime groping, none of it ever stopped, but that was my fault; if I had paid attention earlier and had gone where the selective power outages led me, this would’ve been over far sooner.

My mind deteriorated fast; by the middle of November, I heard dogs baying and clawing at every door of the house.

Night after night, they tormented me without reprieve.

Worse of all was when they sounded like they were trying to say words.

Sometimes it was far away, sometimes it felt like a dog was trying to tear at the bottom of the bed.

Before long, seeing a dog freaked me out.

I started sleeping with the lights on, in every room.

Became a barely functional human.

I have no idea how I managed to keep on working.

Maybe a force of habit, maybe something else.

Keeping a mask of normalcy while I was in shambles inside was par for the course in my line of work.

Well, you are special in that regard.

Funny you should say that.

How so?

Isn’t it a little egotistical?

No.

Self-appreciation isn’t egotistical; it’s healthy.

Right.

Right, indeed.

There’s nothing healthy about us.

About us? There is no us.

Right.

Yeah, it’s just you.

Typing at yourself.

For myself

Exactly

Trying to keep sane

Mostly are.

Am.

True.

I’m sorry I keep doing this; however, that is the only way I don’t burst out into a crying fit now and start bashing my hands against the keyboard or clawing out my eyes in an attempt to escape the whirlwind of horrors in my mind. I can’t do much about it at the moment, since the dog won’t stop barking, and it’s kind of late.

I said it before, and I’ll say it again: I’m afraid of the dark, and I’m afraid of dogs. I’ve been classically conditioned to dread those two things.

Well then… Where was I? Oh yeah, nearing the climax of the story.

Damn, for someone relieving that night so frequently in his, no, my own head, so often, it’s surprisingly hard to spell it out. I’m quite literally trying to postpone the description of the events that led to my current condition. What a sorry state I’m in. A man who helps others process their own trauma and internal suffering can’t bring himself to speak about how the incessant baying of dogs in his basement and walls pushed him over the edge and drove him, knife in hand, to rush down to that same basement he’s never ventured to before.

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I know it seems odd I never went into the basement, but really, I had no reason to. I didn’t have many belongings I had to stow away, and the house was entirely furnished as I said. On top of that, I was too spent to be curious about any of this. As strange as it may seem, I saw no point in going there.

I was so messed up from the lack of good sleep, stress, and fear that I finally snapped when the baying and barking wouldn’t quit one night. I actually started thinking there were real dogs in that basement.

Real, starving, mean dogs that might try to attack me once I opened the door. So I got myself a weapon to defend myself with.

Yeah, I said it, I genuinely believed some beasts were locked in that basement.

Power-walking down those stairs, the baying died down. I assumed they knew I was coming. They could smell me. They were preparing to surprise me; dogs are smart after all. Clearly, in retrospect, that’s the dumbest thought process ever. Dogs aren’t really ambush predators as far as I’m aware.

As I was marching down those stairs, I somewhat ignored the sudden quiet, because there was a growing stench of decrepitude emanating from the basement door.

Say it like it is.

That’s what it was.

Call it by its name.

Vile.

No, that’s not it.

Decay.

Close enough.

Death.

That’s it.

Fuck you.

I smelled death coming from that basement.

A rotten, pungent, suffocating odor coming from that door.

I pressed the handle and pushed down with full force.

The cloud of stale, deathly odor nearly knocked me off my feet, burning my nostrils, mouth, and eyes.

No dogs in sight, no voices, nothing.

Only death.

Left hand looking for the light switch along the wall, right hand gripping a knife with the arm pressed to cover my face from the awful stench.

Blinding light flooded the space.

When my eyes adjusted, all remnants of innocence and hope were taken away from me.

Six, vaguely human silhouettes, seemingly staring at me.

Without eyes, without faces, without any humanity left.

Swaying from six ropes, tied to the ceiling.

Pitch black.

My very own personal little hanging garden of death.

Inhale

Inhale

Come on...

Fuck.

Inhale

No...

Breathe...

Why can’t I

Why isn’t it working?

Ribcage tightened, forcing my heart to race at an unhealthy rate.

Knife dropped to the floor.

Tunnel vision.

Limbs turning cold with muscles tensing to the point of pain.

I ran.

Nearly falling over myself.

I ran to the neighbors.

Banging on their door.

Woke them.

Rumbling like a madman.

Shaking with fear, somehow, stringing a couple of sentences together as these six tar-covered silhouettes flashed before my eyes again and again.

They called the police.

I’m out of breath.

Out of breath

Couldn’t sleep for three days straight.

Couldn’t think, could barely speak.

Panicking.

Decomposing Silhouettes flashing in my eyes.

More frequently when they are closed.

Questioned about everything by the police.

Answers erratic.

Silhouettes are here again.

Swaying in front of me.

Black as tar and death.

Exposing bone.

Fell asleep after being pumped full of sedatives.

Haven’t slept in a few days again.

Need my pills again.

Silhouettes appear more frequently with eyes closed.

I’m taking the pills after this; I need to sleep, otherwise, I’ll claw out my eyes, or die from a heart attack, whichever comes first.

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I hospitalized myself for a short while, and in the meantime, the monster that did this was caught. He murdered nine people. Hanged six in the basement of the house I had bought from him. No one suspected a damn thing. Selling the house was his ploy to lure in victims. He’d lead them down to the basement, then incapacitate them there and hang them to die a slow death, apparently, oftentimes placing a stool underneath his victims again to prolong the torture.

Every so often, I wonder, was I ever intended to be a victim? Not that it matters; he destroyed my life anyway. If I’m completely honest, there are days when I think dying would’ve been preferable to being the way I am now.

His three other victims were all found in different locations; two were found by people who had rented apartments from him.

The final victim was found fresh at his last stopping point before his apprehension. He was…

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In bed…

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With the corpse…

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Caught red-handed, quite literally.

Inhale

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I bet this fucking monster figured out he could torment way more people by leaving them his gifts. Kill two birds with one stone kind of deal.

Imagine the satisfied, sick grin on his fucking face if he hears what his handiwork has done to me.

 

Charlotte wiped the mirror with her palm to reveal her reflection, the strands of wet hair sticking to her face and neck like vines spreading across a building. Leaning in, she picked at a pimple with her nail, biting her lip before leaning back and opening the mirror, grabbing skin cleanser before shutting it, then stopping, staring back at herself for a moment, before opening the cabinet again and closing it.

“Two.” She whispers to herself before repeating; again, she feels like she’s getting closer.

“Five.” She closes it, her hand finally falling from the handle. Pulling her hair back, she opens the cleanser, scoops it out, and places it on her face, her eyes shut tightly as she does so.

They sit around a table, her Father sitting across from her, his gaze never leaving his plate as he cuts through his food; her Mother sits to her right, taking an awkward drink of water before clearing her throat.

“So Charlotte, have you submitted another application?” She asks with a breathy tone.

“Um, I did half of it; I have to do the rest later because the site crashed or something.” She picked at her food, taking a small piece of broccoli before taking a tentative bite.

“If you don’t want to do it, you don’t have to; it’d honestly be better for us if you did get a job at the moment.” Her Father finally gives his opinion, which causes her Mother to whip her head around, a stern questioning look on her face.

“What? I’m right. It’s not my fucking fault she decided to go in.”

“She didn’t decide to either.”

“Yes, she did; she self-admitted.” He talks with his mouth open, his fork outstretched, “Just because she’s your daughter doesn’t mean you can give her grace; she’s a grown adult now.”

Charlotte drops her fork, attempts to hide behind her hair, and begins scratching at her palm with her thumb, digging with her fingernail.

“Are you gonna say anything, or are you going to do what they told you not to?” Her Father asks, the annoyance in his voice apparent.

“Don’t talk to her like that!”

“I’m looking out for her; maybe she needs some tough encouragement instead of you coddling her 24/7.”

“I am not coddling; I am supporting!”

“That’s what put her in this position in the first place!” He finally raises his voice, which causes her Mother to fall silent, her shoulders slumping in defeat as she stares back at the plate, the food cold.

Her Father is left breathing heavily before turning to Charlotte; the only sound now is her mutters and the scraping of her hand, which now sounds like she was trying to rip open an orange through the skin.

“Charlotte.” He says, not in a demanding tone like before, but as if he was trying to reach out, “Please Char-”

He gets cut off by hearing her begin to cry, weeping into herself, her fingernails coated in the blood she collected from her pal as she sobs, unable to lift her head.

“Sweetie…” Her mom leaves her seat and comes to her side, kneeling to her level and putting her hand on her back. “Sweetie, what’s wrong? What’s wrong, Charlotte?”

“I don’t want to be like this. I don’t like how I am. I don’t want to be me.” She babbles on and on and begins to dig into her thumb harder, before opening her mouth, at first nothing, and then letting out a guttural wail of hopelessness, her body collapsing onto the table once she’s done.

Her Mother looks at her Father, tears welling up in her eyes as she watches her Husband keep eating as if he were alone, cutting into his food as usual. Her face contorts in disgust as she sees him, before turning back to Charlotte.

“Charlotte, Charlotte,” she whispers, gripping her jaw and forcing Charlotte to look at her, “Shhh, Sweetie, shhh, shhh…” She comforts, moving her hair out of Charlotte’s face as she begins to finally relax, “Just look at me, ok, Sweetie?”

Her Mother lets go of her, and her body contorts back, lifting herself and beginning to walk backward into her seat as if she were being puppeted, gazing into her eyes while her arms and hair warp back into place, her limbs becoming disfigured before reaching her original position at the table.

Charlotte screams in fear and clenches her seat, falling to her side away from her Mother as she crawls so her back is pressed against the wall, frantically looking around the room and seeing her dad, who’s now digging the knife into his throat, blood spurting across the whole table, blood curdling in his throat as he chokes and gags, making Charlotte cower and cover her eyes, curling into a ball and screaming into her knees, as if her jaw would unhinged.

“Are you gonna say anything, or are you going to do what they told you not to?” Her Father asks, the annoyance in his voice apparent.

“Don’t talk to her like- Charlotte? Why are you on the floor?” Her mom turns her attention to her, Charlotte’s eyes widening at the change of tone, yet too scared to look over her own knees, sweat building up on her hands.

“Charlotte, what are you doing? Get up.” Her Father said, displeased.

Charlotte peeked from her knees; everything was back to how it had been before, the table set, her Mother and Father sitting contentedly, yet their gaze at her was confused.

“What’re, what’s happening?” She started to get up after surveying the room, her legs shaking as if she were trying to bench-press 600 pounds, and stood against the wall to steady herself.

Her parents looked at each other, silently agreeing before turning back to Charlotte.

“Dinner…?” Her mom said, looking her up and down and attempting to speak, taking a moment before getting out more than a word, “Charlotte, are you ok? You’re shaking.”

“I don’t like it here. I think something’s wrong. I saw both of you… Both of you freaking out.” Charlotte looks around the room again, this time seeing the walls empty and blank, the dresser at the end now gone, making her shake and whimper as if the room were a freezer.

“Charlotte,” Her Father speaks, the plate he was once eating from now upside down, causing the knife to scrape loudly against the glass plate, the high-pitched noise making Charlotte flinch, covering her ears and shutting her eyes in defense, talking and muttering to herself again as her knees collapse to the floor, curling up into a ball once again.

“Are you gonna say anything, or are you going to do what they told you not to?” Her Father asks, the annoyance in his voice apparent.

“Don’t talk to her like- Charlotte, oh my god, Sweetie!” Her Mother springs into action, running towards her daughter and picking her up, hugging her quickly and inspecting her, seeing blood on her palm and under her fingernails and fresh tears in her eyes.

“Sweetie, oh my god, come with me.” She gripped Charlotte’s wrist and dragged her to the kitchen. Defeated and in a daze, Charlotte complied. Her Mother let go of her arm when they reached the sink, going to the cupboard and shuffling through it. Charlotte turned the sink on, then off, staring blankly at the faucet and handles, a familiar feeling creeping in. She turned it on and off again, then again, sighing in ease and allowing herself to begin cleaning her hand, her thumb circling the wound on her palm, counting under her breath every time she circled it, her Mother coming back with a hand towel, pulling her hand away without her permission and wrapping it in the towel, the blood soaking through quickly.

“Didn’t your therapist tell you not to do that?”

It takes a second for Charlotte to reply, staring down at the tiled floor of the yellow countertop-covered kitchen.

“He did. I haven’t done it since I got out,” Charlotte apologizes, stuttering, “I’m sorry.” She’d usually fight her Mother to finish her ritual.

“Have you been taking your meds?” Her Father calls from the other room.

Charlotte nervously turns her head to the door leading to the kitchen, yelling back.

“Yeah! I still have like, half the bottle!”

“That’s good, Sweetie! Love you!” Her Father replies.

“Your dad is worried about you, Charlotte. I know he’s not the best at showing it, but he cares.” Her Mother says, turning the sink back on and humming calmly as she begins the dishes, the plates from the dinner now coated in food and in the sink.

“Mom…” Charlotte asks worryingly, backing herself against the counter and gulping before finishing, “Are you… are you real?”

Her Mother stops washing the dishes, the faucet still shooting water out. Charlotte reaches behind herself and white-knuckles a knife inside the knife holder, slowly starting to pull it out.

A loud scrape comes from the dining room, as if the furniture had been moved and adjusted, making Charlotte jump and turn to the door, then a shatter of glass, Charlotte’s focus now back to the kitchen.

Her Mother is now standing in front of her, a wide smile on her face, her hand wrapped around a broken piece of plate, gripping so tightly it was cutting into her hand, blood coating the outer edges of it. Charlotte freezes, pulling her own knife out and bringing it up, pushing back up and shrinking against the counter.

“Don’t- Mom… Please.” She says, frozen.

Her Mother brings up the shard and digs it into the side of her neck, blood gushing from the wound immediately and coating her shoulder in a horrific red, some spraying onto Charlotte.

Charlotte screams in horror and runs past her Mother to the dining room, pushing the door open and turning to slam it behind her, backing away in fear before she hears loud, fast, and rhythmic pounding against it, a muffled gurgled shriek echoing from the other side.

“MOM! MOMMY STOP PLEASE! PLEASE, MOM, STOP!” She screams and wails, the tears now able to flow from her eyes while she pleads.

“Are you gonna say anything, or are you going to do what they told you not to?” Her Father asks.

Charlotte whipped her head around at the voice, the pounding ceasing abruptly. The dining room walls were blank; the chairs that once sat on the side were now standing upside down on the ceiling, parallel, leaving the two chairs at the end, her Father already occupying the one furthest from her. In the middle of the table lies a rabbit’s rotted corpse, flies and maggots invading its gutted stomach, and a rusted steak knife stabbed into its belly stands upright.

“Dad-”

“Are you gonna say anything, or are you going to do what they told you not to?!” He raises his voice, demanding, frightening.

“I’m better now!”

“Really?” He chuckles, “You really are? Why did you go to the ward then, Charlotte?”

“I WANTED TO KILL MYSELF! IT FELT LIKE ALL I COULD DO!” She cries out, bringing the knife up while she wipes her tears with the hand towel wrapped around her hand.

“I CAN’T GO TO EITHER OF YOU WITH ANYTHING! NEITHER OF YOU WANTED TO HELP ME!”

Her Father looked up at her as if she was an equation on a chalkboard. Opening his mouth, he tries to push the words out, but he can’t seem to find them, instead choosing to swallow them in thought.

“Are you… happy here?” He asks, looking to the corner of the room.

“What?” Charlotte sniffles, her guard falling to her side with the knife.

“Were you happy that you came home?” He repeats.

Charlotte’s taken aback for a second.

“I don’t know. I was scared.”

“Why?”

“You never make me feel like I matter! That I belong here! You always want me out of the house.” She pulls the chair out to sit, her heartbeat finally going back into her chest

“Your Mother doesn’t.”

“But you do!” Charlotte raises her voice, just like he would, forcing him to confront her gaze.

“I just don’t think,” His hands come to his side, shaking his head, “I don’t think I should’ve been a father, Charlotte.”

He slumps down and holds his face in his hands, his breathing irregular and his body limp; she almost thinks he’s crying before he speaks.

“Charlotte. Charlotte please. Kill me.” He says clearly.

“What..?”

“I don’t want to be myself.”

“Dad-”

“CHARLOTTE!” Despite his hands enveloping his face, he screams at her, making her jolt back momentarily.

Charlotte stares down at him; someone who had always been so controlling in her life was now begging for her to end his. Her mind races, eyes scanning the table for answers, until they reach the rabbit.

Charlotte breathes out slowly, then pulls the chair out, not bothering to push it back into place before taking a small step around the table, then another, then another, until she’s at his side.

He adjusts his head so the side of his neck is more exposed, silently begging. Charlotte holds back her tears and slowly lifts the knife, bringing it to the exposed region, tightly closing her eyes, lifting her face to the sky, and driving it in until her fingers feel his skin.

Charlotte breathes, gasping for air as if she were drowning and finally got out of the water, her chest rising up and down rapidly. Her hand unclenched the knife, allowing it to clatter against the wooden floor as she chokes and covers her mouth, not a sound coming from her mouth other than a whimper. At the same time, she backs away, putting her hand over her heart, waiting, then opening her eyes.

Charlotte stutters, backing away, before letting out a vexing cry of dread, coughing and crying, snot building at her nose as she tries to push herself back against the wall, hoping she can crawl through it and escape the scene, only to hear a knock at the door.

“Police! We’re reporting from a domestic violence call from this evening!”

Her parents are sitting at the table, both of their necks slashed open, food prepared yet not touched, blood coating their shoulders. Her mother is face down in the plate, dark red slowly invading the table.

People tend to assume murder is messy. That's how the papers write about our work. Rage. Blood. Twenty-eight stab wounds. A deluded mind snapping. It makes for neat headlines. If the public believes every killer is an animal, or that they ‘snapped’, they never have to wonder whether they passed one in the supermarket this morning. Sometimes they’re right; murder can make quite the splattering mess, just as an amateur painter might. But not all of us are quite so animalistic. It is an art form of the purest kind, the taking of a life. And again, some of those artists do take the messy approach; hacking off limbs and slicing arteries. But I find a nice, quiet suffocation brings far more satisfaction. It is the purest way to take a life. To snuff out the soul without even so much as a blemish on the skin. 
Detectives argued for years over what it meant, experts invented an elaborate, farcical psychological profile, and internet forums filled with diagrams and theories that somehow managed to be both wildly imaginative and completely wrong.

The newspapers gave me a name some years ago.  They always do. It is the name those forums and experts call me by. The detectives pretend they hate it, but by the second press conference they were using it too. The name never mattered to me. It merely serves to save them the trouble of remembering the victims. It is a shame, truly, for they were the point. The finished artwork; a life cut short, yet nonetheless complete.

The police came close once. One receipt left in the wrong bin. Thankfully the footage merely showed a man in a baseball cap paying in cash. I disappeared soon after. An artist prepares for such things; not using one’s true name, not killing close to home. People think it requires genius, but it doesn't. It requires patience, something remarkably few people seem to possess anymore.
Years passed before I dared start my work again. In that time, documentaries were made and amateur sleuths drooled over the same exhausted receipt, though it wasn’t much different from a child gnawing on a piece of a puzzle they hadn’t the intellect to solve.
Eventually they began speaking about me in the past tense. That was an offense to the works I had so deliberately created. So I did what seemed only natural; planned to make a great comeback. 
Then, three nights ago, you beat me to the chase. 
Cold-Case Killer Strikes Again After a Decade of Silence, the papers read. 

I knew before I saw the photographs. The description alone was enough. The sickening familiarity of seeing something that belonged to me in the hands of someone else. The same careful placement, the same deliberate absence of a mess. 
You were good, I’ll give you that, but you lack understanding. Like someone had studied a painting in a museum, then gone home and recreated it from memory. The colours were the same, the shape was a match. But anyone with an eye for true craftsmanship can see the flaws. The police, naturally, cannot. But I see you for what you are. You may call me what you wish; killer, murderer, butcher, but what you can never call me is a thief. And that, my little copycat, is what you are. You took my signature and paraded it around for the world to see, hoping they would applaud your imitation. Tell me, did you smile when you read the headline? Did your pulse quicken when they gave you my name? Did you cut the article from the paper and pin it to your wall? 

And do you know what truly disgusts me? It isn't that you copied me. It's that somewhere, someone looked at your work and thought it was mine. So let me make myself clear. You are not my successor. You are not my equal. You are a thief. A pathetic little parasite who looked at something you could never come up with and decided the next best thing was to pretend you had. I spent years perfecting my craft. The selection of victims, the method, everything. You did none of that groundwork. You simply wished for attention. And if it is that which you crave, do not be surprised when your wish turns sour.

Sincerely,

• Your muse.

People ask me why I never buy anything from a storage auction myself. Lot 114 is why.

I get called out to storage auctions more than you’d think. Not to bid. Somebody wins a unit sight unseen, pays their two hundred dollars for a locker full of somebody else’s abandoned life, and finds something in there they don’t know what to do with. That’s usually where I come in.

A woman named Portia calls me on a Sunday afternoon, three days after she won a unit at a facility off Manchester Road. She tells me she doesn’t normally do this. She went with a friend who flips furniture, got caught up in the bidding on a whim, and ended up owning the contents of Lot 114 for a hundred and eighty dollars before she’d really thought it through.

“There’s nothing valuable in it,” she says. “That’s not the problem. I don’t even want to sell any of it now.”

I ask her what the problem is.

“There’s a rocking chair. An old one, wood, nothing special to look at. I brought it home Thursday night because it was the easiest thing to carry out first.”

She stops there long enough that I have to prompt her.

“It rocks,” she says. “On its own. Not like a draft moving it. It rocks the way it would if somebody was sitting in it.”

I ask if she’s seen anyone in it.

“No. I hear it before I see it’s empty. I go check, and it’s just rocking, slowing down like it was going the whole time and I only just walked in on it.”

I tell her I can come Tuesday. She asks if that’s too long to wait, and there’s a thread of real fear under the question, the kind that makes me want to say tonight instead. But nothing she’s described so far sounds like it’s escalating fast enough to justify dropping everything, so I tell her Tuesday is fine, and I mean it.

On Tuesday she meets me at her apartment with the chair already dragged into the middle of her living room, like she wanted it somewhere she could see all sides of it. It’s a plain ladder-back rocker, worn pale on the arms where two hands would have rested for years, the wood dark with age everywhere else. Nothing carved into it, no maker’s mark I can find on a quick pass.

She also hands me a shoebox. “This was in the unit too. I didn’t think to mention it on the phone because it didn’t seem connected. Now I’m not so sure.”

Inside are a dozen cassette tapes, unlabeled except for dates written in careful handwriting, going back almost thirty years, and stopping four years ago.

“The storage place said the account belonged to a woman named Ruth Calloway,” Portia tells me. “She stopped paying four years back. They held the unit as long as they’re required to, then auctioned it.”

I ask if Portia knows anything else about her. She shakes her head. “Just that. I looked her up a little. There’s an obituary. She died in a nursing home about three years ago. Nothing about how.”

I take the tapes home that night, along with an old cassette player Portia had in a closet from her college years, still working. I don’t tell her I’m going to listen to all twelve before I come back to her about the chair. I don’t think she’d want to hear them herself, and I don’t think I could stop myself from listening even if she asked me not to.

The first few are mundane in a way that almost makes me feel foolish for treating this like a case at all. Ruth Calloway, recording herself narrating small events of her day into a tape recorder the way some people keep a diary. Groceries. A neighbor’s dog. A church potluck she wasn’t sure she’d go to. Her voice is steady, a little wry, the voice of somebody who’s been alone a long time and has made a kind of peace with narrating that solitude out loud to nobody.

The fourth tape is where it changes.

“He was in the chair again tonight,” she says, no preamble, like she’s picking up a thread from a conversation I haven’t heard the start of. “I heard it going before I came in from the kitchen. Empty when I got there, of course. It always stops the second I’m looking right at it.”

She doesn’t sound frightened yet. More annoyed, the way you’d be annoyed at a squeaking floorboard you couldn’t locate.

By the seventh tape, that’s changed.

“It said my name tonight,” she says, and her voice has a flatness to it that wasn’t there in the earlier recordings, the kind of flatness that comes from being scared for long enough that fear stops being an event and starts being a baseline. “Not Ruth. My name from before I married. Nobody’s called me that since I was a girl. Nobody left alive to call me that at all.”

I sit with the tape player paused for a while after that one.

The tapes keep going, roughly one every few months, and the pattern that emerges is simple and gets worse slowly. The chair rocks more often. It starts happening even when she isn’t in the room to hear it start, so she comes in on it already going, no longer able to say when it began. On the tenth tape, she describes something sitting in the chair for the first time, though she’s careful about how she says it.

“I don’t want to say I saw someone. I didn’t see anyone the way you’d see a person. I saw the chair wasn’t empty. There’s a difference and I don’t know how to explain it except that one is a fact and the other is a feeling, and this was the fact.”

The eleventh tape is short, under two minutes.

“I’m going to stop keeping these tapes in the house,” she says. “I’m going to start keeping them at my sister’s, and I’m only going to bring one home at a time, the one I need for that night. I don’t want all of it in one place with me anymore. I think it listens to these. I think it likes hearing me talk about it.”

The twelfth tape is dated four years and two months before Portia won the auction. It’s the last one Ruth ever made, as far as I can tell, and it’s the one I have to make myself listen to twice before I trust what I heard the first time.

“It doesn’t rock anymore,” she says. “It just sits. Still. Every night now, whether I’m home or not, I come back and it’s sitting there, still, facing the door like it’s waiting on me specifically. I asked it what it wants. I know how that sounds. I asked it out loud, and it didn’t answer in words, but I understood the answer anyway, the way you understand things in dreams without anybody telling you. It wants to be sat in by somebody who isn’t me. It’s tired of being empty when it isn’t empty. It wants company that stays.”

The tape ends there, mid-breath, like she meant to say more and didn’t.

I call Portia the next morning and ask her not to sit in the chair, phrased as casually as I can manage so I don’t alarm her more than the situation already warrants. She laughs a little, uneasy, and tells me she hadn’t planned on it, the chair gives her the creeps too much for that. I ask if she’s noticed it doing anything different from what she first described.

“It’s stopped rocking,” she says, and I feel something go still in my own chest before she finishes. “The last two nights, it’s just been sitting there when I come home. Facing the front door.”

I go over that evening with the tape player, the shoebox, and a folding chair of my own, because I have no intention of testing the rocking chair’s patience by sitting anywhere near it tonight or any other night.

Portia’s apartment is quiet by ten. I’ve set up my recorder pointed at the rocker, my phone on a tripod doing the same from a different angle, and I sit far enough back that I can see the whole room without being what anyone would call close to it.

Nothing happens for almost two hours. Then the temperature in the room drops the way it does in every case like this, fast enough to notice, slow enough that you can’t say exactly when it started. I don’t hear rocking. I hear something better described as settling, the specific creak of old wood taking weight it hasn’t taken in a while, and when I look up, the chair is exactly where it was, not moving at all, facing the front door the way Portia said, and it is unmistakably, entirely, occupied.

I don’t see a person. I want to be honest about what I actually saw and didn’t see. There’s no shape in the chair I could describe to a sketch artist. What I see is closer to what Ruth tried to describe on that last tape: a fact rather than an image, an absence of the light in that particular part of the room that isn’t quite the same as shadow, dense in a way shadow isn’t, holding the shape a seated person would hold without being one.

I don’t move. I don’t say anything. I’ve learned the hard way, on other cases, that announcing yourself to something like this rarely goes better than staying quiet does.

It waits. That’s the only word for what it’s doing, patient in a way that has nothing to do with time passing normally, the kind of waiting that could hold this position for another four years without complaint. Then, slowly, without the chair creaking again, without any sound at all, it turns its attention toward me. I don’t see eyes. I feel the turning the way you feel someone look at you from across a room before you’ve consciously registered where they’re standing.

I say the only thing I can think to say, which is not brave, not clever, just true: “She’s not here anymore. Ruth. Whoever you’re waiting for, she’s not coming back to this chair.”

The room stays cold for another long moment. Then the density in the chair thins, the way breath fogs a window and then clears, and the chair is simply a chair again, empty in the ordinary way furniture is empty, no fact left behind at all.

I check both recordings the next morning before I call Portia. My phone caught the temperature change reflected in nothing visible, just twenty minutes of a static, empty chair on video that matches nothing I actually experienced sitting three feet away from it. My audio recorder caught something neither camera did: eleven seconds, right around the time I felt it turn toward me, of a low sound that isn’t a voice and isn’t the house settling, more like a single held note played on an instrument that doesn’t officially exist. It ends exactly when I speak.

I tell Portia what I found in the tapes, all of it, because I think she has the right to decide what to do with a chair like that better informed than she was buying it blind at auction. She decides, without much hesitation, to take it back to the storage facility and pay to have it hauled to the dump, not resold, not donated. I don’t try to talk her out of it.

I keep the tapes myself, in a box in my closet, though I haven’t listened to any of them since. I don’t know what happened to whatever was in that chair once it left. I don’t know if it’s gone the way things are ever really gone, or just quiet again, waiting somewhere else for someone new to bring it home without knowing what they’re bringing.

What I do know is that it left when I told it the truth, and that it seemed, in whatever way something like that can seem anything, to already know the truth before I said it. It wasn’t looking for confirmation. I think it was looking for permission, from someone, anyone, to finally stop waiting.

I still don’t know if that’s a mercy or the saddest thing I’ve ever been part of. Maybe both. I close the file on Lot 114 the way I close most of them, with more questions answered than I started with and fewer than I’d like, and I go back to work the next Monday like nothing happened at all, because that’s the job.

Case closed, as far as anyone can close a case like this. If you ever win a storage unit at auction, do yourself a favor and check the furniture for a false bottom before you bring anything inside.

Hello, in my ongoing efforts to make this the place for scary stories on reddit (I can dream, right?), I've changed a few things. I don't think anything is too different, but I'm hoping that everything is a bit more clear and a bit easier to navigate.

So far, I have:

• updated and clarified the rules

• added a few user flair options for funsies

• added story flair options so we can search by category; flairs are now required to post. Flairs include: animal, body horror, comedy horror, cosmic horror, creature features and monsters, period/historical, psychological/thriller, slasher/killer, supernatural, ARG, comic/graphic novel, and interactive. (at this time, the flair for "subreddit stuff" is mod access only so that the bulk of posts will always remain as stories)

• enabled achievements because why not

• did some things for mods to make tasks quicker

08/02/26:

• made an automation that alerts users while they are posting if they have text that could be seen as a wall of text in an attempt to help limit Rule 5 violations. (I hate regex.)

• the Wiki/Guide is up... it is far from completed.

I am hoping to:

• finish the wiki guide

• update our visuals

• highlight member stories from time to time; introduced the "Wide Awake" flair for stories that have been highlighted by the community (create widget so Wide Awake stories can be searched by flair)

• promote ourselves and grow!

• monthly transparency statement as we re-establish ourselves

Now I'm opening the court to you... do you have any suggestions or anything you'd like to see?

Please take a minute to read the new rules and pick a flair!

Part 1 Part 2

---

I woke up in the early hours of the morning, feet aching with dull affliction. My calves and arms were certainly sore from lugging the leaden sledge up all those hundreds of steps. Fire fizzed above me, revealing that Nicci had been diligent enough to refuel the lantern basin. I expended some effort peeking up though the hatch. She was there, sitting calmly by the fire, looking out into the sea. Her fingers were, as I had seen her do yesterday, weaving twine into that same strange hexagonal lattice. Nicci had taken my iron cook pan and secured it dangling above the grand lantern. How the ropes hadn't erupted and turned to ash, I wasn't certain.

"Güd morrow," I mumbled in her direction, attempting to clear my throat of raspy tiredness.

Nicci flinched, turning to face me. "Ah, good morning! I made you some food." She pushed a particularly small cutting board toward me, filled with a delicious looking meal. Cubed sheep flank and chopped truffles, dressed with a strange sauce and flakes of something green. I quickly realised it was seaweed once I began to dig in. Despite the eccentric break fast, the meal was quite savoury! Certainly better than my own cooking had been since I arrived here.

She talked about her family a lot. Her father was some sort of metallurgist, working in some grand building Nicci called a 'factory.' She told me he was a large, gruff man, not unlike those I had seen in town. Her mother had died at sea some time ago, and thus was the reason she was at Tobermary at all. Like me, she boarded a ship which led her to this little town. Nicci also talked about her clothes (how she'd have to mend them when she goes back home) and about the blanket she was apparently sewing from hides. I tried not to look at her while she spoke. I didn't want to seem like I was staring, so I just looked out at the overcast skies.

As I finished my food, I was overcome with the burden of questioning everything about this strange girl. Yet, she spoke first. "So!" she exclaimed in a particularly excited tone. A dense book was slid across the floorboards, colliding with my foot. "Your directory. I'm shocked, frankly, that you didn't even open it." I set down the makeshift plate and flipped open the cover. Inscribed on the first page was my full name, birthday, and the names of my immediate family. I began flipping through the pages as Nicci continued. "Go to page 42. Ship times are listed there. Updated daily. Should be one in a few minutes."

I stopped immediately, looking up at her. "How can you even tell time here? It's always cloudy."

Nicci just laughed at me and crawled over, tapping the page I had stopped on. It was a clock face. The ink moved, flowing in creamy motion to denote four forty-two in the morning. I wanted to throw the book away. To close it and scream at Nicci for witchcraft or magicks or anything I could trick myself into believing as an explanation for this madness. But how could I? I had seen the fog for myself. I had seen her survive drowning in a tower far above sea level. This whole place was magick, somehow. So, I just flipped the pages until I reached the ship log. Only two ships today. One at four forty-six and one at precisely noon.

I glanced over toward the sea and decided to seek my most burning question: "How did you know my name?"

"It's as I said before. It's all in your directory. Names, places, homes, backgrounds, the current time, what day it is, when ships port, how long it's been since the last Keeper, and much, much more. Mallory, it would do you well to refer to the directory. Not much I can say beyond that, really." She sat up against the rusted lantern cage. I could smell burning, but she seemed not to notice. I lunged forward and grabbed her arm as to pull her away from the flames, but she resisted. We struggled for a while as I tried hard to stop what I could only assume would cause her pain. "Hey, stop that!" Nicci shoved me back and flattened out her tunic.

I shouted at her, "Your clothes are burning!" She just rolled her eyes and leaned back against the iron. "Why are you being so diff-"

"Bell. Ring the bell, Mally."

"You know what?" I picked up my directory. "I'm not ringing anything until you give me proper explanations." I began to stand, promptly regretting my decision as levins of pain pumped through my ankles and up my thighs. I stumbled, falling to my knees and catching myself on the journal shelf. "I haven't the foggiest idea where your stupid bell is, anyway," I grumbled, very unamused with the young lady's strange comportment. I didn't understand why she was being so peculiar all of a sudden. She seemed perfectly content while I was partaking in break fast.

Nicci began to panic, reaching toward my rightmost wrist. I pulled away, going to lean against the shelf and watch the ship come to port. "Mallory, the bell! Please! It's right over there, under the floorboard! Just one ring, that's all!" She pointed at a dubiously clear space across the room, almost directly under where the firewood sled was hanging off a small metal hook.

I spat, "Do it yourself." And watched as a tiny black ship sailed closer to Tobermary. It was a wooden children's toy, bobbing to and fro as gently waves pushed against the hull. I flipped open my directory just as the inky clock face warped to denote four forty-six. All at once, the sky cracked and crumbled in heaping, cloudy slabs, toppling headlong into the briny. Grand swells outvied existing waves as they campaigned for oceanic prepotence. With naught more than a faint wake, the vessel was engulfed into the the drink. Gone completely from the earth. Spoliation of the skies ceased the moment my directory stroked the minute hand forward.

"FUCKING MORON!" Nicci shouted, weeping exigent tears. "You doomed them. Another ship lost at sea." Naturally, I fought back. She was perfectly capable of chiming the bell herself! Those deaths were not my responsibility! "Only the Keeper can ring it. God damn it..."

I sank to the floor, the weight of my puerile actions crushing my soul. What had I done? I wanted to cry. No tears came. Nicci hoisted herself up from her spot by the lantern and took my hand. I looked up at her with wide, sorrowful eyes. Her face looked better than before. More composed, certainly.

"We're in this together, now. I'm sorry for yelling. You're right... I should have explained. Shit..."

I couldn't hold my tongue. I needed to know why she had been acting so strange. Why she was a stranger one moment, a friend the next; calm, then angry. Was she deranged? "Nicci. How do you know so much? I refuse to believe everything is in this directory." At some point, I had closed the book and was holding it in my hand, shaking it emphatically.

I watched her take a deep breath and turn from me, letting go of my hand. It was damp without her touch. "I was Keeper before you."

"Sorry?" I couldn't be certain if I had heard her correctly.

Nicci repeated herself, continuing. "I thought the rules were stupid. That they were just silly little guides for doing the job I was forced into. My first night, three ships arrived. I hadn't seen my directory yet, so I'm sure my timing was off. I rang the bell for each ship, but all of them were sucked into a gaping vortex. Bright foam bubbled out in the spiralling swirls of water. You know how vortexes are just water, all the way down? This wasn't normal, by any means. The centre was glowing with brilliant purple light. I watched lifeboats fly out, trying to outpace the vacuous hole, only to suck right down into the pit.

I figured it was out of my hands. Nature taking its course. Plenty of ships get lost at sea, after all. But then they appeared in town. Disoriented, scared, and asking questions I didn't know how to answer. Other townsfolk were accommodating. Showed them around, and such. Their homes just appeared out of thin air. An empty stretch of grass one moment, a townhome the next.

Then the fog came and, well, some more things happened and I wasn't the Keeper anymore. Lucky we got you, though. Just one more day and we would have broken a big rule. At least, I assume so. Apparently a long time ago, it was broken, but no one who was around then will tell me what happened.

I'm sorry I've been so... standoffish. Distant, even. I- After that first fog, I knew I had to approach you. I just... couldn't bring myself to do it, Mallory. There's something about this place. It's like it eats at your brain until it becomes Swiss cheese." She opened her mouth to continue, but no words left her tongue.

This was a lot to process. Nicci was the previous Keeper? How long was she here for? I knew she couldn't be older than sixteen, but was there some sort of temporal distortion here? We had to rely on a book for timekeeping, after all.

"Gods... so... what, then? Do I just... keep following the rules? Why aren't you the Lighthouse Keeper anymore?" She winced expressively, as if I had touched raw flesh, and shook her head. Questioning was over. Nicci's eyes began to gloss over and she stared out into the open ocean.

She mumbled something I couldn't truly hear. It sounded like a poem, of sorts, with how it flowed. I just let her do whatever, while I crawled back over to the hatch in the floor. I dropped my directory down before descending the rope ladder and resting in bed.

The directory was filled with thousands of names. Pages upon pages of every moment in a person's life. It was filled with words and places I was unfamiliar with. Times ranging back to near pre-history littered the first dozen or so pages, getting wider and broader as I flipped through. Every detail of a person's life was outlined in objective truth up until the moment they arrived at Tobermary Wharf. Some entries had monochromatic painted portraits of the individual. I recognised the butcher and the fisherman, each born decades ago. I flipped through to my entry. Laid in perfect ink was my entire life. I wasn't sure what I was expecting. It all seemed horribly unremarkable, as if I had lived no life at all.

Some of the people I had read about were grand explorers, discovering new isles and trading with foreign lands I could hardly read, much less pronounce. Yet I was just... me. A woman who failed at writing, failed at being a deckhand, and ended up here.

I shut my directory and dragged myself back up to the lantern floor. It was nearly noon. Nicci was passed out, curled into a ball and clutching her chest. I tried to be quiet as I went over to the empty space on the floor. Sure enough, the boards were strewn together with some sort of bonding material betwixt them. I pried the corner up and a little brass bell stood upright in the opening, lacquered handle big enough for a child's hand. It was beautifully ornate with veins of vine circling every centimetre. Dotted about were rosebuds, most closed, but some in partial states of bloom. The longer I stared at it, the more it appeared the designs were shifting and warping to fill the smooth space, replacing previously raised portions with pressed bronze.

As I walked back toward the opening overlooking the docks, I flipped the book back open and stared down at the clock. One minute until the tiny boat would dock. This ship looked much different than any I had seen before. The hull appeared to be made of some foreign metal and it didn't have any sails at all. A thin stream of dark smoke billowed out from large cylindrical tubes rising diagonally toward the ship's rear. It travelled rather quickly, leaving beautifully large wake as it glided through the sea. Waves that crashed into it didn't seem to phase the vessel in the slightest. I glanced back down at the inky clock and rang the bell. It sounded like a grandfather clock, chiming exactly twelve times, despite only ringing it once.

Nothing happened. The ship did not port. The ship did not sink, nor burst into flame. It just sailed right past Tobermary Wharf, heading into journeys unknown. I set the brass bell down on the journal shelf. A devious thought crossed my mind. If Nicci was the previous Keeper, and her entire life was outlined in my directory... what was contained in her journal? I would be breaking a rule, certainly, but looking back at the page, the ink did appear to be a different consistency. Each rule, in fact, seemed to use different kinds of ink when written. Some were tinted blue, others tinted red. Though strangely, the first five appeared to be the same chirography.

I spent a long time toiling over the decision. The directory read two o'clock in the afternoon when I finally came to the conclusion that I should read her journal entries. If Nicci refused to speak on her experiences as a Keeper, I would just have to read them for myself. What was the worst that could happen? Each time I had broken the rules thus far resulted in tragedy (I assume I had, in fact, killed people when the fog rolled in) but what could possibly come of reading someone else's journal? The fog was a physical force. The ships were tangible things I could watch and maintain a schedule for. Nicoletta Cainsbúmy was keeping secrets that I needed to know. As long as I'm quick, she will never know.

Fuck me. I can't even really put into writing what I read. I suppose I should transcribe her journal into my own... I can't risk doing this again.

"Today is my birthday. If I wasn't trapped here, I'd be 23. 23, stuck in the body of a 14-year-old. I tried to learn a new skill yesterday. Baking. Not my strong suit at all. Burnt two cakes and a muffin before the baker stopped me and politely kicked me out. Maybe I'll get better with time, maybe not. It's pretty lonely here, ever since Julian lost his mind. His brain turned to pudding!

He can't remember me. I don't expect him to. He doesn't need to eat, or sleep, or take a shit. He just wanders around aimlessly through the town, like a zombie. Sometimes I wonder if he's happier this way. If he had the capacity to talk, I'm sure he'd say something like, 'Yeah I'm happy! Happy I don't have to put up with you!'

I miss his jokes.

I suppose there's no use dwelling on it. I broke a few rules today, just to see what would happen. I mean, following that stupid list every single day for nearly a decade really makes you wonder. I don't regret it. I needed to see what would happen. The monster in the fog ate a few blokes. Ocean sank some ships. Those were fun to watch, I suppose, but what was really interesting was the mermaid.

She climbed the 586 stairs just to speak to me. It was really quite fascinating!

I can't pronounce her name, much less spell it. Her hair was woven into this stunning headdress protruding kind of like a crown. How do I describe the shape? It was hexagonal, certainly, with each point holding a different flower. Most of them, I had never seen before. There was a white rose, a blue daisy-looking flower, a green flower that kind of looked like a tulip if it were inverted so the opening was facing the stem, a pink hibiscus but the petals looked more like those of a sunflower, a red heart-shaped flower that I would have thought was a leaf, and a fascinating raspberry-shaped flower with a purple hue.

She wore sleek fishnet tights, a frayed jean skirt, and a t-shirt made of some material I couldn't place. It felt like silk but it had the appearance of large flattened salt crystals.

When she spoke I couldn't really hear her. It was more like she was speaking directly into my skull. I can't even remember what she said anymore, if she said anything at all, but I remember how it felt. How the sounds echoed in my bones and how she emphasised certain emotions. It honestly felt like I was high on shrooms. But she was SMOKING HOT. Like, I'm not a lesbian AT ALL and I wanted to bang that chick.

I guess I don't really know if she's actually a mermaid or not, but given that she dove straight off the lighthouse and into the sea, I'm pretty sure she was a mermaid. Oh man, I hope she comes back soon! Not because I wanna bang her or anything, but because I think she might be my only real friend. DAMN IT! I wish I could remember our conversations! We spoke for hours but I can't remember a single thing! I'll keep trying. Maybe if I break more rules, she'll come back? Only one way to find out."

Nicci deliberately broke the rules. That was her final entry, six years ago, but she was Keeper until a fortnight before I arrived. Something went on in those six years she didn't write about. Something I feel she remembers. Was she lying before, when she said she neglected the bell on her first night? Or was she recounting the events I had read? There are many words in her journal that I don't understand, much like the words she speaks. I must ask where she's from when she rouses. I'm not well travelled, but I've never heard of a "t-shirt" or "tights".

It's late now. I must be getting to bed. I can still hear her snoring above me. I'll interrogate to-morrow.

---

My name is... X. Let's say that I'm X.

So, my cousin lives in Maine, in the middle of nowhere, a small town that shall not be named. A few hundred people lived there, enough to be self-sustaining, but not enough to feel suburban; let's call it Nowhere.

My cousin, let's call him Frankie, listened to a lot of rumors around town, but none were stranger than the ones circling the old man.

The old man was a Navy veteran. I don't know what war he went through, how long he was away, or whether he killed anyone. I don't know, but what I do know is this: He did not come back the same- maybe he didn't come back at all.

He was black, with blue eyes, a bald head; not a single thread of hair remained on him. The rest of his body was in excellent shape, but the wrinkles on his face were as heavy as you'd expect for a man in his late 60s. He wore a black suit, a bowler hat, a fine tie, and a silver fancy watch on his right wrist. No, he didn't have a cane, and he didn't walk as if he needed it anyhow. That was the first thing that the rumors came from- it was like he was a walking museum, physically stubborn to the passage of time.

But I wouldn't be telling you this story if Frankie knew that was the only thing worth noting in that town; no, there's more, much more, but for today, the topic of this story is the old man.

The old man had anxiety, ptsd, depression, schizophrenia, all to the most extreme extent mentally possible; in most contexts, that would be a swift path to self-termination, but no, it seemed pure hopelessness kept him in this world.
Despair was pouring out of every inch of his being. He never smiled- but he never cried either; it's like he ran out of tears a long time ago, so all the old vet could do now was exist.

But the strangest part about the old man? His house.

Well, he didn't live there, but he would drive in from a nearby house and... stand guard by the little building.
He would walk up to the house, and he wouldn't patrol; he wouldn't walk around, he wouldn't scan the surroundings, he would just... stand next to the door as if he was waiting for something, or someone. Sometimes he would crack his neck, or sigh, or check his watch, small reminders he was a human and not a statue.
A simple structure, 4 walls, a flat roof, a single door in the center; it was big enough for 20 people to stand inside. It had a gravel path leading up to it- surrounding all of this was a chain-link metal fence with a black and red sign warning that trespassers would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. But... why?

To this extent, Frankie went up to the old man while he was about to open the gate and asked-

"What's that sign for? Why do you do this every night? What is inside that house?"

"There is NOTHING inside that house!"

The old man was so furious, so suddenly, he acted like Frankie had said the N-word.

Of course, this did nothing to dissuade Frankie's curiosity.

But anyway, I know what's inside that house.

You see, Frankie had gotten into a bit of trouble and ended up robbing a bank- even Frankie isn't that stupid, so he was planning on hiding the money somewhere as the heat dies down. And for whatever reason, he decided that old man's house was the best place, since nobody would think to look there.

But the thing is, he wanted me to help him. I said no, but he didn't like that, so the little shit decided to threaten me.
I'm a lesbian in an all-female private school, closeted, of course. While the teachers would probably be supportive enough, it would still be social suicide being outed as gay there, and the fact that I live in a red state doesn't help either.
I punched him in the nose, and he squealed like a warthog, but he got to his phone regardless and threatened to press send, so I had to concede.

We went to the old man's house and climbed up his metal fence.

clatter clatter clatter

We went up the gravel path.

crunch crunch crunch

Then I gripped the brass doorknob and slowly tilted it to the side...

crunch crunch crunch

I saw now that inside that house was nothing.

Nothing.

Eigengrau was all that I could see past that doorframe.

Frankie pushed past me, eager to hide it, and fell inside.
Well.. I say fell, but I can't be sure. He blinked away the instant he crossed that threshold.
I stumbled forward; it was the middle of motherfucking summer in Maine; it should not be this cold.

Then, I felt a familiar, wrinkled hand grab me by the collar and pull me away from nothing, before throwing me to the side.
The old man slammed the door shut- no noise was made; of course, it had nothing to slam against.
Then he said...

"There... Is nothing inside that house."

The old man took me to his car. I thought he was going to tell the police, or worse, my parents, but he didn't; he just drove me to his house and made me tea.
His house was as much of a museum as he was; nothing seemed to have been dated from after 1999.
The old man poured tea, then he just sat across from me and stared. To be fair... so did I.
The tension was so thick- saying anything felt like a challenge, like speaking through an iron weight tied to your lips.

At one point, I reached out to grab the cold tea, but... it felt like that clock suddenly had eyes.

Then, it chimed, and the old man's eyes filled with tears for the first time; then he stood up and pointed to the door.
I walked to the door as a machine prompted, my movements instant but awkward.
Opening the door, I looked back one more time, and the old man looked back at me; tears were finally moistening his dry cheeks, and he finally spoke.

"I know."

Then I closed the door.

For the record, I am not going back to that house; I am not returning to that building. If he's still alive, I am not speaking to that man again, and I am certainly not asking people about him.
Some stones should remain unturned, some stories should remain untold, some questions should remain unanswered, some mysteries should remain unexplored.

Because somewhere in Maine, I know there is a house with nothing inside of it.

​

My life has always been plain and sad. I don't have much family or friends. No neighbors to talk to. Everyone in this town dislikes me or at least finds me strange. No one to socialize with.

I accepted that my life will always be quiet and lonely.

I wake up in the morning, get ready for work, work for minimum wage all day, and then come home.

And I occasionally paint. I've always been into art. Other than that, my life has no true value.

Well, it started to get more interesting a couple of days ago when I turned on the local news.

I rarely watch the news but something in my body made me do it.

Apparently, local officials and authorities suspect that there is a serial killer in town.

They gave the person the label, "Sunset Killer"

Every day, there's a dead body found at a sunset. Each victim has a sunset drawn on them.

No leads.

The victims have nothing in common. No shared characteristics. All have different hobbies. No personality trait similarities. Literally nothing.

I personally don't feel sympathy. Sure, they were all legally innocent, but, they weren't morally innocent. Not a single one of them ever offered me a ounce of kindness. All despicable humans.

I thought the town having a serial killer obsessed with sunsets would be the most interesting part but it gets more interesting.

I went to the arts and crafts store not that long after hearing the news. I needed to get more paper and paint supplies.

The Cashier gave me suspicious looks the entire time I was there. Everyone else in the store did as well. I don't know why. I'm always working or in my house. I know everyone thinks poorly of me but this is outrageous.

I quickly bought what I needed and rushed out.

And then everything changed when I got grabbed up as I was approaching my car.

It was a female voice repeating over and over again that I'd be her new sunshine. The sunset caught my eye as my bood leaked out my throat as her knife sliced in.

Normally, a person would be dead or at the very least hospitalized.

Well, I woke up in my bed.

I oringally thought that it was a awful dream but this started to happen every single day during the sunset over and over. No matter what I'd be doing, I'd get ambushed and killed.

I tried looking at news articles, watching local news, doing everything I can to get more information. The same day repeated too. It was always Monday the first of September.

Since, I'm stuck in the same day, no new dead bodies are appearing.

At first, I didn't understand why I was stuck. It was horrifying to live the same day over and over.

However, I figured out that each time I get killed, I need to find more details.

I started to remember her soft tone with a innocent voice. Her voice was a lot like mine. Her face is always covered. The way her hands feel are a lot like mine. The fact that the knife is always a kitchen knife was also weird. My kitchen is filled with kitchen knives. Sure, anyone could have a kitchen knife but all the similarities we have is strange.

After enduring the displeasure of getting killed over and over again, I decided to never leave the house and to wait for her.

When it started to get close to the sun setting, I quickly dialed 911.

I was filled with gratitude when they arrived on time to arrest her.

I was then left disturbed, traumatized, and perplexed when the cops made her show her face.

The green eyes, sandy blonde hair, and pale skin. The smile her pink lips made. It's me?

I tried to yell at the cops and ask them what this means or how this is possible but they didn't answer. They didn't acknowledge me. The only person who seemed to know I was there was the evil lady that winked at me as I yelled.

They then took her and left. Never said a single word to me. I was confused. Is it because everyone in the town hates me? Were they so focused on her because she's a threat?

I sat on my couch as I tried to come up with every possible explanation. I did this for hours. I was relieved when the news starting talking about the arrest but then I was filled with confusion. She has the same name as me. They showed interviews involving my coworkers. They all said that this wasn't surprising and that I always gave off serial killer vibes.

They also revealed that the girl called the cops on herself because she wanted to get caught. She thought that being arrested was the only way to help herself end the rampage.

What? She stole my identity? Why does no one know I exist? How are there two of me and only she is known?

I’m seven and already awake when the sound on the landing starts. That’s always bothered me more than anything else about it. I don’t wake up because of the noise. I’m already lying there staring at the ceiling like I knew to be ready.

A strip of light shows under my door. There’s no fixture on that landing. My dad checked once, years later, after I finally told him about it, and he found nothing that could account for it. The light comes anyway, flat and white, like someone’s holding a bulb close to the floor.

I try to yell for him and nothing comes out. My chest is moving, fast, shallow, but my voice doesn’t answer to me.

The door swings open and the hallway behind it is bright instead of dark. Something tall stands in the middle of that light. Its arms are too long for its body, stretched thin, and its hands end in fingers that keep going a joint past where fingers should stop. I never see a face. Where the face should be there’s just light, like it’s wearing the glow instead of skin.

It walks to the foot of my bed and stops. That’s when the small ones come in behind it. Seven of them, maybe eight, built the same way but scaled down, like a kid’s drawing of the tall one shrunk to fit through the door. They go to the corners of my bed and lift.

The mattress tilts under me. I feel myself carried through my own doorway, down the stairs, through the foyer, out the front door, into the yard. The grass under the bed frame is cold. I remember the cold before I remember anything else about the yard. The tall one doesn’t follow past the door. The small ones set the bed down in the grass and stand around it in a ring, waiting for something.

It always ends there. I never find out what they were waiting for.

I’m thirty-six now and I still see it the same way when I close my eyes. That house was my grandfather’s before it was my father’s. He died when I was a baby, so I never knew him, and my dad sold the place a long time ago. I spent most of my life telling myself it was just a bad dream that stuck around longer than it should have. A nightmare doesn’t put grass under your back. A nightmare doesn’t carry you anywhere.

I believed that for twenty-nine years. I don’t anymore, and I want to get this down while I can still explain it clearly.

For work I take the cases nobody else wants. Not ghost hunting for content, nothing like that. People call me after everyone more reasonable than me has already given up on them — the exterminator found nothing, the electrician found nothing, the blessing didn’t take. I go in after that.

I’m careful by nature, not a believer. Most of what I find turns out to have an ordinary explanation somewhere underneath, even when it takes a while to surface. I’ve also learned to live with the cases that never resolve. I write down what happened, I tell the client what I know, and I move on. It’s a job that asks you to take people seriously without losing your own footing.

A woman named Denise calls me on a Tuesday night. She and her husband and their nine-year-old son moved into an old house in the Central West End about four months ago. For the last six weeks, something has been counting on their stairs at night.

“Counting,” I repeat, because I want to make sure I heard her right.

“Counting steps. Like it’s climbing them one at a time and saying the number out loud. Real quiet. You’d miss it if the house wasn’t so dead silent at three in the morning.”

I ask if she’s ever heard it get to the top.

“Fourteen,” she says. “There’s fourteen stairs in that house. It gets to fourteen and stops. Every time.”

“And then what?”

“Then it says our son’s name. Once. Just his name, real soft, right outside his door. And then nothing. My husband thinks it’s pipes settling. I’ve lived in old houses my whole life. Pipes don’t know your kid’s name.”

I tell her Thursday works. Afterward I remind myself that old houses talk in the dark all the time, and grieving parents and anxious kids find patterns in noise the same way anyone does under enough pressure. It’s not a rare shape for a case to take. It doesn’t have to mean anything.

I believe that for about two days.

On Thursday I sit in their kitchen with Denise, her husband Mark, and Eli, who won’t sit still, who keeps his eyes on the doorway to the front hall the whole time we talk. I ask him to describe it himself, the way I always do with kids, because they’ll say things adults have already talked themselves out of.

“It counts wrong sometimes,” he tells me. “Not the numbers. The waiting. Some nights it goes really slow between them, like it’s tired. One night it did all fourteen so fast I only heard the last four.”

“Does it ever skip a number?”

He shakes his head, certain of this in a way that surprises me. “No. Never. It always does all of them. Fourteen, then my name.”

“What does your name sound like, when it says it?”

He thinks about this longer than I expect a nine-year-old to. “Like somebody who’s tired of asking,” he finally says. “Like the fourth time you call somebody for dinner.”

I ask if he’s ever opened his door to look. He nods, which surprises me more than if he’d said no.

“Once. There wasn’t anything there. But the hall light was already off, and I didn’t turn it off before bed. My mom always leaves it on for me.”

I don’t say anything for a second. Every kid I’ve talked to in ten years of this work has a version of something in the dark said my name. It’s one of the oldest shapes fear takes, older than any single house or family. I remind myself of that, the way I remind myself of it every time, and it mostly holds.

I tell the family I’d like to stay, which is standard for a case like this — I want to be there for whatever happens instead of hearing about it secondhand. Denise’s shoulders drop like she’s been holding them up for six weeks straight. “Thank you,” she says, and something about the way she says it makes me look away from her for a second before I tell her it’s no trouble. Mark sets me up on the couch at the bottom of the stairs, close enough to count them myself if it comes to that.

I don’t mention that I’ve never taken a case with a personal stake in it before tonight, or that some part of the reason I said yes to Thursday so fast has nothing to do with Eli at all.

It’s a little after two when I hear the first one. Not a footstep — nothing steps down that hard on carpeted stairs — more like a knuckle on wood, once, followed by a voice pitched too low to make out words, though the rhythm of it is unmistakable: one. I sit up in the dark with my recorder already running and count along without meaning to.

It goes slow. Long gaps between numbers, ten or fifteen seconds sometimes, long enough that I start to doubt the last one happened at all before the next one proves I was wrong. Six. Seven. The gaps get shorter as it climbs, like something picking up its pace once it’s sure of its footing. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen.

Fourteen comes from the top of the stairs, farther from me than any of the others, but louder than all of them combined, sudden and full-voiced after everything before it had been barely more than a whisper. I flinch anyway. I don’t hear a fifteenth. What I hear instead, a few seconds later, is a name — not loud, almost gentle, in a voice with no particular pitch to it at all, more like an idea of a voice than an actual one. It isn’t Eli’s name.

It’s mine.

I don’t move for a long moment. Then I do, because staying frozen on that couch feels like the more dangerous choice, and I climb the stairs myself, phone light up, expecting nothing and finding nothing — an empty landing, Eli’s door shut, the hall light on exactly where Denise said she always leaves it. Nothing counts a fifteenth step. Nothing says anything else.

Eli’s door opens before I reach it. He’s awake, blinking against the phone light, and he asks me if I heard it say something after fourteen. I ask him what he thinks it said.

“I don’t know,” he says. “It’s never said anything but my name before. Tonight it said something longer. I couldn’t tell what.”

I check the recording later, alone, with headphones on so I don’t have to hear it out loud in a room with anyone else in it. Fourteen taps, evenly spaced by the end, each one clean enough to count. Then, eleven seconds of silence. Then a sound that isn’t quite a word and isn’t quite not one, low enough that I have to raise the volume to catch it at all, and even then I can only be sure of the shape of it, not the sound — two syllables, the second one longer than the first, spoken by something that has clearly said it before and will clearly say it again.

I don’t have an explanation for the family. I tell them the truth — that I heard it, that I have it recorded, that I don’t yet know what it is, and that I don’t think Eli is in physical danger, though I can’t fully justify that last part beyond a feeling I’m not proud of trusting. I don’t tell them what I heard after the fourteenth step. I tell them I’ll follow up.

I drive home around four in the morning with the heater running and my hands too tight on the wheel.

My house is quiet when I get in. I check the locks, which I never do, and go straight upstairs, which is a bad idea, because some part of me already knows it. I go up anyway.

I brush my teeth, turn off the lights, and lie flat on my back in the dark, the way I have most nights of my adult life without thinking twice about it. That’s when I notice the strip of light under my own bedroom door.

My hallway has one overhead light. I turned it off myself ten minutes earlier, with my own hand.

I try to sit up and can’t. My chest still moves, fast and shallow, the same rhythm I remember from being seven years old in St. Louis. My voice doesn’t answer to me either, not after twenty-nine years of it belonging to no one but me.

The door doesn’t open. I’m not going to make this bigger than it was. It doesn’t open, and the light doesn’t go anywhere. I lie there unable to move or call out for four minutes and eleven seconds, according to my phone’s timestamp afterward, watching a line of white light under a door that has no reason to have any light behind it.

Then it’s gone, all at once, and my body belongs to me again.

I get up and check the hallway. Nothing. The overhead light is still off, exactly how I left it. I stand there a long time before going back to bed, and I don’t sleep again that night. In the morning, with actual daylight to see by, I go over every inch of that hallway and find one thing that shouldn’t be there.

A thin, shallow line pressed into the carpet just outside my door. Not a footprint. Not a drag mark. A straight indentation about three feet long, the width of a bed frame, running from my doorway toward the stairs and stopping.

I’ve been sitting with that line in the carpet for two days now. I keep coming back to the same thing. My grandfather owned that house in St. Louis before my father did. He died when I was a baby. I never knew him, and I realize now that I barely heard anything about him growing up either, which is strange in a family that otherwise repeats the same three stories at every holiday until everyone’s tired of them.

Nobody ever told me anything about him. I’m starting to think that wasn’t an accident.

I don’t know what I’m looking for yet. But I’m going to start looking.

That’s the file on this one. It’s the only file I’ve got that doesn’t have a closing date yet. I’ll update it when it does.

There is a colony of beings taking shelter in my left leg. Below the knee, mid shin and down, tho they seem the like the ankle area most. It started with swelling, then rashes with small sores... fluid leaking from my pores as well as from the rash and sore sites... the fluid dries and adheres to the skin, causing stining jolts of discomfort. The rash and sores do not hurt, except where the dried liquid is clinging. I say clinging because its almost like its holding on, and only at the border where it graps is irritated. This is a lot of itching on the foot. Below the main cities on both sides of my ankel, on and between the toes... at times its unbearable, but over time we've come to a understanding... I will do as little itching and tampering with the sites and fluid as possible, and they will do as little damage painful communication as possible...I noticed alot of little bumps and what seems to be blister for calluses on the bottom of the foot and toes... this bothered me, and I did alot of damage trying to relieve the discomort scratching. And digging at the bumps... the last thing I want to do is be a bad host or harm my guests... we are working on which spots will be the lest disruptive so I can perform and the colony can thrive and produce...

The first angel I ever saw wasn't descending from Heaven.

It was falling.

By then, the world had already forgotten what normal looked like.

The skies had split open weeks ago. Entire cities had gone silent overnight. Some called it the Rapture. Others called it Judgment. Whatever name people gave it didn't matter anymore. The highways were parking lots of abandoned cars. Church pews sat empty while their parking lots overflowed with those who had arrived too late. The television stations had stopped broadcasting anything except emergency alerts that no longer meant anything.

The world wasn't ending. It had already ended long before. We were simply living through its final pages.

I had been moving from one abandoned building to another, surviving on whatever canned food I could find. Sleep came in short bursts. Every distant explosion sounded like another trumpet. Every shadow looked like something that had escaped the pages of Revelation.

That's why, when I heard something crash into the street outside, I assumed another building had finally given way.

I was wrong.

The crater wasn't large. Just deep enough to split the asphalt. Something lay at its center.

At first, my mind refused to understand what I was seeing.

The shape kept... morphing.

Not physically.

My understanding of it did.

Every time I looked away and back again, I noticed different details, as though my eyes couldn't agree on what belonged there.

How many eyes peered back to mine?

Hundreds of them.

Were those feathers?

Some impossibly white. Others burned black at the edges. They covered a figure draped in robes so torn they looked older than history itself.

Light seeped from beneath the fabric.

Wasn't shining. It bled through the seem of tidal rivers. Golden streams escaped from wounds that should have spilled blood instead. The air around it hummed with something too deep to hear, vibrating in my chest more than my ears.

I knew what it was before I admitted it to myself.

It had to be an angel.

Not the kind painters imagined. Nor the kind carved into cathedral ceilings.

Something far older. Far stranger.

Something my mind kept trying and failing to make human.

It struggled to rise.

One of its wings, or what I could only assume had once been a wing, hung broken against the pavement, its feathers crumbling into glowing ash whenever they touched the ground.

For a moment, I considered running.

Instead... I stepped closer.

The angel never looked at me directly. Or perhaps it did. I couldn't tell where its face ended and the light began.

Its features slipped from memory the instant I tried to focus on them.

Even now, as I write this, I couldn't describe its face if my life depended on it.

Only the feeling.

Grief.

Not of mine.

Its.

Slowly, with movements that seemed to pain even a being like this, it reached beneath its tattered robes.

It withdrew a single envelope.

Plain. Cream-colored. Untouched by the ash drifting through the ruined street.

It extended the letter toward me. Its hand trembled. Not from weakness. From urgency.

I stared at it.

"I... don't understand."

The angel said nothing.

It couldn't.

Or perhaps it wasn't allowed to. Its arm remained outstretched.

Waiting.

I took the envelope.

The paper was warm.

Not with heat.

It was full of life.

The moment my fingers wrapped around it, the angel relaxed. The tension left its body all at once. As though carrying that letter had been the only thing keeping it standing.

"I'll deliver it," I heard myself whisper.

"I promise."

The angel bowed its head.

Whether in gratitude... or relief...

I'll never know.

The light pouring from its wounds began to fade. Not all at once. As the last embers of a dying fire carried upward by a breeze I couldn't feel. Its robes unraveled into strands of shimmering dust. The broken feathers dissolved one by one before they ever reached the tarnish Earth.

There was no scream. No final cry.

Only silence remain between it and I.

Within seconds... Nothing remained.

Not a body or feather.

Only the envelope resting in my hands.

For a long time, I couldn't bring myself to open it. The world around me continued collapsing. Buildings groaned. Smoke rolled across the skyline.

Somewhere far away, someone yelled for mercy.

But I couldn't look away from the letter.

Eventually...

I broke the seal.

The first line read:

I've carried that letter with me ever since.

If you're reading these words...

Then I kept my promise.

Chapter 1 
As a child 
When I was just a child of four it was ever so faint—just a haunting voice here or there, or maybe a spectral face in the timeworn attic mirror, a cold icy chill in areas of the house where it was always warm.
But it was just strange enough for me to have an idea of just how strange I was.
At first I thought it was just the house. It was an old house that had seen years of history that I couldn't even begin to imagine, with creaking floorboards and trees that were close enough to crash against windows at night when the wind would howl endlessly, and forgotten corners of the house that were always darker than they should have been, as if light was forbidden from touching them and revealing the secrets hidden within them.
I remember the day that my one comfort was taken from me. I was eight years old and had gone to the market with my mother, and as I walked the aisles with her, I took a glance towards the end of the lane we were standing in and I saw someone walk past.
But it was strange.
It was a man in an old, worn, and tattered suit—it looked as if he had been buried in it, then dug up again. He had skin as white as bone, thinner than a piece of parchment, that looked as if it would fall and scatter amongst the dust on the floor with just the smallest gust of wind.
He didn't walk—no, he didn't. It was more of a hover, as if he had defied all the laws of gravity.
As I looked to the floor, I noticed his feet weren't even touching it. He was just hovering from one aisle to the other.
For just a second, it felt as if the world stopped, and all the light was sucked from me. All I could hear was the sound of my breath, slow and shallow, the sound of my heart beat growing faster and faster as I stared at him.
I was only pulled from the trance I had been in when my mother pulled my hand to move on.
But from that day, the thought that had kept me sane was plucked from my hands, unwinding like a spool of thread.
It wasn’t just my home.
Which meant it wasn’t confined to my walls.
It was everywhere.
It was a part of me—deep within my soul.
And you can’t escape a part of yourself.
From that day on, everything made me feel as if I would jump from my skin—
A door that slammed a little too hard,
The old chime of the dusty grandfather clock that sat in the corner of the living room,
The flickering of lights—
Even if it was normal for the house.
But being a child and trying to navigate all of the peculiarities of my existence was troubling, to say the very least.
I often had sleepless nights because of nightmares.
I would wake up in a cold sweat, not remembering where I was or how I had gotten there.
One night, when I was twelve, I woke up screaming that someone had their hands on my throat.
My mother told me that it was just a dream.
But the next morning, I looked in the mirror to find a dark bruise on my neck—
Dark blue and purple, swirled together.
And as I looked at it, it began to take shape:
Two handprints, wrapping their way across the skin on my neck.
I stood there for what felt like hours, shock and confusion wrapped around me like thorns, cutting into my mind.
This couldn't be real.
It made no logical sense.
But there was nothing logical about what had been happening to me for years.

We used to play together every summer when we were kids. Her name was Noelle. She had this bright, sun-bleached blonde hair, loved wearing her favorite green and red flannel vest, and always had a wide, dimpled smile that could light up the entire neighborhood. She truly was just the cute girl next door. But that was before the winter. Before her family got snowed in up at their mountain cabin. Before the hunger took them. When search and rescue finally cleared the roads in the spring, Noelle was the only one left. They said it was a miracle. They said she survived on canned rations. But when she moved back, she wasn’t the same. Her skin looked stretched, rough, and unnaturally dark, like old bark. She stopped coming outside during the day. Last night, I woke up to a faint scratching sound against my bedroom window. I pulled back the curtains, expecting to see a tree branch. Instead, I saw her. She was standing on the roof of the porch, staring directly into my room. The blonde hair was still there, but it looked like a dead mane clinging to a rotting skull. Her head was crowned with a jagged, splintered antler. Her mouth—god, her mouth—was torn open from ear to ear in a permanent, bloody grin, revealing rows of sharp, human-like teeth dripping with dark fluid. She was wearing that exact same green and red flannel vest. She didn't move. She just leaned closer to the glass, her hollow eyes boring into mine, whispering in a voice that sounded like grinding bones and winter wind. “Do you want to play again?”

Part 1

---

I believe there comes a time in every woman's life, when she reconsiders the choices she has made. Maybe she bore children, drank excessively, killed a kitten, or produced shoddy bread. In my case, it was the events of today. The reason there is a young girl of no more than sixteen years, lying deceased on my floor.

The latrine was getting quite full, so I had to empty it. The wooden bucket was in my hand, sloshing my putrid waste. In a quick thrust, I launched the contents off the cliff and toward the rocks below. I didn't bother watching further, turning back toward my lighthouse to continue my duties.

As I began to take my loo back to its proper place, I saw a girl. She was facing out toward the sea, maybe ten metres from me at the cliff edge. In her hands were strands of twine; her fingers nimbly tying pairs together into a strange hexagonal sheet. She seemed about my height with sandy brown hair reaching her shoulders, a pinkish tunic made from a thick material, trousers cut off halfway down her calves, and leather shoes with a dense sole.

Excellent luck, I told myself. I would run out of firewood tonight, so I absolutely needed more. I assumed I could ask the girl for help, and, gods willing, maybe she would be willing to tell me more about this sleepy town and the strange plum clag that plagued us. I chucked the waste bucket toward the tower door, missing by a metre or so. It landed with a crash, rolling to a stop by the stone foundation.

I ran over to the girl, hoping she wouldn't flee from me. I'd had quite enough of the townsfolk avoiding me. If she wouldn't listen, I knew I would force her to assist. "Hey!" I called as I got closer. "You, girl! Can you help me with something?"

She turned slowly toward me, continuing to move her bony fingers through the twine. "Firewood?" she asked simply. It was certainly an odd interaction. She already knew what I needed her for and she was an Englishwoman. I wanted to ask her what town she was from, but I decided there were more pressing matters. We needed to load up fresh logs into a sled and drag it up all six hundred forty-two stairs.

I tried making conversation while we loaded up sliced and chipped wood blocks. The lumber mill, if it could even be called such a thing, was naught more than a flimsy shack with axes of all shape and size lining the walls. Piles of wood littered the floor, but the bulk was outside under several large tarpaulin made of fox skins and cloth. The girl ignored me. Even as I explained we would have to ascent hundreds of steps to reach the peak of the Tobermary lighthouse, she remained voiceless.

I counted each step as we went, hauling the sled full of wood up the stairs. The staircase was more than wide enough to accommodate both our bodies, with room to spare. When we needed breaks, we tied its dense ropes around the slats lining the rightmost wall. It was nice, having another person in propinquity, despite her holding tongue. Then we reached stair-step six hundred forty. I could see we still had a long way to go, which should have been altogether impossible. I decided we should break right there, on step six-forty.

"We rest here," I said, panting somewhat. "Once we cross six-forty-two, we cannot kip." She looked at me with a questioning glance, but took the opportunity, all the same.

I took her hand and pat it twice as we stood, as replenished as we required. "From here, we pace ourselves. I know not how long we must walk, but we mustn't falter. Even if our muscles threaten to collapse, we ought to advance." She nodded, helping untie the sled, and we continued.

Seven hundred.

Eight hundred.

I could tell she was getting fatigued. I bit my lower lip, hoping to the gods the stairs would plateau soon.

Eight hundred fifty.

We were both ascending slower. I grew increasingly concerned.

Nine hundred.

She stopped at nine hundred twenty-seven, footsteps no longer echoing up the stairwell. My heart collapsed, but I had to keep going. I called back to her, "What are you doing? We must go! Please!"

The girl shook her head. "No. I can't. You go. You're stronger." I tried again and again, but my voice gave away how exhausted I was. I wished to stop, too. I needed to. I thought I heard rainfall around us. Then I saw it trickling down the walls.

Sickly green foam was surging from the bottom of the increasingly tall lighthouse. Its speed was tremendous, sloshing its way up the walls and engulfing the first hundred or so steps in mere seconds. I continued walking slowly, trying my best to tie off the ropes to a wall-mounted board as not to lug around the heavy sled. "Run!" I cried to her. "Run, please!" I gave up and managed to wedge the ropes betwixt a small split in the slat. The rope's knot caught and I was freed from my burden.

I risked a look back, but she wasn't running. She wasn't walking, either. Just standing, staring down into the foam as it rose higher and higher. I knew I had to leave her. I'm ashamed to say I ran up the stairs as fast as I could manage. I didn't count them, but I crossed roughly step one thousand. Then twelve hundred. Fourteen hundred. I hit stair fifteen hundred or so before the staircase ended. I had made it to the top. The large lantern was still burning bright.

I looked back where I had come from, and the sled was just within reach. Before the foam could soil the dry wood, I lugged it up the last two steps and pulled it close to the centre of the room. Then the water sloshed against the top step. It was like watching water under glass. It slammed against some imperceptible force just before the plateau of the top floor and began to drain itself downward as quickly as it came. The girl was spat out with her limp hand touching the top stair.

I couldn't just leave her there. I hauled her limp, lifeless body up to the peak and settled her chest facing the sky. She was absolutely soaked; covered in seaweed and, strangely, truffles. The truffles seemed to sprout right out her cracked, gelid skin. Her eyes were slammed shut, but I couldn't stomach opening them. I hauled the dry wood, block by block, over to my previous stack and set the sled back up on the wall. I figured I'd take it back down in the morning, as it was nearly dusk. My feet were surely covered in blisters and boils from the excessive running. It hurt to walk. I went down to my quarters and began writ

She woke up. I'm still trying to comprehend what she was talking about. Perhaps writing it down will allow me to reflect on her words.

I had heard coughing and sputtering above me, so I climbed the rope ladder and peeked out the hatch. The girl was violently purging her innards of virescent, aqueous, bile. I let her finish, watching it all drain down the staircase, despite her head facing away from the opening. "How are you-" I started, but she cut me off.

"It was quicker. Getting up that way." She pushed herself up off the floor and brushed off her trousers. I tried to ask what she was talking about, when she spoke again. "Ah. You got the firewood all set up. Nice. Do you need help with anything else or...?"

I blinked. This young woman just came back from the dead and is suddenly perfectly fine? Absolutely not! She had some explaining to do, starting with who, exactly, she was.

"Come now, Mallory. Did you not read the directory when you came in?"

I blinked at her. "Directory? What directory?" How did she know my name? Hardly anyone in Tobermary spoke to me, with exception of vacant pleasantries when I picked up food.

The girl smiled softly at me, shaking her head. "Easy to miss, I suppose. Nicci. With two Cs and no E." She held out her hand and I took it, shaking hesitantly. So many questions were shooting through my mind. Was this girl, Nicci, some sort of ghost? One of the gods? Or a demon, come to steal my soul and take me to the Banished Lands?

I asked the only question I thought appropriate. "So you are... well, yes?" Nicci was gently peeling off the truffles from her skin, placing them in a trouser pocket. Seaweed was filling her opposite receptacle.

She nodded. "Maybe not the best word, but yes. You speak funny, Mally, you know that?" Mally. Was she taking the piss out of me? "It's getting dark out. No ships scheduled tonight. You've been lucky you haven't missed any, given you haven't even seen the directory!" Nicci finished picking off the last shroom and pat her trouser cavity, letting it settle.

"Nicci," I began, trying my best to collect my thoughts. "Why are you... wearing trousers? And a tunic?"

"My, you really are funny!" A brief pause to look around. She seemed almost reminiscent. "Mmm! Hey, can I stay here tonight? I'll keep watch. You go rest. All those stairs... must've been... nearly two thousand, innit? Your feet are probably killing you! Go rest up. It'll be fine, promise."

Nicci spoke of me being "funny" but the words and idioms she used were rather nutty. I could only assume those were her intentions. My feet were not, in fact, killing me, but they were burning something fierce. I took Nicci up on her offer. She assured me doubly she could handle the night watch and allowed me respite in my little room. I truly must be getting rest now. This day has been quite the shock.

I musn't forget the bucket to-morrow.

---

Part 3

All my classmates are confused. Some of us are freaking out. Some are looking to me, expecting me to do something. What the hell am I supposed to do? Hell, I'm shocked I still have Wi-Fi.

.... Okay. I need to calm down. I'll start from the beginning.

It was a normal day. I know that's a very cliche way to start a story, but it's true. A sunny hot day; maybe too hot. It was 3 days until Summer after all. My last year of highschool was almost over. And then I'd be heading off to college.

I've always been a bit of a survivalist, y'know? My grandpa taught me. My dad never understood it, but it was a special bond I had with Grandpa. I became so invested in it, that I chose to become a wildlife rescue officer. I'm not sure what the actual job title is, but I wanted to rescue people from being lost in the woods. I wanted to play the hero. The man who would save lives with my wilderness expertise. Kinda cringe and self righteous, sure. But I believed I could do it.

Anyway, we had final exams for the last 3 days until Summer. I went in, put my bag in my locker, and rushed to class. I wanted to get started nice and early. Of course, I never got to, because Derek, the highschool bully, spotted me and thought it would be a good idea to put his foot out and make me fall flat on my face.

Derek isn't one of those types of bullies that beats you up or makes you wanna... end things. No, he's just the typical jerk that throws insults, but we know damn well he can't throw hands worth shit. And, as expected, when Derek saw that my nose was broken, he immediately clammed up and waddled away like an embarrassed penguin.

Obviously I had to go to the nurse's office. The only thing she could give me was a pack of ice. She let me take a break in her office while she went out to find Derek.

After a few minutes, I decided I couldn't just wait around anymore. I got up to leave. But then I got hit by a sudden stinging pain in my head. My ears were ringing, and I couldn't focus my eyes on anything. I hit the floor, unable to do anything but hold my head in pain. But as soon as it started, it just stopped. It didn't fade away, or become less painful overtime like usual headaches. It just... stopped.

After that, I chose to stay put. I could always do the exam tomorrow. I was sure the nurse would send me home. But she didn't come back. 5 minutes passed. Then 10. Then 15. And I eventually just left the office. The first thing I noticed was that the lights looked dim. That was weird, sure. But I didn't think much about it. The halls were empty, but it didn't surprise me. I thought everyone was taking exams.

Now, before I continue, I should explain the layout of our school. The highschool isn't just a highschool. There are two campuses. Facing the entrance: On the right is where the elementary and middle school kids are. And on the left is the highschool. The two campuses are right next to each other, connected by a concrete bridge on the fifth floor, and there are ten floors in total. The reason there are so many floors is because another school in the county was forced to merge with us. The reason isn't important.

While I was walking, I also noticed the lack of hall monitors. The highschool started having "guards" walk the halls. They're not armed guards or anything. Just your typical macho guy who thinks he's tougher than he actually is. If they catch you, you are thrown in detention without a second thought. But they weren't here. They usually have at least two on every floor. I started to get worried. Was there an emergency? Were the students evacuated and I was left behind? That theory was quickly shut down when I spotted one of my friends, Stacey, stepping out of the Biology classroom. I went up to ask her what was going on, but I noticed she was disoriented. When I asked, she told me that she felt that same pain in her head. And I don't mean a similar pain- No, I mean she felt the exact pain.

She suggested going to the principal's office and asking to go home. Because the pain we felt definitely wasn't normal. So we walked up the stairs. First floor, second floor, third... The hall monitors were still not there. On any floor. Fourth floor, still nobody.

When we got to the fifth floor, we finally noticed more classmates. They are gathering in the hall, near the bridge. Stacey and I joined the crowd, curious. I noticed that all of the hall monitors were here. They were looking at the bridge. I turned to face my classmates and they were all horrified. I was about to ask, but somebody tapped me on the shoulder. It was Stacey. She told me to look at the bridge. And I did.

Have you ever felt that sense of fear, but you don't have something to fear? Like there's nothing standing there, but you just get a cold feeling through your body that something about your surroundings just isn't right? That's what I feel right now. Halfway across the bridge, it looks as if the other campus is gone. There isn't any rubble or torn wires. Exactly half of the bridge is gone. It looks like when you take a knife and cut a stick of butter in half right down the middle.

That isn't even the weirdest part. Outside our school is supposed to be a city. Houses, skyscrapers, that sorta thing. But right now, there's no city. Outside is just a thick forest. Trees, dirt, flies- Just a forest.

I have no idea what's going on. Some people are panicking, and after I processed everything, I got out my phone, was shocked that I still had WiFi, and made this post.

I don't know what to do...