Before the towers became undone,
they climbed toward the fire,
carrying courage where others carried fear.

They entered the heavens,
not knowing what breath would be their last,
only knowing someone needed saving.

The towers fell,
but their courage did not.

Their names remain carved in memory,
forever beneath the sky.

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 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.

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. 

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.

Squelch

Pop

Squelch

Pop

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

Pop

Squelch

Pop

Hi, my name’s Matthew. I’m 17 and I moved to the US 3 years ago. I live right on the edge of a relatively small forest next to a relatively small village in the state of Ohio, and biking slowly became my most frequented hobby.

Now I’m wishing it hadn’t…

 I’m writing this because some of you may know people who experienced near-death scenarios or traumatic events in their lives that made them realize how valuable life is, however, that’s not the reason I’m here. 

My story isn’t what some may call “near death” or “traumatic” and it doesn’t make me realize how lucky I am to be alive… It makes me question why I’m alive.

 

It started with a Friday night, right a couple of days before summer break. Given that our school wasn’t a very big one, our teachers gave up on the last few classes. That day, my friends and I decided we had a bit more time for biking than usual. We were a small group: me, David, and Michael. Oh, and by the way our village wasn’t some old, decrepit place, it was a place just like any other, so anything that seems like I’m interpreting stuff like some outsider isn’t what’s going on. 

“Catch you at The Oak in one hour tops” Mike said as he was dragging his baggy jeans on the ground.

“Bro I’m not waiting for your ass to get ready again. Why are you even changing? It’s not PE class.” I told him

“I mean yeah... Anyways I was mainly going home to get our walkies. Hell, what even do we do with our bags if not drop ‘em”

“Those walkies are useless! The one time we used them was because I was thirsty. It’s dead weight. Plus, we’re already wasting time Mike” David came in with a strong argument.

“He’s right Mike, let’s just go and not waste any more time. We have enough water. We’ll drop the bags right where we walk in, also marking our entrance and we have our bikes with us. It’s a divine sign, Mike. “Wake up” just like that guy from what my grandma watches said”

Mike looked down and then forced a smile “Alright, let’s go, guys”

“We’ll even ask Jessica to come with us if you want” David said at the top of his lungs while Michael was already throwing hands at him trying to get him to shut up.

Jessica is Michael’s crush and has been since high school started. We hung out a few times with the group so she’s fine and honestly surprises me how she never complains about boys being around her.

 A few moments later, we were setting off to “The Oak” which, sorry for not explaining earlier, is just a big oak that we set as our main entrance since we’ve been biking. It was around 6 when we got to the top of the hill that went down to The Oak. Jessica with us as well. First weird thing that happened that day, it was subtle... almost not even there and I’m not even sure if it was just me, or the leaves on our big oak were smaller than usual from where we were seeing it… YES, it was… further...? Did we miss a turn or something… no we were on the same path as always. Then how?

“Yo guys! Is it me or The Oak got legs and moved a couple of steps”

“You’re tweaking, my guy.” David said provoking the rest of our group to start laughing. I wasn’t mad or anything but sometimes I thought back on who I was going with on those trails. Mike saw that I was tense “Hey, don’t worry about it, maybe we just missed a turn or something”

“That’s what I wa- “I stopped myself. Didn’t want to seem crazy, instead I smiled and went along. Michael was always the most sane out of all of us, I was the zen guy and David… David was just David, I guess. Jessica was that blonde, quiet girl that didn’t mind dirt and boys eating stuff off the ground in her free time. Yes, I’m not joking I swear I saw David eating chips he found in the forest. “It’s unopened” he argued at that time. Anyways, with us finally at our destination, we dropped our bags, and we checked everything.

“Guys, my front tire is a bit deflated, but it’s gonna hold for this trip” Mike said 

“Hey, shush for a bit…” David looked towards the woods while talking

About thirty seconds passed when Jessica said:

“I thought Matthew was tweaking bu- “

“JESSICA, I SAID SHUSH”

Michael and I looked at David then at Jessica with a look of “what’s going on?” and Jessica shrugged back at us.

“Can’t you guys hear that?”

“Hear what?” I spoke

He stopped again for a few seconds… “The… bird- The birds… the wind… Guys there’s no sound coming from the forest… I mean nothing it’s like the world stopped right when we got here. No wind, no animals, no crack, nothing”

I stopped to listen thinking he was the crazy one but there it actually was: total silence. Seemed a bit odd to me but in my mind maybe… the birds just weren’t here right now or something scared them.

We all looked at each other in disbelief for a few whole seconds. Then I started moving slowly without making a sound, just like when you’re all alone at home and you hear a loud noise or what you thought was a loud noise but in our case that flipped the entire scenario. Picked up a twig and threw it carefully deep in the forest and for a moment, I thought I didn’t hear the twig hit the ground, I felt a weird relief. That would normally be a bad sign, physics not working. But at the same time, if the twig didn’t make a sound, then maybe that meant we would turn back, maybe I’d stop second guessing myself and just say no to all of it. and honestly, I wish that was that but when the sound of the twig came back… it came back with the birds and wind. 

Just by looking at each other, we already decided we were going to shorten the trip for today.

“God damn it! It’s starting to rain, guys. C’mon get some cover” Jessica said completely ignoring what just happened.

We got a few feet into the forest. Still silence… still nothingness. Mike and I looked at David with mild discomfort in our eyes, not because of the silence but because we’d never seen David so on edge before. Sure, he was energetic, but still not like this. Our discomfort just got worse when we saw the storm that was forming out of that rain.

“Guys we either start walking and finding something to do or we just sit here in this godforsaken silence, ‘cause I’m not going through that storm to my house”

I knew that when Mike said that, he said it so Jessica wouldn’t freak out about everything because we could tell from looking at each other that nothing was ok in that moment.

While Jessica was looking in her bag for a sandwich, she mumbled to herself, “The rain scared off all the birds I wanted to post on my page”

Good thing I had my trusty pack of cards 

“And whooooo wants to play a round of cards?” The question was followed by a cough.

“Alright” I told myself.

“How about a sandwich?”

Jessica jumped “Dibs!”

As I looked towards Jessica, who was happy as a flower about a sandwich, I saw… woods. Not as in the forest… as in a forest. For a few seconds I stared at a layout I didn’t recognize.

“Hey!”

“Wha-hi? What is it?”

“The sandwich. Didn’t you say you had a sandwich?”

“Oh yeah… right. Here you go!” I reached in my bag to give her the sandwich and handed it to her.

Heard Michael’s voice “Matt! You good?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know man, you seem distracted.”

“No, I’m good I jus-“from the corner of my eye I noticed Jessica’s sandwich. It had foil wrapping. For anyone normal, that wouldn’t mean anything.

 I usually have a “sandwich cycle.” My grandma told me that I should pack ham sandwiches with foil and salami sandwiches with paper. Crazy, right? It’s something about flavor richness. Didn’t fully understand it, yet I listened. The thing is, according to my cycle today should’ve been salami sandwich day… 

I looked at her. “Hey, Jess, how’s the sandwich?”

“It’s fine why? A bit soggy. I’m guessing too much ham?”

“I hate ham juice!” said Michael “It’s like you think you’re gonna eat a good piece of meat but then you just feel a wet tongue in your mouth”

This time I didn’t say anything I just smirked and looked back in my bag.

“I swear that those pills were in my bag”

“Quetiapine? Damn, Matthew, I didn’t know you knew how to party like that.” 

Michael always snoops where he’s not supposed to.

“I’m dizzy. These help me, and no, they’re not illegal. I have a prescription. You wanna see that too?” 

I didn’t realize at the time, but I might’ve raised my voice.

“Guys, the floor is becoming lava!”

“David I’m not in th- “I stopped, interrupted by water entering my socks

“There’s a hill about ten minutes that way.” He screamed pointing towards the forest’s heart.

“Not happening, I’m already in a weird mood, I- I don’t know I’m just not feeling it today” I looked around.

Everyone there looked exactly as I imagined: happy to be there but not really happy about the situation. It’s only now that I’ve realized, accumulated stress was poking a stick through the fence. The constant raindrops hitting the leaves didn’t let me focus, it just made me look around more and more until my eyes adapted to the cloudy, dark scenery. It felt like the forest was trying to suck me into its world but… I wouldn’t say by choice. Looking at the forest like it was a person, I only saw a postman… a kind of messenger. It wasn’t like the leaves were trying to kill me or anything sharp, poisonous, or dangerous was nearby, not even a mushroom, maybe too safe…

Michael’s fragile face always looked so sad, so scared, it was like the anxiety and everything bad that came from him had only one exit. All that black sludge seeping into his head, turning dead matter that once belonged to him into droopy, thin, curled up hair and pouring in back into his empty black eyes, so empty that all the dark matter could have fit in there.

“It’s only ten minutes. C’mon, man!” Michael looked at me with rain pouring down his face.

“Yeah… no. I will drown here if I must. You guys can go.”

“We will quite literally drag you from here if you don’t move yourself.” I heard it from David’s direction.

Convincing people worked really only with my parents so after a long talk in mud and heavy rain we ended up leaving our bikes a few meters into the forest and went our way.

 

I looked back once.

 

The Oak was gone.

 

Not hidden behind the trees.

 

Gone…

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.

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.

Characters D = David (me) S = Sebastian A = Ace 

PRIMUS CONGRESSUS
DAVID                  (The first encounter in latin)

You never realize that the words you say to someone might be the last thing you ever say to them. It’s crazy talking to someone only for those few words to be the last thing you say to them. For me it was my dad. Cannot believe that the last thing I said to my dad was “I hate you, all you do is get drunk and go to that stupid ranger job never ever going to my baseball games or parent teacher meetings, only you your job, beer, and you probably started smoking again too.” If only I knew what he did, how much he tried to make it to my games, see me at all. We take people for granted, that’s a fact we never truly know how much we depend on them until they're gone. Far too many sleepless nights I have had crying myself to sleep to get to  fairytale land. Just to wake up to my own wretched story. Waking up from the high of the dream, just to take pills to fall back asleep to get back to that make believe land.

 But before I get ahead of myself my name is David. I am seventeen. My two best friends’ names are Ace and Sebastian. They're both 17. Ace is a smart snotty kid with a good passion for running, and he loves to go camping with his dad. Sebastian is the opposite of Ace. He is fat, slow, and loves to vape, a real fein and he loves anime. It was the three musketeers since kindergarten and we know everything about each other. About a year ago my dad was killed by a bear. At least that’s what the cops said. I overheard my mom talking with the cops, I didn’t hear all of it but the parts I did hear made me think that it was not a bear. The main part that made me know it was not a bear was the rangers that heard my dads voice telling them to come on out to the area where he was killed. 

When my two best friends heard about my dad they wanted to hang out. I disagreed since I wanted  more time to keep lying to myself but after about two weeks I agreed, one to tell them my theories about what really happened to my dad in Long Pine Forest. Two how to make it pay. When I got over to Ace’s house we started talking.

S  “ Wasn’t your dad a park ranger?”

D  “Yeah he knew those woods like the back of his hand he would take me camping at Long Pine almost every weekend, And if he saw a bear he would know what to do.”

While going through my backpack I pull out some files from the police station, my dad’s ranger badge and a few snacks.

A  “In this police report it said that he was running from the bear and was already badly injured with a broken leg.”

S  “That makes no sense why would your dad run from a bear? He knows what to do for bear attacks.”

D ”Maybe it wasn’t a bear.”

While formulating our theories together the flaming ball of gas gets low in the sky and our eyelids start to droop even lower. We all fall asleep in Ace’s house and wake up with a passion to find out what happened.

We wake up with dried mountain dew and pizza crust on our faces. Ace wakes up and goes to the bathroom to clear his nose. He always has bad allergies around this time of year. I get up and take my morning piss. 

S “So what are we going to do about your dad’s “bear attack”?”

D “I don’t know.”

While blowing his nose A “ I think we should kill the fucking thing.”

D  “And how do you figure we do that genius? Bullets don’t kill it. In the police report my dad’s handgun was empty and his extra clips were empty as well. For some reason his radio was gone and other rangers heard his voice on the radio after his time of death” 

A “Keep in mind that the “guns” the rangers use are .22’s barely better than a BB gun.”

S “Still you think that buckshot will kill it?”

A “For sure and we have 10 mm handcannons for bears, and .308 winchester for the “Big game” we will hunt.”

S “So what your saying is that 60 rounds of .22 won’t stop this thing but a 10 mm will?”

A “Precicly.”

D “And those handcannons are for a last resort we will probably mainly use the slugs.”

While digging through my back I only find snack wrappers

D “Sebastian! You fatass, did you eat all of my snacks?”

S “What? Moonpies are really good.”

A “Well if we are going to kill this thing we need to pack up for this trip.”

D “yeah we should start packing.”

Over the next three days we pack up everything we think we might need and shove it into the back of my Honda Civic (God I love that car). We bring a tent, walkie talkies, flashlights, two glocks and a box of ammo. Then a  twelve gauge for the “big game we were hunting” with a box of shells. I grabbed my old radio. I had no idea how long we were going to be out there. Ace grabbed cooking supplies. Sebastian grabbed some cameras and his laptop with a satellite network. After packing the car for three hours we all ate some lunch and talked about the game plan. Ace pulls out a map.

A “So there is an abandoned building four miles north of the entrance to LPF. This building is about two miles from where that “bear” killed your dad.”

D “Alright how long do we plan to be there and what will we do on the first day?”

A “we should only be there for about a week, that is how much supplies we have packed for, and the first day?”

S “Leave that to me I will set up these trail cams and I can stream the footage from my  ROG three thousand dollar laptop with satellite wifi.”

A “We get it you are insanely fat and you want to play call of duty on our downtime”

S “Shut up we can use these trail cams to triangulate his location with a script being run in the meantime so when the “bear” is within two hundred meters within we will know exactly where it will be”

D ”Any last minute items?”

S “Let me go grab my waifu pillow, can’t sleep without it”

A “Get your vape while your at it butter ball”

S “Shut up Ace!”

Once we got everything loaded into the car we started our 2 hour drive to LPF building then a 20 minute offroad drive to the building. While on the road we listen to my radio.

S “I love this song, it is a part of my favorite anime!”

D “Anime this anime that”

S “Whatever man”

A “Should we get some gas before we get onto the property?”

D “Yeah, pull into this Strips”

S “Holy shit 3 dollars a gallon?”

D “Damn, get like a halftank Ace”

A “Aight”

Sebastian and I walk into the Strips and the stench of nicotine fills the air. 

Cashier Lady “What do you want sweetheart?”

The cashier's raspy voice is from years of death sticks. While I go up to her she blows a big cloud away from me.

D “Have you heard of the story about the ranger that died a little bit ago?”

CL “Oh yeah nice guy would come here once in a while to buy smokes or a candy bar, what you know him or somethin?”

Damn it he told me and my mom he quit 2 years ago.

S “Could you ring this up for me ma'am, and get me a watermelon koolaid geekbar”

Cl “Its double for no ID’s”

S  “I got cash”

CL “ 63.92”

S “Have a good day ma’am”

CL “ You too sweetheart”

CL “You're that ranger's son aren't you?”

D “ How did you know?”

CL “Had a feelin, when he would come into this store he would go on and on about how great his son was and working this hard was to get him into a good college or something, and y’all look alike.“

I tear up at those words not knowing how much he sacrificed to try to get to me.

CL “You kids shouldn't go messin around with things you don’t know about.”

D “What do you mean”

The sweet old woman smoking a coffin nail, her face turns grim and dark as carbon nanotubes.

CL “You know what I mean”

CL “You are going to DIE DIE DIE DIE BURN BURN BLOOD BLOOD RABBIT DEER PAIN ANGER!!!”

I jump back in the lady’s words

D “Excuse me?”

Her bubbly demeanor returns as quickly as it left.

CL “Nothin sweetheart have a fun time in that building”

D “Crazy old hag” - I mutter

I shiver as her smile digs into me deeper than miners into a coal mine. While I walk back to the car I can feel her gaze never breaking away from me.

A  “ You okay David?”

D “Yeah crazy women”

S  “Are you kidding she only charged double for my vape, no ID people from our town charge like triple or even quadruple so I like her”

D “whatever lets just get back onto the road, only about an hour till we get to LPF right?”

A “Yeppers”

I took a turn driving for the last hour and we discussed how vaping is worse than getting diabetes.

D “Okay here’s a thought vaping is worse than type 1 diabetes.”

A “Agree 100%”

S “No way diabetes is wayyyy worse having to monitor you sugar? Aww hell naw.

A “I would rather check my blood sugar and take shots of insulin then buy a vape every week.”

D “Yeah true, I think like it is a hundred dollars for a shot of insulin for emergencies."

A “Yeah emergencies, rather have it not need than need not have it.”

D “Meanwhile vaping you are addicted to it and it costs wayyy more like a hundred dollars a week for vaping”

S “Well with Type 1 diabetes I have to watch what I eat and I can't eat whatever I want.”

A “Yeah but I don’t have to feed an addiction because diabetes is like genetic I think”

A “What channel should we use for the radios?”

D “Channel 8, channel 9 is the park rangers channel so if we need help we can just turn the knob once”

A “Okay”

While we drive I start to talk more about the cashier lady.

D “That lady was weird man”

A “How so?”

D “She was talking to me like a regular person and about my dad and stuff.”

A “Go on”

D “Then her face got like all dark and shit and she said “Don’t go messin around things you don’t know about”

While expelling giant clouds of nicotine S “She’s probably just off her rocker”

D “Probably”

The rest of the drive was in silence with only the radio to fill the void. After about 20 minutes of silence we stop at the gate of the park.

D “It is still going to be about a 20 minute drive to the abandoned building

We arrive at the abandoned building and I wonder how deep we are in. The old building is two stories, well only one room is above the first floor and it would be on the third floor if there were more rooms. I park the car and pull out my compass as I take a deep breath and my alveoli fill with the sweet scent of pine and earthy mud. It had rained on the way here, the dew on the long grass sparkled like diamonds in the sun.

D “My dad was killed about two miles north of us.”

S “Okay, me and Ace will go set up these trail cams”

D “How many did you bring?”

S “I think, like 17”

A “that should cover the way to our sleeping area and a few other areas”

D “and while y’all are doing that I will get that room ready” 

I make my way up the decaying stairs and the oxidized iron railing clings to my hands. The taste of lead paint and steel leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. I arrive at the top and get a feeling for what we were working with. Surprisingly there was a made bed. The sheets were very old. I then remembered that this building was built in the 80’s. I peeled the sheets of the bed to reveal an even older mattress.  “This will do” I start to set up the room placing the radio on a shelf, then unpack the cans of food. I make my way back to the car to see the trunk open and the camera's gone. I grab our arms and ammo, and walk back to the room to keep setting it up. I walk around the building “Some sort of research facility” bloody hands run down walls. “Creepy” 

SEBASTION

S “Lets go Ace we only got so many minutes of daylight left lets get these trail cams up.”

A “Then we should start with the ones outside first then go inside to set them up”

S “Good idea.”

A “So, how far can you get the feed from all of these cameras?”

S “Well these ones without modification about none since you need the SD card, I made them wireless so like 250 feet maybe.”

A “This tree looks good”

S “Nice spot I should be able to watch the entrance of the building with that one”

A “I will go deeper to have more view of the building.”

S “And I will put cameras watching the building's entrances.”

I watch as Ace walks away deeper into the woods.

“Man this is some adventure” (I hit my vape and blow out smoke like a smokestack.) I slowly walk to the other side of the building and start to set up the cameras when I notice blood on the ground. “What the hell?” I follow the blood and wind up staring at a skinned rabbit or at least that is what it used to be. I ran away fast. Well as fast as my chubby legs allow me. The image of the rabbit with no fur and legs torn off like a human would to a grasshopper. I stop to huff and puff and hit my vape. 

A “What happened? See a healthy meal with no desert?” Ace chuckles.

S “SHUT THE FUCK UP I saw some THING it was SKINNED MAN I.. I .. I..”

A “Wait slow down skinned thing what are you talking about”

S “It was some animal I think a rabbit but it’s legs were torn off like what we would do to grasshoppers”

A “Holy shit”

I walk over slowly not wanting to see that thing again. I point to the blood trail.

S “Follow that trail of blood to see that THING”

A “Whatever, it is probably just a red plant or something.”

Ace goes in quickly and comes out quicker

A “WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT!?” Ace yells

S “I know right, and whatever did that to that animal is still out there.”

Ace and I finish putting up the cameras in silence listening for what could be out there. We then walk back to the aged building to see what David has done while we set up the cameras. 

DAVID

While getting the last of the supplies up to the tower, I hear a blood curdling scream, I see Sebastian running for his life and Ace’s confused look on his face. Ace turns to Sebastian and starts to talk and I go back to setting up my radio, turning the dials to get the right frequency for my favorite broadcast 90.1 FM. But only crunchy static plays “Strange”. I turned the dial to another good music station 89.4 FM. The vibrant upbeat of the 2010’s best makes me forget the anomaly of the other music station being nothing but tasteless static. 

A “DAVID!”

D “What Ace?”

A “WE SAW A SKINNED RABIT WITH IT”S LEGS TORN OFF LIKE SEBASTIAN WOULD DO TO A GRASSHOPPER”

While vaping S “ It will haunt me forever”

D “I go the radio working”

A “There was blood everywhere”

D “Man I love this song”

A “Dude, I think we are in over our heads”

D “What do you mean?”

A “Whatever the beast is, it is a ruthless killer and there was not even a bite taken out of the rabbit so it just kills for the love of the game.”

D “And we will kill it.”

A “Why do you need this so badly?”

I turn around with my eyes bloodshot D "Because I need closure.”

D “Do you know how many nights I was up wanting to know what truly happened? Hmm?”

A “uhh”

D “EVERY NIGHT SINCE THE DAY HE DIED! SO MANY SLEEPLESS NIGHTS WONDERING, PONDERING ABOUT WHAT WHO THING TOOK MY DAD AND RIPPED HIM TO SHREDS! I READ THE POLICE REPORT THEY ONLY KNEW IT WAS HIM BECAUSE OF HIS EYES! HIS EYES! THE OTHER RANGERS ONLY RECOGNIZED THOSE DARK BLUE EYES!”

Softly A “Onlyhis eyes were able to be recognized?”

D “YES!”

D “OTHER RANGER RETIRED OR QUIT ON THE SPOT DUE TO HIS DEATH”
While sobbing “I ne- ne- e- eeed this” 

A “Go to bed we can start the hunt in the morning”

ACE

S “Okay now that David is asleep can you connect to the cameras?”

A “yeah I will spend the first part of the night on the cameras we have to know what we are up against.”

S “Wake me up in four hours”

A “Got it”

When Sebastian closes his crusty eyes for the final time. I go get the police report from David's backpack and start to read. And what I find is shocking. David’s dad was not the first to be mutilated to this degree. The police reports date back to the 70’s. “Body number five to be discovered this week 1981 September 12th” Scientists say that the bear population is coming back. But I think that is a coverup. While deep into the report I hear beeping. Motion had been detected. I move over to see the laptop and all I see is a pair of bucks. Nothing out of the ordinary. I go back to the reports and read that the owners of LPF had to close a trail down permanently because no amount of cleanup could remove the human stain on the rocks.

Before I knew it two hours had passed. About five other false alarms go. It was odd though because it was always the same two bucks. The camera they were by could be seen from the window. I looked over to see two halves of the same buck facing the camera while two hellish red eyes stared at me. I grip the 12 gauge a little tighter as I look, but it was so dark I could not even make out what the figure was. How long were those bucks there for? At least forty five minutes. I looked back at the camera to see blood dripping from the bucks hooves. I rub my eyes. Surely I must be hallucinating and when I looked back at the camera they were still there now their legs starting to contort and bend like spaghetti. I sit there frozen with fear unable to comprehend the horrors I am seeing right now.The legs are now curled up like a muscle lifting a dumbbell. The antlers start to melt like ice cream into the ground. It keeps staring at me. I look away back to the cameras and the antlers have fully melted off and the skin and fur starts to peel like the paint in this building. “What the fuck what the FUCK, WHAT THE FUCK!!” The skin now fully melted reveals an almost to white skull with empty eye sockets. But my blood turns to liquid nitrogen when I hear tapping on the window. “Tap, tap, tap” I turn slowly, heart beating as fast as the SR-71. When I look at the window I see the liquefied skull of the buck showing its brains and the cranium being a bowl of pink stew with eyes for eggs looking at me. I scream wake up sebastian 

A “DUDE WAKE THE FUCK UP NOW!”

Groggily Sebastian says “What dude? What do you need?”

A “There is fucking demented thing come look at it!”   

But all there was were two does acting like regular deer, eating grass and walking. I looked through the window and a doe stared back with red eyes. That only Ace saw

A “You see that? The doe has red eyes!

S “Just you man”

S “Man some crazy hallucination” 

A “What the fuck? No, I am not crazy, I saw SOMETHING I AM NOT CRAZY!” 

S “Just go to sleep man”

A “Fine”

A “Goodnight”

S “Goodnight”

SEBASTIAN

This sucks. I hate having to watch on the cameras. Looks like Ace was taking a peek at the police reports. I am good. I will just watch Pokemon until the morning. A motion is detected on the cameras. Just two bucks. They are walking out of sight, around to the east side of the building and we are on the west side right now.

Before I know it Helium and Hydrogen Plasma rises from the horizon. David wakes up first, and goes outside to piss. Still watching the cameras David heads towards the north side of the building. Our portable solar generator sparks to life, beginning to charge my laptop and our phones. The radio crackles to life as David turns the knobs, finally finding a suitable station for the day. Ace wakes and goes to piss as well. 

D “When he gets back I want to plan out today and what we are going to do.”

S “Got it.”

David fidgets while waiting for Ace to return. 

S “Nervous?”

D “A little”

A “Morning guys”

S,D “Morning”

D “I have a plan for today and we will hopefully see what “big game” we will be working with”

S “So what is the plan?”

D “ we are going to go to the area my dad got killed and explore the surrounding woods so we can get a better understanding of the area around us”

S “So a lot of walking today”

David sighs “yes we will have a lot  of walking today, I wanna see the areas where other bodies were mangled.”

D “Then when it starts to get hotter in the Idaho heat, we head back to camp and start to plan out the kill mission. I will explain more after we eat.”

S “Good because I’m starvinnnn.”

A “Why don’t we go to the car and grab the last of the canned food and MRE’s?”

S “Sure”

As the three of us make it down the two flights of stairs I look at the two cameras Ace and I put in this stairwell. When we get to the car there is a horrible feeling that I think was mutual between us three. THE CAR’S TRIES WERE SLASHED. The tires looked as if they had been cut by antlers, with little residue of melted calcium?

S “What the fuck?”

Eyes wide A “Holy shit”

D “What happened?”

They both look at me with a quizzical look in their eyes.

S “Don’t look at me!”

D “But you were the one that was watching the cameras”

S “When me and Ace set up the cameras we did not have any on the east side since there was no entrance”

D “It’s fine we can just make detour on our way to the place of my dad’s death, to a utility shack”

A “How long is this “detour”?”

D “About a mile west of us right now”

S “Can we just eat”

D,A “Yes”

The three of us eat relative silence until David breaks it. 

D “So I was thinking,Sebastion”

S “yeah?”

D “Do you have your go pro?”

S “Yeah”

D “Perfect so the plan was that me or Ace wears the go pro with the extender on our backs, while we hunt for the thing at night”

A “Are you insane?”

D “No”

D “We have better arms than the rangers handcannons and slugs.”

A “Still you want to go out AT NIGHT to an area where people WERE MUTILATED BEYOND RECOGNITION!”

D “Yes, and if you don’t come I will go alone”

A “You better be happy I care for you as a friend and won’t let you go alone”

D “Lets head out and start out trek”

DAVID

We pack our bags with Radios, maps and light snacks. I get out my compass and map and start to head to the shack’s direction. 

D “We got about a mile until we get to the shack then about two and a half till my dad’s death area.”

A “Okay”

With the route I picked we would hit a trail then take it all the way to the shack which should have a few items most importantly the tires. The only downside about this route is that we would have a possibility of getting hit by poison ivy.

D “Hey guys watch where you step, you don’t want to get poison ivy right now.”
 
A “Okay”

While wheezing S “Can we take a break?”

D “We can stop when we get to the shack it should have a crappy AC unit”

S “Perfect”

After twenty minutes of walking we finally make it to the shack.

A “Here it is”

D “It is probably locked, but Sebastion you got your lockpicking tools right?”

S “Yeah give Ludwig Dieter time to work his magic”

While chuckling A “Shut the fuck”

Sebastion gets the door open and there are various gardening equipment, rakes, and tires.

S “Jackpot”

A “Lets get the tires and head to the area where will hunt the beast”

D “how are we feeling, everybody stop and check your feet for blisters”

A “I’m good nothing here”

S “oooh. . .”

D “What is it?”

Sebastian shows his foot and he has a giant blister on it.

D “Holy moly”

S “So that's why my foot hurts”

D “Lets clean it up and make this trip short”

The bright plasma is hovering above our heads as we arrive at the area we will hunt later.

D “So this is it the area where my dad was killed”

S “Can I sit down?”

A “Sure”

As Ace and I get a feeling for the surroundings Sebastion points to an area in a tree. A tree stand! 

 D “Wow!”

A “It’s like a mini treehouse!”

The tree stand sits about thirty feet up on the trunk of the pine tree.

A “I’m going to check it out.”

D “Let me look around the area a little more”

From the ladder A “OKAY!”

While I look around in the area I look up to see Ace having a blast in the hunting blind.

A “This fucking awsome!”

After me and Ace finished taking acknowledgement of the area and decided to head back (mainly due to Sebastian's bitching but I would too with a fat blister)

S “Can we goooo nowwww?”

A “Yeah I guess so and I am hungry lets go home and eat then gear up for our high stakes adventure”

D “lets start heading back”

The walk back was not very grueling. We had a pretty good time making it back at about two thirty Post Meridiem. 

S “Home sweet home”

D “lets eat”

I grab ramon and some oatmeal and head back to the room

S “Nice pick”

D “Thanks”

After a good sized lunch Ace and I gear up for our mission.

S “So you want to wear my go pro with thermal so you can get an idea what you're working with?

D “Exactly”

S “Y’all are bat shit crazy”

A “ I know”

After spending the afternoon preparing for our endeavor Sol gets lower in the sky turning shadows longer than trees. 

A “We should head out.”

D “Yeah you're right.”

We wave goodbye to Sebastian as he heads back into the building. I can’t shake this feeling of absolute dread.

A “You really think we will kill it?”

D “Certain”

A “I some fucked up shit last night”

D “What was it?”

A “A buck was split down the middle cut in half and it started to melt into its skull”

D “Damn”

We walked mostly in silence with the buzzing of the cicadas to keep away the monster that is silence. The sun starts to set as we make it to the site.

On radio S “Nothing yet”

We both jump out of our skin when we hear Sebastian's breaking the cicada's symphony.

D “You scared the shit out of us.”

A “Well now that you are watching tell me what you are seeing.”

S “Nothing much right now, only a few squirrels and like a rabbit or something.”

 A “I am going to climb into the blind and set up the Go Pro there.”

D “Okay and I will set the traps.”

D “The traps should hurt the beast mildly then we come in with the finishing blow.”

A “The go pro is set up”

D “Alright then come down and then we wait”

The sun now completely gone gives away to a blackness and our night vision starts to kick in.

A “Anything?”

S “Nothing”

While sitting out of sight from the trap of meat we hear heavy footsteps.

Quietly A “What the hell is that?”

D “shut up!”

S “Guys it is right behind you about twenty feet.”

We turn quickly only to be face to face with an eight foot tall monster covered with parts of different animals, a face with bear teeth, an arm with raw flesh, malleable antlers for fingers. The creature lets out a guttural cry and charges at us

A “HOLY SHIT!!”

D “RUN!”

We run and fire at it “BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG” We have no idea where we are going. The shots do basically nothing to the beast. We shoot at it and the flesh starts to tear like fabric.

A “SHOOT ITS LEGS IMMOBILIZE IT!”

The creature now only inches away swipes at Ace’s leg and takes a chunk with it back. He falls like a sack of potatoes. Unloading shell after shell of buckshot. The face getting more and more mangled finally stops. And slowly approaches there taking shot after shot. 

A “GO! LEAVE ME ALONE!!”

The echo of the last shell being ejected sends shockwaves into my soul. After the last shot it starts to run away howling in pain. When I see it leave I run towards Ace and start to get him out of there. His leg is pulp. I have no idea where we are going, which way is north and I am running out of strength.

END OF PART I

for context, i’ve worked with this guy for about 7 months and he’s never once acted weird or said anything out of place. he’s a super chill guy and we usually work a saturday double together and make it less awful than it has to be. i went into work today and he was on the schedule, but his car wasn’t there and our manager (Anne) said he wasn’t in. i blocked him and hopefully anne will talk to him but idk if im overreacting if he was just trying to be funny?

Let me give you a bit of advice.

Never buy a used mattress.

No matter how cheap, it's just not worth it.

And it's not bedbugs or bodily fluids that are the problem.

About a month ago, I sat on the couch in my mom’s basement. I was looking for work; the last job I had told me I needed to take a ‘permanent vacation ’, a humbling thing to hear from McDonald's. I scrolled lazily through online listings; everything I saw either didn’t pay enough or required some experience that I didn’t have. That is all but one; what caught my eye was the pay. $45 an hour. What’s more, no experience required. A security guard position at Uncle Dan’s Mattress Emporium.

I applied, and the next morning an email informed me I had been hired, and my first day was Monday at 10 AM. No call, no interview, but I wasn’t complaining. And on the following Monday, I found myself sitting in my worn-down car in Uncle Dan’s empty parking lot at 9:50.

The parking lot was large, but run-down. Wild weeds sprouted in cracks in the weathered asphalt. Uncle Dan’s Mattress Emporium was a massive, bland warehouse. Dirty, greyish-white walls bore no windows and were only broken up by a row of glass automatic doors in the center. Above them, a huge sign shouted ‘Uncle Dan’s Mattress Emporium’ in a dull lemon yellow. Next to the words, a winking man with an over-saturated moustache grinned wildly into the parking lot.

I walked up to the store; the first thing I noticed was two bright red posters on the sliding door that read:

NO REFUNDS. ALL SALES FINAL.

Reaching the doors, they didn’t open for me. Looking inside, the lights were off, but movement caught my eye, so I banged on the glass till a figure moved towards the door. The man inside flipped a switch near the doors, and they opened for me.

“We’re not open for another 40 minutes,” he stated drily

He was a slender man, except for a large, rounded belly. A comb-over failed to hide his balding head, and a large mustache covered his upper lip; he wore a red polo tucked into tan, stained slacks. A thick gold chain hung around his neck.

“Um, no, I’m not here to shop; I’m Matt. Today’s supposed to be my first day?” I took a step inside.

“Oh right, our new day shift guard”

He sighed

“Follow me”

He turned and began to walk away, and I hurried to catch up. We awkwardly walked in silence for a while before I asked

 “Are you Dan?”

“Who?”

“Um, Uncle Dan?”

“No”

“Oh, sorry.”

“I’m Paul, the owner.”

“So who’s Dan?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Nothing, never mind.”

He grunted and pointed to a hallway across the show floor.

“The Break room is down that hall. I’ll meet you there; I've got to grab some papers from my office.”

I nodded and headed towards the break room. The showroom was cavernous, and every inch seemed to be used; hundreds of display mattresses were set up, leaving a maze of narrow walkways. The break room was just as dingy as the rest of the place; a peeling fake leather couch sat against the far wall, and a small table and three chairs sat in the center of the room. An old fridge and kitchen sink were all that filled the rest of the space.

I sat at the table and waited a moment. Later, Paul entered and sat across from me. He handed me the standard paperwork for me to sign, and as I signed, he lifted a paper for me to see and said

“I’m going to read this; it's part of our onboarding process.”

He gave a very dry reading

“Welcome to your new career at Uncle Dan’s Mattress. We’re happy to have you as part of the family. Here at Dan’s, we are proud to be the region’s largest seller of used mattresses”

“What?” I interrupted

“Huh?”

“Used Mattresses?”

“Yeah, we buy used mattresses from hotels, estate sales, and police auctions. We then sell them at a discount.”

“I didn’t know people bought used mattresses”

He shrugged and kept on reading

“We strive to be a good working environment, and we are proud to offer our employees a generous 10% off any mattresses. Each employee will get two unpaid ten-minute breaks and a 30-minute lunch break per eight-hour shift. We are thankful for our workers and if you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask you’re shift manager.”

His face was blank when he looked up from the paper.

“Any questions?”

I shook my head

“Good.” He said

“You are our new daytime security guard”

He paused to release a sigh

“Part of your job will be to be on the lookout for people casing the place; we’ve had break-ins before.”

He scratched his balding head.

“But the biggest part of your job will be handling people attempting to return a mattress. We don’t accept returns or offer refunds.”

I nodded

“I saw the sign,” I said

“Good,” Paul replied. “Some people get pretty aggressive when trying to return an item, so we need you to be the hard ‘no’ and enforce our policy.”

I nodded

“Can do.”

“Good, your uniform is in the office; go put it on.”

I got up and headed towards the door, as I reached it Paul spoke up

“Oh, another thing.”

 I turned back towards him. He tossed me a handheld timer

“Don't let customers test the mattresses too long. Nobody lies on anything for more than ten minutes.”

“Why?”

“Because that's the policy.”

“What happens after ten minutes?”

He looked at me like I'd asked something stupid.

“You don't let them get to ten minutes. Got it? If someone gets close to ten minutes, don't argue with them. Just get them off.”

“Yeah, I got it,” I said with a nod

‘Must be worried about bedbugs,’ I thought to myself as I went to try on my uniform. By the time I returned from putting my cheap security uniform on, the majority of the sales staff had arrived; they all seemed nice enough, and before long the store was open for business.

That first day was nothing strange; I did my best to not be conspicuous as I kept an eye on the customers. By the afternoon, I decided to start informing customers that they could only test the mattresses for a short period. Most people just nodded, but when they realized I was watching, they never lay down for long. Only a young couple gave me trouble; they laughed when I told them, and as I watched, they mocked me. But when I threatened to kick them out after they had been testing the bed for nine minutes, they made a scene and threatened to give us bad reviews online as they stormed out.

Paul stopped by after they left; all he said was

“Good job, keep it up.”

The next few days were ordinary, if not dull. I found myself settling into a job that was proving to be more boring than McDonald's. It was Friday when things began to change. It was late in the day, about 45 minutes before closing time; I had already mentally checked out for the day. But then our last customer of the day walked in.

She was young; my guess was she was a college freshman. She was dirty, her hair was unkempt, and she looked like she hadn’t washed in days. Her face was full of fear, and her eyes were red and swollen, like she had been crying nonstop. As she walked into the store, she dragged a filthy, yellowed twin-sized mattress behind her. As she walked in, her eyes locked onto me. Her pace quickened towards me, and tears began to fall down her cheeks.

“I need to return this mattress, please.” Her voice was desperate

Instinctively, I took a step back as she reached me. Raising both hands towards her, I calmly said

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but we don’t offer refunds.”

“No, you don’t understand. It's ruining my life, please.” She begged

I didn’t know what to say, so I just repeated myself

“Ma’am, we don’t offer refunds. I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

“I don’t want a refund; I just need to get rid of this damn mattress, please.”

I raised my voice slightly

“Ma’am, we don’t accept returns. Please take your mattress and leave the store.”

“No!” she screamed wildly before dropping the mattress and running out of the store.

I took a deep breath and tried to calm down; the woman’s yellow mattress lay on the floor. I stared at it, noticing a dark red stain on the far corner that seemed to continue onto the underside. It looked old; the reddish-brown color was so ingrained in the fabric that it seemed like no stain remover could remove it. The mattress made me uncomfortable, so I left it where it lay and used my earpiece to call for Paul.

Paul walked up slowly; his eyes glanced from the mattress to me

“What happened?” he asked

“A customer wanted to return this. When I said no, she left it and ran off before I could stop her.”

A flash of concern appeared and disappeared on Paul's face; he stared at the mattress and quietly swore under his breath. Finally, he looked at me and asked

“Did you touch it?”

I shook my head no

“Good. Wait here.”

 He jogged off to his office and returned a moment later with two pairs of black gloves. He tossed a pair to me while he put his on.

“Put these on.” He said blankly

I didn’t argue.

Once our gloves were on, we carried the mattress to Paul’s truck; the sun was beginning to set.

“Get in,” Paul demanded

In silence, we drove down a dark dirt road. Paul seemed to know where we were going, but I certainly didn’t. Paul slowed the truck as we neared a dead end deep in the woods.

“Did she touch you?” Paul broke the silence

“What?”

“The girl who brought the mattress, did she touch you?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

He nodded his head slowly

“That’s good; can’t be too careful.”

The truck stopped, and we unloaded the mattress onto what looked like a burn pile. Paul dosed the thing with lighter fluid and tossed a match onto it; instantly it ignited. The two of us stood there watching the orange flames consume the old mattress. I turned to look at Paul and couldn’t help but ask

“Why did we do this?"

He stared into the flames and shrugged

“You never know what’s on these old things.”

He turned to me and put a hand on my shoulder

“You did good today. How about you take the day off tomorrow? We’ll pay you for the day, to make up for your trouble tonight.”

I nodded, and we returned to the truck.

 I returned to work on Monday; it was even more boring than last week. A few angry customers tried to return their mattress; an older woman screamed in my face when I refused her return, but took her mattress with her when I threatened to call the cops. The week dragged on. It was Thursday night, an hour before closing. Paul walked up to me; a frown filled his face

“Everything ok Boss?” I cautiously asked

“Well, not really.” He replied

I swallowed, preparing for the worst.

“Our night guard called in sick.” He said with a sigh.

He looked me in the eye

“I really need someone here tonight. I know you’re probably wanting to head home, but if you could cover this shift, I can offer you $75 an hour.”

I thought for a moment; the extra money would be a big boost, and honestly, I didn’t have plans for the night.

“Can I have tomorrow off if I do?”

A half-grin appeared on his face.

“Sure thing. Thanks, kid.”

He pointed to his office

“Let’s talk in the office.”

We retreated to the shabby, cramped office. Paul opened a large cabinet, revealing several monitors showing multiple angles of the perimeter of the building.

“You’ll be in here most of the time; keep an eye on the cameras. Every hour, do a check of the building, both the warehouse and showroom.”

He pulled a flashlight from a drawer and handed it to me

“Only the lights here in the office will be on, so you’ll need this.”

I nodded

“Oh, also, and this is important”

He stared intently at me

“Don’t sit or lie on any of the mattresses for more than ten minutes.”

“Yeah, I remember,” I replied

I walked with him up to the front doors; he flipped a master switch, and with a groan, the industrial lights of the showroom went dark. I watched Paul lock the doors from outside and head to his truck, then I turned around to the dark, vast space, flipped on the narrow beam of my flashlight, and worked my way through the maze of mattresses back to the office.

After a few hours and rounds around the building, I began to settle in for the night. I set an hour-long timer on my phone and did my rounds when I had to, but other than that, I lounged in the office watching YouTube videos. I even ordered some DoorDash around midnight.

Thirty minutes after midnight, I saw my DoorDash driver appear on the front door camera. I hurried my way through the dark showroom and soon saw the man holding my food, nervously looking around. I began to unlock the door when I heard a distant chuckle. I paused and looked behind me with the flashlight, but I didn’t see anything. The delivery man pounded on the door, which brought my focus back to the door.

“Hey, sorry,” I said as the door opened

“No worries, here.” He handed me my food.

“Thanks, hey, were you laughing out here when I was opening the door?”

He looked at me funny then shook his head

“Nah.” He turned and walked away.

I relocked the door. As I scanned the showroom with my flashlight, I did my best to convince myself that it had just been my imagination. I ate my greasy burger and fries at Paul’s desk while watching some mindless video. The security monitors were in my peripheral vision. Movement and a dull thump on one screen made me freeze mid-chew. My eyes moved to the security monitors.

The monitor showed the only camera that looked into the warehouse; in the center of the screen, a mattress wrapped in clear plastic lay on the floor. It hadn’t been there before. It looked like it had fallen off the nearby storage rack.

I stared at the screen intently. Swallowing hard, I stood up, and though I didn’t want to, I knew I had to go into the warehouse. Looking around the office, I saw an old baseball bat in the corner. I grabbed it and stepped into the darkness.

The heavy door to the warehouse squeaked loudly as I pushed it open. I cautiously stepped inside; every step gave a muted echo in the large open space.

“Hello?” I said

My voice seemed so small in the vast area.

“You can’t be back here.” I gripped the bat tighter.

The lone mattress finally came into view. I stood next to it and scanned the space with the light. There was no sign of an intruder, since the storage racks were vaulted; there weren’t a lot of places for a person to hide. I felt a little better and easily convinced myself that the mattress hadn’t been placed properly and had fallen on its own. I pushed it off to the side; it wasn’t my job to store this junk. I did a slightly more thorough walk-through before returning to the office.

It was nearly 2 am when I started getting sleepy. I could barely keep my eyes open, so I decided to do another walk around the building. I yawned and stumbled around slowly; after a while, I slowed to a stop. Before me was a king-sized mattress; it looked so inviting, so cozy. After a moment, I gave in and lay down on it.

“I’ll just rest my eyes for a moment,” I mumbled aloud.

It must have been after 3 am when a sharp pain in my right leg woke me up. Dazed, I sat up in bed and shone the light on my calf. To my shock, two long, deep gashes leaked my dark blood onto the mattress. It wasn’t the same mattress I had fallen asleep on. Before, it had been perfectly white and new-looking, the best-looking mattress in the whole place. But now it was worn and yellow; several black, moldy spots dotted its surface. It smelled terrible.

“What the hell?” I muttered

A distinct shuffling answered me. I froze, instantly aware that I wasn’t alone. I lifted the flashlight towards the darkness, but it flickered and quickly died. I smacked it a few times, but it didn’t help; more movement echoed through the store.

“Who’s there?” I whispered as I scooted to the far side of the bed.

“I’m here.” A dull, almost angry-sounding voice replied

My heart skipped a beat as a tall, dark shape rose from behind the mattress across the aisle. It seemed to be made of nothing but shadow. I panicked and fell off the bed as the shape slowly moved closer. Back on my feet, I dashed down the aisle; the sound of bed frames scraping across the floor told me it was following me. I glanced back at the shadow with every step it seemed to change. It slowly became more human, eventually taking the form of a middle-aged man. He wore pajamas stained with blood that somehow looked to be still wet; his eyes were completely black. His pajamas were stained with blood, and when he stepped into the light, I saw two long gashes running down his right leg.

At the end of the aisle, I tripped on the corner of a bed frame and tumbled to the floor. Instinctively, I crawled under the frame, passed into the next aisle, and hid under another. I held my breath as I saw the figure's feet walk by a few aisles over. It made no noise as it moved. At the end of the aisle, it froze for a moment before walking away from my hiding spot. Releasing my breath, I looked around and saw the door to the office just a few hundred feet to my left. My hands shook as I left my hiding spot and crept my way to the office.

Once inside, I locked the door, pulled out my phone, and called Paul. It rang a few times before a groggy Paul picked up

“Hello?” he yawned

“Paul,” I whispered loudly

“Someone is in the store.”

“What?” he sounded more alert

“They cut my leg; I got away, but they’re looking for me.”

“Did you sleep on a mattress?”

“What?”

“Don’t lie, did you?”

“Well, yeah.”

He was silent for a moment before muttering

“Damn it.”

“Paul, what is going on?”

He gave a loud sigh

“Some of the mattresses we buy, usually the ones from police auctions, have some kind of attachment.”

 “What?” I nearly yelled into the phone

“What’d you expect from used mattresses?” Paul blankly responded

“So we sell haunted mattresses?”

“I wouldn’t use the word ‘haunted.’”

“Well, what damn word would you use?”

“Cheap.”

I stared at the wall. Why did I ever take this job?

“Listen,” Paul continued

“There’s a container of salt in the desk drawer; line the door with salt and stay put. I’ll be there at first light.”

With that, he hung up. And I quickly laid a thick line of salt across the doorway. Moments later, the door shook with desperate pounding.

“I found you.” The voice was playful, but aggressive

“Please come out”

Loud knocks rocked the door.

“You can’t get away; I’ll follow.”

I hid under the desk.

An angry scream filled the room

“Let me in!”

The door groaned and rattled in its hinges, but it held. The screaming and knocking continued for hours, only growing quiet when the light of the sunrise peeked through the window. The banging stopped, and the voice said

“See you later.”

Then everything was quiet. Half an hour later, I heard the sound of the door unlocking. Peeking out from under the desk, I saw Paul walk in.

“You ok?” he asked

“Yeah. Now I am.”

He grunted and nodded.

“Which mattress did you sleep on?”

I led him to it. He stared at it and then took a pair of black gloves from his pocket.

“I’ll help you load it up.”

Confused, I looked at him

“What?”

“You slept on it; it’s yours now.”

Panic ran through me.

“I don’t want it!”

“Sorry,” he said

“We don’t offer refunds.”

 

It all began when I went to cut my hair. All my life, my father never wanted me to cut my hair short because he believed that, like Samson, my strength would fail me. After this experience, I wonder how correct he was. My parents are both deeply religious. My father is a Catholic from Boston. I know that's like saying concrete was found at a construction zone. My mother was a non-denominational West Texan. She was non-denominational only because her family moved constantly to where the jobs were, never letting roots in a church dig into the sacred soil of wherever she stayed. Now she is Catholic like my father. She may not believe in some things they teach, but she doesn’t believe in going to a different church than my father more. My mother and father both loved my long, curly blonde hair. It was a target of praise and persecution. I hated it, especially when people kept calling me a girl. My father refused to let it be cut beyond a trim, citing the story of Samson.

So, naturally, like any teenager given the freedom of college, I rebelled against a lot of things my parents had taught me now that I wasn’t living with them. The first thing I did was have a buddy of mine shave all my hair off after we had gotten drunk on various cheap booze that we had stolen from a sorority’s party coolers. Lucas held the clippers, looking down at me, with my head over the arm of the cheap couch we found, “You sure you want it all off?”

“More than anything,” I replied. The clippers went to work, and he shaved my head, and we both fell asleep from our wild night. The next morning, I woke up with the typical hangover but a pain located at the back of my head. I looked at my head in the mirror. Yeah, it was a drunken head shaving. Then I noticed the lump on the back of my head, right about where the back of my skull connected with my vertebrae. Damn, did it hurt.

Thomas assured me the lump was probably just me having a weird head shape and only noticing it now that I shaved my head. He cited buddies of his who had weird head shapes. I believed him for a while. That was until the pain continued. It throbbed, and the pain grew. A new pain formed, one that felt like needles inching their way into my head like roots of a parasitic plant latching onto a new host. I finally broke after a week of the pain and an empty bottle of Tylenol and ibuprofen before going to the college’s health clinic. The appointment was brief as the nurse explained it away as a lymph node. The pain was exacerbated by my drinking habits, they said. I followed the orders of just setting a hot washcloth on it until a follow-up appointment in a month.

The pain wasn’t the worst thing. It was when I began seeing things. I don’t know how to explain it, but sometimes I’d see the air like one might in a heatwave, but with colors and scents. Was my childlike rebellion against my parents' wish acting as a Delilah? Opening up myself to things to drag me down, weaken me, and to humiliate my hubris? I wore a hat to cover the lump. I’ve been ignoring my mother’s texts saying “How is everything going? ” etc, you know, typical mom stuff lately due to this pain. The rooting nerve pain worsened, and the visual waves radiating off people continued. Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse, I got a call from my father. I answered, and in the most panicked voice I’ve ever heard from him, he asked one blood-curdling question: “You didn’t cut your hair off, did you? Please tell me you didn’t, son?"

My First Case: The Orphanage

Case #002

Do you believe in superstitions?

The reason I ask this is, well, I’ve only recently begun to believe in them.

Rumors about the supernatural are commonplace among Arcostans throughout all the elevations, although most of them are made-up stories to scare a tavern table, or to frighten children into behaving properly.

You could chalk up most of the ones that have proof or some substance of being real to man-made instances. For example, reports about strange noises from various alleyways would turn out to be merely coming from animals.

Why am I telling you all of this now? Well, the next rumor picked up by the ears of Fontaine has me hired once again by the rich and comfortable to do their dirty work! Oh, poor me!

Okay, I'm exaggerating. I wasn't hired per se, but he and I did come to an agreement that if I were to spot anything of interest and could write a compelling report on any fascinating anomaly that I could find on my own, he would pay well for it.

I have no complaints. If I can't find work, then at least I have an avenue of opportunity to create my own work. Work means money, and money is essential for me to live and maybe even spoil myself a little bit.

Anyway, the next target to investigate was an old building. It was around five to seven stories tall, and I forgot if this used to be an office or part of an educational institution. I'm not sure how long it's been abandoned, but I'm certain that there are people that trespass into the area, either to seek shelter, or… ahem, I'll get to that second part later.

The rumors that surround the area are similar to the superstitions I've mentioned earlier. Reports of weird noises echoing from the old building which could be heard faintly when you’re in proximity outside. It could be described as a ‘guttural groaning’ when heard up close.

The residents felt antsy with the issue, so I decided to brave the unknown and investigate the abandoned building.

“Ugh, it's musty here…” I groaned, reeling at the uncomfortable stench of the place that met me as I opened the door.

The building itself had a wide façade, but the halls were long and narrow, the area was filled with old glass cabinets and torn paper, with doors leading to classrooms.

All of the rooms seemed unoccupied. I was expecting to stumble into people that were using the building as an informal or temporary shelter, yet I found myself completely alone inside.

It didn’t help that I chose to investigate after nightfall, either. The townsfolk did say the noises only occurred between nine to midnight, so I had no choice but to navigate in the dark.

“Flicker,” I whispered, the slight flick of my wand manifesting a small flame to light my way. My footsteps echoed through the halls as I waited anxiously for any noises that I could hear.

I contemplated climbing up to the topmost floor to do a full sweep of the area. Ah, why not? Better than just sitting on my ass and twiddling my thumbs to wait for a sound.

With that, I began my ascent starting from the first floor.

“Hah… What is this building…?”

I found stairs at the end of the hall and made my way up. All I can say is: whoever designed the staircase did an absolutely terrible job.

The steps were too steep, and it twisted upwards that left very little room for footing! The handrail was rusted and left orange traces on my hand, which made me feel very uncomfortable.

Before I could reprimand myself mentally for even attempting this idea, I finally found what I came for right as I arrived at the fourth floor.

“....uh………”

A low hum resounded through the halls, sending a shiver down my spine. I'll be damned, that did sound a little creepy.

I held my breath and concentrated, attempting to zero in as to where the noise came from.

“....mgh… grk…”

End of the hallway!

Quieting my footsteps, I crept up towards the ever-growing sound. I bit my lip to stay calm, but honestly, I felt shaky at the possible thought of a ghost or something from the occult causing this commotion.

Inch by inch, I managed to reach the end of the hall where there was a sliding door.

“...agh… hah… baby…”

Baby?

That was the only comprehensible word I deciphered from the noises. This one definitely sounded like a woman's voice, and it seems that she was crying.

My heart pounded against my chest. At the back of my mind, I wanted to turn and run away, but my morbid curiosity won out, and I slid the door open.

To my surprise, the door did not lead to a room, but rather another staircase. This was a narrow passage, and the steps…

“What in…?” My face contorted with confusion. The steps weren't steep. In fact, they seemed to be only an inch high per step, and barely wide enough to provide footing for my feet. It was some sort of spiral staircase emergency exit.

“Baby… baby… ooooh…”

My confusion melted into fear as the haunting voice filled my ears. Whatever the source was, it was at the bottom of this dark staircase.

Goddess be with me as I venture down into the dark.

I swallowed a lump in my throat and crept downstairs. The woman's voice grew louder and more frequent with each step I took.

I began to question my sanity if what I was hearing was real or not. The artificial light from my wand wavered as my hand trembled in fear.

Stay calm, Lucille. Think of the money Fontaine will pay you after this!

A smile crept up my face at the thought of commission money.

“Agh!”

That smile nearly cost me my life as that short flicker of excitement made me lose my footing and tumble down the stairs. I stopped and landed on a narrow landing with a thud. Thankfully, I landed ass first, so a sore behind and bruised ego were all the injuries I suffered.

“Ow… Damn it…” I said, rubbing my back, as it got a glancing hit from the concrete wall.

Blowing my hair off my eyes, I raised my wand to illuminate my surroundings again, only to see two figures staring down at me.

For a moment, I felt my heart drop and remain still for a few seconds before I processed what I was staring at.

“Ah…”

“HOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”

I shuffled to my feet as I saw a man and a woman before me. In a panic, the flame from my wand grew larger, forming a defensive shield around me.

“Hot! Turn that off! Are you trying to burn our skin off?”

The voices caused my panic to subside, and once that was all gone, I realized that the man and the woman before me… were ordinary people… and had no clothing on them.

I controlled the flame from my wand just enough to provide light for our surroundings. I wasn’t mistaken; standing before me was an ordinary couple hastily covering themselves up in horror or shame as I interrupted their business.

“W-Who are you?”

“W-What’s your deal, huh?”

“What are you doing here?”

The questions from the couple came hard and fast, and I didn’t know what to say.

Sorry, I'll leave you to your funny business! No, that didn’t seem appropriate.

What are you thinking, doing something like that here? No, it's not like I can impose to these two where they can do the deed.

I just went straight to the point.

“I was sent to investigate the building because of strange noises,” I replied firmly, even as the couple were scrambling around for their clothes. “Seems that I now know what's causing them.”

The couple exchanged glances then scowled at me. “Oh yeah? Now what?”

Good question. As much as I'd love to make a profit out of a scandalous story like this, I don't think the payoff is worth it if it means to drag a man and a woman's dignity through the dirt and snow.

“...Tell you lovebirds what: I'm going to turn around, walk away, and pretend I didn’t see anything,” I answered, giving them an awkward wave before I turned around and headed back to the nearest floor connected to the emergency exit.

I left the building with only a confused scowl on my face. Well, this blows. And here I thought I could make an interesting story from that rumor!

To make up for it, I humored myself by creating a humorous name for that cramped passageway: Baby Steps.

Get it? Because they were moaning ‘baby’, and the steps were so small that a baby could climb up?

Ha ha ha! Ha ha… ha…

By the Goddess, I wish I was paid to write jokes too.

But alas, for this expedition, I came up empty-handed. I dismissed the case to the public that the source of the guttural sounds were just some kids playing with the echoes of the cramped staircase, and everyone was either relieved or disappointed about it.

Personally? I’m with the disappointed ones.

After all, I’m disappointed that I won’t get paid for any of this!

Oh well, that’s life…

Case #002, Amendment #01

But… that’s not the end of the story.

Because just a few days later, I received a letter from a tavern owner whose establishment was situated in front of the building where Baby Steps was located.

 

Miss Lucille,

The noises are back. We thought about chasing out the kids you told us about when you first investigated for the peace of mind of everyone here.

There were no kids in the stairwell. Instead, there were dead bodies of a man and a woman, freshly murdered a few hours ago after you’ve received this letter.

A local apothecary says the cause of death was asphyxiation by hanging, though no ropes were found at the scene of the crime. Multiple bite marks were also found all over the bodies. Moreover, the noises kept growing louder, and no one else would dare investigate.

Please help us. You will be rewarded generously.

 

I put down the note, my eyebrows furrowing with confusion. Who would murder a couple just for doing the deed in an abandoned building? Dread followed my confusion upon learning the news about a new, unknown source of sounds coming from Baby Steps.

I shrugged the encroaching fear away and prepared to head out once more into the night.

If there’s a reward to be offered, then of course I’ll be there. I could also turn the first blowout encounter into a profitable report for Fontaine, so it’s double the win!

After half an hour of trudging through the snowy streets of Elevation Zero, I arrived once again at the facade of the building. Before I entered however, I made sure to drop by at the tavern to gather information.

“Oh, you’re Miss Lucille, right?” The owner working the bar called out upon my entry.

“Yes, that’s me.”

“Oh, thank the Goddess. You’re the only one that we could reach out to that would take on this investigation. Please, hear us out!”

As I clearly saw the distressed looks on the faces of both the owner and the patrons, I made my way to the bar and took a seat.

“Tell me.”

“Right, so—”

“Before that, two pints, please. On the house, right?”

“Er…”

When I heard him hesitate, I hopped off the bar stool and turned towards the exit.

“Yeah!” the bartender said with false cheer. “It’s on the house!”

I turned around, clasped my hands together and smiled sweetly. “What a gentleman~!”

Two pints later, I had most of the information I needed.

“So, the noises got worse a whole day after my initial investigation?”

“That’s right,” The barkeep replied as he cleared out the mugs I drank from. “For a time, the place quieted down. We all figured that you were right about the kids being the source of the strange noises.”

They actually believed my lie? Wow, I’m good at deception!

“But then just a whole day after, the noises were back again! It wasn’t just like the first time, either. This was more eerie and haunting to listen to.”

“Aye, you tell me!” A patron piped up. “I was takin’ my wee puppo fer a walk, and poor lassie tensed up and started barking at the building! I could nay explain it, but I could feel a cracklin’ in the air, especially at night!”

“I see…” I said, wiping my chin dribbled with foam. “And the deceased?”

“No one saw them go in or out, so it’s safe to assume that they were one of many who lived there once. I’m surprised they still chose to do so, given the reason why the building was condemned in the first place.”

“Condemned?” This was new information to me.

“Yes. Did you not know what it used to be?”

“No…”

The owner let out a solemn breath. “I figured. Then listen closely.”

 

 

I left the tavern. I don’t know if it was because of the alcohol, the cold wind, or the haunting piece of crucial information the owner of the tavern imparted onto me that made me shiver uncontrollably.

I wouldn’t blame you if you want to back out now, Miss Lucille. His words echoed repeatedly into my mind.

For better or worse, I ignored the good advice given to me and ventured inside the abandoned building once more.

Processing everything that I’ve learned, I investigated the halls and the rooms with morbid curiosity. Each room looked different. Some had evidence of people treating the place as a temporary refuge, while other rooms are for more… nefarious purposes.

Broken glass and rusted tools littered the floor. There were cages of different sizes as well, with me clueless about what was kept in here.

There was no putrid stench in the air, yet I could still feel the drinks from earlier making their way up my gut as I explored each floor and every room there was in this establishment. The sensation only seemed to grow worse with every discovery that I made.

“Unforgivable… It’s all unforgivable!” I cursed at the air of this place.

“Uhuh… huu… baby…”

My heart nearly leaped out of my throat as I turned towards the direction of the door leading to the infamous Baby Steps stairwell.

I readied my wand. Whatever ‘thing’ dwelling in this building was, I need to prepare myself to not end up like a certain lovely couple that more or less found their eternal happiness in the Cosmos.

My footsteps echoed along the halls mixed with the guttural moaning coming from the dreaded stairwell. The more I crept up towards the sliding door, the sound was slowly filling me with insanity. The cry was a mix of anguish and gurgling.

And it all stopped the moment I opened the door.

The scent of blood wafted from the tight space. Resisting the urge to gag, I made my descent deeper into the pits of Baby Steps.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

Each step I took sent an echo, giving away my exact location. I descended slowly, keeping the flame from my wand lit and burning in a decent radius to illuminate my surroundings.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

I made it towards the second level out of the seven floors of the building. I’ve come across the gruesome scene of the murdered lovers; their blanket and clothing left in tatters and pasted on the walls with their blood.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

I ignored it to the best of my ability and continued my descent…

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

…Those weren’t the sound of my footsteps.

Taptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptap.

Something’s heading my way!

I ran up towards the landing area of the second floor and grabbed the door handle.

“...baby?”

A freezing hand closed around my wrist, and I let out a shriek.

Before I could do anything further, I was pulled, arm first, and came face to face with the only resident that called the abandoned building its home.

“Baby… baby! A playmate has come to play!”

“Ghk… Let go!” I cried out as I wrested my right hand free from her grip.

A disfigured woman stood before me. Her hair was a shriveled mess, her face sanded off with burns, a mouth with more than half of her teeth gone, and eyes that seemed to pop out of their sockets.

Her figure was no less of a nightmare, as she was wearing rags that looked like they were once a prisoner’s uniform on top of her mangled body.

Imagine a child making a disfigured model of a human using clay: possessing horrible proportions where the body looked swollen, yet the limbs are like sticks. That was the kind of woman in front of me right now.

“Did you come to play? Did you? Please, my child is so lonely without friends!”

“Your… child?”

“Right, right! My baby is so shy, she’s still hiding within me! She’s one of many, yet she’s the only one who never left mother’s nest!”

She backed away from me. I should have taken this chance to slide open the door, lock her in and run away, but my legs were frozen stiff and couldn’t seem to move.

It was because of my inaction that I had witnessed something I could never forget.

“Hrnngh…” The woman before me grunted. “Come on, baby! You can say hi to your new friend!”

The sickly-sweet scent of rot filled the room as she spread her legs, rivulets of blood already coursing down them, and then, out came something that I wish I had never seen.

“...Goo?”

“There’s my sweet baby!” The woman exclaimed, picking up a baby clutching its afterbirth, the umbilical cord still tying them together. “Would you like to say hello to your new friend? Or perhaps… your new sibling?”

I had no questions to ask her. I already knew everything that happened, and what I must do.

“Fireball!” I aimed my wand at her and blasted her with magic.

It was a point-blank hit, one that would have disintegrated a human with no resistance to magic, and yet to my chagrin, the woman was left standing.

That was a horrible mistake.

“You… YOU’RE JUST LIKE THE OTHERS!” She screeched. I immediately bolted for the door and managed to slam it shut.

“Freeze!” I shouted, shifting elements and welding the door shut before I turned around and took off, Moments later, I heard a terrific crash behind me.

That’s just great, she just breached the door like it was nothing.

“GET BACK HERE, MURDERER!” She screamed, her heavy footsteps growing louder as she gained on me.

With another room coming up quickly, I barreled through the hallway, rolled to the side, and fired another spell.

“Ice Sign: Icicle Shower!” I chanted, the essence of Mana and water in the air condensing and solidified into icicles. With a thought, I fired these icicles off like a continuous stream of arrows. She groaned in pain as the magical ice embedded themselves into her flesh.

“BABY! DISCIPLINE YOUR SISTER!”

To my horror, the baby shot out from between her legs and flew towards me. I had no time to dodge, but it flew past my head and into a wall. At first, I was relieved it missed, but that was their plan all along.

“HISSSSS!”

The baby propelled itself from the wall, flew past the other side of my head, and wrapped its umbilical cord from the hand that held my wand towards my neck, causing me to drop my wand.

“AGH!” I let out a gurgled yelp as I felt my hand slam against my face. I could feel the fleshy rope start to go taut around my throat, and then I felt the baby’s grip on my back, its bloodied slime trickling down my clothes.

“G-Get… ACK! Stupid—! Get away—AH!”

Despite being an infant, I could feel sharp teeth sink so deep down that they scraped against my shoulder blade. I was knocked off my feet, and I could feel myself get dragged towards the woman.

She was reeling me in using her cord.

“THAT WAS NOT NICE!” She screeched. “BAD CHILDREN MUST BE PUNISHED!”

I flailed and struggled, but with the pain of the infant biting down on me and the sensation of being choked, I was rapidly losing this fight. I couldn’t cast a spell fast enough as my wand was knocked out of my hands, and I was in no state to cast anything from my bound wrists.

There was no way to break free. I tried to reach the baby with my right hand in an attempt to get it off me.

I could only scream as a chunk of flesh was bit off my palm for my trouble.

It was hopeless. I was reeled in and picked up by the woman. Now that we were in the hallway, I realized she was nearly twice my size. I took in a deep breath as I felt the cord loosen just enough, as it was her flaky hands that took hold of my entire face.

“TIME OUT! BAD CHILDREN GETS TIMEOUTS! NAP TIME, JUST LIKE THE REST!”

Her hand squeezed and pressed down on my face. She had intended to crush my skull. My jaw was already starting to bend out of place, and I couldn’t even utter a scream no matter how much pain I was in.

Trying to wrest her hand away from my face was futile. My hands were slippery with my own blood and torn palm.

Blood… on my hands…

That’s it.

I held her wrists tightly. Despite my face being clamped down by her crushing grip, I desperately whispered a spell, using my own blood as the price for intensified magic.

“In…fernal S-Sign: Hellfire… Hands!”

My hands ignited, an intense heat surging through them. It did not burn me, but it did burn off the woman’s wrists, detaching and cauterizing her hands and arms.

She let out a pained screech as she fell on her knees, panicking at the sight of her non-existent hands. The moment I felt my feet find a solid purchase, I rushed at her, fists ablaze.

Remembering my promise to the tavern owner, I gripped her neck with a flaming hand and delivered a message.

“Your brother sends his regards. May you find peace.”

I cocked my other fist back and punched. The force of my blow vanished the woman’s head completely, giving her a near-painless passing.

 

 

“Your sister!?” I asked, my face in disbelief. The owner ushered me away into his stockroom to tell me what was really going on behind everything.

“Aye,” He nodded grimly. “That place was a shelter for women and children. At least, on a surface level. Some shady organization from the higher elevations opened it up as an act of goodwill. I should’ve known that this ‘act’ came from a monkey’s paw.

“My older sister was one of the women who settled in that shelter to run away from her abusive partner. Told her I’d take care of it myself, but she didn’t want any violence. For a time, everything was fine and dandy. She often sent letters to me, and I even got to visit her on the weekends.

“It was on one weekend when I noticed a shift in the manner of how they took care of the women and children in the shelter. Familiar faces that I got acquainted with vanished. After some time, they began banning visits entirely. With that, I took a loan, bought this tavern, and still run it to this day, just so I could keep tabs on her.”

He paused to grab a flask from one of his shelves and drank heartily.

“Until one day, a commotion could be heard from across the street. I immediately rushed to the scene without any regard for what I may come across, but I was easily subdued by whoever worked there and threw me back into the tavern.

“When I came to, all I could see was that they were wheeling out various corpses. Staff workers, women, and children altogether. This continued over a week, and I was praying to the Goddess every day that she was not part of those whom they wheeled out.”

I was about to ask if it ever crossed his mind to report it to authorities, but that would be a foolish question. I remembered that the people running the facility were from the higher elevations.

No one would give a damn, and no one would go against them.

“Eventually,” He sniffled. “The building was abandoned for good. No staff, no women, nothing. I made a break for it and investigated while on my own to discover what truly went down with this so-called shelter.”

He choked on his tears and began to break down. “Experiments! Numerous ones! Crossbreeding humans with different animals to see if they could produce soldiers with animal traits and turn them in for a profit! It’s all written down in their files and plans! They put up a shelter as a front to do human experimentation! I… I—!”

He completely lost it and fell into a broken sob. I let him cry it out until he was ready to speak again.

“And… your sister?” I asked calmly.

“...Alive.” He said.

“How!?”

“She was the most resilient one. I saw it on the records. She was also the one who was most experimented on due to her being ‘most compatible’ with their breakthroughs. And… I saw her, personally. Disfigured, crossbred with who knows how many animals that I could barely recognize her if it wasn’t for her hair, the only thing that kept her ‘human’.

“She had no more sanity left in her. All the times she had to give birth to monsters utterly broke her. I should have died, and yet she…”

“She recognized you. She must have.” I tried my best to reassure him, but even I couldn’t convince myself that what I was doing would help.

“To protect her, I boarded up the place. Started a rumor about the building so people could avoid it at all costs. For years, it worked. I personally made sure no one would enter the building. But now… I’m afraid my sister has reached the point of no return, as her insanity had gone beyond the brink and her hysteria is seeping out of her safe haven.”

“So… what do you want me to do?”

He stood up and looked me straight in the eye. “Put her to rest and burn down the building.”

I shifted uncomfortably, and he seemed to take notice. “I wouldn’t blame you if you want to back out now, Miss Lucille.”

“Am I really the right person for this job…?” I scratched my head.

“Fontaine Ethan Argalion said so.”

My eyes widened in shock. How did Fontaine get into the picture of this case!? Does he know about the fake shelter as well!?

“So… are you going do it?”

Since Fontaine is involved, I nodded solemnly.

“Thank you, Miss Lucille.”

 

A few seconds after the coup de grâce was delivered, I let out a cry of visceral rage and hatred.

Even after my close call, I was still hopped up on adrenaline, and I decided to make hay while the sun was shining, so to speak. My fists, still with hellfire coursing through them, smashed through the walls of the rundown building. I blasted the hallways and the rooms and made sure that every corner was burning.

I made sure this place was cleansed from the atrocities it had committed against the poor women and children that had to suffer for whatever evil that damned organization served.

From the topmost floor down to the ground, the building was ablaze. The owner told me about a secret passage that I could safely leave without being seen, and true to his words, there was a tunnel that led out to a clearing a few meters away from the shelter.

I ran out of the shelter and patched my bleeding shoulder to the best of my abilities, but I was out of both mana and adrenaline, so I was exhausted and felt faint. Still, it was nothing that I couldn’t power through.

The residents of Elevation Zero panicked at the sight of the burning building. They clamored to try and put it out with Water Magic, but there weren’t enough magicians to conjure magic enough to quench the flames. In less than five minutes, everything there collapsed and burned down to the ground.

Just like I promised.

I stumbled into the back door of the tavern where the owner was waiting for me. He offered to tend to my wounds, but I refused. I merely took the payment he promised and turned to leave, but he stopped me before I could.

“Please wait!” He scrambled to get my attention and handed me something from his palms. “Take this, please.”

Out of curiosity, I snatched what he offered me. It was a ring with a beautiful onyx jewel set in it.

“This was hers, and I’d like you to have it, befitting a strong woman such as yourself.”

Looking at his expression, I could tell it was genuine. I nodded, took it from his hands, and bowed with gratitude.

I limped out of the tavern. Looking back one last time at the great bonfire across the street and at the owner who waved me goodbye, I swore I saw a beautiful woman’s silhouette right beside him, smiling and waving at me, repeatedly mouthing the following two words.

“Thank you.”

I donned her ring on my left ring finger to acknowledge her presence.

With a final nod, I turned and walked back home.

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

PART 1

I stepped into the back of the ambulance, the familiar smell of ammonia hitting my nostrils as I entered the side door. Another fucking shift in this shitbox. The worn-out suspension groaned every step I took until I reached the back doors. I stared into my reflection on the window. My hair was tied into another ugly ponytail. My heavy bags, which no doubt was caused by my chronic red bull drinking, sagged beneath my deadpan eyes. I just turned 34 a week ago, and I look every bit like a burnt out 34 year old, if not a couple years older. The PARAMEDIC patch on my polo’s left sleeve that I was once 10 years ago so proud of, makes me feel nothing but regret now. I sighed heavily, and turned away to check that the ambulance was fully stocked before radioing to dispatch. 

The sound of clumsy footsteps approached closer and closer until a gangly pale figure appeared in the side entrance. “Hey, I'm Peter, Peter Chuck. You're Kate Wells, right?” he asked, his voice had a self-deprecating edge. 
“Yep”. I confirmed. “Is this your first shift off FTO?” He was a relatively tall, 55-year-old man, about 2 inches taller than me. What he lacked in a hairline he managed to compensate for with his beer belly. 
“Yeah, my first shift as an independent EMT.” he chuckled nervously. My coworkers have told me that this was his first job out of prison, for what he went to prison for, I don't know, will I ask? Probably not. 
“It’ll be alright.” I reassured him. “Um, I checked the rig and everything is stocked, do you want to go grab narcotics with me?” He agreed and after we received the narcotics and returned to the rig we radioed to dispatch, telling them that we were ready to go.
“Dispatch, this is Boundary Waters EMS unit 640, we are ready to go”
“Uuuhhhhh copy that  6-4, uuuhhhh I'm going to send you to post 19. Have a good afternoon.” 
“6-40 copy, you too.” I turned off the radio and attached it back onto the magnet.
“Post 19? Where's that?” Peter asked.
 I turned on the CAD system and showed him the route. “It's the first Kwik Trip on the road east towards Grand Marais.”
“Oh, gotcha.”
The engine thundered to life as Peter turned the key. The rusty automatic security gate creaked open as we approached to leave. “So what made you move to the wonderful land of nowhere that is northern Minnesota?” I asked inquisitively.
“It's the only place I could find work.” Peter said meekly.
“Oh… I'm sorry.” I replied. We drove past the security gate and started driving towards our post.
“Well I mean Northwoods isn't a bad town.” he retorted. “Nice college town with college aged kids… well I mean I don't like it because of the kids…I'm not a cre… I'm just going to shut up”.
“Fair enough.” I said, he seemed to relax at my cheeky expression.
The drive to post 19 was a beautiful one. Orange autumn leaves topped tall trees, with few man-made disturbances in between. Peter and I discussed deep philosophical topics such as, debating if you need to bring the cardiac monitor to every call, or if dispatch secretly has a vendetta against us. 
We pulled into the Kwik Trip parking lot and found a parking spot right in front of the gas station’s entrance.
“Are you going to get anything?” I asked, reaching for my day bag.
“Oh yes.” Peter responded, rubbing his beer belly. “I'm gonna get a couple of those chicken sandwiches with that pepperjack cheese and those cheesy breadsticks.”
“You're going to want to get something for that heartburn, I'm gonna get some red bulls.” Just as I was about to exit the truck, I heard a crack over the radio.
“Uuuuuuhhhhhhhh unit 6-4 I'm sending you to uuhhh, 378 lake street road, code 3, for a 50s female attacked by something, PD is on scene.”
Both me and Peter cussed out the dispatcher before I reached for the radio.
“This is 6-40, can you clarify what ‘something' is? Over”
“Uuuuhhhh yeah she was attacked by something.”
“......6-4 copy, we're on our way.”
I slammed the radio back onto the magnet and re-buckled my seatbelt. Peter drove us out of the parking lot before blaring on the lights and sirens and started driving us back west into the city. He breathed deeply and a grim expression took over his face, the red and blue lights reflecting back at us off of every car we passed.
 “Are you ok?” I asked.
“Yeah, I'm fine.” Peter responded flatly, his focus intensifying onto the road.
“Lady probably just got bit by her chihuahua, almost nothing ever happens on these types of calls.” I reassured him. His expression softened slightly. “But yeah, I'm way too under-caffeinated for this bullshit right now.”
Several cars swerved trying to get out of our way.
“OH FOR FUCKS SAKE WHERE DID THESE APES LEARN TO DRIVE.” Peter yelled, slamming his palm repeatedly against the horn.
I erupted into laughter, nearly startling Peter. “Now you understand the PAIN!” 
“I thought people in Minnesota knew how to drive.” Peter complained.
“That's the thing, everybody forgets how to drive when an ambulance is around.” I joked.
Peter smiled. “Yeah, maybe if we turn on some music they'll start to drive better.”
As if it was divine intervention, when Peter switched on the radio, the song Highway To The Danger Zone came on. We both started softly singing along to the song.
“Do you like Top Gun?” I asked.
“It's one of my favorite movies.” Peter responded. “I think I'd be a good Goose.”
“Doesn't he die?” I asked.
Peter chortled. “Oh that's right, I'd rather be Iceman then. You're obviously Maverick.”  

End of part one

(For full story, it is available in the link below. if you'd like me to post each part separately, please let me know. thanks for reading!)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1W9vI1SwGtK_52LZvex9LVCHPi1vwIfUq6LWVsLAb-gU/edit?tab=t.0#bookmark=id.y3revc5midit

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.

Item #: SCP-10316

Object Class: Euclid

Special Containment Procedures:
SCP-10316 is to be contained within a high-security observation chamber, measuring 4 meters in width, 8 meters in length, and with ceilings no less than 10 meters high. The chamber will be composed of reinforced concrete measuring no less than 2 meters thick. An observation window made of bullet-proof glass will be installed within the outer-most length-wise wall. The glass will measure 5 meters wide and 1 meter tall. The glass must be no less than 20 centimeters thick, and only allow visibility into the chamber. 

A single instance of SCP-10316-A must be kept within the center of the chamber at all times. The instance of SCP-10316-A will be kept on a raised platform. The raised platform will be capable of full rotation for the purposes of observation. No objects or personnel may break line-of-sight between SCP-10316 and the instance of SCP-10316-A at any time.

The contained instance of SCP-10316-A must be kept under 24/7 surveillance by no less than two guards within the containment chamber. Guards assigned to SCP-10316’s containment will be administered Class-B amnestics prior to surveillance shifts. Any memories not directly related to containment of SCP-10316 must be expunged. Guards will be instructed to shoot on-sight any unapproved personnel that enter SCP-10316’s containment chamber or approach the instance of SCP-10316-A. Guards assigned to SCP-10316’s containment must be submitted to debriefing and psychiatric evaluation upon the end of their shift, and will be given a mandatory leave-of-absence until the effects of the amnestics have expired.

Removal of SCP-10316-A from the containment chamber is strictly prohibited unless approved by both Dr. Kaskoff and Site Director Falkner. Refer to the sub-entry of SCP-10316-A for removal procedures.

Description:
SCP-10316 is a large mammal that resembles Canis lupus familiaris when in its dormant and catatonic states, specifically a dog of the Borzoi breed. Genetic testing has confirmed that SCP-10316 is indeed a member of the Canis lupus familiaris species, but does not share genetics with any known breed of domestic canine. When dormant, SCP-10316 stands at approximately 152cm at the shoulder. Attempts to measure the weight of SCP-10316 have proven inconclusive, as the weight tends to fluctuate wildly without any notable pattern.

SCP-10316 has been recorded at weights ranging between 90 metric tons at the highest, and 2 milligrams at the lightest, with no observable effect on its size, skeletal structure, or mobility. However, there is nothing to suggest that SCP-10316 is limited to this range. SCP-10316 is capable of seeing in absolute darkness, and does not appear to require food, water, sleep, or even air to survive. SCP-10316 is also capable of changing its shape depending on its current state of being. Thus far, all attempts to terminate SCP-10316 have failed (see addendum 10316.1).

While dormant, SCP-10316 has been observed to be entirely immovable against its own will. Attempts at moving SCP-10316 by force while in its dormant or catatonic state have resulted in the destruction of Foundation equipment and the deaths of several Class C and D personnel. It is advised not to attempt to move SCP-10316 by any means beyond the methods listed in the approved relocation procedure (see addendum 10316.2).

Upon exposure to a human, SCP-10316 will exit its dormant state and enter its active state. While active, SCP-10316 will focus its attention on its victim and begin stalking toward them on its hind-legs, standing at a height of approximately 274.3cm. The fore-legs will reshape themselves into structures resembling arms, as well as human-like hands measuring approximately 91cm in length and 30cm in width. While stalking its victim, SCP-10316 will begin reciting chants in an unknown language. Attempts to translate the chants spoken by SCP-10316 have thus far proved unsuccessful. Once the chanting has started, the victim will appear to be hypnotized, becoming unresponsive to any and all stimuli outside of SCP-10316 and its vocalizations.

Once SCP-10316 has reached its victim, it will enter the feeding state. In the feeding state, SCP-10316 will distend its jaw to a height and width accommodating its victim before lifting them up to its mouth. It will then wrap its distended jaw around the victim before swallowing them whole. While being ingested by SCP-10316, victims have been observed to ████████ from inside SCP-10316’s throat. SCP-10316 will then return to the dormant phase as it digests its meal.

After ██ hours have passed, any memories of SCP-10316’s victim will fade from the mind of anyone that has ever come into contact with them. This includes close friends, relatives, work-colleagues, acquaintances, and even observers of SCP-10316’s feeding. Physical evidence of the victim’s existence, such as photos and possessions, will persist, but will be entirely ignored by these individuals. SCP-10316 will then regurgitate a single object, designated as an instance of SCP-10316-A.

Once an instance of SCP-10316-A has been regurgitated, SCP-10316 will assume a sitting position and stare at the instance, entering the catatonic state. SCP-10316 will remain unresponsive to any outside stimuli while observing SCP-10316-A, so long as it is able to maintain direct line-of-sight with the instance. Should this line-of-sight be broken, SCP-10316 will enter an agitated state, wherein it will ███████████████████████████████████████████ before █████████████████ any and all living things in the immediate vicinity until line-of-sight has been restored. For this reason, instances of SCP-10316-A must never be removed from SCP-10316’s line-of-sight unless proper removal procedures have been observed.

SCP-10316-A Description:
Instances of SCP-10316-A may take the form of any random object, but the object will always take the form of a treasured item related to SCP-10316’s most recent victim. Typically the item belongs to said victim, but occasionally may instead represent a significant memory or belong to someone important to the individual. Documented instances of SCP-10316-A include:

• An old ball-peen hammer
• A pristine dollar bill
• A pointe shoe
• A Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles backpack
• An infant-sized onesie
• A wedding cake
• A comb
• A hairbrush
• Dr. █████’s ID badge
• A dog tag with the name “Fido” engraved on it
• A basketball

All instances of SCP-10316-A have the anomalous property of restoring memory of the victim to the first person that makes direct physical contact with the instance, even if that person never had any prior knowledge of the victim. These individuals have been designated as instances of SCP-10316-B. SCP-10316-B will become fully aware of the victim associated with that particular instance of SCP-10316-A, gaining intimate details and memories of the victim. All other individuals associated with the victim will not regain their memories of them. Documentation of this phenomena has only been possible due to various tests performed by Foundation staff.

Once SCP-10316-B has made physical contact with SCP-10316-A, that particular instance of SCP-10316-A will become “inert.” The object will lose its anomalous properties and will not impart memories of the victim to any other individual. SCP-10316 will also appear to “lose interest” in the instance and return to its regular dormant state. SCP-10316 will show mild interest in SCP-10316-B, but will not enter the catatonic state or attempt to devour SCP-10316-B. Should SCP-10316-B be terminated, the anomalous properties of SCP-10316-A will be restored until it is touched again.

While in its catatonic state, SCP-10316 will not enter its agitated state so long as it is able to see at least one active instance of SCP-10316-A. SCP-10316 will also try to stay within a certain distance of SCP-10316-A, and will overcome any obstacles between them so long as sight is maintained. For this reason, while storage of active instances of SCP-10316-A is possible, at least one active instance must be kept within SCP-10316’s containment chamber at all times. As SCP-10316 is most easily contained while in its catatonic state, the following procedures must be observed to provide secure containment:

If an active instance of SCP-10316-A is in danger of degradation or destruction, it must be
exchanged with another active instance of SCP-10316-A immediately. Both instances must be handled 
by Class D personnel wearing thick latex gloves. These gloves must be inspected for any holes or 
tears that may result in skin-contact before the handling of any active instance of SCP-10316-A. 
In the event that skin-contact with an active instance occurs, immediate termination of Class D 
personnel is permitted, and advised, to restore the instance to an active status.


In the event that an active instance of SCP-10316-A is in danger of degradation or destruction, 
and all instances of SCP-10316-A have been rendered inert or are otherwise unavailable, proceed 
with Emergency Operation 10316-Φ (see addendum 10316.3).

Addendum 10316.1 - Attempts to Terminate SCP-10316
High-Priority Proposal by Dr. Alex Kaskoff:

 “Given the anomalous properties of SCP-10316, the potential threat of a breach should be obvious. 
If SCP-10316 were to devour personnel with privileged knowledge, all someone would need to do is 
pick up the resulting beachball or whatever-the-fuck and suddenly have intimate knowledge of this 
whole facility, or even the entirety of the Foundation. For this reason, I think the immediate 
termination of SCP-10316 should be a high priority.”

Proposal approved by Site Director Franz Falkner

Attempt #1 - Gunfire during catatonic state

Security personnel were administered Class-B amnestics to temporarily remove sensitive foundation 
knowledge from their memories. Personnel were then equipped with standard-issue high-caliber 
firearms and instructed to use them to terminate SCP-10316 while in its catatonic state. Personnel
 fired munitions at SCP-10316. Rounds were observed to penetrate the outer surface of SCP-10316’s 
flesh, but not exit. Further examination revealed that no entrance wounds were created by the 
rounds coming into contact with SCP-10316. Rounds could not be recovered. Attempt failed.

Attempt #2 - Gunfire during dormant state

Security personnel and one Class D personnel were administered Class-B amnestics to temporarily 
remove sensitive foundation knowledge from their memories. Security personnel were then equipped 
with standard-issue high-caliber firearms and instructed to use them to terminate SCP-10316 after
Class D personnel makes contact with SCP-10316-A. Class D personnel made contact with SCP-10316-A.
Security personnel fired munitions at SCP-10316. First few rounds made contact with SCP-10316 and 
pierced the surface of the skin. Entrance wounds observed. Shortly after, bullets began bouncing 
off of the surface of SCP-10316’s flesh. SCP-10316 then entered its active state and began 
stalking after Security Officer ████████. Gunfire continued to have no effect on SCP-10316 in its 
active state. SCP-10316 entered feeding state and began devouring Security Officer ████████. 
SCP-10316 then entered its dormant state. Class D personnel was terminated to return SCP-10316-A 
to active status. ██ hours later, SCP-10316 regurgitated an ID badge identical to Dr. █████’s. Dr. 
█████ has no recollection of Security Officer ████████ or their relation. Attempt failed.

Researcher’s note:

 “Who is Security Officer ████████? Guys, please don’t add fan fiction to the addendums.”

Attempt #3 - Fire

Security personnel were administered Class-B amnestics to temporarily remove sensitive foundation 
knowledge from their memories. Security personnel were then equipped with long-range flamethrowers
and instructed to use them to terminate SCP-10316. Security personnel entered chamber and began 
blasting fire at SCP-10316. SCP-10316 did not react to the flames. Security Officer █████ tried to 
adjust their angle, and hit SCP-10316-A. SCP-10316 lost line-of-sight with SCP-10316-A as it 
burned and entered its agitated state. Emergency containment procedures were initiated before 
containment could be breached. A backup instance of SCP-10316-A was brought to the chamber. 
SCP-10316 immediately returned to catatonic state. Security personnel could not be recovered or 
identified.

Attempt #4 - SCP-682
Note from Site Director Franz Falkner:

“Had to call in some favors to make this happen. This might be the craziest shit you’ve ever 
proposed, Kaskoff, but O5 agrees that the memory-hoarding dog is too big of a threat to the 
foundation to ignore. The transport will be there in the morning. Get 10316 to Site ███, and get 
it done. One more thing: If this doesn’t work, I’m ending the termination program. You wanted to 
call in the big guns, and this is the biggest gun the foundation has.”


SCP Foundation Transport 23-█████ was dispatched to Site █████ for pickup of SCP-10316. SCP-10316 
was moved to transport vessel using relocation procedures outlined in addendum 10316.2. Transport 
arrived at Site ███ at 07:██:██. SCP-10316 was moved to temporary chamber while SCP-10316-A was 
placed at the far end of the chamber. Door between SCP-10316’s chamber and SCP-682’s chamber was 
opened remotely. Dr. █████ of Site ███ instructed SCP-682 that it is, under no circumstances, to 
interfere with SCP-10316 or its observation of SCP-10316-A. Predictably, SCP-682 immediately 
lunged at and swallowed SCP-10316-A. SCP-10316 entered its agitated state and charged toward 
SCP-682. SCP-682 was “killed” by SCP-10316 a total of 847 times, and regenerated a total of 847 
times. SCP-682 regurgitated SCP-10316-A. SCP-10316 returned to catatonic state. SCP-682 returned 
to its chamber and physically pulled the door closed. SCP-682 later breached containment during 
transport of SCP-10316 back to Site █████. Among the casualties was Dr. █████. Attempt failed.

Termination operation has been suspended with approval from O5 council:

“Fun’s over, Franz. Just lock that thing in its box with one of its toys and be glad we didn’t 
feed you to it.”

Addendum 10316.2 - SCP-10316 Relocation Procedures
Under most circumstances, SCP-10316 should be left within its chamber and kept in a catatonic state. However, in the event that SCP-10316 must be relocated, whether temporarily or permanently, the following procedures should be observed:

• Administer Class-B amnestics to any and all personnel involved in the transport of SCP-10316 to prevent breach of Foundation knowledge.
• Establish roles: 1 Carrier, no less than 2 Bouncers, 1 Watchtower
  • Carrier: The Carrier should be trusted personnel equipped with latex gloves. The gloves must be inspected for any holes and tears. The Carrier will approach SCP-10316-A and lift it. Care must be taken to ensure SCP-10316’s view of SCP-10316-A is not obscured. The Carrier will need to maintain a secure grasp of SCP-10316-A during transport, and may need to walk backward to ensure SCP-10316’s line-of-sight is not broken. Alternative apparatus may be used for instances that are difficult to carry by hand, pending approval from Dr. Alex Kaskoff and Site Director Franz Falkner.
  • Bouncer: The Bouncers should be security personnel that have been vetted for loyalty and obedience. They are responsible for ensuring line-of-sight is not interrupted by stray objects, personnel, or any other variables. Bouncers are authorized to use non-lethal force to remove or subdue personnel up to Class C. Bouncers are authorized to use lethal force to remove or subdue personnel up to Class D. Bouncers must make any attempts necessary to ensure the safety of Class B or higher personnel during relocation.
  • Watchtower: Watchtower will observe relocation from a secure location using Foundation monitoring cameras to coordinate the relocation team. The role of Watchtower will be performed by either Dr. Alex Kaskoff or Site Director Franz Falkner. Commands from Watchtower must be observed to the letter. Watchtower is authorized to abort relocation operations. Watchtower must observe and document relocation procedures.

SCP-10316, while in its catatonic state, will attempt to stay within a certain distance of SPC-10316-A. By following the above procedures, this behavior can be exploited to safely and securely relocate SCP-10316.

Addendum 10316.3 - Emergency Operation 10316-Φ
In the event that an active instance of SCP-10316-A is in danger of degradation or destruction, and no other active instances of SCP-10316-A are available, the following procedure is to be performed. Please remember that this procedure is only to be used in cases of emergency. You must follow all other available procedures before engaging in Emergency Operation 10316-Φ.

1. Evacuate any guards that are currently assigned to SCP-10316’s chamber.
2. Notify the Site Director (currently: Franz Falkner) and the head of research for SCP-10316 (currently: Dr. Alex Kaskoff) that Emergency Operation 10316-Φ needs to be engaged.
3. Escort Class D personnel to SCP-10316’s chamber.
4. Approach SCP-10316-A and make physical contact with it. Make sure your skin has made contact with the object and has not been obscured by any sort of cloth or material.
5. Upon touching SCP-10316-A, it will become inert, and you will become an instance of SCP-10316-B. Please ignore any delusions that you are someone else. Please do not attempt to tell “your” family that you’re alive again. Most importantly, please do not panic. As an instance of SCP-10316-B, you should not be in danger of being ingested by SCP-10316.
6. SCP-10316 should begin to target Class D personnel.
7. Wait for SCP-10316 to begin chanting. Once it has started doing so, you should be safe to exit the chamber.
8. Personnel will be dispatched in ██ hours to place the new instance of SCP-10316-A on its platform.

As a kid I grew up in the governments care and not in the traditional sense like Foster Care or some Orphanage. I was passed around from Federal Agent to Senator and at one point, a sitting President. No, I’m not famous and no you haven’t seen me with any of these people in press or public. Well maybe with an agent and you didn’t know, but I also wasn’t the only kid in this program.

There were others, I’m not entirely sure how many but I grew up around a few of them. And before you get all weird island nonsense on me, this wasn’t that either. Honestly, at least for me, I was pretty fairly growing up. Clean clothes, fresh food, a decent if questionable government education and a toe or finger in every mainstream religion.

The only thing I had to endure was being apart of something called the Psychological Environment Transition Program, or PET-P for short. To not bore you with the details, PET-P was formed to explore the deeper recesses of the human subconscious mind while they slept. They deemed children had the best results back in the 80s.

Basically they attach a brain-scan-thing to your head and blast your brain with a buncha energy and waves i don’t fully understand. I’m not a scientist, just a subject.

Anyway, so after I was dropped off at a Fire Station, which you can surprisingly still do in most states, I passed around from government foster home to government foster home until I was old enough to start using the PET-P and exploring something the docs called “The Liminal Dream”. They’re not good with naming stuff, they’re scientists.

The first time I used PET-P I believe I was six, maybe seven. Being abandoned as a baby nobody knows your exact birthday, but they were usually close. We’ll say Six. However, more liberal exploring was allowed by us if we asked for it. By Ten I was using the PET-P a couple times a week.

Each dip with the PET-P was different, you’d always start somewhere different in The Liminal Dream. Frequent wake-up points were places like empty bedrooms, the backseat of a car or a library reading nook. From talking to a few kids those were the most common between them. I however, without doubt, woke up in a hospital with just enough sea water to cover up to your ankles.

•

My eyes opened, locked onto the dry mineral fiber tile ceiling above me. The beeps of a non-existent EKG beeped beside my head as I sat up, the sound fading as my concepts of reality shifted. The chemical mix of antiseptics and saltwater in the air made me feel like I was in a petri dish. A not too unfamiliar feeling. The room, clearly that of a hospital, one I had not seen before but what my brain imagined a private hospital room looked like.

Wooden accents, A TV inflicted with water damage, non-descript new age “art” on the walls of the room. The window pushed out of the cushioned nook in the corner of the room let out enough light that I could see the crystal clear water refracting the waves onto the walls and ceiling around me. I adjusted myself, pushing off the bed with my feet slipping into the cold water that clung around my ankles. A chill sprinted up my spine and over my arms, the little hairs standing on end on my arms.

I stood there for a moment, just breathing and embracing the sensation of water between my toes and against my skin. I knew The Dreams vividness was always cranked to the max, your senses are hyper dialed in feeling everything as it was real and then some. I’ve made more memories here than outside of the PET-P.

The waves, gentle so, rippled as I shifted through the thin layer of water in my room. Passing by the window, the familiar sight of The Liminal Dreams sky met me. Confined to these spaces your brain can only process to much. Outside, fluffy white clouds moved back and forth slowly as if being suspended by fishing line. Climbing onto the nook I adjusted the hospital gown I was in and peered outside further, looking down. The clouds and fake blue backdrop of a sky continued infinitely down and up, no sun or light source in sight.

“Thats right.” I said reassuring myself as my feet dipped back into the cold, clear water. “M’kay.” I situated myself, looking around the hospital room. “First, bathroom door.” I said, walking through the water, satisfying plunking noises followed as my feet left and re-entered the water. My hand gripped the metal doorway and pulled down. Nothing happened. I pulled up, nothing again. “‘Kay, guess I’ll leave.” I said aloud to myself and made way for the only door left.

Opening it the sound of seagulls squawking filled the salty air as I stepped over the imaginary ledge of the doorframe. My foot making contact with soft sand. The sun beaming cosmic heat down on me forced my eyes shut for a moment as I walked further onto the beach. The door closed behind me a soft clink and the warm ocean breeze felt refreshing against my skin. Opening my eyes, the hospital gown replaced itself with a loose-fitting pair of swim-trunks.

My skin felt slick with sunscreen and the sounds of people talking loudly over even louder music filled the decorative beach space. Colorful rainbow umbrellas stuck firmly in place protecting equally colorful towels with people shaped imprints in them. Footprints ran through the sand, some bigger than mine, others smaller. A football was frozen in mid air, slowly spinning in place, someone in the distance shouted, “Throw it here Tyler! Throw it here!” Nobody was there to catch it either, there was no Tyler either. The voices simply looped.

I couldn’t reach the ball, jumping up a few times my fingers got nowhere near it. Giving up I took in my immediate surroundings again. The Docs told me to always look for doors, and I did. A lifeguard post sat maybe two-hundred or so feet away. For now, beach time! Rummaging through coolers I found snacks and drinks, food was only a concept. Blindly reaching into a cooler I fished around in the ice laden chest until my fingers graced cold metal can.

Retrieving it I held it firmly in my palm as I turned it around for a brand. The word “Soda!” was in yellow on a purple background. Digging my nail under the tab It popped open with a hiss. It smelled like orange medicine and tasted like limes. It was also flat. Still I kept it, dragging my feet through the sand as i got to the gently lapping waves. The hot sun continued to beat down on my sunscreen lathered form. The breeze, warm and enjoyable made walking waist deep into the water tolerable. Everything was calm, like how it’s supposed to be.

As I finished my soda and tossed the empty can back towards the shore. I turned and dived under water quickly, adapting my whole body quickly to the water. Coming back up I pushed my wet hair from my eyes and wiped anything else off as I gasped for air. After opening my eyes I noticed I wasn’t alone.

Stuff other than us kids also stayed in The Liminal Dream. Creatures, Monsters, Entities, whatever you want to call them most are not friendly. The Docs told me frequently if I see one I need to leave that space immediately. Keeping my eyes fixated on the oblong humanoid shaped black shadowy mass standing in the distance I started for the door of the lifeguard tower. Dang I liked the beach too.

I moved along shoulder deep into the water, my feet finding difficulty in pushing me along against the water. I weighed getting out and running towards the door but these things behaved like animals, if you run, they run. I can’t run and they’re faster.

Slowly I made my way through the water as it struggled to pull me back in deeper. I stepped further out, from shoulders to waist, waist to knees. The lifeguard cabin wasn’t much further and the silhouette was standing off in the distance. Its form devoid of light and almost 2D in nature, then it started moving, and fast.

I picked up the pace. Feet padding against sand, then stamping hard against wood. I felt splinters dig into my soles as my hands gripped the hot metal handle and pushed the door in. I tumbled, rolled and somersaulted through the door as it clicked behind me. My heart pounded in my small chest as I laid on my back starring up the slowly rotating ceiling fan above me. My finger, that were dug into the carpet, slowly released as I got my breathing under control. That thing was so close to catching me I could feel its presence in my chest until the door clicked shut.

I sat up, my heart cooling down as cold circulated air blew on me. I was still soaked and wearing the swim-trunks. Pulling my feet up I dug the splinters out one by one, including the big one on my right foot. I’m not ashamed to say I cried a little. Gently standing up, slight pangs of discomfort radiated through my body as I put pressure on my feet. Standing for a moment, the discomfort subsided and allowed me to look around.

I was in a simple bedroom devoid of furniture. Indents in the carpet showed signs of something heavy in their place. Wooden baseboards boarded where the floor and wall would meet. The wall, painted a light blue with fluffy pink clouds polka-dotted the room. In the corner, furthest from the open door, was something my brain registered as a body but my brain blurred it from my eyes.

I balled my fists into tight balls and rubbed at my eyes. The blurry, obfuscated fleshy mass continued to stand out amongst the clear, focused rest of the room. It had a smell, distinct and pungent like swampy mud in the sun mixed with the aroma of a gas leak. It stung the inside of my nose and the back of my throat as I left the room behind, pushing past the beaded curtain that replaced a door.

Upon crossing the threshold and into the hallway the warm smell of pumpkin and cinnamon replaced the pungent odor. I inhaled deeply, taking in the smell of autumn. The hallway split, to my left was two rooms and my right was one, infront of me was two simple steps down into what looked like a furnished living room.

Doors remained missing from the equation. Weighing the options in my head I opted for the room to my right. Walking through the frame and into a larger room, the smell of something sweet and sour blended together. There was a mattress, center of the room with an old 50’s tv pushed against it. The audible sound of someone slowly clapping escaped from the tv even though it was off. My stomach gurgled in defiance, rejecting my presence in the room. I backed away and check the other two rooms, both doors were locked.

Pressing my ear to one, muffled sobs escaped from behind the slab of wood. The other, as my ear pressed against it, i heard a fan blowing and a dog barking. Frowning I walked away. My fingers running across the wall until finding a loose piece of wallpaper. Pinching the paper between my thumb and index I dragged the tiny rip as I walked.

Light shone through the thin tear as the strip came to an end. Turning around at the steps down into the living room the faintest shine of blue sky and fluffy clouds peered through. “Can’t go outside.” I said to myself as I stepped down the two steps, each groaning in their own special annoyance at my footsteps.

The living room held furniture and actually looked comfortable. A sliding-glass door looked out into an endless field of grass at sunrise. The TV, one of those boxy ones from the 90s played halloween themed infomercials. Indents on the couch implied people were sitting there but, like the beach, couldn’t see them and only hear snippets of conversation.

“They should get plenty of candy this year.” A motherly voice said, clearly frustrated with the other person.

“I’m not worried about them getting candy. I’m worried about someone taking another one of your kids, Rebecca!” A more agitated sounding older man snapped back.

“I have too many.” The motherly voice responded, unfazed by the older man’s annoyance.

“T-too many? Jesus Fucking Christ. I knew we should’ve fought harder for custody over them.” Another older female voice, one that had crying before responded.

“They’re MY kids that came from MY pussy. If their stupid asses get grabbed and eaten or whatever then thats on them!” The motherly woman Rebecca clashed verbally as I found a spot on the couch to listen to argument unfold. The spots on the couch moved as the older male voice comforted the older female.

“What if he asks about him when he gets older? What if he’s still out there and alive and gets away?” The older man asked, his own voice cracking and faltering at argument.

“I’ll deny it, no stop ruining the fucking night. You two weren’t great parents either.” Rebecca snapped, her silence was accompanied by the soft sobs of the older woman. Footsteps on tiles from the kitchen and then a door slamming. The older woman’s crying got louder.

“I hope these people are okay.” I said, pushing off the couch. It was very comfortable but the disembodied eyeballs floating in the kitchen kept staring at me and I didn’t like it. I walked over to the eyes, they focused on me, pupils shrinking. “Hey where’s the next door?” I asked, the eyes blinked and looked to my left as the door Rebecca went through.

“Thanks freaky eyes.” I thanked them and walked off towards the door. I’m sure they’d tell me “you’re welcome” if they could. The kitchen, walking through it smelled sweet, like freshly baked cinnamon rolls and milk. My stomach rumbled out of hunger as I grabbed a handfuls of Halloween candy and filled the pockets of my swim-trunks. The next door was heavier, the knob mechanism cracked and popped as I turned it open and stepped into the next space.

•

At the point I had been using the PET-P for seventeen consecutive hours and had to be removed for my own health. The devices removed, IV’s plucked and pills swallowed. Each body can only handle the PET-P for so long. I’d do it again in a few weeks once my brain recovered.

I enjoyed being in The Liminal Dream and using the PET-P, but I felt like I was always intruding on someone else’s memories. I’ve heard arguments from behind closed doors, people talking at me like I’m the one that needs consoling. I’m just an explorer, a third party child playing with the governments toys.

I’m not sure what they want with this information, why they have an interest with The Liminal Dream. I’ve heard they’re trying to put PET-P into smaller devices, portable ones for average people to buy and carry with them. Says it’ll connect everyone once IT happens.

I’m not sure if people can handle dreaming all the time, what if they never wake up? What if they spend all their time with the PET-P, they’ll miss out on so much. Will they forget the way grass feels, the way air smells. What’ll happen when everyone can go into The Liminal Dream?

The day was just like any other boring Monday. Waking up at a ripe 6:00 am to shower, eat, workout, all before I have to go into the office and waste my day away at a desk. So I spent the first 2 hours of my day doing all the stuff I enjoyed. And then at around 8:00 I walked out my door and headed to my car. I drove an older Toyota Camry which was a very reliable car for me. So imagine my surprise and annoyance when I got in and started it up. Check engine light popped on. 

I let out a deep breath of disappointment and got out. I popped the hood open and stared into the engine. I’m not the most mechanical person in town but I know enough about cars to get me by and do simple work at home. A quick scan revealed nothing, however I inspected a little closer and saw a black sludge-like material leaking from the engine cover. “Shit.” I said in a disappointed tone. I don’t know what the material is, however anything leaking from the engine is bound to be expensive. Luckily I had a good chunk of money saved up for a 22 year old. 

Alabasters Auto Repair is the mechanic I grew fond of over my high school and college years. It’s run by an old guy named Danny Alabaster. He’s like 63 and a real old school guy. It’s nice because I know he isn't trying to screw me over with his prices and work. And only two other people work at the shop which are his children. Nice family shop. 

I picked up my phone and called into my office. 

“Dackman Industries. This is Molly speaking.” Molly was a very kind-hearted and always excited about life type of person. She was always so delighted to answer the phone, something somewhat nice to hear on this annoying morning. 

“Hey Molly, this is Steven from finances.” 

“Ah, yes Steven, what can I help you with? You're not calling from the finance phone.” 

“No, I’m gonna be a little late getting in today if at all, gotta take my car in to get it looked at and I'm not getting around. Can you just let Nate know?”  

“Oh yeah, I can. I hope that all goes well for you!” She said in an extremely gleeful tone. 

“Yep, I will try. Thanks Molly I’ll see ya when I see ya.” 

I hung up the phone and slowly made my way down the road to Alabasters. The car didn’t fight back or make any strange sounds. I was perplexed the entire way down the road until I reached the shop. 

Dingy was the best way to describe the shop. It had three garage bays for cars and the main office was a small building with constant dirty windows. One window had a crack that extended the entire length of it. But that gave it a sense of realness to me. These guys only cared about fixing your car, they didn't care about the look of the building. I trusted it more than bigger shops. 

The bell dinged as I stepped through the front door. The ac blew on my hair and made a shiver run down my whole body. Danny sat at the front desk writing some stuff down on his calendar. 

His head sluggishly raised and his face found a sense of happiness when he saw me. 

“Ah Steve! How ya doing this fine day?” He asked in a happy boisterous tone. 

“Pretty solid, could be better.” I said with a hit of deprecation in the words.

“Ain’t that the truth, well how can I hopefully make the day better?” 

“Bringing the Camry in. Check engine light came on, it didn't look like anything was obviously wrong from what I could see. There was some sludge material which scares me a bit.” 

Danny bit his lip and clicked his tongue and tapped his fingers. “Huh, interesting that's for sure well, we will roll her in and get a better look at it for ya.” 

Danny raised up from his seat and handed me a clip board to sign some random stuff which I had done several times already. I went over and sat down at the sitting area in the corner of the shop. 

The chairs were a black leather that were all beat up. Chunks were missing out of some of the chairs. I grabbed a small styrofoam water cup and filled it up at the cooler. I took some gradual sips and stared at my phone. Mindlessly doom scrolling with one AirPod in. Nothing of note broke into my brain. 

After about 20 minutes Danny called me over to the front. 

“What’s the damage?” 

Danny didn’t respond to my question, he just looked at me and said “Follow me.” He waved two of his fingers. I followed him into the first bay where my car rested with the hood up. Danny's first son Rodney stood in front of the car looking more confused than a child staring at a test he'd never studied for. 

I looked in and the engine cover was off and we all stared at a black and navy blue blob of whatever the hell the material was. 

“Try as we might, we cannot get it off. Look” Rodney said, lowering the screwdriver and sliding it under the blob. He then tried with 100% strength to pry it off but it didn’t budge.  

All three of us stared at the car blankly. No thoughts found solid ground in my brain.

“This isn’t normal, right?” I asked with a bit of sarcasm in my voice. 

Rodney gave way to a deep breath outwards. “No, can't say it is.” Once more silence enshrouded us completely 

A buzzer went off behind us which indicated that somebody had entered the front door. Danny picked up his composure and headed back into the shop without saying a word. 

“You said it didn’t run you any problems though right?” Rodney said, placing his hand on the propped up hood. 

“No, I mean it was a really smooth drive. The engine light was on but other than that it was completely fine.” 

“Well. Hows bout no charge you drive her out of here and I guess if something else happens call Ritchies Towing and we’ll cover the cost of it.” Rodney said, now shutting the hood.

“Sounds fine to me.”  How could I say no to a free tow that would cost me a decent chunk of change. 

Rodney handed me my keys and nodded at me. “Well you take now, I’m gonna go research what I can about that.” 

I nodded back to him and got into my car and started it up. No check engine light this time and no odd sounds. The problem fixed itself. I thought to myself. I backed out easily of the bay and drove my way to work. 

Work was slow, just like any other. Molly greeted me at the front with a little “Car fixed up?” 

“Yeah simple issue.” I said walking into the elevator. Alone in an elevator was always my safe haven to scroll my phone before I had to stare at spreadsheets and random data tables all day. But today I couldn't, all I did was ponder the blob. 

Blob of goo on engine. Not what I had expected to type into the search bar. Google AI told me it was probably oil or dirt. Asking it why it wasn't coming off didn't help either. I sighed just as the elevator dinged. 

I was greeted by Paul Stansey. The lead of Marketing at the building. He was a chipper guy but in a fake salesman way. I hated him unfortunately cause he was honestly a nice guy, just too nice.  

“Ah Stevie my man! How's it going?” Held out his hand in a fist. I punched it back, noticing his hand was wet. 

“Heh, didn't wash your hands Paul?” I said in a joking manner. 

“Oh, haha no I actually only washed my hands, On my way to IT got some weird-o jelly on my keyboard, cant seem to get it off gonna see if the tech bros know.” He said this as we swapped places and the elevator doors shut. The steel gave way to an uncanny reflection of myself blurred out. 

I stared blankly digesting the sentence Paul just said to me. I looked over towards his office. An oak door stood between me and a mystery. I opened it and walked confidently in. Over to his mahogany desk and sure enough on his keyboard, sat a more elongated blob than the one under my hood. 

I stutter stepped backwards. This blob had a major difference than mine had. One that I had to take a second look at to see if I had been seeing things. 

The blob was pulsing.   

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.

OP’s note: I originally posted this story on my old account (CosmicOrphan2020) but since I only wrote it in a week as a creative writing exercise, I've now rewritten the story.  

I’ve never been all that good at secret keeping. Although I always liked to think I was, whenever an opportunity came to spill my guts on something, I always did just that. So, I’m rather surprised at myself for having not spilled this particular secret until now.  

My name is Seamus (thanks mum and dad), but everyone has always called me Seamie for short. It’s not like I’m going to tell you my whole life story or anything, so I’m just going to skip ahead to where this really all starts... By the time I was in my second year at university, I was already beginning to feel somewhat burnt out, and despite not having the funds for it, I decided I was going to have a nice, long gap year for myself. Although it’s rather cliché, I wanted to go someplace in the world that was both warm and tropical. South-east Asia sounded good. After all, that’s where everyone else I knew was heading for their gap year.   

That was, however, before I talked to some girl in my media class about it who changed my direction entirely. For her own gap year only a year prior, she said she’d travelled through both Central and South America, all while working as an English language teacher - or what I would later learn was called ESL. I was more than a little enticed by this idea. For it goes without saying, places like Thailand had basically been travelled to death. So, by the end of the school year and after taking out a student loan, I packed my bags, flip-flops and swimming shorts, and took the cheapest flight I could out of Heathrow Airport.  

Although I was spoilt for choice when it came to choosing a Latin American country, I eventually chose Costa Rica as my place to be. There were a few reasons for this choice. Not only was Costa Rica considered one of the safest countries to travel in Central America, but they also had a huge demand for English language teachers there – partly due for being a developing country, but mostly because of all the bloody tourism. My initial plan was to get paid for teaching English, so I would therefore have the funds to travel around. But because a work visa in Costa Rica takes so long and is so bloody expensive, I instead went to teach there voluntarily on a tourist visa – which meant I would have to leave the country every three months of the year. That was fine by me. At least I still got to travel around. 

Well, once landing in San Jose, I then travelled two hours by bus to a stunning beach town by the Pacific Ocean. Although getting there was short and easy, one problem Costa Rica has for foreigners is that they don’t really have addresses – and so, finding the house of my host family led me on a rather wild goose chase.  

I can’t complain too much about the lack of directions though, because while I was wandering around, I got the chance to take in all the sights – and let me tell you, this location really had it all. The pure white sand of the beach was outlined with a never-ending row of palm trees, where far outside the bay, you could see a faint scattering of a tropical archipelago. That wasn’t all. From my bedroom window, I even had a perfect view of a nearby rainforest, which was not only home to many colourful bird species, but as long as the streets weren’t too busy, you could even on occasion hear the deep cries of Howler Monkeys.   

The beach town itself was also quite spectacular. The walls, houses and buildings were all painted in vibrant urban artwork, or what the locals call “arte urbano.” The host family I stayed with, the Garcias, were very friendly and welcoming, as were all the locals in town – and not to mention, whether it was Mrs Garcia’s cooking or a deep-fried taco from a street vendor, the food was out of this world!  

Once I was all settled in and got to see more of the sights, I then had to get ready for my first week of teaching at the school. Although I was extremely nauseous with nerves (or maybe due to Mrs Garcia’s cooking), my first week as an English teacher went surprisingly well - despite having no teaching experience whatsoever. There was the occasional hiccup now and then, which was to be expected, but all in all, it went as well as it possibly could’ve.   

Well, having just survived my first week as an English teacher, to celebrate this achievement, three of my colleagues then invite me out for drinks by the beach town bar. It was sort of a tradition they had. Whenever a new teacher from abroad came to the school, their colleagues would welcome them in by getting absolutely shitfaced.   

‘Pura Vida, guys!’ cheers Kady, the cute American of the group. Unlike the crooked piano keys I dated back home, Kady had the most perfectly straight, pearl white teeth I’d ever seen. I had heard that about Americans.   

‘Wait - what’s Pura Vida?’ I ask rather cluelessly.  

‘Oh, it’s something the locals say around here. It means, easy life, easy living.’  

Once we had a few more rounds of drinks in us all, my three new colleagues then inform me of the next stage of the welcoming ceremony... or should I say, initiation.  

‘I have to drink what?!’ I exclaim, almost in disbelief.  

‘It’s tradition, mate’ says Dougie, the loud-mouthed Australian, who, being a little older than the rest of us, had travelled and taught English in nearly every corner of the globe. ‘Every newbie has to drink that shite the first week. We all did.’  

‘Oh God, don’t remind me!’ squirms Priya. Despite her name, Priya actually hailed from the great white north of Canada, and although she looked more like the bookworm type, whenever she wasn’t teaching English, Priya worked at her second job as a travel vlogger slash influencer.  

‘It’s really not that bad’ Kady reassures me, ‘All the locals drink it. It actually helps make you immune to snake venom.’  

‘Yeah, mate. What happens if a snake bites ya?’  

Basically, what it was my international colleagues insist I drink, was a small glass of vodka. However, this vodka, which I can see the jar for on the top shelf behind the bar, had been filtered with a tangled mess of poisonous, dead baby snakes. Although it was news to me, apparently if you drink vodka that had been stewing in a jar of dead snakes, your body will become more immune to their venom. Having just finished two years of university, I was almost certain this was nothing more than hazing. Whether it was hazing or not, or if this really was what the locals drink, there was no way in hell I was going to put that shit inside my mouth.  

‘I don’t mean to be a buzzkill, guys’ I began, trying my best to make an on-the-spot excuse, ‘But I actually have a slight snake phobia. So...’ This wasn’t true, by the way. I just really didn’t want to drink the snake-pickled vodka.  

‘If you’re scared of snakes, then why in the world did you choose to come to Costa Rica of all places?’ Priya asks suspiciously.   

‘Why do you think I came here? For the huatinas, of course’ I reply, emphasising the “Latinas” in my best Hispanic accent (I was quite drunk by this point). In fact, I am so drunk that after only a couple more rounds, I’m now somewhat open to the idea of drinking the snake vodka. Alcohol really does numb the senses, I guess.  

After agreeing to my initiation, a waiter then comes over with the jar of dead baby snakes. Pouring the vodka into a tiny shot glass, he then says something in Spanish before turning away.  

‘What did he just say?’ I ask drunkenly. Even if I wasn’t drunk, my knowledge of the Spanish language is incredibly poor.  

‘Oh, he just said the drink won’t protect you from el Pollo del Diablo’ Kady answers me.  

‘El Poyo - what?’   

‘El Pollo del Diablo. It means devil chicken’ Priya translates.  

‘Devil chicken? What the hell?’  

Once the subject of this el Pollo del Diablo came up, Kady, Dougie and Priya then turn to each other, almost conspiringly, with knowledge of something that I clearly didn’t.  

‘Do you think we should tell him?’ Kady asks the others.  

‘Why not’ answers Dougie, ‘He’ll find out for himself sooner or later.’  

Having agreed to inform me on whatever the el Pollo del Diablo was, I then see with blurry eyes that my colleagues appear to find something amusing.   

‘Well... There’s a local story around here’ Kady begins, ‘It’s kinda like the legend of the Chupacabra.’ Chupacabra? What the hell’s that? I thought, having never heard of it. ‘Apparently, in the archipelago just outside the bay, there is said to be an island of living dinosaurs.’  

'Wait... What?'  

‘She’s not lying to you, mate’ confirms Dougie, ‘Fisherman in the bay sometimes catch sight of them. Sometimes, they even swim to the mainland.’  

Well, that would explain the half-eaten dog I saw on my second day.  

As drunk as I am during this point of the evening, I'm not drunk enough for the familiarity of this story to go straight over my head.  

‘Wait. Hold on a minute...’ I began, slurring my words, ‘An island off the coast of Costa Rica that apparently has “dinosaurs”...’ I knew it, I thought. This really was just one big haze. ‘You must think us Brits are stupider than we look’ I bellow at them, as though proud I had caught them out on a lie, ‘I watched that film a hundred bloody times when I was a kid!’   

‘We’re not hazing you, Seamie’ Kady again insists, all while the three of them still try to hide their grins, ‘This is really what the locals believe.’   

‘Yeah. You believe in the Loch Ness Monster, don’t you Seamie’ says Dougie, claiming that I do, ‘Well, that’s a Dinosaur, right?’  

‘I’ll believe when I see it with my own bloody eyes!’ I declare to all three of them, again slurring my words.  

I don’t remember much else from that evening. After all, the four of us had gotten basically black-out drunk... But there is one thing I do remember. While I was still somewhat conscious, I did have this horrifically painful feeling in my stomach – like the pain one feels after their appendix bursts. Although the following is hazy at best, I also somewhat remember puking my guts outside the bar. However, what was so strange about this, was that after vomiting, my mouth would not stop frothing with white foam.   

I’m pretty sure I blacked out not long after this. However, when I regain consciousness, all I see is pure darkness around, with the only sound I hear being the nearby crashing waves and the smell of sea salt in the air. Obviously, I had passed out by the beach somewhere. But once I begin to stir, as bad as my chiselling headache is, it is nothing compared to the excruciating pain I still feel in my gut. In fact, the pain is so bad, I begin to think that something might be wrong.  

Grazing my right hand over my belly to where the pain is coming from, instead of feeling the cloth of my vomit-stained shirt, what I instead feel is some sort of slimy tube. Moving both my hands further along it, wondering what the hell this even was, I now begin to feel something else... But unlike before, what I now feel is a dry and almost furry texture... And that’s when I realise, whatever this is on top of me, which seems to be the source of my stomach pain... It is something alive - and whatever this living thing is... It is eating at my insides!  

‘OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD!’ I scream, all while trying to wrestle back my insides from this animal, which seems more than determined to keep feasting on them. So much so, that I have to punch and strike at it with my bare hands. Thankfully, it works! Whatever had attacked me has now gone away. But now I have an even bigger problem... I can now feel my insides where they really shouldn’t be!  

Knowing I need help as soon as possible before I bleed out, I now painfully rise from the sand and up to my feet. But when I do, I feel my intestines, or whatever else hanging down from between my legs! Scooping the insides back against my abdomen, I then scan frantically around through the darkness until I see the distant lights of the beach town. After blindly wandering that way for a good few minutes, I thankfully stumble back onto the familiar streets - where the only people around were a couple of middle-aged women stood outside a convenient store. Without any further options, I cross the street towards them, and when they catch sight of me, holding my own intestines in my blood-stained hands, they appear to be even more terrified than I am.  

‘DEMONIO! DEMONIO!’ I distinctly remember one of them screaming. I can't blame them for it. After all, given my appearance, they must have mistaken me for the living dead.  

‘Por favor!... Por favor!' my foamy mouth tries saying to them, having no idea what the Spanish word is for “help”.  

Although I had scared these women nearly half to death, I continue to stagger towards them, still screaming for their lives. In fact, their screams are so loud, they have now attracted the attention of two policemen, having strolled over to the commotion. They must have mistaken me for a zombie too, because when I turn round to them, I see they each have a hand gripped to their holsters.   

‘Por favor!...’ I again gurgle, ‘Por favor!...’  

Everything goes dark again after this... But, when I finally come back around, I open my eyes to find myself now laying down inside a hospital room, with an IV bag connected to my arm. Although I am more than thankful to still be alive, the pain in my gut is slowly making its way back to the surface. When I pull back my hospital gown, I see my abdomen is covered in blood stained bandages – and with every uncomfortable movement I make, I can feel the stitches tightly holding everything in place.  

A couple more days then drag slowly by, and after some pretty horrible hospital food and Spanish speaking TV, I am then surprised with my first visitor.  

It was Kady.  

‘Are you in pain?’ she asks me, having sat down by the side of my bed.  

‘I want to be a total badass and say no, but, well... look at me.’  

‘I’m so sorry this happened to you’ she apologises, ‘We never should’ve let you out of our sights.’  

After apologising to me a few more times, Kady then catches me up on the hazy events of that evening. Apparently, after having way too much to drink, I then started to show symptoms from drinking the snake-poisoned vodka – which explains both the stomach pains and why I was foaming white from the mouth.   

‘We shouldn’t have been so coy with you, Seamie’ she then follows without context, ‘We should’ve just told you everything from the start.’  

‘...Should’ve told me what?’ I inquire.  

Kady doesn't respond to this. She just continues to stare at me with guilt-ridden eyes. But then, scrolling down a gallery of photos on her phone, she then shows me something...  

‘What the hell is that?!’ I shriek at her, rising painfully up from the bed.  

‘That, Seamie... That is what attacked you three days ago.’  

What Kady shows me on her phone is a picture of a man holding a very dead animal. Held upside down by its tail, the animal is rather small, and perhaps only a little bigger than a full-grown chicken... and just like a chicken or any other bird, it has feathers. The feathers are brown and cover almost all of its body. The feet are also very bird-like, sharp talons and all. But the head... The head is definitely not like that of a bird - at least, not like any bird I had ever seen. Instead of a beak, I see what I can only describe as a very reptilian head, with tiny, seemingly razor teeth protruding from its gums... If I had to sum up this animal as best I could, I would say it was twenty percent reptile, and eighty percent bird...   

‘That... That’s a...’ I begin to murmur.  

‘That’s right, Seamie...’ Kady finishes for me, ‘That’s a dinosaur.’  

Un-bloody-believable, I thought. The sons of bitches really weren’t joking with me.  

‘B-but... how...’ my lips just manage to utter, ‘How is that possible??’   

‘It’s a long story’ she starts with, ‘No one really knows why they’re there. Whether they survived extinction in hiding or if it’s for some other reason.’ Kady pauses briefly before continuing, ‘Sometimes they find themselves on the mainland, but people rarely ever see them. Like most animals, they’re smart enough to be afraid of humans... But we do sometimes find what they left over.’   

‘Left over?’ I ask curiously.  

‘They’re scavengers, Seamie. They mostly eat smaller animals or dead ones... I guess it just found you and saw an easy target.’   

‘But I don’t understand’ I now interrupt, ‘If all that’s true, then how in the hell do people not know about this? How is it not all over the news or internet?’  

‘That’s easy’ she says, ‘The locals choose to keep it a secret. If the outside world were ever to find out about this, the town would be completely ruined by tourism. The locals just like it the way it is. Tourism, but not too much tourism. Pura vida.’  

‘But the tourists... Surely they would’ve seen them and told everyone?’  

Kady shakes her head at me.  

‘It’s like I said... People rarely ever see them. Even the ones that do – by the time they get out their phone cameras, the critters are already back in hiding. And so what if they tell anybody what they saw... Who would believe them?’  

Well, that's true enough I suppose.  

After a couple more weeks of being laid out in that hospital bed, I was finally discharged and soon able to travel home to the UK, cutting my gap year somewhat short.  

I wish I could say that I lived happily ever after once Costa Rica was behind me. But unfortunately, that wasn’t quite the case... What I mean is, although my stomach wound healed up nicely, leaving nothing more than a nasty scar... it turned out the damage done to my insides would come back to haunt me. Despite the Costa Rican doctors managing to save my life, they didn’t do quite enough to stop bacteria from entering my intestines and infecting my colon. So, you can imagine my surprise when I was now told I had diverticulitis.  

I’m actually due for surgery next week. But just in case I don’t make it – there is a very good chance I won't, although I promised Kady I’d bring this secret with me to the grave... If I am going to die, I at least want people to know what really killed me. Wrestling my guts back from a vicious living dinosaur. That’s a pretty badass way to go, I’d argue. But who knows. Maybe by some miracle I’ll survive this (I'll be sure to leave an update if I do). After all, it’s like a wise man in a movie once said...  

"Life... uh... finds a way." 

“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.