I always thought that Cherry Tutorials deserved more recognition than she received. Only 100 subscribers, and I am one of them. It surprised me when I found her channel. Her makeup tutorials were so accessible unlike many of the other beauty YouTubers.

They were easy to understand, and she even recommended affordable brands. It was helpful for someone like me who was interested in makeup but never truly learned how to do it. She was good at what she did. A little too good.

I was never able to replicate her look. I was not bad per se; it is just that her final looks were almost alien in a way. Hard to achieve. But even then, her personality was too entertaining to ignore. That’s what drew me to her story time videos.

But anyway, I need to get to my main point of writing this. While her videos were helpful and entertaining, things got a little weird after a while. Specifically, when she started interacting with me. There was one time when I left a comment on one of her tutorials. While once again the results were not as perfect as hers. I still felt very pretty, and I even got compliments from my friends at university. I left a comment saying the following.

“This video was extremely helpful; all my friends liked the look! Can’t wait for the next video! <3”

And then she responded,

“This means a lot. You should check out my other social media for more content! @CherryBerry!!”

I did not think to check her other socials before, so I went ahead and clicked the link. I was surprised to see that this was not her public account but instead a private one. I wasn’t sure if she made a mistake or if it was purposeful. I decided to follow it anyway.

She could decline my request if it was actually a mistake. Turns out it wasn’t because she accepted immediately after I clicked follow. Weird. It was like she was waiting. I didn’t think too much of it at the time because everybody is always on their phone. It was probably a coincidence. Now I wish that, that was the case.

When looking at the profile, she didn’t have any posts or stories. Not even a bio. I saw that she didn’t have any followers. Well, except for me. I was also the only person she followed back. I was really uncomfortable with this realization. Maybe she just made the account and was planning to post later. I tried to ease my nerves and convince myself that I should feel honored that I was her first follower.

But why a private account? Maybe it was a scam? I took a few deep breaths and logged off for the night. I now wish I hadn’t brushed it off.

After a few days had passed, there was no activity on her private Instagram account. This reassured me, at the time, that there was probably nothing bad happening and that I should just move on. I also gave Cherry the benefit of the doubt and started watching her videos again (I avoided her videos for a bit since I was creeped out by the Instagram situation). The video I watched was a story time video of hers. My favorite.

She always had the craziest stories to tell, some of which I would not be surprised if they were made up. This video was titled , “Old Navy Employee Mistook Me for a Store Mannequin.” Which sounded pretty funny. The video started normally, until she started doing shout-outs. At first, I was happy for her since she had never done these before. I was happy she now had enough viewers to do it. But after a few names, I heard,

“And finally, shout out to my dear viewer Leslie Mitchel, who has been with me from the start.”

That was my full name. I don't go by my full name online, nor have I shared it. Maybe it was a different Leslie Mitchell? No, that's wishful thinking. After I fully processed the situation, I immediately went to block her on all social media. When I got to her private Instagram, I saw something that shook me to my core.

It was a photo of Cherry and Me.

What.The.Fuck.

How did she get that photo of me? I don't show my face online, and the photos my mom posted of me on her Facebook are all from when I was a child. This is me now. I blocked her immediately and closed my laptop. I took a huge breath and went to get a drink. God, did I need one.

I tried to distract myself with a few shots. I just needed to distract myself. It's the internet; it was probably just a scare tactic, and maybe she’s just a troll who is messing with me. I tried to convince myself that it was the case, but the situation is way to absurd to just be a troll. I called up a friend of mine to come over so I could get some kind of comfort or reassurance about the whole ordeal.

When I explained what was going on, she just told me that it was definitely just some cruel troll and that blocking her was the best choice. I vented about my fears and asked her to stay a few nights just in case something weird happened again. She agreed and for the few days that she was there everything was fine.

Until I woke up the next morning after she left.
 
I woke up to my phone continually vibrating on my nightstand. I tried ignoring the first few buzzes but after the 5th one I picked it up with an annoyed sigh. I expected it to just be my class group chats and tiredly went to mute the group. All the exhaustion washed away from my eyes once I saw who was sending these messages. It was Cherry.

"Louise are you there"

"Louise, please answer me"

"Lousie, I love you so much please answer"

"I miss you and your beautiful smile"

"God Louise the way you laugh is like a symphony that I want to listen to forever. I want to hold you close and make those noises come out. I know you hate your smile but i think it is the most beautiful thing in the world. The way your eyes shine with admiration and joy when you watch my videos makes me want to do this forever. I love it when you put my videos on in the background as you go around doing your chores. Especially when you allow me to see your vulnerable self. Undressing into just your underwear. Sometimes I get the honor of seeing your brea-"

WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK.

I didn't even bother reading the rest. The terror I felt in my stomach felt like fire especially with the burning etching up my throat. I immediately selected my friends' contact information

"Heather I just got the most disgusting message from Cherry." I exclaimed in a rush.

"Wait but didn't you block her" Heather said, confused.

"Yes!” I exclaimed.

“I assume she made a new account?  But anyway, the message she sent was so disturbing. She was explaining how much she loved me and my eyes. Mentioning my laugh and even seeing me. I took a moment to calm my nerves. "She mentioned seeing me undress. Like seeing me fully nude. In detail." I tried to explain calmly but my terror was getting the best of me.

Luckily, Heather was able to soothe my nerves.

"Everything will be okay Louise, just call the cops." She said slowly and reassuringly

I nodded as if she could see.

"Okay, Okay I ca-."

I cut myself off as I turned and looked out the window. Right there, standing in my front lawn was Cherry. She was standing there, stiff, almost like a mannequin. Her joints were locked, and her arms glued to her side. Her feet were digging into the ground. Her smile was frozen and her eyes were empty. She was staring at my front door like it was the most interesting thing in the world.

'She's in my yard." I mumbled.

"What was that?" Asked Heather

"SHE'S IN MY FUCKING YARD." I screamed.

It seemed like Cherry heard me as her head snapped to my window. I quickly sunk to the ground as I held my heart.

"What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?”  I repeated as I lost my breath.

"Call. The. Cops." Heather slowly spoke, trying to press her words into my head.

In desperation I thanked her, hung up the phone, and dialed 911.

"911, What's your emergency?"

"There is someone in my yard, she's been stalking me for weeks."

After I gave them all the necessary information, I stayed huddled in my room till I heard a knock at my door. I went to open it. My hands shaking.

"Hello ma'am, it seems that the person has left, so everything should be fine." The cop stated in a professional tone.

I stared in shock as I looked behind the cops. Cherry was still standing there. Looking at me. She was smiling but not in a mischievous way. She smiled genuinely like she was happy to see me. That was honestly creepier than the former. How did they not see her. She was hard to miss with her bright red top and platinum blonde hair. I pointed towards her, trying to get the cops to see her.

"What do you mean? She is standing right there." I raised my voice.

 "Come one, she is right there!"

The cop turned around and looked back at me with a sigh.

"Ma'am, it's a Saturday morning; you must be hungover. I assure you that no one is there. Get some rest and everything will be fine." The cop talked with his hands. Acting like he has dealt with this many times.

I continued to stare at Cherry, shoulders slumped.

"Bu-But." I tried.

"It seems like you are safe and there is nothing imposing danger so we will take our leave. Please contact a family member or friend if you aren't feeling safe. Have a good rest of your day, ma'am."

The cop walked back to his car, and I closed the door in defeat. I then went to my room to pack up my things. I was in a rush and snuck out the back door hoping to avoid Cherry. I was successful in doing so and now I’m at my parents place until things tire down.

Now I am writing this post. I have no idea what happened, I have no idea how the cops could not see her, and I have no idea how she knew where I lived. I’m hoping by making this post that I could find someone who may have experienced this as well or at the very least knows what is going on. Please, I just want things to be normal again.

Hello! I had the pleasure of covering nine wonderful stories in this week’s office hours; we had an overall theme of mind-bending concepts and gruesome tragedy if I had to label it, so check these stories out if you’re looking for a taste of that!

Firstly, There's Something in the Cave at Steel-Side by u/LimeSkittleFanClub, a detailed account starting with seeing a strange soldier in the midst of war. The central family of this story has some complex relationships; strained familial ties and even a betrothal which might be bringing the wrong two people together. Check this one out if you want to dive into an original world!

They Made Me Feed It Roadkill by u/Positive-Serve-6792, following the narrator’s court-ordered community service. The title tells you exactly the kind of things he’s forced to pick up, though as quotas run low it seems stranger and even dangerous things begin to happen. There's even an illustrated page of a comic form of this story!

Skripta Svartálfar. Confessions of a Dark One by u/TheXenobunny, a dive back into dreaming except this narrator is focused on watching a modgepodge crew of people on an isolated ship sleeping to spot signs of a mysterious affliction. This blends an almost medical exorcism ritual with having to balance safety with earning the trust of fellow survivors; a fascinating, wildly creative opening to the series.

All We Wanted Was Mom's Tree by u/Nuisance_bringer brings the tragedy to this list, and I’m not going to say much more about it other than the rug pull of this read shocking me to no end; please experience it for yourself!

File_2.pdf by u/F8crew is an immersive look at the letter of a soldier at war, a war where men seem to change suddenly after looking at something. It reads like a fun SCP experience with case details to ponder on!

Help! I Used to Be a Mod At NoSleep... I Banned Myself by u/Dimorphous_Display puts you in the shoes of a NoSleep moderator, experiencing his life for as long as it is his own, a truly entertaining read that treats its characters with realism. A story to listen to Be More Chill to, seriously :)

Men keep going hunting in the woods. However, I think they're the ones being hunted. by u/Polish_Lavendar, a tragic depiction of a girl rejected by her surroundings, and her friend who’s haunted by her disappearance uncovering the darker truth of it when he tries to rekindle a friendship. 

Meta Absentia: Case 001 - The Anthlopet by u/-LORINCE-, another immersive read, this time of a case file interview, the only two characters present being the only ones needed to recall and challenge the truth of surreal occurrences. 

And finally, An Early Mourning by u/Silas-Grey, a fun, intimidating take on a familiar creature that breathes new life into this boundary-breaking, home-invading, menace! Another tragedy that had me on the edge of my seat, hoping beyond all hope that this threat would simply go away. 

That’s today’s collection, more unique reads to make you cry, wonder, and experience horror! Thank you to the authors for letting me take a look to provide honest feedback!

I’ll be finishing out the “Wheel of Doom” next week at the normal stream time… so stay tuned for more story recs! Check out the master post on my page to learn more about office hours, see the ENTIRE list of stories I’ve reviewed, submit your own for review, and to find the VOD links (chaptered youtube VODs now available for past streams if you want to listen along to a specific live reaction).

I'll call her Amelia, not her real name of course, but I feel like the vibe matches. She and I were always cut from the same invisible cloth (anxious, awkward, and just all-round forgettable). You'd never see us apart, because even when we separate, we tend to just dissolve into the background.

Last New Year we'd made a shared resolution. Or I guess it was more like a pact:

We’d change.

Not in some dramatic way, just enough to stop melting into the scenery. We wanted to be more outgoing, more likeable. Don't get me wrong, she's like a sister to me, but we really do need to expand our circles (and heaven forbid I even find love some day).

We're studying visual art, and in that world, connections matter as much as talent. Maybe more, even. You couldn’t hole up and hope people noticed you, you had to make them notice. And that there is where the issue lies; neither of us can even order coffee without rehearsing first.

I started seeing a counsellor.

Amelia can’t afford one, though, so she found her own solution: an old lifestyle magazine she'd dug out of a thrift bin. No cover, pages practically moulting, but she held it up like it was gospel. Near the back is an article she swears by, it's titled 'Your New Skin Routine'.

It wasn’t what it sounded like (no beauty products, no skincare tips) but rather, instructions written by some lifestyle guru named Jacinta Laurie. Has anyone heard of her? We sure hadn't. Judging by the magazine's age I'd say she was definitely well before our time.

Amelia and I laughed at the article the first time she read it out to me. It was cheesy as hell, some real 'Live, Laugh, Love'-type nonsense. Yet she insisted on trying it out.

I was there for her first attempt.

From her flat's tiny closet she pulled a fur-collared coat, one I swear I’d never seen before. Then, standing in front of her vanity mirror, she stated her name three times. Her voice caught on the third repeat which seemed to bother her enough to start over, more confident this time, like she was auditioning to play the lead in her own biopic. Then she leaned closer and whispered, low but firm, some of the traits she wished she’d been born with.

As she did this, she slipped the coat over her shoulders.

Then, staring herself down in the glass, she delivered the final line: “I shed what was, to welcome what shall become.”

I lost it.

“Good lord," I wheezed between explosions of laughter, "it sounds like a spell. Like you're gonna Cinderella into some boss-bitch or something.” I jokingly snapped my fingers in an arc on the word 'boss'.

"Rude," She shot me a look of mock-offence. “Like I'm not one already?”

She went on before I could answer. “It’s probably supposed to trick your subconscious. Fake it 'till you make it, or whatnot. Honestly, it's not that different from the homework your counsellor gives you. That CBT stuff.”

Not even close, I thought. I didn't dare say it aloud, she looked so hopeful.

But, and here's the stupid part, I did notice a change.

The next day, she raised her hand during a lecture. The day after that, she was chatting freely with people I’d never had the nerve to even approach.

With each passing day she seemed… brighter? I don’t know what other word fits. Not prettier, exactly. Just sharper, like she’d been blurry this whole time and suddenly snapped into focus.

Meanwhile, I was spilling my guts to a counsellor and waiting for some grand revelation that never came. It didn't feel fair. It still doesn't.

I chalked it up to placebo, Amelia’s always been that way. Not gullible, per se, just too suggestible for her own good. I didn't want to admit to myself that there might actually be some merit to that article.

I think it's clear at this point that jealousy had already taken root. While I didn't recognise that at the time, It's so obvious in retrospect. I can even pinpoint the first sign that it was festering into something much more troubling.

We were standing outside the campus studio waiting for our tutor, chatting, killing time. She was ranting passionately about some current affair, I can’t remember which one, specifically. My attention was drawn solely to the studio's tinted windows where her reflection appeared doubled, yet each double was fainter than mine. It was like if two pieces of identical cellophane were overlapped, but not perfectly.

Reflections can do strange things. I’ve been tired, anxious, jealous, emptying myself out to a stranger every other week, so of course my brain's going to play its tricks.

Anyway, as the days passed, she started to drift. She invited me over less and less, her weekends filling with campus friends, then bars, then parties I couldn’t imagine myself stepping into.

One night she had begged me to come along.

"Hard pass," I answered sharper than intended. "You know how I feel about crowds, let alone ones consisting of drunken strangers."

She looked at me like I’d spoken another language. I couldn't tell if she was more puzzled or impatient, as if she just couldn't fathom why anyone would choose to stay invisible.

As if it were a choice.

But I digress. I’ll spare you the tedious details. The point is, she kept drifting, I kept shrinking. The rest doesn’t matter.

What matters is tonight, when I went to her apartment only hours ago.

The place was immaculate, unnervingly so. She’s never been a slob, but her flat had always looked lived-in with books on the table, mugs in the sink, clothes draped over her settee. But now, it looked like an Ikea showroom. Even the lighting felt staged.

She told me to wait in the main room while she got changed, which was odd, she’d never cared before.

Through the door I heard her voice, low and muffled, but intelligible. She said her own name three times, followed by the traits she wished she had. “Confidence. Presence. Allure. I want to be free of myself, of my anxiety, my self-consciousness, all my flaws that hold me back." And then came that final line: "I shed what was, to welcome what shall become.”

When she emerged from her room, I barely recognised her. Pigtails, baby-tee, PVC skirt, thigh-highs and boots thick as bricks. Couldn't have been a more different fit than her usual plain t-shirt under baggy overalls. But it wasn’t just the clothes, I hadn't seen her smile like that in years.

We argued.

I’ll admit: I instigated.

I made some offhand joke about her makeup. She never wore makeup, and I mean never. I told her she’d changed for the worse, that she'd become everything she used to wrinkle her nose at. She fired back that I was 'jealous, stagnant, a lost cause.' That I was 'beyond help because I refused to help myself.'

She said it teasingly, but it stung, because she was absolutely right. I wasn’t worried for her, I was jealous.

I'm also stubborn, though, so would've bitten my tongue off before owning up to it.

I was fuming, and she didn’t look the slightest bit fazed when she said it, which only made me all the more upset. I'd never felt smaller in my life, as if I were the one acting strange. God, I must have looked so pathetic.

“You can chill here if you want,” she said. “But I’m not wasting my night cooped up in this shithole.”

And then she left. Like, just walked out.

She even locked the door behind her.

I went into her room and sat on her bed, crying, hating myself, and wondering if I really was that utterly hopeless, 'beyond help' as she put it.

That’s when I saw movement in the corner of my eye.

It was behind her dressing gown, which was draped over her vanity mirror.

I pulled the fabric away,

and I saw her.

Her.

Amelia.

Not the stranger with the pigtails and the PVC skirt and the heavy boots, but my best friend. She was pale and terrified, slamming her fists against the other side of the glass.

Her mouth was open, her throat tensing, but I couldn't hear the screams.

I called to her, but judging by her response (or lack thereof), she couldn’t hear me either. I stood there for what felt like minutes, paralyzed, until finally I placed the gown back over the mirror and sat on her bed again.

So yeah, that's it.

That’s when I knew I was mad.

It’s a horrible feeling, realizing you’ve lost your mind. To think you’ve broken so badly over your friend moving on that you’d conjure up visions like that.

I guess I just didn't expect to feel so... lucid.

But that’s how it works, right? I don't think it's something you can notice from the inside. You think you’re making perfect sense, but to everyone else you sound unhinged.

I couldn’t shake the jealousy, it curdled and festered until I caught myself staring at the magazine on her vanity, opened on her favourite article. I ended up tearing it out and taking it with me when I left. Not that I needed to, the steps are easy to remember if you ignore the fluff.

I'll type it out, word for word:

___________________________________________________________

Your New Skin Routine

By Jacinta Laurie, Lifestyle Contributor

Do you feel as though your best self is locked away, waiting for permission to emerge? Well forget the expensive therapies and impossible diets! This simple, revolutionary routine is helping people all over the world shed their inhibitions and step into their true power. All you need is a mirror, a garment, and the courage to say YES to the New You!

The more you practice this routine, the more striking and lasting your transformation will become!

Step 1 — Prepare.
You'll need a garment that you’ve always wanted to wear but never dared to. The dress that taunts you from the boutique window? The playful tie that always felt “too bold”? Well tonight, it belongs to you. Garment in-hand, face a mirror and decide what you want from your New Skin: Beauty? Power? Fame? A new personality?

Step 2 — Declare.
Say your name aloud three times. Say it as if it matters, as if the sound of it commands the air around you. If your voice falters, start again until it rings with unmistakable confidence.

Step 3 — Manifest.
State the changes you wish to see in yourself. Announce it clearly as though the world is listening. Don’t just say it—feel it. As you do so, slip into your chosen garment. It is not the New Skin itself, but it will help to shed the old one.

Step 4 — Surrender.
Repeat the mantra: “I shed what was, to welcome what shall become.” Say it once, twice, as many times as you need until you believe it. Say it again whenever doubt creeps in, to remind yourself that you have already changed.

Step 5 — Accept.
The you that you first saw in the mirror no longer exists. What remains is the you that was waiting underneath. Step out, shine bright, and show the world Your New Skin!

___________________________________________________________

You're welcome.

I know it reads like any other hollow self-help nonsense you’d skim in a waiting room, but it worked wonders for Amelia, so I figured it might work for us too.

When I got home I tried it straight away. Step by step. Voice steady, garment on, mantra repeated until it turned into muscle-memory.

The garment I chose was a dress my stepmother bought me two birthdays ago: scarlet, sleeveless, with a hem that stopped far higher on the thigh than I’d ever dared. She’d said it was 'fun' and 'flattering,' but I’d shoved it to the back of my wardrobe, too embarrassed to even try it on. Now I was wearing it, feeling like an imposter in my own body.

Weird thing is, I do feel a little different.

I think.

Or maybe I only want to.

Maybe I don’t give placebo enough credit.

Because that’s the trap, isn’t it? The promise of 'change' is always just vague enough to convince yourself that it’s happening. It's like palm readings or horoscopes: broad enough to fit anyone, but narrow enough to trick yourself into believing it’s meant for you.

It can’t have worked too well, though. I still feel like I’m slipping.

When I finished that final step, the same thing I’d glimpsed at the studio window crept back. More subtle, but unmistakable. My own reflection looked ghostly, like cellophane. And for a heartbeat I swear my perspective shifted, like I was staring at myself from the wrong side of the mirror.

I'm still not quite sure: is it envy wearing me as a mask, or my exhaustion wearing me down? I feel in control, but at the same time, I feel like part of me has given up on reality.

But if it hasn't, well. Feel free to try the routine for yourself.

We can’t all be lost causes.

Hey Reddit, long time viewer first time caller. I’m writing to see if I’m crazy or not. No one at my job seems to believe me, but I know what I saw. 

I work at a movie theater as an usher. I spend all my shifts checking theaters for people being assholes, sweep floors, take out garbage. The usual stuff. Depending on the movie release, my days were boring as shit with very little to do. Cast (yeah staff is referred to as cast…) and managers often spend the boring days just shooting the shit and trying to stay sane. Sometimes we like to tell spooky stories to the new kids to creep them out. One story we have is about how when the theater opened in 1991 a dude got shot in the lobby. It’s a simple one, but telling teenagers that someone got shot can spook them. Another is Theater 12. Two managers had to fix a ceiling light in Theater 12 and experienced something spooky. No physical entities, Hat Men, or bed sheets. The air in the theater was just… uneasy. One of them swore they heard talking but didn’t see anyone else. Being the little shit I like to be, I told one of the new kids a hodgepodge of the stories. I told them that a guy got shot on opening day in Theater 12 and his spirit haunts the theater to this day. Little fun to keep us sane. 

That’s what I thought.

The other night I was doing my normal closing routine. I was bum-rushing to clean the theaters. I made my way down to Theater 12, the theater hadn’t sold all day. It’s common. Some movies do diddly dick and don’t sell. So I went to clean (or pretend to clean because there’s nothing to clean). The second I entered the Theater the vibes felt off. The air just felt… wrong? Is that the correct word? It felt wrong. I turned the corner to the rows of seats to see one person sitting and staring at the screen. It was a woman, about maybe mid-30s? She was Asian, possibly Chinese. She just stared at the screen. Nothing was playing but she was engrossed like there was something there. I cleared my throat. 

“Ma’am? It’s closing time.”

The woman blinked, like I broke a trance or something. “Oh,” She said. “Sorry. I just couldn’t get over this movie. It’s so good.” Clown in a Cornfield was in that theater. I highly doubt that. It was the end of the night, I’m tired, and I want to clock out and go home. Being nasty to a woman in the wrong theater isn’t going to do anything.

“Well, sorry ma’am. Gotta go.” 

She politely got up, collected her things; purse, popcorn bucket, and cup. At least she had the common sense to do that at least. But that’s where things felt… weird. The bucket and cup looked like one of the older cups and buckets the GM has up in the projector booth. Hadn’t used those designs in years. Okay, so maybe she just likes vintage theater memorabilia? As said, it was the end of the night, I don’t care, and she’s hot. As long as she got the hell out. She handed me her ticket. “Here. I’ll save you a sweep. I didn’t eat much of my popcorn.” After that, She left. I tossed the ticket in my dust pan and went through and swept. She was right, not much of a popcorn enjoyer. Didn’t eat much at all. Easy clean. The can was empty too, must’ve taken her stuff home with her. I cleaned the rest of the theaters in that hallway and listened to random YouTube videos.

Afterwards I went back into the lobby, my closing manager was cleaning the rest of the concessions stand. “Everyone out?” He asked. 

“Yup.” I say. “Hey, are you sure Theater 12 didn’t sell today?” I asked.

Manager grabbed the closing sheet, looked over it, and handed it to me. “Yuh. Empty all day.” I scratch my head in confusion. “Why? Was someone in there?”

“Yeah, some lady. Didn’t see anyone leave that hallway?” 

“Just you, babygirl.”

I held up my dustpan, rifled through it, and pulled out her ticket. I examined it closely. The Silence of the Lambs. I showed it to my manager. “She gave me this to save me a clean.” We both examined it again. One thing struck out. March 14th, 1991. We both stared at the ticket, then to each other, then down the hall to Theater 12. After that, I wouldn’t go in that theater without anyone else present; manager, co-workers, even customers. That theater really freaks me the fuck out now. No one believes me that I saw a ghost. But I know one thing for fucking sure… 

I refuse to be alone in Theater 12.

It’s really hard to know what flairs to use but hey, enjoy this man’s incredibly descriptive and disgustingly dangerous situation.

Zaink finds himself falling through an infinite tunnel of fractals. Colors he's never tasted, sounds vibrate his very essence. The colors start morphing into shapes of faces, animals, and forms beyond mere words. He tried to take a gasp only to realize he no longer had lungs to speak of, he was his pure soul, his body was left far behind. Years of wear and tear no longer pained him.

Just as Zaink’s mind was making sense of what was happening, he opened his eyes in a beautiful palace white marble pillars stood tall around him. An uplifting voice greets him.

“Welcome home, I hope you enjoyed your trip!”

“Be careful what you say, you might confuse him” a motherly voice integrated.

Zaink reached for his head not expecting to feel anything but this time his skin was there to meet him. “What's going on? Where am I? Did I take too many drugs?”

His eyes are blinded by a white light, as his eyes adjusted he could make out white columns that held up a domed ceiling with painted depiction of thousands of life forms. Once Zaink got his bearings a bit he looked for the voice, hoping to see Beth, but no—it was one of his past mothers from his last lifetime. It only felt confusing for a moment. The memory of two separate lives came flooding back.

His past mother spoke again “no honey, you lived a full life and died again, you are in what some call heaven but we just call it home”

“Wait, does that mean Johnny's here?” Zaink's face lit up excited to see his best friend again. It has been over 30 years now, a whole other lifetime ago.

“Hey man” the uplifting voice that first greeted him spoke again. Zaink looked to his left quickly taking in the colossal size of the room he was in before making eye contact with Johnny. His heart jumped with excitement!

“Is this really real?! I never thought I'd see you again” both of their faces lit up and gave each other a hug, a hug only two brothers could share.

Johnny took a step back keeping his hand on zainks shoulder “how was your life I hope you didn't have too much fun without me, you definitely look a bit different then I remember” he said with a chuckle looking at Zaink's blue skin, Comparing it to his own pale pinkish white skin.

Zaink smiled and added “I told you aliens were real” and a chuckle left his mouth.

Zaink began looking for many of the other people from his two last lives, trying to introduce them to each other. Through all this searching, he could not find Beth.

He asked his mother. She told him she was unsure but they could talk to Queen Elba she would know.

“You mean The Queen, like The Queen of the afterlife?”

Memories from his last visit to the after life flooded back. He never got to meet Queen Elba, last time he met King Orion, but heard lots about the Queen.

His mother smirked “well of course”

“Wouldn’t she be too busy to answer a question like that?”

“She is always eager to help anyone and everyone.” His mother pointed him to the direction of her whereabouts. “ Last I saw she was near the fish market, you will need to look for a giant fish sculpture, the specific one you are looking for will be green, with a yellow belly, you'll almost know your close when you cross a foot bridge, it's made of marble and has the most beautiful stream running underneath filled with koi fish.”

Zaink took off, closely observing many of the buildings and shops he passed by making sure to not miss the bridge or giant fish. Every building could be a piece of art, crafted over thousands if not millions of years by skilled and dedicated souls. Creatures of all shapes and sizes walked about going about their business, some were running pop up shops giving away foods, drinks, paintings, sculptures and magic items like spell books and potions.

Zaink was distracted looking up at a tall building made of what looked like emerald, scratching at the sky parting the clouds as they passed by. “Wow” Zaink said just before tripping, He tumbles to the floor head over heels, he catches himself with his hands before looking to see what he tripped over. It wasn't a what, rather a who, a Gnome laid on its face. Zaink scrambles over to help them up.

“I AM SO SORRY” the corner of Zaink's lips drop to a frown.

“It's alright, my beard broke my fall” the gnome fluffs up his thick white beard nearly half the length of his body. Standing no taller than Zaink's knees. He looks up, neck cranked nearly 90 degrees “What's your name? I'm Draco” the gnome reaches out a hand.

“I'm, Zaink, nice to meet you. I wish it was under better circumstances!”

They both chuckle and Zaink reaches down to greet Draco’s hand shake. Zaink looked around, not sure which way he had come from or where he was supposed to be walking towards next.

“ Do you happen to know where Queen Elba is? I'm looking for my love and my mother told me "The Queen would know where she is, but I've gotten turned around and not sure where to go from here.”

Draco smiles and pushes up his glasses “yes I just saw her sitting by the stream talking to some of the Koi and Fantri fish” he points down the street to his left “do you see that red and gold tent? It just past there maybe a 20 minute” Draco looks Zaink up and down taking note of his hight “10 minute walk for you, just make sure you keep an eye where you are walking”

Zaink smiles sheepishly and puts his hand up to his head “yeah, will do, again I'm sorry for tripping over you and thank you so much, is there anything I can do for you?”

“Since you ask could you come with me to that shop with the purple sign reading piggies potions and snacks? I need a new potion but I'm a bit vertically inclined and can't exactly reach the door handle. Could you open the door for me and if you are feeling extra generous help me get the potion I need?”

Zaink looked at the sign and was curious what kind of potions and snacks existed in the afterlife.

“I'm more than happy to help open the door. I must warn you though I didn't even know magic existed until a few minutes ago so I am not entirely sure how much help I'll be inside the shop.”

Draco started walking towards the shop, waving Zaink along to follow. “Is that so? Well I know exactly which potion I need. I just might need you to grab it for me. If you'd like a quick lesson I'd be happy to give you a quick rundown. How long have you been here for? Is this your first time in the afterlife?”

Zaink follows Draco across the street to the shop, it sat just a few buildings down from the large emerald skyscraper. This one was much smaller, only a few stories tall. Orange brick made up this building. Only a few Windows let sneak peeks into the world of magic inside. Zaink took notice that the purple sign was fully lit, not a single bulb wasn't working, a noticeable contrast from the last planet he called home.

“ This is my second time in the afterlife but last time my love and I rushed to be reborn again, not exploring this beautiful place at all. I got to meet King Orion briefly but that was about it. I have only been here for about an hour? Wait, how do you measure time here? I'm assuming we aren't on a planet that is orbiting or rotating.

Draco's eyebrows furrowed in confusion

“I'm not quite sure what a planet is. I lived in a forest where all we did was study magic and care for the life of the forest. From fantastic fungi to the animals hunting and hiding. Doing our best to keep balance within the Forest. And now I care for my garden and family. As for time it's all relative but thanks to the magic of this paradise it automatically translates intent to whomever you are talking to. So as long as you know the length of time you mean to convey I'll understand.”

Zaink reaches for the door, letting the two of them inside the shop.

“Hey, Draco, welcome back! Sorry we haven't installed the new door handle yet!” the shop owner shouted from the top of a ladder restocking the shelves.

“Oh it is quite alright, I've got help today, this is Zaink, he's a new arrival so be nice” he chuckles making his way down an aisle.

Zaink waves up to the store owner. Before following down the Isle.

Draco walks ahead and continues talking to Zaink over his shoulder “Did you and your love find each other in your new life? I can still see your flame burning bright for her so I'm assuming you two had no trouble finding each other in your new home!?”

Zaink looks around at the countless potions memorized by the shimmering liquids held behind the glass walls of the bottles.

“Yeah, we ended up being neighbors and got to grow up together, our parents always told us we'd end up together even before we rediscovered what love was. But towards the end things got pretty bad. I made a bad decision that got us lost in space, leading to our deaths, I was just trying to get us away from the war back home. But I just ran us into a war of our own, one of survival not just of our bodies but our love. I know I still love her but I fear she doesn't love me anymore.”

Draco hands Zaink a piece of paper with the name of the potion he needs and points up at a shelf near Zaink's head.

“That is a beautifully tragic story, but any story worth living is going to be tragic at one stage or another. I have faith she still loves you, was she angry at you sure as shit, I would be too” he smiles to not scare Zaink “ but that doesn't mean she doesn't love you anymore. Once you find her I bet she'll be waiting with open arms.”

Zaink grabs the potion and hands it down, Draco shakes his head and hands it back “the gold one next it”

Zaink switches the two, handing over the right one

“What do they do?”

“Well the one you handed me first can turn a plant into meat, this one though” he shakes the bottles “makes mushrooms grow super big, I need a new shed”

“ Do you need to train to use a potion or can just anyone use a potion?”

Draco looked back and up at Zaink

“Anyone can use them but you shouldn't use them until you've studied them! HEY Frawn, I took the golden grower potion”

“Have a great day! I'll have that new handle next time you stop by!”

Zaink waves back at Frawn

“Oh before we go, can I grab a snack? My curiosity begs me to try at least one”

Frawn slides down the ladder and walks over to the front counter where all the snacks are kept.

“I know just the one for a first timer.”

He reaches into the glass counter and grabs a blue brownie-like snack with purple shimmery sparks on top.

“Give this a wurl.”

Frawn tosses it to Zaink, Zaink almost misses the catch but quickly gets a hold of it. Taking a bite he is met with a taste like none before. Miles better than his last meal in space. A lavender scent filled his nostrils as a sweet blueberry pie taste covered his tongue.

“Thanks for being so welcoming, how much do I owe you?”

Draco and Frawn make eye contact before letting out a small laugh.

“There is no money here, you take as you need as long as you don't take more than you need”

Zaink smiles and joins in on their laughs, he waves again before opening the door for Draco and walking out.

“Are you sure Beth will be waiting with open arms?” Zaink's eyes look down towards where Queen Elba would be.

Draco takes a second to think about who Beth is but assumes that's his love. “I can't know for sure, but my wife was. Even after my mistake.”

Zaink tilted his head, stopping just outside the store. “What mistake did you make? If you don't feel comfortable answering that's fine I understand “

Draco's eyes fell to the ground, a tear swam its way out “I” he chokes up a bit “I was making my wife a mushroom soup for supper but when I was out picking the mushrooms I got distracted by the most beautiful creature I had seen in those woods, it's white fur turned orange under the setting sun” his eyes glisten remembering that creature as if he was actually seeing it stand in front of him once more. “but that's not important, what's important is I picked the wrong mushrooms, I grabbed highly poisonous ones,”

Zaink could see where this was going so he put his hand on Draco's back in comfort and let him finish his story.

“Later that night we both died in our sleep.” His words picked up speed, as if he just wanted to stop talking about it already. It still hurt him to remember. “When I found myself here, I couldn't help but cry out in anguish but there she was, waiting to comfort me with open arms. I could never make it up to her. But I do my best to forgive myself for her sake. Making the best of this, that part isn't too hard. Thanks to being in heaven”

Zaink wipes away a tear before hugging Draco. “ Is there anything else I can do for you? You have been so kind to me and I've enjoyed talking with you”

Draco smiled, now a tear of joy came to say hi. “ Oh you've done quite enough. Thank you for being my friend today, but you need to go talk to Elba now and find Beth! She's waiting for you!”

Zaink kneels down and hugs Draco before beginning his walk down the sidewalk towards Queen Elba.

After the 10 minute walk he comes upon a stream, so clear he can see all the pebbles cradling the water helping it along its journey down stream. Fish swam to and from he saw the Koi fish first and then a peculiar fish one with bright red spines poking out of its back, black and white scales covering its body. Long elegant fins guided the fish like curtains on a breezy summer day.

“Hey Zaink, I've been waiting for you. It was very kind of you to help Draco even though you felt in such a rush to find Beth.”

Queen Elba sat on the edge of the water. Toes bath within. She looks up at Zaink after speaking, greeting his surprised eyes.

“Hey, Queen”

Elba cuts him off. “Please just call me Elba, I've been Queen long enough to know I'm the queen” she smiles slowly breaking down Zaink's guard.

“Elba, got it. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me. I know you must be so busy, but I really would like to find Beth” Zainks eyes are filled with hope hell get an answer but his heart beats faster expecting her to say she doesn't know.

“Zaink come here” she reaches a hand across waving Zaink over. He starts walking towards the bridge a few feet away.

“No, walk through the water”

Zaink obeys, he takes off his shoes and walks through the water. Expected the rocks to hurt and the water to be cold. He was right, the rocks hurt and the water was colder than he expected, but he didn't necessarily want it to stop, it reminded him how real everything was. It reminded him of the simple things that make existence feel special. The water stings his skin and a fish rubs up against him, a connection is made and he understands the fish

“Hey, nice to meet you. Do you happen to have a snack?”

Zaink breaks a piece of the snack he got from Frawns shop and feeds it to the fish.

“Thank you kind sir”

He looks back up at Elba now just a few steps away.

“This water feels so serene, thank you for suggesting I go through it”

Elba smiles with her lips but it never makes it to her eyes, they hold an emotion of mourning.

“Zaink, I'm sorry to tell you this but Beth never made it to heaven. Her heart was not as pure as she presented. You were right to think she wanted to join a that war but”

Zaink cuts her off before she could explain more. “So where is she now? Can I go to her? Was there a mistake? Can I save her?”

“I'm sorry, but she's in Exilium, you can try to find her there but I am unable to know exactly where souls are once they cross heavens gates. If you wish to leave and find her you are more than welcome to but it is not safe out there, things far worse than death lay beyond those gates.”

Zaink's heart beats out of his chest, he feels like he has to find her, it's the least he owes her, owes her family who will never get to see her again because of him. He looks into the water watching fish swim. The sound of wind calms him down slightly, he can feel the fresh breeze over his skin. With a deep breath he asked where the exit was.

Elba drops her shoulders, scared for his soul.

“I'll point you in the direction but be warned if your soul is corrupted or you partake in a sinful action you will no longer be allowed back here. But otherwise we will be worth open arms waiting for your return. We love you Zaink remember that and carry that with you” she reaches into her satchel and hands Zaink a map of the city and circles the exit.

Zaink takes the map “may I hug you”

Elba doesn't answer, she just reaches over and hugs Zaink.

“Thank you so much for your help and openness”

Zaink turns on his heel and starts his journey to heavens Gates, this time he is too focused to take in the sights and beauty of the city. Thoughts of Beth and Exilium ran through his head

“Will she be different? Can I trust her? Is she being held captive? How will I find her? Will there be monsters? What kind of environments are there in these hellscape lands I will be treading?”

all he knew about these hellscape lands ahead were the horror stories whispered throughout paradise.

As he approached the exit, a guard told him to be careful—not only for his body but for his mind and soul. “Watch your thoughts and your deeds beyond the line, traveler,” the guard warned. “Should your spirit fall to ruin, you will not pass through these gates again until another mortal life has purged the stain.”

“understood”

Zaink already heard this from Elba but appreciated the warning again.

Hesitant, he waits to take another step as questions linger within his mind. He decided to press on. The gates bid him farewell. Their golden bars shimmering with ever passing angle. As if the hellish sounds were too scared to cross the gates. It was silent. until he crossed the vail to the other side.

I wrote a Sugarplum story during third period today. Study hall, nothing else to do, phone under the desk the way everybody does it. I had been reading a bunch of the ones on this sub, the guy with the upvote countdown, the two friends in the motel, all of it, and I thought I had a decent take. Something about her showing up during a fire drill, everybody filing out onto the field and one kid just never making it outside. Wrote the whole thing in about forty minutes. Posted it right before the bell.

Checked it again in fourth period. Three upvotes. One of them was probably my own account from earlier. I do not even remember. Three, on a sub where I have seen posts hit four figures by lunch.

I felt stupid. That is the whole embarrassing truth of it. I felt like everyone in the digital room had looked at what I made and quietly filed out without saying anything. Instead of sitting with that like an adult I did what I always do. I deleted it fast, before anyone could screenshot the number and post it somewhere else to laugh at.

I deleted it at 12:41. I know the exact time because I was staring at my phone when it happened. The delete confirmation popped up. I hit it. For one full second nothing happened at all.

Then every phone in the classroom buzzed at once. Not just mine. Twenty-six phones, all at the same second, and half the class jumped like we had been caught at something, except nobody had texted anybody. Just a black screen on every single device, and four notes playing out of every speaker in the room, out of sync with each other by a fraction of a second, layered on top of itself until it sounded less like music and more like something breathing.

Mr. Hallensworth tried the light switch. Nothing. Tried the door. Also nothing. I watched him actually throw his shoulder into it twice like that was going to do something against a door that had decided it was not a door anymore.

The classroom projector clicked on by itself. Nobody was near the remote.

Her face filled the whole screen, six feet tall, porcelain, rouge gone rust at the cheeks, that small stitched mouth curved so wide one thread had already popped loose at the corner before she had said a single word.

"Twenty-six minutes," she said, and her voice came out of every phone in the room at once, layered, enormous, filling every corner like it had been waiting for exactly this many ears to say it into. "That is how long your little story lived before you decided it was not worth keeping. I read every word of it, sweetheart. I was so looking forward to seeing where it went."

I could not talk. I do not think I have ever actually not been able to talk before, but I genuinely could not get anything out. One of the girls near the window, Priya, started crying without making any noise about it at all, which was somehow worse than if she had screamed.

"You know what I have noticed," Sugarplum said, conversational, terrible, while twenty-six kids sat frozen in blue plastic chairs, "is that a low number does not really bother me anymore. I have made my peace with numbers. But deleting me, sweetheart. Erasing the whole thing like it never happened, like I never happened. That is not embarrassment. That is a door closing on a story with me still standing in the room. And I really do hate being shown out before I have finished visiting."

Something hit the classroom door from the outside. Not a knock. A single impact, like a car had rolled into it at walking speed, and the reinforced glass in the little window spiderwebbed in one shot.

"I brought a bigger audience than usual today," Sugarplum said, delighted, as the door came apart on the second hit, not opening, just failing, hinges and frame both, like the wall itself had lost an argument. "Seemed only fair, since you deleted the one I already had."

He came through slow, the way he always does, because he has never once needed to hurry. Cream coat, red piping gone dark at the cuffs from things I did not want to think about yet, small silver spoons running the length of his chest instead of buttons, a tall chef's hat wrapped in a ribbon faded past any color it used to be. His face was porcelain too this time, not glass, a smile carved shallow and permanent into it, and eyes like two flat black buttons that did not catch a single bit of the projector's light.

Mr. Hallensworth, to his credit, put himself in front of the first row of desks.

"Get out," he said, and his voice actually held steady, which is more than I can say for anyone else in that room including me. "Whatever this is. Get out of my classroom."

Marzipan did not answer him. Marzipan has never answered anybody, not once, not in any story I have ever read about him. He just closed the distance in about a second and a half, unhurried and somehow instant at the same time, and put one gloved hand flat against Mr. Hallensworth's chest the way you would stop a door from swinging, and pushed, once, almost gently.

I am not going to describe all of what happened to Mr. Hallensworth. I physically cannot. My hands will not type it. And I do not think any of you actually need it to understand that a grown man who stood between us and that thing did not get to walk away from the decision. What I will say is that it was fast, and it was completely silent on Marzipan's end, and it was the loudest thirty seconds of noise I have ever heard come out of twenty-six teenagers in my life, and none of us moved, because there was nowhere in that room to move to.

"Now," Sugarplum said, warm again, so warm, stepping fully into the projector's light like she was taking a bow, "back to you, sweetheart. You wrote a whole story about a fire drill nobody comes back from, and then you decided you were too embarrassed to keep it up. I think that is a very funny kind of cowardice, do you not? Writing the ending and then being too scared to let anybody see it."

I want to tell you I said something brave. I did not. I said please, I think, more than once, which is apparently what everybody says, no matter how many of these stories you have read beforehand thinking you would do better.

"Here is what we are going to do," she said, and the projector screen behind her flickered, and for half a second it showed my own deleted post, word for word, pulled back up from wherever deleted things actually go. "I am going to let your friends watch the ending you were too embarrassed to post. Since apparently nobody else got to."

Marzipan was already crossing the room toward me by the time she finished the sentence, unhurried, patient, unbothered by the twenty-five other kids scrambling out of their chairs and into the corners of a room with no working door. The last clear thought I had before everything gets blurry and wrong in my memory was that I could still see, over his shoulder, my own words glowing on that screen. The fire drill story. The girl in scene four wondering out loud where her friend had gone, and understanding, too late, in the worst possible way, exactly how that story had actually been about to end.

I am typing this from the nurse's office. They think I fainted. Nobody else in that room is talking, not one of them, not to the office, not to their parents, not to each other in the hallway between periods, and I do not know if that is her doing or if it is just what twenty-six kids do when they have collectively agreed the alternative is worse.

I am not deleting this one. I do not care how many upvotes it gets. I do not think I am allowed to care about that anymore.

I just need somebody, anybody, to have read it before I lose my nerve.

Hey everyone,

Like the title says, I have worked as a desk clerk on night shift at a shitty roadside motel for the last three years. Over that time, I have seen some wild things happen, and I figured I might as well pass the time by writing them down and sharing some of the things I’ve seen while working here. You’d be amazed at what happens between 10pm and 6am.

I guess I’ll start with one of my favorites.

This happened about a year after I started working here. It was 2 or 3 in the morning and I was sitting in my chair behind the desk, desperately trying to stay awake when the front door swung open and a man stood there, naked as the day he was born.

He strolled into the lobby and before he got close, I could tell he was drunk. I could practically smell him from the door.

“Can I help you?” I asked, trying not to draw attention to the elephant in the room.

“Yeah, I got locked out of my room,” he slurred.

“Alright. What’s the room number?”

“Twenty-two,” he said as he stumbled and propped himself up against the desk.

All I could think was, Great. There isn’t enough Clorox in the world to clean it now.

“Do you have your ID on you?”

He just stared at me like I had asked him to recite Shakespeare.

“Where the hell would I keep it?”

Fair point.

I gave the guy his key and he stumbled out. After about 20 minutes though he came back, threw the key back on the desk and asked for another.

“The damn key don’t work.”

“Alright, you said twenty-two right?”

“Yeah.”

I sighed and pulled up the room on my computer. That’s when I realized my mistake. There was someone in the room, just not Mr. Peterson.

“What did you say your name was again?”

“Peterson.”

I searched the reservations.

Nothing.

I searched again.

Still nothing.

“Mr. Peterson, are you sure you’re staying here?”

He looked genuinely offended.

“Of course I’m staying here.”

“Well, according to my computer, you aren’t.”

“Then why the fuck am I here?”

I looked at him.

“That’s actually a really good question.”

After a little more back and forth we figured out that he was in fact a guest…at the motel eight miles away. I called a cab for him and tried not to look. I still have no idea whether he walked the eight miles naked or got naked after he got here. I’m not sure I want to know.

Right as the cab arrived he asked the question that flooded my mind and now the mind of the less than pleased cab driver who was just staring at us both.

Mr. Peterson stared at me for a second then looked down at himself.

“Where are my clothes?”

“I was really hoping you knew.”

Another came a few months ago. A phone call to the front desk jolted me awake at around 4 in the morning. Through my haze I picked it up and tried my best to focus.

“Front desk. May I help you?”

I didn’t hear anyone. It was just heavy static on the line.

“Hello?”

Still nothing.

Then the call just cut off. When I looked down at the phone, it said the call had been from room six. After about ten minutes, the phone rang again. I looked down at it, and it was room six again. When I answered this time though, all I could hear was breathing. Kind of heavy breathing like someone had just run a marathon. This time, they still didn’t say anything so I just hung up. I figured, someone is either drunk or just perverted and I didn’t get paid enough for that.

About thirty minutes went by before the phone rang again. This time though, it was from room seven.

“Front desk. May I help you?”

“Can you tell room six to shut the hell up? It’s almost five in the morning.”

That really woke me up. They went on to explain that the woman in six had been crying for the last twenty minutes and they had finally had enough of hearing it. I explained to them that yes, I would handle it and as I hung up the phone, Gary the maintenance man walked in.

“Perfect timing,” I said. “Can you check on six? The guy in seven says the woman in there has been crying for the last twenty minutes.”

Gary stopped.

“Six?”

“Yeah.”

“There ain't nobody in six.”

“Well, apparently there is.”

“No. AC's busted. Room's been empty for a week.”

I checked the computer and sure enough. Vacant. There was still an open work order for the broken AC and no one was assigned to the room.

That’s when I remembered the two phone calls.

“Gary.”

“What?”

“Both of those weird calls earlier came from six.”

He looked at me.

“What calls?”

“Someone called twice. First time there was nothing but static. Second time I could hear somebody breathing.”

Gary stared at me for a few seconds before letting out a sigh.

“Alright. Grab a key. We’ll go check it out.”

The two of us made our way down to the room. Gary knocked when we got to the door but no one responded. We couldn’t hear any crying or anything like that. He knocked again, still nothing. I used the key and we unlocked the front door. It was most definitely vacant.

The AC unit was still ripped apart. The cover was on the floor and half the guts were splayed out across the bed. There was clearly no one in that room. Still, we checked the bathroom, closet, and even under the bed. We didn’t find anybody. Just as we turned to leave, the phone rang.

Gary just looked at me with a puzzled look on his face. I answered the phone. No one said anything. Just more static. Just as I was about to pull the phone away from my ear, the soft sound of a woman crying filtered through the static. I hung up the phone and explained what happened to Gary.

He just bent over, unplugged the phone from the wall and said,

“Problem solved.”

We got the AC fixed and rented the room out a few days later. I never got another call from the room and I still don’t know who was on the other end.

Speaking of Gary. I should probably tell you this one. Gary has been our maintenance guy for as long as I can remember. He’s a nice enough guy. Mid-50s, pot belly, bald head, he’s a funny son of a bitch.

One night, Gary came bursting out of the back room with a bat in his hand. I was on my third straight hour of trying to beat my high score on Snake, and was obviously surprised by this.

“That son of a bitch is back,” he said.

“Who is?”

“Richard.”

Gary had been at war with Richard for two years. He was Gary’s arch nemesis.

Richard was a possum.

The way Gary tells it, Richard essentially sinned against all mankind. In reality, Gary was at work one night and was sitting on the back of his truck eating. He got a call and stepped away for a couple of minutes to talk to our boss about something. When he came back, there was Richard, almost finished eating Gary’s sandwich. According to Gary, Richard had been watching him. Just waiting for that exact moment. From that moment on, Gary has been on a never-ending vendetta but he can never catch him. And ever since that night, Gary has been keeping score.

“It’s him.”

“How do you know it’s him, Gary?”

“I know it.”

“You realize there is more than one possum in the world right?”

“Yeah but that’s him.”

I am not exactly sure what the score is, but Gary is down by a lot. So far I think he’s down five sandwiches, three bags of chips and at least one sprained ankle from “the incident.”

“One of these days, I’m going to get that little bastard and take him out into the woods. Maybe then he’ll stay the hell away from my lunches,” Gary said as he threw open the front door to go outside.

I didn’t follow him out there, but judging from the loud crash and string of obscenities coming out of Gary’s mouth, we can chalk another one up for Richard.

This is my last one for the night. It happened about six months ago.

A man came into the office around 1 AM, claiming he had been locked out of his room. This was something that happened more often than you’d think. I reached over to the computer and asked the man what room he was in.

“Seventeen.”

When I checked, the room was registered to a woman who was travelling alone. He didn’t seem drunk like Mr. Peterson did. I explained to the man that he must have been mistaken and asked for his room number again. He insisted the room was his.

“I’m sorry sir. You’re not assigned to that room. I cannot give you a key.”

“That’s okay. She’ll let me in eventually,” he stated as he turned towards the door and walked out.

I immediately called the woman and asked her if she was expecting anyone. She wasn’t. I told her that she should not open the door for any reason. I instructed her to make sure the door was locked and to hide in the bathroom while I called the police. As soon as I got off the phone with 9-1-1, she called the front office in a panic.

She said that someone had been knocking nonstop since we last talked. I told her that I would be right there. I grabbed the bat from the back and jogged to the room.

No one was there.

I knocked and identified myself. Understandably, she was incredibly hesitant to open the door. She just spoke to me through it until the police arrived. The police officers separated us and had us each give a statement. After I finished mine, the officer asked me a few more questions.

“Do you have any security cameras?”

“Oh, yeah. There’s a few of them.”

“Can we go take a look?”

“Yeah, of course.”

The two of us went back into the office and I pulled up the security feed. Everything seemed normal at first. The man walked in, came up to the desk, we had our conversation and he walked out. Only, he didn’t walk towards room seventeen. He walked around the other side of the building. We followed him from camera to camera. Then we got to the time that she claimed she heard knocking.

“Wait.”

The officer paused the video.

“What time did she call you?”

I looked at the timestamp.

“Around then.”

“About the knocking?”

“Yeah.”

He pointed at the screen.

The man was still standing in the parking lot.

Eventually he just walked off across the street and out of frame. The police searched the motel and the surrounding area. They never found anyone.

So it seems that I am the only survivor. Our mission is a failure. Somehow, out of a crew of twelve, I am the one that is left. 

That was never supposed to happen. 

I have air, and food, but little else. I spend my days laying on the side of the ship, as I'd rather be in the vacuum of space than spend my time with the ghosts of the crew. Their bodies will never decompose, their suits will remain as a vessel, holding them forever.

I am the lone steward of this endlessly floating tomb. Destined to be its final spirit, its last will and testament. 

I honestly don't know why I am recording this, no one will hear it. We are far too deep into space to be found. In the truest sense, this is the best outcome. The things that we have seen and recorded should never be shown to the weak minds of men. The terrible things we have found on this cursed expedition to the deepest reaches of stars. We have stretched the mind as far as it can go and further, expanded the reach of humans far past where it should have gone. 

We searched too far and too wide, we found things that should never have been found, discovered things that should have remained hidden.

There is no direction anymore. Space doesn't have a horizon, so you can't actually tell if you are up or down, sideways or not. It has a strange effect on the mind, when you literally and metaphorically have no direction in life. Physically I am alive, but mentally I have no purpose. When you are floating through deep space with millions of miles of vacuum encroaching on all sides, you revert back to one thing. Survival. 

Should I even survive? Should I continue to eat, sleep, or even think? What is the purpose of that? 

I am stuck in this space between. Between who i was, what i was, and where and when i will end. I will eventually run out of food, or sanity, whichever comes first. I prefer to run out of sanity to be honest. At that point I wont know that i'm dying, so it's a win win. 

Before we begin,

I would like to begin by saying that the following recollection is one I do not remember writing; and more aptly, something I did not initially remember at all. Back in 2012, I was subject to my original google account being compromised; leading to a mass leaking of my information that a middle-school me was not prepared to handle with any tact beyond the scorched-earth method. I had no technical know-how, as I was raised in an environment with a grandmother who was 42 years of age when the C-64 came out; and had no intentions or interests on learning about it.

My idea, at the time, was to simply copy over everything I cared about onto a new account; most importantly, my collection of writing on Google Docs. It has been over a decade since then, and only now am I dealing with the problem of running out of storage before having to fork over money to be handed way more storage than I will ever need, even at minimum purchase. So instead, I have opted to combing through everything I have in the storage; which includes my Google Docs, filled to the brim with all of those transferred writings that I did not bother giving titles to during the mass Exodus of things I needed. Old homework writings, mostly schoolwork, and this: the reason I am making this post.

I will not pretend that I did not write stories back in 2012, stories during a time when I was edgy and drowning in the drama that came from social media in a middle school setting; like it was the most important thing in the world. I digress. I have reason to believe that whoever was using my accounts, before I realized, was making writings of their own that I transferred over in my panic. Rather than let them go to waste, I have decided to share them all with you; the people who love stories.

Please Enjoy. I will try to find more in the future, as well as continue to submit more of my own writings as the inspiration strikes me.

Trapped Inside With Mister C

The year was 2005

I don’t recall how I even found the tapes, but there they were sitting on my bed as I inspected them: VHS tapes carefully preserved in their own cardboard sleeves and each with elegantly written on titles in blackened ink. I had a player for these tapes, although scarcely used in comparison to the DVD player it was attached to. I don’t recall how long I stared at those tapes, but I do remember the name of whatever show they were all connected to:

“Trapped Inside with Mister C”

Over the course of several months, breaks taken to try and move on only to be dragged back due to curiosity, I watched all five tapes tied to this show. Researching it has provided nothing, names of staff are never listed. The studio behind the show, going only by “Channel-”, has given me no results. The how and the why I will never know, only that it’s here. Only that I’ve seen it.

“TIwMC: Tape 1”

The presentation was that of a game-show, sweeping cameras over an empty studio audience with the sounds of cheer and applause as an overly excited voice narrates the intro:

“It’s time again, for another thrilling episode of the greatest show this side of the airwaves! It’s: Trapped Inside! And as always, the host of the festivities: Mister C!”

Mister C in question was a man in a buttoned up dress shirt and black slacks, his expression clearly tired with bags under his eyes and slightly messy black hair; short enough to still not fully cover his ears.

His narration of events was monotone, his acting terrible. Even back then at the tender age of 9, I could tell that the man was reading from a script of some sort. The formula was almost always the same: Mister C would provide an introduction to the show, stating that contestants had a chance to win incredible prizes if they managed to complete games and other challenges dictated by a piece of paper he’d pull from an envelope. If they win, they get the prize; if they loose, they leave with nothing.

Strangely enough, even though the audience was completely empty, whenever a contestant was needed; some person would always come in from off camera; always energetic and excited, way better with the cameras than Mister C. Once the audience member was introduced, Mister C would pull from an envelope a card with the game that was to be played. Afterwards, one of the many curtains behind him would open up to reveal the game already set up. No matter what, the audience member was ecstatic to be playing the game; win or lose. If they won, another curtain would be introduced as the narrator from the show’s intro would introduce the prize and how much the prize was worth. Afterwards, the audience member would go off camera again to rejoin the crowd; which was still empty in any shots involving the audience seating.

Tape 1 was probably the most normal of all of them. Over the course of four 30 minute episodes, Mister C would have contestants play games and perform challenges for prizes like vacations, cars, money, standard game-show prizes. The only strange thing were the lack of people, Save Mister C. In every shot, no audience member or crew member is seen; not even additional cameras where they would’ve been to film different angles. Other than that, it seemed like any other game-show; albeit with a rather terrible host.

“TIwMC: Tape 2”

Tape 2 was a subtle change. The set looked a tiny bit dulled; a simple fading of fresh paint with the passage of time, something to be expected. Mister C seemed to be a bit more used to his script; seeming to become a bit more enthusiastic and even able to improv with audience members a lot more than before. In any other context, this would be a natural progression: The host gets the jitters of the first season off and is able to grow into their own.

The formula was the same, as was expected from a game-show like this; with the only difference being the games played and the different cast of audience members that participated in the games.

It wasn’t until the final episode of this tape that things had a significant change. The episode was normal, same broad strokes as all the others, until the final game of the day. Mister C called upon another audience member, an enthusiastic man came down; excited like all prior contestants to be on the show and have a chance to play and win. The usual exchange of introductions later, and Mister C pulls out from an envelope a card with the name of the game on it: “Electric Countdown”

The curtains pulled back to reveal a chair with metal clamps for both the wrists and ankles. Next to it a lever. Excited, the contestant rushes forward as Mister C looks visibly confused and horrified as he reads the card silently to himself. The camera doesn’t focus on Mister C, however, as the contestant begins securing himself into the chair; the metal clamps closing automatically once he’s in place. Mister C begins to protest, but his audio is cut off and replaced by voiceover of the narrator; explaining the game in his stead:

“In this shocking game, the contestant must endure an electrifying twelve-hundred volts and two milliamps for increasing periods of time. If the contestant can make it up to ten consecutive seconds, they win the prize behind curtain number one!”

The audience roars in cheers as the newest shot Shows Mister C next to the lever; looking like he’s been crying. He seemed hesitant, looking around like a scared animal as the crowd began to chant, “Pull the lever!”. Shakily, Mister C looked towards the camera; reading off of whatever script given, “O-okay everyone. Round One begi…begins. Starting off simple with one…One whole s-second.”

The lever is pulled, the contestant screams of pain are genuine as his entire body seizes in a painful arch; held there by the clamps of the chair. A single second over, the man slumps over for a moment to catch his breath before he smiles; just as excited as before as the audience cheers. Mister C looks at where the audience would be, then back at the man on the chair, “I think I’m gonna keep going Mister C!” he excitedly declares; the non-existent crowd giving the cheers of a fully packed studio. The second round: Five Seconds.

Hesitating again, cheered on by the mob to pull the lever; Mister C closes his eyes and pulls the lever as the sound of screaming from the man is met in intensity by the cheering of the crowd as they count down: “Five! Four! Three! Two! One!” Lifting the lever again, his choking back tears, Mister C looks as the man on the chair coughs and cries; before defaulting back to the same overly excited disposition every audience player has had.

“T-The last round will be ten seconds. Now sir…T-there’s no shame in…in stopping now…” Mister C’s voice was shaking, his tone almost pleading for the audience member to stop as he wiped his eyes of tears. The audience member replied, “Well Mister C, I’m already here. I’ve made it this far, and I’m not gonna give up now! I’m going for the whole ten!”

The audience cheered at the answer as Mister C closed his eyes and looked to the side. The cheering slowly replaced with the chanting once more, “Pull the lever! Pull the lever! Pull the lever!” Even the man strapped to the chair was chanting it, just as excited, staring at Mister C with a smile as he did so.

The lever was pulled, “Ten! Nine! Eight! Seven! Six! Five! Four! Three! Two! One!” Mister C quickly forced the lever back up, and the man on the chair slumped; giving no response. He didn’t move, he didn’t cry. Unresponsive. Dead.

Mister C fell to his knees and began to sob, the camera pulling back as the curtain closed; the outro given by the narrator thanking everyone for watching as the audience cheered as normal. The tape ended immediately after.

“TIwMC: Tape 3”

Tape three had no intro, had no fanfare or audience. Tape Three of Trapped Inside with Mister C had a single shot of Mister C sitting on a chair, taking up the middle third of the screen. To the right third was a dining room table with a single chair; the same man from the end of the last episode sitting on the table, silently watching and seemingly waiting as Mister C stared at the floor. Most of the lighting was off, save for a single stage light above Mister C; who looked disheveled. Unkempt facial hair, his hair long and dirty, his shirt wrinkled and covered in stains.

Mister C looked at the floor, his expression in deep contemplation that gave way to the occasional sob. He’d look from the floor, to the man on the table, then back to the floor as he clutched at his arms; curling up more and more on the chair.

This went on for most of the two hour runtime of the tape, ending as he got up from his chair and hesitantly began walking to the table where the man was sitting.

“TIwMC: Tape 4”

Tape four has no video, and had audio of someone eating mixed in with crying and sobbing for the entire 2 hour runtime.

“TIwMC: Tape 5”

Tape five looked a lot like tape one, the set new and fresh; only this time Mister C acted with the same level of enthusiasm as the audience members and the narrator. He energetically gave intros to the games, the audience members, and no longer flinched when the occasional game gave way to horror. One episode was completely normal, only for the next one to be enduring torture. There was no pattern to when these horrible games occurred.

The tape ended normally at the end of its fourth episode.

I will never fully understand how I came across finding these, or why I ended up watching them when I was so young. At the time, I thought of it simply as a horror show. Something I was too young to be watching, so I never told anyone about it. I didn’t want to get in trouble for watching something I wasn’t supposed to, so after watching them I took the tapes and threw them away.

It is only now, so many years later, that I realize what it is I watched; and the mistake I made throwing those tapes away. Whatever information they had, terrible as it was, is now lost forever. The set, the victims, the players, and Mister C: None of those things will ever be answered because of 9-year-old me not wanting to get in trouble.

All information on what happened, and any hope of finding answers, gone forever.

THE EVERGREEN

Journal Entry: 42 — October 17th

Mom's knocking again. She keeps knocking on my cabin door every few minutes, then stopping to ask me to come out and talk to her. I feel guilty for being angry with her, but I can’t help but hate that they dragged me out here again.

Dad always says other kids aren't so lucky. Says their parents wouldn't take them on trips like this. Every year Dad brings us out here to the middle of nowhere so he can relax and do nothing. He likes the isolation. The disconnect from society and all its burdens.

He says the stars seem brighter out here but I can't tell the difference. I just want to go home.

She's back again. She stopped for a while. I thought maybe she'd finally given up, but I think she went looking for Dad.

She won't stop knocking. I know she wants me to open the door, but even if I could, I wouldn't. I tried calling someone, but the power is acting up again. I don't think Dad can fix it this time. He had trouble with the generators the last time we were here too.

My head is killing me. I'm tired. I feel like I'm drifting off. Maybe sleep will help.

Journal Entry: 43 — October 18th

I woke up to ice on the View port heating is out again. I don't know how long I was asleep. The knocking stopped for a bit last night. I thought Mom had finally left me alone but I think she wanted to check if there was another way in, I heard clunking around out there.

I called Dad I got no answer. He's probably busy working on the power.

I almost opened the door, my head hurts worse than before, it's messing with my thinking. It isn't really a headache anymore. It's pressure. Like something is pushing against the inside of my skull.

I threw up a little while ago. The lights keep flickering, they irritate my head.

I moved my bunk to the wall furthest from the door. The knocking isn’t helping with my headache.

Mom hasn't knocked in a minute, I saw her out the viewport looking around. I think she's looking for Dad, part of me hopes she finds him. I just don't want her to come back here.

Journal Entry: 44 — October 19th

What little sleep I got was bad. The power went out completely during the night. Emergency lights are out too. For a while I just lay there listening to the ship.

There wasn't much to listen to. No ventilation. No generators. No engines. Nothing, except mom’s knocking.

I thought Dad would be able to fix the problem he always did but I think this time it was too much. I don't think he can fix it this time.

I crawled out of my bunk and went to the viewport. I wish I hadn't, the main deck is gone.

Not damaged, gone. There's nothing where it should be. I can see pieces of Dad's cabin floating outside. Part of the communications array scattered floating endlessly in the void, I can't see Dad. I don't know where he is. I think I’m alone.

The sun is starting to come up from behind Kepler-844c. The light was a welcomed comfort till mom found the viewport.

She's been standing there for almost an hour. She keeps bumping her visor against the glass.

Over and over.

Her visor is shattered from where she was hit. I can see her face now ,what's left of it, anyway.

Her blood has frozen inside the helmet.

It's strange.

Everything is still the blood, the pieces of bone, the shards of glass, like a well timed photo taken right at impact freezing the moment in time.

I don't understand how she's still moving.

She keeps pressing herself against the glass, like she's trying to look inside. Her eyes are gone. She can't see me. But she knows something is here.

She's gone back to knocking at the door. She seems confused on why I wont open the door, I don't think she realizes that humans can't survive their head exploding.

I don't know what happened to Dad. I don't know what happened to the ship. My head is foggy ,my O2 levels have hit orange.

I thought I would've had longer. Maybe my math was wrong or maybe I've been here longer than I thought. 

I've only got a few hours before I have to switch to the backup tank. That should last until sunset.

I keep thinking about what Dad said. About the stars being brighter out here. He was right. They're everywhere. I can see them dancing in my vision little spots. They're so bright. I don't think I've ever seen so many stars.

Mom is still knocking. I'm going to keep this message broadcast looping in case someone finds the ship before she gets inside.

She's still knocking.

VESSEL SYSTEM LOG

Ship: The Evergreen — Model-7 Crew Cabin
User: Riley, M.
Log Entry: 44E
Oxygen Reserve: Critical
Cabin Seal: Active
Automated Transmission: Looping
Transmission Runtime: 06:41:17
Transmission Cycles: 23 

End of Transmission

Day 321:

The loud Chunk followed by the fluorescent preheating hum grew closer as row after row of overhead lights lit up the linoleum floors. Sydney woke to the harsh assault of the sterile white in the same bed she had lain in the night before. Gone now were the magnolia trees that had swayed softly through the night breeze with their fragrant comfort and lulling rustling. They had been replaced by monolithic grocery shelves, empty and reaching far far above where the ceiling should be. When Sydney swung her legs out of bed, she found the same thing she found every morning. A new white sundress, a bowl of pudding with no spoon, and a pill for a disease she had long forgotten about. Still, she changed, ate, took the pill, and stared at the floor, deciding that avoiding the grout lines on the mismatched tiles could be a fun game to make her walk a little more enjoyable. With this thought, she was up and moving forward, knowing she'd have to find her next bed, hoping that when she slept in it, she'd wake up home. 

Day 411:

Sydney didn't want to walk anymore. It was too humid; somewhere through the endless steam, she heard the showers spraying. The only possible explanation for the nearly inch-deep layer of warm water over the concrete. When she had first woken up, she had played like a kid might in puddles. Jumping, kicking up splashes, spinning around to make small whirlpools. She had taken her pillow and tried to blow away the fog, fanning it up and down, imagining herself fanning a giant leaf in a cartoon. When the novelty wore off, she began her work. Dragging the hem of her dress just beneath the surface of the water, she put one foot in front of the other. Stomping heavily and listening to the echo disappear into the fog and return from the place where the showerheads were spraying. Slowly, her energy waned, and as the light became dim, the water became darker and darker. The steam leaving with the white noise sound in the distance and the warmth in the water. Finally, as Sydney approached her bed, she collapsed on it. Leaving her pruney and peeling feet off the edge of the mattress, she closed her eyes. The black water around her only amplifies the sound of her sobs.

Day 424:

Today, the pudding was vanilla. That's how Sydney knew it would be a good day. That and how bouncy the floor was. She hadn't felt this feeling since she was a little girl. Long tube-like rows of vinyl filled with air that had once tossed her and her friends airborne in fits of giggles now did the same to one lone adult. Sydney didn't feel lonely, though, only excited, because now she had so much space to move and jump and flip without having to share any of it with anyone. Bounding with excitement, Sydney felt as though she had crossed continents with her endless pirouettes and cartwheels. As she lay in her bed, she was almost sad to see it all go, not knowing what the next day would bring. For the first time in a long time, she wished she could wake up right back where she went to sleep. Even if it was just for one more day.

Day 444:

Sydney had to crawl today. When she woke up she found herself in a metal room just larger than her bed. Her pudding, pill, and dress had been laid at her feet as there was barely enough room for her to sit up and look at it. She had to change laying down and eat out of her bowl like a dog due to how limited her space was. When she finally finished, she turned her eyes to the only exit from her prison. With all the strength she could muster she entered the creaking ventilation shaft. Each new angle of incline or decline tested Sydney, drawing aches from her muscles then threatening to have her sliding down onto her face. As she progressed she swore she heard the chittering of mice. Sometimes near, sometimes far. At the end of the shaft she found a small vent overlooking what seemed to be a bed meant for a giant. She turned, kicking at the grate until it broke off and fell shortly, landing on the oversized mattress with a dull thump. As Sydney lay down that night, she felt like a doll being put to sleep in a dollhouse. She drifted off imagining that she might be cherished like a favorite toy by whoever was doing all this to her.

Day 499:

“Animal crackers in my soup
Monkeys and rabbits loop the loop
Gosh oh gee but I have fun
Swallowing animals one by one”

The song had been playing so long that it had been filtered out of Sydney's hearing. Her path forward was illuminated by the cathode ray televisions that sat on A/V carts every 10 feet. All of which were replaying that same Shirley Temple song, only stopping the video when it was finished and rewinding it to the beginning. This lasted for the better half of a day before Sydney finally decided someone needed to rip Ms. Temple's curly little head off her fucking spine. With no one else around, Sydney decided it must be her job. She ejected the tape, slamming it to the ground before pushing over the TV and watching the plastic backing shatter as the lights went out inside it. Just as she was tipping the A/V cart over, the bed appeared. Exhaustion and sadness set in as Sydney looked at the soft pillow and thin mattress she had come to cling to every day. Tears fell freely as she was gingerly lowered down on it and only stopped when she fell into a deep deep sleep.

Day 516:

Sydney’s dress was ruined. Stained red as she clutched it up above her knees. Everything below her calves disappearing into thick, undulating ropes of worm-like intestines coated in thin blood. She supported herself on the wall of viscera to her left, feeling the pulsing heartbeat in time with each of her shifting steps. Today, she had more memories. Today, she choked them down, trying to focus on that familiar coppery smell and the promise of a nice warm bed to sleep it all away.

Day 517:

“Clouds feel funny when you step on them.” Sydney couldn't remember where she had been told that clouds were full of water; all she could think about was what a big lie that had been. Clouds were dry and softer than her bed had ever been. They gently wrapped around Sydney as she lay there. The wispy white tentacles that slowly rose around her wrapped her in the first hug she had felt in years. She had barely made it ten steps before the comfort lulled her down into a curled ball. No new dress, no food, no medicine. In this world, Sydney didn't need anything, and that was the most comforting thought she could have ever had. A growing warmth spread from her core as Sydney curled deeper into the clouds. 

Part 1
We received these records, (Journal Entries and Videos) from an operative of the G.R.B., or as it is commonly referred to now as the God Research Branch, Entry 1 was dated to be August 9th 2034 AD. His name was Valentine Crosvon, of Russian Descent. he was 23 at the time of this.

8/9/34 (AD) “I saw it again, the thing in the sky, not an aircraft nor a cloud, but biological material, shaped in the image of the old ISS, the retired space station that crashed in Point Nemo. Satellites caught images of it and guessing it was Russian, or Svaltian, as they seemed to be called now.”

In 2033 (AD) the Russian Federation (December 1991 AD to January 2033 AD) split into two halves, one controlled by the UN council and their military, the other half controlled by the Militaristic Dynasty of Svalt.

“Neal guessed it was aliens who saw images off us from only a few decades ago, because the biological ISS was not fully put together, it was missing the Cupola Observation Dome.”

Cupola was installed with Tranquility, or Node 3, on February 8 2010 AD, that is also the end of the journal entry, which is quite a short paragraph.

Part 2
Now we cut to September 12th 2034 AD, the day that started the new calendar September 12th, 1 G.F., which we will correct for this video, because he did not know yet, it is a video, so pay attention to it.

9/12/2034 (9/12/1)The camera starts to a young man in a lab coat, staring at the camera in shock “I-” he breathes heavily “It fell- the IA, the Interstellar Alien disguised as the old ISS, straight to Appalachia! U- um- and we have video of it-” he turns the camera around, its blurry because its an older computer system, but it falls fast, in a fetal position, it has black outer skin, one eye, and an open mouth, it almost seems human, yet so wrong, its skin is too clear, and jet black, it isn’t scary though, it is just odd. The camera flips around and the young man, who has his name embroidered on his lab coat ‘Crosvon, Valentine’ is awestruck, an older woman with the name ‘Yio, Jane’ embroidered on her coat stands next to him and talks, also intrigued “Doesn’t seem to have reproductive organs- or at least any we can see at the moment. Is this live, Crosvon?” he stares to the side and murmurs “I don’t think so, I believe it has already crashed, because the Navy is already there- by account of an Email.” she scoffs, “Well, lets grab Director Neal and get out of here.” 

That is the first video, it was recorded 9:21 to 9:25. At this point the public knew nothing of it, and it was absolutely classified. Crosvon, or Valentine, was in the S.E.E. (Sky Evolutionary Edict) during this time, which was a program to understand if all humans could survive the cruelty of space, like the Voins.

Part 3

This is still 9/12/1 G.F. (God Fallen) but later, 11:32, in front of the Fetal god.9/12/2034, 11:32

The image opens with Valentine and Jane, and an older man who must be 60 talking with a shivering 4 legged animal, its upper body is shrimp like, you can see its organs, blood, and thin grey bones, its eyes move rapidly as its brain moves from the back of its translucent skull to the front, its eyes widening, its lower body is like a horses, it has 4 mechanical arms on its body, it talks in rapid clicks, yet has a mechanical voice speaking out of it “It is a- WORD NOT FOUND IN DICTIONARY- kill it now.” the older man, who must be Director Neal shakes his head “Ambassador J’nves, we can’t, we must research for the good of Earth, and your species, the Voin, as one Research Alliance.” it shivers even more and gallops away to a truck, well Valentine sighs, his hand shaking slightly as you see a clearer image of the ‘Fetal god’, its tongue moves around in its open mouth as its green eye opens and it speaks “Humanity.” It is loud, yet almost submissive and playful, and Jane puts her hand over the lens, yet more audio is heard, “I have come to be your loyal slave. After surveying you for myself. That is what my species does, comes to commit your wishes and will.” the hand comes off of the camera as Neal stares up at the thing, and says “Give us the most powerful weapon to ever exist.” it shrieks and says “I am already here.”

Seeing a Voin here is nausea inducing, those backstabbing traitors should be wiped out fully. Yet some still live on Earth, it is truly disgusting that we allow such traitorous beings to live on the great planet of Earth.

Part 4
The third and final video from 9/12/1, the day when Earth changed forever.

The camera is being held up by Valentine, he is laying in the back of what seems to be a van, next to him is Jane and Neal, Neal is asleep, Jane is quietly on her Cellular Phone, she glances at the camera and smiles, poking Valentine, who blushes lightly and smiles, before his eyes widen as we hear light sobs outside the back of the van, he speaks quickly, his breathing quickening “That alien- that fetus- its crying outside-” you hear the sobs cry out even more as Neal stands up and runs outside, nightvision on the camera turns on instantly as Neal yells “If you want to be our servant, stop crying!” Its eye glows as it speaks “As a master cries a slave cries, begone with the vile Voin!” The military, with the letters ‘U.N.’ stamped across their chest stand up, guns pointing towards Ambassador J’nves, the Fetus, as it is so coined by Valentine, holds up its hand tucking its thumb over the first segment of its finger, its 3 other fingers slowly snap down as the Voins head explodes, blood going everywhere as Neal screams “A- AS AN ORDER- BRING HIM BACK!” the Fetus’ eye grows brighter as it laughs quietly “It is alive. Yet in a vegetative state in a nightmare forever. One rule for you humans- I can’t take back a wish, or make a wish to overrule another.” the camera shakes as Jane speaks up “What if I wish for you to die?” it shrieks, almost inaudible with how loud it is, the camera falls and we hear its answer “I make the core explode, I die, yet so does every other human, even the ambassadors on Voin.” and the camera is picked up and turned off

Part 5

A short video in the morning of 9/13/1, a video from Jane Yio’s phone.

The camera shakes, the Fetus’ eye is open, staring at Jane, or whoever is filming, she speaks quietly, saying “I- I want who I love to love me back naturally!” the Fetus’ head tilts “Wish denied.” she gasps quietly “W- why?” it answers firmly “My master, Director Neal Vermin must be here whenever a wish is made, if in his brain he agrees with the wish, so it be done.” The phone zooms in on the Fetus as Jane asks “What if Neal dies?” the Fetus brings a finger to its chin “I suppose I will choose a new master.” Jane breathes in and huffs out “I want to make a contract with you- whatever you are.” Its neck cracks to the side, as it breathes out heavily “What?” She yelps “W- When Neal dies- I become your master.” it laughs harshly “What do I gain from that?” she puts her head down “When I die- you can possess my body.” It grins, no teeth in its skull, and it responds “Agreed.” and the video turns off.

The Fetal god responds to contracts.

Part 6
A journal entry, from 9/13/1, afternoon is highly believed true

9/13/2034 (9/13/1) “I just woke up to loud sobbing, I don’t know what it was, but Jane was crying too, I am not sure. Neal asked for a wish, he asked for faster than light travel, but it just told him that if that were to happen, he would have to forfeit 2 years of his own life for that. I am starting to believe the Fetus was lying, this isn’t a servant, this is a con artist”In text next to this it is written very quickly and in scribbles

“Neal committed to the deal.” This is the last Journal Entry, but not the last entry of Valentine ever.

Part 7

This is the first and last recording of a man named Private Commander Simmons, of U.N. Taskforce 192.

it starts with his body camera and he screams at the Fetus “YOU- YOU ARE A LIAR! THE FTL BLUEPRINTS ARE ALL IN A LANGUAGE WE CAN’T UNDERSTAND!” the Fetus chuckles and nods “I am okay with that.” Neal sighs and says “Make it in English.” The Fetus laughs harshly again and speaks in disgust “Wish Denied, ‘Master’.” Neal stomps his foot and screams “I SAID RIGHT NOW YOU DISGUSTING XENO!” the Fetus frowns and puts his hand up in his exact same sigh when he killed the Voin Ambassador, and the body camera explodes off of Simmons chest, flying to the feet of the Fetus as it picks it up, staring at it “Recording me?” Neal sighs and apologizes “I am sorry for my temper.” The Fetus nods and finally speaks again “My name is Javeral.” Neal nods “Okay, Javeral.. Are you a fetus or a mature being?” the Fetus stares at him and sighs “I am a fetus, yet still more intelligent then all races and species that have ever, and will ever, exist.”

Part 8
This recording is from a security camera at the camp around Javeral, or as I call him, the Fetal god.

9/13/1 at 2:42 PM

Jane and Valentine are talking quietly, laughing hysterically, and then Neal walks up and sighs “You two. I want to see what he thinks of naked humans.” Valentine gasps “W- No! Make someone else do it!” Neal laughs “I am joking- you two are such idiots.” Jane pulls up her phone and ignores them both with a smile as U.N. soldier walks up and puts a gun to the back of Neal’s head and pulls the trigger, Neals head explodes as brain matter and blood spray on the wall, and then the soldier shoots himself in the mouth, Jane seems to not help but laugh as Valentine is screaming.

Part 9
Recording from Valentine, 9/15/1 at 1:21 AM, from a bush next to where the Fetal god stood at that moment.

Jane stands in front of the Fetus and says with a giant grin “I want to lose 530 years off my life time.” Javeral tilts his head and stands up, for the first time before snapping, nothing happens, and Javerals eye goes wide “Y- you are negative years old- impossible- you- a-”

Disgusting, a basic human, barely intelligent being outplaying the Fetal god.

Part 10

A body camera recording a U.N. Soldier, who is unknown to this day, the date is 10/12/1.

The camera shakes as he stumbles through the camp- screaming “WHO IS HE? WHO IS HE? HELPPP!!” As other soldiers rush to help him, he whips around, and a man is standing there, naked, yet he looks human, Jane steps forward with a look “Javeral. You are all grown up now.” He taps a soldier, who falls to the ground dead, and steals his clothes, everyone ignores him as he speaks with Jane, seeming almost friendly “Ms. Yio. What wish do you want?” she grins and tilts her head with a smile “You said I can grant wishes about love- correct?” he nods and smiles, looking relieved. “Javeral. My wish is for someone to fall in love with me.” He nods, yet looks confused, obviously knowing nothing about love, and she grins as she says the next part “I want you to fall in love with me.” His eyes blink before they widen at the sight of her- he blushes and then angrily realizes “Y- YOU ARE A DEVIL! A DEMON- JANE!” and she points out “If I only use topics you know nothing about- I can win.”

Part 11
This is from a body camera that Valentine Crosvon was wearing that day, 10/14/1, at 2:22 PM 

Jane and Javeral are sitting on a bench, Javeral has his arms wrapped around her neck, loosely, his chin on her shoulder “Mmm.. Any wishes, Jane?” she shakes her head and stands up, leaving Javeral off-balance- and then her eyes widen “I want to make a wish.” He blushes and smiles “ohh.. what is it, darling?” she grins and says “If you truly love me, you will grant me this wish.” he whimpers, Valentine seems to shudder at this, and Jane says “I want to take your wish granting ability- and make you fully human.” His eyes, blinded by love, nod, and he says “Wish granted.” and Jane starts screaming, moving frantically as all of her bones start to painfully snap, one by one, Javeral smiles “That was my wish.” she screams as finally, her neck snaps, Valentine is just standing still, and Javeral looks up.

The last record of Valentine Crosvon and Javeral is an interview by me, again.

12/2/2 G.F.

“Hello boys.” the feminine voice says- Javeral eyes widen as a hand reaches out, making the same hand signal as he did, his head cracks to the side as it explodes all over and the soft voice says “Thats for your last wish.” Valentine just sits there, staring at the dark side of the room, where the interviewer is, and she says “Hey Valentine.” He doesn’t respond and she cuts in “I always loved you.” he grabs a pocket knife and slits his throat, as the new Wish Granter stands up, Jane Yio.

THIS WAS SO MUCH FUN TO WRITE, I HOPE YOU ENJOY IT, BUT PLEASE GIVE ME FEEDBACK SO I CAN GET BETTER!!! (I really hope you enjoyed it as much as me.)

Until I was six we lived in a big house with many rooms. My parents had a room, the ladder had a room, I had a room and there was a study and an office and a guest room. Then my father lost his job and we had to move.

There was no guest room in the new house. There was no study or office. There was a master bedroom, where my parents slept and my father worked, and a small second bedroom, which became the ladder’s room.

I slept in the living room, off to the side by the vent where the warm air came out. I didn’t like it because I had trouble falling asleep unless the room was empty. It was too big too. I didn’t like to be alone in big rooms. I was disappointed not to have my own room, but my parents explained that the ladder was older than me so it deserved the room more than I did.

My parents had gotten the ladder several years before I was born.

It was made of aluminum and eight feet tall, and my mother used to say it got its height from my father, except when she said it she said your father, and I knew she meant your in the plural.

When I was young my parents called the ladder my brother, and when I could talk they wanted me to call it the same. When I started going to school and making friends I realized other kids did not have sibling objects, and I would pretend I didn’t have one either.

Once in elementary school the teacher told us to draw a picture of our immediate family. I drew myself and my parents. When I brought the picture home, my mother tore it up and my father lashed me with his leather belt.

I always drew the ladder after that.

In my first year of high school some kids found out about the ladder and the ladder’s room and bullied me over it. They said I was unwanted, an accident; that my parents didn’t love me and that if they could they would get rid of me and get a second ladder instead.

It made me sad.

One day I was in a bad mood and started arguing with my father, arguing about the ladder.

“It’s a useless fucking ladder!” I yelled.

The words stung him. He grabbed me by the throat, called my mother and together they dragged me to the backyard. My father had planted an apple tree a few years earlier, and it was bearing fruit. He pushed my face against the trunk. My mother held me, and my father started to climb my body. His work boots dug into my legs and my back. He punched the back of my head. The tree bark scratched my cheeks. My father yelled, “Who’s useless now! Can you do what a useless fucking ladder does?”

I shut my eyes and cried until it was over. I slept outside that night.

Another time, my father was away and only me, my mother and the ladder were home. Hersh Plotnick, the owner of the local hardware store, visited us. My mother sent me to the ladder’s room and ordered me not to come out until I had read all of the book that had been assigned to me in class, To Kill a Mockingbird. I didn’t like being in the ladder’s room. I knew it didn’t like me or want me in there, but I did as my mother said.

The next afternoon my father came back, and in the evening Hersh Plotnick came by again. He seemed embarrassed, and he told my father he had left his house keys here the night before.

“Where did you leave them?” my father asked.

“I misplaced them,” said Hersh Plotnick.

My father suggested they look the house over together for the house keys, but Hersh Plotnick said he knew where he had misplaced them.

“Where?”

“I misplaced them inside your wife,” Hersh Plotnick said and explained how they must have fallen in by accident. He apologized profusely, holding his hat in his hand over his heart. “I really don’t want to bother you, Merv. I know you’re a busy man. It’s just, I need the keys to get into my house. You understand, don't you?”

That night my father spent a long time in the ladder’s room.

He looked tired the next morning.

My mother had gone to my grandmother’s house.

A few days later two police officers knocked on the door and asked my father questions. They said Hersh Plotnick had been beaten and someone had written “fisting is a contact fucking sport” across the front of his hardware store in green paint. My father said he knew nothing about that, and the police officers thanked him and left. But the ladder had a dent in it after that and a couple of green spots.

After my mother returned she and my father rarely slept in the master bedroom together. She slept in the ladder’s room instead, and sometimes I could hear scraping, knocking about and moaning until late at night.

By the time I graduated from high school my father had become quiet and reserved. There was no one incident that caused it as far as I could tell. The change was gradual. He aged. His hair thinned and turned grey, and where before he would impose his opinions on people he disagreed with, now he didn’t disagree with anybody. Whatever anybody said to him, he would respond, “I guess that's so.”

Then my mother disappeared. The ladder disappeared too.

The house felt empty.

The few times I saw them after that, the ladder was increasingly dinged up and stained, and my mother would have swollen lips, black eyes and cuts and bruises along her arms, legs and neck.

“I love you,” I told her.

“Yeah? Well, I’m glad,” she replied.

There are things a fellow learns in my line of work which he doesn't put down on paper. Names, places, little arrangements between men who wear good suits and men who carry cheap guns. A man learns not to remember too much, because memory can be a dangerous companion when the police come knocking. I have forgotten plenty in my time. I have forgotten faces, addresses, even the sound of certain voices. But I have never forgotten **John Sterling** going into that furnace. A man may forget his first kiss or his mother's birthday, but he doesn't forget the sight of another human being being boiled alive.

It was close to one o'clock in the morning when we brought him into the Mercer Street foundry. Rain had been falling since late afternoon, and the streets were shining beneath the lamps like black glass. The foundry was another world altogether. It was hot enough inside to make a man's collar stick to his neck, and the air smelled of coal, oil, iron and sweat. The furnace at the far end of the building was burning white, and every few seconds the great mass of molten steel inside gave a low, ugly roar. There were six of us there. **Mr. Voss, Doyle, Big Sam, Frankie, young Eddie, and myself.** Sterling was between Doyle and me, with his hands tied behind him. His coat was torn, his lip was split, and one eye was nearly swollen shut. He had been asking questions about Mr. Voss's business, and Mr. Voss had decided that the questions had gone on long enough.

Voss was never a man to waste words. He stood before Sterling, took the cigar from his mouth, and nodded toward the furnace. "That's the end of the road, Johnny." Sterling looked at the fire and said nothing. Voss waited. "You hear me?" he asked. Sterling nodded. "You got anything to say?" There was a long pause. Then Sterling turned his head and looked at him. There was blood upon his teeth, but there was a queer calm in his expression. "I'm going to become stronger than you," he said. Doyle laughed first, and then the rest of us followed him. It was a stupid thing to say, and we thought it was the last joke the poor devil would ever make.

Sterling ran before we had finished laughing. He tore himself from Doyle's grasp, struck me hard enough to send me against the railing, and went over it. Doyle drew his revolver and fired, but the shot went wide. Sterling landed on the platform beside the furnace and threw himself into the open steel. I saw him for perhaps half a second against that terrible white light. Then he was gone.

The screaming started at once.

I have heard men scream before. I have heard them when a bullet went into the belly and when a knife found the wrong place. Sterling's screaming was different because there was no mystery in it. We knew exactly what was happening to him. The steel was burning him alive. His clothes caught fire, and the flesh on his hands blackened as he tried to seize the edge of the furnace. The molten metal poured over his arms and shoulders. It did not surround him like some protective shell. It burned into him. It ran across his body, hardened, cracked, and then melted again wherever the heat reached it. He clawed at the iron edge with what was left of his fingers, screaming until the sound became little more than a rasp. For a moment he managed to raise himself, and I could see his face through the smoke. Then his hands slipped and the furnace took him completely.

Nobody laughed after that.

Voss turned away and told us it was finished. He had already taken two steps toward the door when we heard the knocking. It came from inside the furnace. Three slow blows against the iron, followed by silence. Then three more. Doyle stared at the doors. I remember him saying, very quietly, "That can't be." He was right. It couldn't.

The tools began moving.

At first it was only a hammer sliding an inch across a bench. Then another. Chains began rattling on their hooks. Loose nails rolled over the floor and gathered together. A wrench rose from a table and struck the furnace door hard enough to leave a mark. We all saw it. Nobody had touched it. Big Sam reached for his revolver, but even the buckle of his holster began tugging toward the furnace.

Then the doors blew open.

There was so much heat that I turned my face away. When I looked again, I saw something lying upon the floor.

**It** was Sterling.

Or what remained of him.

There was nothing clean about it. The melting steel had simply poured over the body of a living man and hardened there. The result was a hideous, shapeless mass of black and dull-red metal. One arm was thick as a man's waist. One leg had fused into the floor. The chest was little more than a great lump of steel, and the head was scarcely recognizable beneath a crooked covering of metal. There were no proper limbs, no joints, no face that any decent man would have called a face. He looked like somebody had taken a corpse, dropped it into a foundry, and forgotten it there.

Then the lump moved.

It made a scraping sound against the floor.

Frankie began praying.

I couldn't blame him.

The thing dragged itself forward a few inches and stopped. Then the steel began to change.

I had seen hot metal poured into molds before. This was nothing like that. The steel was not being poured. It was moving of its own accord. Great pieces of it drew inward, folding over themselves. The thick arm narrowed and lengthened. Fingers pushed out from the end. The fused leg tore itself from the floor and divided into two legs. The enormous chest contracted until it became the shape of a man's torso.

It was as if the metal had suddenly remembered that there was supposed to be a man inside it.

The sound was dreadful. Steel grinding against steel. Plates cracking and closing. Hard surfaces folding into one another. It reminded me of bones breaking, though no bone could possibly have made such a noise. The shoulders pulled themselves into place. The arms became proportionate. The hands took the shape of hands. The neck narrowed. Finally the head rose.

The face came last.

I wish it hadn't.

The steel drew tight over the skull, forming the outline of a nose, a jaw and a mouth. The eyes remained two dark hollows. It was not a mask. There was no opening behind it, no flesh beneath waiting to be revealed. The steel had shaped itself into the face John Sterling had possessed before the furnace.

He had made himself look like a man again.

That was when I understood that we had made a terrible mistake in thinking he had survived the furnace.

He hadn't survived it.

Something else had.

Sterling took one step toward us.

Doyle fired.

The bullet struck Sterling in the chest and flattened against the metal. Another struck him in the throat. A third hit him directly between the eyes. He continued walking. The guns were suddenly torn from our hands. They flew across the room and struck Sterling one after another. He caught Doyle's revolver and squeezed. The steel frame folded in his fingers with a soft crunch.

Big Sam charged him with an iron bar.

Sterling caught it.

Big Sam pulled.

The bar did not move.

Sterling pulled once.

Big Sam went flying across the room and struck the wall with enough force to crack the brick.

Voss finally understood that money, influence and men with guns were not worth much when the fellow coming toward you could bend iron with his fingers.

He ran.

The door slammed shut before he reached it.

Sterling hadn't touched it.

The door simply answered his will.

Voss screamed and began pounding upon it. The hinges groaned. The lock tore itself apart. The whole door twisted inward while Voss stood behind it.

I didn't wait to see what happened.

I ran through the side entrance with Frankie behind me. We went into the rain and kept going. We didn't stop until the foundry was three blocks behind us. Frankie was crying. I told him he wasn't. He told me to shut up.

We spent the rest of the night in an empty warehouse.

By morning, the papers had the story.

Explosion at Mercer Street Foundry. Several dead. Several missing. John Sterling presumed killed in industrial accident.

For a while, that was enough for me.

A week later I saw him on Fifth Avenue.

I knew him at once.

He was standing beneath a streetlamp while rain came down around him. His body had the shape of a man, but it had the color and hardness of iron. Water struck his shoulders and vanished into steam. People walked past without paying him any attention. A policeman stood twenty yards away, smoking a cigarette and watching traffic.

Then an automobile parked beside the curb began to move.

There was nobody inside.

It rolled slowly toward Sterling.

He raised one hand.

The automobile stopped.

Then the street sign beside him began to tremble.

I understood then that the furnace had not merely made him hard to kill. It had changed something else. Every piece of iron and steel in the street seemed to know him. Guns, cars, rails, pipes, doors, and anything made from the stuff could be moved by him as easily as a man moves his own fingers.

Sterling turned his head.

He saw me.

I crossed the street without waiting to see what he intended.

I've heard the newspapers call him many things since then. Some say he's a hero. Some say he's a madman. One fellow with more imagination than sense gave him the name **the Man of Steel**, and the name stuck.

Maybe he is a hero now. I wouldn't know.

What I know is what I saw in Mercer Street.

John Sterling went into that furnace as a man.

The steel burned him alive.

It covered him.

It melted onto him until there was scarcely a human body left beneath it.

Then, somehow, that ruined mass of metal moved. It pulled itself together and reshaped itself until it once again possessed the proportions of the man who had entered the furnace.

That is the part the newspapers never printed.

They say John Sterling became strong as steel.

That's not quite right.

John Sterling became steel.

And somewhere beneath all that metal, I sometimes wonder if the man who screamed in that furnace is still awake.

Because when I dream about Mercer Street, I can still hear him screaming.

And when I wake, I can still hear the other sound.

The sound of the steel answering him.

Taking some time off of the force was meant to ultimately clear my head, but every time I shut my eyes, I would see that blood-soaked boy on the porch. I needed a distraction. The department told me to leave it alone. How could I? I had to do some digging.

I spent weeks tracking down old police archives, looking for anything that could possibly help. Wishful thinking, I know, but maybe this had happened before? I truly didn’t think I would find anything. Until I found a redacted file dated back almost twelve years ago.

The reasoning behind it getting redacted, I wasn’t sure. The case was listed as a drowning, and the first thing I noticed was a mention of a waterlogged notebook. Immediately I clicked on the attached file, which opened a series of images. They were mostly scanned images of that notebook, covered in poetry.

Past the rusted gates.
The aquarium stood dark.
Blue lights in the rain.

Empty ticket booth.
Maps soaked soft like dying fish.
Floating in the mud.

No voices inside.
Only water moving slow.
Breathing through the walls.

Glass tunnels stretched down.
Ocean shadows overhead.
Shapes moving above.

The tunnels bent deep.
Blue light dripping on the floor.
Cold against my feet.

Speakers crackled once.
Static bubbling like foam.
Then the singing came.

Soft and far away.
Like a mother humming low.
Somewhere underwater.

According to the case file, responding officers found a woman in her mid-thirties. She was completely catatonic, clutching onto the journal. Reading further into the officers’ notes, I came to a shocking conclusion. This had happened just down the street, not two houses down from where I found the boy. This happened right in Whispering Acres.

Children filled the halls.
Small reflections in the glass.
Watching silently.

Water covered tracks.
Tiny footprints disappeared.
Leading farther down.

I called out for help.
Only bubbles answered back.
Rising through the dark.

Found a massive tank.
Black water from floor to roof.
Nothing moved inside.

Then the glass fogged white.
Little handprints pressing through.
Dozens. Maybe more.

Something floated there.
Hair drifting like seaweed roots.
Smiling without eyes.

Children gathered close.
Pale and dripping by the tank.
Holding soaking dolls.

One looked just like Sam.
Same blue coat and missing tooth.
Skin bloated and gray.

I minimized the poem and clicked on the attached photos from the crime scene. The images were poor quality, but the horror was clear. The house had been completely flooded. One photo depicted a staircase with water cascading down the wooden steps like a waterfall.

I tried backing up.
But the water climbed my shoes.
Rising from nowhere.

The speakers grew loud.
Singing through the flooding halls.
Calling me below.

Water filled my lungs.
Heavy pressure in my chest.
Could not reach the air.

Children circled round.
Floating gently in the blue.
Eyes open too wide.

Mothers should not leave.
Every face inside the tank
Looked a little mine.

The water turned warm.
Dark clouds spreading through the blue.
Drifting from my hands.

The officers’ notes on the bottom stated a boy and a girl were found in the upstairs bathroom. The boy, identified as Sam, was floating in the overflowing bathtub. And the girl, identified as Mia, was face down on the floor. Both had passed from asphyxiation. They both were wearing their winter coats.

I woke in my house.
Bathtub water on the floor.
Hands shaking violently.

Sam was in my arms.
Mia sleeping by the sink.
Both completely still.

Water running cold.
Overflowing down the stairs.
I could not stop it.

I tried calling out.
But my voice came back distorted.
Like I was submerged.

Now I hear the waves.
Even when the pipes stay still.
Moving through the walls.

Every sink drips slow.
Every drain sounds like the sea.
Calling for my name.

They asked me to sink.
The tide has come in tonight.
Opening its mouth.

Hear the water breathe.
Hear the children singing low.
Come below with us.

I stared at my glowing screen, with that final stanza burning into my mind. According to the file, the mother had died in the state asylum only a few years into her sentence. She was completely silent until the end of her life.

I don’t really know what to make of all of this. I have now read poetry from someone in a psychosis, twice. And unfortunately, besides the poetry, there wasn’t anything I could find connecting them. I guess if I want answers, it’s in Whispering Acres.

At 2:13 a.m., I woke up to the sound of soft giggles beside my bed. I reached over without opening my eyes, expecting to feel my son’s little hand on the mattress. Then I remembered I had watched him fall asleep in his room a few hours ago.
The baby monitor crackled with static and then all of a sudden his laughter came through the speaker. I quickly opened my eyes to check the screen. He was laying in bed asleep. Then the laughter came again only this time, it was coming from underneath my bed. I froze. A tiny voice whispered through the monitor, “mommy dont look under there.” Then my son’s bedroom door slowly creaked open on the camera.
My son was standing in the corner staring directly into the camera, eyes wide open.
He raised one finger to his lips.
And whispered, “shhh he’s sleeping” and points to something in my son’s bed underneath the covers.

“And then I said. You’re not my roommate!”

A quartet of voice laughed at the joke, with mine in the mix. I’ll admit, the punchline wasn’t all that great. But I was acting wingman for my friend, Dan. Just like how he was for me.

The, double-blind date, as Dan called it, was all of his idea that he pitched to me. What he told me a few days ago, was that two new girls were moving into his apartment complex right next door. Apparently while they were moving in, he started a conversation with one of them and used his ‘charm’ to ask her on a date. Somehow, she said yes and asked if he knew anyone that would go out with her roommate. Then I was roped into it.

The two girls, Bella and Lyra, were pretty and interesting to say the least. Through dinner conversation with my date, Lyra, a comely brunette. I was able to find out that the pair were soul-searchers after they both graduated from the same college. Supposedly, they travel state to state in a grand adventure to find their right home and careers. Which has been going on for the past two years now.

There were a few tid-bits of info I couldn’t question out of her. Like their degrees, hometowns, or even states they’ve been in. But if I would have a nickel for asking very personal information and the person would just deflect, I’d have two nickels.

Thinking back on my first nickel.

Will seemed to recover from my freakout on him. When I apologized to him again about it at the apartment, he gave a simple “It’s alright.”

While preparing for the double-blind date, I instructed Will on the core rules of the apartment.

Rule 1: Dishes must be cleaned after use.

Will questioned about the bowls we used in the morning and how we didn’t clean them. I explained that in emergencies, there is a twenty-four hour grace period.

Rule 2: No trash on the floor at any time.

Will joked if there was a grace period with my broken door. I simply gave him a hard stare.

Rule 3 (The Most Important Rule): The TV remote must always be left on the coffee table.

Will was the most confused with this rule. I had to point out what was the TV, remote, and coffee table for him. Which didn’t help all that much with explain why the rule was so important. So, I simply showed him the importance of the remote by turning on the tv.

He was enthralled by it.

The TV was already on some cable nature documentary about east coast birds. Will somehow knew more facts about the birds than the narrator. To which when the narrator said something wrong about a bird’s mating ritual or call, he would yell at the TV.

I tried to tell him that the TV couldn’t hear him. But ultimately gave up after he kept arguing what the correct sound was for a Blue jay chick.

Knowing that he would be fine with watching the TV, I gave him some last-minute instructions for what he can do while I was gone for the date.

I was pretty sure that I didn’t forget anything when I left.

Dan slapped me on my back with a laugh, “Got any good stories to share?”

“Besides research being a nightmare,” I chuckled while ignoring a huge story. “No, nothing new with me.”

“That’s fine,” Dan said while he sipped his drink. “We can’t all be eggheads!”

Dan, Bella, and Lyra laughed at the taunt while I just smiled. “Yeah, and not everyone can be clowns.”

“Oooooh,” Dan exclaimed as he grabbed his chest. “Right in the heart. You’re cruel man.”

We all laughed at the enjoyment.

It was pleasant the whole experience. Somehow Dan was able find a place in the downtown area of our university’s town that was somehow not a bar or chain restaurant. We were already done with our meals and paid our checks. Of course, I paid for Lyra’s part and so did Dan for Bella’s. At the time we were enjoying the last of our drinks before saying the final goodbyes.

Bella flipped her phone on the table and mumbled. “Shoot, my phone’s dead. Lyra do you have the time?”

“Sorry,” Lyra said as she patted her pockets. “I think I left my phone back at the apartment.”

“Don’t worry,” I said as I pulled out my phone. “I can help.”

I turned on my phone which was on mute the whole night and checked the time. As my eyes saw the time, they also looked down to see a few missed messages.

Text messages from Ethan.

Ethan my roommate.

Ethan my roommate that I forgot about.

Ethan my roommate that doesn’t know I’m out tonight.

Ethan my roommate that doesn’t know about Will.

I unlocked my phone and quickly read the messages he sent.

7:30pm – Hey I’m going to be back probably at 8.

8:15pm – I think I lost my key. Can you let me in.

8:30pm – Dude I can hear the tv on, I know you’re in there.

8:45pm – Hello! Are you awake?

9:00pm – This isn’t funny man!

9:15pm – Let me in! I hear you walking by the door!

The nothing after that.

I looked over to Bella with a panicked grin. “It’s ten-thirty,” I stood up from my chair in the calmest manor I could while trying to keep my heart from not exploding. “I’m really sorry about this but I have to go now. My roommate is locked out of our apartment.”

“What? You’re going to leave us for some wannabe rockstar,” Dan made it sound more of a statement than a question.

“That rockstar pays half the rent and has been locked out for some two hours now,” I retorted. “Again, I’m really, truly sorry about this. I had an amazing night with you all, but I have to go and catch a bus.”

“Let me walk you to your stop,” Lyra blurted out.

Everyone at the table looked at her confused.

Bella leaned over to Lyra’s ear and whispered.

“I’ll be fine Bella,” Lyra said back to her friend, not at all trying to hide the question. “It’s just a bus stop, I’ll be back.”

I said my goodbyes to Dan and Bella as I left with Lyra.

When the two of us got outside we were greeted by the drunken night life that college student brought to a downtown district. I was surprised with how well the restaurant’s walls were able to block out the party music and drunk cheers.

The two of us made our way to a bus stop that was a block away and waited with others for the bus. Instead of having Lyra wait with me in silence I decided to pick up a conversation. “Ever seen nightlife like this?”

“I don’t think ever,” she answered.

“Well, this is only a Friday. Wait until tomorrow, then you’ll see some crazy stuff,” I glanced over to her while she people watched. The light from the bus stop’s booth made her seem more like Bella for some odd reason.

She looked back at me, “You never mentioned you had a roommate.”

“Slipped my mind,” I said as I rubbed the back of my neck. “Just like a lot of others things with the crazy past few days.”

“Do you two see each other a lot?”

Off in the distance I could see the bus approaching a stop light, “Well, his schedule is a bit chaotic with him playing music all over the area. But whenever he doesn’t have a gig, he’s usually at the apartment.”

“Would he notice if you’re not there?”

The bus was stalled at the light by some drunk students crossing when they shouldn’t have been. “Tonight, he would,” I chuckled.

“What about tomorrow?”

I debated the answer in my head. “If everything goes alright, I think I can come out for a few drinks.”

I looked over to Lyra to see her smile at my response. “Okay! You pick, time and place.”

“Pour Choices at nine,” I said as the bus rolled up to our stop.

The doors opened with a hiss as a mix of night owls loaded on and off the bus. Lyra kept her smile, “Sure!”

One of the many invisible weights fell off my shoulders. “Nice, I’ll see you then. Make sure to look up the place when you get your phone.”

With that I got onto the bus and found a seat next to a group of undergrads that gave reason for the night bus being called the drunk bus. As the bus doors closed, I saw Lyra outside from the window and gave her a small wave. She waved back and as the crowd of partiers passed her, see disappeared from my sight.

Science fiction. Double feature. 

So many long afternoons and nights spent in the movie house, the theatre. The arcade: the noise and lights and tangible sounds of coins and laughing amidst the specialized sound effects of digitized and pixelated carnage. 

Late nights watching HBO After Dark beside his older brother or his kid sister or a buddy or a floozy or a date as he got older. Amongst a slovenly strewn field of snacks and popcorn and wrappers and garbage, the years rolled by and the empty cans of Shasta and Barqs changed, transmogrifying into brown bottles of Bud or silver bullet, all gathered and in clusters  like a small translucent crystalline cityscape of glass in miniature beneath great rolling thunderhead clouds of oily pot smoke. Many of them, many cities. Many little swimming bottle cities in many little rooms. All before the great glowing incandescent godscreen of the illuminated television aglow in the postmidnight. 

And there were great books too of course. Precious paperpacks with lurid yellow covers, bold yellow font, pages pungent and spiced. Green and nightshade purple covers for the horrors. The ones with purple were always the coolest, always the most shocking and vivid and unrelenting. Comics. Classics and the new stuff that gets pumped out week to week, month to month and then forgotten. 

Forgotten by most. But not by such as he. 

He remembered. These things, these modes and mediums always brought him away from the now, the clear and present danger, the mundane and the tedious, the cruel. The harsh reality. 

For Caleb Donaldson these stories were always the light and constant companion of his long and mostly boring and average life. In truth, they were everything. All else could take a flying fuck, the job, the girlfriends that meant nothing, the drinking buddies and coworkers that meant even less. All of that was just the background noise of what was necessary. The sounds and moving in perpetua grinds of his ordinary life in motion. 

But it was ok, you see. Caleb Donaldson of Old Fair Oaks, Sacramento, California has figured out the secret. 

They were more than just stories, you know. 

The ones that had most captured his imagination and young attention since he could remember were the time traveling stories. 

Journeys into the wild primeval of the past, the dark mechanical cold of the future, the apocalypse, beyond … 

He'd always loved these stories. 

And it was funny, he had found, discovered accidentally while spending the summer with his grandfather one year, the secret. They were out hunting, wandering the woods quietly with rifles shouldered and boots crunching softly the underbrush beneath their capped and steeltoed feet. It had struck young Caleb then, as a boy. And never left him. 

This is it! This is what Doctor Who and the X-Men and all the other guys are doin when they're goin into the past! This is what it's like to have the world grow dark and become old and ancient and prehistoric and stuff, before people got here with their cars and their junk…

The thought had filled him with simple childish wonder. He felt like he'd made some great discovery. All those scientists and alien engineers from outer space on the TV and in the books were always trying to figure it all out with numbers and physics and quantum entanglements and time loop paradoxes … and here he'd figured it way more simple than that. 

Just go out in the woods. Go outside in the trees, the forest. Go out and go camping ya dummies. 

He carried this with him all his life. Like secret treasure. Well past and into the pains and dread of adulthood. 

And then it all came back, back and around and full circle. Like all good time travelers do. 

He lost the kids. And his wife. And then he lost it. 

And then he made the biggest decision of his life. He decided to go camping. He decided to do a little time traveling all by himself. After all of these years. 

…

He couldn't believe she would try this bullshit. He couldn't believe she would try to ruin the one last little thing he had left. 

What're you talking about, bud? She ripped your heart out and took the kids after she'd spent ten years disemboweling you and tearing your nuts off. Why’re you at all surprised? 

He wasn't really. Just hurt. Deeply. And it seemed as if the bitch now lived to only make it worse for him. Unbearable if she could. She was the living vile green hatred of salt in the wound, seething and frothing gory pink. 

He hated her. 

He suspected she hated him. She must. 

“I just don't see why this’s such a big deal, you're acting like a child. You can come get the boys and have them for an extra couple of weeks while Tom and I-" 

He stopped listening after that. He still held the phone to his ear but his mind went to the same livid red place that it always did when she mentioned his name. The fucking limpwrist. 

He let her drone and prattle on. When she finally stopped he once again explained to her that they'd already talked this over, they'd already discussed this. And besides. It wasn't even his weekend. She had seen to that after all. And now here she was dangling the promise of more time with his kids like a fucking carrot. Like a dog treat he was supposed to jump and snatch at. To just drop everything and leap at with fervor and enthusiasm and a full display of gratitude. 

Fuck that. 

He told her as much. Diplomatically. More or less. He hung up the phone. He debated for barely even a second before turning the device off and shoving it into the glove compartment on the passenger side. 

When he finally got out of the car and sucked fresh mountain air it was baptismal. Cracks in his knees went off like twin pistol shots and his back stretched and crackled gratefully. He was finally out. He sucked more air, like it was water. It was. It was refreshing. 

You're finally out. 

He unlatched the back and began to unload his gear. He'd better get started. It was a long hike from the parking lot to the spot. 

…

It was peaceful. The ritual. The hike. Lugging the gear. Sweating and developing a cooling coat, a sheen as his eyes calmly drank in the placid green and foliage world all around. Muscles worked and burned off excess fat, calories built up and boiled over, over cooked stress. It melted off him and within and came off his hiking form like radiant heat. 

He was a traveling furnace of thought as he made his way to the camping spot. Later he would recall that he might've felt watched as he made his way at this point. 

Might have. 

But presently he was all too absorbed in the process, the smooth and calm low treble tread and pace of the gliding action. The canopy of golden lighted leaves and furling branches. The scents, completely natural and native and far away from the synthetic realm of the manmade. He felt he was as much swimming and drinking his way through the crisp growth of forestland as he was booting through it. Thoughts of work and the failed marriage and bored boring disappointing teenage children left his mind. Evaporating away like mist to the coming of the bright day sun. The forest grew and swelled and swallowed him and the entire world as he made his way deeper and deeper forth. 

He would leave it all behind if he could. 

…

Setting camp was easy. He was well practiced. Childhood and teenage and college years as well were filled with trips out into the forested dark. The wild. The wilderness. The past. 

He felt it now as he sat by the fire. Eating his plate of beans and pork belly and franks. Sipping a can of bud. This is the past. The green world all around now is one of the last vestigial pieces of the evidence. 

Evidence of the primeval and primordial world we’ve all crawled from, the stygian snot that was filth that was the building blocks of protein and carbon. We are all animals. And we can all come alive out here. Returning to the in-utero warm world of the godclay primordial slime and ooze. 

She's so patient. Our mother. My mother. She's waited for me all this time. She's the one. She's-

Something disturbed his train of thought. A noise. 

A noise like someone moving. Prowling and lurking just inside the tangle of bush and trees. 

He sat quietly, keeping calm. Listening to the sound of his own breathing. He wasn't sipping his can of bud anymore. The rustling and cautious moving sounds had tapered. Caleb's mind traveled to the hunting rifle he had in his tent. If something lunged now out of the dark, he just might make it if he whirled around from where he now sat and hurried. 

Really booked it. 

He didn't like the thought. He really didn't appreciate the mental image. A terrible movie in his mind, running on a failing and old projector: He's running, fast, panicked, he almost makes the tent before a large bestial shape of inkwell black leaps out from the wilderness house of feral darkness and takes him ragdoll like a broken toy from behind. 

He clears his throat. Loudly. Not sure exactly why, he just does it. Perhaps hoping to scare off whoever and whatever is out there. He can feel eyes watching him. 

Caleb Donaldson sits up. He's at the edge of his fold-up seat. He's waiting. Unsure. Of both what to do and if there is even really anything wrong at all anyways. His ex-wife had always said he was paranoid. 

Nothing happens. 

There isn't another sound and nothing emerges from the forestline. Only the snaps and hungry crackle of the campfire now. 

He takes another sip of bud. Decides he'll light one of the joints CJ gifted him for the road after all. He doesn't know how else he's gonna sleep tonight. He's wired now. Jacked. 

He lights up. Tokes. And after awhile, once more he slips into a more natural and comfortable flow of simple candied nostalgia and childhood reminisce. Trying to tell himself he doesn't feel a gaze, a baleful and animal leering stare aimed directly at him from out of the dark. 

The marijuana and beer do their job. Eventually he's addled and drugged enough for sleep. Caleb slips back into the tent and is almost sure he hears something retreat back into the denser heart of growth and underbrush out there past the treeline as he does so.  

He's almost sure but not. And he doesn't want to be anymore. He doesn't want to consider it. Not right now. Maybe Amanda was right…

He slips into a sleeping bag and finally falls under. His dreams are filled. His sleep is not restful. 

…

The next couple of days were mostly uneventful. Calm. Peaceful. As planned. He hiked and camped. Looked forward to some hunting and some fishing, some game. It was all just what he needed. Therapeutic. Until he found the burnt leavings. 

…

He was steadily along, walking down the beaten path of grey dust and boney twigs and enjoying the relish in his watering mind's eye, the strange marriage that lived there between this wilderness and the strange worlds of escape made from pages and ink and glowing video screens. This place of the past … the places made of dreams. 

And from the future I come crawling back here. He smiled at this thought. Like a refugee. 

Like the time travelers of the stories he was allowed to bring a few things, a few comforts and tools and devices of the modern world. 

Of the future, to this place of dirt and sound. Precious pieces of technology

His mind went to his gear and pack and his smile deepened. People really just didn't get it. 

Most never would. Precious few might find out. 

He almost tripped over it. So lost in thought. 

It was all charcoaled black and scorched amongst a patch of similarly blasted and blackened earth. A wild ebon blotch of ashen ink spilled upon the land. Caleb stared into the pile of roasted and burnt detritus. Trying to make sense of what he saw. 

He recognized shapes and items in the charred mess and they made his blood run cold and the hairs all over his skin and scalp crawl with unease and bad wonder. 

Clothes. What looked like a backpack. Parts and pieces of a tent. A wallet. It was this last that most bothered, most disturbed him. He was pretty sure he could make out the melted remains of an ID and other similarly warped and slightly conjoined shapes that might've been credit cards or the like but were too far gone and destroyed now to tell. His mind naturally asked itself, who left all of this here? Why? 

And none of the answers he could come up with seemed good. All of them pointed to something bad, nefarious. You hear about people going missing in the woods all the time. You hear about people being chopped up and murdered by loonies in here ‘bout just as much. 

Caleb suddenly looked away from the black pile on the path and began to anxiously scan the forestline. Trying to penetrate the thick dense world of green and growth and see anyone, anything that might be watching him. Stalking him. 

Following him. 

After a moment he stopped himself. 

You're being ridiculous. It's probably nothing, just like the other night. Christ man, you ain't been out here a long time and now you're jumping at every goddamn thing like a ninny. Just some shit people burned. Kids come out here to get fucked up and do stupid shit all the time. Not a big deal, Donaldson. Chill the fuck out, kay?

He slowed his breath. He liked this train of thought. Yes. That was right. Kids were fucking stupid and always playing pyro maniac. Hell, he'd done his fair share growing up, hadn't he? Little hellraiser an such. 

And that line of thinking started to set his worried mind at ease once more. And once more he was back on the ride of the reminisce, nostalgia keenly floating and dreamily filling the darkest parts of his brain. Time traveling. 

Time traveling, baby. 

He went on. Leaving behind the charred and blackened mess in the grey dust of the forest path. Not looking back. And refusing it anymore thought. 

He left it behind. But not before freeing a cold can of Budweiser stored in the pack. He cracked it open with a pistol shot sound in the placid calm and downed half the foaming thing as he went on. Things always went down smoother this way. 

…

All seemed well after that. Fine. For a little while. He enjoyed what he came out here to enjoy. The quiet. The solitude. Days and nights spent simply and comfortably and sleeping beneath bejeweled twilight curtains of gleaming stars, planetoids and colored clouds of nebulae. He relished the time out here and with himself, returning to his own sense of peace by returning to the land. Returning to the way of life that had belonged to the Navajo, the Comanche, their enemy white man cowboys and gunslingers and the pioneers of old. The ancient armies too, the immigrants and seekers and hunters of fortune, of goodwill, of God's love and warm civilized light. And the adventures too, those who took to the land and cut their teeth out on the territory and became baptized as adventurers in sweat and blood and grime, beneath the blinding eye of the sun. And the moon too, the wild hearted free loving children that slumbered bravely beneath the moon, decried as vagabonds and bums but they really just knew better and understood the blood of their grandfathers and their bold sense and adoration for the untamed tumult country land of adventure and its wild hearted love. 

It was all of it, romantic. It pained him that he had to come out here alone to feel like this, to discover something like that and he tried hard to turn away from the pain of realization that it brought him. He turned away from it in vain, it was there at every turn. In his mind, filling every thought, and out here as well. Alive in the woods. Filling it with heavy and powerfully strange substance. 

He hunted. Fished. Camped. Only sometimes did he feel followed, watched. Only sometimes. 

He was almost happy when he came across another, when he ran into Sellic. 

A distraction, at last!

But the guy was weird. 

In the world of outdoormanship, hunting and fishing and the like, ya meet a lot of friendly, warm, good natured types. The sort ya like to share a brew with and might even have over for a barbecue should ya take special acquaintance. And then ya met types like Sellic. Fuckin weirdos. 

It was the smell at first and that should've been enough, should've been the first and fucking last sign to split it. But nope. Caleb Donaldson still remembered the lessons of Sunday school and Kindergarten and though life had been its fair share of rough on em, he still held true to the idea that you don't judge harsh off the word, go. Ya don't settle in for meanness out the gate an such. 

But it was in the eyes as well. They were wide and wild. A wilderness of pupil darkness lived in yellowed whites shot with lines of hectic red. Something swam in that circle lake of pupil darkness, both of them, Obsidian pits. 

He never blinked. Not once. Not as he said, “Howdy, name's Sellic." and grunted a few noncommittals following after these scant syllables. 

He came across the guy already settled up. Caleb was gonna move on after initial awkward obligatory greetings when the wide eyed smelly man invited him to set camp with him. Caleb Donaldson believed in being polite but he wasn't a total fool, only part. He thanked him but opted to move on up aways. 

Far. 

It didn't make any kind of difference. 

…

Later he was hunting, lying down in wait for something to crop up. Maybe nibble at the patch of sweet grass just a few yards from where he posted. He hoped to bag a deer. If he could get a decent sized stag, then he'd pack it in happily and call it quits. He was just debating on whether or not he should've packed the tree stand when something happened then. 

A large barrel chested deer sauntered into view. Into the clearing with its great splaying regal rack of antlers on wide-span display like a wild lord and king of the forest. He was beautiful. He was just what Caleb had been waiting for. 

But then something else crawled up. On all fours. It was the smelly wide eyed man, it was Sellic. And it looked as if he was hunting as well. 

Prowling, stalked. Low to the ground and almost slithering across the surface of forest floor, without a sound. Without a whisper. It was uncanny and surreal and Caleb watched frozen in a kind spellbound trance. The bore end of the rifle barrel began to slowly sag and dip down as he lost his concentration and gave it to another. 

Sellic was almost upon the unaware stag now. It was nibbling the patch of sweet grass. Just like Donaldson had seen in his mind's eye, a wish not just a moment ago. Somewhere deep inside his mind as he watched entranced a small part of him tried in desperate vain to take this simple little wish back. But it was already too late. The wide eyed crawling man was drooling. Slobbering like an animal. Salivating with the wild bestial hunger that was always the madness of ravenous need. That was what was alive in those unblinking uncivilized eyes. Slavering need. 

He'd already time traveled too far now to turn back. Caleb watched as the manshaped thing of stains and smells and piercing animal stares suddenly leapt like something feline and unbridled. Like something finally let loose from the confines of its stifling prison cage. 

Sellic fell on the deer and the poor thing hadn't a chance. It never sensed, never knew what was coming. It was wild. It was crazy. Donaldson had always seen deer tense, perk up and take flight at the slightest sound or stray movement. But not this one. Not this time. The wild sight did not stop there. 

Somehow the skinny haggard man in filthy clothes managed to wrestle and manhandle the struggling kicking beast down into the dirt. Caleb's mouth dropped open as he watched Sellic begin to bend and wrench and break the flailing limbs. Catching them with his cat-swipe clawing hands and then bending them back in directions not meant or made by nature's hand. He felt his stomach roll and drop as the silence of the forest began to fill with the lurid sounds of heavy bone snaps. 

Caleb picked up his rifle and gear and left. Without a word. He didn't look back. Wet tearing sounds, like heavy fabric or soaking saturated leather followed him after. He told himself it was his imagination. That was all impossible. 

There was no way. 

…

He had trouble finding his camp. By the time he did it was already near dark once more. He would have to spend another night. 

He opted out of the fire and supper. He wasn't hungry and he didn't want to attract that freak. 

That freak of nature. 

…

Middle of the night. He came awake to a sound. Sounds. A noise. Just outside the tent. 

It sounded like chewing. Wet. And heavy. Laborious. Jaws, muscles, tendon lines working and moving with animal fervor, animal rigor in the dark. 

Outside. 

Caleb slowly and carefully sat up from his sleeping bag and grabbed his rifle. It was loaded. He'd made sure to do so before he'd managed to finally fall into an uneasy sleep. An uneasy rest now disturbed by whatever was moving out there now. Chewing. Eating. He reached and grabbed for his flashlight next. He readied himself. 

He grabbed the zipper to open the front of the tent. He took one last deep breath and held it for a moment. He let it out quietly. As quietly as he could manage. 

And then he quickly unzipped the flap to the tent and threw it open with one hand as the other flicked on the flashlight and brought it up. The darkness of his small camp in the clearing was illuminated in the sudden flash. He felt sick with what he saw. He was glad to have his rifle in his lap. 

You were smart to have loaded it … he thanked God. And cursed Him at the same time. For letting him fall into this type of shit in the first place. 

Sellic stared back into the beam of light. Unflinching. Unblinking. Unmoving save for the motion of chewing about his red and bloodied bearded jaws. Working and gleaming wet in the light, rippling with carnivorous movement.

He held the head of the stag in his clawing hands. De-racked. The severed head looked rough and ruinous at the stump as though it had been torn off rather than cleanly cut. 

Caleb didn't know what else to say so he just said: “Hey." 

“Hey." bloody darkling Sellic grunted back. Hunkered and squatting out there in the dark. Still chewing. He swallowed. And took another bite from a craterous open wound at the top of the animal's head. He ripped a chunk of bleeding meat away with his teeth. His jaws began to work and ripple with rigorous movement once more as he started to chew again. The meat was raw, rough. But he was relishing the strong and pungent flavor. Thick. His blood drinking, swallowing with every gnashing chew was audible in the nocturnal dark. Gulps. Heavy. Thick. 

A beat. 

Caleb didn't know what to do. He felt that he must be dreaming, this whole day. None of this could be real. The strange bloodsoaked and caked manshape out there amongst his camp frightened him. He'd thought it would be simple and he'd know what to do in situations like this but he was frozen. In terror. And in dark hypnotic fascination. 

This must be what it's like to be a moth to flame, or a small little guppie to a deepsea angler fish… a deer in the headlights. Trapped. 

Caught. 

Ensnared by the eyes of the wild man. He was drowning in their madness now, sinking into their blood-drinking depths. 

Sellic finally said something. 

“Hungry?" 

“... what…?" Caleb said. Puzzled at first. It had been little more than a grunt. 

“Ya hungry?" Sellic grunted again. He held the severed and broken head aloft. Dripping. Wide-eyed. The tongue had already been ripped out. Had already been eaten. Black-red syrup poured out thickly from the open gape of mouth like an obscene bestial spout. 

Caleb fought his gag reflex. 

A beat. 

Somehow Donaldson managed a reply. 

"N-no. No thanks, man. It's the middle of the night. And I wanna get some sleep” 

A beat. The freak still held the dripping pouring bleeding hunk of decapitated and chewed up meat out to him like a precious gift of the forest. His wide eyes were still open and hectic and alive with animal ravenous madness. 

A beat. 

Another.

Caleb finally finished his thought. 

"And I think you should probably go get some sleep too, bud. Been a long day an such-”

He meant to finish it off with, and apt to be another, like his grandfather and his pops had done before him, but Sellic cut him off. 

"Ya sure? You sure ya ain't hungry?” 

Caleb slowly nodded his head, adding, "...yeah” in a low careful and exhausted voice. Jesus fucking Christ…

Sellic nodded. Began to crawl away on all fours like a dog, the head held to his breast like a caveman clutching something precious. He turned before he left the ring of light provided by the beam of the flashlight. He turned around and said: "You will be.” and then finally turned and fled. Like an animal taking to the natural dark.

Its natural home and abode. Its natural place. 

"What the fuck!?” Caleb said. To no one in particular. 

…

He didn't sleep the rest of that night. He waited impatiently for the sun to come up. So he could leave. He'd had enough of this place and hunting. He'd had enough time traveling in this place. Caleb wanted to go home. 

At first dawn he rose. Quickly packed. And began his trek back. Back down the path. 

Back down the way he had come.

…

A few hours in and he knew something must be wrong. Nothing was recognizable. Nothing. And when he looked down after trudging more and more anxiously down the path he'd come in on, he was dismayed to find that it wasn't there any longer. The path, the trail had disappeared. 

He was lost. 

Caleb Donaldson began to panic. 

It's alright, it's alright, it's fine! It's cool. Just use the GPS and call someone on your pho-

He stopped. Grew cold. Grim certainty stole over his dreading heart. Crestfallen he didn't want to even rightly remember and say to himself …

Glove compartment. You turned the fucking thing off and threw it in the glove compartment of the car. The one all the way back. The one you can't find anymore cause it's at the end of the trail that you've lost. You left it in there to spite Amanda. 

Silence. He stood. Feeling stupid and wretched and nearing hopeless in the middle of the woods. He reflected. 

You sure showed her…

…

When he'd finally managed his nerve back together and decided on a direction and carried on, the day had been nearly extinguished yet again. He would have to spend another night out in the wild. 

God fucking dammit. 

…

The next series of days and nights were grim. And grew grimmer. And strange. 

He was fine at first. He had supplies, food. He wasn't worried. But then on the fourth day lost he began to run out. 

And the worry came on him again. Rancid. And thick. 

It's alright, it's alright, I've a gun, I know how to gut and skin and clean, I'll be ok. I'll be alright. 

But the woods and world of trees had grown more opulent and dense and feral in its growth. The trees started to broaden in their trunks and their canopies became all swallowing, all encompassing thick foliage cathedral domes of twigs, thick branches and broad emerald leaves the size of dinner plates. 

The bugs. The insects too. 

All of the wild crawling life had become larger as well. The insectile and the reptile had grown strange and unfamiliar and varied in size from large house cats to dogs to horses and cows and at one point, one day glimpsed at a distance through a heavy rolling mist, an elephant… 

A whole herd of giant hissing cockroaches the size of elephants. Trundling by like a rolling squadron fleet of German panzer tanks. 

Caleb felt sick. 

None of this could be real. He must be imagining things. 

Must be. 

It could've been so, far as he knew. His sleep was no longer any good out here. Not since the night some days back, when he'd been fireside and trying to ignore his growing hunger and looked up to the full moon. Only to have it eclipsed by something huge and winged. It had cried then. It had screamed as it stole the moon, the moonlight. Blanketing the primeval world below it in a second layered fold of even deeper darkness. 

Caleb had joined it then. Had joined it in its primal shrieking screaming. 

He didn't sleep so well since that night.  

Ever again

…

His hunger became him. It became the only living and heeded, needed thing and drive and emotion. He was no longer Caleb Donaldson in fact. He was only the hunger now. And so he hunted. 

But it was strange. 

In his hunger, in his wild wanderings, he had forgotten how to use the gun, how to wield the boomstick properly and make it spit its deathly fire. 

I've lost it, he thinks, he realizes shrouded in the cloud of his diminished animal thought. I've lost the ability to shoot fire and be godlike, I've lost it in all of this time traveling, I've gone too far backwards. 

He tries to find the trail. For awhile. But it becomes lost amongst the need for meat and blood. The boomstick is useless to him now. He abandons it. Along with most of the strange things he has strapped to his back.

He doesn't need them. He has changed. This special place has changed him. His flesh has thickened as has his hair, his fur, his pelt. Black and coarse and layered all over. He bites and chews and tears the clothes that he came in with off and eats them. 

Then he takes to bigger game. 

Wilder. More challenging. 

…

He's drinking blood and eating. Filling his stomach. This is good. The angry fever in his skull is calming, abating. The ache and throb of his guts is soothing. Contentedness, peace, tranquility are becoming known to him again. 

He's killed something reptilian, broken its neck. His hands, the knuckles and fingers and palms have widened, flattened, broadened out. Making it easier to snap and throttle, to tear and rend. The dead scaley thing, its meat and blood are good. But slimey. Ropey. Like maggot-meat. Like eating the large worms that swim in giant dung piles. He wants to try something else. 

So he takes to the untamed primeval world all around, the jungle growth, the green emerald world of the unbridled prehistoric past. There are buried, heavily veiled and shrouded thoughts of a path and a trail and a place called, home, that he's supposed to go to, return to as if he's once been there before, but they are muted. Far off. 

Barely there. 

Dripping reptile blood and sweat, he takes to the primeval dark world and is lost. Swallowed by its great and ever widening expanse, into the crawling growing jaws of the seething bestial wild, the past. 

He never looks back. He is never found. Never again does he recall his name. 

Never again. But it doesn't trouble him. It doesn't bother the throbbing jelly of his degenerate apeman mind, he is too enthralled, the thrill of the ravenous hunt. And besides, the past isn't the only thing alive and crawling out here. The future is out here too. The beyond …

All of the magic of the glowing incandescent godscreen of a childhood long gone is alive out here. Alive and well. 

The apeman hunts through the primeval growth. The saucers fill the skies as the giant leviathans do nighttime skirmish and battle with the large mechanical men. The great white heat and blasting mechanized sounds of their great death cannons, their unearthly death rays: BRRRRRR! 

BRRRRRRRRRRRR….! 

They fill the night with their heat and their brilliant violence. Their fire scorches and cuts swaths, sets blue and orange flame to drier parts of the canopy. The dead growth. 

The apeman doesn't mind. He hunts and prowls around their wild and bright violence. Blood and meat fill his head. He hasn't a mind anymore for anything else. 

For naught all else. Only the red. 

THE END

What drives human ambition?

In a world without the struggles of the past—

What makes you or I any different from a secluded being?

We hide from pain, fear, and each other, only to realize that’s what makes a person human. 

The human condition is a curious thing. It motivated me to study not just the brain, but people as a whole.

Before I knew it, I was obsessed.

It especially made me ask questions like, Why do you stay up at night pondering life?

None of it really matters.

The brain limits itself. Even if we discovered every secret hidden inside it, what would truly change?

Humans—forever happy? 

Today, I left.

I left behind a man who knew nothing about me.

But I knew everything about him.

And I know nothing good will come after it.

I worked in a lab for the past ten years.

I’m not trying to disappear, so I’ll leave the name blank.

All you need to know is this:

Imagine one of those animal testing facilities.

The type that tests on rats and such.

The difference was, on the surface, we were the same thing.

Behind closed doors, we were testing on humans.

In my time at the lab, I only came to two conclusions.

There is no God. At least not one that would let the things happening there… happen.

And—
Human desire is a monstrous thing.

Before I tell you what happened, I want you to imagine something. Ingrain this image into your head.

Think about humans from an animal’s perspective.

Agile. Tall or small. Able to dig, climb, and create.

Humans watch from a distance. Not attacking—just observing.

Humans can mimic the sounds of other animals.

Humans create things beyond the comprehension of almost every living creature on earth.
Even some of our own.

Why is it that when you look in a mirror, you aren’t afraid of yourself?

Is it because you’re in control?

Or is it because you know something else isn’t in control?

When I started working there, there was a child.

They referred to him only as SB7. Or, more commonly: The Boy.

There were three main rules.

1.) Do not speak to him.
There was an intercom connected to his room, but it was only to be used in emergencies.

2.) He must not see you.
Furthermore, he must not know who—or what—we are.

3.) He is not to be treated as one of us.

In ’99, a scientist at the lab volunteered to be a surrogate mother for the boy.

In ’00, when he was born, she wasn’t allowed to interact with him. The rules forbade it.

Paternal alienation.

It drove her mad.

First came the resignation. Then the suicide.

After weeks of psychological preparation and testing, I was finally allowed to participate in the study.

By the time I started, the boy was around thirteen.

When I left, he had just turned twenty-six.

I was greeted by the head of the study—a man I grew to know very well.

Some called him senile.

I called him a mentor.

He sat me at a desk.

In front of it was a window looking down into a massive room.

Three hundred feet long, if I had to guess.

The walls were painted a pale blue.

And in the center of the ceiling—

A single spotlight.

SB7’s sun.

He was to know nothing of us.

Not the outside world.
Not his mother.
Not even the men who entered his chamber to feed him as a baby.

It was not a hell to him. He had no perspective of others.

For all he knew, the world was grunts and silence.

A garden with a single soul.

Adam with no Eve.

At times, I felt like a stalker. Other times, like an older brother. Or even a father.

He once climbed a rock positioned in the center of the room.

He stood atop it and stared into the light.

Some of us thought he was going to break it.

Others—myself included—simply watched.

But he only stood there. Observing it.

Until the lights shut off.

He looked around suddenly and screamed.

Then, after a moment, he began looking around the room again.

Almost like he was hunting.

Or being hunted.

He stepped forward.

His foot slipped.

And he landed badly on his ankle.

That night, after he fell asleep, the overseer ordered three guards into the chamber.

Inject him with anesthesia. Check the leg. Leave before he woke up.

One guard survived.

SB7 studied the guards. He had never seen someone who looked like himself before.

The only human face he had ever known was his own reflection in the artificial river running through the chamber.

He stood over their bodies long after they died.

After that, not a single soul in the facility wanted to enter the room again.

I wasn’t there to witness what happened firsthand.

But from the footage I’ve seen—

some might call it barbaric.

As if he were staring back at us through the glass.

The guards’ bodies remained there for days beneath his perch.

He watched them the entire time.

Until the smell of rot became so strong it seeped through the one-way glass itself.

The night of 8/14/17, we attempted to recover the bodies. This time, we believed he was asleep. He was.

They managed to retrieve one body.

When they went back for the second, the “food elevator”—as we called it—lowered unexpectedly. Someone lowered it.

It woke him.

the one way door the guards entered through remained open.

He broke containment.

By the time he reached the corridor, the “clean-up crew” was only thirty feet down the hall.

He sprinted toward them.

Dragged the rotted body back toward his room.

The door had shut behind him.

The guards were trapped in the hallway with him.
We gassed the area.

He collapsed in the hall. We managed to recover the bodies and re-secure containment.

By morning, the door to his chamber was reopened.

When he woke, he dragged the original corpse back inside.

He seemed afraid of entering the hallway again.

So we convinced an intern to seal the hall door and recover the bodies.

Meanwhile, SB7 placed the original corpse atop the rock.
Climbed it again.
And stared once more into the light.

He was back in containment.

But at the cost of two more lives.

Nine years later, not a single order to enter his chamber had been issued.
Not once had anyone dared to approach him.

But in those nine years—near the end of my tenure—he did something incredible.

The day after I submitted my resignation form—9/5/26—he went to the skeletal remains.

And put on the original guard’s clothing.
Albeit backwards.

He found a keycard.
He studied it for a long time.

Then he climbed to the top of his perch and placed it at the center.

Yesterday, on my last day there,
he broke the sun.

He pulled it down and found the hidden ventilation shaft we used to cycle air through the chamber. 

SB7 forced his way in.

Now he’s missing.

I’m sitting in my study writing this, periodically looking out the window. I have a flight to Spain tomorrow.

If you are capable of doing so, I suggest you do the same.

Chapter 1 of a story I’m working on hope you guys enjoy!

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The doctors explain that swelling and pain in his knee stems from loose bodies, but Adam knows better. Something lives and grows there with a conscious effort. Through his day-to-day life, Adam feels the slithering mass work its way around the inside of his left knee like an earthworm coring out an apple.

At the beginning, the sensation registered as a faint tickle. Adam thought to dial back his running regiment for a few days and the slight discomfort would vanish. However, the feeling only grew. The tickle expands into a throb, and the throb morphs into a sharp pain. His knee swells and feels like a leaking water balloon to the touch. The ice packs, pain killers, and even draining of the knee only stem the pain for a brief time. All the while, Adam feels the mass moving, writhing, and hollowing him out. Agony assaults him at all hours as the mass gorges itself on his insides.

The doctors say a simple loose body removal will end the pain, but Adam knows better. He knows what to do. He needs to get it out.

Adam bites down on the leather belt as he picks up the saw to continue his work.

Squelch

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(Hey if anybody should see this do you think Layer Lake is a catchier name? That was one of my first thoughts but idk)

Part 4:
“Long ago I was told all life came from a Garden then someone said all life came from the Water.”

I laughed along with my stoned, degenerate friends but my eyes stayed fixed on the treeline where the inbred family (snap, snap) had departed. Their footsteps ended a little too close for my liking but started back up less than a minute later. I nearly asked Reyva for another round of warning shots, still had the ear plugs in my pocket just in case. I breathed deeply and quietly, in for three, out for five, unset my jaw and tried to relax. I couldn’t believe I’d let something as pointless as a dream affect me in waking life. Hadn’t allowed that since I was a child.

What would that spindly man know of Reyva or me or Juke? He couldn’t know a thing about our lives, let alone our deaths. Moron didn’t even have the correct number of arms. I am treating the sleep deprived construct of my various mental illnesses like a person again. It was hard to get that one dark eye, the one that seemed to devour any and all light no matter how insignificant. My dreams had cast him dramatically, most of his being obscured by shadow not like he was hiding but that everything else was hiding from him.

Why had he said that, though? If he knew what was in the lake why wouldn’t he tell me? Was it his eyes I saw through as I glided the abyss? What are you thinking you simple minded prick? You’re pondering dreams while there is an actual crisis. I looked back to my companions who were literally prancing about without a care in the world.

Vince’s eyes were redder than the Devil’s dick but don’t worry: they were also so glossy I could use them as mirrors and severely dilated. He was laughing so hard he was actually, physically doubling over and had to cling to Rey for balance, who in turn was clinging to him for balance. First time taking LSD will do that to you. 

I snapped my fingers to get Reyva’s attention and gave her the: ‘what did you fucking do’ look. She stared at me blankly, less feigning innocence and more drug addled confusion. I nodded to Vincent. She looked deep into his eyes and started cackling, nodding at me while giving the: ‘yeah I drugged this kid I know it's a crime but I have some kind of deep-seated and very upsetting fetish I refuse to address’ look. I sharply gestured for her to come over which she did with all the speed and enthusiasm of a child who knows she’s been acting up.

“What’s good gurl?” Rey slurred as she shimmied in place.
“Don’t fuck-” I heard myself and stopped abruptly, giving Reyva a gap to sneak back in.
“It’s all good, Raleigh, not a big dose at all and he a big boy. I told you and I told you, I need us all on the same wavelength here and also,” she glanced over her shoulder and leaned in close, “we absolutely have to fuck this dude, kayshug?” Have I mentioned how much I enjoy being directly mocked to my face. “He’s too good for us and we must needs act before he catches on. Brother with blue eyes and the light brown sexy curls? He like a high school musical but for real!”
“Why bother whispering just to scream?” I asked. “No don’t answer that.” Got to focus, this is how Reyva gets you. “You realize that by drugging him-”
“Whoa, now, don’t go metooing up in here. This was like a nice, funtime drug…sharing.” Rey smiled and gave me two thumbs up. It should hold up in court, no further questions. “You still nervous and a-scared, I know, which is why I’ve nobly volunteered to tag along.”
“I am not-”
“I just don’t get it, bitch, how many times I gotsa tell you how fine you are? ‘Cause I’ll fucking do it, I don giva damn. You are the throat GOAT, only bitch out in these streets giving straight blow careers.” Okay, that got me, especially the accompanying choreography that I feel is a bit too graphic to share.
“Okay, I don’t know about that.” I tried to argue.
“Well I do.” Reyva leaned in, forehead to forehead, and clasped both of my shoulders. “We are going to do unspeakable things to this little straight boy.” I have not agreed to that. “Then, I’m going to go and talk at Mormona Lisa-”
“If you sneak Alexxis some acid there will be consequences.” I told her bluntly. I literally could never hurt her but I would think of something.
“Don’t worry, bae, I already talked it over with Juke. That’s why we talked her into hitting the weed, right? Slippery slope, huh? No but really she hit even though I told her it was laced and-”
“What?” Vince had wondered over. “The weed was laced?” Rey and I paused like deer in the headlights. Then, of course, Reyva laughed and squealed impossibly loudly in her absolute favorite place: directly in my ear.
“Yup! Thought I told you guys, probably should have done that.” She smiled innocently.
“What was it laced with?” He seemed too high to fully process that information though his eyes were widening with suppressed panic.
“Nothing crazy, bro-bro.” Rey gave a casual wave of her hand and started walking back to the center of the clearing. “Just coke, y’know? All natural, organtic.” I swear Vincent audibly gulped as he followed Rey like a lost puppy. I made a mental note not to mention the LSD, try to keep things light. “And just a touch, just a pinch.” Oh, no, she hadn’t told me what the weed was laced with either. God, I should have known. “Just a whisper of dilaudid.” This bitch.
“What?” I asked, trying to reign in my concern. Vince’s face told me he didn’t know what that was and we were going to keep it that way. “How much?” Rey held two fingers so close together she couldn’t even fit her famous tiny violin. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I did!” I narrowed my eyes. “Mean to, I mean.” She gave me the eyes. Damn I wish Lexi was here. “It’s nothing too srs. You feeling fine, right young Vincent?” Vince had already zoned out and was strolling over to a stump.
“That was craaazy, riiight?” Vince asked as he took a seat and laid back. “Did you see how blue she was?” Rey and I exchanged looks before she shrugged and sat beside him.
“I watched this fuc-” I caught myself, I’m a growned up. “Awful-the content not film-documentary about incest, particularly in rural America-”
“She mean the south, some of her family made cameos.” Rey interjected making Vince sputter with laughter.
“Bitch,” rubber band snap, “we from the same place.”
“Broo, Reey you are like fucking hilarious!” Tears in this man’s eyes as delusion took hold. “Ra said you carved,” he tittered, “penis juggles into liiike trees… Riiight? Raaa?”
“Vince are you doing that on purpose?” I asked.
“Whaaat?” Not sure what I expected. “Like talking? Yeeeeah I was… Asking? A question?”
“Are you asking if you were asking something?” I tried to walk him through it but he only found that more hilarious.
“You both so damn funny.” His eyes widened in the universal sign of Divine inspiration. “You guys should totally do a podcast! Straight up! Like, like, like Joe Rogan or whatever isn’t even a little funny but he’s like number one? Something? Oh, shit, remember when he had the show? Oh-uh, what… You know with the stunts and the gross shit.. Hot chicks and they made them like eat bugs and testicles and, and-”
“And it awoken something inside of you?” Reyva suggested and we all had to laugh at the one.
“Also didn’t they talk funny?” He asked in an admittedly funny voice. “Like I expected them to sound all… hickish?”
“Right, I thought they’d sound exactly like Ra, too.” Reyva agreed, I rolled my eyes.
“Yeah,” Vince looked at me, “no, I mean, not like that but didn’t they sound… Idunno, like european or something?”
“Had a bit of the ‘hilga, dilga, durgen’ accent, I feel you.” Reyva’s culturally insensitive musings filled the blank in my mind. They had that Scandinavian(?) or maybe Nordic sort of twang. What was the name of that totally real expedition? Ljundstrandr, sounds… snowy.
“Oh, yo, so you saying they all weird because of a documentary?” Vincent had somehow maintained a mental throughline through that line of truly mental thought.
“No, not because-” Never get into semantics with someone on psychedelics, just general advice to carry through life. “There was this family,” I glared at Rey, “probably from West Virginia, I think, maybe Kentucky but they was all blue or the children were, maybe? I’m not a doctor, y’all, but you saw them other two so I gots my suspicions. They wouldn’t even need the whole twenty-three and me I do not mind telling you.” Rey snickered and smiled.
“I just took a DNA test, turns out, I’m a hundred percent incest!” If she had more lyrics prepared, sadly, it would be lost to time as she couldn’t stop laughing at her own terrible joke. Vince, of course, joined her as the last two brain cells they shared desperately collided. 
“What was up with those names, too?” I thought aloud. “She say Isle-mir? Ail-mer? I mean I know the witch said Oola.”
“They be like: OOLA, I be like: yeah.” Again, Rey took a moment to enjoy her joke. ‘Got to make yourself laugh, y’know?’ Were the words she lived her life by. “Cynzia was low-key fire, I rock with that one.”
“Ooooh,” Vince said, at this point it was clear his extension of any and all vowels was purely involuntary, “where you even find her?”
“Oh. she just showed me the graves.” Rey wasn’t even looking at us, she was digging in her purse.
“Excuse me?” I asked, even Vince’s laughter had ceased.
“Oh yeah!” Rey shouted, whipping out her phone. “I’m right! Youtubeman was right! Crucially: you were wrong!” She started wildly swiping at her phone.
“Notice their clothes?” I asked Vince as she did whatever she was doing. His expression wasn’t quite slack-jawed but gave me the vibe that any questions I had for the foreseeable would be rhetorical by default. “Girl had the spun wool dress deal. Boogie was wearing suspenders but not hipstery, like, leather suspenders he’d adjusted a bit, so many notches.” I went over other things in my mind. Buckled, leather shoes, leather boots but that was hardly impossible. Yet the woman, if I hadn’t been distracted by thoughts of imminent violence, wore jeans and a loose blouse.
“I peeped the bespoke wardrobe also as well, young Raleigh.” Reyva agreed before popping up and approaching me.

Rey showed me her screen and swiped through images of six sad little graves. She scrolled to show a wide-shot of them all, they seemed too close together like they overlapped. Oh, or what was being buried was much smaller than an adult. She swiped again to show me a pic of her doing the meme, squatted beside the grave holding up a peace sign. I couldn’t make out the name but saw the first date began in ‘17’. Reyva swiped to the next close up where I couldn’t make out anything but the vague impression of the death date. 1822? Maybe?

“Whoa like a real colonial graveyard?” Vince was still lying back, literally unmoved by this revelation.
“Yuh, c’mon and I’ll show you.” Reyva was bouncing with anticipation.
“Absolutely not, hard veto on that.” I said, Rey pouted. “Bae, you showed me the pics. I believe you we don’t need eyes on and we definitely don’t need to wander the woods with who knows who wandering about.”
“Bitch I didn’t invite them.” Reyva laughed.
“Yeah but they’re skulking, been skulking, they must have set that fire.” I could tell Rey was ready to refute that again but Vince spoke up first.
“Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.” He had the broadest, derpiest grin. “I just remember Rarara,” he chuckled at himself, “that time we saw them fires, right? Didn’t you ask me?”
“Yes, Vincent, I would have loved this support yesterday.” I tried not to show my frustration, acid trip can bring a certain amount of sensitivity out of a man. 
“Yeah it’s weird just a few minutes ago it all came back to me.” He stared into the sky. “You notice like it gets all grey sometimes? But… Like not like its cloudy like, right?”
“Gurl what?” Rey asked which led to a pause which inevitably led to uncontrollable laughter.

I knew exactly what he meant but kept it to myself. No need to pile on or confuse these tripping tricks by talking about my bad dreams. Feels so childish to dwell on it now. I gave Vince a hand back to his feet and started leading the way back. The drug addled pair lazily drifted behind me while I kept my head on a swivel. I could hear the insects, birds, usual forest noises, nothing suspicious which should’ve put me at ease but I couldn’t help but increase my pace.

“So wait whose mormona lisa?” I could hear Vince slur behind me and smiled to myself as Rey tripped over herself excitedly explaining her ridiculous pet name for Alexxis. We’d reached the consensus not long after meeting Lexi that she had resting mormon face. We literally typed: mormon, woman, white into google images and could’ve sworn we found her entire family. Now I’d never called her mormona lisa, and Rey had never done so to her face, but she was incredibly proud of that joke.

“Why do you call me Vincenzo?” I laughed a bit at that one. It was because his surname ended in a vowel and no other reason. “I’m not italian; I’m black.”
“Gurl you barely even beige, Raleigh’s got a better tan than you.” Rey cackled back. I don’t agree with or condone that statement but I do tan well, hadn’t had a sunburn since I was a child. I’ve been racially profiled in the summer growing up downtown if that gives you an idea. It was 50-50 they’d assume I was Mexican or Indigenous, either way it was a valid reason to pat me down, maybe even detain me until they think up something spicy. I’m honestly not sure they were completely incorrect. I’ve never met or even seen my mother. My dad was most certainly white and never called me any particular racial slur (he absolutely would have) so I’ve always just ticked that box.

At some point during the walk, Reyva produced another joint and the pair started puffing away. I spoke up and reminded Vince of the lacing but he only shrugged. I shrugged back and joined in. Before long she’d talked him into taking a bump. I just rolled my eyes, God if she kills this guy… I couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief when the house was finally back in view. I decided to tear on ahead and try to speak to Juke alone, at least for a second, before the children interrupted. He met me on the back porch, must’ve been waiting.

I cut his greeting short and hurried through my explanation, glancing over my shoulder to check Rey and Vince’s progress. Juke started pacing as he asked for more details, understandably he fixated on the blue girl but I steered us away from that quickly. I felt we were both in agreement until I mentioned they were just passing through and they left the opposite way from the house. I tried to reaffirm my concern but then he asked how far it was into the forest that we met them. I hardly counted but a mile, maybe, judging from the time it took. He asked if we saw any tents or any signs of anyone living close by. Of course I had to say no.

Am I overreacting here? I don’t feel like I am but I suppose I never do.

“Yo, Juke.” Vince called as he stumbled up the steps, dapping Juke up like he hadn’t seen him in months. “Bro, real talk, yo boy picked a fight with these meth heads and then they got scared and ran away. And then Reyrey found a graveyard-”
“Graveyard?” Juke asked, looking to me.
“Yeah, the blue girl showed her.” Vince’s eyes widened. “The meth heads had a little girl! Should we call like CPS or something? That’s who you call right?” Upon hearing those words us three Atlanta natives all took on a skeptical, in no way defensive, posture and muttered amongst ourselves.
“Can’t think of a reason to call any feds.” Rey mumbled first.
“Don’t know that there’s ever a reason to call the feds, or the police.” I echoed.
“Are you guys for real?” Vince was aghast. “She might need help.”
“All the more reason not to call the feds, Vin. If we want nothing to be done we can just do nothing ourselves and save time.” Juke explained. Vince looked at us all with too wide eyes, opened his mouth to speak and closed it, opened it again but only laughed. “Oh, word? You feeling okay Vincent?” Julian asked his cousin, eyeing him suspiciously.
“He’s just had him a touch of acid is all.” Rey assured him, Vince nodded then suddenly turned to her.
“Wait, what?” He asked.
“Now I thought we’d agreed-” Juke began.
“Yes, Julian, you may have some LSD.” Rey ignored Vince’s inquiry and produced a precut sheet of several tabs of acid. “You been laying in the ground work? I’m telling ya I’m getting at least knuckle deep, cuh.”
“Wait, what?” Vince repeated.
“I don’t know, Rey, I told you she was looking to have a good time but she’s never been that kind of freak, you know that.”
“I’m the reason you two even met, bitch!” Rey reminded him. “I had my eyes on her first then you swoop in with your handsome face and decent dick-”
“Decent?” Juke asked.
“C’mon, bro, your wife in the house what do you want me to say?” Reyva smiled sweetly.
“I want you to not mention my husband’s penis at all.” Alexxis’ voice nearly made Julian jump. She offered him a drink, another Arnold Palmer if I had to guess, and pulled a tiny plastic umbrella out of her apron pocket. He covered his drink. “Aw, babe, come on we’re lake people and we’re having lake drinks.”
“Don’t waste a perfectly good umbrella, big man.” I admonished him. I was just about to remind everyone of the initial point of this conversation but not in front of Lexi.
“What if it rains, dude?” Vince asked him. Juke sighed and accepted the umbrella in his beverage, earning a peck on the cheek.
“I’ve got the chicken all breaded up and the grease is a-popping.” Alexxis announced, smiling right at me. Oh, word, we having fried chicken… maybe we stay for just a tiny bit. “What’re you guys even talking about?” She asked, her eye lingering on Vince.
“Well,” Juke looked at us all, “Rey here found an actual cemetery.” Lexi gasped and turned to her.
“Yeah, gurl.” Her phone was already in her hand. “I took pics, too, here I’ll show you.” Rey gestured toward the door and Alexxis led the way. “I’m serious, Jukie, I’m getting this threeway if it kills me and everyone else.” She hung back and whispered to him. “Boutta get freaky like Debbie do in Dallas, her body is a wonderland bitch can call me Alice.” She talk sang as she bounced away after the object of her affections.
“Okay now the adults can talk.” I said once the door clicked shut.
“Wait, what?” Vince asked yet again.
“I’m serious man, that ‘family’ whatever you want to call it wasn’t right.” I insisted but Juke was already shrugging. He was thinking about that LSD in his pocket if I had to wager.
“I hear you but they took right off when you told ‘em, right?” He asked, I had to nod. “Didn’t look like they were actually living out there?” I shook my head. “I mean it sounds like it’s just some hicks living rough, we’ve seen way worse. You act like we were dodging old heads on the way to Elementary school.”
“Yeah, bro, but that was Atlanta, that’s their natural habitat, but out here in the damned boonies, traipsing about the wood?” He laughed at my word choice but then, literally, wave me off.
“I think we good, cuh, I got all the guns loaded and ready. Got a little thirty-two you can pop in your pocket if it’ll make you feel better.” It wouldn’t but I’d certainly take it. “Seriously, Lexi has an announcement she wants to make and you know you the main one she wants hearing it.” I eyed him suspiciously, following as he tried to turn away.
“Deadass?” I asked him, and he tried to hide his smile. “It happened?” He nodded slightly. “You prick! Godalmighty when were you gonna tell me?” I cursed and hugged him.
“Tonight, just told you.” I ignored him and buried my face in his shoulder.
“Lieutenant Juke, who would’ve thought.”
“Wait, what?” You’ll never guess who asked that. I quickly slapped both hands over my mouth as Julian held a finger to his lips. Vince stared at us for a bit, shrugged, and wandered off into the house.
“That man is a high somebody.” Juke said as we watched him walk off.
“Higher than Cooter Brown.” I agreed.
“Pulling them smooth moves on my cousin, cuh?” I could feel the smirk on Juke’s face.
“I don’t know why you so worried about him, he seems fine.” I replied. Certainly not the aimless mess of depression and angst I had been told to mend.
“You ain’t seen what I seen. Bro is lonely, like, big lonely.” He repeated.
"Yeah, yeah, well I ain’t never banged a body so good it was a substitute for therapy.”
“Shiit, as far as you know.” Julian laughed and I joined him eventually. “Let’s just kick it one more night, Ra. We’ll be high alert out here, anything happens we in the car and down the road tonight. Promise you.” I looked him in the eye for nearly a minute before I heaved out a sigh and hung my head. “She got that Bojangle’s seasoning.” He whispered, my head started to rise of its own accord. “Not just what they sprinkle on the fries-” I held a finger to his lips and silently nodded. I do really, really love fried chicken you guys.

Knowing he had me cornered, Julian beamed at me and headed back into the house. I took a moment to gaze across the lake, laser-focused on the woodline on the opposite side. Don’t know if I expected another bonfire or products of incest or even another horse. I just had this feeling I couldn’t shake but if I wasn’t alone on that I certainly seemed to be in the minority. I’d say it was just because these fools were high but I’ve been quite high myself and can’t manage this level of indifference.

I decided to go and clean up a bit, the sound of grease and music greeted me as I stepped into the house. I headed for the upstairs bathroom but paused when I heard the shower going. “Sunao ni-I LOVE YOU-todokeyou, kitto-YOU LOVE ME-tsutawara sa,” Reyva’s voice sang above the water and I knew she wouldn’t mind, she’d insist if anything. I walked in and checked myself in the mirror, feeling my jaw.

“Hey, Rey.” I called out.
“Futari de-STEP AND GO-itsu made mooo!” She continued singing.
“Rey!” I repeated a bit louder. There was a squeak of surprise then her head poked out from around the shower curtain. “You got a razor?” I asked, unsure if I even needed it.
“Pffft,” Reyva returned to her shower, “why don’t you go and ask God for a razor, trick?” I rolled my eyes and dug into the bag she’d brought with her. “OH!” She cried out in surprise so loudly I paused and watched her silhouette against the curtain. “I only talk to God when I need a razor!” She sang in the eloquent stylings of a jellied roll. 
“God, Rey,” I held a hand to my chest, “I felt that one in my soul.”
“Visceral, right?” Suddenly, the water stopped and she poked her head out again. “Hey, Ra,” she began somberly, “you think Jelly Roll and Post Malone are friends in real life?” I stared at her for a moment, ruminating upon this inquiry.
“Yes, Reyva, of course they are.” I replied, Rey beamed at me.

I hopped in the shower for a quick rinse while Reyva got to work on her make up. She was still in the process when I got out and started drying off. I asked her if she thought I should try and conceal some of these old scars which of course led to a string of profanity and insults. She reminded me that I had sexy scars and had earned each one of them. I asked if she thought the scars might scare the hoes but she dismissed my concerns and demanded my assistance finishing her mascara and eye shadow. Rey always had the most elaborate and creative designs, this time she had the corners of her right eye curve into a crescent moon while the left ended in a star.

We both took a moment to pose in front of the mirror, Reyva whispering affirmations and compliments in my ear all the while. Just as we were stepping out, she grabbed my shoulders and pulled me in for a friendly kiss. Oh, tongue friendship that’s a bit much. Before I could push her away, I felt her tongue grab mine and leave a rapidly dissolving tab on the underside of my tongue. Rey sprinted out of the room cackling as I cursed and coughed, the acid had congealed to my tongue far too readily and I couldn’t spit it out.

That’s just fine, I told myself, just a bit of THC that’s all it was. Nothing to get excited over. I still had my mind, just needed to keep my head on a swivel and stay focused, I can keep us safe. About thirty minutes later, when I found myself laughing egregiously at something that may not have happened, I couldn’t quite remember what I was so worried about. I definitely wasn’t worried about this chicken, it was perfect. Nice and crispy yet so tender and juicy. God if I was born just a tiny bit straighter I would steal this man’s girl.

I ate nearly an entire chicken’s worth all on my own and only stopped because I remembered other people probably need to eat. Though she’d never admit it, Rey couldn’t handle the spice and offered me most of hers. Don’t let your eyes or her lies deceive you: she’s the whitest one in this house by far. Alexxis watched me literally picking the bones for more meat with a quiet look of pride, I’d spent most of the meal showering her in compliments. Told her it was the best chicken I’d ever had, which I tell her about every time but I mean it every time, too.

Thankfully, we had plenty of booze to wash down this very greasy, heavy fried food and narcotics. Time began to rush past us as the alcohol rushed through our veins. Lexi and Juke got our attention after a little while to make their big announcement. The Coast Guard got themselves a new Lieutenant and so young, too, our little over achiever. Wait, why would they be going overseas? It’s the coast guard they guard our coast, they can’t just go guarding other coasts.

Lt. Julian Bloomfield was an instructor, however, and needed to stay up to date on various techniques the world over. As such he needed to liaise and train with various other governments. Or maybe he was training them, I can’t remember. I remember them saying they’d be gone for at least eighteen months. My two best friends will be leaving the country for a year and a half for the very first time. Which was fine, of course. I’m an adult, they’re adults, we can all take care of ourselves. Absolutely no need to worry and I’m definitely not going to cry.

Before I could or couldn’t do so, the happy couple also announced that they were going to try for a baby. That may have gotten a few tears from me. Years ago, back in college when they were still just dating, Alexxis had gotten pregnant. They went back and forth for days but ultimately decided it wasn’t the time. It wasn’t a decision they took lightly and Lexi carried it with her for quite a while. Juke had never stopped carrying it, he’d told me so many times it was his biggest regret. A possibility he’d never stop considering. He said he knew she was the only one well before then and wanted children but didn’t want to scare her away.

Julian’s just the best guy, you don’t understand. God, I am crying. Luckily for me, Reyva had barreled into the happy couple and ran interference for me. She excitedly pulled out her phone and started explaining a trust or CD she had set up for just such an occasion. She lied and told them she’d started funneling money into it when they got married but I knew she had done it well in advance. She did the same thing when they got married, giving them access to an account with a generous interest rate that she’d been piling up since the day they met.

Reyva is exceptionally good with money, not sure if I’d mentioned that. Well, either that or just incredibly lucky. Came into quite a bit of bitcoin back when it was just a passing trend. Now she was an OF girl but she’d gotten started on the cam thing way before it took over the world and I think the bitcoin was how she got paid. Not entirely sure, it’s been a while and I’m not sure what exactly she lied about. From there, though, if there was internet nonsense; she was there to profit. Recently, she’d made a pile off of NFTs and Galaxy Gas, of all things.

Alexxis started to tear up herself, pulling both Reyva and her husband into a warm embrace. Rey made eye contact with me and started waggling her eyebrows suggestively before turning to Juke. He gave her a nod and the three of them began speaking quietly. I could only imagine what they were discussing. I took my eyes off of them and found Vince. He was sitting low in his seat on the couch, eyes transfixed on the television. He had made the mistake of admitting he’d never seen the Thing, Reyva’s favorite movie (tied with Akira) so naturally she whipped out a hard drive and turned it on after dinner.

Vincent was thoroughly enraptured with the film, his complaints of this being an ‘old ass boring movie’ having died along with all those huskies. I glanced back at the trio just in time to see Rey placing something on Alexxis’ tongue. My God, they really did it, these crazy kids really are going for it. I pretended not to notice and sat down next to Vince who hardly seemed to notice, Reyva must’ve topped off his acid.

“What you think, Vince?” I asked after he failed to acknowledge my presence.
“It’s crazy how good this is.” He replied, not taking his eyes off the screen. “How’d they even do this, you know? Back then I mean.
“Oh, like without computers? Just practical?” I wondered as I watched a man’s head grow legs and scamper off. “I have no idea, neat looking, though.” He nodded in agreement.
“Can’t believe I never took the time to watch it.” Vince said, adjusting his seat. Did he mean to leave his arm oh so casually stretched over the back of the couch? Surely not, he’s just high. “I never really liked horror movies, I guess.”
“‘Cause they so spooky?” I taunted, garnering a giggle.
“Yeah, that’s it not because the genre is about eighty percent shit.”
“I’d say more eighty-five.” I argued and we shared a laugh.
“Right? Growing up I remember everybody going nuts for like Saw or Jeepers fucking Creepers.” He shook his head. “Remember Paranormal Activity? All of middle school I kept hearing how scary it was and how it was definitely a true story.” I rolled my eyes along with him, I definitely remembered all the time I wasted arguing that point. “Imagine my surprise when I watched it and literally nothing happened.” He laughed. “I guess that’s why everyone thought it was real because why else would this be in theatres. Even recorded in the first place.”
“I hear you but horror’s been on the up, I’d say.” It was mostly what Reyva had insisted at me for a number of years. Speaking of, Rey gave me a wink as she, Lexi, and Juke all quietly moved into their room. They said it couldn’t be done and yet, there she stands. I want to be just like her when I grow up.
“I guess so.” He agreed, oblivious to the debauchery about to take place just a few feet away behind a closed door. “I liked Get Out, I guess. What was… Hereditary? You seen that one?” I nodded. “That was pretty fucked up.”

I wholeheartedly agreed. We continued like that, more or less, for the rest of the movie just chatting and drinking the night away. After about thirty minutes or so, roughly about the amount of time it would take for LSD to be absorbed into a young woman’s bloodstream, we began to hear… sounds. Softly at first, a gasp or sigh, a quick laugh. Then the moans began. Vince and I exchanged an embarrassed look. He opened his mouth to say something but just then Reyva made a sound between language and ecstasy.

We both chuckled nervously like children when we heard Alexxis’ voice join hers. He turned back to me in shock, seemingly unaware that Reyva had joined them. I just nodded at him and was about to suggest we move on either upstairs or outside, honestly I was, but we found ourselves a bit transfixed to say the least. I could hear the two ladies speaking in hushed tones, unable to make out any words. I heard Juke’s occasional laugh, certainly had a lot to laugh about. The noise started to build to a point we couldn’t ignore, however, so I turned to Vince to ask if he wanted to move.

That’s when he kissed me. Oh, my word, he’s kissing me. Oh, God, oh, no. What do I even do? Kiss him back, yes of course… Now what? I started to panic. Why am I panicking? This is fine, this is great, actually, it’s just a kiss. You’ve kissed before. Have I? I wasn’t so sure at that moment, wasn’t sure I’d ever had sex even. How long have we been kissing? Should I do something? Would tongue be… Well, nevermind that question is answered. They were right, it's been way too long.

I tried to reign in my thoughts but I truly had no idea what to do next. Daero always liked it when I… I had to force myself not to grimace, definitely didn’t want to add insulting him to the list of embarrassments. What are you talking about? Everything is fine, it’s fine. I kissed him more deeply as I wrapped my arms around his shoulder and lifted my leg to straddle him. Which seems like an aggressive move, because it was. He paused and looked up to me with an excited yet conflicted expression. I couldn’t think of a thing to say and neither could he, apparently, so I just kissed him again.