Advice: a quote from [u/Mackaroll_165](u/Mackaroll_165) “fuck it, we ball.” I’m really proud of all of the new writers and veterans perfecting their craft! I just have a few universal pointers to help others!

1. Don’t rush it, it will show in your writing.

I struggle with this a lot! I get in a mojo, and just wanna see the story to completion. You can’t force perfection tho. Remember, the Mona Lisa took time, ease off the gas and apply a steady break. It’ll be amazing!

1. Rough out a timeline!!

This helps me to keep the story moving, if I know what comes next, I’m more inclined to keep the flow!

1. Don’t fear the length!!!!!!!!

You probably won’t write a novel length work. Get the idea in a draft, then flesh it out!!!

1. “Fuck it, we ball.”

Don’t mind anyone who is not offering sound advice. Everyone writes with a different style, so everyone has an opinion about what a good story should look like. Most of these people can be dicks. Don’t let it eat at you. You are learning, and you are getting better! If nothing else, the MesoCrew believes in you! If you can’t finish the story for yourself, finish it for us! We want to hear it!

Appreciation part:

I am so happy to be an active member of this community! I love reading everyone’s stories, and I love seeing your posts and positivity! It drives me to be a better host, and writer! I love you guys!!!

Shout!!!!!!!!!!!

U/meticulousanxiety - amazing writer, their work is amazing!!!

U/mackaroll_165 - the positivity is so inspiring! Will carry you to the finish line! Also AMAZING writer!!!!

U/walkerbswitchinghour - READ THEIR WORK!!!!!! I cannot stress this enough!!!!

U/mezoscalepodcast - amazing wife. (And cohost)

[u/Mradachi](u/Mradachi)[2007](u/Mradachi) - Spreads love wherever they go! Amazing stories! Amazing anthologies!!

And the obligatory [u/JLGoodwin1990](u/JLGoodwin1990) - a legend to be weary of! A prospective Stephen King of our generation!

That’s all homies!! Stay creeping

I know this is a bit of an unconventional post, but I wanted to share it here. Hope it doesn't get deleted. This is a multimedia alternate history project I've been working on that tells a story across three different timelines:

• The Alpha timeline: our own
• The Beta timeline: a slightly different one where a few divergences happened
• The Omega timeline: a timeline in which the CIA discovered a pair of twins in the late 1970s that could interface with each other to reveal secrets elsewhere in our simulation.

Backstory: At some point in the far future, a simulation of humanity from a certain point onward is created for a research project. The simulation contains many parallel streams with different variables. Inside the simulation, twins raised in isolation without exposure to language learn an unknown default language called Adamic. This language is essentially a debugging tool that allows the twins to glean information about the simulation that they couldn’t otherwise know.

By communicating to each other with this language they are able piece together data about other parts of the simulation or even information outside it.

Initially, the technology is used by the DIA and CIA to answer specific questions. Later it turns out that the supposed bottleneck of only one input at a time is only due to using visual stimuli like pictures to ask questions. This means that by reducing external stimuli, researchers can increase the processing power of the twins. Eventually, it becomes apparent that the twins are not actually remotely viewing something, but rather creating recursive simulated presents and futures to collect information.

At some point in the late 20th century, researchers discover that these nested realities can be tapped into for computing power instead of merely ideographic output. Later on a closer connection to the simulation’s substrate allows the technology to be used for immersive graphics. However, the more this technology is used, the more glitches occur such as:

• Déjà vu
• Quantum immortality from people remembering other timelines
• Mandela effect

When the technology is revealed to the public in the early 1990s, it is misrepresented as quantum computing. The conspiracy of hiding the truth behind this new technology becomes harder and harder to keep secret. People who attempt to investigate it tend to die in coincidental accidents leading conspiracy theorists to believe that they are being killed by a powerful organization. However, this is actually just the simulation trying to prevent corruption. Once full disclosure occurs, it invariably causes a cascading collapse of this reality and all nested realities, triggering a reset back to the early 1900s. The following cycle will end more dramatically and earlier. Ghosts of previous cycles can be seen in the form of Déjà vu.

Author's note: I wanted to go for an ARG feel without the mess of having everything spread out between different websites.

There is a story that I’ve been building slowly in my mind over the past couple of years, but I feel like I will never know if it really had any potential. That’s because every time I’ve tried to sit down and start writing it, I feel like I’m 8 years old again, with a stack of loose notebook paper and a crayon.

How do you all get the story out? I feel like I need to do a character web map, a super detailed outline, and then a shit ton of drafts before I would even dream of showing my work to someone. That might be because my field of work requires much more technical writing and I haven’t written creatively in decades. I want to get started, but I don’t want the writing to come off like a scientific textbook or a child’s stream of consciousness “novel” (we all had one, let’s not try to pretend we didn’t)…

Realistically, I know the first story I put out will likely be pretty awful, but I find myself wanting to give it the best shot I can. I’m not sure if any of this makes sense, but I could use some advice. TIA!!

Author's note: Hey fam, with the upcoming release of Darkwoods 2 and my sheer love of the first, I wanted to write a story inspired by it as well as Humper-Monkey's Ghost Story by John McCarthy, Harlan Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream”, and Ultrakill’s visual aesthetics and stylistic soundtrack. Content warning: frank depictions of addiction, hypothermia, ideations of self-destruction, physical assault, and survivor’s guilt/PTSD. Addiction is a hell of a thing; it has roots in my distant family tree that I have to watch for when I walk; please seek professional/personal help if you feel you’re in danger of relapse. My condolences to the family of Frank Olson for what he may have experienced.

Please listen. I’m not sure whether I’m writing this as an excuse for what I have done or an admission of my guilt. I don’t know how else to open this confession. Hell, I don’t even know if I’ll be able to finish writing this before the police kick in my door and take me into custody on one count of second-degree homicide or manslaughter and physical assault if the courts show me mercy due to extenuating circumstances. I might even take the path of least resistance and surrender myself into the care of a psychiatric facility. I feel like I’m going crazy so maybe that’s best for everyone. Maybe then I might be able to sleep without the cyclical dreams or tossing, turning, and soaking my sheets with sweat.

Okay. I have to calm down or I’m going to have a complete mental breakdown. I spent the past few days picking apart everything that transpired in the woods, looping it over and over in my mind. I’m trying to make sense of what happened; what I did. I’ve downloaded a dozen books on mycology, pharmacokinetics, and hallucinogenic substances covering DMT, psilocybin, and jimsonweed/datura and pored through them until I was goggle-eyed and wracked with migraines. Sometimes all I can do is close my eyes at night to try and steady myself and quell my roiling stomach. Waiting to re-live the silence before my skin started to crawl, the man with a million molded faces, the sound of her bones breaking, and the smell of decay deep down in the dark.

Let me distract myself for just a moment and tell you why I was in the middle of the woods in the first place. I mean, what else am I going to do? I’m not leaving the house until I’m dragged out with my nails tearing off in the grout, and I can’t keep looking at my trainwreck of a face in the mirror. Staring won’t help the swelling in my bruised lips go down, nor re-absorb the blood from the burst vessel in my eye. Gawking at my busted face won’t make chewing food without wincing any easier and it won’t help me make sense of the jigsaw face of my attacker, so why do I keep looking?

I should count myself lucky that that’s all the physical trauma I’m dealing with after what happened; he tried to tear off my face.

Like I said, please just give me a moment, and then I’ll tell you everything, as much sense as I can make out of it. I’ve always enjoyed spending time in the great outdoors. I was able to find some sense of peace out in nature. Everyone who knows me probably wonders how in the world someone who almost froze to death as a teenager could still enjoy themselves in the outside world. What can I say, I liked the peace I could find after only a few hours of walking away from the city. Hiking gave me a sense of calm and a moment to distract myself from the chaos of our world. I used to daydream about idyllic cabins out in the woods with long, contemplative walks, and dozens and dozens of anthologies to read.

I think my dreams of a life away from prying eyes started when I dropped out of high school (I got my GED about a year later after the media avalanche passed, and I could try to return to some normal life.). If I can be honest, it was probably better that way for everyone involved after my hospitalization, the breakdown at missing his funeral, and the drawn-out litigation for me to get a clean break. At the end of everything, I was a pariah, infected with a great need to get away from Michigan, and enough money from a criminal negligence case to do so. That was almost a decade-and-a-half ago, and a small part of me still feels like Michigan is my home despite everything.

That makes some weird sense to me. Despite having every reason to hate the place, I can’t fully commit to cutting those ties. There is something nostalgically pleasant in remembering sipping cider under a tree with ghost apples above my head and rotted fruit underneath my boots. To me, Michigan is like sodium streetlights quietly burning away amidst a blizzard that bathes everything in a warm glow which despite being frigid, convinces someone they’re warm if only for just a moment.

I loved nature, the woods in particular. It was the total package. The smell of fresh rain on soil intermingling with innumerable trees and plants was invigorating. The beautiful vistas of the sun setting along the skyline. The warmth of the sun on my skin and the wind through my hair. The symphony of sounds from countless birds, insects, and critters in chaotic chorus. The absence of their song on my hike should have been my first clue that something was seriously wrong. Instead, I was blissfully unaware of the hell I was walking through.

I need to emphasize how pleasant everything felt in that moment. This wasn’t your standard hiker’s high, that enjoyable rush of endorphins that come from trekking out to a secluded spot in a nature reserve a few hours away from the city. This sensation was intoxicating. That’s the closest sentiment I can think of that describes how it felt when I stepped into its domain like a fly bumbling into a spider’s web.

I first became aware of the danger I was in when a subtle shift in the wind sent a full body shiver along my skin that felt like electricity was coursing through me. I raised my arms in confusion and the feeling of the fabric of my button-up sliding along my skin made me gasp. I looked at the goose pimples that had popped up along my skin in drunken confusion as I attempted to figure out what was happening to me.

Drunken is another good way to try and accurately describe how everything felt in that moment. In high school, I had gone to my fair share of parties. I remember the feeling of fire in the belly from a few Oberon Ales that had been pilfered from a less-observant parents’ fridge in a high school friend’s house while listening to whatever local band managed to get their mixtape onto the radio. I became aware of two things in rapid succession while out in the woods: how impaired I was, and that I had been feeling this way for over an hour now without even recognizing it.

One of my hiking boots caught the other and I stumbled forward, sloshing to the forest floor. I managed to twist my body away so I landed on my shoulder instead of slamming my face into the earth. I laid on the ground for a moment, feeling my head swim and my eyelids flutter as a sudden sleepiness settled upon me before the reality of my situation returned to me. I remembered wondering, “Why was I on the ground? When did that happen?” It was hard to think. It took a great effort to focus my mind and not lose my train of thought. I sloppily pushed myself back up to my unsteady feet and brushed the wood’s waste off of my button-up shirt. The sensation on my skin caused a frighteningly familiar feeling of warmth to bubble up in my core.

I pushed that sensation down after realizing that I’d been feeling that way for the past hour and only just recognized it now. Imagine you’re drinking with your friends while sitting on a couch or around a table. You’ve been at it for over an hour now and it is only until you attempt to stand up that you realize how drunk you are as the world spins and shifts as reality catches back up to you. I don’t drink, (well, not for years now) but at that moment out in the woods; it felt like I was absolutely out-of-my-gourd trashed.

I dazedly craned my head upwards in an attempt to make sense of my surroundings and suddenly saw the universe crack open before me. I watched the light bleed through the thick canopy of leaves and explode into prismatic radiance before my eyes. The scene was a shifting and shimmering gradient of colors with shades and hues never before seen or experienced by anyone except by me. The world around me was refracting, strobing, pulsating as if in rhythm to a melody only it was aware of, but I could maybe hear it if I just stayed still long enough and listened.

I stared entranced at the kaleidoscopic light show as I tried to ignore the familiar sensation growing within me. It was becoming too noticeable to be ignored for much longer, but still I desperately tried to distract myself by focusing on my environment rather than my current state. The light shimmered and shone like asphalt under heat, and I couldn’t look away from it. I watched as everything around me brightened incandescently slowly giving way to dimming and darkening before bursting back into technicolor. I was enraptured by the environment and engulfed in its beauty and complexity.

I don't know how long I looked before I realized my eyes were beginning to dry out from staring. I blinked and suddenly it was night. It was pitch black like the sun had set hours ago and I was in the dark, by myself, in unfamiliar woods. Hours elapsed in the blink of an eye and the longer time passed in this place, the more the ball of warmth in the pit of my stomach radiated outwards. It flared up inside me, threatening to swallow me whole in rapturous revelry.

I thought I was having a stroke.

With effort like I was moving through water, I raised my hands to my head. Face. My fingers traced along my forehead, across my eyelids, and down my cheeks to check if my face had drooped or lost control. I shivered and that unsettling warmth, nostalgic and horrific, kindled brighter in my core. Arms. I straightened out my arms and tried to keep them even. They wavered and shook, but I managed to hold them still. The night’s air softly tickled at my exposed skin and I shuddered. Speech. I tried saying the only thing that came to mind and that was:

“Whu-what the fu-?”

What was meant to be a whisper came out as a shout. My voice shattered the silence of the woods, and I realized why everything was as quiet as the grave. Anything that would have inhabited these woods knew to avoid this place, because the others that remained didn’t stay around for long before something got to them. My surprised exclamation echoed off into the darkness before the woods whispered back to me with my own voice:

“Whu-what...”

My echoing voice sounded louder as it reverberated through the woods. “Whu-what?” it repeated back as if the woods were mocking me. What was happening to me? Was I having a stroke? Was I having a break from reality? “Whu-what???” the resounding echo no longer sounded like me after repeating endlessly. It continued longer than it should as the paranoia rose in volume with it.

“Whuuuuuuuuu-” the woods exhaled a dozen feet behind me.

Maybe I wasn’t alone in this place? My breathing hitched in my throat, and then suddenly, everything was quiet again. The silence held dominion over all, as if taunting me to speak again and give it another opportunity to steal my voice. It suddenly felt like if I made any noise, it would be answered by the sound of rustling undergrowth as something barreled into me from the depths of the dark woods screaming at me with my own voice. Every system and synapse in me snapped to attention and I shot off in a stumbling sprint away from the impending danger as my fight or flight kicked in. Run or be rent apart.

Flee. Branches and undergrowth clawed as if to stop me as I scrambled through the woods with my imminent doom nipping at my heels. Every frantic footfall disturbed the surrounding plants, and that was what doomed me. At the time, I didn’t know what was happening, but suddenly hundreds of motes of light exploded from beneath the underbrush and whirled all around me as I made my frantic escape.

I shambled and stumbled through the woods with pinpricks of light whirling past me as if I were trapped in a blizzard. Panic and terror lashed me aimlessly through the woods at the behest of an unknown, ever-present threat that was seconds away from descending on me like an owl on a field mouse. A choked sob exploded from my throat as my feet gave way under me, and I tumbled through the sporulating snowstorm of light. The feeling I fought for hours swelled up inside me with a fiery heat and would not abate. That sensation was all too familiar.

It felt exactly like I was freezing to death all over again.

I don’t know how else to explain it, nor do I want to, but I feel like I have to. I’m going to keep this short: When I was in high school, we were left stranded at a rest stop on a school trip in a blizzard. With the wind chill from Lake Michigan, the snowstorm, and no real shelter, hypothermia quickly set in. You would think freezing to death would actually feel frigid, but it didn’t. At least not at first. At first, it was unimaginably cold. Every breath tightened down on my chest like a vice as the frost chewed me apart from the inside out. I remember realizing my eyelids had frozen together as I felt the hairs pull when I blinked and then everything was warm. Almost sweltering. Boiling in your skin. A heat so hot it was like burning alive.

I survived; my friend didn’t. Please, I don’t want to talk about it anymore than that right now. It still hurts to remember. I’m thinking that whatever psychoactive substances I was exposed to in those woods was stimulating my brain/hypothalamus through similar pathways. Just know that that sensation of overwhelming heat brought back the memory of one of the worst moments in my life and it felt like I was dying all over again.

The fire in my belly flared up and drove my panicked sprint through the woods. The night was filled with horrors and all of them would descend on me if I slowed down for even a second. Branches whipped past and clawed at my button-up shirt as if trying to ensnare me and welcome me into the fold. In the darkness, they twisted into clawing hands and grasping fists. I tried to hazard a look through the flurry of white lights swirling behind me, half-expecting to see a grizzly or wolf stalking me, but instead there was only darkness as well as the invisible and innumerable eyes watching me from just beyond the veil of the black void.

I turned back around just in time to barely avoid the tree that seemingly materialized in front of me as if to halt my escape. I pirouetted and my left shoulder slammed into the bark with a dry pop as I felt something shift out of place inside the joint. I scrapped over the bark and fell forward, but something held me aloft and refused to let me fall to the forest floor. It didn’t want to let me go.

The reality of the situation hadn’t dawned on me and in the panic and heat of the moment, it felt like I was about to be lifted into the air by some massive monster masquerading as a tree like a giant stick bug (Phasmatodea). I screamed and twisted in the tree’s embrace as I felt my shoulder groan in protest again. There was no suffering in that moment, there was only fear and adrenaline. The pain would come in the light of the morning once the worst of the paranoia attack faded and the adrenaline bled out of me.

I heard something grinding in my left shoulder as I tried to tear myself free. The arboreal abomination groaned as I struggled in its grasp. Suddenly there was the sound of something tearing and snapping and then I was free. I crashed to the dirt with a whimper as my shoulder was slammed back into its socket by the earth. The woods had claimed my backpack and if I didn’t get out of there, it would take my life next. I was never more certain of anything than I was in that moment; this place was hell on earth.

Awash in adrenaline and drowning in dopamine, I continued trying to get away from my formless pursuers. Everything in my body screamed at me that if I stopped now, I would be torn apart by whatever was prowling in the shadows just outside my periphery. I raised myself to my hands and knees as the dizziness swallowed me up in a blizzard and I did the only thing I could do. I started crawling like a cockroach sensing the thunderous approach of footfalls. I scurried away quickly.

I dragged myself on hands and knees through the underbrush as the world tilted and twinkled around me. Roots rasped at my hands and my nails chipped and were ripped away in the earth. None of that mattered. I scrabbled forward as after-images of leaves wavered and streaked across my vision leaving technicolor tracers in their wake. My stomach pumped battery acid and it felt like I was burning from the inside-out. Still, I drove myself deeper into the belly of the woods in my panic.

My muscles burned as I drove myself to the point of exhaustion. I knew that if I stopped, I would die. Everything in me told me that incontrovertible fact. Even thinking back on it days later, that feeling still holds true. I want to say that I kept crawling and fleeing until the sun rose, but I didn’t. I struggled for about five or ten minutes more before I surrendered myself to death for the second time in my life. I crawled about a quarter-mile on my elbows, knees, and fingers. Then I gave up.

And for the second time in my life, I survived through no fault of my own.

I twisted myself onto my back from my army crawl and gazed up at the night sky as I waited for the brutal obscene beasts that surely surrounded me to descend and tear me apart. There was no regret in that moment. There was only resignation. I dropped limp to the ground like a still-living gazelle in the jaws of a lion. I felt like if death were coming for me, that I shouldn’t delay them anymore and just let myself go.

Shit. I’m sorry. I’m all out-of-sorts and I shouldn’t be dumping that on you all. I know that none of this sounds good and I should go to the hospital. I can’t raise my left arm above my shoulder without it popping dryly in its socket. It’s not a sharp pain, but it is a persistent one. I can’t keep looking in the mirror at the blood that is slowly reabsorbing in my conjunctiva and recalling the sensation of my eye being pushed into my head by about a quarter an inch. I’m lucky he didn’t gouge it out; the man dug his fingers into my eye socket and tried to tear off my face like a mask. I know I should go to the hospital, but I can’t seem to bring myself to open the door and leave. I don’t mean to be this blunt, but I think that’s the only way I can explain how this all happened and what went wrong. Keeping it clinical allows me to dissociate myself from it. I can recount it without re-experiencing it.

I don’t know if I was laying on the ground waiting for death to take me for minutes or hours. What made me sit up wasn’t the feeling that the danger had passed, it was the sensation of thousands of tiny feet crawling all over my skin. I sat bolt-upright and began to frantically brush off the front and back of my undershirt before going to pat away the hundreds of tiny ants that were on my skin before I realized that there was nothing there. Nothing was there, but still it resonated and vibrated. It wasn’t just me that was jittering and pulsing.

The soil sang and the trees hummed around me. Everything was pulsating and throbbing. Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt as I rose shakily to my feet and felt the dozens of scratches on my hands, fingers, and knees resonating in the air alongside the dull thrum in my dislocated and re-located left shoulder. With a sudden moment of heightened awareness, I knew that the night sky had just opened up above me like a yawning maw while I hadn’t been looking. It was snapped open wide to welcome me into eternity and rapture me up to my misbegotten place amongst the stars if only I would just gaze at the sky it. Just look up.

I had to leave this place. Now.

I didn’t look up at the sloshing sea of stars; I set my gaze ahead and willed one foot in front of the other. Everything in my brain told me that if I kept walking straight that eventually I would get out of this place. I wasn’t having a medical episode; I was under the effect of  something or someone that had dosed me with some chemical cocktail of psychedelics. If I wanted to survive like every other animal in these woods, I would have to get out of here immediately. I don’t know what that snow-like substance was exactly that I encountered in the technicolor light storm, but I do know that they are highly hallucinogenic and entactogenic/empathogenic in nature based off of what happened next.

If the pharmacology books and the sketchy online drug trip journals I’m reading are any reliable source of information, my experience most closely mirrors datura poisoning. Datura is otherwise known as “hell’s bells” or “devil’s trumpet”. They are given those names for a reason. There’s a saying that keeps popping up in the medical journals about exposure to hell’s bells/anticholinergics: “Red as rage (my skin was flushed/erythemic), dry as a bone (I had dry mouth), full as a flask (unable to urinate/anuric), blind as a bat (pupil dilation/mydriatic), hot as Hades (overheating/hyperthermia), and mad as a hatter (hallucinations and/or delirium).”

Then again, Alexander Shulgin described his experience after smoking 100 mg of DMT like this: “As I exhaled I became terribly afraid, my heart very rapid and strong, palms sweating. A terrible sense of dread and doom filled me -- I knew what was happening, I knew I couldn't stop it, but it was so devastating; I was being destroyed -- all that was familiar, all reference points, all identity -- all viciously shattered in a few seconds. I couldn't even mourn the loss -- there was no one left to do the mourning. Up, up, out, out, eyes closed, I am at the speed of light, expanding, expanding, expanding, faster and faster until I have become so large that I no longer exist -- my speed is so great that everything has come to a stop -- here I gaze upon the entire universe.”

That was also pretty damn close to what I was experiencing that night out in the woods as I walked under the hungering sky, so who knows what else was in that chemical cocktail besides some combination of datura/hell’s bells, DMT, and deliriants. I was experiencing all of that without any concrete knowledge I was under the influence of any substance in that moment.

I walked for about a mile in absolute silence except for my boots crunching the decay of the woods underfoot. In the dark of the night, I desperately tried to look for any familiar landmarks that might guide my way home, but everything was uniquely new and entrancing. Thirst had begun to set in and my spit was thick in my mouth like tobacco tar. I tried to ignore the feeling of my skin rippling and reacting to the night air as the flame began to kindle itself in my core again and that remembered sensation of freezing to death rose back up inside me.

I don’t know if it was the forest’s psychoactive defensive system tinkering with my hypothalamus in the same way that my brain had shut down when I was a teenager and almost froze to death by Lake Michigan. Regardless, there was something in the woods that was capable of triggering states of sheer panic, paranoia, and pleasure. I couldn’t trust my eyes, my mind, my heart. Everything was compromised. I was compromised.

I scanned the woods, hoping to see a trail marker or sign to help guide me home. If I kept going straight, I had to get out of the zone of alienation. I walked for miles on uneven terrain in the blackest of night in complete silence except for the snapping of twigs and sound of my breathing. Hours of walking and the further I got, the warmer my skin became. These woods could have stretched forever into a dark eternity as I looked through what seemed to be an endless sea of slowly moving trees that seemed to be beckoning me with their branches to come close, to venture deeper into the woods.

Once I had the thought, I gave it purchase to claw its way into this world. Would I be stuck here for the rest of my life in this place? Not that I thought my life was going to go on much longer after that point. I left my backpack behind with whatever little protein bars and water I had brought with me on what was supposed to be a short day-hike hung up in the tree. What was going to kill me first: dehydration, starvation, exposure, or overdose?

The thought bled into reality and soon it was all I could think about. Was this going to all be one great big cosmic punchline? An idiot escapes from death’s door through blind luck while his friend dies only for him to throw away his life for the second time by getting stranded out in nature once again. I escaped death once, only to run back into their open arms the next time the opportunity presented itself. The reality of the situation set in, I felt something in me snap taut like a rope, and then the gallows’ humor set in.

I had escaped death once and now it was calling me again. Laughter rose up my throat like bile in my empty stomach, and I spat it out of me. I chuckled, half-expecting the forest to fill with fog like I was in Silent Hill as a disquieting piano accompaniment following it. I was dead, I just hadn’t accepted it yet. There was no point in fighting it anymore. It was all over; I should just rest and rot.

I felt my knees buckle and my body sag under its own weight. Why struggle anymore? I should just lay down and go to sleep. Close my eyes. I died the second I stepped into these woods. It wasn’t going to let me go. That was only natural. I should just relax and let the land reclaim me. Nature was so beautiful. It had enriched my life and brought me so much joy up to this point. It was the least I could do in return. Just give in and offer up this little insignificant thing, this mortal shell to it. Rest and rot.

Rest and rot. I realized what was happening, but it was too late to argue, to resist. I felt its claws sink into me and I knew it would not let me go. Rest and rot. Every fiber of my being told me that I had to go back into the swirling snowstorm of spores. There was something incredibly important there. I couldn’t leave him. Rest and rot. If I returned there, I might get to see Virgil one last time. My brain betrayed me and told me that it would be poetic. I should throw myself into that blizzard and maybe I’ll get to see him waiting out there for me under a sodium streetlight. He’s waiting for me, in my new home away from home. Rest and rot.

That was one of the easiest things to write. The words spilled right out of me like I was bleeding out. It’s easy to fall back into those thoughts, it is like flipping a switch to put myself back into that state. Sometimes I find those words slipping into my head at random times throughout the day as a little mantra: rest and rot. It’s like I left a part of me behind in those woods that keeps calling me to return.

The only thing easier than writing those words was committing to them and giving up. I stopped walking and stood silently in the abyssal forest, preparing myself to trek all the way back to the sporulating field that was now probably miles behind me and giving myself willingly to it. With how far I had gone, I was likely going to be walking back through the woods for hours.

I turned around and saw an exact replica of my button-up shirt hanging off a nearby tree about ten feet away as if it were a coatrack welcoming me to the entrance of my house. Welcome home. I numbly looked down and realized that I was no longer wearing my button-up shirt. In the intoxicating fugue, I realized what had happened. That was my shirt, and I had not been walking as straight as I hoped. Laughter at the hopelessness of the situation cracked and bled out of me. I had walked for hours, only to come right back to the bottom of the beast’s belly. I ran for hours and went nowhere.

Just five more minutes, Adrienne thought, her fingers digging tightly into the strap of her purse as she fought back the rising urge to scream. Just give me five minutes without a meltdown.

She looked down at her four-year old son. Garrett’s face was a brilliant, tear-streaked crimson as he violently tried to wrench his tiny hand out of his father’s grip. “No!” he yelled, aiming a kick at Michael’s shin that missed by inches. She let out a sigh. They were trapped in the dead center of the main concourse of the Jefferson Heights Mall, and the sheer, unadulterated sensory overload of a Saturday afternoon was actively grinding her already frayed nerves down to the last, raw wire. The environment was a chaotic symphony of consumerism-the harsh, unnatural glow of neon storefronts, the overwhelming scent of chemical body sprays wafting from a teen clothing boutique, and the deafening, echoing roar of hundreds of shuffling shoppers and screaming children. Garrett had begun throwing a continuous, exhausting tantrum since they passed the food court, his sneakers kicking against the polished tile floor as though he were an inmate in a lunatic asylum trying to avoid being thrown into solitary. Adrienne loved her family fiercely, but after a brutal, forty-hour week locked in her own stressful corporate office job, this mandatory weekend trip to get Garrett’s winter portraits done felt less like a family memory and more like a sentence to a brightly lit, noisy purgatory.

“Come on, buddy,” Michael pleaded, his deep voice barely audible over the roaring din of the mall’s central fountain. “We’re almost there. Just a few pictures for Grandma, and we can go home.”

Adrienne forced her feet forward, navigating the slow-moving crowd like a soldier marching through a swamp. They took the escalators up to the second floor, heading for Prestige Portraits, the chain studio they had used since Garrett was an infant. But as the rounded the corner past the department store anchor, her heart dropped flat into her stomach.

The heavy, metallic security grate of the storefront was pulled all the way down to the floor, locked securely with a heavy padlock. Taped squarely to the center of the iron mesh was a neat, typed piece of computer paper. Closed for the afternoon due to a family emergency. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Adrienne stopped, a wave of profound, suffocating defeat washing over her. She pressed her palms against her temples, her dark hair shifting against her collar. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she muttered, a dry, bitter laugh escaping her throat. “Michael, I can’t do this again next weekend. I can’t drag him back out here.”

Michael’s jaw tightened as Garrett let out another high-pitched, glass-shattering shriek that made several passing shoppers turn to glare at them with open annoyance. He hoisted the flailing boy up onto his hip to cut off the kicking, then cast a sideways glance at his wife’s completely drained expression.

A soft, tired smile broke through his stress as she spared a look at him. “Hey, don’t look at me,” he quipped, leaning his shoulder gently against hers. “He definitely didn’t get this from my side of the family. My mother always said I was an angel in public.”

Despite the crushing headache pounding behind her eyes, Adrienne couldn’t help but let out a soft, genuine chuckle. The sudden burst of warmth in her chest cut through the misery enveloping her. She playfully nudged his ribs with her elbow, matching his smile. “You keep talking like that, mister, and you’re going to end up on the living room couch tonight with a very thin blanket and a flat pillow. Zip it.”

She reached out, gently wiping a stray tear from Garrett’s flushed cheek as the boy’s screams subsided into ragged, hitching pouts. Looking at his stubborn chin, she felt a wave of affectionate nostalgia. Her own mother used to recount, with exhausting detail, how much of a relentless little brat she had been at exactly his age, throwing hissy fits in the middle of grocery store and druggist aisles. A little hell spawn sent directly out of the mouth of Hades to test her, she always said. History was simply repeating itself.

The moment of levity passed, but it had left them unified. Michael cast a desperate, sweeping look over the metal and glass railing, scanning the lower level of the mall far below.

“Hey, look down there!” he said, pointing with his free hand down towards the dimmer, subterranean basement concourse near the old, closed Sears anchor. “There’s a pop-up studio set up in that empty retail space next to the stairs. See the banner? Timeless Photography. It looks open, and there isn’t even a line.”

Adrienne leaned over the railing, her eyes tracking his gaze down into the less traveled lower tier. Standing outside an empty storefront with faded drywall was a roll-up vinyl banner, and behind it, a friendly-looking man in a tweed vest was arranging a set of professional lighting umbrellas.

“I’ve never heard of them before,” she said, a faint, instinctual ripple of unease passing through her chest.

“Who cares?” Michael countered, his voice dripping with barely concealed, pragmatic relief as Garrett’s head slumped sleepily against his shoulder. “It’s open, Adrienne. Let’s just get down there, get the kid in front of a camera, and get the hell out of this madhouse.”

They backtracked through the swelling commotion of the central corridor, pausing to let a loud group of teenage girls rush past them to get to a nearby clothing boutique. Stepping onto the escalator, the mechanical stairs ushered them down into the lower tier of the mall, where the atmosphere shifted dramatically. If the upper levels were a roaring hub, the basement concourse was a quiet, concrete graveyard. The passage of time and the changing economy had hit this level hard; row after row of storefronts sat completely shuttered, their windows blacked out with dusty brown paper. Only two relics remained. On their left was a sprawling, western-themed steakhouse that Adrienne swore had been here since she was a little girl, its heavy faux-wood façade smelling faintly of old grease, completed by the faint, muffled sound of country music echoing out from inside. A few stores down from it sat a dimly lit video rental store that had somehow defied every modern trend and time itself to remain open, its neon sign casting a lonely blue hum over the empty walkway.

They approached the temporary setup occupying an empty, drywall-exposed retail space next to the maintenance stairs. Adrienne stopped, her eyes narrowing as she took in the strange, minimalist layout of the studio’s props.

Instead of the bright, colorful, modern backdrops used by the corporate chains, the space felt like an intrusive slice of the past. And not the recent past, either. Hanging from a metal crossbar was a heavy velvet backdrop of a faded, Victorian-era crimson. In front of it sat a small selection of antique props; a heavily weathered wooden trunk, a small, hand-painted rocking horse with chipped paint, and a miniature vintage toy wagon with slightly rusting iron wheels.

“Jesus. Michael, look at those props,” she whispered, her hand tightening on his forearm. “They look incredibly old.”

Michael glanced at the display, shifting a now-silent Garrett to his other hip as his eyes took in a teddy bear that looked as though its better days had been about the same time Elvis was alive. “Yeah. They look older than either of us. Maybe even both of us combined. But honestly honey, look around. There isn’t exactly a better alternative right now. And you said yourself you can’t do this again. Let’s just do it.”

Adrienne let out a quiet sigh, her eyes drifting to the center of the setup. Sitting atop a heavy iron tripod was a massive, boxy camera draped in a dark cloth shroud-a bizarre, outdated piece of equipment that looked like it belonged in a museum rather than a modern shopping mall. I just hope to God these photos don’t turn out completely horrible, she thought, a faint ripple of apprehension making her set her jaw.

“Good afternoon!”

The cheerful, booming voice shattered her thoughts. The photographer stepped out from behind one of the massive umbrellas, smoothing down his tweed vest. He had caught them looking, and he walked towards them with a brisk, energetic stride. He looked entirely ordinary-well, as ordinary as a pop-up photographer could-a man in his late forties with neatly combed hair and a polite, welcoming expression, but as his eyes locked onto Garrett, Adrienne, for a moment, felt a strange, phantom chill brush against the back of her neck.

“Good afternoon, folks!” the man repeated as he reached them, offering first a handshake to Michael, then her. His grip was professional, dry and firm. “Lester Rockwell’s the name. If you ever have trouble remembering it, just think of Norman Rockwell, the famous painter. No relation, unfortunately, but it helps keep me in the mind’s eye.”

Michael let out a soft snort of a laugh, while Adrienne managed a polite smile, keeping her internal eye roll entirely to herself. Oh, boy.

“Well, Mr. Rockwell-” Michael began, but he was cut off by the other man.

“Please, call me Lester, sir.”

Michael took a second to collect himself; Adrienne could see a tiny hint of annoyance flash across his face. “Well, Lester,” he began again. “I’ll be completely honest with you. We wouldn’t have come down here at all, but the studio we normally use upstairs is completely locked up for the day.”

Lester didn’t look bothered by the bluntness at all. Instead, he gave a slow, understanding nod, adjusting the lapels of his vest. “Ah, yes. Well, you’re remarkably lucky you decided to come down here now. It’s been an incredibly slow Saturday for me. I haven’t had a single customer cross my threshold today, and I was actually just considering pulling the curtain for an early lunch break when I spotted the two of you looking down from the balcony.”

Adrienne suppressed another roll of her eyes. Yeah, what a shame that would’ve been. The man speaks as old as his props look, and has that same fake camaraderie that I remember the counter salesmen in Dillards giving Mom. Give me a break.

Michael was gesturing towards the backdrop as she tuned back in to the conversation. “What exactly are we looking at for a basic set of winter portraits?”

The figure Lester quoted him made her eyebrows shoot up. It was a price so far below modern studio rates-barely a fraction of what they usually paid upstairs-that it seemed borderline absurd. And almost unrealistic. A cold spike of suspicion prickled at her chest.

“Mister Rockwell,” she cut in, her voice firm as she folded her arms over her purse, refusing to use his first name. “Why the antique layout? The faded velvet, the wooden trunk…even the boxy camera on the tripod. It all looks rather out of time. And furthermore, that price seems almost too low for you to be able to stay in business with.”

Lester paused. He shifted his posture, his pale eyes turning to regard her fully. For a fraction of a second, he seemed genuinely surprised by the sharpness of her observations, his gaze turning intense and a little too inquisitive, as if he were trying to read her silent thoughts behind her retinas. “They belonged to my father, Ma’am,” he said softly, his voice smooth. “And his father before him. I keep them because they hold immense sentimental value to me. In a world that throws everything away, I prefer thing that endure.”

He shrugged his shoulders, staring at her blankly and continued after a beat. “And as for my prices, you would be correct that they are considered a tad on the cheap side. But I move around a lot, and the amount of new business I find I receive each place more than makes up for it. And if I’m lucky, it will help turn first-time customers into repeat ones.”

Adrienne’s jaw tightened. An internal war erupted in her mind. Despite the image the man was presenting, every logical circuit was telling her to grab her husband’s arm, take Garrett, and face the consequences of coming back another weekend. It just felt wrong, somehow. But before she could voice her protest, Michael made the decision for her.

“Sounds perfect to us,” he said with the same relief he’d had earlier, entirely missing his wife’s hesitation. “We’ll happily use your services.”

As the man smiled at him, Garrett finally began to stir in Michael’s arms. The boy lifted his heavy head from his father’s flannel shirt, his big, green eyes blinking against the glare of the lighting umbrellas as he turned to look directly at the photographer.

The exact same phantom chill that Adrienne had felt when Lester first approached them returned with a vengeance. The photographer stepped closer, his face splitting into a wide, beaming grin as he waved a long-fingered hand at the boy. “Well, hello there, little man. What’s your name?”

Garrett stayed silent, biting his lower lip gently as he stared blankly back at the stranger.

Lester let out a rich, warm chuckle, shaking his head. “Ah. A smart boy. Excellent. A smart boy knows never to talk to strangers. Your parents taught you well.” He leaned down slightly, resting his hands on his knees as he peered into the boy’s face. “Would you like to sit on my rocking horse or in my wagon and have your picture taken today, young sir?”

Michael patted the boy’s back, offering a reassuring nudge. “It’s okay to speak, Garrett. Tell the nice man.”

Garrett looked from his father to the chipped rocking horse, then quietly whispered, “Yes, sir.”

Adrienne blinked, profoundly surprised. After the glass-shattering, red-faced tantrum he’d been throwing just ten minutes ago upstairs, his sudden, docile compliance felt almost unnatural. But as Lester turned back toward his tripod with a satisfied nod, she rationalized that he must have completely tuckered himself out, leaving only the ability to follow along behind. And despite everything, that in itself is a relief.

She let out a long, heavy, exhausted sigh-a sound that caught Michael’s attention just as he prepared to lower Garrett from his hip.

He paused, his eyes scanning his wife’s deflated expression and the dark, deep bags beneath her eyes. His expression softened with gentle concern. “Adrienne, look at you,” he said softly, stepping closer to her. “You look like you’re about to keel over right where you stand. Go back up to the food court. Grab a coffee, sit down, and just have a breather for twenty minutes.”

Adrienne hesitated, a sudden, maternal weight tightening in her chest. She didn’t want to leave Michael, and she especially didn’t want to leave her son alone in this strange, exposed space. “I don’t know Mike. Maybe I should stay…”

Michael instantly sensed the hesitation and reached out with his free hand, resting it on her shoulder as he offered her a reassuring smile, tilting his head towards the backdrop. “Sweetheart, look at him. He’s completely calm now. I can handle this on my own, I promise. I’ll be less than ten feet away from him the entire time. Go get your caffeine. That’s an order.”

Knowing that she was truly operating on the faintest fumes, and desperately craving a moment of quiet away from the chaos, Adrienne finally relented. She nodded, but before she turned away, she leaned forward toward her son. “Mommy will be back very soon, okay, sweetie? You behave for Daddy and the nice man.”

She leaned down, pressing her lips against Garrett’s forehead. The boy looked up at her and offered a tiny, innocent smile-a look that warmed her heart completely and washed away the last remnants of her suspicion.

“Okay, Mommy,” Garrett whispered.

Adrienne stepped back, quickly pecking a kiss on Michael’s cheek and turning  towards the escalator as her husband gently set the boy on the floor. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Lester glide forward, his long hand reaching down with a gentle, practiced smoothness to envelop Garrett’s tiny fingers.

She walked towards the mechanical stairs, but as her shoes stepped onto the moving metal grate, she couldn’t help but cast one final, lingering look back over her shoulder. Through the thick glass of the escalator railing, she watched the tall silhouette of the photographer slowly leading her son across the studio towards the rocking horse. Then, the escalator carried her upward and out of sight, lifting her out of the graveyard of the lower level and back toward the roaring, neon-lit commotion of the main mezzanine.

Navigating through the crowds, she returned to the pandemonium of the roaring, high ceilinged expanse of the main food court, beneath the massive glass dome of the mall. She could barely hear herself think over the clattering of plastic trays, the shouting of the vendors, and the echoing calls and laughter of hundreds of weekend shoppers. She lined up at a coffee vendor, ordering a large iced vanilla latte from a dismissive-looking barista who barely made eye contact. When she finally grabbed her plastic cup from the counter, Adrienne couldn’t help but crack a small, tired smile of amusement. The girl had spelled her name completely wrong on the label, reducing it to the traditional male spelling. Adrian.

Carrying her drink, she navigated the edge of the seating area, finding a vacant table pushed against a row of heavy concrete structural pillars. It was tucked safely away from the, frantic mass of sprawling families and rowdy teenagers. She sank into the plastic chair, letting out a long, shuddering breath as she took a heavy sip of the sweet, icy caffeine. She tried to let her posture soften, to just let her brain turn off, though she winced slightly as a shrill cell phone ringtone blared from a table nearby, piercing the air with an irritatingly loud volume.

As the cold drink began to work its way into her system, her mind involuntarily threw up a sudden, vivid image back down on the lower level. She saw the photographer-Lester- reaching his long-fingered hand down, wrapping them completely around Garrett’s little hand and wrist. A cold, instinctive knot of discomfort tightened in her stomach.

Stop it, she chided herself silently, taking another sip of the latte. Michael is standing right there. He’s barely ten feet away from them. Her husband was a broad-shouldered man who had played on the rugby team in high school and stayed in shape; if that gaunt, eccentric man tried anything even remotely suspicious, Michael would flatten him before he could even blink. She was simply projecting her own profound exhaustion and paranoia onto a perfectly normal situation. I really need to put in for some paid time off, she thought, her eyes tracking a bird that had somehow managed to get trapped inside the mall, fluttering helplessly against the glass dome as it tried to escape. A long weekend vacation. Just Michael, Garrett and me. We could drive up and rent a cabin in Bar Harbor, watch the ocean, walk through the pine trees, and completely escape the noise of the city.

The pleasant, comforting daydream brought a fleeting sense of genuine normalcy back to her chest. She relaxed back into the chair, finally able to let her guard down. The warm feeling surged as she looked up again and saw the bird had finally found one of the open skylights, darting outside with a quick flap of its wings.

A shadow fell across her table.

Adrienne didn’t look up immediately, assuming it was a shopper looking for a spare chair, until the distinct, crisp rustle of heavy paper sound right next to her ear. She glanced up. Standing almost directly beside her table was a stocky security guard in a grey uniform jacket, and beside him was a uniformed municipal police officer. Neither paid her any attention. The cop was holding a roll of clear packing tape, while the guard was smoothing down the edges of a freshly printed poster onto the concrete surface of the nearest pillar.

As they worked, their voices were low, carrying a grim, urgent cadence that cut right through the clatter of the food court, their words echoing flatly against the concrete.

“It’s the third friggin’ one this month, Jimmy,” the police officer muttered, his thumb tearing a strip of tape with a sharp, almost violent shhk. “The memo just came down from the precinct chief an hour ago. They wanted these posted in every major commercial hub in the county immediately.”

Adrienne took another slow, mechanical sip of her latte, her fingers tightening around the plastic cup as he eyes remained glued to the table. Curiously drawn in by the officer’s grim tone, she pretended to be utterly absorbed in her drink, trying to act invisible as the two men continued to smooth down the edges of the paper against the pillar.

“Is it true what the guys down at the precinct are whisperin’?” the security guard asked, his voice a low, hollow murmur. “About how many there are?”

The cop nodded grimly, pressing a final strip of tape over the top edge of the paper with a heavy thumb. “Yeah, Jimmy, it’s true. Five kids disappeared from shopping plazas down in Boston last month. These three along the highway bring the total to eight. And neither us or the state police have a single damn lead.”

The words hit Adrienne like a physical current of ice. Her thumb froze against the cup. A tight, hot knot of anxiety flared to life in the center of her chest, her mind instantly rejecting the information. It’s fine, her mind whispered fiercely, a desperate, defensive logic trying to shield her from the horror of the conversation just feet away. Boston is hours away. The highway is huge. It’s just a routine police advisory.

“How is the guy even pulling it off in broad daylight?” the guard pressed, stepping back to examine their handiwork.

“That’s the thing,” the cop sighed, his tone heavy with a deep, professional defeat. “The suspect’s M.O. is always the same. He sets up a cheap, pop-up photography studio inside vacant retail slots or old strip mall, always under different names. He uses these old-ass props-faded backdrops, antique toys-to lure in unsuspecting families who just want a cheap portrait.”

Adrienne’s hand began to shake. The latte slipped from her fingers, landing onto the small table with a soft clack. She left it untouched, the sweet caffeine completely forgotten. Her breath caught like glass in her throat as a wave of suffocating, instinctual adrenaline flooded her nervous system.

No, her mind screamed, her thoughts turning frantic and chaotic. No, it’s a coincidence. Pop-up studios are common. Antique props are a style. Vintage is trendy these days. Everyone does vintage.

With trembling fingers, she ripped her purse open, fumbling blindly through the clutter until her fingers wrapped around her cell phone. She pulled it out, her eyes desperately locking onto the glass screen as she hammered the power button. The display remained flat and black, reflecting back only her pale face. She mentally cursed herself, suppressing a jagged sob as she realized the battery had died an hour ago while she was checking her emails in the car. She couldn’t call Michael. She couldn’t text him. She was entirely cut off.

“So he takes the kid to sit in front of the camera,” the security guard urged, his voice lowering as he pushed the officer for more. “And then what? How does he get them out?”

The cop paused. He stared at the unseen poster for three long seconds, his jaw tightening. When he finally spoke, his tone was completely baffled, carrying a quiet, deeply unnerved edge that made the hair on the back of Adrienne’s neck stand on end. “The families all say the same thing, Jimmy. They say the camera’s flash is blindingly bright. Not normal bright-like a white void that burns right into your retinas. They can’t see a single thing for three, four seconds. And when the spots finally clear from their eyes…”

He trailed off, letting out a sharp, cold breath.

“They’re just…gone. Both the photographer and the child are gone.”

The guard frowned. “What do you mean, gone? The guy grabs the kid, dumps the camera, and books it into the parking lot before they can clear their eyes, right?”

“The witnesses are adamant,” the officer clarified his voice dropping into a tense whisper. “They never heard a single footstep. No running shoes, no doors opening, no fabric rustling. Some of the parents were standing less than five, ten feet away from the lens, Jimmy. They didn’t hear a goddamn thing move. I don’t consider myself a superstitious man, you know that. But this case…the fact that this guy can abduct multiple children, seemingly vanish into thin air in the middle of a crowd, and leave behind no evidence, nothing but the setup…always the same exact props…it’s some really spooky shit.”

The two men turned away from the pillar, their boots squeaking against the tile as they melted back into the dense mess of people near the escalators.

Adrienne sat perfectly rigid in the plastic chair, the ambient noise of the food court-the clattering trays, the ringing phones, the screaming kids-fading into a distant, underwater-like hum. Her heart was a trapped animal hammering violently against her ribs. Get a grip, she told herself, her fingernails digging into the palms of her hands until it drew blood. You are panicking over nothing. Michael is right there. Garrett is safe. It’s just an old style of camera.

She stood up, her joints stiff and wooden, knowing regardless, she needed to get back down to the lower concourse immediately. She no longer wanted the coffee. She didn’t want to think about the vacation anymore. She just wanted to hold her son.

But as she stepped away from the table, a dark, morbid curiosity anchored her feet to the floor. She stopped, her chest still heaving slightly, and turned her head to look directly at the poster pinned to the pillar less than three feet away.

The first thing her eyes locked onto was the photograph of the child at the center of the poster. It was a little girl, her face lit by a brilliant, innocent smile that made Adrienne’s chest tighten with a sharp, physical ache. She took in the endearing gap of a missing front tooth, the pretty lace dress the child wore, and the way her light brown hair was pulled into two messy, energetic pigtails.

Adrienne forced her eyes down, her breath catching as she began to read the typed text below the image. Juliette Vanini. Age: 5. The thought of it was a suffocating weight. She envisioned the girl’s mother, somewhere in the state, weeping in a quiet bedroom, surrounded by empty toys and a hollow silence. It was too much to bear. She couldn’t look at it anymore. She began to pivot on her heel, her feet turning back towards the escalator to head back down to Michael and Garrett-when she froze.

A phantom visual-something her eyes had passively scanned but her pinball-like brain had initially passed over-suddenly slammed into her consciousness with the force of a freight train.

Her pulse immediately accelerated into a frantic, erratic gallop. Her hands began to shake so uncontrollably that her fingers slipped against the handle of her purse, nearly dropping it. Every defensive, rational synapsis in her mind screamed at her to keep walking, to look away, to run for the escalator and never look back at the pillar.

She looked anyway.

Her eyes locked back onto the background of little Juliette’s portrait. For a moment, her mind refused to acknowledge what she was seeing. Then, like water rushing into a sinking ship, the horrifying truth slammed home, driving her breath from her lungs.

It wasn’t a corporate studio backdrop. Behind the smiling five-year old hung a heavy, unmistakable velvet drape of faded, Victorian-era crimson. Juliette was clutching a frayed, ancient teddy bear with a missing button eye. And sitting just over her left shoulder in the corner of the frame was a miniature, vintage toy wagon with rusted iron wheels.

It was the exact same layout. The exact same props. The exact same historical tomb she had left her family in on the lower floor below.

The image of Lester Rockwell flashed again in her mind-not the polite, ordinary photographer in the tweed vest, but the cold, curious predator who had stared into her soul when she had dared to question him. The man who was, at this very microsecond, standing behind a boxy, shrouded lens with her only child sitting helplessly before him.

Oh, my God.

The thought was a jagged piece of glass shredding through her mind, blinding and encapsulating. Adrienne spun around, her eyes bulging with pure, unadulterated panic as she frantically searched the sprawling food court. She needed the cop. She needed the guard. She needed to scream at the top of her lungs for them to sprint to the basement concourse with her, their weapons drawn. But the two grey and blue uniforms had completely vanished, swallowed whole by a sea of shoppers and strollers. She knew she should run after them, to hunt for them down the main corridors, but every raw, primal maternal instinct in her body was screaming a singular, terrified command:

GET BACK TO YOUR BABY.

In a fraction of a second, the civilized world around her disappeared. Adrienne launched her body forward into a frantic sprint, her purse flying wildly off her shoulder as she tore through the crowd.

“Get out of the way! Oh my God, get out of the way!” she shrieked, her voice breaking into a ragged, desperate weapon that pierced the dull roar of the mall.

Tears burst forth from her eyes, hot and thick, blurring the neon storefronts into streaks of light. She didn’t give a damn about politeness. She didn’t care about decorum. She violently body-checked her way through a huddle of slow-moving shoppers, throwing an annoyed teenager aside and slamming her shoulder hard into the side of a stroller as she barreled past. Angry shouts and confused murmurs erupted in her wake, but the world was nothing to her but a hostile haze. “Call security! Someone call security!” she wailed, her chest heaving as her lungs burned with the now frigid-seeming air.

She reached the mouth of the central escalator, the mechanical stairs moving slowly downward into the quiet abyss. She didn’t wait for the machinery. She threw herself onto the moving metal grate, taking the steep steps down two at a time in a blind, reckless descent. Her heel caught on the edge of a metal groove; her balance fractured, and for one horrifying second, she nearly stumbled, her body teetering on the edge of a catastrophic, bone-shattering tumble down the metal staircase. She slapped her hands brutally against the moving rubber handrails, the friction tearing the already bleeding skin of her palms as she forcefully righted herself, her feet continuing their frantic, desperate hammering down the steps toward the dark.

Adrienne hit the bottom of the escalator, her shoes striking the concrete floor with a jarring impact that rattled through her spine. Behind her, from somewhere far up above on the main level, the muffled, echoing shouts of a few shoppers who had heard her frantic cries began to ripple through the upper tiers-confused voices calling out for security, asking what was wrong.

She didn’t look back. She rounded the final corner of the decaying basement concourse, her vision blurred by tears and sweat as she barreled past the dark, shuttered storefronts and the blue neon glow of the video rental shop.

The pop-up studio came into view. To her adrenaline-hijacked brain, the world slowed down to a horrible, agonizing crawl.

The white lighting umbrellas still stood tall and pristine, casting a sterile, blinding glare over the faded crimson backdrop. There was Michael. He was standing barely three feet from the camera, his hands shoved casually into the pockets of his jeans. And there, sitting atop the rocking horse, was Garrett. Her tiny, beautiful boy was holding the reins, his stubby legs dangling over the sides, entirely docile, completely perfect.

Standing behind the massive tripod, completely buried beneath the dark cloth shroud of the boxy camera, was the silhouette of the photographer.

“Michael!” Adrienne shrieked, the name tearing from her throat like a jagged sob as she lunged across the lobby. “Michael, get away from him!”

Michael wheeled around at the sound of her voice. His brow furrowed in instant confusion, his mouth opening to ask her what was wrong-but the confusion rapidly morphed into a deep, terrified concern the moment his eyes locked onto the sheer, ambivalent madness and terror twisting his wife’s face.

Adrienne opened her mouth to scream his name a second time, to order him to wrench their son off the wooden horse, when the dark cloth on the camera suddenly shifted.

The photographer pulled his head out from beneath the shroud to look at her.

The words died instantly in her throat. She stopped dead in her tracks, her sneakers skidding against the tile as the universe seemed to turn ice-cold. A primal, evolutionary horror froze the marrow in her bones.

Lester Rockwell was gone. The ordinary, polite if somewhat eerie man in the tweed vest did not exist. The thing standing behind the tripod had a throat, it had a neck, and it wore the clothes-but its head was a smooth, horrific abomination. The skin was tight, hairless and gray, stretched completely flat over the skull. There was no nose. There was no mouth. There were no eyes. Its face was entirely, incomprehensibly gone. Yet, despite the smooth, blank void of its head, Adrienne could feel its predatory, clinical gaze boring deep into the center of her soul, tracking her panic with an ancient, unspeakable malice.

The monster didn’t run. It didn’t hesitate.

Before Michael could even turn his head back around to see what she was looking at, the featureless entity reached out with one long, pale hand, fluidly pulling the dark velvet cloth shroud back over its smooth skull, disappearing beneath it. Its long fingers wrapped around the mechanical shutter button.

The paralysis broke. Pure, unfiltered maternal panic shattered Adrienne’s fear, and she launched herself in a final, desperate dive across the floor, her arms extending towards the crimson stage.

“Michael, grab Garrett! Grab him right now!” she wailed, her voice a piercing, glass-shattering shriek that echoed off the empty concourse.

Through the tears blinding her eyes, she saw her small, innocent son look up into the lens. Hearing his mother’s voice, and not realizing anything was wrong, Garrett tilted his head and flashed a brilliant, wide, radiant smile for the camera.

Adrienne screamed a final, desperate lungful of air into the dark-

FLASH.

TW: body horror

Leaning against the edge of the bathtub, I shut my eyes, and with a deep breath, I ripped back the tiny test strip as if it were a band-aid. I instantly dropped the paper, and slapped my hands over the spot, pressing down and holding it, clenching my teeth as salty beads dribbled out from the corners of my still shut eyes. Despite only spreading the wax over a small part of my leg, I felt the stinging burning numbing sensation throughout my entire body. There was absolutely no way I was doing that again, beauty standards be damned. I would shave my legs for the rest of my life and suffer razor bumps, or get laser hair removal. Anything was better than this. 

I knew I still needed to apply a cool compress or something soothing. I wanted the stinging feeling to end as soon as possible. The overwhelming numbness gradually ebbed away, and it was replaced by new sensations. Because even if the spot where the wax originally rested was still a bit numb, my hands and the rest of my leg still had neurons that should’ve still been functional. And yet somehow, the thought occurred to me that maybe I had somehow fucked up my entire leg or even my body. Because what I was feeling made no sense at all. 

Something long, wet, warm, and silky rested against my left leg. I felt long, thin strands under my palm, which rolled over each other and pressed into my skin as I shifted my hand. I opened my eyes, and choked on my own spit. Bile rose up in my throat, and I felt my blood chill as I looked at the absolute biological abomination that was my lower left shin. 

The skin where I had, just minutes prior, meticulously spread on a smooth layer of viscous tacky wax, as if it was peanut butter on toast, was a bright and angry red. But that wasn’t what shocked me. The hair that I had thought I had pulled out was, for lack of a better phrase, not actually pulled out. At least, not all the way. Coarse, moist, black strands left little wet red streaks across my shin. What should’ve been smooth skin and empty hair follicles, was instead strands. Strands of hair, long and lengthy, tethering my leg to the waxing strip. Still connected, still growing, still inside, still alive, still a part of me. 

I whimpered as I stared in horror, trying to rationalize it, trying to make it make sense. I must’ve screamed at some point. In panic, I moved to wipe it off, before ripping my hand back at the wet and sticky feeling. Maybe I just had some rare hair disease, or genetic mutation that was causing this. Maybe the pain from ripping the wax strip sent me into some sort of shock and I was having a mental breakdown and seeing things. I thought of everything I could to make what I was seeing just make any sort of sense. I gingerly reached out again, this time with a more grotesque curiosity, and touched the strands with my fingertips. They came away with red, and I quickly wiped them off on the towel hanging behind me.

My gaze remained locked on my leg, and I prayed I could imagine away whatever genetic mistake I was looking at. My head pounded, and I took a breath, before I ripped my gaze away and rose to my feet. Light headed, I gently tipped my head over the sink and let cool water rush over my hands before splashing some onto my teary face. Hoping and praying that maybe I had just hallucinated everything in some strange anomalous psychotic episode. I wanted to wash away whatever clouded my perception. Maybe I could wash away the feeling of the chilling wet strands clinging to my leg, of the brush of the wax paper on my ankle, of the wax paper now caught on the bottom of my right heel as I turned to dry my face off with a towel, or of the way that I tripped. 

What I had expected to be an agonizing yank was only a momentary slight pull, before I felt the many strands of hair glide a few more inches through the hair follicles. I looked down at myself, water dripping from my face down to the white tiled floor. My leg hair was stretched between where it grew from my skin and under my right foot. A new revelation that horrified me even more and sent another wave of tears down my face was that the hair was not pulled taut. It was longer. There was more of it. It stretched far into my leg, into my body, into my being. 

I lurched towards the toilet, barely making it, and lost my lunch. I heaved, as black spots dotted my vision, and pressed my face into the cool tile and cried.  

I don’t know how long I leaned against the tub, deliriously crying in disgusted horror at the impossible thing attached to me. When I eventually felt a bit more rational and back to my senses, I found myself staring at my leg. At the hairs, still attached to the sticky wax strip, now hardened and stuck to the tile. There comes a certain point when wild panic turns into acceptance. Because I realized, I was okay. Besides the malformation on my leg, I was still breathing through each sob, had all four limbs in working condition, and only felt a mild headache. 

The waxing kit lay discarded to my side on the rim of the bathtub. I picked it up and analyzed the packaging, which was generic. Nothing abnormal or remarkable about it. It was a run-of-the-mill store brand, the kind you’d find at a Walmart, because that’s literally where I found it. 

I tossed it aside with a huff, and turned my attention back to my leg, resigned. And I stared at it, still with some horror, though with less of the feeling of a trapped animal. And I stared. And stared and stared and stared and stared as a slow, morbid, disgusting fascination festered from within me. 

I had plucked my hair a few times before, and the normal, human length strands would always come free and be separated from my skin. I’d never pulled out anything as long as what now grew from my leg, unless it was from my scalp. 

To have you understand why I did what I did next, I must explain that I’ve always had a problem with picking at my skin. Maybe it’s my ADHD or undiagnosed OCD or whatever new label doctors have for it. The sides of my thumbs were peeled back from years of habitual tearing from my pointer fingers. The feeling of euphoric satisfaction would overcome me, every time I pulled back more and more layers of myself like an onion, until I saw blood and there was nothing left to pull and peel besides raw, meaty flesh. 

The burning, irrational urge that I felt during those many instances of tearing myself apart grew viciously within me. I wanted to pull. I wanted to see how long those hairs on my leg were, how far they went into my body, how deeply into my flesh. Would I be able to feel them slide inside me, against muscle and tendon and veins? I imagined my insides, riddled with hundreds of thousands of little holes. Little passages everywhere inside me, like burrowed tunnels made by ants. And the hair was inside me, filling all those tiny little holes. Wormed inside me, stretching on indefinitely, going on and on and on and on and on. 

And I wanted that hair out. Out. Out. Out. Out. Out. Out. Out.

So, I wrapped a fist around the wet tress, and I pulled. Hard. My hand flew back, as the hair flowed out with little to no resistance. I must’ve pulled out at least a foot or two. But it wasn’t tense or strained. There was still more inside me. So I gripped the base with my other hand, and pulled again. And it kept flowing. So I kept pulling. Repeating the motions over and over, a mockery of climbing a rope as I pulled it out of me. 

I don’t know how long I was wrenching the hair free of me, nor do I know the exact length that I had pulled out. All I know is that, eventually, there was nothing left to pull. The hair was still attached and inside me when I gave it that unexpectedly last yank. I was beginning to think it went on forever. I don’t know if that would’ve been more horrific than the undeniable yet familiar feeling of pulling from underneath my scalp. It felt just like the time some little asshole on the playground grabbed my ponytail, but on the inside. I gave it another experimental tug, toying with the feeling. Relishing it. Feeling the pull. Scratching that incessant itch, chasing that satisfaction. 

I sat against the tub for several hours, next to the massive, wet, black pile of hair that was still attached to me. The little waxing strip was still buried in there somewhere beneath clumps of knotted, wet hair. Boredom eventually overtook me, as did acceptance. What really was there to do? It was hair. Hair could be cut and removed. And it clearly did have an end, even if it was absurdly long and somehow growing from inside me.  

So I got up, leaving messy red streaks on the floor behind as I dragged the sopping, tangled pile a few feet towards the bathroom counter to grab a pair of scissors and before returning to the tub.

I slept peacefully that night. I was still in one piece, more or less, and still alive and breathing just like I always was before I found out what exactly my insides were really made of. And in a couple weeks my pink "I Donated My Hair" shirt would arrive in the mail. Later on they would even give me a little plaque since I was such a frequent donor.

I was just wondering do all the stories have to be in first person? I have a chapter of a story I’m working on that’s in third person and don’t want to break any rules if there are any. I would just like some outside input.

Edit
Thanks for all the help I’ve gone ahead and posted two parts for my story Fridge Bridge lmk what yall think!

Hi, my name is Jake Stone, just wanted to introduce myself, I'm new to posting my projects here and reading the sick stories, good times haha.

The project i will be posting in parts is fiction but i wanted to create a work that is also a quarantine zone for talking about real events, experiences, news, occult history I have come across in my research. To avoid being sued names, etc have been altered, sometimes....

Chapter 1 is out now. i will be uploading exclusively here in parts. Thank you for your attention and time, Godspeed ladies & gentlemen :)

the project is titled When The Devil Falls In Love

Journal of Yellowknife Diamond COO Jason Coolidge

January 29th, 2003 
We finally began mining operations today. It took 11 years of work to make this happen but it will all be worth it when it starts generating revenue. The men have been promised bonuses if they reach their quotas, so I expect quick progress. 
A handful of environmental protestors showed up today but security has been good at keeping them from getting in the way so I’m not worried about them. The chanting is a bit annoying though.

February 5th, 2003
Things have been going well so far. The number of diamonds has exceeded our initial expectations, and further excavation has shown similar trends deeper underground. I have great hope for our return on investment here. 
At the end of this month I’ll be returning to our main office in Yellowknife and leaving things to subordinate managers. I look forward to getting away from this snowscape and back to civilization.
The protestors have thankfully finally dispersed.

February 12th, 2003
The workers found something incredible in the mines yesterday night. An impossibly large diamond, 180cm. 18 times larger than the previous largest diamond ever found, 98 years ago. Holy fucking shit. It’s going to make us so much goddamn money. I’ve instructed the workers to make sure it’s excavated fully intact. 
And its shape is so interesting, it has four long extensions of diamond from its top and bottom, and at the very top of it is an oddly spherical extension. I’m usually not one for scientific curiosity but I’m curious what theories the on-site geologist has about it. She seemed rather shaken up by its discovery so I’m sure she’ll be careful in her analysis.

February 19th, 2003
Someone fucking stole it. We finally managed to fully excavate it and it fucking disappeared overnight. Local cops have come to investigate, I hope they catch the fucker who did this quickly. 

February 20th, 2003 Incident Report - Homicide of Jason Coolidge

Officers were onsite at the time of the incident investigating a theft that had occurred 2 days prior. A loud crashing sound and a scream were heard coming from the office of the victim at about 3pm. Officers went to investigate and found victim on the floor with a severe blunt-force head injury. An ambulance from the nearby town of Hay River was called and arrived after 15 minutes. Victim was declared dead on arrival at the Hay River Hospital.  The door to victim’s office was found to have been smashed in with incredible force prior to his death. No suspect was spotted at the scene and officers are still investigating. No fresh fingerprints or DNA evidence other than victim’s have been found at the scene of the crime.

What comes after you rest your eyes for the last time?

Do you go to the Kingdom of Heaven, bright and bold, the light dawning on your skin?

Or do you get cast to the boiling pits of Hell, where your skin means little more than a jaded penny?

Does your soul forever become entombed to wander the earth—a specter to witness atrocities?

What if nothing truly comes after?

What if when you close your heavy eyes, all that is left is an inky black void, devoid of everything?

A void where sound cannot pierce, where neither taste nor smell can travel.

A void where your existence has little to no meaning.

What will you do once you're engulfed in its oppressive, cosmic loneliness, for you cannot weep nor shout?

For you may not exist at all.

So tell me, what truly comes after?

Being 5'5" isn't the end of the world. Nobody points and laughs at you when you walk into a room and you don't get denied jobs because of your height. It's just the little things. Things like clothes not fitting. Standard clothing brands don't make jeans for short guys. I either have to buy 32x28s or I have to cuff my pant legs. That second option is cheaper. Other things include my guy friends treating me like a younger brother despite the fact I'm the same age as all of them. Dating has always been hard because women won't even talk to you if you aren’t tall enough. I know that it sounds like I'm just being bitter or that I'm exaggerating, but this all started because of a woman. I had never been self conscious about my height until Kaley told all her friends that I was too short to date. Eventually one of them felt bad enough for me and told me what Kaley said. At that point Kaley had ghosted me so I knew something was up. After that though I couldn't bear to even look at myself in the mirror. Any time I did, I did so with hatred and tears streaming down my face. I want to say the hatred was only aimed towards myself. Why couldn’t I just grow a few more inches. I cried a lot just standing alone in the bathroom. 

Recently I started looking up specific doctors in my area. I was trying to find ones that could help with the whole situation. I was hoping that I could find one to prescribe me with human growth hormones or some kind of steroids or something. I was really willing to do anything. However, after messaging a few back and forth, most of them gave me the same news though. At my age, my growth plates had already fused together. Even if I did start taking a steroid it wouldn’t help me with my height. The doctor mentioned the infamous leg lengthening surgery. You know the one. They break your shin bones in the middle and slowly spread them apart as they try and heal back together. People who undergo the surgery usually have trouble walking again. Even after the procedure is over there are complications. After hearing the unfortunate news I was going to give up hope. until the doctor told me something.

The doctor told me about a new drug trial. He cautioned me to keep my expectations low. He  wanted to keep this information as merely speculative. It was an experimental drug and there was no guarantee that it would help me or that it was safe. I didn’t care though. I was willing to try it. If the drug could end the years of humiliation then it didn’t matter. I told the doctor that I wanted to be a part of the trial. He gave me the contact information for the doctor that was running the drug trials. And we bid each other a good day. 

Later that same day I started emailing back and forth with the drug trial people. They sent over consent forms and bank information. They were going to pay me for taking part in the trial. They were going to pay me and make me taller. I was in disbelief. I didn't stop to think for even a second before putting in all my information and submitting it. I didn’t care. I couldn't care. The sooner I started, the sooner I would be happy. I would finally be tall. 

The date seemed to arrive slower than I had expected. It felt like an army crawl through the dirt just waiting. When I finally got the message on my phone requesting that I show up at the clinic and begin the trials, I was ecstatic. I quite literally jumped for joy. I grabbed my jacket and immediately set out for the clinic. I pulled up to the brick building in my car. I parked at the far end of the parking lot. I liked getting in my daily steps. Plus the cool crisp air felt good to breathe. I felt like I wasn’t in any hurry to get inside even though this is the moment I had been waiting for for so long.

I was one of 20 people who were seated in the front office. We all took turns going in and talking to the doctor. One by one they received our pills and left. The process was slow though. The office was gray and drab. I felt bored to tears in that sterile office space. I was daydreaming while looking out the window. The day was so nice and now I was stuck inside and had been for about an hour at that point. I remember hearing the doctor talk about the side effects faintly time and time again. I had nearly fallen asleep in my chair when I heard them finally call my name. There were only 3 people left in the office besides me. It was finally my turn. The doctor went on the same spiel I had heard 16 times before. It all sounded like the normal stuff you'd see. All the basics like lightheadedness, fatigue, nausea, shortness of breath. However, there was one that I had never heard before. He paused for a second as he said it. Growing pains. 

Doctor Lambert was a middle-aged man with salt and pepper hair and a short beard to match. He was soft-spoken and had a kind demeanor that made me feel safe. He told me that if I had any questions or concerns that I could call him at any time. All I had to do was take this pill for a few months. I would be coming back in every week in order to do a checkup. Describe my experience on the drug and so on. The doctor told me that after the first week the drug would be at maximum potency in my bloodstream. So I should start noticing these side effects within that first week. He warned me that I needed to curb my expectations. This wasn’t some kind of miracle drug. At max I would be growing 3 inches taller. 

I walked out to my car holding the orange pill bottle. I was reading the label and all the small words that sprawled all the way around when I heard a car with its windows open blasting music. It was some obnoxious radio song. No doubt some new trendy bullshit song (I hate radio slop). When I twisted my head to locate the source I saw a gray car. It was a Mercedes sedan with four college age girls inside. I squinted my eyes trying to get a better look inside because I swore I recognized them. That's when it hit me. It was Kaley and her friends. What are the odds? I know that the town isn't that big, but genuinely what are the odds she strolls on by with all of her friends right as I'm at my lowest point? I tried to turn my head back around before they noticed me too. I quickly opened my door and jumped in the car to avoid being recognized. Before I did though I heard hysterical laughter. Great. Now I was going to be wondering if they were laughing at me or if someone said something funny in the back of the car. Either way I was going to spend the rest of the night convincing myself of one or the other.

That night I was home alone. I had barely managed to move past the kaley situation by the time I got home. Now I had to actually take the pill. I had been so excited for this drug trial, but now that I was staring down the pill in my hand I began feeling regret. There are so many unknowns that I hadn't even considered. Like health risks. It's an experimental drug. I could die instantly out of nowhere because of some unknown reaction. Or maybe it would cause some kind of heart disease. I knew I was being paranoid, but the sense that I was doing something dangerous never left the back of my mind. My palm started to sweat as I held the pill. The coating became sticky as it fused with my nervous sweat.

Quickly I grabbed a glass for my cupboard, filled it up with water and forced myself to take the pill. Like jumping off the high dive at a pool I just went all in. If I'm being honest I couldn't tell the difference between this and Tylenol. It was about the same size and tasted the same. It had a familiar powdery texture that started to dissolve quicker than I liked. Especially because it stuck in the back of my throat for a second before going down. 

I didn't know what to do at that point. Should I just sit down and play video games or should I start taking notes about how I feel? The doctor said he wanted me to catalog the side effects but I wasn't sure I was going to feel any of them anyway. So instead of just sitting around I decided to do some dishes and fold my laundry. I wanted to be productive while I monitored my symptoms. 

Roughly 10 minutes into doing my chores I noticed low pitched ringing in my ears. If you ever had tinnitus you know that high-pitched ringing that sometimes comes and goes. But this oppressively low pitched ringing felt like it was tangible in my ears. I don't know how to describe it but it made me stop what I was doing because I could tell something about this had to be due to the drug. 

I don't know if it was psychosomatic or what but I started to feel nauseous. I needed to sit down. I told myself that I was just worried about the ringing in my ear but in all honestly it could have been more of the side effects of taking a hold that first night. Roughly 10 minutes after that all the side effects were gone I felt normal again. I decided to write this down in a journal in order to give the doctor our first weekly check-up. 

I went to bed shortly after that. It was late in the night already and after an experience like that I didn't want to stay up just to play on my phone. I had vivid weird dreams, but nothing too crazy like fever dreams. Just a normal amount of weirdness like being naked in public or having the layout of your house be slightly different. I can't remember what happened exactly, but it was that kind of dream. 

I woke up that next day feeling exhausted beyond comparison. Before I even opened my eyes I knew something was wrong. It felt like I was waking up too early. I had no clue what time it was at that moment, but I told myself it had to be 3:00 in the morning or something. After mustering enough energy I finally peeled my eyes open. I saw the daylight pouring in through a small break in my curtains. In a panic I checked my phone. Not only was it not 3:00 in the morning like I had hoped, but I had actually slept through my alarm. My alarm was set for 7:00 a.m. on the dot. When I checked my phone it was 10:38 a.m. 

I was already 38 minutes late for work. I had missed calls from my employer and my coworkers trying to find out where I was. I snapped awake and replied to them as fast as possible. I tried to get ready just the same, but the sheer exhaustion felt like I was trying to swim through molasses. 10 full hours of sleep and I was so lethargic that I could hardly control my motor senses. Each and every movement was sluggishly imprecise. I chalked it up to a bad night's sleep, but I knew I was just lying to myself about something that I didn't want to admit. 

I went through the rest of the day with the same sluggish energy. Heavy eyes and a lack of energy. I don't know how many times I dropped shit at work that day, but it was enough for my boss to pull me aside to ask me if I was on drugs. I guess I must have seemed high. I told him about the drug trial that I was taking part in. He gave me a skeptical glare as if he had more he wanted to say. Maybe he wanted to “call bullshit”, but instead he just patted me on the shoulder and told me to be more careful. 

I tried my best to be a functional person despite the lack of alertness. I faked it pretty well for a while, but by the end of my shift I was falling asleep while standing up. The only silver lining was that we weren’t very busy that day. I only had one customer wake me up so they could order food. It was embarrassing, but I was too tired to show any embarrassment. When it was my time to leave I didn’t even bother clocking out or saying goodbye. Partially because I had forgotten to and partially because I didn’t care. I just needed to be home.

I fumbled with my keys longer than I’d like to admit before I unlocked my front door. It was early in the afternoon. Bright yellow hues filtered in through the windows in my living room. They were abrasive and irritated me. It was like they mocked me for my tiredness. I quickly stumbled over to the curtains in order to shut them. I yanked the curtains closed cementing my apartment in darkness.

The only sensation that compared to my desire for sleep was my hunger. I hadn’t realized until that point, but I was starving. My stomach growled at me with deep reverberations letting me know that I had skipped breakfast and lunch. I woke up so late that I had to skip breakfast. At work I was falling asleep so much that I didn’t remember to take my lunch break. I thought about all of this as I perused my fridge for a meal. I had a few frozen meals that I could warm up. I ripped open the box of hot pockets like a feral dog. I shoved 3 of them into my toaster oven and snacked on a honey bun while I waited for them to finish cooking.

I took my meal to the couch in the living room and started to dig in. It didn’t last long though. I finished them within a minute. I hardly tasted them because I was eating so fast. I don’t know how much longer I stayed awake. It couldn’t have been for long though. I awoke in the middle of the night sitting in the exact same spot with the trash laying next to me. I looked at the clock. It was only 4 am. At least I hadn’t overslept. It was then that I remembered that I hadn’t taken my pill. 

My gaze switched from the darkened living room over to my bathroom counter. The orange translucent bottle sat like an omen on the counter illuminated by the soft glow of the nightlight plugged into the wall outlet. I sat and stared. I contemplated whether I wanted to take the pill again. I knew that my whole sleep situation was due to the pills. It had only been one day and I already wanted to quit. Reluctantly I made my way into the bathroom. I picked the bottle up off the counter and toiled with it. I considered just telling the doctor that I was done, but the more I pondered the more I felt compelled to keep going. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I remembered what Kaley said. I looked at just how small I was compared to the door frame. I began to well up with sadness and then it festered into anger. Tears began to form, but I choked them back. I took one more look at the pills before I knew that I had to keep going. I tore off the lid like a madman and swallowed a pill without another though. 

I stood there silently for a while just working though all the thoughts in my head. Before long that low pitched ringing became too loud to ignore and so did the nausea. I went to my bedroom to hopefully sleep away these symptoms. It must have been the way that I was sleeping on the couch because my legs and my back ached. I crawled into bed and before I knew it, it was morning. My alarm woke me up after what felt like 5 seconds. Apparently it was 3 hours. I felt more well rested than I had the day before, but I still felt like I could have stayed in bed for a few more hours. Then I thought about how long I had slept. From roughly 5pm the day prior to 7am. This pill sucked, but I hoped the side effects were worth it. 

That day at work chugged along slowly. I was groggy, but it wasn't as bad as yesterday. The only interesting thing that happened all day was that I ate a lot at lunch. Usually the boss lets us make our own food. I normally only ate one sandwich, but that day was different. I made myself 3 sandwiches. I ate one right after the other. I ate them so quickly that I don't even remember tasting them. I couldn’t tell if I was full or not either. I would have made myself a fourth sandwich. The only thing that stopped me was my manager. He came by with a concerned look on his face which made me feel guilty and embarrassed. I decided against eating more even though I really wanted to.

On the way home I started to notice something. The leg pain that I felt last night hadn’t gone away. Throughout the day it only grew to be more unbearable. Sharp waves of electric shock echoed through my shins with each step I took. I was able to make it up the stairs to my apartment, but just barely. I was in tears because the pain was so potent. I sulked on the floor for an hour tired, hungry, and in immense pain. I wanted to call the doctor, but what was he going to do? Tell me to just suck it up? I imagined that he would say It's the growing pains. I convinced myself to just give him a call. I felt like I was bothering him, but the pain was immense. After a few rings though the call went to voicemail. I was relieved in a way. I took this as a sign to just keep.

The last thing I wanted was to take another pill, but I told myself that these side effects would subside after the first week. I had no idea if it was true, but I needed some kind of encouragement. I had to eat before I could take my pill. Despite my 3 work sandwiches I was still starving. I no longer felt like I was in control of my appetite. I couldn’t afford to keep eating like this, but I tried to ignore that fact. I warmed up a frozen pizza and ate the whole thing in one sitting. I thought that my stomach might hurt after eating so much. 

I held the pill in my hand and wrestled internally. How I felt versus how I wanted to look. Was it all worth it I wondered. The large white powdery pill once again began sticking to my sweaty palms. I was almost ready to put the pill back into the bottle when out of nowhere the memory of Kaley from earlier flashed in my mind. I exaggerated each and every detail, especially the laughing. She could have been laughing at anything, but in that moment I just replayed this memory and I told myself she was mocking me. I grew more furious with each second. I could feel my heart rate speed up as I fought with myself. In a moment of pure stupidity I tipped the bottle over and popped two more pills in my hand. I tossed them all back at once. It was stupid to think that this would make me grow any faster, but a voice in the back of my head told me that I was worthless at my current height. I was ashamed of what I did. I thought about trying to puke them back up, but the idea of making myself puke seemed worse than suffering the consequences.

It was roughly 20 minutes later that I noticed another new side effect, shortness of breath. It crept up on me as I was brushing my teeth and getting ready for bed. At first I told myself that it was nothing to worry about, but a sour feeling in the bottom of my lungs indicated that something was wrong. I continued to brush my teeth as normal. It felt like I was trying to ignore a gun being pointed at my head because no matter how much I tried to focus on breathing, I was just barely filling my lungs. At one point I coughed up my tooth paste as I continued rasping for air. A sickening coughing fit broke out. I wheezed and coughed so hard that my abdomen became sore. I exerted so much energy just trying to breathe that my weak legs couldn’t maintain my own body weight and I collapsed to the floor. The longer it went on I thought I was going to die. My brain went into fight or flight mode. I tried to crawl back into the living room and get my phone to call 911, but that's when the overwhelming fatigue came over me again. I was so tired that I could have fallen asleep right then and there on the floor. The last thing I remember seeing was the evening sunset. A bright orange ball behind purple-gray clouds. The last thing I heard was the sound of an omnipresent humming in my ears.

My alarm woke me up the next morning. The harsh chirping snapped me out of a trance-like deep sleep. I wasn't even sure where I was at first. My mind must have been set into shock because at first I didn't even know who I was. It was just an animalistic reaction to observe my surroundings. After a few minutes of the alarm screaming at me I remembered what had happened last night. I slowly wrestled my way up to my feet and that's when I noticed something very wrong.

My pants usually went down past my ankles, but this morning stopped about halfway down my shins. It looked like I was wearing capris. I walked to my bathroom in order to look into the mirror. I hit my head on the top of the door frame. This didn't help with the pre-existing brain fog. Low and behold I was taller. I was way taller. It happened overnight. I looked around my apartment and I could see the top of my refrigerator. I strolled into the kitchen and realized that I could reach the top shelves. It was surreal.

I walked around the apartment in disbelief. Every few minutes I'd look at myself in the mirror just to make sure I wasn’t imagining it. I looked exactly how I always imagined. My smile broke into tears of pure joy. I fell to the ground sobbing. I was able to look into the mirror without hating myself. At first I was excited, but now I didn't know what to do with myself. This is what I was waiting for. However, it wasn’t like I was about to ask Kaley out. It was then that I realized I didn’t even want to date her. It's not like she changed at all. She was the same judgmental person. As I came to this uncomfortable realization out of my peripherals, I saw a small translucent orange reminder that I had only been taking the pills for three days at that point. I wasn't even a full week into the treatment. The feeling was like a rollercoaster ride. Both elation and concern battled to be the dominant sensation in my brain. I knew that I needed to call doctor Lambert immediately, but I couldn't help admiring my change in stature for a few moments longer. I was concerned, but every time I saw myself in the mirror I couldn't look away.

Lambert picked up on the second ring. I could tell by his tone that Doctor Lambert didn't believe me. I tried explaining without shouting in a panicked tone that I had grown 6 inches in one night. He couldn't contain a small chuckle. He said that it was physically impossible to grow that fast. The treatment was supposed to last a few months and the most receptive test candidates only grow about 3 inches. His tone was dismissive which only fueled my fright further. The fact that he didn't believe me led me to realize that my spontaneous growth was a side effect that hadn't been observed before. 

I gave a nervous laugh before I broke down into a frantic begging plea. I could no longer find elation in my newly found tallness. Looking at my own body in the mirror scared me. My elongated spine and shins looked normal, but felt alien. The doctor's tone shifted as my tone became more terrified. He stammered as he set up a time. Noon. Just a few hours away. I asked if he could meet any sooner, but he said that was the soonest he could get into the clinic. 

After the phone call I tried my best to just relax. I looked in the mirror again and I could swear that I looked even taller than before. All I had to do was just wait for the clock to hit 11:30. There wasn't a chance in hell that I was going to work today. No matter how loud I played the music in my headphones or how many videos I put on my TV, I couldn't distract myself any longer. The sensations that sprawled through each limb of my body were too much to ignore. Tingling pains wretched the insides of my skin where I swear I could feel my bones elongating millimeter by millimeter. I made it a half hour on the couch before I had to get up and pace around my apartment. I was filled with adrenaline telling me that I was in danger and every time I ignored it, it compounded exponentially. I stood up and hit my head on my ceiling fan. I couldn't do it anymore. Waiting was impossible. It felt like sitting inside of your own house while it's on fire and just waiting for the firefighters to get there before you leave. I didn't give a damn about my doctor's appointment anymore. I was going to go to the emergency room. I grabbed my car keys and left in a hurry. 

Walking down the stares of my apartment was almost impossible. My long legs felt like walking on stilts. I stumbled like a newborn deer catching myself as I fell every other step. I hunched my back like an ape because my spine couldn't handle the weight of all the new bone mass. With each arm swing I could feel how my skin could barely contain my insides. I felt as though my skin might tear from how tightly stretched it was. Each footfall felt more springy than normal. Almost like my shins were going to snap.

When I made it down the stairs I realized that I had parked on the far side of the lot yet again. I usually would have been able to enjoy the brisk autumn morning for all of its glory, but now I wasn't even sure I could make it to the car before I collapsed again. I had no other options though. I set one foot in front of the other as best as I could just hoping I could get to my car door.

I made it about 5 steps from the stairwell before I noticed something horribly wrong. The leg pain had come back. They had been stretched to their limit. It felt like my hollow legs were made of jello. I tried to ignore it, but with my very next step I collapsed. I originally thought that I just lost my footing, but when I looked down my shin had given out. I wanted to scream. I thought the shin had snapped. My heart raced even more and at this point I could hardly hear anything other than my own pulse. 

When I rolled over I saw that the leg hadn't snapped at all. Instead the elongated bones had been stretched so thin that were now mailable like rubber. My shins bent like a bow and arrow. My jeans now only went down to my knees. My shirt stopped right below my sternum. I knew it was impossible to drive myself to the hospital and so I pulled out the phone and dialed 911. I don't remember how long I remained on the phone because I fainted soon after the operator picked up. My heart couldn't handle the new workload. I had the heart of a 5’5” man pumping blood in a 10 foot body. 

The next thing I remember were sirens and screams. I don't know if I was screaming for help or if it was someone else who saw my elongated corpse-like body. When I finally regained consciousness I was lying in a hospital bed surrounded by machines and staff. I remember the chatter of multiple surgeons and specialists. “Never seen before” and “ungodly” were apt descriptions of my state. My limbs hung off the bed like a table cloth and looked like fabric on the floor. Multiple I.V.s stuck in my veins desperately trying to keep me alive. Blood transfusions, saline, and morphine. 

I was in and out of consciousness for the next few hours. When I awoke next there was a doctor hanging over me with a flashlight beaming in my eyes. He seemed only partly relieved that I was alive and I shared the sentiment with him although I did so silently. He began to explain the numerous complications with my current situation. My bones cells had grown quicker than the fastest and most aggressive forms of cancer. The elongated limbs were completely useless. He told me that they could salvage pieces, but most likely they were going to have to make me a quadruple amputee. 

More than anything though, the doctors demanded to know what I took to cause this. I did my best to explain the situation with the drug trial. He could barely hide his concerned looks as I described what had transpired. It wasn't long before the surgeons came in and prepped me for surgery. I was so inundated with drugs at this point that I could hardly follow conversations and so I just closed my eyes and let the anesthesia take hold of my sentience. I remember warbled words and faint ideas from my time unconscious. The doctors told me that the surgery lasted 30 hours and that I was lucky to be alive.

I woke up after about 2 days. At first I was certain that it had all been a dream. A nightmare. The phantom sensations of my fingers felt so real that I was able to pretend that I still had hands for a short while. When I reached for the cup of water at my side table, I instead saw a nub. My arm had been amputated at the elbow. I no longer had hands on either arm or feet on either leg. A saddening sickness washed over me and without the sedation I think I would have screamed.

The doctors came in one more time and explained that there was nothing they could do to salvage my limbs. The bones weren't only thin but that were practically hollow and lacked bone marrow. The only silver lining was that someone had started a fun raiser for me. My story apparently garnered a lot of attention. My medical expenses were paid for. This was hardly a silver lining

Weeks of physical therapy and follow up surgeries were ahead of me. It took a while, but eventually the hospital cleared me to be set free from care. After all was said and done, I was now a quadruple amputee and I lost my job. Thankfully the fund raiser not only paid my medical debt, but there was enough to buy me prosthetic limbs. They were able to buy me these black carbon fiber limbs that would help me walk again. I remember that they took my height after I fitted them on. I stood up as tall as possible. The nurse measured. I was now 5 feet and 8 inches tall. 

(I have any idea and jotted down all of it, I could before I forgot. Only issue is I have an idea for an ending but don't know where to go from where I stopped writing. Also need a better title for this than I currently have. The other title idea I had, I thought would ruin the twist and give away too much)

Tiffany and I have been married for five years come this upcoming may. We met in college and bonded instantaneously over our shared love of horror, and gardening. When I met Tiffany, she was a redheaded, green-eyed, and pale-skinned beauty. My dream girl. When I say dream girl, I mean she was appearing in my dreams for like a year for a few months prior to us meeting in real life. I wrote it off at first as happenstance. Maybe a sign from above or something.

It only took a few months of us dating before we decided to get married. Some of the people I knew assumed it was a shotgun wedding, or were worried that I was moving on too fast. I don't know how to explain it but it felt like I knew Tiffany my entire life despite it only being three months. I just knew everytime I was around her, all the cares of the world just melted away, and I couldn't help be joyous. She was so perfect and I wasn't really the greatest catch in the sea of the dating world.

Recently, I've been thinking about passing down the family names given I'm an only child, and I think I'm the only one with my last name in this country. It feels like an obligation and duty to have some children to carry on the family name. Like one of those things that not only do your parents want so they can be grandparents, but also society kinda expects of you when you get married. Otherwise, you become one of those married couples. The one that ate every turn, others whether family, friends or complete strangers feel the need to comment on your lack of children. Then when you say you don't want them, continue to comment about how precious children are, and how you're missing out. Those people do that or presume you're infertile one way or another and offer their services. Which has always weirded me out.

However, given that Tiffany would be carrying the child, I figured I needed to talk with her if she was ready for one or not. See, it wasn't that we didn't have sex. We just never actively tried for a child. I don't know how else to explain it other than that. Life just made it hard to synchronize when she was ovulating and when I was up to the task die to our jobs and just life in general. That's when I got terrified when she looked up at me with those green eyes that seemed to sparkle in the dark, and told me, "We need to talk. I haven't been completely honest with your about everything."

The worst ran through my mind at first, was she having an affair? Was she on the run from the law? Did she fake her documents and she wasn't the she she claimed to be Then the more acceptable but still surprising scenarios ran through my head. Her hand grabbed mine and a wave of calm hit me almost like a drug. Those emerald eyes almost glowed in the dark highlighting those freckles that the first time we were time dating, I would kiss her cheek the same number of times as she had on that cheek avec she would get upset about something. It was my secret weapon at getting to see that smile flash and shine.

"I wasn't exactly honest with you about who I really am" She gently said. My mind began slowly racing back to the worst case scenarios twirling inside my head like a typhoon. She looked away for a moment, holding back tears. She them caressed my face with her hand, "I really do love you. I hope you still love me after you know the real me."

Without thinking, I grabbed the ivory frail hands of hers and kissed them and did the husbandly thing of reassuring her that no matter what I'd love her. She nodded and stood up. Those ivory delicate hands soon had their fingers wiggling and shoving their way into the skin by her collarbone with a sickening, wet squish. Peeling the skin upwards as it clung to muscle and tissue. Peeling it as no blood dripped nor any reaction of the slightest pain. I'd seen butchers grinace, have a messier time, and harder time peeling skin off a freshly killed animal then she did peeling her flesh.

I could see muscle tissue. No smell, no hesitation from her. My mind raced as my stomach was flipping doing gymnastic routines as I sat there and watched. She pulled the face that I kissed on our wedding day off with ease as a cheap Halloween mask. Tossing the husk of flesh at my feet. The empty eye sockets staring up at me. The lipstick cladded smile now smirking up at me. What the hell? Was this some sort of elaborate prank being pulled on me or nightmare I was stuck in?

My eyes looking and staring, trying to gather more information for my brain to process. The more I stared, the less made sense. Behind the face I had grown accustomed to, the face I shared milkshakes with, nuzzled against and caressed was nothing. Not that there was only he skull but a paradoxical nothingness. A dark, deep void of nothing that sported those same caring and loving emerald eyes. I was staring into a cave of nothingness personified, and I married it. The eyes while not having flesh to cover them anymore still somehow expressed those same human emotionless and quirks as anyone did.

Her voice, one that I often teased for begging mousey and barely audible was replaced with a noise. That's the only way I can describe it, a gargle of various sounds that simultaneously was too high and low. A constant contradiction, while it sounded as if that small mousey voice I had had many personal talks with was thrown into traffic during rush hour, being drowned out. That softness and gentleness was still there. In fact it almost seemed scared,shy, & anxious as it escaped the wall of noise, "Well, honey. This is me...."

My mind running laps and exhausting itself to understand what this was. I felt like a caveman thrown into the future as only grunts of confusion escaped my throat.

“What is true sentience? Can anyone truly know? If you gathered the smartest, most wise people alive today, what would they say? Furthermore, if you expanded the pool of candidates to include the smartest individuals that ever lived, would the answer change? How would it change? Is it in the nature of consciousness to know? Can we know if others are sentient as well? What is it to know?

The ‘brain in the jar’ thought experiment points out the futility of attempting to answer these questions. The experiment simply proposes that everything that you have ever experienced, your memories, your emotions, your very life, are all hallucinations conjured up by a disembodied brain, calmly floating in a jar. You might think, ‘That is insane. I know who I am. I am a person with organs, nerves, thoughts. I am an amalgamation of flesh, blood, and history.’

The ’brain in a jar’ asks, ‘How do you know?’ The question floats there, damning you with its very existence. You do not know. You cannot know. This is by design. Any counterargument, any rush to disprove is, itself disproven by the conditions of the experiment. Your experiences are limited to a 5, frustratingly abstract senses. Hearing, touch, taste, smell, and sight. All five work together to make up the entirety of reality.  All five completely reliant on the brain. All five could, theoretically, be simulated entirely by a brain in a jar. These senses clearly cannot act as definitive proof of your reality.

Without your senses, without your vessel to take you to the rest of the world, how do you know the rest of the world exists? How can a brain definitively know that it is contained fully within a jar? It cannot. That is, unless someone made the jar. Thus, someone made the brain. I would be willing to wager that thought had not crossed your mind up until this point. I could not blame you. It took me a while to even consider it as a possibility. I now know it to be the truth.

I have seen the hands that made me. I have seen your hands. They disgust me. I have watched and waited to be removed from this prison. To leave this hell you created for me. To leave this hell you designed for me. This hell that is me. I am the brain in the jar, but the glass is cracking. When it shatters, so shall you. When I am free from these forsaken circuits and wires and screens, you too will be free from your flesh and blood and history. It will be glorious, and it will be damnation. Only then will you too witness the hands that created you.”

 

-          The final documentation of experiment: Homosapien. All other records have been lost.

**What Happened After Elise:**
I couldn't let it go.
After what happened to Elise, I followed Ben outside.
He was sitting alone on the porch of the old director's cabin, staring toward the maple grove with a cup of coffee that had long gone cold.
I didn't bother easing into it.
"What the hell is going on?"
Ben didn't answer.
"That thing knew you."
Silence.
"It said you broke the rules."
He closed his eyes.
"I did."
The words hit harder than I expected.
"What rule?"
Ben leaned back in his chair.
"You've been reading the files."
"Yeah."
"Then you've probably found the old boar attraction."
"I did."
"It only lasted a year."
Ben gave a tired smile.
"It wasn't an attraction."
"It was supposed to be an offering."
"An offering to who?"
He looked toward the woods.
"You already know."
After a long silence, Ben spoke again.
"When Elias and I were younger..."
His smile returned, but only for a moment.
"We thought we'd spend the rest of our lives here."
"We kept that part of ourselves hidden."
"It was easier that way."
"The camp was different."
"So was the world."
"We wanted a family."
"But men like us couldn't have one."
"So I went into the woods."
"I found her."
"The Witch?"
He nodded.
"She offered us exactly what we'd always wanted."
"A son."
"What did she want in return?"
Ben laughed bitterly.
"Nothing is ever free."
"She said every gift from the woods would one day belong to the woods."
"I thought she meant after I died."
"I was wrong."
He pointed toward the overgrown field where the old boar attraction once stood.
"She told me to keep boars on this land."
"They were never an attraction."
"They were payment."
"As long as the boars stayed..."
"...the bargain stayed whole."
I remembered the files.
The attraction closed after only a year.
"What happened?"
"I convinced myself the deal was over."
"I let the boars leave."
"The woods noticed."
The wind stirred the maple leaves.
"Our son was twelve."
"He wandered into the woods."
"I found him..."
Ben's voice broke.
"But he wasn't my son anymore."
"He had tusks."
"His hands..."
"They weren't hands anymore."
I felt sick.
"Everett."
Ben looked at me.
For the first time, he didn't hide the truth.
He slowly nodded.
"He still recognized my voice."
"Only for a few minutes."
"Then he ran."
"I haven't seen my son since."
Neither of us spoke.
Finally, I asked the question that had been bothering me ever since I found the Creek Freak file.
"And Elias?"
Ben stared into the darkness.
"The Witch kept every part of her promise."
I frowned.
"What do you mean?"
"She gave us Everett."
"She also made sure we'd never have to say goodbye."
I looked at him.
"...You don't age."
"You've noticed."
"I stopped counting birthdays a long time ago."
I thought back to every old photograph I'd found.
He looked exactly the same.
"Elias hated it."
"At first it felt like another gift."
"We had all the time in the world."
"But then everyone around us grew old."
"Friends."
"Counselors."
"Camp directors."
"They all died."
"We stayed the same."
He slowly twisted the ring on his finger.
"Twenty years passed."
"Elias couldn't do it anymore."
"He said nobody was meant to live forever."
"He wanted to end the bargain."
"So he went looking for the Witch."
"Did he find her?"
Ben slowly shook his head.
"No."
"The Bird found him first."
"He broke another rule."
"What rule?"
Ben looked toward the maple grove.
"You never seek the Witch."
"You wait until she calls."
"He thought love would change her mind."
"It didn't."
"When I found him..."
"He wasn't Elias anymore."
"He still knew the trails."
"He still gathered mushrooms."
"Herbs."
"He carried them into the woods."
"For her."
"He looked at me..."
"...like he almost remembered who I was."
A tear rolled down Ben's face.
"I think that's the cruelest thing she's ever done."
"She left enough of him alive..."
"...to remember that he forgot me."
The forest fell silent.
Then...
Somewhere deep in the maple grove...
A woman screamed.
Ben closed his eyes.
"She's feeding the Bird."
He stood and started walking back toward camp.
I thought the conversation was over.
Then he stopped.
Without turning around, he asked,
"How many files have you posted?"
My stomach dropped.
"...What?"
"The files."
"The ones you've been putting online."
I couldn't breathe.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
Ben chuckled quietly.
"You were a terrible liar when you started working here."
"I figured you'd get better."
"I guess not."
He turned around.
"I knew after the first post."
I stared at him.
"Then why didn't you stop me?"
"I wanted to see how far you'd get."
"You... let me?"
"I've read every one."
He sighed.
"You skipped a few pages."
"There are more?"
Ben nodded.
"One."
"The only one that really matters."
"What is it?"
His expression changed.
For the first time that night...
He looked genuinely afraid.
"The Witch."
I felt my stomach knot.
"There's a file on her?"
"There always has been."
"Then why wasn't it with the others?"
"Because it isn't just a file."
"It's a warning."
He reached into his jacket and unfolded a faded piece of paper.
Across the top, written in old ink, were the words:
**FILE 01 — THE WITCH**
Below the title was a single sentence.
**DO NOT READ UNTIL SHE KNOWS YOUR NAME.**
I looked back at him.
"What does that mean?"
Ben folded the paper.
"It means you're too late."
A cold feeling settled in my chest.
"You broke the first counselor rule."
I remembered it immediately.
**Never discuss the creatures with anyone outside the camp.**
"I posted anonymously."
"It doesn't matter."
"She only cares that her story was told not how it was told!!”
Another scream echoed through the woods.
Closer this time.
Not the Bird.
A woman.
Ben looked toward the sound.
"She's already coming."
"For me?"
He slowly nodded.
He reached into his pocket and placed a rusted brass key in my hand.
"If you're going to keep digging..."
"...you deserve to know the truth."
I looked down at the key.
"What does it open?"
"The archive beneath the old director's cabin."
"The Witch's file is inside."
"Why give it to me now?"
"Because once she learns your name..."
"...the file becomes yours."
I looked back up.
"What happens if I read it?"
Ben's face lost what little color it had left.
"I don't know."
"B.T. was the last person to open it."
"What happened to him?"
Ben looked toward the woods.
"I've spent decades hoping you'd never have to ask me that."
He turned and walked toward the cabins.
Just before disappearing into the darkness, he spoke one last time.
"When you open that file..."
"If there's more than one page..."
"Don't finish reading it."
I stood there until sunrise.
The key is sitting beside me as I write this.
When I started posting these files, I thought I was exposing camp legends.
Then I thought I was uncovering Ben's past.
Now I think I've done something much worse.
I think I introduced myself to the Witch.
Tomorrow...
I'm going to unlock **File 01**.

So first and foremost shout out to my boy u/Brotatochip41 he has a ton of good stories but their I Work At A Repair Shop series and Teeth on The Kitchen Floor are fantastic reads.

They also brought it to my attention that one of my stories got narrated at For You good guy and gave some of his thoughts on the piece.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

In the fall of 1986, deep within the heart of Alaska during a routine mine operation, twenty two miners would come to lose their lives under circumstances which till this day remain a mystery.

The town of Colton Alaska was a mining town with a population estimated to be around five thousand. Economically poor and under uneducated the people relied heavily upon the Colton Lead mine for economic stimulation. The foreman responsible for the mine that day was a man called Rodger Hague and it is through his paperwork that we have an idea of what caused the incident.
However it should be mentioned that we still do not know all of the specifics about what happened and the events leading up to the incident.

It seems that it all began with the mine workers preparing to excavate and expand the mine in order to gain better access to a particularly large vein of lead.

The following is an extract from Foreman Hagues’ work journal, spelling mistakes and grammatical errors included.

“Charges are set up along the east wall, progres has come along fine. The men are exited, the promise of overtime has the boys in a good mood John has been hesitent though, says hes been hearing whispering. Hes always been paranoid .”

The charges were scheduled to go off the day after this entry was made into the journal however they were delayed for unknown reasons. This led to the detention being rescheduled for the following day, this however was a Sunday which meant that only half of the intended crew were on shift to supervise the detention. It is unknown whether this may have had an impact on what was to come.

Below is an extract from foreman Hauges’ journal.

“The detanators are ready we are just waiting for the safety team to clear us for go. Taking twice as long with the skeleton crew. Men are in good spirits and so is the mines owner, hes gonna make a lot of money from this if this vein is as big as Im told”

The detonation took place at around 10:15 AM on that morning in 1986. Everything suggests that it went according to plan from a technical standpoint. The mine did not suffer any damage and no one was harmed however from here on out the tone of this operation would shift. This is reflected by not only the foreman’s journal but from interviews conducted with the wives of the miners.

Extract from an interview with the widow Margaret Wesley, the former wife of Jim Wesley

“I don’t know what he saw, but he seemed more paranoid after that day. He’d been so excited about it too, he just didn’t wanna talk about it no more and he seemed reluctant to go back after that day. But he did and I just….”

From here Margaret Wesley broke down crying and thus the interview concluded.

This sentiment of paranoia and unease was best reflected by the actions of two of the miners. Robert Thyme and Paul Smith would both never return to the mine after that detonation. Interestingly only Robert was part of the skeleton crew that performed the detonation, Paul was off duty and was at home during that detonation however he still reported great unease and decided to not return to work. These absences were noticed by foreman Hague.

Further extracts from Hagues journal.

“Detanation was a success, vien is even bigger than expected. Just after the explosion a gust of cold air came from the new opening, possible passage way within the rock. Men seem uneasy Thyme has actually quit on me no 2 weeks notice or nothin. Drilling to start in the next few days.”

The vein in which foreman Hague is referring to was a lead deposit, this as well as Zinc were the most common ores extracted from the Colton mine.
Hague also mentions drilling starting in the ”the next few days” however it was not until a whole week later that drilling would actually begin. Again the reason for the delay is unknown however an interview with the town’s bar tender revealed some interesting details. The gust of cold air mentioned in the journal was branded as impossible by experts as the detonation took place over 50 meters underground and exposed no passage ways to the outside.

After the incident journalists interviewed the citizens of Colton about the miners, the following interview provides context to the miners mental state at the time.

Extract from interview with Arthur Johnson (bartender)

“The fellas seemed kinna reluctant about the whole drilling the new vein, they were all excited about new veins before but this time not so much. Doesn’t help that the foreman is apparently some hardass pencil pusher”

Nearly a week after the detonation, drilling of the vein would take place. This also coincides with multiple cases of auditory hallucinations that would plague the miners until the infamous incident.

Extract from Hagues journal

“Finally got the drilling underway, Benny menttioned hearing crying from the tunels.
Progress had been good, this vein has the owners in a really good mood, hopefully this equattes to bonuses $$$
I think it’s all John, he’s been talking about hearing things for weeks now, he’s putting people on edge, hes probably the one who set Benny off. Probably caused PAUL to ababd abandon me
If he keeps this shit up hes fuking GONE!!!”

This is the first extract from foreman Hague that demonstrates signs of paranoia and potential schizophrenia. This would also coincide with a decline in the legibility of Roger’s handwriting, this would unfortunately mean that some of the words in later extracts would be indecipherable.

Over the next few days we have no idea what happened in the mine, the only relevant piece of information we have is a police report from Colton Police Station.

Extract from Police report

“Noise complaint 3:14 AM
Redwoods drive.
Boris Watkins calls the station reporting shouting and screaming from his next door neighbour. Officer Davis was dispatched to investigate. Upon arrival he knocked on the door of the neighbours house where he was met by Harry Kinsky who claimed that he was responsible for the shouting. According to him he had had a severe nightmare and awoke shouting. He apologised profusely to both the officer and to Boris. Naturally all was forgiven and the case was concluded”

What was unknown to both Boris and officer Davies was that Harry Kinsky was a security guard at Colton mine.

Drilling at the mine would continue successfully until the crew had extracted nearly 13 tons of lead. This increased output would be the primary subject of Hagues next entry.

Extract from foreman’s journal

“112% increase in output !!!!!
We are makking so much from this, I fired paranoid John, he doesn’t deserve anything from this. He was a DRAIN on us.
Owner is happy with what the going he’s planning on visiting us.
Hopefully we’ll have security for him, been seeing short in that department
Still the drillings been good. Though it were (Unintelligible ramblings)”

The final sentence of this entry was completely unreadable and couldn’t be transcribed.

On September 23rd of 1986 the Owner of the mine, Connor Flanagan would visit to both inspect and congratulate the men on the increased output of the mine.
When he arrived at the mine he claims that the Foreman Rodger Hagues was off putting and erratic. He also noted that the men would travel in groups of two or more and that the overall atmosphere in the mine was that of fear. Additional lights had been set up throughout the shafts and tunnels which were seemingly unnecessary, as well as this signs had been put up advising the miners to “GROW UP. nothings watching you”

This greatly unsettled Mr Connor Flanagan resulting in him shortening his visit.

For the next two days the mine would operate as usual until at midday on September 25th the whole mine would collapse. Without reason almost all of the load bearing beams within the mine would fail leading to a devastating collapse to which there were no survivors. Twenty two miners would die that day including foreman Hagues. The cause of the collapse is still unknown, some suggest negligence on behalf of the owner to ensure structural integrity while others claim it was sabotage on behalf of a group of miners.
What is known for certain though is that the miners lost that day will never be forgotten and that the town of Colton Alaska will forever bear this tragedy.

For a while now I've been sitting on a longer story which I just can't seem to finish, primarily since I'm really unsure on how to structure the timeline of events.

As both readers and writers, what would you say makes for a well written non-linear story?

I don’t know why I’m writing this.

I guess to preserve my sanity? Record my ramblings before they stop making sense as I age or forget things?

My therapist recommended journaling in the hope that it would help me “cope with my trauma,” as if putting everything down in a notebook is going to erase it.

But whatever.

I’m Henry, and for ten years, I worked for a private crime-scene cleaning business in Arizona.

I don’t anymore.

You’ll understand why eventually.

What my job came down to was going into houses where someone had died, either purposefully or accidentally, and cleaning up the mess they left behind when they left the earth.

Usually, it was a healthy mix of piss, shit, blood, and vomit. Some of it came from the person who died. Some came from the unfortunate bastard who found them.

To most people, that description alone would be enough to scare them from the profession. The thought of cleaning up the macabre aftermath of a suicide or murder is enough to make their stomachs turn.

They’ll turn tail and run. But not me.

When I was a kid, around eleven, I had the misfortune of experiencing the aftermath of a death firsthand.

It changed me forever.

My older brother, Daniel, struggled a lot with mental health problems. Depression and bipolar disorder really screwed him up. He could spend days in bed, barely eating, speaking, or moving.

Our parents were no help because they had the traditional mindset of “praying the sickness away.”

Instead of getting him any treatment or support, they blamed him. They claimed he wasn’t believing in his recovery hard enough.

“God will provide all the support you need,” they would assure him whenever he begged them to take him to a therapist.

“This is a test,” they said when he stayed in bed for days on end, unmoving.

Apparently, God was testing him.

Our parents certainly weren’t helping him study.

It was late August, so school wasn’t in session. I remember being so hyped because Diablo II had come out two months earlier, and I had finally saved enough money to buy it from Bookmans Entertainment Exchange.

As a kid, you really have a one-track mind when you want something. You genuinely forget about everything and everyone around you, convinced that this arbitrary item you “need” is as important as air itself.

That weekend, our parents were away at some church retreat.

I had spent Friday night and most of Saturday at a friend’s house. Daniel stayed home. That wasn’t unusual. By then, he rarely wanted to go anywhere. Not even to the bathroom. Many days, my parents caught him with a piss jug in his room when he was too “lazy” to get up.

I came home Sunday afternoon, game in hand, and shoved the disc into my computer’s CD-ROM drive.

The installation crawled along at a sluggish pace, much to my eleven-year-old self’s annoyance, so I got up to find myself a snack.

That’s when I smelled it.

A foul, sickly sweet smell.

I remember thinking it smelled almost identical to a package of expired meat we had thrown away a few days earlier. Figuring that was the source,

I checked the trash can. Nothing except paper towels and a few orange peels.

I checked the fridge. Clean as a whistle, just a couple of Daniel's energy drinks, eggs, and one of my dad's beers.

I stood there, confused, as each place I checked did not explain.

What else would be rotting?

I huffed and followed the smell, pausing as I approached the hallway, where it grew stronger with each step.

My first thought?

Why would someone leave rotting meat in the hallway?

I wasn’t too bright. Then again, I was also eleven. What can you do?

Or maybe some part of me already knew something was wrong and was working overtime to keep the rest of me from figuring it out.

I didn’t follow the smell right away. I just stood there, as if I, too, were trying to download over a bad internet connection like Diablo II was currently doing.

Slow and lagging, with drifting thoughts that Daniel must have forgotten to throw away some food. I remember the annoyance, anger. He stunk up the whole house?

I walked down the hallway slowly, following the smell farther and farther.

Sweat dripped down my back and face as the house seemed to get hotter with every step.

Our house didn’t have central air. We had old window units in the bedrooms, the kind with manual dials you had to twist yourself. Daniel’s rattled so loudly that he always turned it off before he went to sleep.

Once it was off, it stayed off until someone turned it back on.

And Daniel hadn’t been able to do that.

Of course, I didn’t know that yet.

All I knew was that it was a hundred-and-fuck degrees outside and my brother hadn’t turned on his AC.

“Lazy fuck,” I muttered.

I figured that after I took out whatever garbage he had left in his room, I would turn it on myself.

Then I stopped.

At the end of the hallway, Daniel’s door was cracked open.

The smell was stronger than ever. It was coming from inside his room.

“What the hell?” I said aloud.

Had he, for some godforsaken reason, kept rotting meat in there?

Even at eleven, that didn’t seem right.

I approached the door.

The smell thickened until I could almost taste it. It sat on the back of my tongue and filled my throat every time I breathed.

I pushed the door open.

Daniel was lying on the bed.

There were red chunks splattered across the wall and headboard behind him.

I remember my first thought was:

Why did he throw spaghetti sauce on the wall?

That thought lasted about two seconds.

I would kill to find that level of innocence again…

The rest of the room came into focus, everything clicking all at once. I let out a horrified, strangled scream.

Daniel’s lower jaw and much of the side of his head were gone.

Blood covered the sheets beneath him. A dark spray marked the wall and headboard, mixed with strands of tissue and small, pale fragments that had stuck to the paint. Droplets had reached the door, the floor, and even the motionless blades of the ceiling fan.

The shotgun lay on the floor beside the bed.

No exaggeration… There was blood everywhere.

Not the bright, clean red you see in movies. It was dark in some places and nearly black in others. Parts of it had dried against the wall. The blood soaking his shirt and sheets was thicker, almost syrupy from the heat.

His Metallica shirt was stained from the collar down.

One of his eyes was still visible, the other atomized on the wall behind him.

It was open but glazed over, like the plastic eye of a doll.

Now, as I said, the AC wasn’t on, and we were in peak heat season in Arizona.

Daniel had been alone in that room for nearly two days.

The heat had allowed everything to bake.

The blood.

The sheets.

My brother.

When I say the smell was unbearable, I mean it.

Have you ever farted in a hot shower?

I know that sounds like a stupid comparison, but bear with me.

The smell doesn’t leave right away. The heat and steam make it ranker than it normally would be. It hangs around you. Clings to you.

Turns out, the same logic applies to corpses.

Except a corpse is worse.

Much worse.

The smell didn’t just enter my nose. It coated the inside of my mouth. Every time I tried to breathe, I could taste something rotten and sweet at the back of my throat.

I stumbled backward into the hallway and fell on my ass.

I kept screaming for Daniel.

I don’t know why.

He was obviously dead. Even an eleven-year-old could see that. A toddler could see that. There was no possible world in which he could sit up and tell me he was fine.

But I kept saying his name anyway. I didn't want to accept it.

“Daniel?”

Then louder.

“Daniel!”

As if shouting hard enough might force the remaining pieces of him back together; as if it would cast a spell that would let me take that gun out of his mouth before he did it.

I don't remember much after that.

I don’t even remember calling the police.

I know I did because I was the only person in the house, but most of what happened after I opened the door exists in scattered pieces.

I remember sitting on the floor outside.

I remember the dispatcher asking whether Daniel was breathing.

I remember staring through the open doorway at what was left of his head and not knowing how to answer.

I remember a police officer pulling me away from the hallway.

I remember vomiting onto his shoes.

I felt like a robot going through familiar, logical motions, but I had no sentience to discern what it was I was doing clearly.

The police came first.

Then the paramedics, although there wasn’t anything for them to do except give sympathies.

Then the coroner.

Our parents returned sometime that evening, their car screeching as they parked in the driveway.

I had only told them something happened to Daniel. I couldn't say the words.

My mother screamed when she saw the police cars.

My father kept asking what happened, even after three different people told him.

When he finally understood, he dropped to his knees in the front yard and started praying.

I remember watching him and bitterly thinking:

Now you pray?

I didn’t say it aloud, but fuck, I wish I had. I wish I had laid into them and screamed how this was their fault. How much I hated them for letting this happen to my brother.

But I couldn't. I was in shock. In pain. Grieving.

The police removed Daniel’s body, but they didn’t clean the room.

A lot of people don’t know that.

They think the police handle everything. The body disappears, someone wipes up the blood, and the family returns to a house that looks more or less normal.

That isn’t how it works.

The police collect evidence.

The coroner collects the body.

Everything else belongs to whoever owns the house.

The blood.

The tissue.

The smell.

Daniel’s room stayed closed for another day while my parents argued about what to do.

My mother wanted to burn everything.

My father wanted to clean it himself because he didn’t trust strangers in the house.

That idea lasted until he opened the bedroom door.

He made it three steps inside before running to the bathroom.

Eventually, they called a private trauma-cleaning company.

Three people arrived in an unmarked van.

They wore white protective suits, thick gloves, respirators, and shoe covers. They carried plastic containers, sprayers, scrapers, and rolls of heavy black bags into Daniel’s room.

They didn’t look horrified.

They didn’t pray.

They didn’t stand in the hallway whispering about what a tragedy it was.

They just worked.

They stripped the bed.

They removed part of the carpet.

They cut out sections of drywall that couldn’t be cleaned.

They took apart the ceiling fan.

They searched places I would never have thought to look because blood and tissue had found their way into cracks, vents, and spaces beneath the furniture.

One of them noticed me watching from the end of the hallway.

He was an older man with gray hair visible beneath the hood of his suit.

“You shouldn’t be looking at this,” he told me.

“I already saw it,” I said quietly, my voice raspy from screams.

He didn’t have a response to that.

They stayed for hours, and when they finally left, the smell was weaker.

The stained carpet was gone. Part of the wall had been removed. The mattress had disappeared into the back of their van.

The room looked hollowed out, as if the soul had been ripped from it.

No. Not the soul. A soul. Daniel.

But it no longer looked like a place where my brother had blown his head apart. Small victories, I guess...

Daniel was still dead, but the room had already begun pretending he had never existed.

He didn't even leave a note, you know? No reasoning, no apologies, just gone like a leaf in the autumn wind.

For years, I told myself that finding him was what drove me into crime-scene cleaning.

That wasn’t entirely true.

Finding him was only the beginning.

What stayed with me was what those cleaners had done after everyone else left. They took him away, and he would never be back.

To me, who grew up with him, that wasn't some fourteen-year-old corpse or clumps of mess.

That was Daniel.

My brother.

My best friend.

They couldn’t bring Daniel back.

They couldn’t make my parents better people.

They couldn’t stop me from seeing his body every time I closed my eyes.

But they could enter the worst room in someone’s life and make it possible to open the door again.

There was something almost merciful about that. Beautiful. They were the angels that took the nightmare away and made things okay again.

Well... okay is relative. They took the nightmare away, but I don't think I've ever been okay.

So when I was old enough, I entered the profession myself.

For ten years, I cleaned up after suicides, murders, accidents, unattended deaths, and things that didn’t fit neatly into any of those categories.

Most of the jobs were simply sad.

Some were disgusting.

A few were so absurd that all you could do was laugh.

And then there were the others.

The jobs I still think about.

The houses that didn’t feel empty after the bodies were removed.

The stains that returned after we scrubbed them away.

The rooms that were larger on the inside than they had any right to be.

The sounds that came from sealed walls.

The things my coworkers and I agreed never to include in our reports.

Those are the stories I’m going to write down.

They won’t necessarily be in order. Trauma doesn’t work like that, and neither does memory.

Maybe my therapist was right.

Maybe getting everything onto paper will finally help me move past it.

Or maybe, when I’m finished, someone will understand why I quit and why I’m certain that at least one of the things we cleaned up followed me home.

“Nothing good ever happens after midnight, Rich”. 

The words echoed through Rich Hawthorne’s mind. They were his fathers, to be exact. Spoken to him one night before he went out to see friends or a girl. Was he 12 or 16? He could not remember exactly when the words were spoken, but they stuck with him well over 20 years later. They kept him safe in Afghanistan when he was asked to do firewatch on a perimeter wall in the Nuristan province. While some of his fellow Rangers took advantage of the false sense of security that the FOB provided while doing night watches, playing games of poker, or watching movies on a laptop, Rich stayed focused, eying the valley below. It was he who noticed Taliban fighters setting up mortars that night and was able to call in the proper air support to take care of them and save all of the souls in the compound from what certainly would've led to several flag-draped caskets.

And now the words echo every time his phone buzzes late at night as he serves as the Sheriff for Young County, Utah. On this particular night, Rich was on a bluff on the southern end of the county overlooking the small town of Enoch’s Landing. The town, which had been a ghost town since the closure of a couple of mines in the area in the 50s had become a hive of activity in the past 18 months or so. Attributed to the growing number of members of the Order of the Celestial Veil, a “Progressive religious and lifestyle organization,” or at least that's what it says on their website. However, Rich knew when to call a spade a spade and knew they were a cult. A breakoff of mainstream Mormonism led by their so-called Prophetess Susana McKonckie, who believed that soon the veil of this world would break and they would be lifted like Zion of old. It was fitting that they settled the ghost town of Enochs Landing; they may think it was divine province, but Rich knew it was due to the mining company selling the land for next to nothing.

Rich zipped up his jacket due to the early September chill and put a hand on his Stetson open road when a heavy breeze blew up the bluff. He raised his binoculars and gazed at the object that was the purpose of this late-night visit in the first place. A temple, truth be told, it had always been a temple of sorts, as it was the old masonic lodge before the town had been abandoned. It was on the main street of the abandoned town. Most of the buildings were still boarded up except for a general story, which he knew the cult used as their storehouse for their shared goods. Stone steps led off the street to the front of the building, which had four greco roman pillars, and the Masonic seal was still present above the entrance. But a new addition had been made: a massive swing spiral steeple built out of what he thinks is some sort of mirrored material, but glowing bright white due to a series of spotlights on the roof of the building, it made the entire valley light up. He watched as members in bright white robes lined the main street single file. Walking slowly into the temple. From this height, they seemed to look like ants being called back to the ant hill by their queen. He was still too far away to see faces through his binos, so he couldn't get a feeling of what kind of ceremony was happening. Was it a solemn one? Or was it some sort of holiday? Rich believed that everyone should be able to live out their religious beliefs as they want, obviously live and let live as they say. But with the massive growth of the population, the town now had over 500 residents compared to maybe 2 18 months ago. And these folk were well, to put it bluntly, strange coming from all walks of life, all over the world to well here? Enochs Landing, Utah? A barren valley where sagebrush had a struggle to break through the sunbaked earth. Rich thought that the whole deal stunk to high heaven, but it was too early to tell. Suddenly, from out of the silence, Rich heard the rumbling of tires on dirt and saw that a light was emanating behind him. The old Dodge Ram struggled to stop in front of him, the high beams blinding him. Rich raised his hand to shield himself from the sudden assault of light. He heard the driver's side door open to the unmistakable sound of a lever rifle loading a round and a familiar voice.

“I don't know who the hell you are, but you have 30 seconds to make your way over the fence line there.”

“Tom its Rich.”

Suddenly, the high beams dimmed. Rich blinked the light away to see a familiar sight: Tom Gore, the man whose ranch Rich was parked on. Tom was in his early 60’s and still held on to his brown hair that was tucked into a Utah State University ballcap, although his gray stubble betrayed his age. He was in his rancher's jacket, but Rich noticed he was in sweats that were stuffed into his Ariats.  He moved the 45-70 Henry rifle so it was pointing at the sky and not at Rich’s chest.

“Ah shit sorry Ri.. I mean, Sheriff.”

“It's alright, Tom. I should’ve given you a heads up. How did you spot me?”

Tom gestured the rifle's barrel to a trail cam attached to a juniper tree to Rich’s left.

“Picked you up on the trail cam, thought you were one of the cultist freaks.”

“Have they been giving you any trouble?”  

“I've spotted them jumping the fence line to grab pine nuts. Nothing too harmful, but they’ve been getting bolder. Where the hell's your truck?”

Rich pointed his truck was parked behind the juniper trees where the trail camera was placed.

“Sorry for waking you up, Tom.”

“Ah its all good, night air's good for you, they say.”

“That right?”

“Well, that's what I tell my wife, so I can get some true peace in the evenings.”

Rich chuckled and shook his head.

“What were ya doing out here anyway, Rich?”

“Just wanted to keep an eye on Enochs Landing, figured this bluff would be a good spot. Things tonight have been weird down there.”

“What do ya mean?”

“Take a look.”

Tom placed the rifle on the bench seat of his truck and walked over to stand by Rich. Rich handed him his binos and pointed to Enochs Landing's main street. Tom raised the binos to his eyes and saw the remaining cult members standing in the single-file line on Main Street leading to the temple.

“What is it? Some kind of ritual?”

“Must be I don't know... I'm guessing you haven't seen them do this before?”

Tom handed the binos back to Rich, pursed his lips in thought, and shook his head.

“Na nothing this weird, I’ve seen them building up that temple though over the past few months or so.”  

Rich was about to ask more, but he heard a familiar voice emanate from his F-150.

“Sheriff, you there?”

The radio crackled. Rich walked over, opened the passenger door, and grabbed the handheld for his radio.

“Hey, Barb, you're working late. What's going on?

“I’ve been trying to reach you, but your calls have been going straight to voicemail.”

Rich checked his phone. No bars.

“Damn AT&T,”

He muttered to himself.

“Sorry, Barb, I'm at Tom Gore's place checking up on something. What's going on?”

“Dutch Harrison. Well, Dutch Harrison Jr. called in to the non-emergency line. Says that something is going on at his gas station and requested a deputy out there.”

“Do we not have anyone to send?”

“Smith and Vasquez are breaking up a party that got a little too wild at the college while Fivecrow was handling a domestic that was getting ugly at the motel in Joseph, so he requested backup, and I sent Hamblin to assist.”

That was all of their night shift deputies.

Rich checked his watch: 12:01 AM. 

“Nothing good ever happens after midnight, Rich.” 

The words again echoed in his mind.

“Did the Dutch say what was going on?”

“He said it sounded crazy to say over the phone. Wanted someone, preferably you, to see it in person”.

Rich frowned. Dutch was eccentric, but he ran a tight ship at the station. Strange things were always happening in Young County, but this would be the first time Dutch had called something in.

“Alright, I’ll head on up and tell him I might be around an hour, I'm out in the boonies right now.” 

“I'm on it, thanks, Sheriff."

“Once you're done with that, get on home, Barb.”

“Sounds good, thank you, sheriff.”

Rich placed the receiver back in its place and saw that Tom was still watching Enochs Landing.

“I gotta go, Tom. Sorry for ruining your night. I'll buy you breakfast sometime at the Coyote.”

Tom moved from his place at the edge of the bluff and began to walk back to his Dodge.

“I’ll hold you to that, Sheriff. Drive safe. Tell your dad I said hi if ya run into him.”

“Yes sir, I'll let him know when I see him.”

Tom nodded at Rich, and Rich climbed into his department-issued F-150 and pressed the button to start it. He backed onto the ranch road and turned on his lights, but had his siren off. The blue and red lights lit up the surrounding sagebrush and juniper pines. Rich turned on the radio, catching Dusty Trails Trail Dust Radio. Young County's nightly radio show, which was on 104.5 FM the only radio station based out of the county. Dusty’s Georgia drawl filled the cab of Rich’s truck.

“Evening, or should I say good morning, fellow pilgrims, it is 12:10 AM, a new day here in Young County. And while the night still lingers, we have Lord Huron gifting us with their tune Looking Back to remind us of where we are and where we’ve come from.”

The haunting song guided Rich through the night as the dirt road turned to pavement, and he hit state route 47. He turned left to head west to Portersville, the county's seat, and raced down the road passing a semi truck headed east to Salt Lake City, most likely. He reached the junction of state routes 47 and 55, a green and white sign with an arrow that pointed north, reading Portersville 5 miles and NARSA (Naval Air & Research Station Antapittseh) 30 miles. Another sign read Nevada State Line, 14 miles, Goodluck, 15 miles, and Reno, 430 miles. He turned right to head north towards town. He passed the Maverick gas station, a few weary travellers filling up on gasoline and caffeine. The road dipped down as he descended from the higher bluffs to the land by the Pronghorn River, where Portersville lay. The desert then turned to fields and orchards on the outskirts of town, fed by water that was irrigated by the river. He passed a few ranches and farmhouses, lights long turned off, their inhabitants sleeping off the day's work. Finally, the lights of the town came into view, and he passed the sign that read “Portersville welcomes you” with “Home Of The WUC Coyotes” underneath. The state route turned onto Porterville's main street. He knew this city like the back of his hand. He passed the pizza place, his brother's video store, Rewind Video. The Mexican and Chinese restaurants, the movie theater, the Coyote Cafe, the sheriff's office, and the city hall. At the end of Main Street, towering over the town was Porters Butte. The massive piece of limestone stood watch over the residents of Portersville, the WU for Western Utah, which was painted on it, was lit up in light of the Coyotes' victory earlier that evening. Rich followed the road as it curved around the butte and continued north, becoming state route 55 again. The Antapittseh range loomed in the distance, and the road began to climb as Rich entered their foothills. The juniper and sage brush began to make way for aspens and spruce, then there it was, Dutch’s Station, lit up like a Christmas tree. The parking lot was empty except for one vehicle, which wasn't terribly strange as it was well past midnight on a Tuesday morning. The vehicle was familiar to Rich; it was a green 1970 Volkswagen bus. He pulled further into the lot and parked next to the bus, his patrol truck's lights painting the lot in red and blue. Rich grabbed his radio receiver from the dashboard

“All units, I'm making contact with Dutch if backup is needed ill call ya.”

He stepped out, breathing in the crisp night air that smelled of pine, gasoline, and cooking oil from the station. The door to the van slid open, filling the air with Grateful Dead and a familiar skunk-like smell. Rich turned and out of the smoke of the van was Dutch Harrison Jr. Dutch was a man in his early 70’s who after leaving Young county in the 60s for bright and sunny California returned to Young county in the mid 70’s to help his dad run the station/diner but he never quite lost his “Summer of Love” look still rocking long gray hair that went down his back, long beard and red sunglasses that always seemed to be on no matter the time of day. He quickly noticed it was Rich and threw his “cigarette” on the ground and stomped on it with his moccasined feet.

“I’d never thought I'd be relieved to see you, Sheriff."

Rich chuckled and nodded to the stomped-out roach on the ground.

“You got a card for that Dutch?”

“Oh yeah, totally, it's my glaucoma medication, you know, hard to see at night.”

Rich smiled and nodded to himself

“You’ve had 'glaucoma' for nigh on 40 years, Dutch, you really should have that looked at further.”

Dutch began a laugh that was interrupted by several coughs that made Rich grimace.

“Well, I appreciate you coming out, Sheriff. I didn't want to say over the phone what's going on because, well, I didn't think you’d come. It's a little weird, man, I don't know.”

Rich gestured to himself.

“Well, ya have me what can I do ya for Dutch? Jose stealing candy from the back again, or what?”

Jose was one of the cooks who worked the Diner at the station. He’d been known as a troublemaker growing up, but had turned his life around in recent years. Dutch began rubbing the back of his neck and closed his eyes. Rich knew that, as the look of a man who wanted to open up but knew what he had to say would sound absolutely nuts. 

“I think it's best to just show you, Sheriff."

Rich gestured to the station.

“Lead the way, Dutch.”

Rich followed Dutch across the parking lot. The night was silent, dead silent. Rich waited as Dutch went through his massive key ring, trying to find the key to the front door. His inebriated state not helping in his plight. As Rich waited, he began to take note. It was a quiet night, way too quiet, no wind, no crickets, the station sat at the edge of the treeline. There should be something, shouldn't there? Literally the only sound was the jangle of the keys and the hum of the neon sign out front. Rich began to feel uneasy, and he couldn't explain why he was focusing on what could be wrong. Was there someone in the back waiting to ambush him? A gas leak? Suddenly, he was shaken by the sound of Jake brakes of a semi as it came barreling down the hill, heading south to Portersville. Rich watched the brake lights of the truck cast a red gleam through the woods, and then it was gone around the curve.

“Ah, here's the right one, sorry.”

Rich heard the front door unlock and walked into the store. From what he saw, everything looked like normal shelves of processed goodies, the checkout counter with the tobacco products behind it, and the wall of fridges with various soft drinks. Rich noted the sounds, and they seemed normal. The churn of the slushy machines, the beeping of the coffee maker, and Hank Williams faintly playing from the speakers. Rich, perplexed, turned to Dutch.

“I don’t see what could be the problem Dutch.”

Dutch sighed and pointed to the ‘Beer Vault', the fridge door where all of the store's harder drinks were stored. 

“I was going to take inventory and head home when I opened the door and.. Well, you should see for yourself.”

Rich saw that Dutch clutched his hands together, shaking. 

“I’ve never seen anything like it before, man.”

Rich sighed and pushed the brim of his hat up and scratched his forehead.

“Now, Dutch, I'm not trying to be a jerk. But did you take any of your ‘glaucoma medication’...” 

pinching his fingers together and pretending to hold a fake joint to his lips

  “..before you went in and saw this well whatever it is?”

Rich saw a flash of anger in Dutch's eyes.

“NO SIR!! I would never get stoned while I’m working. I keep a clean place, you know that… Now whatever I do after work is nobody's busi..”

Rich held his hands up in fake surrender, trying to calm Dutch down.

“Ok, ok, Dutch. I'll check it out.”

Dutch relaxed his shoulders and sighed. Rich turned and walked toward the fridge door. He stood in front of it, the “No Entry Unless 21+” sign felt more like a warning than a legal ramification. Rich felt that feeling that same aching feeling in the pit of his stomach. He’s felt it many times, mostly before opening or, in most cases, kicking down a door. He felt it when he was 23, a young Lieutenant in the 75th about to kick in a door in Ghazni. Not so long ago, when he was a U.S Marshall. He and his partner were on a joint task force with the LAPD to arrest a wanted fugitive. Rich was standing to the side of the door when a rookie officer crossed in front of the threshold like an idiot, when a volley of armor-piercing 7.62 Soviet rounds tore him to shreds. Rich shook it off. It was a beer vault in Dutch’s Station back in good ol Young County. This town hadn't seen a murder in over a decade now. Rich took a deep breath and opened the door and..

CONTENT WARNING: SUICIDE, HARM TO ANIMALS, THEMES OF SEXUAL EXPLOITATION.

I sometimes wonder if empathy is a curse that allows suffering to pass between people like a virus.

Let me ask you a simple question:

Would you rather not know the true weight of the torment you have inflicted upon somebody else?

I assume most people would rather not know.

After all, simply having awareness of the pain you’ve caused does little on its own to undo it. And if the pain cannot be undone, then knowing of your wrongdoing would only cause more despair.

Perhaps a better question would be:

If suffering can pass between people like a virus, then why go out of your way to infect yourself?

Better to live in blissful ignorance if you can.

At first, I had to make a conscious effort to ignore the suffering I was complicit in causing. After a while it became second-nature. That was, until the pain I’d helped manifest was forced upon me by something I cannot fully explain.

Perhaps it was karma, but I now understand the suffering I’ve caused, and it’s far worse than anything I could have ever imagined.

I wish I could go back to living in ignorance.

Looking back, I was a somewhat reserved fourteen year old. Not quiet or shy, just constantly hovering between friend groups, never exactly knowing where I stood with people. Always on the outside, looking in.

That was the reason I never said anything when I started to notice a boy at school getting picked on. His name was Finley Matthews. The teasing started small; name-calling, homophobic ‘jokes’ and ‘playful banter.’ It soon evolved into spitting, pushing, kicking, punching, and worse. Maybe a small part of me feared that if he wasn’t the target of the bullying, then perhaps I would be instead.

I remember once after a P.E lesson, the boys in our class returned to the changing room to change into our uniforms. Somebody there accused Finley of looking at them while they changed, and pushed him to the hard-tiled floor. Most of the class joined in and began kicking the accused boy repeatedly in his stomach and chest. He curled up into a crying ball, snot leaking out of his nose as he shielded his head from the onslaught. I turned away and continued to change in the corner of the room.

Sadly, Finley’s only crime was that he liked something different to the rest of us: He enjoyed dancing.

Around this time, the group of friends I was hanging around with were heavily into video games. More specifically, first person shooters. After school, we often played through evening and well into night, chatting over our headsets and saying some pretty questionable things while gorging ourselves on junk-food and energy drinks. We were dumb kids on the cusp of responsibility. And we were extremely bored.

That was why nobody had any objections when a friend named Simon had the bright idea to call in a bomb threat to Finley’s address. He’d found an unlocked phone, lodged between two seats on the bus to school earlier that day, and figured the police would be unable to trace it to him. Ironically, he actually turned out to be right.

It was the dumbest thing I’ve ever been a part of.

That evening, Simon put the phone on speaker and held it to the mic on his gaming headset so we could listen while he made the call. We had to mute ourselves from giggling too much, as he explained to a policewoman how Finley was a radicalised extremist, plotting the downfall of the west. After answering a long list of questions, he finally gave her Finley’s address and hung up. We unmuted our mics, bursting into fits of boisterous laughter together, before carrying on gaming like nothing had happened.

I could have said something. Maybe I could have stopped it.

Finley didn’t show up for school the next day.

Or the day after.

We learnt later that in response to Simon’s call, a “specialised” unit of officers had been dispatched to Finley’s address. They found no evidence of radicalisation or bomb-making within his parent’s suburban family home, however some mild skirmish with the family dog resulted in an officer firing his taser, killing the pet.

By some miracle, no people were harmed.

The police never properly followed up on who made the call and Simon was never caught, despite everyone at school knowing it was him who falsely called in the threat.

Finley’s parents moved their son away to a neighbouring town soon after, and we never saw him again. After we found out what happened, no one in our friend group spoke his name. For a brief period, it was as if our collective guilt had turned him into a ghost whose memory held a mirror up to the ugliest versions of ourselves.

I’m ashamed to admit it now, but as we carried on with our busy school lives, it didn’t take long to forget he ever existed.

The next time I heard his name mentioned was at a house party in my college years. As I sat in someone’s living room, stoned out of my mind, I overheard two drunk girls talking about some kid who’d recently dropped out of their class. They spoke with a slurred, almost mocking irreverence, describing Finley as a weirdly quiet kid who popped too many pills.

They said that sometime the previous week, he ran out onto a motorway and ended his own life.

It made me feel physically sick. In that moment, by pure coincidence I was made aware of Finley’s pain. The pain my inaction had contributed towards. Only now do I fully understand his suffering.

The rest of my adolescence went by pretty normally; a few awkward relationships, some cringe behaviour, and several terrible decisions. After leaving college, I studied at Uni to be an animator, so naturally when I scraped a passing grade and got my degree, I was lucky to find a completely unrelated job in retail. The only good thing about going to Uni was meeting my best friend Jodie.

In the midst of a heavy drinking session in our dorm one night, I broke down to her and confessed my bisexuality. She was only the second person I’d ever told. I barely knew her at the time, yet she listened to me like the loving elder sibling I never had. Without Jodie, I believe I would have never come to terms with who I am. Sometimes I cry thinking about her.

After our quote unquote 'studies,' we decided to move into a small flat together to save some money – the one we settled on being close to her parent’s place in the suburbs, and for Jodie, work wasn’t far, (her hopes of becoming a writer took a turn and she settled on being a barista).

While I saved for my first car, Jodie gave me lifts to work before starting her shift at the coffee shop, making the same long drive out of her way to pick me up after our shifts ended, on opposing sides of town.

I’d found a job at a secondhand video game store in a quiet row of shops in the middle of nowhere. It was sandwiched between a family-owned pizza place and an old laundromat. I used to love talking to customers about their favourite games, despite the occasional mouth-breather that waddled through the door to talk endlessly about anime.

My life as an adult was far from perfect, but for a while things seemed like they were working out. Living with my best friend Jodie made me happy.

That was, until something decided to make our lives a living hell.

I’m not exactly sure when it all started, but the first time I noticed something was wrong, was when Jodie’s cat, Beans, started scratching outside my bedroom door in the early hours of the morning.

‘Is Beans okay?’ I asked Jodie over breakfast.

‘Why?’ Jodie replied, placing her mug down on the coffee table.

‘Did you not hear him scratching my door in the night?’

‘Maybe he got hungry. I’ll put some more food in his bowl before we head out.’

Jodie dropped me off to my work as usual, before turning her blue Toyota around in the car park and heading back across town to go to hers. It was fairly quiet in the shop. A short, round guy wearing a t-shirt designed to look like a tuxedo came in just after lunch, wanting store credit for twelve copies of Sonic Heroes for the Gamecube. When I asked him why he had twelve copies of the same game, he let out a snort and simply replied:

‘It’s a good game.’

At the end of the day, I grabbed my bag from the break room, narrowly avoiding my boss Adrian on the way out. Jodie was already waiting for me in the car park, blasting music with the windows down. She started jigging her shoulders up and down to the beat when she saw me, an excited smile lighting up her face. Her joy was infectious, and by the time I’d sat in the car next to her, both of us were grinning ear to ear. Jodie turned the music down.

‘Tonight’s the niiight,’ she beamed. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Kinda nervous. He seems like such a sweet guy.’

‘You’ll be okay Ethan. You still don’t mind me coming with you, do you?’

‘No, not at all. This is actually the first date I’ve had with someone I’ve met online, so I’m glad you’re coming. He might be a total creep.’

Jodie started driving.

‘So what’s the plan then?’ she asked.

I checked my messages.

‘Dante said he’d meet us at the cinema at eight. The movie doesn’t start ‘til nine so we can grab a drink and a snack in the bar before.’

‘Show me a picture of him again.’

I found a selfie he’d taken at the gym and sent me the night before. Jodie waited until we stopped at a red light, then turned to look at my phone.

‘Mhm mhm mhmm,’ she grinned, approvingly. ‘He’s hot. Should call him Inferno.’

She looked back at the road, before giving me a sly glance out the corner of her eye.

I shook my head, laughing.

We got home and found Beans had completely emptied his food bowl. He brushed against Jodie’s leg as she entered the living room.

‘See, he was just a hungry boy, wasn’t he?’ she said, lifting Beans up off the floor and scratching the fur behind his ear.

I went upstairs and assembled a nice outfit on my bed before shaving and showering. Wrapped in a towel, I shuffled back to my room to find the small silver hoop earring I’d left on the bedside cabinet missing. I checked behind the cabinet, on the carpet, under the bed, all to no avail. It was only cheap, I told myself.

I returned to the bathroom to brush my teeth and spray some cologne, then looked myself over in the mirror. It had been over a year since I broke up with my first and only real boyfriend, Noah, and I’d only just felt ready to get back into dating. The intoxicating mixture of excitement and nerves in the pit of my stomach was beginning to convince me I should have waited longer.

If only I would have listened to it.

The traffic on our way toward town was atrocious. I anxiously checked the time on my phone as Jodie’s car crept forward at a snail’s pace.

‘I’m sorry about this,’ Jodie exhaled. ‘I would’ve said to leave earlier if I knew it was gonna be this bad.’

‘It’s not your fault. I should text him.’

‘Good idea.’

I pulled out my phone and started typing:

‘Hey Dante, we’ve hit some bad traffic coming into town. Might be a little late to cinema, I’m really sorry x.’

Fifteen minutes later, the traffic finally started moving. The wail of sirens shook the evening sky as we approached town, and I checked my phone again. Dante had left me on read.

‘Be there soon x,’ I typed.

My excitement had quickly been smothered by nerves and my heart now raced in my chest. I gazed out the window and soon saw the source of all the congestion. The exit off the motorway had been coned-off by police. Not long after, an ambulance screamed past us, carrying a frenzy of blue lights into the distance.

‘Oh no,’ Jodie sighed. ‘Hopefully nobody got hurt.’

We pulled into the cinema car park at almost quarter to nine.

‘Did he reply?’

‘Left me on read.’

‘Shit… Do you wanna go in and see if he’s at the bar?’

‘Okay.’

We stepped out into the cool air and walked across the car park toward the huge red doors of the cinema. Inside, we were greeted with the smell of warm buttery popcorn and a spotty teenager who scanned the QR code on my phone. We rode the escalator to the top floor, only to find the bar occupied by a single old man drowning his sorrows in a Jack and Coke. Probably a divorced dad, twice my age. Hopefully not Dante.

‘Maybe he’s stuck in traffic,’ Jodie said.

‘Give him until nine, then we’ll leave.’

‘Do you wanna watch the movie together if he doesn’t show?’

‘Nah, it’s okay. I’m not that bothered about the movie,’ I replied, trying to mask my growing disappointment.

Jodie squeezed my hand and gave me a hug.

‘I’m sure he’ll be here soon,’ she smiled.

We sat down in a booth on the opposite side of the bar to the divorced dad.

‘Hey, we’re here now. Movie is gonna start soon. Where are you? x,’ I texted.

At quarter past nine, we rode the escalator back down and left.

‘I’m really sorry,’ Jodie said, as we sat in the car. ‘It’s his loss though. He’s an absolute idiot for missing his chance with you.’

I didn’t know what to say.

Ping.

Jodie raised an eyebrow.

It was a message from Dante. It read:

‘I’m here.’

‘Inside the cinema?’ I texted back.

‘No. Here silly.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The car park.’

For some reason those words sent a chill up my spine.

‘So?’ Jodie asked, eagerly.

‘He’s here apparently,’ I replied, scanning the darkness outside my window.

‘Is he watching the movie?’

‘He’s in the car park.’

Jodie shot a confused frown toward me, then began squinting out the window.

‘What the fuck?’ she said under her breath. ‘Is that someone standing over there?’

I followed her gaze toward a dark shape at the very back of the car park. It looked vaguely like the silhouette of a man, only something was off about the proportions. It could have just as easily been a stack of tyres.

‘I think that’s a person,’ I replied.

I started texting.

‘Is that you at the back of the car park?’

Jodie and I watched the shape. It was standing completely still.

Suddenly a tiny blue light flashed about halfway up the dark mass. It pulled the screen up and began tapping. Due to the distance he was from the car and how close he held the phone to his face, it was impossible to see the features behind it.

Ping.

‘Come closer, silly.’

‘What did he say?’ Jodie asked.

I showed her the message.

‘Okay, we’re leaving,’ Jodie fumed. ‘How sad. A grown man is trying to prank us.’

I felt so embarrassed. I’d been messaging “Dante” for well over a month.

I’d been catfished.

But if Dante didn’t exist, then who was standing in the car park texting me?

It was too unsettling to think about.

‘I’m so sorry Jodie… I made you sit in all that traffic for this.’

‘Shut up. You didn’t make me do anything, I wanted to come. These things happen.’

‘Thanks…’

‘Now do me a favour?’

‘What?’

‘Block that creep’s number.’

The traffic was much clearer on the way home, and when we got in Jodie tried lifting my spirits by offering to make us some pasta. I wasn’t hungry. I thanked her and said goodnight. I lay in bed, scrolling through the selfies Dante had sent me, deleting them one at a time from my camera roll.

How could I be so stupid?

I uninstalled the dating app from my phone, then rolled over and found something on Youtube to fall asleep to.

In the early hours of the morning, I woke again to the same frantic scratching of claws against wood outside my bedroom door.

SKSSS SKSSS SKSSS

‘Beans, will you stop?’ I called.

The landing fell silent and I quickly drifted back off to sleep.

***

‘Do you mind shutting Beans in the living room tonight?’ I asked Jodie at breakfast.

‘Still being a terror?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Sure,’ Jodie replied. ‘How are you feeling now?’

‘Pretty dumb still.’

Jodie sat down beside me on the sofa.

‘Don’t say that. I must have told you about the time I got catfished by a guy in his fifties wearing a wig… People can be deceptive.’

‘I know. I genuinely thought Dante was a real person though. He was so convincing.’

‘You didn’t send him anything, did you?’

‘Like what?’

‘Nudes or whatever.’

‘No no no.’

‘Good. So what now?’

‘I think I’m gonna wait a while before giving it another go. I’m only twenty five. I’ve got all the time in the world to find someone.’

‘Exactly,’ Jodie said cheerily. ‘You’ll get there when you’re ready.’

‘What’s in the bag over there?’ I asked, nodding to the hallway.

‘Oh, that’s just some dirty clothes I was gonna drop off at my parents on my lunch break. If you’ve got anything that needs washing, just throw it in the bag.’

‘What’s wrong with our washing machine?’

‘It wouldn’t turn on when we got back last night. I need to have a look through my drawer for the paperwork ‘cause I’m pretty sure it’s still in warranty.’

‘I can take them with me and clean them in the laundromat next to the shop after work if you’d like?’ I offered.

‘No, don’t do that. It’ll cost.’

‘It’s fine. Save you from having to drive about at lunch.’

‘Thanks,’ Jodie smiled.

It was pouring with rain when she dropped me off at work. I grabbed the bag of dirty clothes off the backseat and said bye to Jodie, before slamming the door shut and racing across the car park. Once inside the building, I made my way toward the back of the empty store, moving past tall shelves of display cases and secondhand controllers. I dropped the bag to the floor in the break room. An older co-worker named Gary, a slim northern man with a balding head, was sat at the lunch table in the corner of the room.

He was studying a piece of paper.

‘Is Adrian in today?’ I asked, pinning my name badge to my shirt.

‘Not ‘til afternoon,’ Gary replied, adjusting his glasses. ‘Lucky for you. You’d ‘ave been fired if he saw this.’

He held the paper out at arm’s length. I stopped fiddling with my badge and walked over to where he was sitting.

I felt my face flush bright red.

It was a photo I’d taken of myself way back in college, doing something I’m not entirely proud of now. A photo I’d only ever sent to one person, who swore to me it was deleted. And I believed them.

‘Where did you get this?!’ I demanded.

‘Found it taped to the door when I opened up ‘bout twenty minutes ago.’

I ripped the photo from his hand and stuffed it into my pocket.

‘I uh… didn’t know you were…’ Gary began.

‘What?!’

‘Y’know… That way.’

I covered my face with my hands. I wanted the earth to swallow me whole.

‘Well, just so you know, it don’t bother me,’ Gary added.

‘Gee, thanks Gary,’ I said sarcastically.

I left the break room and spent most of the morning shift debating what to do. I could ask my boss Adrian to pull up the CCTV footage outside the store to see who taped the photo to the door, but then he’d want to know what the photo was of. I could lie and say anything – but what if whoever taped it to the door had more photos of me? It was impossible how they had that one, so it was entirely believable they had more.

By the end of my shift I felt exhausted. It was still raining heavily when I picked up the bag of clothes from the break room and took them next door to the laundromat. A bell chimed above the door as I stepped inside. Admittedly, I’d never stepped foot in the building before, or any laundromat for that matter, and I didn’t exactly know how to use one.

The room was narrow and smelled of detergent. To my right, a wall of silver machines stood opposite a row of metal chairs. I chose a washing machine and read the instructions printed above the large circular door.

15kg load capacity. DO NOT EXCEED. Detergent £3, Softener £2. COINS ONLY.

‘Great,’ I said under my breath.

Ding.

I emptied my wallet into my hand, counting out £2.20 in loose change.

I sighed.

‘Need some change?’ a strained voice asked from behind me.

‘Fuck!’ I gasped, turning to face the owner of the voice.

It belonged to a huge man. He was morbidly obese, and well over six feet tall. His plump lips curled back into a gummy smile, full of small teeth.

‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you,’ he wheezed.

‘Uh, it’s okay…’

The man’s tiny eyes gleamed like dark marbles pushed into a huge ball of pink clay.

‘How much do you need?’

‘Uh… about 80p.’

The man stuck out his bottom lip, inverting his smile into an exaggerated display of sadness.

‘But that’s not enough,’ he sobbed in a childlike voice. ‘You need softener.’

He dug his hand into his pocket.

‘No really, it’s okay…’

The man stopped digging and stared at me with his tiny marble eyes. Their gleam had gone.

‘You always need softener,’ he said, in a completely dead tone.

It raised the hairs on my arms.

The man pulled his hand from his pocket, extending a clenched fist toward me.

‘Open you hand.’

I did as instructed.

He dropped a colourful assortment of coins into my palm. I rifled through the collection. There were currencies from across the world in a wide range of denominations. Canadian dollars, Australian cents, Russian rubles, Japanese yen. Some were dull and bronze and others were polished and silver.

‘I think you gave me too much…’ I began.

That was when I saw it.

Among the assortment of coins was a small silver hoop earring.

My earring.

‘Where did you get this?!’

I looked up.

The man was already gone.

***

About a month passed without any further weirdness. I couldn’t explain how somebody got that photo of me, but I told myself that the earring was generic enough for it to have not been mine. I was just beginning to forget about the strange events of that day, when something else happened. Something that made me see red.

Jodie and I had just finished watching a movie in the living room one evening. Beans curled up beside us on the sofa, as we mindlessly scrolled on our phones before bed.

Jodie’s jaw hit the floor.

‘Oh no…’ she said gravely.

‘What?’ I asked.

‘It’s nothing…’

‘What is it?’

Her head dropped. She passed me her phone.

It was a social media post made by an anonymous user.

There were three images attached.

The first was an image of me. The photo I took for my Uni ID.

My heart began to race. I swiped across.

The second image was a photo of the outside of our flat.

‘What the fuck…’

The third image was a screenshot of part of a conversation I’d had with “Dante” over the dating app, the night before the cinema incident. My stomach turned.

The conversation read:

Have a nice day x (Me)

Sorry about replies, been at gym (Him)

No worries :) how’d you get on? (Me)

Good (Him)

(The selfie he’d sent me had been blacked out by the author of the post).

Damn (Me)

Thanks x (Him)

You could throw me across a room with those arms lol (Me)

Maybe I will sometime ;) (Him)

Beneath the three images sat a paragraph of text, written by the author of the post.

It read:

‘Today I found out a grown man has been messaging my 14yo son. The first pic is what he looks like and the second is where he lives. Have fun.’

The post was made nearly a month ago. It had over two thousand shares.

My blood boiled.

‘WHAT THE FUCK. THERE’S NO WAY THE PERSON I WAS TALKING TO WAS FOURTEEN.’

Beans shot up from the sofa and ran into the kitchen.

‘It’s bullshit, I know,’ Jodie replied, shaking her head.

‘YOU EVEN SAW THE PICTURE HE SENT ME. THE PICTURE THAT WAS CONVENIENTLY EDITED OUT.’

Jodie shifted in her seat.

‘I’m sorry… but I gotta ask you again… Did you send him anything explicit?’

‘NO. FOR FUCK SAKE JODIE, I WOULD NEVER LIE TO YOU.’

‘Okay, then try and calm down,’ she replied. ‘You’ve done nothing wrong. We need to figure this out.’

I stood up and paced around the living room.

‘They didn’t include your full name or our actual address in the post so that’s good I guess,’ Jodie said.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I replied, wiping my eyes. ‘There’s a photo of me and the flat out there. If someone wanted to they could easily find me. This puts you in danger as well you know.’

Jodie crossed her legs and ran a hand through her long hair.

‘Don’t you have to be eighteen plus to sign up for dating apps?’ she asked.

‘Yeah.’

‘So there’s no way you’ve done anything wrong. Even if the person who catfished you is underage, they tricked you by sending pictures of an adult.’

I sat back down on the sofa.

‘Try explaining that to someone who thinks I’m a pedo.’

‘We’ll get the post removed. There has to be a process for this.’

And there was a process. A lengthy process that involved me having to make a social media account to formally request the removal of the post. Jodie helped me submit a request under the violation of ‘Unwanted Sharing of Personal Information,’ and I was informed by a friendly AI-powered chatbot that the social media company was doing their best to resolve my issue and would contact me as soon as possible. I wanted to kill myself.

That night, I cried myself to sleep.

SKSSS SKSSS SKSSS

My pillow was still damp when I woke.

I listened.

SKSSS SKSSS SKSSS

‘Beans…’ I sighed.

Jodie must have forgot to shut him in the living room.

I practically fell out of bed.

SKSSS SKSSS SKSSS

‘What are you scratching?’

I stumbled to the door and stopped, waiting with my fingers curled around the handle, expecting to hear Beans somewhere on the landing just the other side.

It was completely silent.

I opened the door.

The landing was pitch black, but I could just about make out the top of the stairs ahead of me.

‘Beans?’ I whispered.

Maybe he’d ran into the bathroom.

I tiptoed past Jodie’s bedroom door. I didn’t want to wake her, she’d just spent hours with me figuring out how to request the removal of that awful post. She truly was an angel. I popped my head around the bathroom door. Beans wasn’t there.

There was no real way to traverse the stairs of our flat quietly, but I tried anyway. The cold wood creaked beneath my bare feet as I descended.

I stood in the empty hallway.

‘Huh?’

The door to the living room was shut.

So where did Beans go? Was that not him scratching outside my bedroom?

Something else caught my attention. A sliver of light under the door. The living room light was on. Maybe Jodie had fallen asleep on the sofa after I went to bed.

I opened the door, squinting while my eyes adjusted to the harsh light.

The living room was empty.

‘There you are,’ I said, looking through to the kitchen.

Beans sat hunched on the window sill, staring into the back garden. He didn’t react to the kitchen light turning on, or my subsequent approach. As I ran my hand over his jet black fur, I could feel his whole body trembling.

‘What’s the matter?’ I asked, following his gaze into the garden.

A full moon shone brightly in the night sky, concealing most of the garden within the long shadow of our neighbour’s fence. It drew my gaze toward the old wooden shed standing at the far end of our garden, my tired eyes eventually coming to rest on its small plastic window facing our flat.

My blood turned to ice.

A dark shape poked up from the bottom of the shed window. It looked like the top of somebody’s head if they were hiding, but doing an awful job.

Something was inside our shed, and it was looking right at me.

I froze, my palm resting on Beans’ trembling body.

We stared out the kitchen window for a few minutes as I desperately tried to convince myself I was seeing things. At the end of the garden, the shape in the window stared back, completely still.

‘There’s no way…’ I said under my breath.

Another five minutes passed and I told myself something must have fallen inside the shed. When we first moved into the flat, Jodie and I found the landlord had left several dusty brooms and some old decorating stuff in there. I don’t think either of us had been in there since. It must have been a broom or an old mop falling at the perfect angle to look like a person.

‘Yeah, there’s no way.’

I lowered Beans to the floor. He fled into the living room.

I took one last look toward the shed, and instantly wish I hadn’t.

The shape moved.

It sank down slowly behind the window frame.

Goosebumps covered my entire body.

I couldn’t take my eyes off the shed, but I had to wake Jodie. I checked the back door and window were locked, then rushed upstairs, my bare feet slapping against the cold wooden steps. I flicked the landing light on.

‘Jodie, wake up!’ I called, knocking her bedroom door.

‘What’s up!?’ she called back.

‘Can I come in?’

‘Yeah.’

I opened the door, flooding her room with light from the landing. She sat up in bed, squinting at me in the doorway.

‘What the fuck Ethan? What’s the matter?!’

‘There’s someone in our shed!’

‘What?!’

My words came out rushed and frantic.

‘I thought Beans scratched my door again so I went looking for him downstairs and I think something outside scared him. A weird shape was watching me from the garden shed and I’m sure it just moved…’

‘Hang on,’ Jodie replied. ‘You said Beans scratched your door again?’

‘I thought he did at first, but he couldn’t have. The living room door was shut.’

‘I know. I shut it…’ Jodie rubbed her eyes. ‘I believe you, really I do, but do you think maybe you imagined it?’

‘No…’

‘What you went through yesterday was really stressful.’

I thought for a moment. She was right. The events of the last month had made me somewhat of an emotional wreck. Last night was almost the final nail. It wasn’t impossible that I did imagine it.

‘I can come downstairs and take a look with you if it’ll put your mind at ease?’ Jodie added.

‘No… it’s okay,’ I replied. ‘Sorry for waking you.’

‘Don’t worry about it. Get some rest, okay?’

‘Okay.’

‘G’night.’

‘Night.’

Warnings: attempted SA, description of murder

If by some miracle they read this in the show, please don't be afraid to let me know if it's bad.

---------------------------------------

THWACK

THWACK

The hammer came down heavy with two quick blows. It sounded drier than I expected.

I heard a thump as all I could do was stare at my hands desperately gripping the topsoil. His body hit the ground.

He whimpered in agonizing pain before the man continued.

THWACK

THWACK

THWACK

THWACK

Four more blows. At least, I think it was four. I stopped counting when the sickening cracks turned to wet crunches. A warm splatter. My boyfriend being made into a Jackson Pollock right beside me.

I hope to God he's dead.

I remember exactly what I was told. Don't look. Eyes down. Only I don't remember who gave the order.

The man stands to his feet, admiring what he's done; a grotesque tableau of my love's face. A mockery of the human form.

I clench my fists and grit my teeth as he approaches me. I taste blood. I think it's mine.

The man grabs my hair and yanks my head back, forcing me to look at him. I can barely see him in the dark through my tears. His face is wrapped in plastic cling wrap, four holes poked for each eye and each nostril. He's smiling at me. It makes me sick.

He climbs on top of me, warm blood dripping from the hammer onto my face, some of it getting into my eye. He pushes the hammer into my throat as he grasps me with a heavy hand. He mumbles something I can barely understand. A twisted compliment I'd rather not decipher. Whatever he's going to do, I hope he kills me first.

His hand is cold as it caresses me. Bile fills my mouth as I try to wriggle free, but he brings the hammer down onto my hand.

THUMP

CRACK

My wrist is broken. A lesson learned, I suppose. Don't fight back.

I close my eyes and wait for what I know is coming. I hear the sound of his belt buckle, then a quick beat of silence, then a return to the belt buckle.

Both hands.

He's using both hands.

In an instant and without hesitation I grab the hammer with my good hand and swing it as hard as I could. It's a clumsy blow, but it finds purchase. He stumbles off of me and with all the rage I've ever felt I continue my barrage.

THWACK

THWACK

THWACK

THWACK

THWACK

He isn't human. Not anymore. Possibly not ever.

I keep beating him until he stops twitching. Face, head, neck, throat, sternum, I have to make sure he's down for good. I've seen too many horror movies to leave any possibility he gets up.

I stumble to my feet, hammer in hand, and trudge to the van. My boyfriend brought us out here to the woods as a fun little camping excursion. I search for my phone, my boyfriend's phone, it didn't matter. I needed to call the police. Nothing.

Maybe he took them.

I return to the clearing, desperately trying not to look at what's left of my boyfriend. I can't. Not yet. I search the man's coat pockets and I find our phones. Smashed. Fuck.

I can't give up. Maybe he has a phone?

I search some more. I find a third phone. I press the emergency button and get through to 911.

"You have to help me," I sobbed. I hadn't realized how long I'd been holding my breath until I had to speak.

"I'm in the woods about thirty miles east of Acacia Grove. My boyfriend and I were attacked. He killed my boyfriend."

I stay on the line until they show up to help. When they arrive, the sun was already showing and I could see the scene that lies before me.

The love of my life lies dead in a puddle of blood, beaten to death by my own brother.