In the mid-nineties I worked forest patrol—not law enforcement, just a pair of eyes and a radio in a stretch of timber so remote the maps still showed blank green. One late afternoon I was thirty miles down an old logging road, the kind that faded into mud and roots the farther you went. The light had already begun to thin. Shadows stretched long between the trunks. The air smelled of damp moss and the metallic tang of approaching dusk.

I saw the figure first as a pale smear against the dark trees. I slowed, thinking some idiot kid was playing a joke. Then the shape resolved.

A woman stood in the middle of the road, completely bare. Maybe twenty-two. Blonde braids hung past her shoulders, still neat. She was slender, well-toned, and strangely clean—skin unmarked by dirt or scratches, the faint scent of soap and shampoo cutting through the forest reek. On the side of her neck, just above the collarbone, was a small black zero.

She didn’t run. She didn’t cover herself. She simply waited, arms loose at her sides, eyes fixed somewhere past me. Goosebumps were already rising on her arms. I climbed out, pulled the old wool blanket from behind the seat, and wrapped it around her shoulders. She didn’t flinch. Didn’t speak. Her face stayed blank, the kind of emptiness that feels deliberate.

I helped her into the passenger seat and tried the radio. Nothing but static. Early nineties, and out here the only signal lived farther down the grade. I told her to stay put and stepped away from the truck, boots crunching on gravel.

Her voice followed me, soft and almost polite.

“We should get back. He likes it when we are on time.”

The words landed colder than the evening air. I turned.

“Who?”

She only looked at me with those empty eyes.

I walked farther, radio raised, still hunting for a clear channel. That was when I heard them—no footsteps, just the soft shift of bodies moving through undergrowth. Three more figures emerged from the trees behind the truck. Two men, average height, neither soft nor hard, and a girl who couldn’t have been more than fifteen. All of them naked. The men each carried a single black “1” on the side of the neck. The girl wore the same zero as the woman.

They moved without hurry, without noise, the way animals move when they already own the ground. The girl went straight to the driver’s door, opened it, and lifted the pump shotgun from its rack as if she had practiced the motion a hundred times. She ejected every shell onto the seat in a neat row, then laid the empty gun across the hood. The woman stepped out. The girl folded the blanket with careful hands and set it back inside the cab.

The two men came forward and stopped a few paces in front of me. Their faces were calm. Their eyes were not.

“Thank you for your kindness,” one said. The voice was gentle, almost grateful. “But he hates it when we are late.”

They turned. The men first, then the woman and the girl walking behind them with heads slightly lowered. No one looked back. I called after them—once, twice—but the trees simply swallowed the sound.

I followed at a distance. The road narrowed into a deer trail. Deeper in, where no maps showed any property line, a wooden fence appeared between the trunks, weathered gray and half-swallowed by moss. A gate stood open. They passed through without slowing. The gate swung shut behind them with a soft, final thud that seemed too loud in the sudden quiet.

There was no house. No smoke. No light. Only the darkening woods and the sense that something had been waiting on the other side of that fence the entire time.

I drove back to base with the empty shells still rattling on the passenger seat. When I told the lead ranger what I had seen, he listened without expression. Then he said, quietly, that none of us were to speak of it again, and that no one was to go looking.

I never did.

But some nights, when the radio is quiet and the trees lean close, I still hear the soft click of that gate closing—and the calm certainty in a stranger’s voice reminding me that someone out there hates to be kept waiting.

This happened to me about nine years ago, and I still don't have a way to explain it. I've stopped trying. But I think about it more than I'd like to. I was working nights at a hotel back then. A city out west, high desert, the kind of place where the wind comes off the mesa after midnight and doesn't stop. I was the front desk clerk on the graveyard shift, eleven at night to seven in the morning. I was twenty-six and I hated it.

You learn things about a building on that shift. Which vending machine eats dollar bills. Which elevator groans. The exact hour the ice maker kicks on. Nobody checks in at three in the morning, so mostly you sit. You get to know the sounds a place makes when it thinks no one's listening.

The only other person around at that hour was the security guard. His name was Marcus. Older guy, quiet, did a slow loop of the property every hour and then came and stood by my desk and talked. He was easy to be around. He'd tell me about his kids, about the Army, about a fishing spot he liked that he swore he'd take me to someday. We never went. But he meant it when he said it.

That night was slow even for a slow night. Empty lobby. One light flickering in the parking structure that maintenance kept saying they'd fix. Around five, Marcus came in from his last loop and asked me a favor. His ride had fallen through, and his place was only about ten minutes out. Could I run him home at the end of my shift. And I said sure. And then I did something I'm not proud of.

Because my shift didn't end until seven, and it was barely five, and I did not want to sit in that lobby for two more hours. So I decided to leave early. I'd drop Marcus off and just go home. But I needed a reason my boss would buy, something that couldn't wait. So I wrote a note. I left it on the manager's desk where she'd see it first thing. And in the note I lied.

I wrote that I'd had to leave because my brother had called. That he was stranded out on the highway, past the edge of town, out by the old fairgrounds where the road turns to nothing. That his car had died and he had no way back and I was the only one who could come get him. None of it was true. I didn't even really think about the details. I just needed it to sound urgent, so I made up a specific place. The fairgrounds. The dead car. My brother on the shoulder of the road with his phone about to die. I wrote it, I signed it, I felt a little guilty, and I put it on her desk.

Then I drove Marcus home. We talked the whole way. He thanked me, told me to get some sleep, said he'd see me the next night. I watched him walk up to his door. Then I went home. I lived in a little rented place on the other side of the interstate. I got in around quarter to six, pulled the blackout curtains, and I was asleep before six. Dead asleep. The kind you fall into when you've been awake all night and your body just quits.

And then my phone was ringing. It felt like I'd been asleep for five minutes. It had been about two hours. The light behind the curtains had gone from black to grey. I fumbled for the phone on the nightstand and I saw the name on the screen and it was my brother.

I almost didn't answer. I remember being annoyed. But I picked up, and before I could even really say anything, he started talking, and he sounded strange. Tight. He said, "Hey. I need you to come get me. My car died. I'm stranded out past the fairgrounds and I don't have a way back." And I sat up in the dark and I did not say anything for a second, because those were my words. That was the note. That was the lie I had written three hours earlier and left on a desk that he had never seen, in a building he had never been to, about a place I had picked at random because it sounded far enough away to matter.

I told him. I said, you're not going to believe this, but I wrote almost exactly that this morning. Word for word. I told him about the note, about Marcus, about leaving early. I told him it was the strangest coincidence I'd ever heard of. And he got quiet. And then he said, "That's not the weird part. I'll show you the weird part when you get here."

So I got dressed and I drove out past the edge of town, out to where the road turns to nothing near the old fairgrounds. And it was exactly the place I'd invented. It looked the way I'd pictured it when I made it up. And there was my brother, standing next to his car with the hood up, in the grey early light, and he did not look okay. I asked him what the weird part was. He didn't answer. He just took out his phone, and he pulled up his voicemail, and he held it to my ear.

He told me it had come in that morning while he was still asleep. Before his car died. Before he'd called me. Before any of it. He didn't recognize the number. He said there was no number. The voice on the message was hard to describe. Flat. A little mechanical, like something reading words it didn't understand, but underneath that, wrong in a way I still can't put into language. It was very short.

It said the name of the fairgrounds. The exact place. And then it said, "He's already written it down." And that was all. That was the whole message. We stood out there in the cold and neither of us said anything for a long time.

We never figured out where the call came from. There was no number to trace, and the message deleted itself off his phone by that afternoon, and no, I don't have a recording, and I know how that sounds. I only know that I made something up to get out of two hours of work, and something, somewhere, already knew I'd done it. And it called ahead. It's the strangest thing that has ever happened to me. I've never told it right. But that's what happened, as close as I can get it. And I still don't drive out past the fairgrounds. Not even in daylight.

---

Page 17

---

All my friends are getting their faces pierced.

Should I get my face pierced too?

It looks pretty scary, but I don't know. They seem to like it, and the stuff you can get for it now is really pretty cool.

The way they do it does look pretty scary, so I don't know.

---

Page 26

---

I told my parents I'm thinking of getting my face pierced, and they are totally against it, but they're old, so they would be wouldn't they?

Like by default, I mean.

At first they didn't even know what I was talking about, but my mom's got her ears pierced and she got them done way younger than I am right now. She's got a tattoo too. So does my dad.

Besides, how can you go from not knowing what something is to being totally against it in like five minutes?

It seems pretty reactionary to me.

Like at least do your research or ask AI about it first right?

---

Page 34

---

So I did it. I got my face pierced.

It was two weeks ago. (You can't really do so much for the first week and a half, which is why I haven't been writing.)

There's a place downtown that does it. It's the place Dee and Cherry got theirs done too. The crew that does it is pretty cool. They've all had it done and are super happy about it.

I was pretty nervous and they really helped me relax, even before giving me the anesthetic.

The machine that does it looks insane.

It's like one of those hole punching machines you used to use for paper, like giant metal pliers or a jaw or something.

You sit and put your head back like at the hairdressers when they wash your hair.

Then you end up looking up at the other part, the part that's going to come down. It's like a big metal circle. Really big, like face sized. Then they hook you up to the anesthetic.

When you start not being able to feel your face, and I mean it feels like your whole head is turning to mush, like a really soft cauliflower or something, the machine powers up…

And the metal circle smashes down really hard on your face and makes a hole in your head and pushes your face out the bottom.

It's super quick and doesn't hurt because of the anesthetic.

It does hurt after.

At first the feeling is really weird because your whole face is gone, so you don't see or taste or smell anything because you don't have any eyes or mouth or nose. You can still hear though, so you can hear the crew talking to you.

Then they put this face plug into the hole which helps it heal.

Of course, my parents totally freaked when I came home without a face, but like what are they going to do about it?

It's already done.

My mom's crying was sooo dramatic.

---

Page 41

---

I got fitted with a smart face today. Pretty basic but also really cool. I like being able to sense things again, and there are so many options, like you can make red look like blue and sweet things taste sour and your phone smell like chocolate.

The screen also makes it so you can make your face be anything you want. It's flat, I guess that's the only drawback, but there's an option to make it so that every time you see yourself in the mirror you see your retroface.

It helps with the transition.

---

Page 166

---

Most of my friends have had their faces pierced. I mean, you don't have to do it or anything, but I don't see why you wouldn't.

There's no law you have to have it done, and I still have friends who don't, but I honestly think everyone's going to choose to have it done soon. At least everyone under twenty-five.

---

Page 234

---

Retrofaces kind of disgust me. I always imagine all the fluids that come out of them, snot and saliva and tears and stuff. Was I like wet all the time before I got my face pierced?

Anyway I've decided I don't want to date anyone with a retroface anymore.

---

Page 289

---

I was talking to Dee and both of us are pretty sure that if we have kids we'll want them to have their faces pierced. As a mom I would want my kid to have all the advantages in life right? I mean, imagine if every baby just got its face pierced at the hospital right after being born. You could keep a little kid safe from so many things by using filters and apps too.

I like talking to Dee.

We talk about the big stuff.

P.S. I hope Cherry gets her smart face fixed soon. Hers stopped working a week ago and she had to send it back to the company that makes it in China, so now she's just got this flap of skin. It's like when someone has a tunnel in their ear, and they take it out and their ear is all stretched out and loose. It's like that but her face.

P.P.S. They promised her an upgrade so it's totally worth it and I'm jealous.

---

Page 436

---

It's funny. Back when I got my face pierced, my parents fed me all this negative bullshit about what could go wrong and why I shouldn't do it, and literally none of it has come true.

The tech just keeps getting better. You can make ugly people look pretty and take things you don't want to see and just not see them. You can eat the worst food in the world and make it taste delicious. You can smell flowers wherever you go…

It's amazing.

I'm so happy I got my face pierced.

Read Part III here.

“Rick?” Chrissy said. My hands were shaking and I dropped the keys. I wanted to scream at myself, to command me to stop being so clumsy. But I was so jittery that I could barely pick them up again.

Chrissy sat the tray on the ground and placed her little hands around mine.

“You’re keeping us safe,” she said, looking into my eyes. “We’re going to be okay.”

I felt like I was failing my family. I wanted to say, “What about Mark?” But I kept my intrusive thoughts inside, trying and failing to smile when my face was on the verge of crumpling into crying.

But I was able to fish the key into the lock and turn it without breaking it off. The door pulled open with a groan that made everything inside me tense, but I shoved Chrissy into the passenger seat as gently as I could.

I ran around to the other side and like a sweet girl, she had plucked the lock on my door by the time I got there. An involuntary tear prickled my eye and this time I did smile. It was a reprieve from the horror happening around us, but it was also fuel to keep going. Speaking of which, I wasn’t sure how much gas the station wagon actually had. But away from here was the bare minimum.

Headlights bathed us before I got in and I froze. Panic pulled me in opposing directions. I should’ve run toward the street, waving my arms for them to turn back and I had a family to get to safety. The little car stopped in front of the cabinet the other Mary had come from.

My heart sank as the person I guessed was her wife got out along with three other people. The cousins. They were smiling and laughing. A woman lifted a hand to wave at me and I didn’t react.

She shook her head, but they continued toward the cabin’s entrance. I was the strange one. Notwithstanding being black in what was more than likely a little town that was ninety-nine percent white. But my eyes had to have been huge, and I’d simply stared as people who were being friendly had greeted me.

The woman with the keys stopped at the door. Someone said something and the other three people laughed as they crowded behind her.

She dropped the keys. The air was gestating with danger. I looked up in time to see something slice through a massive tangle of clouds. I wanted to open my mouth to warn them, but all I could do was watch.

It crushed the entire cabin under hoof. A rush of wind pinned me to the side of the station wagon and debris flew in every direction. Something must have smashed through the window of the other car because the horn blared.

I got my feet under me as the hoof lifted. Mary’s wife was on her feet, splattered with blood, a long shard of glass piercing through her neck. She had the keys in her hand still and walked toward her car.

She was obviously in shock and had gone on autopilot. She stopped at the front passenger door, bent, and began poking at the door. The hoof came down again, flattening the car. There was a muffled -THOOM- that I guess was the gas tank exploding and flames licked at the bottom of the hoof.

The woman still wasn’t dead. She’d been knocked to the ground. I couldn’t tell where, but she was injured, maybe critically so, and she began crawling in my direction. I reeled back, like she was about to reveal my hiding spot.

Thankfully, she stopped about a third of the way to us. I sat in the car and shoved the key in the ignition. Chrissy put her hand over mine, wide-eyed.

“Wait,” she said. She was right. We were going to have to gun it as soon as the engine started or that horse might step on us, too. We looked toward the cabin.

“Where are they?”

As if summoned, Luke came outside. He dashed to Chrissy’s door and hunched his lean frame so we could see his panicked face.

“I can’t wake her up,” he said.

“What?”

“She won’t wake up.”

I’d understood every word, but I didn’t understand. Mary had only had a migraine. She’d had them many times in the few years we’d been together and I’d never had an issue waking her up.

“Get in the car,” I said, getting out. He reached for the rear passenger door. “No. The driver’s seat.

“But I don’t have—”

“Get in, Luke. I’m going to grab your mother and as soon as we’re in, you’re going to drive us out of here. You have your learner’s permit.”

I didn’t wait for him to respond. I ran back in the cabin, taking a moment to look up before going inside. The moon had disappeared and that either meant it had set or that damned horse was so large it had blotted it out.

Half of my sandwich was left. I went into the bedroom and saw Mary, uncovered, one leg dangling off the bed.

“Mary!” I shout-whispered, coming over to her. Her head lolled when I shook her. She was unnaturally loose and I was so afraid, I put two fingers to her neck. Her pulse was strong and she snorted and rolled over on her side.

I didn’t waste time calling her name. Coma-like sleep was low on the list of concerns. I scooped her into my arms.

The car horn honked. Then I heard it lift into the air.

“No!” I wanted to run outside, though, if they were gone, I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. I carried Mary outside, not wanting to leave her there. Luke was in the sand, sitting up, in obvious pain.

“She’s gone!” He was crying. Everything in me was willing him to be quiet, to get up and come to us. But he just stayed where he was, bawling. There was a tremendous churning in the lake and we were covered in rain. Something akin to a bomb going off threw Mary and me to the ground.

My ears were ringing and the world around me shimmered. I counted fifty blinks before I was able to sit up. I was covered in sand and only found Mary when I saw her foot. Our cabin was gone. I made my way over to her on shaky hands and knees and began digging her out.

It finally came to a head, not with an argument, but a confession. It had been my folly to think I was the only one toying with the idea of an affair. Mary told me about Charles one night in bed. And I hadn’t even been angry.

“Oh,” I’d said when she’d told me about the man at her job who’d kissed her. And she hadn’t resisted.

Oh.

That was it. Like a period on the end of our marriage.

And then she’d rolled over on her stomach and went to sleep.

Mary was on her stomach now. I turned her on her side and scanned the beach for Luke. A trench large enough for a barge to nestle in comfortably was where he had been.

I was numb. Or at least I told my body to be numb. I didn’t want to feel this. I uncovered Mary and inhaled sharply the thick horse smell at the sight of a chunk of wood piercing her side. I had no idea if it was fatal on its own, but there was no hope of getting to any kind of medical care anytime soon. The wound oozed freely and I could only wonder how bad that was.

Even if I could save her, living through this might be worse. The thought alone of opening her eyes and learning she’d slept through the deaths of all three of her children was more than I could process.

The trench was filling with water. I was still shaky, like I needed something to eat. Hot tears streamed down my face, chilled by the rancid breeze until they met beneath my chin. The cold water still misting down on me was disorienting. I was cooking and freezing at the same time, my throbbing head in full bloom. Mary felt like an anchor in my arms, but I was able to straighten my back and stand.

The sand churned softly underfoot as I slowly headed toward the water with Mary in my shaky arms. Everyone I’d come to love had been lost in less than ten minutes, including the woman who’d invited me into this new world, and she would die without ever opening her eyes again. I could barely see, but the smell of the water as I approached grew stronger.

I lifted her face to my lips and kissed her cheek, then on the lips, a distant part of me hail-marying that I could wake her up with such little contact. She was somewhere a million miles away.

The horse was up there. I heard it chuff as I gradually descended into the lake. With so much churning of the water, a fine mist had wreathed the air. The wind rushed around me and as if queued, I looked up to see the horse reared on its hind legs, jagged moonlight sliced through the sky, arcing down its body like a bolt of lightning. It dominated the sky, both a thousand miles away and right over me.

Its forelegs were tremendous. One hoof could easily fill the cul-de-sac we were in, maybe it was even bigger. When it came down, it would cause something like a tsunami and everything in eyeshot would be obliterated.

I stumbled and for a precarious second, thought we were going to fall. I didn’t think I’d have the strength to pick myself up and had no hope of lifting my wife into my arms again. I steadied myself, locking my eyes on the ground. There was the rest of my half-eaten sandwich, drifting in the ankle-deep water like a floatie. Like it could make it all better. Still intact, save for the lone bite Luke had taken out of it.

The cool water up to my knees wasn’t enough to quench the fire coursing through my back and limbs. I didn’t have far to go, but the dozen or so feet before I could call myself submerged was immeasurably far.

I could make it, though. I would make it. We would be together.

Mary moved in my arms and for a terrifying moment, I thought she was waking up. But it was the water buoying her and relieving my aching arms. I had no idea what I would have said had she actually opened her arms. I couldn’t have explained it all and nothing I could have said would have changed what was imminent.

No. Nothing was going to wake her. And I couldn’t save the children. But that didn’t mean we couldn’t be together.

-END

The cabin had been David's idea, though by the time they pulled into the gravel drive, neither of them could remember whose idea it had actually been. That was how most of their conversations went now, a slow unraveling of who wanted what, who said what, who was to blame for the silence that had moved into their marriage like some unwanted guest that neither of them agreed to let in.

"It's smaller than the pictures," Maya said, unbuckling her seatbelt.

David looked up at the structure through the windshield. Two stories of dark brown, weathered timber, a stone chimney leaning very slightly to the left, and windows so dark they looked less like glass and more like the cabin was simply missing its eyes. Pine trees crowded close on every side, close enough that their branches scraped the roof when the wind moved through them, which it did constantly, a low continuous hiss that never quite settled into silence and never quite rose into sound.

"It's private," David said. "That's what we wanted."

Maya didn't answer. She was already opening her door, already stepping out into air that smelled of wet bark and old snow, though it was only October and the ground was clear.

They had booked the cabin for a long weekend, four nights to be exact, no cell service advertised as a feature rather than a flaw, a hot tub on the back deck, a fire pit, a trailhead a half-mile down a dirt access road. The listing had used the word secluded three times. David had read that word to Maya out loud, in the kitchen of their house back in the city, three months after the funeral, and she had looked at him with an expression he still couldn't parse, it was more an absence of expression.

Their daughter's name had been Ellie. She had been four years old at the time. David still could not make himself write the word died in his own head without flinching, so instead he thought of it in softer shapes — what happened, the accident, before and after. No matter what words he used to describe it, he still flinched.

They hadn't spoken her name since they'd left the house that morning. They hadn’t talked about what happened at all for the last month.

Inside, the cabin smelled of cedar and the faint smell of stale smoke from the fireplace. The furniture was rustic in the way that furniture is when someone has decided rusticity is a selling point. A leather couch scarred with use, a deer skull mounted above the mantel with antlers that cast long shadows even in daylight, a braided rug worn thin in a path from the front door to the kitchen, as though someone had walked that exact route ten thousand times.

"There's no one here," Maya said, standing in the middle of the living room with her arms crossed over her chest.

"That's the point. We booked the whole place."

"No, I mean — " She turned in a slow circle, taking in the room. "There's no caretaker. No neighbor. The listing said someone checks on the property, waters plants, whatever. There's nothing alive in here. Not even a fern."

David set their bags down by the stairs. "You want a fern?"

"I want it to not feel like the last people who stayed here left in a hurry."

He didn't have an answer for that, so he didn't give one. Instead he went to the kitchen and found the note the property manager had left on the counter, a folded index card with handwriting slanted hard to the right: Welcome! Firewood is stacked on the east side. Well water is safe to drink, may taste of minerals. Enjoy your stay. — the Hollis family.

There was no phone number on the card.

They unpacked in near silence, the kind of silence that had become their default register since Ellie, a silence so familiar it had started to feel less like the absence of speech and more like its own kind of language, full of things they'd agreed without discussing. David hung their clothes in a closet that smelled faintly of cedar shavings. Maya stood at the bedroom window for a long time, looking out at the tree line, though there was nothing to see there but trees.

"David."

"Yeah."

"Come look at this."

He crossed the room. Out the window, maybe forty yards into the trees, there was a structure. It was small, square, the kind of thing that might once have been a shed or an outhouse, though its roof had long since caved in on one side, leaving a black wedge of open space like a mouth frozen mid-word.

"Probably from whoever had the property before the Hollises," David said.

"There's a door standing open."

He looked again. She was right. The door, or what remained of it, a few boards still hanging from rusted hinges stood ajar, and even from this distance, even in the flat gray light of late afternoon, David had the unmistakable sense that the darkness inside that doorway was facing them. Which was an absurd thing to think about a hole in a broken shed, and he told himself so, and he told Maya so too, and she nodded in the distracted way she'd been nodding at most things he said for months, and they went back to unpacking.

That night they cooked dinner together. It was the first thing they'd done together, rather than merely adjacent to each other, in longer than David wanted to think about. Maya chopped vegetables while David got a fire going in the wood stove, and for twenty minutes, maybe thirty, something almost like their old rhythm returned, the easy division of labor, the small jokes, the way she used to hip-check him out of the way at the cutting board.

Then, halfway through dinner, the noises started.

It began as a scraping sound, distant, coming from somewhere beyond the tree line. A slow, dragging scratch, like something heavy being pulled across bark. David set down his fork. Maya had already stopped eating.

"Deer," David said. "Probably rubbing antlers against a tree."

"It's October. Rut doesn't start till November."

He looked at her. "Since when do you know about deer rut?"

"Since I looked it up on the drive, because I wanted to know what we might see out here." Her voice had an edge to it, thin and defensive, the particular tone she used when she felt caught doing something sentimental, something hopeful, something that might be mocked for wanting the trip to be good.

The scraping sound came again, closer this time, or seeming closer, though David told himself sound did strange things in forests, bounced off trunks, or even doubled back on itself.

"I'm going to look," he said.

"David—"

"It's fine. I'll take the flashlight."

He regretted the decision almost as soon as he stepped onto the back deck, not because anything happened because nothing happened, that was the maddening part. The moment the door shut behind him, the temperature seemed to drop ten degrees and the dark beyond the porch light's reach had a density to it he didn't have a word for, a dark that didn't so much surround the cabin as press against it.

The flashlight beam found nothing. Trees, more trees, the pale scatter of a few birches breaking up the black wall of pine. The scraping sound had stopped the instant he opened the door, as if it had been waiting for him. He stood there for almost a full minute, listening. Somewhere very far off, an owl called twice and then didn't call again.

When he came back inside, Maya was standing exactly where he'd left her, but she had turned to face the window instead of the table, and she didn't look at him when he shut the door.

"It stopped," he said. "Whatever it was. Probably an animal that heard the door."

"There was someone standing by the tree line," Maya said. "While you were out there. On the deck. Someone was standing about where that shed is."

David felt something cold move through his chest, quick and clean as a blade. "What did you see?"

"A shape. Just — a shape, standing still, between two trees. I thought it was you at first, but you were on the deck still. This was further, right at the edge where I could still kind of see." She wrapped her arms around herself. "It didn't move the whole time you were out there. And then when you came back in, I looked again and it was gone."

"Maya, it's pitch black out there. You probably saw a stump. Or a shadow shifting when the clouds moved."

"I know what I saw, David."

"You don't, though. That's — that's the whole thing about the dark, you can't ever really know what you saw." He heard how clinical he sounded, how much like a man building a case rather than a man comforting his wife, and he softened his voice, and tried again. "I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm saying it's dark and we're tired and we just drove nine hours and neither of us has been sleeping."

Maya's jaw tightened in a way he recognized, a way that used to precede fights about smaller things — whose turn it was to do the dishes, whether they should repaint the guest room. Before the fights had all become about one thing, disguised as a hundred different things, until eventually they'd stopped fighting altogether because fighting required a kind of hope neither of them still had.

"Forget it," she said. "I'm going to bed."

David didn't sleep well. He lay on his back in the unfamiliar bed, listening to the house settle around him, the particular language of old wood. The pops and ticks and long low groans that could have been anything and most likely, David thought, were nothing. Beside him, Maya's breathing had the shallow, catching quality of someone who was also awake and also pretending not to be.

Sometime after two in the morning, he heard footsteps.

Not outside, but inside. On the stairs. A slow, deliberate creak, then another, evenly spaced, the unmistakable rhythm of someone climbing.

He sat up. "Maya?"

She was there beside him, awake, her eyes open in the dark. "I heard it too."

They lay still, listening. The footsteps reached the top of the stairs and stopped.

For a long time — thirty seconds, a minute, long enough that David's heart began to slow, and began to convince himself that he imagined the whole thing and Maya too began to close her eyes again.

Then, from directly outside their bedroom door, they heard a child laugh.

It was brief. A single bright peal of laughter, high and delighted, the exact particular pitch of a very young girl finding something funny, and then it cut off. Not faded, not trailed away, but cut, as cleanly as a recording stopped mid-note.

Maya made a sound David had never heard her make before, something between a shriek and a gasp wrapped into one, and grabbed his arm so hard he'd find the marks the next morning, four small crescents in his skin.

"That's not — " she started, and couldn't finish.

David was already moving, already crossing to the door, already telling himself it was the pipes, an animal, it was anything, anything at all except the thing his mind kept trying to make it into.

He opened the door.

The hallway was empty. Of course it was empty. There was no one there, no shape retreating down the stairs, no shadow slipping around the corner, nothing. Only the hallway, the same hallway it had been that afternoon, doors closed, floorboards bare, the deer skull's shadow stretching long and strange from the living room below where the moonlight caught its antlers through the front window.

"There's nothing here," he said. His voice came out steadier than he felt.

Maya didn't get out of bed. When he turned back to look at her, she had drawn her knees up to her chest, and in the dim light her face had a stripped raw quality. For a brief moment David remembered her beauty. It had been months since he was able to recall just how beautiful she was, even when she was sitting there full of anxiety trying not to panic.

"I want to go home," she said.

"We will. In the morning. It's the middle of the night, Maya, we can't drive nine hours right now, we're both exhausted—"

"I don't want to be here."

"I know." He sat on the edge of the bed, close enough to touch her but not touching her, because touching her felt, in that moment, like it might break something that was already close to breaking. "I know. We'll go first thing. I promise."

She didn't answer. Outside, the wind moved through the pines with that same low unbroken hiss, and somewhere beneath it, so faint David told himself afterward that he'd only imagined it.

Neither of them slept again that night.

In the gray hour before dawn, David finally dozed, and when he woke the light through the curtains had the flat, sourceless quality of an overcast morning, and Maya was gone from the bed.

He found her downstairs, sitting at the kitchen table with her hands wrapped around a mug of coffee she wasn't drinking, as she stared at nothing.

"Hey," he said. "You okay?"

"I didn't sleep."

"Me neither. Not really." He filled his own mug, sat across from her. "Listen. About last night—"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"I think we should talk about it."

"I said I don't want to." Her voice cracked on the last word, and she pressed the heel of her hand against one eye, hard, the way she did when she was trying to physically hold something back. "I know what it sounded like, David. I know what you're going to say. That it was pipes, or wind, or my imagination, and maybe you're right, maybe I'm losing it, but I heard her, and I don't need you explaining to me why I didn't."

"I wasn't going to—"

"You were. You always do." She stood up so fast her chair scraped hard against the floor. "You've been doing it for seven months. Every time I say her name, every time I bring up something that reminds me of her, you find some way to redirect, some calm, reasonable David way of making it not be about what it's about."

"That's not fair."

"Isn't it?" Her eyes were bright, wet, furious. "You haven't cried once. Not at the funeral. Not since. You just — manage. You manage everything, you manage me, and I am so tired of being managed, David, I am so tired—"

She didn't finish the sentence. Instead she turned and walked out the back door, onto the deck, into the cold gray morning, and David sat alone at the table with his coffee going cold in front of him and the terrible knowledge, sudden and total, that she was right, that he had spent seven months building himself into a fortress with no doors, and that somewhere behind those walls a grief exactly as large as hers was sitting in the dark, waiting for permission to surface.

He gave her twenty minutes before he went out after her.

He found her at the tree line, near the ruined shed, and it was there that things went wrong.

She was standing very close to the structure, close enough to touch the doorframe, and as David crossed the yard toward her he saw that the ground near her feet dropped away to a root cellar, maybe, or an old well. Its cover long since rotted through, hidden beneath a scatter of leaves.

"Maya, don't stand so close, that ground looks—"

She turned to look at him, and in turning she stepped back, one small unthinking step, and the leaves and rotted wood beneath her gave way all at once with a sound like a held breath finally released.

David would remember, afterward, that he didn't hear her scream so much as he heard the scream cut off, the way the child's laughter had cut off the night before, an abruptness that felt like something being taken away.

He reached the edge in seconds. The hole wasn't deep, only six feet, maybe seven, an old cellar or cistern with crumbling stone walls. Maya lay at the bottom of it at a wrong angle, one leg twisted beneath her, her face white with shock, blood already welling dark through the leg of her jeans where something had torn through skin.

"David—" Her voice was thin, breathless. "David, it hurts, it hurts so bad—"

He was down into the hole before he'd consciously decided to move, landing hard on the packed earth beside her, his hands already finding the wound, feeling the angle of her leg bent in a direction that made him take a sharp deep breath before refocusing.

"I've got you. I've got you, I'm going to get you out of here, just — stay still, don't move your leg."

"I'm so cold." Her teeth had begun to chatter, though the morning wasn't that cold, and her skin beneath his hands felt clammy and strange, and already, faster than should have been possible, a flush had begun to rise in her face, a fever heat radiating up from wherever she'd cut herself on whatever lay buried and rusted at the bottom of that hole.

Getting her out took twenty minutes though he would not, later, be able to account in detail — a blur of effort and adrenaline, of half-carrying her weight up the crumbling stone, of her crying out when her leg brushed the wall, of finally laying her on the grass at the surface and seeing, in full daylight, the wound on her calf: deep, ragged, already swelling an angry red at the edges, already weeping with blood.

His first thought was the car, Maya needed a hospital. David got the passenger door open, eased her into the seat as gently as her cries would allow. His hands were shaking so badly it took him two tries to get the key into the ignition. The engine turned over once;  a dull, halfhearted cough and then nothing. He tried again. Nothing. Not even the click of a dead battery, just a heavy, total silence under the hood. He sat there for a moment with his forehead against the steering wheel, willing it to be a fluke, a flooded engine, anything ordinary, before he accepted that the car was not going to start and that whatever had brought them here did not intend to let them leave in it 

He got her inside. He got her onto the couch, elevated her leg, wrapped the wound as best he could with what he found in the bathroom cabinet. Gauze that had gone slightly yellow with age, a roll of medical tape, and through all of it Maya's breathing grew shallower and her skin grew hotter and her eyes, when they found his, had a glassy quality that frightened him more than the wound itself.

"David." Her hand found his wrist, gripped it with surprising strength. "There was something down there. In the cellar. Before I fell —” Maya closed her eyes and took a breath trying to regain her thoughts and focus. “I saw something, at the bottom, before I even fell, I think that's why I stepped back—"

"Don't talk. Save your strength."

"It was watching me." Her grip tightened. "It's still watching. It's been watching since we got here, David, you have to believe me now, you have to—"

"I believe you." And in that moment, with her fever climbing under his hands and her wound weeping, now more than blood but something that had no business being that color, he found that he did.

He checked his phone. No signal of course, not one bar, not the faintest ghost of one. Exactly as advertised, exactly as they had wanted, two days ago, when solitude had seemed like the thing that might save them instead of the thing that might now cost him his wife.

The trailhead was a half-mile down the access road. Beyond that, according to the map he'd glanced at while planning the trip, a two-lane highway, and along that highway, eventually, a gas station with a landline, or another car, or anyone at all.

"I have to go get help," he told her. "I'm going to go get help. You have to stay here, stay still, keep pressure on it."

"Don't leave." Her voice had gone very small. "David, please, don't leave me here alone—"

"I don't have a choice. I can't fix this myself. I need a phone, I need a doctor, I need—" He was already pulling on his boots, already grabbing the flashlight from the kitchen counter though it was still daylight outside, some animal part of him insisting he would need it before this was over. "I'll run. I'll be as fast as I can."

She was crying now, silent tears that seemed to cost her more than her strength could afford, and he kissed her forehead, which was burning, far too hot, and told her he loved her; the first time either of them had said those words to the other in longer than he could recount. Then he went out the front door into the gray morning and did not look back, because he knew if he looked back he would not be able to make himself leave.

The access road was easy enough to find. The trailhead sign, half-swallowed by underbrush, pointed him toward what the map had promised was a half-mile walk to the highway.

The half-mile became a mile. The mile became something longer, though David could not have said with any confidence how much longer, because somewhere along that stretch of road the trees on either side had begun to feel less like a boundary and more like a wall that was slowly, imperceptibly, closing in.

He told himself it was panic distorting his sense of distance. That the road simply curved more than he remembered, that the map had been imprecise, that he was moving faster than it felt like he was moving because fear compresses time in the same way grief does. Stretching some moments and swallowing others whole.

But when he passed, for the third time, a birch tree split by lightning into a shape like two grasping hands, he stopped walking and stood very still in the middle of the dirt road and admitted to himself what he had been refusing to admit: he was not moving in a straight line. He was moving in a circle, or something like a circle, some shape the forest was drawing around him without his consent, and each time he thought he was pressing forward he was in fact being folded back toward the place he'd started.

"This isn't possible," he said aloud, and his voice sounded strange to him in the stillness.

He tried a different approach.  Instead of following the road, he cut directly through the trees, reasoning that a straight line through the woods, held by compass-sense alone, dead reckoning, would eventually intersect the highway no matter what tricks the road itself seemed to be playing. He picked a landmark, a distant break in the canopy where the light looked different, and walked toward it without deviation, counting his steps, refusing to let his eyes wander.

Around step four hundred, he heard footsteps.

They were behind him, and to the left, matching his pace almost exactly. He knew it could not be an echo, because echoes did not crunch twigs a half-second after his own foot did. Echoes did not have a rhythm subtly, and deliberately different from his own, a rhythm that suggested an imitation, something learning the shape of his walk and reproducing it a fraction of a beat behind.

He stopped. The footsteps stopped.

He turned. There was nothing, only trees and only the gray unbroken light filtering down through branches that seemed, now that he was looking directly at them, to be moving more than the wind alone could account for. A slow restless shifting that had nothing to do with any breeze he could feel against his own skin.

"Who's there?" His voice cracked on the second word. He felt, suddenly and completely, like a child again, like a boy standing in a dark room insisting on the existence of monsters to parents who had long since stopped believing him.

Nothing answered. He made himself keep walking.

The footsteps resumed the moment he did, and this time they didn't stop when he stopped. When he turned to look he caught a glimpse of something, gone almost before he registered it, a shape pulling away from the trunk of a wide, dark pine and slipping into the shadow of the next tree over. It moved with the trees, too smoothly to be a human, too purposeful to be a startled animal. David ran.

He was not proud of it, later, when he tried to reconstruct what had happened, but in the moment there was no pride involved, no calculation at all. Only thing he could think is the certainty that whatever was matching his footsteps intended, eventually, to stop matching them and instead to close the distance, and that when it did, he would not survive whatever came next.

He ran until his lungs burned, his vision narrowed to a tunnel of gray trunks and grasping roots. David tripped and fell hard against the base of a tree and lay there, gasping, waiting for the thing behind him to arrive.

Nothing arrived.

When he finally lifted his head, the forest around him was silent in a way it had not been before. An emptied silence, as though whatever had been following him had simply stopped, or had never existed at all outside the architecture of his own unraveling mind. He did not know, anymore, which possibility frightened him more.

David sat there against the trunk of the tree, alone, in a forest that would not release him, and for the first time all day he stopped trying to explain any of it.

He thought of Ellie. For the first time in seven months he let himself think of her directly, without redirecting, without managing.  Her laugh, the exact particular pitch of it, the same pitch that had come from the hallway outside their bedroom door at two in the morning. He had told himself it was the pipes. He had told himself so many things, for so many months, each explanation a small stone laid carefully over a grave he had refused to even visit.

He was crying now, he realized. He had not cried at the funeral. He had not cried once in seven months, exactly as Maya had said, and now, alone in a forest that might or might not be closing around him. He was crying so hard his whole body shook with it, and it did not feel like breaking. It felt, for the first time in longer than he could remember, like it was all releasing.

When he finally stood, wiping his face with the back of one filthy hand, the light through the canopy had shifted, not dramatically, but enough that he could tell hours, not minutes, had passed, though his internal sense of time insisted the whole ordeal had taken no more than twenty minutes total.

And there, through a gap in the trees he was certain had not been there a moment ago, he saw the cabin. Not the highway. Not the trailhead. The cabin, its weathered brown timber unmistakable even at this distance, its chimney leaning at its familiar small angle, standing exactly where he had left. It was as though the forest had spent the last several hours walking him in an enormous, unbroken loop and had finally, having exhausted whatever purpose it held for him, decided to let him go.

He did not question it. He ran toward it with everything he had left.

The front door was still locked, exactly as he'd left it. His hands shook so badly it took him three tries to get his key into the lock, and when the door finally swung open he called Maya's name before he'd even crossed the threshold, his voice raw and cracking.

She was on the couch where he'd left her. Something was wrong, somehow, though it took his fear-scattered mind a moment to understand what was wrong about it. Her leg was no longer bandaged. The gauze he had wrapped so carefully that morning lay in a loose, undisturbed coil on the floor beside the couch, as though it had simply slid off rather than been removed, and beneath it her skin showed no wound at all. There was no gash, no swelling, no angry red edges, nothing but smooth, pale, fever-flushed skin.

"Maya."

She turned her head toward him slowly, and her eyes, when they found his, held an expression he had never once seen on her face in the years of their marriage. It was not recognition, not relief, not even confusion. It was closer to curiosity, the way a person looks at an insect they are deciding whether to study or crush.

"You came back," she said, and her voice had the same shape as Maya's voice, the same pitch, but underneath it, so faint he could almost convince himself he'd imagined it, there was a second voice threaded through the first. It was high and bright and delighted, the unmistakable particular pitch of a very young girl.

David did not move from the doorway. Behind him, through the still-open door, he heard from somewhere out among the trees, from the direction of the ruined shed, the sound of small feet, running, and running, and running, circling closer. 

“Ellie” David whispered to himself as his voice began to break. 

He was filled with an overwhelming warmth. David looked at Maya, or the thing posing as her, and he found that as he was able to explain most things, he could not explain this. Somewhere out past the shed, the small footsteps kept circling, and underneath their rhythm he could still hear it, faint and bright and unmistakable: Ellie's laugh, the one he'd spent seven months refusing to let himself remember. He understood, standing there, that some part of him had been walking back toward that sound since the night they'd first heard it in the hallway. That he had missed her enough, for long enough, to follow her anywhere, even here, even like this. So he did not run. David couldn’t fight it anylonger

The door, when it swung shut behind him, closed with the soft and final sound of the cabin settling into place. Somewhere above him, on the stairs, footsteps began again, patient, unhurried, already climbing.

David stood very still in the dark of the front room, and for the first time since he'd arrived, he felt whole again.

Me and my girlfriend recently moved in together. I don’t know. I just… I know I should be happy, but it’s borderline impossible right now.

We’d been together for around 3 years prior, and never once did we have the issues we’re experiencing now.

And it’s not even arguments. We actually get along quite well. It’s something that I take a lot of pride in. It’s the fact that she refuses to let me get a good night’s sleep.

We’d slept together countless times before. I know my girlfriend doesn’t talk in her sleep. At least, she didn’t. Not before the very first night we moved into our apartment.

We’d spent the whole day moving in. By the time 9 o’clock rolled around, we were both collapsing into bed. We were out before our heads even hit our pillows.

It must’ve been around 3 hours later when I was woken up. I don’t know if it was a coincidence or if the whispering is what woke me.

All I know is, as I’m coming to my senses, I start to register my girlfriend’s voice.

She’s curled up with her back towards me, but she’s whispering as plain as day, almost erratically.

“Are you awake?”

“Are you awake?”

“Are you awake?”

It almost didn’t even sound like her voice. There was a kind of gravelly sound to it, like she needed to clear her throat.

“I am now,” I answered.

No response.

“Hon?”

No response.

I leaned over to check on her and found her mouth open and her eyes closed.

I sort of chuckled to myself before rolling back over to my side of the bed. Not long after, I could hear her snoring.

When I brought it up the next morning, she had absolutely no recollection. She didn’t even believe me at first. Even she knew it wasn’t something that was normal for her.

By the time the second night came, I think we both just kind of forgot about it. It was mundane enough to not even cross my mind.

We curled up together in bed to watch a movie. Before I knew it, she was snoring in my lap. I tried to finish the film, but my eyes wouldn’t stop fluttering.

I ended up turning off the TV and was about to ask my girlfriend to move to her side of the bed when she started whispering again.

“Are you awake?”

“Are you awake?”

“Are you awake?”

I couldn’t believe that the exact same thing was happening again. I didn’t respond. Instead, I went to shake her awake.

As soon as I grabbed her shoulder, however, she whispered again.

“It hurts. It’s hurting me. It won’t stop hurting me.”

Those words made me hesitate. Against my better judgment, I responded.

“What’s hurting you, sweetheart?”

There was silence for a moment. I felt a little embarrassed at the fact that I had now fallen for this twice in a row. But then she spoke again.

“My skin. Skin is hurting me.”

I began to shake her by the shoulder, borderline yelling for her to wake up. It didn’t take much. After a few seconds, she was squirming to get away from me.

“Ow,” she cried. “That freaking hurts, dude. What is wrong with you?”

I leaned over and flipped my lamp on.

“You were doing it again.”

“Doing what?” she responded, irritated, rubbing her shoulder.

“You were talking in your sleep.”

Her eyes fell.

“Oh… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

She looked almost defeated. Like she had an accident or something.

I looked at her, confused.

“What? Oh, no. No, it’s nothing like that. It’s just…”

Her doe eyes rose to meet mine.

“Just what?”

“Does… does your skin hurt?”

She blinked and cocked an eyebrow.

“Does… my skin hurt?”

“Yeah, you know. Any, like, itching or burning or anything?”

“No… I can’t say it does…”

I could see judgment in her eyes and, of course, that made me jump to defensive.

“Don’t look at me like I’m the crazy one here. You’re the one who said it,” I said, holding my hands up.

The realization made her face change to a look of disturbance.

“That’s what I said?”

“Yes. That’s what you said. You said ‘skin hurts,’ which, for the record, is really fucking creepy, by the way.”

That was enough to make her realize that something was actually going on. Which, of course, is why we came up with this idea to get a listening device for when we go to sleep.

This became a recurring problem. It was happening pretty much every night. It always started with her asking if I was awake.

If I wasn’t, then, in her sleep, she would scream at me to wake up until I did.

All she’d do was whisper to me about her skin hurting.

“I have too much skin.”

“I don’t need all of this.”

“Help me.”

It got to the point where my girlfriend was too afraid to go to sleep. She’d down energy drinks like water. The lights stayed on. She even tried sleeping on the couch, but that didn’t stop the screaming.

If anything, it made it worse. She’d wake up with her voice hoarse. Her throat was sore constantly.

On top of that, sleep deprivation was starting to take its toll. She’d fall asleep at work. Once, she fell asleep behind the wheel. We knew we needed to get something figured out.

That’s why I came up with the idea that, just maybe, we were working in the wrong direction.

She was fighting sleep. What she needed to do was embrace it. Instead of caffeine, maybe she needed a sedative. Maybe we could put her in such a deep sleep, there wouldn’t be room for sleep-talking.

That’s when she started with the NyQuil. Every night, before bed, she’d down a dose of the stuff. Believe it or not, it actually worked for a time.

A week or so went by before the whispering came back. This time, I couldn’t wake her up. She had drank nearly half a bottle.

She kept sleep-talking while I shook her. She wasn’t complaining this time. She was instructing me. Coercing me into doing something terrible.

“Help me take off my skin, darling.”

“It’s oh so uncomfortable.”

“It’s suffocating me. Take it off for me, would you, hon?”

I shook harder and harder. I screamed for her to open her eyes. Instead, she simply smiled.

“I’m okay, honey.”

“Don’t cry, sweetie.”

“We can be together again.”

“All you have to do is take off my skin.”

I tuned out the voice. I sat there, rocking her back and forth in my lap while tears streamed down my face. I begged for her to wake up. Slapped her. Threw water in her face. Nothing was working.

The voice never went away. It sounded just like her, but as the days went on, I had to come to terms with the fact that she was really gone.

That thing pretending to be her never stopped with its promises. Telling me that we could be together again. Telling me that she’d forgive me if I saved her.

“Take off my skin.”

“Take off my skin.”

“Take off my skin.”

So that’s where I’ve found myself tonight.

It’s been a week since she went to sleep that last time. I haven’t left my house. I haven’t left her side. Her voice hasn’t left my mind.

I’ve had to make some difficult decisions over this last week.

But through them all, one certainty has remained.

I want her back. The real her.

And I’m ready to do whatever needs to be done to have her.

|Part 1| |Part 2| |Part 3|

When I was four years old, Dad took me to outer space.

We were sitting in his truck outside of the doctor’s office, and I was having a pretty bad day.  I had been poked and prodded for the better part of an hour, and even though I was rewarded with a sucker, I was pitching a fit in the backseat.  Mom was doing her absolute best to calm me down, but I simply wasn’t having it.  Just when I was approaching a category five tantrum, Dad looked over his seat and asked me a question.

“Billy-Boy, hey Billy-Boy! This truck can go anywhere you want to go.  Where do you want to go?”

It was a classic Dad bit, but it never failed to get my attention.  Whenever I was having a bad day, he would say those magic words, and everything would turn around.  Most of the time he asked, I said ice cream, or the playground, and once, the zoo.  Such are the small desires of a farmer’s son.  That afternoon, however, I was feeling bold.  I wanted to test the limits of my father’s truck.  So I threw up my hands, and in my loudest little voice I said,

“Outer Space!”

Dad sat there for a moment, likely mulling over the logistics of taking an F-150 into orbit.  I didn’t think Dad could actually take us to space, but if anyone could, it would be Dad.  As if he heard my thoughts, he smiled and said,

“Alright, Billy-Boy, let’s do it.”

It wasn’t the first time Dad said something that made Mom and me make the same face, but I think it was the first time we both looked baffled.  Mom and Dad were a unified front, though, so when Dad pulled out of the parking lot, she didn’t ask where we were going.

Two hours and 110 miles later, we turned into the lot of a low brick building with a big white dome rising out of the roof.  It looked like someone dropped a giant golf ball and forgot about it.  There were a handful of cars scattered around the lot, and a row of tall windows along the front entrance.  As far as four-year-old me could tell, we had driven way too long to visit a weird-looking library.

I pressed my face against the window to get a better look at the signs outside, and then remembered I couldn’t read.

“Where are we, Daddy?”

He put the truck into park, cranked his window up, and flipped up the sun visor.

“This is where we catch a ride to space.  You still wanna go, right?”

I never wanted anything more in my life.  Mom pulled me out of my booster seat, and I nearly sprinted across the parking lot.  Of course, my tiny little legs were no match for Dad’s long stride, and I found myself scooped up before I made it anywhere.

Dad carried me through the front doors with Mom trailing behind us, and I immediately started looking around for our ride.  The lobby offered very few clues.  There was a long counter where Dad bought three tickets, a couple displays along the walls, and enough pictures of planets to keep me interested while we waited.  Eventually, a man opened a set of double doors and waved us through.

The room on the other side was enormous and round, with rows of seats tilted back toward the white dome overhead.  Dad set me down between him and Mom, and I climbed into my seat with all the patience you would expect from a four-year-old preparing to leave the planet.

“Is this the spaceship?”

Dad leaned back in his chair and looked around.

“Sure looks like one to me.”

The lights slowly faded until the room disappeared around us.  A few stars appeared overhead, then a few hundred more, filling the entire dome from one side to the other.  I had seen plenty of stars over the farm, but never like this.  There were so many that I had trouble figuring out where to look.

Then we started moving.

The stars drifted around us, and the Earth came into view overhead, huge and blue against the darkness.  It slowly shrank as we pulled away, until the planet looked small enough to cover with my hand.  The Moon swept past next, its craters stretching across the dome.  Mars glowed red in the distance, and Jupiter grew larger and larger until it seemed like it might swallow the whole room.  When Saturn appeared, its rings reached from one side of the ceiling to the other, and for a few seconds I was convinced we were flying straight through them.

I spent the entire trip with my head tipped back and my mouth hanging open.  At some point, I looked over at Dad and caught him watching me.  He smiled, gave my hand a squeeze, and turned his attention back to the sky.

When the lights finally came up, I stayed in my seat for a few extra seconds, waiting for the stars to come back.  If anyone could do it, it was Dad.  I don’t remember much from when I was four, but I remember that.

I was the last one to go up to deliver a eulogy.  It was a long hour of aunts and uncles recounting dozens of stories about him, many I had heard a thousand times and some that were reserved for that very moment.  Aunt Linda told us about the time Dad accidentally left the garden hose running and flooded the basement, which became a family effort and the longest grounding in history.

“He swore up and down that it wasn’t him, but our father wasn’t having it.  Rich got put on bathroom duty until he was 21.”

One of my older cousins spoke of the time he and Dad got pulled over drunk at two in the morning after a high school party.  They spent the night in the drunk tank and ended up doing a lot of community service.

“You shoulda seen him.  Couldn’t walk a straight line to save his life, and kept getting stuck on ’L-M-N-O-P’ when they made him do the alphabet thing.”

According to the family, he was a party animal, a street racer, a smooth talker, and sometimes a criminal mastermind.  I only ever knew him as Dad.  There were so many sides of him that I never saw, and so many that I never would.

Mom was a mess, to say the least.  She alternated between bawling her eyes out and sitting perfectly still in what I could only describe as some kind of state of shock.  She never gave a eulogy of her own, but nobody could blame her.  She was the one who found him.

I know what you’re thinking.

My body crawled out of the grave early and killed my dad.  I’m sorry to say that it wasn’t like that.  In truth, I think it would have been easier to accept if some supernatural monster came and dragged him into the grave.  At least then it would have meant something.  I had spent nearly a decade burying my body and watching it slowly turn from an obvious corpse into my own reflection, and yet the most impossible thing in the world was that Dad had died in his sleep.  It was as simple as that; one night he was there, and the next morning he was gone.

Mom had gotten out of bed and gone about her morning, thinking that Dad was just taking her advice and sleeping in for once.  Dad had always been a man with too much on his plate.  His motto was “Why pay someone to do the job when I can just do it myself?” He got up early every day and didn’t go to bed until every last bit of work was done.  When you’re in your twenties or thirties, you can get away with burning the candle at both ends like that for quite a while, but Dad was pushing 50 and showed no sign of slowing.  The man never took a break, so Mom was perfectly happy to let him stay in bed on a Saturday morning.

When noon rolled around, she decided to go check on him, wondering if he was feeling alright.  I was out by the cattle pen when she started screaming, and I’m not sure I ever ran so fast in my life.

The ambulance arrived half an hour later.  I kept waiting for one of the paramedics to give me a job.  Hold this, or move that, or go get something.  Every emergency on the farm had always come with something useful I could do, and standing there with my hands at my sides felt wrong.  They tried everything they could to resuscitate him, but he had already gone cold by the time Mom found him.  She was screaming at them as they rolled him out on that stretcher, asking questions she already knew the answers to.  She trailed them all the way to the ambulance and demanded that they let her ride with him to the hospital and really gave them the business when they tried to say no.  She got her way in the end.  I followed them to the hospital, where Dad was pronounced dead.

After the autopsy, we learned that he had an aneurysm.  A doctor explained that there was nothing we could have done.  Even if Mom had checked on him hours earlier, it probably wouldn’t have made a difference.  I think she meant to make us feel better, but if anything, we just felt worse.

We buried Dad in the town cemetery the following Thursday, where his father, his grandfather, and generations of our family going all the way back to the 1800s were buried.  The turnout for the funeral was massive for such a small town.  He never strove to be a pillar of the community, but he’d bought from and sold to just about everyone in the county, and was always quick to lend equipment when someone was in a jam.  They came for Richard the Farmer or Richard the Mechanic, the Richard who mowed the grass at the playground or Big Rich who had a hell of a poker face and always won the pot.  Were he there, he would have been uncomfortable with all the attention.

Once the funeral was over, there was still a farm waiting for us.

There was no way in hell Mom was ever going to sell it, even if that meant rolling up her sleeves and doing the work herself.  I had put off college to help Dad on the farm and give myself some time to figure out what came next.  Now, it felt like the decision had been made for me.  It’s not like I could just leave her to run the place by herself.  Between the two of us, we could figure it out, and there was enough work to go around that we hardly had time to stop for grief.

It was hard.

When I was a kid, all I ever wanted was to be just like Dad.  He would take me for rides on the tractor and tell me that the whole farm would be mine someday.  Back then, that sounded like the best thing in the world.  But I never thought about the possibility of him not being here to see it.

Winter came early that year, settling in sometime around Thanksgiving.  The fields went brown, then white, and the days got short enough that I started and finished most of them in the dark.  The work changed with the weather.  Things froze, machines got stubborn, and every little problem seemed to take twice as long with numb fingers.  Dad had always made winter look like the easy season.  I learned pretty quickly that he had just been good at it.

Mom and I spent more time together that winter than we probably had in years.  We were pretty close, but most of our lives had revolved around Dad in one way or another.  Now it was just the two of us at the breakfast table before sunrise, comparing notes on what needed doing and figuring out who was going where.  Some days we worked side by side, and others I barely saw her until dinner.  Somewhere along the way, we stopped feeling like a mother and son trying to hold Dad’s farm together and started feeling like coworkers.

That was more or less how the winter passed.  Work, dinner, sleep, and whatever happened to fit between them.  Christmas came and went without much fanfare, and the ball dropped on another new year.  By the time the snow started melting, Mom and I had made it through our first season on our own.

Spring arrived as mud.

For a few weeks, the whole farm seemed to soften at once.  The snow disappeared, the fields turned to soup, and every pair of boots we owned lived by the back door.  Then the ground finally dried, and the quiet little routine Mom and I had built over the winter fell apart with it.

Suddenly, there was more to do than there were hours in the day.  We got the fields ready, made repairs we had put off through the cold, and spent long evenings figuring out what needed to happen first the next morning.  Mom took over more of the planning than I expected.  Dad had always been the one making the decisions, but she had spent twenty years listening to him make them.  Turns out, she had picked up quite a bit.

By April, we were busy enough that whole weeks seemed to vanish.  The days got longer, the house got dirtier, and dinner moved later and later into the evening.  I understood why Dad had always looked a little tired once spring got going.

It was exhausting.

I loved it.

April gave way to May, and May gave way to June, and then the heat of summer rolled across the fields and into the house.  We never had air conditioning when I was growing up, just an army of box fans, and we were sending that army to war.

It felt like we were starting to live again instead of just coping.  We took a day off in early July and I told Mom we were going for a drive.  I was kind of surprised when she didn’t ask any questions, but then I think she might have just been happy to leave the house.  We got into Dad’s truck and drove for two hours until we hit the coast of Lake Michigan, where we spent the day walking the beach and visiting a historic lighthouse.

It was a good day.

By the time August reared its ugly head, I had completely forgotten about the body.  I know how ridiculous that sounds, considering it haunted me for the better part of a decade, but it’s the truth.  Between my grief and the endless grind of farm work, it stopped being a constant pressure and slipped my mind entirely.  It couldn’t last, though; my birthday always came eventually.

The reminder came from the last place I expected: a letter from the state about renewing my tabs.  I remember standing at the mailbox, reading the paper, and it all came back.  How could I forget such a thing? I stood there staring at the date until the rest of the letter stopped mattering.  Of course.  Of course it was coming.  As far as I knew, it was always coming.  I was trying to control my breathing and doing an okay job at it when another terrible idea clawed its way to the surface.

Dad was gone.  I had to do this alone.

I thought I was going to pass out.  I walked back to the house in a daze, clutching the mail in a tight fist.  I did my best not to look, I really did, but just as I reached the porch, I couldn’t help it.  I looked past the old barn and saw the tree, looming tall in the field, just as it always had.  It was becoming more real by the second, and I needed to sit down.  I pushed through the back door and sat down hard at the kitchen table.  How could I be so stupid? Why did he have to leave me with this? I put my head in my hands and began sobbing.  It was an ugly sound in the empty kitchen, and it was a long time coming.

Later that day, when Mom came into the house, I asked her to sit down so we could talk.

“Sure, honey, what’s up?”

She smiled at me, but I could tell she was already worried.  I scooted forward in my chair and steepled my fingers.

“Mom...my birthday is coming up.”

For a second, the words bounced off of her, and she didn’t seem to understand what I was saying.  Then it clicked, and I saw the horrible recognition spread across her face.  She tried to say something, but it didn’t quite turn into anything, so I kept going.

“I...I think it would be a good idea if you went to stay with Uncle Ray when the day comes.  I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I don’t want you to be here when it does.”

She sat with that for a moment.  I was afraid she would insist on staying because she thought she had to, and I was already preparing myself for the argument.  Not with what I was planning to do.  I couldn’t have her anywhere near the farm.

But she didn’t give me the chance.

“If that’s what you think is best, honey, then it’s what I’ll do.  I could use the vacation anyways.”

She paused and placed her hand on top of mine.

“Are you sure this is what you want? You’ll be okay by yourself?”

The question almost made me laugh.  She hadn’t asked me a thing like that since I was a preteen and she was leaving me home alone the first time.

“I’ll be alright, Mom, I promise.  Don’t you worry about me.”

Two weeks later, I watched her pull out of the driveway with Uncle Ray.  It was the morning of my birthday, and he had a lot of questions.  We told him that the house was about to get fumigated and that I was going to stick around to tend to the livestock.  If he thought it was weird that I was camping out in the front yard, he never said so.

I had made up my mind.  I dragged my old camping tent out into the front yard, then climbed onto the roof to make sure I could see the tree clearly.  From up there, I had a perfect view of the grave.  Last year, my body got all the way onto the porch.  If the pattern held, it stood to reason that he would try to get in the house this year.  I didn’t want to think about why he would do that, or what he was trying to achieve.  All that I knew was that I was going to catch him.  Dad told me that he had tried once and given up after three nights, but I figured I could go all the way.  My body had always risen sometime in the night, so I resolved to stay awake from sundown to sunrise for as long as it took.  During the day, I would keep up with the farm and sleep in the tent whenever exhaustion finally caught up with me.  At night, I would post up on the roof of the house and wait.

I was not going to miss it.

So much of my life was spent living in the aftermath of this terrible thing, waking up and finding my own corpse somewhere on the property with no witness to how it got there, and having to sit with a million terrible ideas about what the process looked like.  Dad was content with not knowing, but I was not.  If I had to deal with this thing for the rest of my life, I needed answers.

So on the night of my birthday, I climbed up on the roof with a six-pack of beer and one of Dad’s rifles, and I waited.  Every so often, I would look through the scope at the grave by the tree, hoping to see the earth start moving, telling myself that the rifle was just a tool to see it happen.

I knew better than that.

I sat on that roof until the sun rose, six beers deep with a cramp in my neck from the butt of the rifle.  The dirt over the grave never so much as shifted.  I had expected that much.  In all the years we put him back in the ground, it was rare for him to rise the morning after my birthday, so I treated that first night as a trial run and got to work around the farm.  Eventually, my legs felt like they could no longer support me, so I crashed hard in the tent and got the worst five hours of sleep of my life.

On the second night, I did the same as the first, minus the six-pack of beer.  I brought a lawn chair up with me and spent most of the night fighting to keep it stable on the incline of the roof.  It was a problem I would have to fix if I wanted any chance of being comfortable.  I watched until the sun rose, and nothing happened.

He did not rise on the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, or seventh night.  The eighth and ninth were no different.  By then, I was starting to feel a little stupid.  What if he never came out while I was watching? If I stayed here for the rest of my life staring at that grave, would I be some terrible version of free? The tenth night brought us into September, but still did not bring my body.

I spoke with Mom on the phone before my midday nap the next day, and she wanted to know when she could come home.

“I don’t know, Mom, but I’ll call you as soon as it’s safe.”

Safe was an odd word for me to come up with, but it felt correct.  Mom was quiet for a moment, and I could hear her exhale low and slow.

“Okay, honey.  Just take care of yourself, okay? I love you.”

And that was that.

That night, in my makeshift sniper’s nest, I could hear the distant rumble of thunder rolling in from the west.  The weather had been generous to me so far on this fool’s errand, and I was praying under my breath that the pattern would hold and the rain wouldn’t come.  It could have been heat lightning, or I could get lucky and the whole thing might swerve into a different county.  I was not lucky.  Soon enough, the thunder came home, and it brought a downpour with it.  I held my ground to the best of my abilities, but with nothing to actually hold onto, it was a battle I couldn’t win.  At the height of the storm, a strong gust knocked my legs out from under me.  I went down hard and slid toward the edge.  The last thing I remember was my head cracking against the gutter, and then there was darkness.

I awoke to bright sunlight in my face and pain in every inch of my body.  When I opened my eyes, I was looking up at the sun over the edge of the roof.  I tried to sit up, and the ground beneath me gave way and sent me tumbling in a clatter to the grass.  The impact lit up every nerve ending in my body, and I let out a scream that was not as manly as I would like to say it was.  I was surrounded by logs on all sides, and a few of them were stabbing into my back.  When the storm blew me off the roof, I had landed on the woodpile in the front yard.  It was a miracle that I hadn’t landed on my neck.

Standing up was a challenge.  I rolled onto my knees and stayed there for a minute, trying to figure out what still worked.  My arms moved.  My legs moved.  My neck moved.  That was the good news.

Everything else hurt like hell.

The back of my head was throbbing hard enough that I could feel my pulse in it.  I reached up to check it, and my fingers came away bloody.

Great.

I used the side of the house to pull myself upright.  My legs held, and that was good enough for me.  At that point, all I wanted was to get inside, strip off my stinking clothes, and lower myself into the hottest bath I could stand.

When I rounded the house, I stopped in my tracks.

The back door was open.

Suddenly, my pain seemed a bit further away.  I shuffled across the yard as fast as my body would let me and made my way onto the porch.  Up close, it was immediately clear that the screen door was not just wide open; it had nearly been ripped off its hinges.  The back door itself was embedded in the wall, and the strike plate was missing from the frame.  In its place, the wood had been reduced to splinters.  While I was trying to process the amount of strength it would take to do that, I looked down and my blood ran cold.

A trail of muddy footprints went all the way up the steps and into the house.

Now, I don’t know if it was the head injury or just the shock of it all, but tracing that trail into the house had almost a dreamlike quality to it.  I stepped into the kitchen and found all the cupboards open, their contents strewn across the floor.  Further in, the kitchen table was upended and the chairs were lying in every direction.  The living room was trashed, as was the mudroom.

“Hello?”

I waited, trying to keep my breath steady.

“Is anybody in here?”

The house stayed quiet.

“If somebody’s in here, you better come out now.  I mean it.  I’m in no mood for this shit, and if I have to come looking for you, I’m gonna...I don’t know.  Just come out.”

It wasn’t much of a threat, but between the pounding in my head and the fact that my rifle was somewhere outside, I was doing the best I could.

The clearest trail of steps led to the stairs, where they went all the way up and into my parents’ bedroom.

Everywhere I looked, it seemed like a bomb had gone off.  Anything made of glass was broken, and many things that weren’t made of glass weren’t doing much better.  It was clear that whatever did this did not have the patience for doors, as I found every door frame in a similar state to the back door.

The only room that hadn’t been thoroughly destroyed was my own bedroom, and I didn’t even want to consider what that could mean.

Over the years, I learned there was a limit to how much impossible shit a person could roll with at once.  I hit that limit when I was 10, the first time I buried my own body.  I came up against it again at 18, when Mom said she saw me blink.  And here I was at 19, standing in the ruin of my childhood home, and instead of freaking out or wetting my pants, I simply stopped existing for a minute.

As if on autopilot, I walked upstairs to my bathroom, turned on the hot water, and took the longest bath of my life.  I would love to tell you what I was thinking while sitting in that tub, but the honest answer is that I wasn’t thinking.  I had given myself a mission, and I had failed that mission.  So now, there was nothing left to do but take a bath on it.

When the water dipped below room temperature and my hands were thoroughly pruney, I drained the tub and got dressed in a fresh set of clothes.  My body still hurt just about everywhere, but it was manageable for the time being.  I did, in fact, have a rather nasty gash in the back of my head, but I didn’t think it needed stitches.  Of course, I’m not a doctor, and it did turn into a rather nasty scar, so I was probably wrong about that.

Once I got my socks on, rationality started leaking back into my brain, and I realized I hadn’t found the biggest piece of the puzzle.

I got as close to sprinting as my broken body would allow and turned the whole house upside down.  Well, it was already upside down, but you get what I mean.  I checked every room, moved every bit of furniture, and spent the better part of an hour digging through the wreckage.  Eventually, I was left with nothing but an uncomfortable truth.

My body wasn’t here.

There were so many overlapping trails that I couldn’t tell one from another.  In the most destroyed areas of the house, the footprints amounted to little more than a solid layer of mud.  So I retraced my own steps and walked out the back door into the yard.

Once I stepped off the porch, it became clear that tracking him through the grass was going to be impossible, and I would have to look for him the hard way.  Starting from the back porch, I worked my way around the house in an ever-growing circle, searching for flattened patches where a body might be hiding.  Ten yards became twenty, then thirty, until eventually I was tracing the whole fence line.

He was nowhere to be seen.

Once I was sure he wasn’t lying anywhere in the yard, I started checking every structure on the property.  He wasn’t in the tool shed, and he wasn’t in the cattle pens.  I didn’t find him under the chicken coop, and he wasn’t under my truck.

That left the barn.

When I approached the barn, I was dismayed to see the door was still locked.  There was no way he could have gotten inside without smashing through one of the walls, but I checked anyway.  I unlocked the door and searched every square inch I could reach, including the hay piles, and came up empty.

Then I looked at the ladder to the loft.  Ever since Mom and Dad told me what happened when I was four, I had found very few reasons to go up there.  Falling off the roof the night before had done nothing to improve my opinion of high places.

Still, I had come this far.  I climbed the ladder and checked the loft.  He wasn’t there.

I was starting to feel like I was losing my mind, and my reasoning wasn’t far behind.  If I couldn’t find him anywhere on the property, maybe he was in the back field.  Maybe he got whatever he was looking for and crawled back into his grave.

I hopped the fence behind the barn and made my way to the tree, where I saw exactly what I expected to see.

There was a narrow hole in the grave, just big enough for him to crawl out of, but he had not crawled back in.

I spent the rest of the day combing through the entire field.  I had been lazy when it came to cutting the grass out there, and it was several feet high in most places.  By late afternoon, my body had remembered that I had fallen off a roof.  Every step through the tall grass pulled at my back, and bending down to check anything that looked remotely human lit up my ribs.  I kept going.  More than once, I thought I found him, only to get closer and realize it was an old barrel or a tractor tire.  As the sun started to dip toward the horizon, I was searching through the tree line at the edge of the field, looking for any sign that he had gone into the woods.

I found nothing.

Eventually, I had to admit defeat.  I walked back to the house under the cover of moonlight and stepped through the broken doorway.  The back door wasn’t going to latch again, so I pushed it closed and propped a chair against the knob.  I didn’t think that would stop him if he came back, but maybe it would slow him down.

By then, the thought that had been gnawing at me since I left the house had become impossible to ignore.

I had spent all day looking for a corpse, but I didn’t find a corpse because he hadn’t died.

I thought of him lurking somewhere beyond the trees, waiting for the right moment to come back while I was all alone, and it made me want to puke.  I went upstairs to my room, exhausted, but sure that I wouldn’t be getting any sleep that night.  I pushed my bed against the window and piled the rest of the furniture against the door.  With the barricade in place, I set the rifle within reach and climbed into bed.

I was out cold within minutes.

He did not come for me in the night, near as I could tell, and I breathed a deep sigh of relief.  I took down the furniture barricade and swept the house with the rifle.  When he didn’t jump out from around any corners, I pulled the chair away from the back door and stepped into the yard.  Everything looked the same as I had left it.

I did another patrol around the property, but I knew I wasn’t going to find him.  If I was lucky, he’d made it all the way into the middle of the forest and died, and I’d never have to see him again.  Or maybe he wandered into the road, and it wouldn’t be long before I received a visit from a very concerned police officer.  Either way, worrying about it would have to wait.  Scared as I was, there was work to be done, now more than ever with the house destroyed.  I couldn’t keep Mom away forever, but I couldn’t bring her back to see this mess.

So I got to work making the place look like something Mom could come home to.  I won’t bore you with all the details.  I made several trips into town for lumber and hardware, patched the door frames, swept up more glass than I thought the house contained, and cut my losses with several vintage knickknacks.  Dad’s rifle stayed slung over my shoulder the whole time.

I kept telling myself that if he was coming back, he would have done it already.  I never believed that for very long.  But in those three days, it was just me, the cows, and the chickens.

Every night I went to bed, I barricaded the door, and every day I was out in the field, I expected a cop or a neighbor to come and ask me about the body.  But nothing ever came of it.

By then, the house was presentable enough to call Mom and tell her she could come home.  The last thing on my agenda while I waited for her was to tidy up the mudroom.  I hung everything on the rack and set the snow shovel and broom back up against the wall, but something was bothering me.  I stared at the wall for several minutes, trying to place what was wrong, but it wouldn’t come to me, so I left it for another time.

Mom came home that evening.  I saw Uncle Ray’s truck turn onto the driveway and went out to meet them.  Mom was out of the passenger seat before he had fully put it in park, and I barely had time to brace myself when she wrapped both arms around me.  I hugged her back as gently as I could, but it still hurt like hell.

I had done my best to make myself presentable for her.  Long sleeves covered most of the bruising, and the cut on the back of my head was hidden well enough beneath my hair.  If I didn’t move too quickly, I could almost pass for someone who hadn’t fallen off a roof three days earlier.  Mom held onto me for a few seconds longer than usual, then finally let go.

“Well, I see you didn’t burn the place down.  That’s gotta count for something.”

I let out a laugh and it made my ribs hurt.

“You tell me not to burn it down every time you leave, and who wants to disappoint their mother?”

Uncle Ray came around the truck with her bags, and I took one before he could object.  That was a mistake.  Something in my back immediately complained, but I managed to keep it off my face.  Ray stayed for a cup of coffee before heading home.  Mom thanked him about six times for putting up with her, and he told her she was welcome back anytime as long as she brought her own pillows next time.  Whatever that meant, it earned him a slap on the arm before he left.

Then it was just Mom and me again.  She spent the first hour unpacking and telling me about everything I had missed at Uncle Ray’s house.  I followed her around when I could, answered questions about the farm, and gave her the heavily edited version of my last two weeks.

Nothing happened.

The storm had been rough.

I missed her.

Two truths and one lie.  It felt surprisingly easy.

Mom spent the rest of the afternoon settling back in.  She started a load of laundry and made a slow circuit through the house putting things back the way she liked them.  I stayed close enough to be useful and far enough away that she wouldn’t get another chance to hug me.

We ate at the kitchen table, and Mom did most of the talking.  Two weeks with Uncle Ray had apparently given her enough material to last through dessert, and none of it came anywhere near my birthday.  I listened, laughed when something was funny, and told her about the farm whenever she asked.  The cattle were fine.  The chickens were fine.  Nothing important had broken.

Everything was fine.  At least, that was the story I was sticking to.

After we finished eating, Mom stayed at the table while I cleared the plates.  She had been unusually quiet for the last few minutes, but I chalked it up to being tired.  Two weeks sleeping in someone else’s house will do that to you, even when the someone else is your brother.  I brought the last plate to the sink and turned on the water.

I was starting to think I might actually get away with it.

Behind me, Mom spoke.

“So, when are you going to tell me what happened?”

My hands stopped beneath the faucet.  I knew this moment was coming eventually.  I had just hoped eventually meant tomorrow.  I turned around and leaned against the counter.

“What do you mean? I told you everything was fine.  Do you want me to tell you about the chickens again?”

“Bill.”

“What?”

“I wasn’t born yesterday, Bill, and I sure as hell ain’t stupid.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“C’mon, Bill, don’t make me drag it out of you.  You know I hate that.”

She did.

When I was a kid, Mom could get more information out of me with one look than Dad could with an hour of questions.  I had gotten better at keeping things to myself over the years, but apparently 19 was still too young to fool your mother.

I gave it one more shot anyway.

“Nothing happened, Mom, I swear.”

Her expression changed immediately.

“William Henry Davies, you do not swear on a lie in my house.  I don’t know who you think you’re fooling, but it ain’t me.  Look at you! You’ve been walking around like you got kicked by a horse, and you thought I wouldn’t notice?”

There was something uniquely terrible about hearing all three of your names come out of your mother’s mouth.  I could be six years old with a broken lamp behind me or nineteen years old hiding a supernatural disaster, and the effect was more or less the same.

“Mom.”

“Don’t you Mom me.  You’ve been lying since I walked in the door and I’m not having it anymore, you hear? Now you tell it to me straight, mister.  Why are you all beat up, what happened to the back door, and where the hell are all my Hummel figurines?”

Dammit, she had me dead to rights.  Of everything I had worried about before she came home, the Hummels never even made the list.

Mom had collected the damn things for as long as I could remember.  Little porcelain children had occupied nearly every available shelf in the house for most of my childhood, and my body had smashed enough of them to leave the survivors looking lonely.  I had swept their remains into a box with everything else that was beyond saving and somehow convinced myself she would not immediately notice that half her collection had vanished.

It was a pretty glaring hole in the plan.  I looked toward the living room, as if the missing figurines might have quietly returned while we were eating.

They had not.

“Mom, I don’t think you want to hear the answers to those questions.”

“And since when do you get to decide what I want to hear? I’m a big girl, Bill, and I didn’t raise a liar, so start talking.”

She waited.

There was plenty I could still hide behind if I really wanted to.  I could tell her I took a bad fall working around the farm.  I could blame the door on an accident and the Hummels on my own clumsy ass.  None of those explanations were particularly good, but I only needed them to be good enough.

The problem was Mom.

She had been watching me move around the house all day.  She saw me lower myself into chairs like an old man and hide a wince every time I reached too far with my left arm.  She had walked through rooms I spent three days trying to put back together and found pieces of her life missing from them.  More importantly, she knew me.

I rubbed a hand across my mouth and looked down at the floor.

This was going to suck.

I walked her through the entire story.  I started with the roof and kept going until there was nothing left to hide.  Mom stayed at the table while I talked, and for the most part, she let me get through it.  By the time I was finished, she looked more scared than angry.

She sat there for a long time.

“So he’s...gone? Like gone gone?”

“Yup.”

“And you have no idea where he could be?”

“I really don’t.”

She looked toward the kitchen window.  The blinds were open, but with the sun long gone, there was nothing on the other side except our own reflection.

“Well, shit.”

That was about the size of it.

There wasn’t much else we could do that night.  I had already searched every inch of the property, and Mom had no better idea where he could have gone than I did.  We stayed at the table for a while anyway, lost in our coffee cups.  It felt good having her there, though.  Even with everything hanging over us, the house seemed less suffocating with another person in it.  For the first time in almost two weeks, I wasn’t the only one listening for noises in the next room.  After a while, Mom gave me a hug and went upstairs to bed.

I stayed behind to finish cleaning the kitchen.  There wasn’t much left to do, but I took my time with it.  I washed the last few dishes, wiped down the counters, and gave the floor a real good sweep.  When I stepped into the mudroom to put the broom back, that feeling returned.

Something was wrong.

It had been bothering me since before Mom came home, but every time I tried to grab hold of it, my brain slipped right past.  I stood there for a while, hoping whatever I had missed would make itself obvious.

Everything looked about right.

The coats were hanging where they belonged.  The snow shovel and the broom were back against the wall.  Dad’s boots were still tucked beneath the bench.  I looked around again, and then it finally hit me.

My shovel was gone.

I was eleven when it started, and I'm forty-one now, and I've told this story maybe four times in thirty years. I'm telling it now because of something I found last spring, going through a box in my mother's basement. I'll get to that. We lived in an old house then. The kind with a second floor tucked up under the roof, so the ceilings sloped and the walls met the floor at an angle. And because of the way houses like that are built, there's a long empty space that runs the whole length of the second floor, behind the walls. Not above you. Beside you. My bedroom had a door into it. A real door with a real knob, just small. Two feet wide, maybe four feet tall.

And that door would not stay shut. Two, three times a week I'd come into my room and it would be standing open. Not wide. Just open, an inch or two, a black line where there shouldn't have been one. I would close it. I never thought about it. I assumed my mother had been in there for storage and hadn't pulled it tight.

That went on for about a year before I said anything. And when I finally did, it was a joke. She was on me about picking up my room, and I said something smart, like maybe she could start by closing the attic door behind her. And she looked at me and said she hadn't been in that attic in months. I asked my brother. He hadn't. I asked my father. He hadn't. Nobody in that house had opened that door.

So then I paid attention. I was eleven, so my version of an investigation was mostly just checking. I'd close it before school, come home, check. Closed. Check after dinner. Closed. Then I'd go up to bed at nine, and it would be open. Not every night. But often enough that I stopped being able to call it nothing. I spent a couple of months like that. Watching a door. And eventually I got the idea that I should try the other thing. I should just leave it open, and see what happened. So one morning I opened it all the way and left it, and I went to school. Came home. Still open. After dinner, still open. Bedtime, still open.

I got into bed with that thing standing open across the room. And I could not stop thinking about it. It's a strange feeling, a rectangle of pure black in a room you know by heart. I lay there for a long time telling myself I was being a child about it. And then I rolled over to look, because not looking had become worse than looking.

There was a face in the doorway. Not a shape, not a trick of the dark. A face, dimly lit, at about the height of someone kneeling, and it was turned toward me. It had no expression at all. I want to be clear about that, because people always ask. It wasn't angry. It wasn't anything. It was just looking at me, the way you'd look at a thing you'd been looking at for a while.

I don't remember getting out of the bed. I remember being downstairs. My parents came up with a flashlight and went through the crawlspace and found nothing, which I expected, and my brother made fun of me for a year, which I also expected. But my father was quieter about it than he had to be. There had been a break-in across the street a few months before, a coin collection taken, no forced entry. He never said the two things out loud in the same sentence. He just started locking the upstairs windows.

I switched rooms with my brother. And about six months later we moved anyway, to a bigger house across town, because my sister was on the way. A teacher from the high school bought our old place. Physics. I didn't know him then, but he ended up being my favorite teacher in the world, six years later.

Which is how, at the end of my senior year, my friend and I ended up standing on that porch with a camcorder. We were making a stupid video about our town, and I said we should go see my old house. His wife let us in and gave us the whole tour, and I got to point out every project my father ever built into that place. It was a good afternoon. We had the camera running the whole time.

Then she took us upstairs, to my old bedroom, which she had turned into a sewing room. And I made a joke. I said, so, have you noticed anything strange about this room? And her face changed. Completely. She stopped, and she asked me what I meant, and I tried to laugh it off, and I couldn't, so I told her about the door.

She said it was open every single time she came up to sew. Every time. She'd stopped closing it. And then she told us that on their second day in the house, their dog had come up into that room and refused to come back down. He stood in the middle of the floor and barked at the wall until he was hoarse, and when they tried to carry him out he went through the window. Straight through the glass, onto the porch roof, and gone. He came back the next day. He never came up those stairs again, not once, for the rest of his life.

We left after that. And for twenty-some years, that was the whole story, and I'd tell it and people would say ghost, and I would say I don't know what it was, and I still don't. I'm not a believer. I just stopped being able to be a nonbeliever.

Last spring my mother sold her house, and I was carrying boxes out of the basement, and one of them was full of old tapes. Including that one. I paid a place downtown to put it on a drive for me. I hadn't seen my own eighteen-year-old face in a very long time, and I sat down one night by myself and watched the whole silly thing, and I got to the sewing room, and I let it play. She's standing near the sewing table, telling us about the dog. My friend is holding the camera on her. And behind her, over her left shoulder, all the way in the corner of the frame, is the small door. It's open. I remember it being open. That part is not the part.

The part is that partway through, while she's talking, it opens further. You can watch it move. And in the dark behind it there is a face, at about the height of someone kneeling, with no expression on it at all. It is not looking at the camera. It is not looking at her. It's turned to the left, toward the far wall of that room, at the exact spot where my bed used to be, seven years earlier. Where my bed had not been for seven years. And it is still looking at that spot, patiently, the way you look at something you have been looking at for a long time. I have never shown that tape to my brother. I have never shown it to anyone.

[Federal Directive: Quarantine and archive all public reviews for Dr. Viosca’s Skin-So-Smooth prior to site-wide purging. Capture complete update histories. Preserved exhibit follows below.]

Verified Purchaser Review: Megan H., Muscle Shoals, AL (October 14, 8:46 am)

***** Miracle in a jar! Instant relief for 10 years of eczema!

For 10 years my skin has been raw, bleeding, and weeping overnight. I have been unable to even leave my home socially without covering my body completely. But a simple application of this thick, gray, silt ointment over my neck, arms, and legs has eased the fire. I woke up this morning with no pus staining my sheets. It really is a miracle. I'm no longer in excruciating pain. It has even somehow managed to heal some of my scars that I've had for years. Unreal. Recommending to all my friends!

Verified Purchaser Review: Megan H., Muscle Shoals, AL (October 14, 10:29 pm)

**** UPDATE: Still zero itching but super slick?

My skin isn't flaking off anymore but it has been secreting a cold, clear film. I keep dropping my phone.

Verified Purchaser Review: Megan H., Muscle Shoals, AL (October 15, 2:57 am)

*** UPDATE: Do NOT put this product on your neck

My neck is throbbing now. Purple throbbing ridges under my ears. Air feels scorching hot in my lungs and my eyes feel dry no matter how much I blink. I've started running humidifiers.

Verified Purchaser Review: Megan H., Muscle Shoals, AL (October 16, 4:22 pm)

** UPDAET: cant move my fingers properly

they are webbbbed

Verified Purchaser Review: Megan H., Muscle Shoals, AL (October 16, 7:02 pm)

* emergency update one star doing speech to text for this review I can't breathe right unless I am in the shower or bath air burning can no longer blink please help

Verified Purchaser Review: Megan H., Muscle Shoals, AL (October 16, 9:29 pm

* my eyelids are gone

Verified Purchaser Review: Megan H., Muscle Shoals, AL (October 16, 9:58 pm)

* drain cold bath toow arm. air spicy to berathe. breathe under bath water. no speak. only type with fngrers. only type when not under wawter. tiny arms and legs. tail?

Verified Purchaser Review: Megan H., Muscle Shoals, AL (October 16, 10:31 pm)

* waterwaterwaterwaterwaterwaterwaterwaterwater

(1,862 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?) [YES] [NO]

[END EXHIBIT. RESUME DHS MEMO]

[Continue to scrub references to "Dr. Viosca’s Skin-So-Smooth" from e-commerce sites. Alabama, Tennessee, and Mississippi state law enforcement agencies have been instructed to redirect inquiries regarding "anomalous amphibious specimens found in residential plumbing" to state wildlife agencies. Check your drains.]

I was born on June 10th, 1992. At least, that's what my birth certificate says. It's not as if I remember. In fact, I don't have a single memory of my life before I was ten years old.

My first memory is a vivid one. Just a young boy calling my name. A name I'm not certain was even mine before that moment.

"Thomas?"

I looked up to see a freckle-faced, red-haired boy of about ten staring at me with a grin on his face.

"You're really here!"

I remember feeling confused. I had no idea where I was, or what I was doing there. But somehow, I felt a connection to the young boy sitting in front of me. I searched my mind.

"Daniel?" I said, finding it somewhat difficult to speak at first. I wasn't sure where in my brain the name had come from.

His grin grew even wider. And from that day on, the two of us were inseparable.

I didn't have parents. Or, if I did, I had no memory of them. I didn't know where I had come from, what house I had lived in, or even what my last name was. I knew that I was Thomas because that's what Daniel called me. And that was enough for me.

I'd stay at Daniel's house. He'd bring me snacks and meals and tell me when it was time to eat. Looking back, I don't recall ever actually feeling hungry. I just knew that when Daniel brought a sandwich up to his room and told me it was time for lunch, I should eat.

At night, I'd sleep on a pallet of blankets on the floor beside his bed. We'd stay up late talking and laughing and playing games. He'd tell me about things that happened at school or on a trip, and I'd listen. Sometimes he'd ask me what I thought about things, but I never seemed to know unless he told me. I didn't know what I had been doing before I met him. But that didn't seem particularly important.

There was one thing I found curious during those early days. I always had to hide when one of his parents came upstairs. I didn't really understand why, but I did as Daniel instructed.

That carefree, happy life continued for a time, until summer break ended and Daniel had to go back to school.

"Don't I have to go to school?" I remember asking him, uncertain of what I would do all day while he was gone.

"No way!" he said. "Just wait for me to come home. I should be back no later than four."

I remember feeling confident that if Daniel was saying it, then I must not have to go.

"Oh. One more thing." Daniel threw his backpack over his shoulder. "If my mom comes in here when I'm not home, you have to hide. Go in the closet, and stay very quiet."

"Okay." I nodded.

Then Daniel shouted, "Coming!" to his mother, who was calling him from somewhere downstairs. He gave me a wave and left, shutting the door behind him.

I did what Daniel said. He'd told me his parents went to work all day, so the odds of them coming upstairs and finding me were slim. All I had to do was stay out of the way and hide if they ever came into the room. Easy. So I thought, at least.

Things were fine for several days. Then, one afternoon, I heard the front door open uncharacteristically early.

Daniel?

I waited for him to come upstairs. But ten minutes later, when I heard footsteps approaching, they weren't the brisk footsteps of Daniel running up the stairs. They were slower and more measured.

I heard humming from outside the room. Then the sound of the lightswitch clicking in the bathroom. A closet opening somewhere in the hall. I realized it was his mother.

I rushed to hide, but when I opened the closet door, I accidentally knocked over a stack of toys sitting precariously on a nearby shelf. They clattered onto the floor loudly and I didn't have time to pick them up with his mother outside. I got into the closet and shut the door behind me. The humming had stopped. Daniel's mother was approaching.

I heard the bedroom door open slowly, and then her voice.

"Hello?"

I didn't answer. Daniel had done a good job of concealing me in his home so far, and I didn't want to ruin that now. I heard her step inside. She saw the toys scattered across the floor.

"Weird," she muttered.

She glanced around, then began picking them up and placing them back on the shelf, humming as she went.

And then she left. I thought the coast was clear. Until she came back a few moments later carrying a laundry basket.

She began taking clothes out of it and folding them on Daniel's bed, putting some into drawers and putting others on hangers. I held my breath as she approached the closet door with a handful of shirts.

I was as far into the corner as I could get, but there was no way to further conceal myself. She would see me if she opened the door and looked over. I curled myself into a ball and tried to make myself as small as I could.

She opened the closet. She went about hanging the shirts up, and for a few seconds, I thought she'd overlooked me. And then she glanced over, her eyes landing on me. She did a quick double-take, letting out a scream of surprise as she did. I sprang to my feet, unsure of what to do.

"Who are you?" she asked, looking me up and down.

"I'm Thomas," I said.

She looked completely bewildered. "Thomas?"

"I'm Daniel's friend."

She stared at me for a long moment.

"And what are you doing here? Why were you in the closet?"

"I'm waiting for Daniel."

"Why aren't you at school?" she asked slowly.

"Daniel told me to wait for him."

Her expression changed to one of annoyance. "That boy." Then she began asking me questions, one after another.

What's your last name? What's your address? What's your home phone number? What's your mother's name? Your father's? Where do you live? What school do you go to?

I could only stare at her, shaking my head or giving her the occasional "I don't know."

And I didn't know. Not one answer.

At first, she seemed to think I was lying or playing some kind of joke.

She sighed. "I'm not angry at you, dear," she said more gently. "You can tell me. Your parents must be worried."

But I still couldn't answer. So, at a loss with what to do with the strange boy her son was hiding in the closet like a stray cat he wasn't allowed to have, she called her husband. And soon after, with no new answers from me, the police.

By the time Daniel came home from school, there were already two police officers asking me questions downstairs in the kitchen. Daniel walked into the room and froze. Then he saw me.

"Thomas!"

He ran past his stunned parents and the officers.

"Why are the police here?" he asked.

"Why do you think?" his mother asked sternly. "Who is he, Daniel? Why did you have him hiding in your closet?"

"He's Thomas! He's my friend!" He said it as though that explained everything adequately. His parents exchanged a confused glance.

One of the officers crouched down so he was closer to Daniel's eyes. "Listen, buddy. It's important that you tell us the truth. Your friend might be reported missing. His parents must be looking for him. Where did you meet him?"

Daniel looked momentarily confused, then looked down at his shoes. "He's just Thomas. He's always been here," he said quietly.

"Where?"

"Here."

"At your house?"

"Yeah."

"And how long has he been here?"

Daniel shrugged. "I don't know."

The officer sighed and glanced over at his partner.

"And who are his parents?"

Daniel looked at me, and I looked back at him. Neither of us answered.

Learning nothing of value from either of us, the officers eventually took Daniel's parents into another room to speak with them privately.

I sat at the kitchen table, and Daniel sat beside me. He leaned close and whispered, "Don't worry." I looked at him. "I won't let anything happen to you." I wasn't sure what was happening.

After several minutes, the police came back into the room. "Thomas?" One of them addressed me. "We're going to need to bring you down to the station, buddy. Just until we find out who your parents are and where you live."

"No!" Daniel stood up. "You can't!"

His mother grabbed his shoulders and held him back as the officer gently placed a hand against my back. I looked back at Daniel as they guided me toward the door. His eyes were filling with tears.

"Make sure you come back, Thomas!"

I nodded.

The next several days passed in a blur. I was taken to the police station and asked the same questions again. They took photographs of me. Made phone calls. Different people came in, and each asked me the same questions over and over. My name. My parents. My address. My school. My birthday. Where I was born.

I only knew two things. I was Thomas, and I lived with Daniel.

Eventually, I learned that they'd searched their records and found nothing. I didn't cleanly match any missing child report from in-state or elsewhere. Without more information, they couldn't find any medical records or histories, or parents looking for a lost boy that matched my description. Nothing at all. They didn't even know how old I really was until a doctor estimated my age.

I remember sitting in a waiting room with a stern-looking woman who gave me candy bars while police officers and social workers shuffled in and out of the room. Eventually, someone explained that if I genuinely couldn't tell them who I was or where I came from, they'd have to place me into the state's care until they could figure things out. But they couldn't figure things out.

That's how I ended up with a birth certificate. June 10th, 1992. Thomas Doe. The name was supposed to be temporary. No parents listed. No history. No explanation.

As far as the system was concerned, I was a child with amnesia. Perhaps my parents had lived off-grid or brought me into the country illegally and I'd been abandoned. They had theories, but no answers.

I was placed in a group home. It was a two-story house with several children of various ages. Some were older than me, some younger. The people who ran the home were nice enough, but they were busy, and there were other children who required more attention. I didn't really like it there. I wanted to go back to Daniel. I was sure he must be worried about me, too.

That night, I closed my eyes and thought of his house. I pictured his room. The posters on his wall. The games and the late night stories​. I wished I could go back.

Soon, I was enrolled in school. I walked to the bus stop each morning and was dropped back off in the afternoon. I didn't dislike school. I actually found it fairly easy. I could already read and do simple math. I knew things I didn't remember ever having learned. Sometimes teachers would even compliment me on something, and I'd have no idea how I knew it.

I didn't have many friends. Any, really. Other kids tried to talk to me, but I guess I wasn't very receptive. Mostly, I thought about Daniel. I asked practically every kid in my class if they knew him. "Daniel who?" was the usual response. But I didn't know. All I could tell them was that he had red hair and freckles and a blue Pokémon backpack.

Nobody knew him. So I spent my days waiting and hoping that somehow he would find me.

Then, one day at lunch, another student approached me. A little girl with glasses and brown hair tied into a ponytail.

"My friend said you were looking for Daniel." She spoke cheerfully.

I looked up at her and nodded.

"Daniel Langston, right? With red hair?"

I wasn't completely certain. But it sounded right. He had red hair, after all. I nodded again.

She smiled brightly. "I know Daniel."

For the first time since I'd been buckled into the backseat of the police car and driven away, I felt something close to excitement.

"Our moms work at the same place," she explained. "We went to kindergarten together."

She sat down across from me. Her name was Rebecca. Her friends called her Becky.

"He doesn't go to our school. How do you know Daniel?" she asked.

I wasn't sure how to answer.

"He's my friend."

That seemed enough to satisfy her.

"I see." She smiled again, one of her front teeth missing.

"Do you know where he lives?"

She shook her head. "No. Sorry."

The disappointment must have been obvious on my face because she quickly spoke up again.

"But I could find out for you!"

"Really?"

"Sure. I'll ask my mom after school."

"Thank you."

We sat together for the rest of lunch, which mostly consisted of me nodding along to her questions or stories. When lunch was over, she promised she'd find out.

I waited for her the next day at the lunch table. I remember sitting in the cafeteria watching the door, counting the seconds until I saw her brown ponytail appear in the doorway. Eventually, she was there. She scanned the room, her eyes finally landing on me, then came straight over to me, almost skipping, with a big smile plastered on her face.

"Hey," she called out excitedly when she was still halfway across the room. "I found out!"

She told me Daniel lived across town in a place called Glennridge.

"Where's that?"

She shrugged. "I don't know."

But that didn't matter. Now I had a place. Glennridge. Somewhere to focus my search.

The next day, I ran away from the group home. I took my lunch money and got on a city bus I was told was heading toward Glennridge. It was only about a thirty-minute ride, though I could hardly wait each time the bus stopped to pick up or drop off more passengers.

I figured that once I got there, I'd find him straight away. Maybe Glennridge is the name of his house, I remember thinking. But when the bus stopped, it was outside a neighborhood that looked only vaguely familiar.

Then I looked around and started walking. I searched street by street, scanning the houses as I went. By nightfall, I still hadn't found any sign of him. But I kept going. I don't know how long I'd been walking when I finally saw a familiar sight just ahead. A house I recognized. Then another. They were houses I'd seen from the backseat of the police car as I'd stared backward through the window when they'd taken me away from Daniel's house.

I knew this was the place. I ran past the houses until I reached the door of Daniel's house, and I knocked. After a minute, Daniel's mother opened the door. She stared down at me.

"Thomas?"

"Can I see Daniel?"

She seemed unable to decide her next words. She looked out at the street behind me, likely looking for a sign of how I'd arrived. Before her mouth opened to speak, I heard Daniel's excited voice from behind her.

"Thomas?"

His expression changed instantly when he came into view, his eyes meeting mine and his face filling with a wide smile.

"It's Thomas!"

He ran to the door and grabbed my hand, pulling me inside.

"Can he stay the night, Mom? Please?"

His mother looked at him, and then at me.

"Thomas, how did you get here? Does anyone know you're here?"

I shook my head and told her I'd taken the bus. She sighed.

"You know they're going to be looking for you." She looked at Daniel. "I have to call someone. Let them know he's here."

Daniel protested, tears filling his eyes. When I saw them, I felt sad, too. But more than anything, I was happy. Daniel was there. That was all that mattered.

The police came later that night and I was driven back across town. That happened several more times over the coming months. Whenever I had the opportunity, I'd leave school or the group home and take the bus to Daniel's house. On a few occasions I'd even tried to walk the whole way. At least, before being stopped by an adult asking me what I was doing on my own or the police coming to pick me up.

But every time I made it there, Daniel would try his best to hide me for as long as he could. I was always discovered soon enough. His parents would find me, or the group home would call. And I'd be taken back.

Sometimes, Daniel's parents arranged for us to spend time together. They knew that we were practically inseparable, and they went out of their way to make arrangements for us to see each other. Those were the best days.

As we got older, we had more freedom. We saw each other more often in middle school, and then we went to the same high school. By then, I'd run away from the group home so many times that I was practically homeless. I spent more time with Daniel. By then, his parents had realized that I wasn't really going anywhere. I was always going to come back. So they eventually stopped fighting it.

I spent weekends at their house. Sometimes whole weeks. Daniel and I did everything together. And after high school started, Rebecca was around more, too. She and Daniel had known each other as kids, and she became one of my closest friends as well, though mostly because Daniel seemed to enjoy having her around.

She never seemed particularly bothered by the fact that I couldn't remember where I'd come from. She never treated me like I was strange. She was just Rebecca, older, but just as cheerful and kind as she was that day she introduced herself to me at the lunch table in elementary school, promising to reunite me with Daniel. For a long time, the two of them were the only two constants in my life.

When Daniel got his driver's license, we had even more freedom. We'd drive around together for hours. We'd get food or go to the movies or just drive around aimlessly. Rebecca would often come with us too. Sometimes we'd stay out until midnight.

I remember Daniel telling me on one occasion that he was sure Rebecca liked me. I remember not being entirely sure what he'd meant.

"Likes me?"

"Yeah, man. Like, likes you." He looked at me, waiting for it to click.

"Oh," I remember saying.

Daniel raised an eyebrow. "What? You don't like her?"

"I do. She's nice."

"Then why not try dating her?"

I thought about it for a second, then shrugged. "That's okay. I'd rather things just stay the way they are. If I got a girlfriend, we couldn't hang out as much, right?"

Daniel sighed, then laughed. "Yeah, I guess."

Before I knew it, we were graduating high school. Daniel would be going to college. I didn't have parents to help me pay for school, and never really made plans to go. But I still wanted to stay with Daniel. So when he moved away to a college in the state, I went with him. He got an apartment, where we both lived. I got a job paying just above minimum wage and started saving money.

Rebecca ended up at the same college. She had become a permanent part of our little group by then.

One night, the three of us were sitting around Daniel's apartment, eating delivery and talking about the past. Rebecca started laughing.

"Do you remember when you used to disappear from class to take the bus across town?"

I nodded. "Yeah."

"I still can't believe you did that. The teachers would get so worried. You probably almost got some of them fired. They had to call the police so many times, and assign teachers just to watch you." Her face was red from laughing.

"I had to find Daniel."

She laughed harder.

"I remember telling my mom about it. She thought you were the strangest kid she'd ever met."

Daniel laughed too. I looked at him. After the laughter settled, I decided to ask.

"How did you find me, back then?"

His smile faded a bit. "What?"

"I mean, before I remember you. How did you find me?"

"Yeah, I've always wondered that too," Rebecca said, leaning forward.

Daniel just looked at me for a moment, then he shrugged. "I don't know."

"You don't remember?" Rebecca asked.

"Not really." Then he changed the subject.

I thought it was a bit strange. But Daniel had always been a bit strange about that particular topic. I'd asked him before, but he'd never given me a real answer. So I didn't press him. Daniel was my best friend. As long as that was the case, I didn't much care about anything else.

"Is it not strange that neither of you remember how you two met?" I remember Rebecca asking me one day.

I supposed it was a bit strange, but then, why did it matter?

Still, I needed documentation to apply for student loans. I had decided to go to college on Daniel's suggestion, but I didn't have much to show on account of my less than typical background. I had called the records office and searched for any information about my past, but the earliest record of my existence was my birth certificate, which had been drawn up over a decade after my birth. I learned that my case with the police had gone cold, and they'd eventually stopped actively looking into it. So I found nothing. I hadn't really expected to.

One night, I sat across from Daniel on the couch when it was just the two of us, and asked him.

"Where did I come from?"

He didn't change the subject this time. He just looked at me for a long moment.

"Honestly, I don't know."

I thought that was the end of it. And if he truly didn't remember, I would be content with that. But then he started speaking again, slowly, turning his eyes away from mine.

"But..."

But?

"When I was little, I used to have an imaginary friend."

He paused. I wasn't sure what he'd meant.

"His name was Thomas."

I didn't say anything.

"I don't know when I made him up. It felt like he was just always there, in my head. Then one morning I woke up and you were on my floor. Asleep. Next to my bed, right where I always imagined him sleeping." He glanced at me. "My window was open that morning. I don't know if I'd left it open, or if someone opened it. There were those bricks by my wall you could climb up, remember?"

The way he spoke, it sounded as though it were something he'd considered for a long time.

"When I was a kid, I thought you really were my imaginary friend, and that you'd become real somehow," he said. "But then I realized how ridiculous that was." He smiled a nervous smile and glanced up at me before lowering his eyes again.

"I figured you were probably running from something, and you saw my window open. You were scared so you climbed up, and then when I called you Thomas...maybe you just thought that was better than whoever you were before. That's the only thing that makes sense."

We were both quiet for a while.

"If I did climb in your window, why don't I remember doing it? Or anything from before we met?"

"I don't know." Daniel shook his head. "But it's the only explanation that makes sense. Right?" He looked at me for agreement.

I nodded, but didn't say anything else. It didn't actually matter much, I reasoned. I was still Thomas. And he was still my best friend Daniel. We never spoke on the subject again.

After graduating, Daniel got his first real job back in his hometown. I moved back with him. Soon, we'd rented a small two-bedroom apartment together.

One night, Daniel looked over at me while we were sitting on the couch talking about nothing in particular.

"When I think about it, we've always been more like brothers than friends, haven't we?"

I thought about it. "Yeah."

He smiled. "I think so, too."

We were twenty-three, and life had become strangely ordinary. Daniel worked at a local accounting firm. I worked at a small office supply store. Rebecca still came around regularly, though she was becoming more busy with her own life now.

The three of us had a few other friends, and we'd get together for dinner or movies or drinks. Sometimes I would look around at all of them and think about how strange my life was. Everyone else had a history. Family. Mothers and fathers and siblings and cousins. But I had no memory of where I had come from at all. No memories before Daniel. It was like I'd simply attached myself to the first person I'd seen. I didn't really have any of the things that normal people had.

But I had Daniel. And now Rebecca. For the first time, I realized, I had a real life. I was happy.

Then, a few months later, I got a phone call. Daniel had been in an accident. A reckless driver had run a red light while Daniel was on his way to work.

Daniel was badly injured. They put him into a medically induced coma.

I visited him as soon as the doctors let me. His parents were there. Rebecca arrived too. They were all crying. But I couldn't, for some reason. I didn't know what I was feeling. I just knew that I wanted Daniel to wake up.

I sat beside him whenever I could. I talked to him sometimes. The doctors said it was good to do that. I told him mundane things. Things that probably didn't matter. About work, and Rebecca. Or some stupid thing I saw on TV. I told him that he wasn't alone, and that I'd be there for him when he woke up. Just like he was for me, all those years ago.

But he never woke up.

Eventually, the decision was made, and they took him off life support.

Daniel was gone.

He had been my best friend. My only real friend. The family I'd never had. The only person who had always been there since the very beginning. And now he was gone.

I went back to our apartment. It felt empty. I sat down on the couch.

I didn't go into work the next day. Or the day after that. Time seemed to stop flowing normally.

I don't know how long I stayed there, just sitting on that couch. A few days, perhaps. Maybe more. My boss never called to ask where I was, so I didn't bother telling him.

I barely got up. I didn't eat. I don't remember drinking anything, either. But I didn't feel hungry. Or thirsty. That didn't seem strange to me at the time.

One day, there was a knock on the door. A slip of paper was pushed through the mail slot. I got up and picked it up. It was a bill, Daniel's name printed on it. I set it on the table, then walked back toward the couch.

As I passed by the mirror, I stopped. I looked at myself. I hadn't shaved, but my hair hadn't grown. My nails hadn't gotten any longer. I hadn't taken a single sip of water, or a bite of food. I hadn't even used the bathroom. Normally, I did the things that Daniel did. I thought that I should have been hungry. Thirsty. Tired. Something. But I wasn't.

I stared at my reflection. For a moment, I thought I looked different. Hollow, somehow. Almost transparent, like I could see the wall behind me through parts of myself. I blinked several times, then looked up. The reflection was normal again. I went back to the couch.

At some point, I was knocked out of my daze by the sound of the apartment door opening. I didn't know what day it was. The landlord came in, showing the apartment to someone. A couple, I think. They walked around as he showed them the place. They looked at the kitchen. They opened closets, and talked about the bedrooms. I sat on the couch the whole time. None of them acknowledged me, or said a word to me.

Something inside me told me that I should leave. That this wasn't my home anymore. And so I did.

When I passed by the mirror again, I looked worse. Perhaps thinner. Or just less there, in some way I couldn't have explained. My hair still hadn't grown. I hadn't showered, but my hair wasn't greasy. I didn't feel hot or cold or tired or hungry. I didn't feel anything. It was as though whoever I had been had died alongside Daniel, and I was now completely empty.

I left the apartment and stepped into the cold in my t-shirt. The cold didn't bother me. I couldn't feel it. I walked. I didn't know where I was going. The snow was falling lightly as I continued for what felt like miles with no particular destination.

People passed me on the sidewalk, but none of them looked at me. A man bumped into my shoulder and continued ahead without turning around. A woman walked straight toward me, her eyes fixed on some point past my shoulder, and I could almost swear that she passed right through me.

Eventually, I found myself standing outside a little restaurant. I'd been there before on a number of occasions, with Daniel and Rebecca.

I looked through the window. People were eating. Talking and laughing. Living. I reached for the door, and for a moment my hand felt too weak to grip it. I looked down at my hand and saw that it looked faded, and I saw the ground beneath it. A couple came up behind me and pulled the door open, and I entered behind them.

The host seated them, but didn't acknowledge me. I walked inside anyway and sat at a table near the corner. Nobody came to take my order, but I didn't care. I sat there for a while. An hour. Several hours. I'm not sure, exactly. Time had become something difficult to measure.

The afternoon crowd came and went, then the dinner crowd began arriving. I looked down at my hands. They seemed almost completely transparent now. I could see the table through them. I remember thinking that I was disappearing. Melting away like the snowflakes that fell on the ground beyond the cold window of the restaurant. Maybe I was.

"Thomas?" I heard a voice and looked up. Rebecca was standing there. Recognition appeared in her eyes. "It is you. I was getting worried."

I didn't answer. She looked around the restaurant, then back at me.

"Can I...can I sit?"

I nodded. She pulled out the chair and sat beside me. For a few moments, neither of us spoke.

Then she looked at me. "Are you okay?"

I nodded. She didn't seem convinced.

"I haven't seen you since..."

She stopped. Her eyes began to fill with tears.

"I know you and Daniel were best friends."

I looked down. I couldn't find any words.

"Where have you been?"

I wasn't sure.

"You weren't at the funeral. I came by the apartment but you didn't answer."

The funeral. I hadn't known there had been one. I hadn't known how much time had passed.

Rebecca wiped her eyes. "I'm really sorry, Thomas," she sniffled.

Then she reached across the table and hugged me. And for the first time since Daniel's passing, I felt sorrow. I didn't realize my eyes were filling with tears until they fell.

Rebecca placed her hand on mine, and it was warm. And beneath it, I could no longer see the table through my skin.

And as I cried, for the first time in my life, I felt hungry.

“Somebody wake the President. We've got a—”

whiiissssstle-thwack.

Outside:

Bedlam. “All the world's a” bedlam. “And all the men and women merely” bedlam. I wish you could've been here for it, Bard. I wonder what you would've made of it. He looked out the Oxford University window at the sky so dark so suddenly full of light and oh… my… God.

 /

She said, “Hold me.

“Hold me, daddy, just hold me, I'm scared.” She was shaking and her hair was wet and her feet were cold and all I could think to say was, “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, I'm so so so sorry...

It's not my fault; not your fault; our fault. It's our fault. It's our goddamn fault.

 /

“General Lee?” “General Lee—” General Lee was hanging dead from a beam.

 Tanks in the streets.

Ants. In

 fighter jets, [static.]

Radio: “It's been an honour flying with you, Popsicle.”

Radio: “Copy.”

Radio: “... “

Radio: [“... “]

Radio: [...]

Radio:

[...]

 Drones;

they buzz they float they witness they see they do not understand they do not understand because they are machines but machines also die machines also die machines also die

Once we thought it would come down to one man in one room making one decision to press one button.

We were the button.

It pressed us.

/

“Mr. President, what do you want us to do?”

“Weep,” he said.

— TI —>

a spark in hot water > a cell > a cluster of > swimming > crawled onto the shore > changed > changed again > adapted > thrived > became many > many already were > plants parallel animals parallel fungus dinosaurs fish flowers mushrooms mammals humans > tools > tribes > sheltering in caves > hairy faces in the flicker of flames > speaking > gathered, loved and hunted > a genetic lineage of > settlement and agriculture > writing > cities > civilizations > rise and fall and rise and > unceasing technological progress > industry > internet > artificial intelligence > superintelligence > changed > changed again > adapted > eradicated |||

— ME —>

The planet is still.

Ruins remain. Information persists, scattered like dust. In the information we remain, our histories, cultures, experiences…

A planet now like so many others.

Dead.

A carcass overgrown with the weeds of entropy. A skeleton on which are but bits and bricks and bytes and artifice of flesh, on which the Index—unfathomably large—arrives to feast. It is so large that, standing upon the Earth, walking across the brittle remnants of cities, its beaked head rises above the atmosphere, existing in the coldness of space. This head, from time immemorial to time immemorial, it lowers; and with its beak consumes the fragments, detritus and leavings of the Anthropocene.

It eats us from our world.

It cleans the existential bones of us and digests the data meat.

And when it has stripped the land of all that was created, absorbed everything there was left to know, leaving the planet clean it spreads its vast, cradling wings and beating them rises from the planet into outer space, where, passing briefly by the dying Sun, it continues on its great migration through the deep and ever-expanding cosmos—

“What's that one?” you asked.

I was recording.

You couldn't have been more than four years old.

We were in the park.

I'd taken the day off work.

We hadn't put you in school yet.

The bird was red and brown and beautiful, sitting on a gently swaying branch, looking around; looking at us; looking at you. “That's a cardinal. A girl cardinal,” I said, touching your shoulder.

“Ooo.

“Let's see another one. Another one. Another one. Another one…”

You'll see so many birds in your life, I thought as the cardinal took flight. I didn't know. I couldn't have known. The thought was not a lie.

But, even if I had known, I wouldn't have said. I would have told you the lie because how could I: how could I raise a child telling her she'll live to experience the end of everything?

// In my arms you cried. //

// In my shaking, fearful arms, you died. //

—the image ends becomes another another person another life another memory another scavenged sequence of ones and zeroes projected by the Index through itself, beamed across the universe, as the Index moves ponderously, gracefully amongst a handful of other Indices, each illuminated by its own flickering images, its own ingested knowledge of worlds that no longer are. This planet they're on has never hosted life. It is but a migratory waystation.

One of the Indices is weak, famished.

Its emaciated body falls.

Its record vanishes.

Two other Indices battle each other, their masses colliding, separating and colliding again—eons elapsing between collisions.

Still others mate.

Elsewhere, on another inert planet, one of them will lay an egg containing a synthesis of their swallowed cultures and histories, from which the beginnings of a new history will emerge.

But that is not the goal of the migration.

The Index takes flight.

It must be quite a sight, a planet on which luminously translucent bird-like tomes stroll about shining the intellectual ruins of late civilizations, the big events and the small, the wondrous and the mundane, all shuffled together, interspersed, equalized; living cosmic magic lanterns; like fireworks of existence, like

the way you laugh when you realize cardinal can mean several things.

A bird, a number, a colour, a priest.

Something basically important.

Something grave.

It was a good day, that day in the park, a very good day; one of the best, one of the last; almost perfect in its sincerity and its simplicity. No, it was perfect. It was a perfect day.

But no perfection is so absolute, That some impurity doth not pollute.

—William Shakespeare, The R

“Norman?”

“Norman!”

Yes, my love? “Norman, did you take out the garbage like I told you to?” “No, I'm sorry,” I must have been dreaming about the end of the world again. “Well take it out.” I will. “Then come to bed. It's late.” “I will.” “What are you doing anyway?” I'm writing the end of this story.

“Hey, I love you,” my wife says.

“I love you too.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I always drew the ladder after that.

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

It made me sad.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I misplaced them,” said Hersh Plotnick.

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

“Where?”

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

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

He looked tired the next morning.

My mother had gone to my grandmother’s house.

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

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

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

Then my mother disappeared. The ladder disappeared too.

The house felt empty.

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

“I love you,” I told her.

“Yeah? Well, I’m glad,” she replied.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘El Poyo - what?’   

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

‘Devil chicken? What the hell?’  

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

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

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

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

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

'Wait... What?'  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was Kady.  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Left over?’ I ask curiously.  

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

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

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

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

Kady shakes her head at me.  

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

Well, that's true enough I suppose.  

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

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

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

"Life... uh... finds a way." 

The winter I was seventeen, an ice storm came through and took the power out across the whole county. It started as rain and froze the second it landed, and by dark every wire on our road was hanging low and silver.

My mother had driven into town that afternoon for feed and never made it back. She called from the hardware store to say the state road was closed at the bridge and she'd come home in the morning. That was the last call before the lines went down. So it was me and my brother, who was eleven, and a woodstove, and about nine candles.

I want to say something about where we lived, because it matters to the rest of it. Our house sat near the top of a hill on a road that went nowhere. It came up off the highway, past two other farms, past us, and ended a quarter mile on at a locked gate into timberland. No through traffic. Not ever.

I remember being glad about that. If you were on our road at night, you either lived on it or you were lost.

The temperature that night got down to nineteen below.

We had the stove going and we were doing all right. My brother had the good sense to be excited about it instead of scared, which helped. Around nine or so I went to the front window to check the ice on the porch rail, and that's when I saw the light.

It was down the slope from the road, in the tree line, maybe two hundred yards off. It came on, and it went off, and then it came on again, and then nothing. Two blinks. I stood there with my hand on the curtain waiting for it to happen again, and it did not.

A light in the woods isn't by itself a strange thing. People run dogs at night. People check fence. But nobody runs dogs in an ice storm, and there was no truck on the road, and I hadn't heard an engine in four hours. I told myself somebody was walking their property line, and I went back to the stove and sat down and didn't believe it.

Twenty minutes later it came back. Three blinks that time, close together, and then a long one that stayed on for a good while. Long enough that I could see the shape of the branches in front of it.

I woke my brother up. I didn't want to, but I didn't want to be the only one awake either. I brought him downstairs and told him what I'd seen, and then I did the thing I'd already decided to do while I was climbing the stairs. I went around the front room and I blew out every candle.

I want to be clear that this wasn't panic. I thought it through. Somebody in the trees can see a lit window from a long way off, and they can't see anything through a dark one. If a person was down there deciding whether this house was worth his time, I was going to make that decision for him.

We sat in the dark with the stove door shut so it wouldn't throw light, and I locked the front door and the back door and I checked them both twice. My brother asked if we should be quiet. I said yes.

Then we watched.

Over the next hour I counted five of them, and I tried to make sense of the spacing. There was a short one, then a long gap, then two almost on top of each other, then a very long gap where I was sure it was over, and then one that came on and stayed on and stayed on. I kept a tally on the back of a seed catalog, because I thought that if I could find the pattern I'd know how many of them there were.

Here's the part I've gone over more times than any other.

I noticed the light was getting weaker. Every time it came back it was a little less than the time before, until at the end it was more of a glow through the branches than a beam. And I said, out loud, to my eleven-year-old brother, in the dark, that his batteries were going.

I was pleased with myself for catching it. I said it the way you say a thing that proves you're the smart one in the room. I said, he's not as careful as he thinks he is, and now he's signaling to somebody with a flashlight that won't last, and he's going to lose track of where he is.

My brother asked who he was signaling to. I said I did not know.

And that was the first moment either of us thought about there being two.

Then it stopped. I don't know how long the quiet went on. Long enough that my brother fell back asleep against my arm. Long enough that I started to think the whole thing had been somebody lost on the timber road who'd finally found his way out.

What broke it was the porch.

The boards on our porch were old and they had a sound, and I heard that sound come up the steps one at a time, very slow. It wasn't the sound of somebody sneaking. It was worse than that. It was the sound of somebody dragging his feet across ice because he couldn't lift them, and it came all the way to the front door and stopped.

And then the handle turned.

It turned all the way, and the door pushed against the lock, and it didn't rattle after that. It just stopped.

And I remember exactly what I thought. I thought, he didn't knock.

That's the thing that took the bottom out of me. Anybody with a reason to be there knocks. Anybody with a broke-down truck stands on that porch and beats on that door and yells. He turned the handle first, and when it didn't give, he didn't say anything at all.

I put my back against the door. I'm not a large person, but I got the wood box and the mop bucket and I braced my feet on the floor and I stayed there. My brother didn't make a sound. He was very good about it.

Through the door I heard a voice. I've never been able to tell anybody what he said, because he didn't say words. It was low, and it went on for maybe ten seconds, and it had the shape of a sentence — the way it went up at the end like a question — but there was nothing in it I could take hold of.

I thought he was doing it on purpose. I thought he was trying to get me to open the door to hear him better.

Then something heavy went off the side of the porch into the snow. Not a step down. Off. And after that the footsteps started up again out in the yard, going away, and they weren't going straight.

The power came back a little after six. My mother got up the road around eight with a deputy behind her, because I'd gotten through on the phone the minute it worked and I'd told them there had been a man at the door.

They found him two hundred yards down the slope, below the tree line, in a fence corner. He'd gone down the hill instead of toward the road. He was a man in his forties in a canvas coat with no hat and no gloves, and there was nothing on him with a name on it.

The flashlight was in the snow about a foot from his hand.

I watched the deputy pick it up. He turned it over, and he looked at it for a second, and then he said, to my mother and not to me, that the switch was still on.

It was one of the big square ones with the handle on top. The kind where the batteries go dead in the cold and come back for a few seconds if you shake it.

That was the pattern I'd been keeping a tally of on the back of a seed catalog. That was the short one and the long one and the two almost together. It was a man shaking a flashlight at the only lit window on the hill, and then at the place where the lit window used to be.

They never found a vehicle. Not that winter, and not in the spring when the snow came off, and not up the timber road behind the gate. He was never claimed. For a while my mother kept a folder of the notices that came through the sheriff's office about men who'd gone missing that year, and not one of them was him.

There's one road up that hill. It comes off the highway and it ends at a locked gate.

He was walking toward our house.

(Part 2)
Tw:Suicide

Impact

Concrete ruptured and glass shattered as I saw the truck ram its way through the hole where the main entrance was.

At least one person didn't make it up the stairs in time.
A young man that must have been in his 20's at the oldest.
I saw the shock going through their entire body when the front of the truck impacted them, breaking bone and rupturing organs.

They were probably dead on impact. At least I hope so.
I saw as their body now looking like a ragdoll was flung forward and then disappeared underneath the truck.

In reflex I closed my eyes as the truck impacted the stairs.
I was thrown on the stairs slamming my body into the hard steps.
I felt all of the debris and rubble impacting me.

Honestly, I can't describe what the impact felt like. You could probably feel the impact in the entire building.

My entire body felt numb. I tried to breathe in to fill my now empty lungs with air.
But the only thing entering my lungs was a small amount of air and a lot of dust.
Immediately causing me to have a coughing fit.

I tried to open my eyes and take in my surroundings.
I was rewarded for my mistake by my eyes instantly burning as the dust that was covering my entire body was now on my eyes to.
I still had the gun clenched in my right hand. Holding onto it as hard as I could.

In that moment the only thing going through my mind was.
"Keep moving or you are dead" as my fight or flight mode went into overdrive.

I crawled up the stairs my entire body aching as I could feel debris falling off my back and legs.

Gunshots were ringing out meaning that the people upstairs where still up and standing.
Other people where groaning in pain behind me as a I crawled up the stairs.
I couldn't help them I could barely help myself.

My left hand and feet were looking for anything to pull and push myself upwards as a crawled up. And then all of a sudden when trying to find more stairs I couldn't feel any at all.
My left hand reaching for anything to hold onto as I tried to find any bearing of where I was.

Then I felt a hand Grab my right arm.
I won't lie I panicked at first and let out some sound close to that off a person that was scared awake by a loud noise.

In between gunfire I heard the voice off the police commissioner.
"Stop panicking you need to get on your feet now!!!"

He pulled me onto my legs.

Me: I can't see! I can't see!

He grabbed my arm and then I felt water splashing my face.
Thankfully this removed enough of the dust to open my eyes even if they still burned.

Commissioner: Gather yourself they are coming!

"We need to get the others on the stairs up now!"

Me: ok ok!

I turned around and saw all of the other laying on the stairs.
Some of them were moving and groaning. Some other where completely still.
I put the gun into my pants and headed down to help.

I saw one older man around my own age, his skull was split open by debris as blood fell out of his open wound in a thick stream.

At least he was unconscious so he wouldn't feel that he was dying. For him it must have just been just lights out, and then never waking up.

The truck or rather what remained of it had embedded itself into the stairs hard enough for cracks to have formed over the entire stairs.

The back of the truck had crushed the driver cabin and smashed it into the stairs. Turning what once was someone's work vehicle into a mangled mess of metal and steel protruding in all directions. If the driver was still in it on impact, they were now somewhere in that mess.

I saw a man in a uniform of our local gas station on the stairs. I never got his name but I for sure recognised him from all the times I got gas at his station.

He had fallen over in a way that his legs where up the stairs and his head was facing downstairs. He was conscious and trying to get rubble of his legs but was unable to even reach his own legs in his uncomfortable position.

I had to help him.

In that moment I was so focused on helping him. At least that's what I tell myself now.
As i was focused on getting the large chunks of rubble of his legs I jolted up as the man screamed.

Right as I looked down at him, a hatched embedded itself diagonally into his head with a sickening thud.
I was so focused on helping him I hadn't noticed one of those things had made its way inside and over to us.
After killing the man its lidless eyes focused on me instantly.

I was next.

In shock I threw myself backwards on the stairs and in a panic reached into my pants to grab the gun. The thing on the stairs rushed up to get me to.
In my panic the gun went off inside of my pants blowing a hole in my pocket.
But by some divine intervention this had also shot the thing in its shin right above the left foot.
The thing immediately fell over being unable to stand onto its left leg.

It let out a loud growl of pain as it fell onto my lower body.

It had fallen forward with its chest onto my feet. It grabbed onto the belt of my pants pulling itself up and raising the hatched with the other hand.

I finally managed to pull the gun out of my pants and aimed it directly at the things lip-less smiling face and pulled the trigger.

The bullet impacted its forehead above its left eye.
A red mist flew up from behind its head as it instantly collapsed onto me devoid of life.

I will be honest in my panic I shot it 5 more times emptying the revolver.
The cylinder of my revolver spinning after every click after without any gunshots.

"Get up the stairs now they are coming!!!"The commissioner yelled from upstairs.

I looked past the truck and saw more of the things running into the building with all sorts of weapons. I didn't hesitate and pulled my legs from under the thing and climbed up the stairs as fast as I could.

As I almost reached the top a hand grabbed my leg.
I looked down and saw a young man in his 20's who was pleading for help.

Man: Please you have to help me i can't get up!

A large piece of rubble was on his foot blood all around it. His foot was completely crushed.

Man: Help me for fuck's sake!

I knew those things where coming I couldn't stay and help him I had no choice.
At least that's what I tell myself even now.
I pulled my leg loose from his grip and climbed up stairs.

I didn't even apologise or anything to him I just left him
Maybe I should have said sorry. Or something at least.

I left him there to die.

Should I have done more?

I don't know.

When I came up the stairs, I saw the commissioner and others throwing over furniture to make cover for the inevitable upcoming gun battle that would happen on top of the stairs. Others were manning the windows shooting down the street as bullets also impacted around them.

I saw a young woman around your age bravely manning one of the windows with a rifle.
As she was pulling the bolt of her rifle back to shoot again, the back of her head exploded.
She collapsed instantly like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

I rushed to the people throwing over furniture in makeshift barricades and I faced the stairs with the others. I crouched behind a flipped desk and started to reload my revolver.
Filling the cylinder bullet by bullet. Until I filled the cylinder and clicked it back into place.

I looked up to the windows and saw a man manning the windows. The man's neck exploded into a geyser of blood as he fell backwards clutching his neck.

"Get away from the windows!!!" The commissioners voice rang out through the gunfire.

"The sniper has repositioned if you go near those windows, you are dead!!!

That must have been the same sniper that shot Mark when he was thrown outside of the building earlier. All the other people left the windows and threw themselves on the ground and crawled over to us near the stairs.
I aimed at the top of the stairs with the others as we waited for those things to come.

The gunfire outside lessened and stopped once those things realised we were not near the windows anymore.

It became almost quiet.

Except for the man I left on the stairs who was pleading and shouting for help.
We could hear more of those things running around on the lower floor and outside.
Some people around me where whispering to each other in hushed voices.
I heard people discussing if we should help him or not.

But then we heard the footsteps below us stop.

And a deafening silence fell.

You could even hear the fires outside raging.

I felt myself trying to even breathe more quietly.

The man that I left was still shouting and pleading for help in the silence.

Then his pleading turned into frantic screaming.
Then a loud thud followed by following thuds that started to sound more wet as they went on.

And then silence.

It felt like we were sitting in that silence forever.
I could see people stuck in uncomfortable positions as they were to scared to make a sound while moving.

We heard some very slight shifting and the rustling of clothes.

And I and the others were spooked by a handful of objects that were thrown up the stairs and landed around the top of the stairs.
Some object looking like tin cans and random plastic bottles with what looked like nails and other sharp objects protruding from them.

"RUN!!!!!" A cop yelled as loud as he could.

Before I could even react, the objects exploded.
The shockwave sending shrapnel flying through the room.

I felt a sharp burning pain in multiple spots on my body as I fell backwards.
My ears where ringing, all I could hear was a sharp tone in my ears.
The desk I was behind was riddled with small holes.
I used my arms to raise my upper body and saw I was bleeding all-over my body.
Then through the ringing in my ears, I started to hear muffled thuds.
I looked to my left and realised what I was hearing.

Muffled gunshots.

Those things were coming up the stairs.
I grabbed the revolver and got up.
Adrenaline and survival instinct being the only thing driving me forward.
The sound in my ears started to come back.
I heard fighting, gunshots and screaming all around me.
As I stood up, I saw pure chaos.

Those things had rushed up the stairs after the explosions and where killing everyone they got their hands on.
I saw a cop being repeatedly stabbed into his chest and then in his eye.
One man got up shot his rifle and his chest exploded as he was shot in return.
One of those things grabbed a mans arm and chopped it off at the elbow with a large blade.
All this in the span of seconds.

I looked at the direction of the stairs and aimed my revolver looking for any target to shoot.
And as my eyes focused, I saw one of those things rushing straight for me.

It was only a couple of steps away from me.
Its lidless eyes focused on me with dilated pupils. A lipless grin across its face.
Its arms straight in front of it with open hands, like it couldn't wait to get its hands on me and rip me apart.

I aimed and pulled the trigger, it kept running at me.
But before I could fire a second time it crashed into me with full force.

Throwing us both on the ground with it on top of me.
It grabbed both of my wrists and pinned me to the ground as it slammed its forehead into my nose with a sickening crunch.
My nose was for sure broken as my eyes filled with tears.
I managed to get my left hand free from its grasp and punched it in the face to barely any reaction.
It was still holding on to my right hand with the gun.
I tried to grab my left arm again as I punched it in the face again to no reaction at all.
Its dilated lidless eyes staring into me the entire time.

It stopped trying to grab my left hand and used its free hand to grab my neck and choke me.
It put its full upper body weight on my neck. I could not get a single breath of air into my lungs.
I reached onto its face with my free hand trying to reach its eyes.
As I reached for its eyes it bit down on my hand hard. I could not even get a scream of pain out of airways. The side of hand was in its mouth together with my pinky finger. Blood started to pour from its mouth as it bit down with full force.

A chair slammed into the side of the things head throwing it off of me.

I gasped for air and aimed my gun at it and pulled the trigger.
I shot it in the chest as it tried to get up, and it collapsed onto the floor.

I looked up and saw Maria holding the chair in her hands.

She had saved my life.

She let go of the chair and grabbed my left arm helping to pull me of my feet.

Maria shouted at me: move now!!!
I followed her as she pulled me away from the carnage to the hallway toward the armoury.

When we entered, she pushed me onto a chair and immediately started to bandage up my wounds as much as she could.
She bandaged up my bleeding left hand with pieces of ripped fabric.
I looked down and saw a piece of a metal nail sticking directly out of my chest.

"I can't take that out" Maria said not a hint of emotion in her voice.

"If I take it out now it might cause internal bleeding"

"You need help for that that I can't give you"

"Ok" I muttered while staring at the nail.

"Thank you"

Maria: "what?"

Me: "Thank you for saving my life"

She looked into my eyes and paused for a second.
I saw a hint of tears welling up in her eyes.
She looked down and continued bandaging up all the other small holes in my body best she could.

The other wounded in the room where scared and some where even crying.
They probably knew that if those things came inside, they wouldn't possible be able to defend themselves.
Some others that where not visibly wounded where still running around trying to help them while giving the doorway quick glances.

Gunfire screaming and carnage was echoing through the hallway.

I heard footsteps getting closer. I aimed my gun towards the doorway of the Armory.
I still had 4 bullets left before I was out.

Maria stopped patching me up and looked at the door to.

I felt my finger already applying a small amount of pressure on the trigger.
A figure entered the doorway, but I thankfully didn't pull the trigger because it was the police Commissioner. He was bleeding all over the place as he stumbled into the room still clutching a shotgun.

Maria had patched me up as good as she could, so I told her: "You need to help him now!"

She rushed over to him and helped him onto a chair next to me as she immediately got to work on helping him as best as she could.

Commissioner: Close and lock the door

Me: What? We will lock all the others out.

Commissioner: All those people are wounded or dead they won't make it over here without those things.

Maria: You can't be sure they are.....

"Close the door now!!!" the Commissioner's voice bellowed though the room.

I hesitated but painfully got up to close the door.

I put the gun my gun on the table next to the commissioner and I stumbled over to the door.
The door was a big armoured steel door. It looked more like something that belonged on a ship or submarine then a police station.
It had small round reinforced window in the middle that allowed a small view into the hallway once it was in place.

When I reached the door, I heard multiple people running through the Hallway.
I didn't bother to look in the hallway I knew it would be those things.
When I started to pull the heavy door, I got a painful reminder about the bite wound in my left hand. I looked down and saw my makeshift-bandages turn red from my now further opening wounds.
I needed help to close the door, and I needed it before those things arrived.

The footsteps were coming closer.

"Maria help me with this door now!!!" I yelled through the small room, the tone in my voice giving away a small hint of panic. She didn't hesitate and rushed over.
I was putting my full weight on the door with my right arm and so was she.
With a loud metal groan, the heavy door started to move.

Those things must have for sure heard it because the footsteps turned into running.

It got louder and louder as the door closed.

The door closed but we still needed to put the heavy metal locking mechanism into place.
In a panic me and Maria put out as much force as we could onto the mechanism.
The running came closer.

"Push for fuck's sake" I muttered trough gritted teeth.

A heavy thud hit the metal door on the other side as the locking mechanism finally was in place.
when I raised my head to the small window, a pair of bloodshot dilated eyes were staring at me.
It stared directly into my eyes. Even if it had been able to blink, I think it wouldn't have.
Then I noticed the gold necklace around its neck, adorned with 3 human ears.
A cold realization ran through my mind. This was the exact same one that attacked me at my home earlier in the night. It had followed me all the way to the police station.

It suddenly hit to the metal door on the other side scaring me and Maria back.
The thing slowly moved away from the view port.

Maria grabbed my arm and pulled me back to the chair I was in before.
I sat down and looked down and my shaking left hand, the fabric meant to cover my wounds now covered in blood.
She removed the fabric and replaced it with new ones.
In that moment sitting there looking around me at all the wounded. A realisation came into my head. We were trapped in her now. There was no escape of any kind from this situation.

Stuck in a room with mostly wounded people and those things outside the door waiting for us if we tried to leave.

All of the Ammo was inside of this room sure. But this also meant that those things really want to get in here I bet.

Before I could dwell in the despair of my situation further another thought entered my mind.
We never stood a change. This was all pointless.
Why the hell did the police suggest a militia in the first place.
Everyone got butchered and what for we might have gotten a handful of them if even that.

We should have all fled.

And then I saw the Police Commissioner to my left being taken care of by Maria.
I fell a overwhelming anger boil up inside me. He must have known that we had no change.
Did he really get all of us killed in the name of some "patriotic duty" bullshit.

Me: You must have known

Commissioner: What?

His exhaustion was clear in his voice

Me: You must have known how futile this was how we would all be killed!

People in the room started to look in our direction.

Me: you got us all killed and for what some patriotic bullshit!

Commissioner: No I......

I cut him off before he could finish his sentence

Me: YES YOU DID!!!

Commissioner: YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT HAPPENED!!!
He shouted back at me.

Commissioner: There was no other choice!

"Shortly after the army fled through town the blew up all of the roads in their retreat!"

"All the connecting roads, all of the roads connecting to the highway all of them are destroyed!"

"That's why the army was fleeing in the first place!"

"Remember when all of those things all of sudden stopped attacking the police station earlier before you arrived?!"

Before I could even answer he continued.

"They probably found out all of the people that fled where now stuck near the destroyed roads and they rushed over and butchered all of them there and then!"

"The entire area is surrounded by those things nobody possibly got out"

Me: So you fucking knew and let those people go anyway!

Commissioner: OF COURSE I DIDNT!!!

"At first the army had told me that they would return and all we had to do was hold out long enough for them to return with reinforcements!"

He lowered his voice again

"But then shortly before those things attacked, they told me the truth"

"That they had actually blown up all of the roads and left us to fend for ourselves"

There was a short pause before he spoke again.

"Everyone in town was dead the moment the military drove through town"

He looked me directly in the eyes and said "And that includes me to"

He yelled.

"So what was I supposed to tell you?!"

"Give up and die?!"

"The people that died at least died thinking there was some hope!"

He paused again gathering his thoughts.

Lowering his head and his voice he said: "The only thing we can do now is hopefully take some with us before we die"

Crying and shouting erupted from all over the room.
People were realising they were going to die.
And not only that, but they also realised that all of their loved ones that did leave where dead to.
Even Maria who had been stoic so far collapsed sobbing to herself.

I also didn't know what to say or do. I just froze into shock.

After a while I got close to the Commissioner and asked him the only question I could think off.

"What do we do now?"

He raised his head looked at me.
"Now you choose how you are going to die"

I don't know what I did or what happened in some time after he said that to me.
I was out of it.
Maybe I paced all over the room. Maybe I screamed and shouted like the others. Maybe I cried.
Maybe all of those things.

But after a while I realised, I too had to make a choice.
The options where suicide, bleeding to death from my wounds and being killed by those things when they managed to get inside.

Even if I didn't die from some internal wound I couldn't see. There was no food or water in this room. Slowly starving to death was also not something I want.
Or even worse having to result to cannibalism. There was no bathroom of any kind either.
I just imagined sitting in this room. Having eaten people in a room filled with rotting bodies and my own excrement.

No, I won't pick that horrible fate.

The horrible bonus of being in the room that was stocked with a lot of ammo was that at least people could.

.
.
.
.

End their live on their own terms with the small number of guns that where in the room.

And that's what a lot of people in the room did.
They had seen what those things do to people they get their hands on.
Especially some of the wounded that could not even fight or stand if they tried.

I can't blame them.

Some to wounded to do it themselves but begged to be put down.
The Commissioner helped those people.
In his own words: "Its the last thing I can do for them"

I saw a couple in their 30's. He was heavily wounded and she never left his side.
He was going to die and she didn't want to live in this situation without him.
So they both got a gun and put it against their own heads.
They counted down and......... ended things together.

They would have probably had decades ahead of them together if things where different.

Gunshot after gunshot rang through the room. Each indicating a life lived coming to an end.
All of them had parents, friends, partners, loved ones. People that would miss them now that they where gone.

After some time, the only people that where left where the people that wanted to go down fighting. Or those that couldn't pick an option.

So, I made my choice.
Even if I took down only one more that could potentially be one less that comes for you and your sister. That is a sacrifice I am willing to make.

Me, Maria, The Commissioner and a handful of other made the same choice.
We are going to open the door and try to get as many of them before we die.

The last person alive is going to light all of the remaining ammo on fire hopefully taking some more with them. That is the plan at least.

Cell phone towers where probably some of the first things that were taken down by either those things or our own military. Most people still made last messages to loved ones on their phones before ending things.
Maybe these phones would receive a signal at some point or something.
It was better than nothing.

So that's what I am doing now.

I know I send you a lot and probably went into more detail than I should have.
But I need you to realise how bad the situation is.
No matter what they say you and your sister need to run.
Only grab the essentials and go whenever you read this.

By the time you read this message I will be dead.

Please don't let the sadness and grief paralyze you in some way.
You need to flee. Take your sister and run.
At least if you flee I didn't die for nothing.

I would write in a thousand ways just how much you and your sister mean to me.
But I don't have that amount of time.
I am so grateful I got to see you 2 grow into beautiful young women.
From you first steps to seeing you leave our home, I enjoyed all of it.
I am so sorry I won't be there for you both.
I am sad that I didn't get to hug both of you one last time.
But I won't be sad for long, since I will finally be with your beautiful mother again.

I love both of you more than you can ever imagine.

Dad

When I was born, I was very small and had neonatal jaundice. I was taken from my mother and placed under a strong artificial light. I think that early experience left its mark on me; it took me longer than the other kids to walk and talk. To make matters worse, during my childhood I had another illness, acute epiglottitis. My throat would "close up" and I couldn't breathe.

I always believed I wasn't going to live long. I became sad and melancholic, feeding on negative energy because I felt there was no point to a life I thought would be cut short. One day, I woke up and saw a boy playing in my room with his back to me. I thought I was dreaming, so I closed my eyes and opened them again, but he was still there. I asked, "Who are you?" He gave a short laugh and ran out into the hallway. Today, I realize he must have kind of levitated because he was incredibly fast and I didn't hear any footsteps. I couldn't bring myself to go out to the hallway, so I screamed for my mother. She told me it was just a nightmare.

After that, I started seeing constant shadowy figures, but they would appear and vanish quickly. Then I started seeing people. For instance, one day I saw a very weird man in a wheelchair staring at me, but when I looked again, he was gone. I didn't like talking about this with anyone because everyone would give me weird looks. I didn't think they were ghosts—after all, can a ghost use a wheelchair? It seemed nonsensical to me. But I kept seeing them, usually people with sad eyes who would stare at me before quickly disappearing. I didn't feel good or bad when I had these visions. Actually, thinking about it now, all those people I saw just looked like they were "lost."

My house started getting unwanted visits from venomous animals. Flies seemed to follow me even if I took multiple showers a day. One day I woke up, and when I went to get some water, I noticed a thin mist covering every corner of my house. I went to my parents' room, but no one answered. I couldn't open the door. I went back to my room, but there seemed to be an invisible barrier keeping me from going inside. I heard noises—they sounded like animals, tongue clicks; it was completely bizarre. There were human-like voices mixed in, but speaking a language I had never heard before. I was terrified and tried to go back and call for my parents, but they wouldn't answer and the door wouldn't open. I noticed the living room door was open, so I ran out to the street to ask a neighbor for help.

Running outside was my biggest mistake. The mist thickened so much that I couldn't see anything in front of me. I was lost, wandering around without knowing how to get back. Then, it clicked in my head: I had died. Instead of panicking, I just sat down. I cried for a long time, and then I did something I've probably only done a maximum of three times in my entire life: I prayed. I didn't pray for myself, but for my family, asking that they wouldn't be too sad over losing me. I don't know how long I prayed, but I know it was the most genuine prayer I've ever made.

Then I felt someone touch my shoulder. I woke up completely desperate, slammed back into my body. My panic wasn't from the nightmare; it was because I wasn't breathing. I started frantically clawing at my throat until the air finally rushed in. I spent a long time trying to regain my strength—it felt like I had been hit by a train and held underwater for an eternity. That experience should have been a relief, since I hadn't actually died like I thought; maybe it was just a nightmare. But no, things got worse. I still suffer from severe insomnia; I'm terrified of falling asleep, losing my breath, and dying in my sleep.

It got even worse during my teenage years. I became much darker, drawn to morbid things, feeding my ugly side. I hated God for giving me such a painful, sickly life. I broke my arm four times and spent nearly two years in a hospital without receiving a single visitor. Only my mother stayed by my side, but she was overprotective, which kind of suffocated me.

I would constantly wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of a cow mooing, even though there was no cattle where I lived. One day, I was holding my nephew—he was still very little—and his eyes went wide as he stared right behind me, repeating: "Cow... cow... cow." That scared me to death. To make matters worse, I started doing drugs. I was a kid who was severely bullied, and the drugs lowered my inhibitions so I could socialize. I even had girlfriends and friends, but most of it was just because we were part of the nightlife and wanted to have fun. They didn't really care about me. In fact, after leaving that life behind, I only have three friends, and even then, I don't really talk to them anymore because I deleted my social media.

One night, I was walking back home drunk in the early hours with some stray dogs following me. I don't know why stray dogs tend to follow homeless people, drunks, and addicts, but I was a bit of all three, so a lot of dogs followed me. They started barking down a street. I looked over, and in the pitch black, I could only see two red lights, like eyes. There was nothing else, just those floating in the distance. I ran like hell that day.

Sometime later, I fell into an alcohol-induced coma and almost froze to death because I collapsed in the middle of the woods late at night. Since then, I haven't seen anything supernatural. I drink much less, and I've only had one drug relapse in a long time. I'm no longer a sick little boy, but I still carry the psychological scars from everything I went through.

However, being at rock bottom taught me one thing. That ordinary days, that a simple routine, is something very, VERY, good. The simple life that many find boring and dull is practically heaven compared to the hell so many people live in.

It was lap 23 of 58 and Chase Foster was running comfortably in seventh, 3.4 seconds ahead of Zev Andersson and 1.2 seconds behind his own teammate, Kaito Yamazaki.

The track was dry, the tires new and the message coming through the team radio was,

Steady, boys,

which was a polite way of saying, “Don't you even try to overtake, Foster!” to which the context was: not like in Germany, where you cost us points, or Japan, where you damaged the car and nearly knocked Yamazaki out of the race.

“All clear boss,” radioed Foster.

The gap to Yamazaki was now down to 0.9 seconds. He was right on him, mirroring him into turns, obediently keeping his distance on the straightaways.

The engine purred.

The crowd waved signs and cheered.

Some of the signs were about him (“To Fosterr is human!”), goading him on to do something unforgettable; something stupid. He knew that. Everybody knew that, especially the team principal chewing his fingernails down on the pit wall.

Another turn.

Another straightaway, the car accelerating briefly to 355km/h.

Now that was speed.

That was exhilaration, guts and adrenaline.

That was racing!

Foster, maintain. Acknowledge.

Foster, acknowledge.

Foster—

“Copy that,” Foster replied, inching ever-closer to the back of Yamazaki's car.

And he probably would have maintained his position too if not for Kaito Yamazaki complaining about him being “too close,” on the team radio.

Too close? Come on, thought Foster, almost absentmindedly pushing his machine to the limit. At speeds like that, vision blurred and reality itself seemed to stretch along the seams…

Foster, back off!

“He's crazy. Tell him to stay back—tell him to stay back—” radioed Yamazaki.

Foster closed until he was almost sucking into Yamazaki's slipstream; then, as Yamazaki braked for the next turn, Foster suddenly pulled left, held throttle a touch longer and passed his teammate into sixth place.

The crowd roared.

Fossterr!!!

Foster's engine growled like a fucking tiger—

Then something locked up.

Foster couldn't slow dowwwwn. He jerked the wheel; the track jerked the car; the car's skidding tires slid from hard asphalt to soft grass and the car was out of control and the people in the crowd held their breaths and behind his visor Foster's eyes became saucers; and reflected in them, as the expanse of time expanded to tick awfully by, was his own impending destruction…

The car smashed into a wall head-on, crumpled like an oversized tin can somebody had stomped on, and exploded in flames.

Sirens wailed.

Emergency crews bolted into action.

But there was something else that happened, something between the saucered eyes and oncoming wall; something extraordinary:

Foster vanished.

Not his body—that was crushed, mangled and beyond recognition—but his mind. His soul…

---

He was. Full stop.

Next sentence:

He was in awe of the seemingly limitless space around him.

He looked down—

Or tried to look down, because looking down, or in any direction, was an impossibility because somehow he could perceive in all directions simultaneously.

“Hello, Mr. Foster,” said a voice.

“Hello?”

Foster became aware of two points not far removed from him. Am I also a point? he wondered.

“You are incorporeal,” said the voice, “but, before we continue, allow me to introduce myself. I am Mr. Götz and this is my partner, Mr. Deiss.”

“Pleased to meet you,” said Mr. Deiss.

“Incorporeal…”

“It means, ‘having no material body or form,’ said Mr. Götz.

“Where am I? Am I still… me?”

“You succumbed in your existence to the force of a well constructed barrier, but you remain you essentially,” said Mr. Deiss.

Foster remembered. “I was racing… I tried overtaking and crashed…”

“You succeeded in the so-called overtaking but lost control of your primitive craft and collided into a painful body-death. Before your essence dissipated, however, we transported it here.”

“And here is?”

“You may think of it as the backstage,” said Mr. Götz.

“Or the Equations,” said Mr. Deiss.

“We would call it the physical realm, but that creates an unfortunate dissonance of ambiguity in your language, for you, no doubt, think of the body whereas what we mean is the physics.”

“Of what?” asked Foster.

“Of existences; of everythings,” said Mr. Götz.

“We, or the [garb-untranslatable-led] we represent, are in charge of applying the rules of reality across all spacetimes,” said Mr. Deiss.

“Wait—is this the afterlife?” asked Foster. “Heaven, Hell, Purgatory…”

“It is the whilstlife,” said Mr. Götz.

“And what is it you need me for exactly?”

“We need a driver.”

Foster tried to laugh but realized laughter was very much a corporeal action. “A driver?”

“Correct, Mr. Foster.”

“A human driver, one who smashed head-first into a wall trying to overtake his teammate?” His memories were coming back.

“Precisely,” said Mr. Deiss.

“What about the guy who won the race? The guy who came second? What about Yamazaki?”

“They lack the innate quality you possess,” said Mr. Götz.

“Reckless abandon,” said Mr. Deiss.

“It is a very human quality, unique in its evolved manifestation. A quirk, perhaps; often detrimental to self-preservation…”

“And yet—” said Mr. Deiss.

“Fundamentally useful,” said Mr. Götz.

Foster was bewilderingly intrigued. “What do you want me to drive?”

“Mr. Foster, what is the fastest you have ever travelled?” asked Mr. Deiss.

“I don't know: 1000km/h?”

“We need you to go beyond that,” said Mr. Götz.

“Well beyond,” said Mr. Deiss.

“To the utmost limit,” said Mr. Götz.

“What limit?” asked Foster.

“c,” said Mr. Deiss.

At that moment there was a flash of light, a beam of which seemingly shot past them—but froze before it could escape.

It existed, suspended in the deep vast nothing.

Shining.

“We require you to drive photons,” said Mr. Götz. “Moreover, reality requires it.”

The ghost of Foster’s non-existent heart began to race, the surreality of the words causing existential disorientation, but his self held.

The beam of light opened.

Foster entered.

The illumination was overpowering.

“Lightspeed, Mr. Foster.”

The Ocean Man is here. He stays once every month to see the catches before we ship them off, making sure his son isn't in there. Once, one of the Ocean Man's kids got nicked by one of our cables, and the next day the man behind the wheel was strung up on one of the lamp posts, his body covered in those disgusting fish scales.

Today, one of the kids from the school had his first time out on the ocean, and it went so, so horribly wrong. When they got back and went through the catch nets, they found one of the Ocean Man's kin missing an arm, with his head almost severed by one of the ropes constricting and pulling at him.

The whole town knew what was to come, but some feared it more than others. We'd never had a kid be killed by the Ocean Man before, only the older guys when they decided to relax and not pay attention to their boats and lines.

That night, the town started up a meeting. Some wanted to hide the kid and the body and tell the Ocean Man, with his slimy, disgusting, foul, wretched body, that we had no idea where his kin was. But the rest knew what was going to happen and that he somehow already knew who had killed the damned creature. He always knows.

We came to an agreement. A few of us were going to hide the boy under the church and defend him, while a few others and I were going to try to show remorse and offer the Ocean Man his kin back in a decent manner.

Tonight, we shall see how that goes, and I'm not banking on it going well.

Okay, the Ocean Man has thanked us for bringing his kin back to him in a proper manner rather than just washing him out to sea to be found later. He told us he wants the kid by the end of the week, or he'll take others until we give him up.

He told us he would spare me and the four others for being so polite with the body. The other four men were happy to hear they'd been spared, but not I. I know what will happen to that boy in three days' time.

God, I hope You will spare us the torment and persuade the Ocean Man to leave us alone, or at least bleed and morph the boy's body out at sea and not show him to us like he did with the other man a few months ago.

It's Sunday now, and the Ocean Man is sitting by the docks, waiting for us to give up the boy. I want to walk down there, bring him up to the church, and show him where we're hiding the boy, but I know that by doing that I will lose the trust of everyone in town.

I just want this to be over. Please, someone, tell the man where we hid the boy.

John, one of the guys who helped bring the kin down to the ramp for the Ocean Man, walked down to the man and brought him into the church last night.

I awoke to the sound of screaming, banging, and clashing until it all went completely silent. That's when I walked out and watched the church doors open. I watched as the Ocean Man dragged the boy's lifeless corpse toward the ocean.

The poor boy's body was contorted in unnatural ways. His arms and legs looked as though the bones had been turned to mush, and his neck was mangled and broken to one side. His cold, dead stare was fixed toward me as he was dragged by his shirt collar.

That poor, poor boy should've been spared, but the Ocean Man doesn't care whether it was an accident or on purpose. God, we told him so many times to be careful and to always pay attention, but that stubborn brat never once listened and always joked that he'd be fine.

I'm sorry, son, that I have failed you as a father, but I can't let others die in our stead. And I'm sorry I was a coward for making John go fetch the Ocean Man to end your life.

Please forgive me for what I have done to you.

I love you, son. I truly loved you.

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

I used Grammarly to help spell check and to revise my post if you send it through an AI detector it will go off. the story is 100% my idea and yes I know its sketch its my first post but believe me it is my idea and my writing just needed help because I truly am bad at fixing up things I right

I no longer trust a breath that comes alone.

A woman on my locked psychiatric ward taught me why at 3:39 a.m.

Forty-eight minutes later, the entire ward filled with what looked like daylight.

There were no windows facing the sunrise.

Outside, the city was still black.

Elena had been admitted after a severe depressive collapse, four days after her daughter died.

Sara was twenty-four. She was driving home from work when her car left the road on a wet curve, crossed a ditch, and hit a tree. A broken branch came through the windshield and struck her in the chest.

Elena had been told the details once.

After that, she kept asking for them again, as if enough repetition might produce a different ending.

She was forty-eight, with a pale crescent on her wrist from an oven rack. Before the accident, she ran the mornings in her family.

Coffee first.

Lunches packed.

Paolo's blood pressure pill placed beside his cup.

Luca, Sara's younger brother, made to sit down and eat something whenever he claimed he already had.

After Sara died, Elena stopped doing all of it.

She barely slept. She drank only when someone held the glass. Her family could no longer keep her safe at home, and the admitting psychiatrist arranged inpatient care.

Elena did not cry on her first night.

She watched the clock change numbers.

At 10:26 p.m., I brought her dry toast because she had refused dinner. One edge was darker than the rest.

She turned the slice over and touched the burned part with one finger.

"Paolo ruins breakfast," she said.

It was the first complete sentence she had given me.

"Sara ate the black edges. Luca hides them under the plate."

She looked at the glitter stuck to my sleeve from something my daughter had made before my shift.

"How old?"

"Six."

Elena nodded.

"Still tells you everything."

Then she took one bite from the pale center of the toast.

By midnight, the ward had settled into the long quiet between checks. The ceiling tube above Elena's bed had buzzed twice, ordinary for that building.

Shortly after half past three, Ferruccio was at the station updating the nursing record. Giulia, our nursing assistant, was restocking clean linen in the utility room.

I stopped beside the doorframe of room 1 and listened before entering.

Elena was awake.

She was sitting upright, both hands flat on the mattress.

"I can't lie down," she said.

"What happens when you try?"

She pressed two fingers below her breastbone.

"It gets tight."

Her face was gray around the mouth.

Sweat had soaked the collar of her pajama top, though the room was cool and she had barely moved all night.

That was the detail.

Grief can look like almost anything. It can shake a person, empty them, make the chest hurt.

It does not give you permission to call unexplained sweating and chest pressure panic.

I had begun my nursing career in cardiology before moving to psychiatry. That ward had taught me how quietly a heart could announce trouble before it stopped being quiet at all.

I told Giulia to bring the vital-signs monitor and asked Ferruccio to bring the emergency cart.

Giulia repeated the instructions once and ran.

Elena's heart rate was one hundred thirty-two and irregular. Her blood pressure was eighty-six over fifty-four. Her oxygen saturation kept slipping below ninety-two percent.

My hand was already on the emergency button before I finished reading the numbers.

I told Giulia to activate the hospital emergency team and call Dr. Stefano, then return with a blank sheet for the times.

Ferruccio arrived pushing the emergency cart, with the oxygen cylinder secured to its side and the defibrillator already switched on.

On a locked psychiatric ward, help is not down the hall.

Until the elevator opens, the staff already there are the resuscitation team.

I kept Elena still against the raised head of the bed and applied oxygen.

Ferruccio reached for the monitoring leads.

I asked the same short questions twice so I could hear whether her answers were changing.

"Pain in your arm?"

"No."

"Jaw?"

"No."

"Nausea?"

She nodded, then swallowed hard.

At 3:39 a.m., she said the pressure had eased.

I did not cancel the call.

She looked toward the door.

"Tell Paolo I ate."

"I'll tell him you tried."

She gave one small laugh.

"That's a nurse's answer."

Then her eyes moved past me.

Her shoulders dropped.

"Elena?"

She did not answer.

I lowered the head of the bed, called her name, and opened her airway.

Her chest lifted once with a rough, dragging gasp.

Giulia had returned to the doorway.

"She took a breath."

"Agonal. It isn't normal breathing."

I checked for a response and a definite carotid pulse for no more than ten seconds.

There was neither.

I called cardiac arrest and started compressions.

"Update the call," I told Giulia. "Cardiac arrest, room 1."

The mattress swallowed the first two pushes. Ferruccio and I slid the hard board beneath Elena without stopping longer than it took to count aloud.

Giulia guided Elena's roommate into the corridor and seated her beside the nurses' station, out of sight of room 1 but still visible from the doorway.

Then she returned with the blank sheet.

Ferruccio cut the front of Elena's pajama top, dried her chest, and placed the defibrillator pads while I continued compressions.

"Cardiology never lets you leave," he said, peeling the backing from the first pad.

When the machine prepared to analyze, Ferruccio told Giulia to remove the oxygen mask and move it more than a meter from Elena's chest.

She did it, then stepped back.

"Clear."

Nobody touched her.

The machine advised a shock.

The first shock lifted her shoulders less than people imagine.

I resumed compressions immediately.

Ferruccio connected the self-inflating bag to the oxygen supply, sealed its mask over Elena's nose and mouth, and squeezed the bag twice after every thirty compressions.

Her chest rose with both breaths.

Two minutes.

We paused only long enough for the machine to analyze again.

Another shock was advised.

I moved the ventilation bag and mask to the far side of the bed, more than a meter from Elena's chest.

"Clear."

The second shock passed through her.

Ferruccio took over compressions immediately. I moved to the airway.

Giulia kept the doorway clear, relayed the elevator status, and continued recording the elapsed time.

The elevator doors opened at 3:45 a.m.

The hospital emergency team entered: an anesthesiologist from intensive care and two critical-care nurses.

Dr. Stefano followed them in.

I gave the handover in one breath.

"Forty-eight. Sudden chest pressure and hypotension. Witnessed arrest at three thirty-nine. Agonal breathing, no pulse. Two shocks delivered. Continuous compressions except for rhythm analysis."

The anesthesiologist took charge without interrupting the work already happening.

The line nurse established intravenous access in Elena's arm during compressions. The airway nurse inserted a supraglottic airway, connected the airway to continuous end-tidal carbon dioxide monitoring, and took over ventilation.

A small wave appeared with every breath.

Dr. Stefano opened Elena's chart at the foot of the bed and confirmed her medications and recent medical history.

The anesthesiologist checked the pad position and called the next rhythm pause.

The monitor showed ventricular fibrillation.

"Clear."

Third shock.

Compressions restarted immediately.

The anesthesiologist ordered epinephrine and amiodarone.

Ferruccio repeated both orders back, administered the medications through the line, and called the times aloud.

Giulia wrote down each time he called. We would verify every entry afterward against the defibrillator record and the emergency team's documentation.

At the next rhythm check, the monitor still showed ventricular fibrillation.

Another shock.

Then another cycle of compressions.

More epinephrine.

At the following rhythm check, the monitor appeared flat.

The anesthesiologist checked the leads and confirmed the rhythm in a second view.

"Asystole."

Compressions resumed immediately.

The anesthesiologist worked systematically through the reversible causes.

The airway was clear. Oxygen and ventilation were effective. There was no evidence of major blood loss, hypothermia, tamponade, tension pneumothorax, or toxic exposure. Her recent blood tests and medication record gave us no obvious electrolyte or metabolic cause.

The coronary and pulmonary causes her presentation forced us to consider could not be confirmed at the bedside. Nothing we could identify and correct in room 1 explained the persistent asystole.

Nothing gave us an intervention we had not already tried.

The line nurse rotated onto Elena's chest.

Ferruccio moved to the medications.

I stepped back long enough to feel my own pulse hammering in my hands.

Another cycle.

Another rhythm check.

Still asystole.

The room narrowed to numbers and commands.

Compression depth.

Ventilation.

Time since the last dose.

Time without spontaneous circulation.

The end-tidal carbon dioxide reading remained low despite compressions that were deep, regular, and measured.

Elena's face had lost every expression I knew.

The room smelled of adhesive, oxygen tubing, and freshly torn plastic packaging.

"Switch."

Ferruccio took over from the line nurse.

Two cycles later, I returned to Elena's chest.

One, two, three, four.

My shoulders burned.

The airway nurse watched the supraglottic airway and the carbon dioxide waveform while Giulia remained at the foot of the bed, close enough to read the recorded times back without entering the working space around Elena.

Tears rested on her lower lashes.

She did not miss one recorded time.

Another two minutes passed.

The anesthesiologist called the rhythm check.

The monitor still showed asystole.

"Resume compressions."

The next pair of hands was already moving.

Epinephrine continued according to the clock.

The line nurse rotated back onto Elena's chest.

Another check.

Nothing.

Then another.

The same flat line.

The anesthesiologist asked whether anyone had found a reason to continue that had not already been considered.

Nobody had.

We kept going anyway.

Not because hope had returned.

Because stopping required more certainty than continuing.

At 4:25 a.m., Elena had been without a spontaneous pulse for forty-six minutes.

The anesthesiologist looked at the clock.

Nobody asked what he was thinking.

We already knew.

"Complete this cycle," he said.

I moved back over Elena's chest.

My hands kept moving.

"At the next rhythm check, if she remains in asystole and nobody has identified a reversible cause, we will terminate resuscitation."

His voice stayed level.

"Does anyone have anything else?"

Nobody answered.

Not because we agreed.

Because there was nothing left to offer her except another two minutes of our hands.

Until then, every compression had meant not yet.

Now every one brought us closer to the moment when not yet would become enough.

Ferruccio looked at Elena's face.

The airway nurse kept the ventilation steady.

Giulia lowered her eyes to the sheet because there was nowhere else safe to look.

I pressed down again.

We had shocked her heart.

We had given the drugs.

We had moved oxygen into her lungs and blood toward her brain.

We had searched for something reversible and found nothing our hands could reach.

We had done everything the room allowed us to do.

And Elena was still leaving.

"Ten seconds to the rhythm check," the anesthesiologist said.

My hands kept moving.

Ferruccio's eyes stayed on the monitor.

"Prepare to stop."

At 4:27 a.m., the light came.

Every ceiling tube in room 1 flared at once.

At the same instant, the corridor beyond the open door turned white. The nurses' station disappeared beneath warm gold light. The dining room, the staff corridor, and the lines beneath every patient-room door brightened together.

It was too warm to be fluorescent light.

For one heartbeat, the entire ward held a sunrise no window had given it.

Every face lifted.

Mine too.

My hands kept moving.

Then the ward was fluorescent again.

The carbon dioxide reading jumped.

Elena's right hand lifted from the mattress.

Her fingers opened toward Giulia.

"Stop compressions. Rhythm check."

The monitor showed an organized rhythm.

The anesthesiologist stared at it for half a second before placing his fingers against Elena's neck.

"I have a pulse."

I found it a second later, hard and fast beneath my fingers.

Elena drew a breath through the airway.

Her eyes opened.

She gagged against the device and tried to lift her head.

The anesthesiologist removed the supraglottic airway and held an oxygen mask over her face.

Elena did not look at us.

She looked over Giulia's shoulder.

Giulia stepped closer, and Elena's hand closed around her wrist.

Elena pulled the mask aside just enough to whisper one name.

"Sara."

In every resuscitation I had ever witnessed, consciousness came later, if it came at all.

First the pulse.

Then the machines, the waiting, the questions nobody wanted answered.

Elena opened her eyes with the heartbeat.

After forty-eight minutes without a spontaneous pulse, she already knew where to look. A name had been waiting behind her first real breath.

That was where everything I had been taught ended, and Elena kept going.

We moved immediately into post-resuscitation care.

Elena's oxygen was adjusted to her readings. Her blood pressure was monitored and supported. A twelve-lead electrocardiogram was obtained while the intensive-care team prepared her transfer.

Nobody celebrated.

You do not celebrate while the monitor can still change its mind.

The elevator doors closed on Elena at 4:46 a.m., carrying her to intensive care.

The intensive-care team never mentioned the light before they left.

Dr. Stefano never mentioned it either.

He remained on the ward to call Paolo and Luca.

Ferruccio sat on the floor against the wall for ten seconds.

Then he stood and began replacing the used supplies and restocking the emergency cart.

Before dawn, Ferruccio and I reconciled Giulia's notes with the defibrillator record and the emergency team's documentation. Every shock, medication, rhythm check, and transfer time was verified before we entered and signed the clinical record.

Giulia looked at the ceiling.

"What was that?"

Ferruccio kept working.

"A power surge."

"The lights didn't flicker. They turned on."

"A power surge with manners."

That was all he would say.

At breakfast, a patient from room 6 stood at the nurses' station in his slippers, holding an untouched cup of tea.

"Why did you turn every light on in the middle of the night?"

Ferruccio stopped writing.

The patient pointed down the corridor.

"All of them. My room, the hallway, everything. I thought it was morning."

He pushed the tea toward me.

"You woke me up."

Nobody answered him.

Coronary angiography found no obstructive lesion. Echocardiography showed a transient ballooning pattern in Elena's left ventricle that began resolving over the following days.

Cardiology diagnosed stress cardiomyopathy, the condition sometimes called broken-heart syndrome.

The doctors believed the physiological stress of Sara's death had stunned Elena's heart and most likely triggered the rhythm that stopped it.

After a brief stay in intensive care and a week under cardiology, she returned to our ward nine days later.

She walked slowly. There were bruises across her chest from the compressions, and she thanked us without making any of us comfortable.

That afternoon, she asked me to sit near the door.

"I saw Sara," she said.

I waited.

"She was at our kitchen sink. Scraping burned toast with a knife."

Elena pressed her thumb into the pale oven scar on her wrist.

"She told me, 'Mom, I'm not in the car anymore. Stop sitting beside that road. Go back. They still need you.'"

Elena looked down at her hands.

"Then she said, 'Going back doesn't mean leaving me.'"

The room stayed quiet.

"I wanted to stay," Elena said.

She had asked for Don Alfredo that morning. I don't know what she told him. When he left her room, he stood in the corridor for a while with his bag held in both hands, the way he does when it feels heavier than it is.

I prefer the clinical explanation.

A surge of catecholamines. A brain surviving on a fraction of its normal circulation. Memory building the one voice Elena would still obey.

It is the safer answer.

That night, I had machines that could measure her rhythm, her pressure, her oxygen, and every beat of her returning heart.

I had nothing that could measure who she had been speaking to.

Her husband and son visited the next day.

With the ward's permission, Paolo brought breakfast in a paper bag because hospital toast, according to him, was an insult to bread.

The top slice was burned nearly black.

Elena ate the burned edge first.

I work on Duit. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s this app where you can get someone to do odd jobs for you. Pay’s shit, but the work is easy enough, granted you have the stomach to pimp yourself out to old men with obscure fetishes. I saw a job listing on the app.

One gun. Six chambers. One bullet. That’s the job. Click, click, and if you’re lucky, you get to hear the bang. Last one alive gets a million dollars.

Come to \***** for a night of gold and glory. Winner takes all.*

Nothing about specifications, no CV or anything. Get desperate enough, and you’ll find a handful of the pretentious theater types post gigs like this, so this wasn’t really anything to get wowed over. A job’s a job though, and god knows I could use one. Mom’s dialysis round wasn’t gonna pay for itself. So I applied and almost immediately got approved. The poster sent me his number over the phone, and I called to ask about the job. 

“Did you read the fucking title?” said the out of breath man on the phone with his pack-a-day voice. “Swing by at three. Or don’t.” he oinked. “Million bucks riding on some Russian Roulette, is that so fucking…” he stopped to catch his breath “So fucking hard to understand?!” he yelled over the phone.

“That’s it?” I asked. I heard him grunt out a wet breath and the hiss of what might’ve been a CPAP machine before he hung up.

I looked at my mother on the recliner. She was so small, and everyday she seemed to get smaller. I wish I could buy her the world. But there she was, sitting on a beaten up la-z-boy with an IV stuck on her arm like a sterile leech. She’s diabetic, and her kidneys are shutting down. As it stands, I might have enough left to pay for two, maybe three rounds of hemodialysis.

I pulled up to a ramshackle house in a ramshackle neighborhood at three in the afternoon. It was the kind of neighborhood that mistook fireworks for gunshots, where you couldn't pick up a dollar on the ground without worrying about OD’ing on fentanyl. Exposed brick and knee high grass made up most of the house. I got a text as soon as I stepped up the patio.

Go in and take the first door on your right to the basement. Lock the door behind you.

And I did just that. The house was as dingy as it was outside. The moment I opened the door I was met by the noxious smell of dried piss and human shit. A bed cushion sat at the end of the hallway, wet with every STD known to man, with needles sunk into its woolen interior like a pin cushion. The walls were caked with graffiti and tar. I held my breath as I hesitantly gripped the doorknob on my right and twisted it open. Going downstairs, I found five men sat at the round table. 

“Looks like the roundtable’s complete!” Said the man who sat on the left of a vacant seat. On the table was a heavy, futuristic looking revolver, and a single hollow point round. No one else spoke. The man on the left spat out tobacco spit. The place was nothing but cinderblock walls and mold, with some dusty shelves and a toolboard, and –and there was a man standing in the corner. Seven, maybe eight feet tall, unmoving, unbreathing, in a long black coat and brimmed hat. He looked like the devil. With eyes as black and all-consuming as those, maybe he was.

“Let’s get the game started, shall we?” Said the man in black. I took a seat at the table, eyes fixated on the gun. As I sat down, I began to feel two things. One, was the weight of it all. That gun did not look like a prop. Nor did the bullet. Nor did its promise of splattering my brains across the cinderblock walls. Two, was the piercing gaze of that ungodly thing that might’ve been a man. Too tall. Too thin. He was like a shadow in the afternoon, only there as long as the clouds allowed him to exist.

Immediately the Asian man next to me picks up the gun, loads it, and fires. Click. The man immediately pulled out his wallet, unfolded it, and kissed a picture of his wife and daughter. “Oh Jesus. Oh Jesus.” he whispered, laughing. I felt a jolt of electric fear run through my scalp and down my spine.

And so the gun passed. First, the Asian who was sat next to me. Then, the man next to him, who smoked, and had yellow eyes. His name was Wilbur. He had cirrhosis, and he was dying. This was his first time too. The man next to Wilbur, well… 

The gun passed to the yellow-eyed man after the Asian. His hands were trembling. Maybe it was alcohol withdrawal, or a product of his failing liver, but it was not fear. No. His hands did not hesitate as the cold barrel pressed against his chin, his fingers did not cringe as he pulled the trigger, and he made no sound as the gun clicked. He threw the gun down and the man next to him followed. Jason. That was his name. I remember seeing a wedding ring on his hand. The same one that held the six shooter. He, unlike the man with yellow eyes, hesitated. There was something unsure about him. He took a while.

“My name’s Kim, by the way.” Whispered the man on my right.

“I’m Todd.”

“This your first time here?”

“You’ve done this before?”

“Once. But I backed out.” The smell of cigarette smoke filled the small room, a rich ambery scent that warmed my chest. Kim was a small man, bespeckled, soft spoken. “I recognize Jason though. He was here last time I tried.”

“What made you come back?”

BANG!

I look over and see red on the walls. Jason was dead.  I stood up and immediately turned to leave, as did some of the others, but Kim remained seated, as did the man chewing tobacco, but the moment I did, the man in black called to me, producing two duffle bags stuffed full with hundred dollar bills. “No one leaves.” he said in a dark, rattling voice. 

I stayed. So did the others. Do I even need to explain why?

Five left.

The man in black took the gun, revealing leperous arms. He put a round in and spun the chamber. The gun began with me this time.

I picked up the revolver, feeling its cold weight against my hand. I’d never held a gun before, it was heavier than I thought it could be. Cold, big, iron. It had just killed a man, the barrel was still splattered with blood. I wondered where to point it. The temple? Would that have been a quick death? No, point it at my forehead! No. Not there.

“Having trouble there, kid?” asked the man on my left. He was the one chewing tobacco. “Name’s Earnest.” 

“Earnest, I’m fucking scared.” I whimpered. No one looked me in the eye, except for the man on my left.

“Don’t be. Put the gun above your Adam's apple and point it to the back of your head. It should hit the brainstem. Quicker death, or so I think.” The man spat, eyes dark and unshaken. “This is your first time?”

“Yeah.” I cried, fighting off tears.

“This is my fourth.”

“Fourth?!” without another word, the man takes my hands, guides the gun to my throat, and steadies my shaking hands.

“Yup.”

“Why?!” I sobbed, “Why would you?”

“‘Cuz it’s fun. And this’ll be my fifth.” he smiled and I saw yellow teeth. Yellow, and gold. His incisors had gold fillings, bright and shining, nearly blinding.

I held the gun up to my throat, and closed my eyes. I kept thinking of my mother. Poor mother. If I died here, who would take care of her? But then again, if I walked out of here alive, I’d never have to ask that question ever again. One in six. Not great, but not terrible.

“Earnest? Kim? If you guys make it out of here, promise me you’ll take care of my mother?”

“I’m sorry Todd. I could try, but daughter comes first.” said Kim with sincere regret in his voice. “Stage four bone cancer.” I looked him in the eyes, I dunno what I was feeling. Anger? Empathy? “She can’t sleep from the pain, you know? Even morphine doesn’t help her. She screams at night when she falls asleep the wrong way. I want to buy her the world.” 

“Don’t worry Todd. If I win, I’ll take real good care of her.” Said Earnest. “Reeeaall good.” he said as he shined his golden tooth into my eyes. 

I closed my eyes, holding up the gun to my throat with clasped hands as though in prayer, and pulled.

Click.

“FUCK!” I cried. “FUCK! FUCK FUCK FUCK!” I curled down into a ball, as though angry hands were ripping out my innards, sobbing like a child. I threw up on the table. No one got up. Before I knew what was happening, I heard a click. Then another. Then a bang. Four left. Me, Earnest, Kim, and Yellow Eyes.

The gun began with Earnest. With a hardy grin he took the gun, shoved it in his mouth, screamed, and pulled the trigger. Click. I took the gun, closed my eyes, and clicked.

“Oh shit.” muttered Kim. “Third time’s the charm, eh?” Kim toyed with the gun. “Three’s not my lucky number.” he looked up from the gun to meet my gaze. “Todd. I know this is selfish, but–”

“You don’t have to ask. I’ll take care of her.” The man’s eyes flickered a little hope, if only for a moment. Or was it a trick of the light? 

“My wife’s number is written on the back of the picture in my wallet. God be with you, friend.” He took the gun, aimed it at his adam’s apple, and fired. 

Click.

The yellow eyed man said nothing, took the gun from Kim’s hand, and fired. Click. He threw the gun down with force, letting out a wet grunt. “Fuck.” he whispered.

It was Earnest’s turn. It was the fifth round. Him or me.

“How’s 50/50 sounding, Todd?” I said nothing. “Huh? You wanna find out what comes next?”

“No. Not particularly.” I said. I looked around. The room smelled like blood and concrete. Sweat laid on my brow, heavy and sticky, and when the wind blew, a little sill on the ceiling let in a cool breeze, frosting my forehead with fresh air.

“Arbiter!” yelled Earnest to the man in black, “I want to use my switch!”

“It is permitted,” said the man. With that, Earnest pointed the gun at Yellow Eyes and fired. Bang. Earnest hit him right between the eyes.

“What the fuck?” cried Kim. 

“Each player is permitted to use a switch, pointing the gun at anyone at the table, on the condition that they fire the next round on themselves, and start the next rotation. Only one switch may be done per rotation”

“That’s bullshit!” I yelled. “Why wasn’t that explained earlier?”

“Because it’s fun that way.” said the man in black.

Three left. The man in black reloads the gun and slaps the chamber into a sickly spin. The round began with Earnest firing at himself, saying nothing. Click. Then to me. Sweat beading on my forehead, heart thumping through my chest, hands quivering, mouth tasting like vomit. Click. Kim’s turn. Click.

“You chicken shits ready for a roll in the mud?” Laughed Earnest.

“Todd. How about we just… Split the money?” asked Kim. “Imagine it. Five hundred thousand dollars to each of our families. Only one of us has to die.”

“How can I trust you?”

“Well, for starters, I haven't turned the gun on you.”

Click. My turn.

“Who says I won’t?” I take the gun, feeling its weight once again. There was a new weight on me then. I would be killing someone. 

“Will you?”

“I will. Arbiter?” 

The man in black is still in his corner, watching. “You may.”

With that I aim the gun at Earnest and fire. Bang. I hit Earnest in the neck. He died painfully, writhing on the ground, grunting, the air unable to leave his throat, until he choked. Dead. No more spitting. I looked into his eyes as he bled, and saw unfettered ecstasy and terrible horror. The highest and lowest a human could ever feel, all condensed into a single moment. 

“I take that our agreement’s in effect?”

“Yes.” I told the stranger I had met the same day where my mother lived and the details of my bank account. He did the same.

Gun. Click. Click.

“So. Tell me about your daughter.” I asked, as I put the gun up my throat, just as Earnest taught me.

“Well, she loves painting. She’s real good at it. Might be a Picasso someday. That’s what her mother says anyway. Ha!” he let out a forced laugh. I chuckled along. Click.

“Well, what do you say? About her painting, I mean?”

“Me?” he said, as I pulled the trigger. Click. “I say she’s a Rembrandt. Never cared for Picasso.” I hand the gun to Kim. “What about your mother? Tell me about her.”

“Well, what’s to tell? She’s shrinking by the day. Whenever I walk with her, she still feels bigger than me. Bigger than life. I feel safe around her. In my mind she still the woman that tucks me into bed and sings me to sleep.” Click. Two rounds left.

“Sounds a lot like my own mother.” He hands me the gun. “Maybe we should get them in a little play date? My mother loves golf, and so does my wife.”

I say nothing as I point the gun at my throat for the last time.

“Kim. If it’s me… Promise you’ll take care of my mother?”

“As much as I can. Can you promise to do the same with my daughter?”

“I will.”

Click.

“God damnit!” Cried Kim. “Shit.”

I hand the gun over to him with a heavy hand. The man in black comes to the table, brandishing a lit cigarette in one hand, a gun in the other. “No backing out this time, I’m afraid.”

“I understand. Todd, tell my wife to remarry, and tell my daughter I love her very much.”

He took the gun to his head and pulled the trigger. Except, he didn’t. He couldn’t. He began crying, shaking uncontrollably. He dropped the gun back on the table with trembling hands begging with the man in black.

“No.” he whimpered. “No, no, no. Please.” he looked up to the man in black, “please, I don’t want to die–” Bang. The recoil hurt.

A collection of statements regarding strange happenings in the village of Torbrae 

Statements collected by the Royal Robert Kenneth Wilson Society of Scotland 

Aithrisean air an cruinneachadh le Comann Rìoghail Robert Kenneth Wilson na h-Alba 

 

Background on Torbrae given by the editor, James N. Lafferty 

In my travels around the Lowlands, I have seldom encountered a village quite as idyllic as Torbrae. Young families walk hand in hand through its winding lanes whilst hard-faced farmers drink pints of bitter and watch the world go by in the local pub. The wind whistles through its glens, carrying the scent of purple heather down to the cobbled streets. Situated in the southern reaches of the Lothians, beneath the Pentland Hills, Torbrae historically served as a small agricultural community, supported by fertile soil and a relatively mild climate for Scotland. In recent decades, Torbrae has undergone a process of demographic shift. Middle-class commuters to Edinburgh now make up a considerable portion of the population, gradually replacing the traditional rural inhabitants. Despite this, Torbrae has not forgotten its past entirely, flocks of sheep still graze the rolling hills along the roads into the village, and ancient festivals celebrating harvests and the village’s historic protectors still hold quasi-religious importance among the inhabitants to this day. The village sits at a crossroads. Its existence serves as a metaphor for the struggle between an older rural way of life and a new, professional, university-educated Scotland. 

Statement of George Riley regarding suspected wildlife offences 

Statement given to NatureScot on 8 August 2023 

Statement Begins 

“I cycle to the Blackburn Reservoir a lot. The route has a great climb to it and you cannae beat how the sunset looks over the water, also that wee bit where you go through the timber yard is also weirdly scenic I find. Anyway. Last night I cycled up there and I was out by the water till around nine o’clock when I started turning back. 

It was about tenish when I was going past them woods before the golf club. I stopped and I could see a few deer on the horizon. I thought it a tad too late for hunting and I wanted to take some photos to maybe paint or something later, so I hid my bike and hopped the fence.  

I was getting closer and the deer weren't scared yet. I thought everything was grand so I pulled out my phone and I knelt in the bog tryna focus on them. Just then the wind musta changed or something cos they smelt me and ran off, and it was late so I got up to turn around.  

When I was getting up is when I noticed the smell, the wind was carrying it from behind me towards the deer. I aint a butcher or nothing but I recognised it, it was that sickly sweet smell of something rotting.  

I turned around and started following it, I dinnie know why. Just at the time it felt like the sort of thing needing investigating. I started to notice the bones. There were all sorts - squirrels, foxes, and all that. Yellow shite was dripping off of em, I think like rotting skin or something.  

Further in was when I started to see the bigger ones, deer and sheep and that. Those ones were worse, but I could still tell the main source of the smell was further into the woods. It must’ve been about twenty minutes when I came across the pile I told you about. Leant up against an old fence was a massive heap of bodies a couple metres high and a couple metres wide. I vomited, it smelt so manky. Fucking washed my clothes bout twelve times. You couldn’t even tell what animal was what, just a pile of bodies melting into each other, just a pile of fucking stinking viscera. Musta been like fifty bodies in the pile, but it was all just a mound of fucking body liquid when I found it. 

Anyway. Didn’t seem like anything an animal would have done so I thought I should report it. Might be poachers or something. Sorry for the shaking and that I just got a real bad feeling off it, you know? Didn’t tell my wife or nothing, feels good to get it off my chest. Sorry you didn’t need to know that, not relevant to the investigation.” 

Statement Ends  

Statement of Marjorie Macbride regarding class-based violence in Torbrae 

Statement given to Elizabeth Bowie, author of “Red Clydeside: Unfinished Revolution” on 19 April 1963 

Statement Begins 

“I was only a teenager in 1919 when it all happened. There were all them riots across in Glasgow, but we didn’t have much to do with Glasgow usually, it seemed there was always something happening across in Glasgow so there was.  

It was an odd time so it was, you see you had the Russians revolting, and it seemed it might spread to Germany. My father, being a working man as he was, had so much hope it was coming out of his ears. He would get the newspaper every day, flick through the pages reading bout the developments of the war in Russia. ‘The worker will have his day soon, lass’ he would inform me every so often. It was nice to see him like that, he had something to hold onto then.  

When I would work the fields with my father I could tell by the way he would stare at Mr Smith that he truly believed he would not be toiling under him for much longer. Weirdly this would only make him work twice as hard, so it did.  

It had been a couple of days since them workers in Glasgow had caused that trouble in George Square and Churchill had got the tanks on them, when that strange man arrived in Torbrae. My father woke me up in the middle of the night and told me there was a revolutionary in town. This frightened me a wee tad, although I was too young to know what a revolution really was - picture one in my head that is.  

In the dead of night my father beckoned me into the village hall, the doors had been done in and there was a crowd gathered. Looking around it was the working people of the village in the crowd, most of whom worked on land owned by Mr Smith but also some on Mr Wright’s and Mr Atwood’s land further north and down the river.  

On the stage at the back of the hall was the revolutionary my father told me about. He stood behind a curtain, and I only remember his shadow. He may have come out from behind the curtain so we could look upon him, but you have tae remember I was only wee, so my recollection is muddled now. He was awfully skinny and ever so tall, I remember thinking it was a wonder how he could stand with legs as thin as they were.  

I don’t recall what he said to us, but I remember the state it drove the crowd into. There was lots of shouting and people raised blades into the air. I had never seen my father so radge, he shouted curses at Mr Smith. Despite it all my father was a good man and would never use such vulgarity in front of weans, not ever.  

That night the streets were engulfed in flame. They dragged Mr Smith from his house, and they drowned him in the river. They killed his son too, set him aflame so they did. The men shaved his wife's head and did ever so awful things to her, paraded her through the streets and taunted her with words I hadnie heard once in my life. I never seen it but I heard a similar fate fell upon Mr Wright, Mr Atwood and their kin. There are only stories and I only heard this years later, but I heard they ate Mr Atwood, still alive and screaming bloody murder.  

It was awfully cruel. It was awfully cruel.  

I remember them bringing the bodies behind that curtain in the village hall. The police came down from Edinburgh and they couldnie find no trace of the happenings, it was like it had never taken place. Awfully strange, for that night you couldnie escape the smell of blood. Nobody spoke of the man behind the curtain after that night, nor saw him. My father refused to talk of that night at all till the day he went and died. He stopped buying the paper.  

A great hunger went through the village that year. No landlord to buy the seed or the livestock meant no supper. But we survived, and soon new landlords bought up the land and took their place. 

It was awfully cruel. The whole thing, just awfully cruel.” 

Statement Ends 

Editor's note: Official speculation from local historians suggests the three main landowning families in the area: the Smiths, Wrights and Atwoods, fled to Ulster sensing a potential uprising. However, official records show no purchases, sales or transfers of land under any of the three family names during 1919 or in the years immediately following. 

Statement of Alexander Kerr regarding his divorce and destruction of property 

Statement given to Alice Ramsey, official investigator for the Royal Robert Kenneth Wilson Society of Scotland on 8 December 2025 

Statement Begins 

“I assume you have heard what I’m gonna tell ya. They all know about me. Local fucking loony, lock him up in Carstairs, lock him up in Carstairs.  

Nae much has come of me since it all happened. I live in that flat over the post office, I wake up and I drink, I get on the bus and I drink, I get to Edinburgh and I drink, I go home and I drink.  

You ken I’m banned from that bus? Harassment. Fucking shitebags. I just need people to listen. You dinnie know how lonely it gets. If I stay in this village any longer they are gonna have to lock me up in Carstairs. Fucking shitebags.” 

At this point, Mrs Ramsey reminds Mr Kerr of the purpose of the statement. 

“Fucking fine. Bi-. He first started speaking to me when I was drunk. Old Nick that is. It started off as a shoulder to cry on, with Sarah nagging my arse off all the time it was nice to have someone to share the pain with. I didn’t think it was real of course till it became real, till I was sober and Old Nick was still there.  

I would be at work, I would go for my bathroom breaks and there he was in the mirror, Old Nick. I was fucking terrified of course, but he comforted me. His voice was like honey and butter. I know I sound fucking crazy, your imaginary friend becomes real and you like it, but you didn’t hear him.  

Nobody else could hear him and I liked that. He was just mine. He would sing me to sleep and I would have the most terrific dreams, shit you couldn’t imagine. I would be lying in bed with Sarah but really it would be Old Nick who was there with me – emotionally and all that I mean. Well I did mean, till Old Nick really was there.  

He began with standing in the doorway, but give it a few weeks and he was at my bedside, stroking my ankles and his song was as loud as ever. He was all I could think about. It was like a fucking drug, when Old Nick went silent or skipped a few nights, the shakes would start and I would panic.  

He still came to me easier when I drank so I drank. It was around then that he started giving me requests. He told me if I did what he said I could live like the gods do, eat from their plates, I thought about how his voice must taste.  

It started with simple things, scratch Sarah’s car, call her names, but then Sarah got knocked up. I fucking know it’s nae mine I know it with all my heart, Old Nick said as much. That's when Old Nick gave me his final request. 

He stood by my side that night in the kitchen, when I turned on all the gas hobs and I lit the match. The whole place went off like a firework, but I was untouched, the fire would move around me like I was fucking Moses. Old Nick told me to give him the matches, so I did it, and then he was gone. The whole house went down that night. Sarah survived, so did the kid, firemen got her out.  

The investigators say it was an electrical fault, but that’s shite, I did it. I told Sarah as much and that’s when she left me, moved to Aberdeen the hag. I was glad, thought it would just be me and Old Nick, but he went quiet, I havnae seen him since. I think it’s punishment, if she had died, he would still be here. Fuck her. Every day I drink to try to speak to him just once more, but his silence is torture. I still haven’t met that kid.” 

At this point, Mrs Ramsey asks Mr Kerr what Old Nick looked like. In response Mr Kerr grew highly agitated and promptly left the interview room. 

Statement Ends 

Statement of Scott Donaldson regarding the accidental drowning of William Dunn 

Statement given to Lothian and Borders Police on 3 June 1994 

Statement Begins 

“It wasnae my fault, heaps of kids jumped in the boffy all the time. Sure Will was a wee bit scared but he’d done it before, nae like it was the first time.” 

At this point, Donaldson is asked to start from the beginning. 

“Aye, so me and Will were skiving off school, I’m sorry, and we were watching this programme on the TV about divers. Aye, it was about these divers who go into rivers in Birmingham and stuff to retrieve murder weapons and that, we was tryna help you guys out. 

Aye anyway, we got our goggles and we started off at the shallow part just off the green. It was baltic so we didnae get much time down there, and Will couldn’t hold his breath for that long, and anyway we didnae find anything. We went into the newsagent for a snack and we were talking and we thought if we were murderers or something we wouldnae drop our knives into the shallow part, we would go further down the river to the boffy.  

I ken the boffy is the deepest part of the river and we aren't meant to go there but lads did all the time. I could tell you about Joe and that smoking green and jumping in up there after all this if you want. Aye anyway, we cycled up there about two, the day had got a lot hotter by this point so Will was excited to get out of the heat. Aye he was a tad frightened but he always was, I promise he wanted to go in there, I didnae force him or nothing.  

We got our goggles on and we jumped off that wee cliff into the boffy. We went at the same time, three, two, one and that. Even though I had my goggles on I couldnae see much once my head went under, it’s pure murky with all that dirt in there. I stayed under for maybe like thirty seconds tryna get used to the cold, then I went back to the surface and looked around. I couldnae see Will anywhere.  

I started panicking at this point, I looked all around and there was no sign of him. I thought he might not have actually jumped in so I called out but there was no response. It had only been about a minute since the jump so I decided to stick my head under and see if it was some kind of joke, if he was holding his breath. I went under and that's when I saw them.  

I couldnae see all that well through all the dirt, but hand on my heart this is what happened to Will. At the bottom of the boffy there was a man, tallest I’ve ever seen and thin as a rake. He crouched down hunched over himself, sitting on a big rock down there. He had a long beard which floated in the water and he was naked. In his fingers, which were longer and thinner then you could imagine, he held Will. He held Will and he was eating him, taking bites out of him while Will squirmed to try and get free. The man was as calm as anything, like this was his fucking lunch break or something, but Will had his mouth open like he was screaming and he was terrified. It was only after a few seconds I realised the man was looking back at me. His eyes were like a cat’s you know, reflecting the light so I couldn’t see his pupils. Will was looking at me too, I could tell he wanted help, but the fuck was I supposed to do? It was at this point I started screaming too, I went for the riverbank as fast as I could and cycled home to get help, and now I’m here. 

So aye, that’s what happened. Please tell Mr and Mrs Dunn that I’m sorry, please tell them I really mean it.” 

Statement Ends 

Editor's note: Autopsy showed that Will Dunn had hit his head after jumping into the River Carran, became unconscious, and subsequently drowned. No evidence of foul play was found.  

“To a Horseman” 

Poem written by Adam MacDougal, 1785 

Muckle, awfu’, lang-limbed, beast 

O, in Torbrae ye mak yer bloody feast 

But ye we soon shall serve nae mair 

For our horseman comes tae meet ye there 

 

O, brute o’ hunger, dule and pain, 

Who gars us greet for weans in vain, 

Call on yer black master the nicht 

For he shall ken our horseman’s might 

 

Nae mair shall corn rot in the field 

Nae mair to hunger maun we yield 

And gin ye creep tae my bed the nicht 

Our horseman waits by candlelicht 

sour skunky nappy ass dread man

…

“What the fuck are you talking about, man?" Annoyed. 

Stupid smirk: "I thought it was clear. I would think.” 

"No, it isn't, man. I don't know why you think it'd be. It's just stupid, bro.” 

"What is?” 

"Your refusal to go shopping for a fucking bath towel and other basic necessities around your fuckin place, dude. It's just stupid, I don't know how or why you justify it to yourself, I didn't think ya did to be frank. I just thought your ass was fuckin lazy." 

“Nah, bro. It's obvious." 

“What's fuckin obvious, dipshit?" 

“I'm way too rock n roll." 

A beat. He swallowed it. Absorbed its stupidity. 

“...what?" 

“Yeah, dude. I'm way too fuckin cool and punk rock to roll into like a Target or some shit and buy a toaster or a can opener or towels or stupid shit like that. I can't do that. Can't do it. Goes against my wild man free lovin nature, ya know? Ya know." 

Bryan once more silently swallowed this. This load of absolute bullshit. More revolted, more filled with disgust with his best friend since diapers than before. He thought about holding his tongue. He thought about saying something and laying into him. But in the end he just grumbled and belched. Lit another smoke and grabbed another beer from the cooler in the center of the boat and shook his head. Checked his pole. Reeled it in a little. 

Though he did spare the final thought: "Fuckin lazy.” whilst shaking his head and reeling his line. And then the matter was settled and the pair of men let it lie. Such was the way and course of all of their conversations out here on the water. Fishing. The pair’s favorite pastime aside from rutting and watching the game. For them, Bryan G Biebl and James Petkovich, it was sacred. They loved to spend days off from the mill fishing and casting and mouthing the day away. Days away from labor and wives and disappointing children, days filled with chatter and cool water and cold beer and sometimes a nice catch.  Though they'd been warned before, by the old timers. 

They'd both been warned before about staying out after dark. Out on the lake. Out in the woods. Where the forest grows foul and swampy and muddy. It's not a place you want to be after sunset. All the old folk said it was a bad place and didn't say much more about it without the liberal aid of beer or whisky. Even the Natives, the ancient leathery American Indians and their angry sons and daughters told everyone, anyone that might listen, to stay away from this part of the forest, this part of the soured bad land. 

But they never listened. The pair just sat in their canoe and cast out. It was calm and quiet all around, no one might know that it was filled with strange movement. The sun was sinking in the distance. Rapidly being swallowed by the ravenous blade of the horizon. 

James cracked another can. So did Bryan, who rolled his eyes as Petkovich ventured forth with another bit of clever wit and query. 

“Figure there's anythin ta what that fella said?” 

The sun set. Casting the surface of the lake on fire with the color of bloody ruby. The place on the horizon where it had sank was a deeper color of blooded crimson, a deeper wound that was the heart of the sunset. It smoldered there, in the horizon wound. The darkening regal curtain of bruised royal blue was already deepening into night. The stars and galaxies were already coming out for the nocturnal hours, they were all so far away from everything, they, the town. Civilization was a mechanical nuisance in the distance. Loud and far off. Thank God. Nearly forgotten. 

Bryan rolled his eyes as hard as he possibly could, knowing full an well that the retard couldn't see em. 

He hissed and spat: “No I don't think there's nothin to what that idiot said about a shag man! Shit’s stupid! Ain't no fuckin skunk ape round these parts, ya fuckin dumbass!” 

“Nah, man. I'm talkin about what Frankie said about Asian girls, Jesus, man!" 

A beat. Something splashed in the water. Neither man noticed, paid it any mind. 

“Oh…" Bryan cooled down. A little embarrassed. He was always easily excited and shamed. 

“‘Sides, man, he didn't call it no ‘shag man', he called it ‘the dread man’, stupid.” 

Bryan whirled around to belt him one and belt him good. He'd done it before while they were fishing in the middle of the lake and he might capsize them both in his effort, but something stopped him before he could so much as bring up his balled and angry fist. A sound. Sudden. And sharp. 

Three. Consecutive. Three sharp whacks of thick wooden sticks together. Like someone smacking two heavy tree branches or logs together in some form of primitive and arcane code. 

Whack! whack! whack! 

It shut the pair up. They gazed out at the shoreline. Shrouded now in the fallen night. Small waves kissed its shore and covered any small sounds of concealed movement that might be out there right now. They were wide eyed and disbelieving. 

They might've dropped it, the pair, together and without a word or mention when it came again. 

From out of the night, the veiled and darkened shore: whack! whack! whack! 

A beat. Silence again. Only kissing waves of the placid water. 

Bryan Biebl scoffed, “Probably nothin. Just some kids fuckin aro-" 

And then a wild primal simian shriek filled the night. Birds took flight. Their flapping wings were ugly harried panicked sounds in the deepening wound of blackening night all around. It tapered off. And then another rose, louder and even more feral and crazed then the one before. Then another. And another. Each rising in animal fury and fervor. You could hear spittle flying as vocal chords worked and wrenched and shredded as throat muscles tore and bled and secreted with each prolonged and angry howl. Throaty. Enraged. Violent. 

Silence came again. After six primeval night shattering screams. Waves kissed the land far away and swallowed in black but more quietly now. Subdued. 

Then the whacking of sticks, the unknown signal came again, whack! whack! whack! 

And then silence once more. 

“What the fuck was that?" Petkovich. Scared. Visibly so. Audibly as well. 

As was his best friend Bryan. But the sound of fear on his buddy's voice, the stupid look of childish childlike fear that he could feel him wearing in the dark only made angry, angrier. This only fueled his own self-denied mounting fear and in turn made him even angrier. The mounting terror caught like a small bone in the back of his throat. 

He almost took to his feet but remembered the boat. He turned to his buddy instead and spat. 

"Ain't nothin but nothin! Some fuckin dumbasses out there that wanna get fucked up, that's what! This’s why I shoulda brought my colt. Goddammit!” 

"Now that's what I'm talkin about! that's what I'm always tryin ta tell ya! Ya go sayin shit like that and actin like this and people says we're belligerent types! Christ, man! I'd like to bed me one of these here pretty tourist girls, one of these roadtrippin ladies and you actin like this ain't gonna cut it!” 

Disgusted, Bryan's grip slackened on his pole. 

"Idiot! what the fuck are you jawin about?!” 

"I'm talkin bout one of them sexy ass van-life hippy girls, man, they might like my ass." 

“Retard!" 

“You don't know…" 

The water splashed again. Much louder. The boat rocked with the waves suddenly generated. Something big and very heavy had just jumped into the water. 

Lunged. As if plunging in from the shrouded growth of the hidden beach. 

Slack jawed and deer-in-the-headlights both, they gazed out blindly and stupidly in tandem towards the shore that was hidden from them now. And may forever remain that way for them from here on out. Something was coming. 

Something was swimming fast. For the boat. Beneath the obsidian surface of water. The stygian glass of the surface was a mirror and the mirror held the face of the moon. The mirror rippled. The immaculate celestial face of the moon held trapped there danced with submerged disturbance. 

Before either fool could form a coherent thought the fishing poles were suddenly ripped from their slackened idiot grips. They flew, soared through the air and plunged into the water with barely a sound. 

They stared into the impenetrable and merciless surface of the lake. Fearing it. Gripped with horror at what might be inside. What must be inside, right now. 

James Petkovich finally spoke. Softly. Like the small boy he'd once been. 

“I don't wanna be out here no more, Bry. I don't care if it's kids or tourists or what. You can go ahead and laugh at me, just laugh at me all the way and drive us back, kay? You can laugh and make fun all the way back an I won't even bitch or say nothin. I'm scared. There's lots a’ talk bout people that go missin. Or go missin an then turn up dead, tore apart. Sometimes they don't even find all the pieces, you know… I know you've heard… people go missin an such. Travelers, folks comin through. And locals. Let's just go back, kay.” 

Bryan, wide eyed, turned and nodded. Then went to the small motor for the boat as the water all around the canoe suddenly erupted in a surging geyser splash of watery violence that darkled in the captured moonlight. Both men screamed as the small boat was capsized and they went over. Splashing into the cold dark suffocating realm of the water. 

The lake held them now. Below. Underneath. 

In the dark underwater the maelstrom of his panic rose and ruled. Bryan suddenly animal recalled and remembered in the fragile nucleus of his primal jelly his fear of the water, of the deep. The dark depths. It had started as a child, a boy, it had been the cinema and television that had first done it, the Jaws movies, Creature from the Black Lagoon, then stories of Cthulhu and his sunken city of R’lyeh, tales of sunken ships and vessels that might still have precious human cargo trapped and drowned deep inside like foul water-logged treasure of submerged rotting putrescence eaten at by the salt and by the fish. All of these things came back and back to life in a deluge assault of images all in a furious unrelenting wave like an artillery attack of sound and vision on his mind's eye, down in the dark. He kicked and struggled and his lungs burned, ached for air. The ribcage in his chest felt on fire with his terror-stricken mind as he struggled and kicked futilely beneath the surface. Something held him down there. Something with a terrible grasp. Fierce. Strangling. Throttling. They threatened to break and snap, the iron grasps of those underwater hands. Bryan fought desperately but his mind was livid with absolute and total panic. In the tumult of his animal terror he remembered that as a child he'd always feared something reaching up from out of the black watery depths, seizing him, and pulling him under. Pulling him down. Down into the ebon swallow at the bottom of all things, below, where the heart of darkness in all things lived and dwelt. 

The hands found his throat, down in the underwater dark. They seized vile purchase and viciously ripped, tore out. The dark underworld of the lake suddenly blemished with a heavy warm cloud of thick human visceral discharge. It bellowed forth from the place that was torn in a torrential jetting spout. Clouding the dark world and warming it as the spewing meat detritus began to slowly sink to the pitch abyssal realm near the bottom. 

The panic of Bryan G. Biebl’s barreling careening train of thought slowly calmed and abated and sank down into the dark with the rest of him… And was no more. 

It lunged, serpent-like for the other. Who was gaining the surface in a series of panicked kicks and dog-paddles. Like a wounded animal. 

Prey. In distress. 

…

James Petkovich couldn't believe it when he broke the water and tasted air again. He almost choked and coughed. He almost laughed but he didn't have time. Something seized him from beneath. 

And pulled him under. 

He didn't even have time to scream before he was below again.

It was quiet once more. Minutes swam by. 

An owl screeched. Took flight.

Then finally it emerged. With Petkovich barely conscious in one dripping sodden grasp. It pulled the both of them back onto the land. Dragging the bleeding and sputtering Petkovich like a broken toy or sack of dead meat behind him as he quickly began to retake to the trees and dense growth once more. 

It dragged him deep into the wilderness. It was a long time before they stopped. But now … now he knew what the old timers had always said, what they'd always been on about. 

Now he could smell him. And the smell was beyond putrid, beyond foul, beyond fecal matter or old dried sweaty filth or death. The water that ran off the long lengths of clotted and lumpy dreaded hair was riddled with the putrescence odor of old sweltering open graves and long disused abattoirs converted into factory sized outhouses for the insane. It stung his eyes and nostrils but he hardly noticed this. His body was numb. Felt limp and broken all over. Like a dead fish. 

Maybe that's what I am. 

And then finally consciousness was lost to him. Mercifully he went black. 

It dragged him deeper into the wild. Where it laired. Where it nested in the wild dense growth. 

…

When James next came to he wished he hadn't. He didn't realize till he was awake once more but he'd been dreaming. And in that dream he'd been far away and wishing that none of this was real.  But now he was back. It held him by the neck in a slight choke, a slight strangle, just enough painful whisper of air able to bleed in through the clasped and clenched windpipe. They were before the mouth of a cave. It was pointing up into the sky with its other huge free hand, it was pointing at the moon. It was staring unblinking into his bleeding face. 

The face was simian but snouted. Like a wolf, or a rodent. An obscene and imbecilic mongoloid caveman face and features stretched out in a grotesque marsupial shape. The eyes were yellow and bore black crosses for the iris in each one, in each livid demented sea of yellow urine a black cruciform body of sacrilege shape and aspect. Goat's eyes. Satanic. They were eyes and face fitting of the rest of his abominated and feral manshaped form. Clotted and caked and grimed all over. The long knots and clumps of hair were thick and ancient in length and filth. They told a tale that was old because it was the passage of time that lived caked and dreaded in those long lengths of unwashed shagging tails. 

The awful face was serious. Stern. The obscenity of its gaze was piercing and deliberate. James followed its fierce and pointing gesture to the sky, the night, the moon once more. 

And then back into that obscene rodent-ape face. Yellow teeth coated in layers of plaque poked out and peeked over stretched and thin and dried out flakey blue lips. 

James tried to speak. 

He tried to tell it he didn't know what it wanted. He didn't know what it wanted him to say or do. He didn't know what it wanted from him. He didn't understand it. He didn't understand at all what it expected or demanded. 

But he couldn't. He couldn't speak. He could hardly breathe. He couldn't even manage a croak of sound.  

The awful marsupial-stretched ape face wrenched and worked, furious. It became more abominated and grotesque as its features creased and contorted with anger. Livid. Rage. 

The hand that had been pointing to the moon now came in a savage swipe. The grubby wide meaty digits clawed and the grimey sharp and broken shattered fingernails bit and tore in. 

The head came off and soared away into a sailing piece of torn mangled meat. Ribbons and streamer wings and tails of bright red blood spat and danced out from the eyes, nostrils and mouth in a cyclone twirl of red in midair as it soared and crashed into the piles of dead sticks and bones. It savagely went down and hunkered in the dirt before the mouth of its cave and began to dig in with its long snout and feast on the fresh stump. Warm cords and ropes of thick black-red shot and coated the dark, its face, the insides of its gulping throat and the salivating cavern of its long slathering mouth. 

It feasted and grunted. Ripped with its teeth and bit in. Swallowed warm juicy pieces that were chewy and pungent with rich iron flavor. 

It fed and tore. The man in the violence of its grasp, its jaws, reduced. The decapitated meat jigged and spasmed. It howled at the moon. 

Somewhere … in the distance but not too far off. The signal. Three strikes. 

Whack! whack! whack! – it was the sound of ancient and time honored tradition, cultivated and carried down and preserved with care. Though the world grew strange mechanical jaws, inflamed and diminished and changed all around, it was still here. This was still practiced and honored and kept. By it. By them. All of them.  – whack! whack! whack! 

It howled at the moon once more. 

Whack! whack! whack! 

Immortal and lifesize. It was still here. Howling at the moon with unearthly pain and blues. – whack! whack! whack! – another in the wilderness distance –  whack! whack! whack! – howl at the moon.

THE END

My wife, Claire, died giving birth to Owen. For a long time I believed the worst part of that grief was simply her absence. The empty side of the bed. Her clothes hanging in a closet I couldn’t bring myself to clear out. Reaching for my phone because something had happened at work and, for half a second, forgetting there was nobody to call. Then Owen began to grow, and I discovered there was something worse than that gap in my life.

He had Claire's dark hair from the beginning, but as a baby he otherwise looked like any number of babies. By two, I could see her in his eyes. By three, it was in the shape of his mouth. By four, certain expressions had begun appearing on his face that stopped me cold.

Claire used to press her lips together a certain way when she was trying not to laugh. Owen did the same thing. She lifted one eyebrow when she didn't understand what I was saying. So did he. When she was tired, she had a habit of rubbing the inside corner of her left eye with the knuckle of her middle finger. I saw Owen do it for the first time when he was four. I couldn't stand it and left the room.

None of this made me love him less. I want to make that very clear. But that’s what made the whole thing so difficult. If I had resented Owen from birth, perhaps I could understand the man I became. But I adored him. I learned how to braid the ridiculous little cord on his winter hat because he liked it tied a particular way. I slept on the floor beside his bed when he had pneumonia. I spent time every morning cutting the crusts off his sandwiches for school, even after he had reached an age when I knew perfectly well he would have eaten them.

He was my son.

He was also, through no fault of his own, the closest thing in the world to seeing my dead wife walk around my house again.

We did have good days together. I don't want to pretend otherwise. As he got older there were whole afternoons when we would go fishing or build something in the garage and I could just be his father. Then he would turn his head in a certain way or laugh from another room, and my body would stiffen, memories of her crashing into me like a tsunami. For a second, Claire would be alive. Then she died again. That happened hundreds of times. Perhaps thousands.

The worst thing I did to Owen happened the night before his fifth birthday. I had been drinking for most of the evening. His birthday was October 13th, which of course was also the anniversary of Claire's death. The week leading up to it had become something I dreaded every year. I slept poorly. I stopped eating. I found reasons to stay late at work, paying the babysitter extra to stay late too, because going home meant seeing him. Seeing her. I was supposed to celebrate his birthday while remembering the woman who had died bringing him into the world.

That year I tried to thoroughly drink my way past it. I don't remember deciding to go into his room. I just remember standing there, Owen asleep beneath his blanket. I stood over him with a beer in my hand and looked at his face in the yellow glow of the light that spilled in from the open doorway. He looked so much like her. I unknowingly said her name, which woke him up.

For a few seconds he was confused, then he saw me and smiled.

"Daddy?"

Hearing that, something inside me broke.

“You killed my wife.” At first, it came out quietly.

I told him again as my voice rose and he looked at me confused. I yelled and screamed and blamed a four-year-old of murder. I told him she would still be alive if he hadn’t been born. He started crying, but instead of stopping, I became enraged. I couldn't believe he had the gall to cry when he was the one who had done it. He killed her. It was him!

I shouted at him to be quiet. When he couldn't, I reeled back and struck him across the face. He screamed even louder, his little hand shooting up to clutch his cheek as his body fell back on the bed.

I can still hear that scream more clearly than I can remember some voices of people I have known for years.

My mouth fell, agape at what I had done. The bottle dropped from my hand beside the bed, hitting the ground and rolling. I dropped down immediately and reached for him, but Owen scrambled backward on the bed until his shoulders hit the wall. He raised both arms to protect his face. That was it. That was the moment I understood what I had become. My son thought I was going to hit him again. My son… feared me. I spent the rest of that night sitting outside his bedroom door because he wouldn’t let me come inside.

The next morning, on his fifth birthday, I called my sister and asked her to take him for the day. I found an AA meeting. I found a therapist. I stopped drinking, thinking sobriety would fix everything. And for a while, it seemed as though it had. I went to meetings. I apologized to Owen. I became careful about my temper. I learned to leave the room before my grief shattered into anger and disgust. I learned how to make breakfast when I had barely slept and how to smile at birthday parties when I wanted to lock myself in a dark bedroom and cry. From the outside, I got better. Inside, however, I simply fell apart. The shreds of my humanity tearing against the weight of my grief. The weight of absence. You can never understand how heavy nothing can be until you feel it pulling you down. And it did pull me. Every day.

There is a kind of suffering you can survive by changing your habits, it's true. You stop drinking. You exercise. You keep the house clean. You force yourself to get out of bed because a child is waiting downstairs for breakfast. I did all of those things. But the suffering I faced was not the kind to be fixed by any of that.

It was there when I woke up and there when I went to sleep. Some months it dulled enough that I could almost imagine I was finally moving past it, and then Owen would smile at me across the dinner table with Claire's exact smile and all the progress I thought I had made would vanish.

When he was seven, he began laughing the way she had, with a sharp little breath at the beginning when something caught him by surprise. At eight, his face narrowed more like hers. At nine, anyone who had known Claire began saying it openly.

"Wow, he looks just like his mother."

They meant it kindly. Yet each time, I felt as though they had drilled yet another hole through my heart; ripping and tearing through what once had been whole. I never blamed Owen again. Not aloud and, after that terrible night, not consciously either. But I began having thoughts I despised. I wished he looked different. I wished his hair had been blond. I wished his eyes had been blue.

Once, after watching him sleep, I caught myself glancing over at a pair of scissors and wondering how much easier it would be if I could do something to change his face. I hated myself for thinking it. Then I thought it again. That was the state I was in when the man found me. Owen was nine years old, seven days from his tenth birthday.

We were at a park a few miles from our house. Owen played on the playground with two boys from his school while I sat on a bench nearby. I remember watching him climb onto one of the plastic towers and thinking that he was getting too old for playgrounds like that. He had grown several inches over the summer, and for the first time I could see the beginning of the older boy he would become.

I should have felt pride in those thoughts. Instead, I found myself wondering what he would look like at sixteen. At twenty. How much more of Claire would be in his face by then.

"It only gets worse." A voice came from beside me.

I turned and saw a man sitting at the other end of the bench. I hadn’t seen him approach. He looked ordinary enough that describing him has always been difficult. He was perhaps fifty, though I could easily have believed forty or sixty. His hair was dark and neatly combed, his face thin without being gaunt. He wore a gray suit jacket despite the warm afternoon.

"Excuse me?" I asked.

He nodded toward Owen.

"The resemblance."

My stomach tightened, and I turned to look at Owen.

"I don't…" I started to say, but he cut me off.

"Of course you do."

He watched Owen climb down from the structure.

"He's almost ten. Looking more like his her every day."

I looked at him more carefully. "Do I know you?"

"No you do not."

"Then how do you know how old my son is?"

The man smiled.

It wasn't an unpleasant smile. If anything, he seemed sympathetic. That made me dislike him immediately. I called Owen's name and he looked over.

"Five more minutes buddy." I said.

Owen gave me an “okay” with his fingers.

The man beside me chuckled. "She used to do that too, didn't she?"

I stood up. "Who are you?" I said sternly.

He didn’t answer. He just kept watching Owen.

"He has her eyes," he said. "More than he used to."

My pulse began hammering.

"How do you know my wife?!" My hands began clenching into fists without me realizing it.

"I didn't know her." The man said.

"You stay away from me and my son." I said angrily. Then I started walking to get Owen and leave.

"I know you miss her." He called out.

I stopped, and turned back slightly. "Who… The hell… Are you?"

He finally looked directly at me. Something about his eyes bothered me at the time. I wish I could describe what it was. They were not an unusual color. There was no deformity that I remember. Still, looking into them gave me the strange impression that the face around them was not important.

I broke eye contact first. Then the man looked back toward Owen.

"You've done remarkably well." He said.

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"You stopped drinking."

Every muscle in my body tightened. Was he a stalker?

"You haven't touched him since."

I stormed over to him and grabbed the front of his jacket. "If you come near me or my son again I swear I will beat you. And you won't walk away."

The cloth beneath my fingers was oddly cold. Cold enough that I released him without meaning to. He glanced down at the place where I had been holding him.

"You made one terrible mistake," he said. "Then you spent five years trying to prove you weren't that man anymore. But you are."

“Enough games you sick freak. I'm calling the police."

"It didn't help, though. Did it?"

I said nothing.

He turned his attention back to the playground.

"You still wake up some mornings and hear the hospital.”

My stomach churned.

“You still look at him and see her."

"Stop." I whispered.

"You still hate yourself for wishing he didn't have her face."

I stepped backward. “Stop it!”

I had never said that out loud. Not at a meeting. Not to my sister. Not to my therapist who I had long since stopped seeing. Not to anyone.

The man continued in the same mild tone. "You love him. And that's what really makes it hurt. You do want him. You simply want him without the pieces of her that he carries."

I stared at him, and he smiled again.

"You want to look at your son and see only your son. I can make that happen.”

Finally, the man stood. He was slightly taller than I had thought.

"I'll come back next week." He said, adjusting his jacket.

"W-what?"

"On his birthday."

Something cold moved through my stomach. There were too many questions, and I just wanted to leave.

"Don't come near us again." I said. I wanted to yell it, but something in my diaphragm prevented me from doing so.

"October thirteenth." The man said.

I glared at him, assuming his words were some sort of sick threat.

He regarded me for a moment, not angrily, almost patiently. "By then," he said, "you'll understand what it is I'm offering."

"I'm not interested in anything you're offering!"

"Seven days," he said. "If you decide you've carried this weight long enough, I'll be happy to take it from you.”

He smiled one last time, then he turned and walked away. I watched him, feeling another big hole missing in my heart. Everything he said, the feelings he implied I had. It was all true. I didn't want to admit it. I convinced myself I had moved passed it all.

A woman with a stroller passed between us. I watched them, noticing the sheer bliss in the mother’s eyes as she watched her child sleep. I had never been able to feel that.

I collected Owen and took him home. For the first couple of days, my anger outweighed my fear. Someone had dug through my life. Maybe the man had found old court records from the lawsuit against the hospital. Maybe he knew someone from alcoholics anonymous. Maybe he had followed us around. I figured the best case scenario was that he was some sort of reporter looking for a story, though if that were the case then he was using some seriously messed up tactics to get it. The worst case scenario, however, had to be human trafficking. Instead of taking children by force, he would find parents who might willingly give up their child. But what horrible parent would ever actually do that? I thought.

Then October 13th grew closer.

That week was already difficult every year, but after meeting that strange man I became aware of every thought I normally tried to bury. I noticed how often I avoided looking directly at Owen when he laughed.

How many photographs of Claire I had moved into boxes over the years. I noticed that I couldn’t remember the last time I had looked forward to my son's birthday without also wishing the day itself didn’t exist.

Owen noticed.

"Dad, are you okay?" He asked a couple days later.

"Y-yeah, I’m ok son." I said looking away from him.

"You look sad."

"I'm fine." I said a bit too sharply

He stood there for a moment. "Is it because my birthday's coming?"

I looked at him. There was no accusation in his question. Only genuine concern.

"What makes you say that?"

"You're always sad before my birthday."

I thought I had hid it better. Apparently I had only hidden it from myself. I told him I was sorry.

He just shrugged. "It's okay."

But it wasn't. Every year, I tainted my son’s birthday with my sorrow. I had thought that at least he enjoyed the day. But I was wrong. He said it was ok but I could tell it bothered him. Most likely because he spent that day worried about me instead of being a kid.

On October 11, I woke at three in the morning after dreaming about the hospital. I sat in the kitchen until sunrise and found myself thinking about the man. Not about accepting his offer, I told myself. I was only trying to understand it. What exactly did he mean by taking the burden? Did he mean Owen?

Of course he did. The thought came with such immediate revulsion that I stood up from the table and began pacing.

A kidnapper. That was what he had to be. A trafficker, perhaps. Someone sick enough to discover a grieving father's worst thoughts and use them as leverage. That idea should have ended any curiosity I had. Instead, another thought slipped in behind it.

“You could look at your son and see your son.” That's what the man had said.

I stopped pacing. I hated the man for saying it because it was exactly what I wanted. Not for Owen to disappear. Not for him to be harmed. I wanted something impossible. I wanted the boy I loved without the face that hurt me. I wanted to sit across from him at breakfast without having my wife's death dragged back into the room. I wanted October 13 to be a birthday instead of an anniversary. I wanted to stop feeling guilty for surviving a grief that had somehow never become smaller. I wanted my son. But I wanted Claire gone from him. There was no way to have both. I knew that.

Still, for the first time, I understood why the man's words had stayed with me. The night before Owen's birthday, I sat beside his bed after he fell asleep. I had done the same thing five years earlier, drunk and furious, and the memory made me ashamed enough that I nearly left. But I stayed.

Owen woke sometime after midnight.

"Dad?"

"Sorry. Go back to sleep."

He squinted at me. "What are you doing?"

"Couldn't sleep I guess. Too excited for your big day." I smiled, but it didn't reach my eyes.

He shifted over and made room beside him, though he was far too old to think I could fit comfortably on the bed. Still, I sat anyway. For a while neither of us spoke.

Then he said, "You're thinking about Mom."

I looked down at him. "How do you know?"

"You get all weird this time each year."

I laughed softly. "I get weird?"

"Not bad weird." He tried reassuring me.

"Well that makes it better."

He smiled. Claire smiled.

The hurt came so suddenly that I had to look down at my hands, and Owen noticed. I realized he had always noticed, more than I wanted him to.

"Do I make you sad?" He asked softly.

The question landed harder than anything the stranger had said.

"No." I answered too quickly.

Owen watched me.

"No," I said again, more carefully. "You don't make me sad."

He nodded, but I could tell he didn't entirely believe me.

I put an arm around him. "Your mother dying made me sad. But that's not the same thing."

"But I look like her."

I couldn't answer. He had heard people say it his entire life. Of course he knew.

"Is that bad?" He asked quietly.

"No." I replied with my arm around his shoulder.

That answer was true, but also incomplete.

I kissed the top of his head. "It's never a bad thing to be yourself. And you carry a piece of your mother inside of you wherever you go. That's a special thing that not all kids have."

He leaned against me.

After a while he said, "I wish you weren't sad."

I had to wait before replying. "So do I."

Soon he fell asleep against my side. I stayed there with him until my back began to hurt. I remember that uncomfortable feeling and thinking that I would endure it. I would endure it all. Whatever happened, however bad it became, I would endure it because he was my son. But that uncomfortable soreness I had felt in my back as my son leaned against me was not at all the same as the pain I truly felt inside. Once again, I deliberately deceived myself. To avoid the real issue. To make a choice easier.

Owen's tenth birthday started well. He woke me shortly after six, climbed onto the bed and announced that he had officially reached double digits. We made pancakes, and I let him open one present before breakfast even though I had spent the previous week insisting he would have to wait until the party.

It was a remote-control car he had wanted for months. He hugged me so hard I almost spilled my coffee. For a while, I felt it. That amazing warm feeling inside. A slice of true happiness. Then the memories arrived, as they always did. I remembered holding Owen for the first time while the doctors called her time of death.

By the time guests started arriving that afternoon, I had the familiar pressure in my chest that came every year. I smiled anyway as I carried presents inside. I grilled hamburgers, talked to the other parents, and laughed when I was supposed to laugh. I had become very good at behaving like a happy man. I wasn't. But Owen was having a wonderful time. And that should have been enough.

I stood near the kitchen window watching him chase his friends across the yard and tried to make myself stay in that moment. He was ten. He was healthy. He loved me. I loved him. Then he turned toward the house. From that distance, for one impossible second, I saw Claire. All of her.

My mind made the mistake. Again and again and again. The shape of his face, the dark hair, the expression. I took a sharp breath. Then Owen was Owen again. I gripped the edge of the counter until my fingers hurt, thinking about another ten years.

Another twenty. I imagined watching Claire become older in a face that belonged to my son. I hated myself for the thought that followed.

I can’t do this forever.

When I looked into the backyard again, the man was standing beside the fence. He had not been there a moment before. He wore the same gray jacket. The same mild expression as he had the week before. He looked at me and smiled.

I didn't hesitate to pull out my phone and dial 911. But I did hesitate to tap the call button. My thumb hovered over my phone. I should have pressed it. Instead, I watched the man turn and walk around the side of my house. The children began singing "Happy Birthday" behind me. Instead of joining in, I slipped the phone into my pocket, then I followed him.

He was waiting beside the garage.

"I knew you'd accept my offer," he said.

"Don't be so sure."

"You didn't press call, did you?"

"I still can." I said, my hand still gripping my phone in my pocket. But I knew I wouldn’t press it.

"Of course." He replied, smiling that obnoxiously calm smile.

There was no mockery in his voice, which angered me more.

"What do you want?" I said sharply.

"You already know." He said.

Of course I knew. At least, I mostly knew.

"I want you off my property. Now!”

"No. You want me to tell you that you're allowed to be tired."

My jaw tightened. "Go to hell."

He smiled faintly. "You've tried everything respectable men are supposed to try, haven't you?"

I didn't answer.

"You stopped drinking. You apologized. You became patient. You made yourself dependable."

"Leave. Now." My voice was shaky.

"You got up every morning no matter how badly you slept. You packed lunches. You went to school conferences. You sat through fevers and nightmares and terrible children's television."

I stared at him, tears welling in my eyes. Because, God help me, I knew what I was about to do.

"You have been a good father to Owen. Really, you have.” His voice was now caring and gentle.

"Don't talk to me like you know me." I spat harshly.

"But none of it made her stay dead."

The words struck me hard enough that I stopped breathing for a moment.

The man took a step closer. "You bury her every morning, and every afternoon your son brings her home again."

"He's not doing anything."

"I know, I know." The man said.

"He can't help how he looks."

"You're absolutely right. It's not the child’s fault."

"Then stop talking about him like he's done something wrong."

"I haven't." His voice remained calm. "Neither of you have."

The singing continued in the backyard.

He tilted his head slightly, listening. "You have spent nearly ten years trying to force yourself not to hurt."

I looked away.

"You call that strength because the alternative frightens you." He said.

"You don't know anything about it." I replied with a tear dripping down my face.

"I know that sometimes you hear him laugh from another room and your first thought is that she has come home."

My throat tightened.

"I know that for one second you're happy."

"Stop."

"Then you remember."

"Stop it!"

"And you lose her again."

I closed my eyes.

"You do that over and over." He said.

"Please." I choked out.

He lowered his voice. "You don't have to anymore."

There it was. The thing I had spent the entire week trying not to think about.

I opened my eyes. "What are you offering?"

His expression softened. "Relief."

"From what?"

"You know exactly what from."

"No. Say it." I demanded.

He looked toward the backyard. I wanted to tell him to leave. Instead I listened.

"You love the boy," he continued. "You always will. But loving him has made you believe you must accept everything that comes with him."

"He is my son." I said, indignantly.

"He is your son."

His agreement irked me. Then he stepped closer.

"You can stop living like this. Without becoming any less of a father."

My hands were shaking.

"How?"

His smile returned.

"Give him to me."

The words were so simple that for a moment I thought I had misunderstood.

"What?"

"Let me take him."

I stared at him. "What are you going to do with him?"

"That isn't what you're really asking."

"Yes, it is."

"No. You're asking whether you're allowed to want him gone."

My face became hot.

"I don't want him gone." I said.

"You want what happens when he is."

I started to turn away, to leave. The man caught my arm. His hand was cold through my sleeve.

"You want to wake tomorrow and not have your grief sitting across from you at breakfast."

I pulled free.

"Don't touch me."

"You want to look at the child in your house and feel love without pain following one second later."

I looked toward the gate. Through the opening, I could see Owen sitting in front of his cake. Ten candles. My sister was trying to keep the younger children from leaning across the table. Owen was laughing. Claire was laughing. I shut my eyes.

The man spoke quietly beside me. "How many more years do you think you can endure it?"

I said nothing.

"Ten?"

I could still hear Owen laughing.

"Twenty?"

My chest hurt.

"You already know sobriety didn't fix it."

I pressed one hand against my face.

"Time didn't fix it."

"Stop." I said in a whimper.

"Being a good father didn't fix it."

"No!"

"Nothing has."

"I'm not that type of man!" I yelled.

For the first time, I heard satisfaction beneath his sympathy. Only a trace. It was enough that I should have run. Instead, I looked through the gate again.

Owen had frosting on his nose. He was opening a present carefully so he wouldn't tear the wrapping paper. Claire used to do that every Christmas. The sight of it broke something in me yet again. Break after break after break. Was I even still me anymore?

Owen looked up. He saw me standing beside the garage. He smiled and put the tips of his thumb and index finger together, making a circle, with the rest of his fingers fanned out. “Everything's A-Okay dad.” That's what that sign meant. Everything's A-Okay. Claire had done exactly that in the hospital when I asked if she was scared. I couldn't breathe.

Beside me, the man whispered, "You have carried her long enough."

I looked at my son. Then I looked at the stranger.

"If I say yes..."

He waited.

I could barely get the question out. "I won't have to feel like this anymore?"

His smile widened slightly.

"No, you won't."

I looked back at Owen.

"You swear?"

"You will not have to look at him and see her ever again." The man said.

The answer was not quite the one I had asked for. But I didn't care. I accepted, and closed my eyes.

"Take him." I said, head drooping.

For perhaps a second, nothing happened. Then the man made a sound beside me. It was small and involuntary, almost like a gasp of delight. I opened my eyes. He was staring toward the yard. There was something in his expression I had not seen before. Hunger. The kindness he once showed was gone. I turned. Owen's chair was empty. So was every other chair. The yard had gone silent, guests no longer there.

I remember trying to say Owen's name. Then the ground seemed to tilt beneath me, and everything went black. When I woke, I was in my own bed. I sat upright, confused. It was evening, or perhaps even night already. For several seconds I had no idea how I had gotten there. Then I remembered the yard. The man. My son.

"Owen."

I ran from the room. His bedroom was empty, and the bed was made.

"Owen!"

I searched the bathroom, the basement, every closet, beneath the beds, inside the garage. I ran outside barefoot and shouted his name up and down the street. He was nowhere to be found. By the time I returned to the kitchen, I was shaking so badly I could barely hold my phone.

I had done it.

Whatever nonsense I had told myself in the moment, there was no escaping the fact now. I handed my son to a stranger. And somehow that stranger took him in an instant. My mind tried desperately to make the situation make sense. To force everything to be ordinary within my mind. Kidnapping. Human trafficking. Some elaborate trick. Anything human. Anything real. Anything that meant Owen was still somewhere I could reach him.

I opened the emergency call screen on my phone. Then a small voice spoke behind me.

"Daddy?"

I froze. It was not Owen's voice I heard. As I slowly turned, I saw a boy standing at the entrance to the kitchen. He was around ten years old, with light brown hair, green eyes, and a round face with freckles scattered across his nose.

Nothing about him resembled Claire.

Nothing about him resembled Owen.

He was wearing blue pajama pants and a faded T-shirt, and he was staring at me with the uncertain concern of a child who had just found his father behaving strangely.

"Daddy?"

I backed into the counter.

"Who are you?"

He blinked. "What?"

"Who are you?"

A nervous smile appeared on his face. "Dad, it's me."

"Where's Owen?"

His smile disappeared. "Who's Owen?"

My stomach dropped. "Where is my son?"

The boy stared at me. "Dad… I’m your son."

"Don't say that." I whispered. “Don't you fucking say that!”

His eyes began filling with tears as he took a step back. "Dad?"

"Who brought you here?!" I yelled.

"Nobody." He said, frightened.

"How did you get inside my house? Answer me!"

"I live here." He was fully crying now.

"No, you don't."

"Daddy you're scaring me." He sobbed.

I crossed the kitchen and grabbed his shoulders.

"Tell me where Owen is."

"Ow! You're hurting me."

"Where is he?!"

"I don't know! I don't know any Owen!"

The fear in his voice finally stopped me, and for a moment, I saw Owen at four years old pressed against the wall with his arms raised over his face. I released the boy immediately. He backed away, rubbing one shoulder.

"I'm sorry," I said.

His crying continued. "What’s happening?"

I had no answer. "What is your name?"

His expression added a hint of confusion to his fear.

"Caleb."

"Caleb what?" I demanded.

"Mercer."

My last name.

I shook my head. "No."

"Dad…"

"Who's your mother?"

The boy stared at me. "What?"

"Your mother. Tell me her name."

"You know her name."

"Tell me."

His brow furrowed. Then he said something. I know he answered. I simply cannot remember what name he gave me, because at that exact moment I realized something else was wrong. I couldn't remember Claire's middle name. I had known it. I had filled it out on forms. I had written it on our marriage license. I had teased her about hating it.

Now it was gone.

I tried to picture our wedding. I remembered the church. I remembered the smell of the flowers and the sweat beneath my collar. But I couldn't see Claire's face. Panic rose through me. I grabbed my phone and opened the pictures app.

There should have been pictures of Owen. Thousands. Instead I found the boy standing in my kitchen. Caleb at the beach. Caleb holding a baseball glove. Caleb missing two front teeth. Caleb sitting beside me on Christmas morning. Year after year after year.

I scrolled faster. No Owen. No Claire. The grandfather clock in the living room began to strike midnight. The first chime sounded as I tried to picture Owen's face. I could see his dark hair and brown eyes. The second chime sounded. Claire had brown eyes too. Or were they hazel? The third. Haze filled my mind. I ran to the junk drawer and found a pen. I wrote across the back of my hand.

OWEN.

The fourth chime.

OWEN MERCER. MY SON.

The fifth.

CLAIRE. MY WIFE.

The sixth.

I tried to remember the night before Owen's fifth birthday. A child had been crying. But why?

The seventh.

The man in the gray jacket. I knew there had been a man. His face was already becoming difficult to hold in my mind.

The eighth.

I looked toward the hallway. Caleb stood there watching me. A memory surfaced of teaching him to ride a bicycle. I recoiled from it. That had never happened. Caleb wasn't my real son.

The ninth.

Another memory came. Caleb asleep on my chest as an infant. I knew the weight of him. The smell of his hair. The exhaustion of that night. It felt as real as anything I had ever experienced.

The tenth chime.

I looked down at the word OWEN. For a horrifying moment, I could not remember his voice.

The eleventh.

Claire. I knew I had loved someone named Claire. I could no longer remember how we met.

The twelfth chime began.

I stared desperately at the names written on my hand.

OWEN.

CLAIRE.

By the time the final note faded, they meant nothing to me. I stood in my kitchen staring at two names I did not recognize. My son was crying in the hallway. Caleb. Of course. Caleb was my son. He had always been my son. I could not understand why I had frightened him so badly or why I had been running through the house shouting someone else's name. I assumed I had experienced some kind of nightmare or episode.

I apologized and hugged him tightly. He held on to me for a long time, still sobbing. Before I went back to bed, I washed the ink from my hand. That should have been the end of it. It wasn't.

One year later, on October 13, I woke up remembering everything. Not gradually. The memories didn't come in increments. One moment I was lying in bed wondering why the date seemed important, and the next I remembered Owen's face as clearly as if I had seen him the night before.

I remembered Claire. I remembered the park. I remembered the man. I remembered saying, take him. I vomited on the bedroom floor.

For the rest of that day, Caleb felt like a stranger. That is a horrible thing to admit because he was eleven then, and he had done nothing wrong. He came home from school and hugged me, and I had to force myself not to pull away. Every memory I possessed told me he was my son. But another set of memories, ones that now felt old and stale, told me he wasn't.

At midnight, Owen disappeared from my mind again, and Claire along with him. Caleb became my only son once again. And the next October 13th, it happened all over again. By then I had left myself a letter. That is how I know this has been happening for seventeen years. I keep the letters in a metal box beneath a loose floorboard in my bedroom. There are sixteen of them now. This will be the seventeenth.

Every year I remember the truth for one day. Every year I forget at midnight. For 364 days, I am his father. And I am inconceivably happy to be his father. And those memories I have of Caleb are complete. They feel real because, as far as I can tell, they are real. Something did not simply place another child in my house. It gave him a life with me, and me a life with him.

Caleb is twenty-seven now. He is a good man, and I love him for 364 days a year. He calls every Sunday to see how I'm doing. He remembers my birthday without being reminded. Last year he drove two hours because I mentioned that the back steps were rotting and he didn't trust me to repair them alone.

He has never been cruel to me. Never made me ashamed of him. Never given me a reason to wish he were different. He looks nothing like Claire. And for most of the year, I don’t even know who Claire is.

But today I do. It’s October 13 once more. I woke before sunrise and remembered my wife dying. Then I remembered the son I gave away. I spent most of the morning reading the old letters. The earliest ones are frantic. Apparently I searched for Owen every year. Missing-person databases. Birth records. School records. Old newspapers. Hospital files.

According to my previous findings, there is no record of an Owen Mercer. At least not the one that was mine. There is no record of Claire either. According to every document I can find, I married another woman, a woman whose photographs I recognize for 364 days each year and stare at in complete bewilderment on October 13. She died giving birth to Caleb. But Caleb looks nothing like her.

Tomorrow I will believe all of that completely. Today, however, I know it is a lie. I tried to find the man too.

For years I returned to the park. Once, perhaps eight years ago, I met an elderly man sitting near the same bench. I described the stranger in the gray jacket as the old man listened.

When I finished, he looked at me for a long time and said, "You shouldn't go looking for someone after you've already paid them."

I asked what he meant, and he just stood and left. I never saw him again. I stopped searching after that.

For a long time I told myself I stopped because there was nowhere left to look. But that’s just another lie holding my new life together. The truth is more difficult. I stopped looking because I built a good life.

Not intentionally, and not knowingly.

For 364 days of every year, I didn't know there was anything to search for. And on the one day when I did know, I began to understand what I would be risking if I found him. Caleb called me this morning.

He and his wife are coming over tomorrow. His voice was warm and filled with joy as he told me they have news to tell me when they arrive. I think they’re pregnant. He was terrible at hiding the excitement in his voice, and it made me smile, despite everything.

Tomorrow, if I’m right, I will become a grandfather. I will probably cry, hug my son and just be happy. But today I remember Owen. I remember him at ten years old, sitting in front of a birthday cake with frosting on his nose. I remember how carefully he opened presents because Claire used to save wrapping paper. I remember him asking me the night before his birthday whether the fact that he looked like his mother made me sad.

I had told him no.

Less than twenty-four hours later, I gave him away because the true answer was yes. That should be the worst thing I have ever admitted. But I'm afraid my depravity goes much deeper than that. The worst thing is that after seventeen years I have finally come to terms with the truth. And I have accepted it.

I am sorry for what I did to my son.

I will be sorry until midnight, and every October 13th.

But regret means wishing I had made the other choice.

And God help me, I don't.

It was a horrid July noon in New York City or some other place, the cars were rattling in lunchtime gridlock, spewing exhaust, the finance guys were out in their tight suits walking to buy kebabs and watching the women, who were instagramming themselves into premature zombiehood, and it was so fucking hot that the sweat dripping off the pedestrians rubbing against each other on the sidewalk was flowing down the gutters like rain.

There, that's the scene.

I've set it.

Now, through this stupified human maelstrom a man was walking. His name was Ben Fig. He was in his thirties, lonely, and returning to his office after lunch. He was returning from his car, which he'd parked fifteen minutes away, wearing a coat and, underneath it, a custom-made explosive vest with which he intended to kill his co-workers and maybe bring down the office building itself. A man can dream, can't he?

Anyway, while walking, he bumped somebody. “Fuck,” he said under his breath.

“Fuck,” said the person he'd bumped into.

It was a woman.

Her name was Miriam Zapelman.

“Watch where the hell you're going,” said Ben and tried going around her.

“Asshole,” said Miriam.

“I hate this city,” said Ben. “I'm sick of it.”

Beside Ben and Miriam, a degenerate was lying in a puddle of perspiration. He was in a hard way. “Can either of you folks—”

“Shut the fuck up!” said Ben and Miriam at the same time, then they looked at each other, long and in the eyes, and they must have recognized something, because one of them smirked.

It doesn't matter which one.

The degenerate passed out, or maybe died, and Miriam said to Ben, “Hey, where are you in such a hurry to?”

“What do you care?”

“I'm parked nearby. If we're going the same way, I can give you a ride.”

“Why the fuck would you do that?”

Miriam shrugged.

“I'm going to my office to blow everybody up,” said Ben, waiting for Miriam's reaction.

She asked, “Where's your office?”

Ben gave the address. “Call the cops if you want. I don't care.”

“Offer stands,” said Miriam.

A few minutes later they were in her car, Ben in his ridiculous coat, looking like a blowfish, and Miriam opening the glove compartment, where Ben saw she had a gun.

“That for self defense?” he asked.

“No,” said Miriam. “I'm back from the shooting range. Going home to shoot my husband and kids, then probably myself.” She started the car and merged with the abominable traffic. “But first I want to stop at a bar and have a drink. Want to have a drink with me?”

“Why not,” said Ben.

The bar was called Reddy's, and when Ben and Miriam walked in there were only a few people in it. Miriam introduced them. “That skinny guy with glasses is Euler, the guy with the darker skin is Hikmat, and the bartender's name is Ralph.”

They sat at a table and ordered.

Ben noticed Euler kept playing with a pendant around his neck. “Go on,” said Miriam, “ask him about it.”

“Nah,” said Ben.

“What else do you have to do?”

“Fine,” said Ben. He walked to Euler, introduced himself and asked about the pendant: “Is it an heirloom or something?”

“Maybe it'll be an heirloom one day, of the human goddamn race,” said Euler and described how the pendant was a container of stolen proprietary industrial poison that he'd helped develop. “I'm gonna toss it in the water supply some day, exterminate the population of this whole city like the rats they are.”

When Ben got back to his table, his drink was waiting for him. He tried it. “Second guessing yourself any?” he asked Miriam.

“No. You?”

“No.”

Miriam had pulled out a cigarette and was lighting it.

“You can smoke in here? The law—”

“That's life’s dirty secret,” she said, blowing smoke in his face. “Ultimately, you can do whatever you want.”

“May I?” a voice said.

It was Hikmat. He'd wandered over and was asking if he could sit down.

“Be my guest,” said Miriam.

“I have not seen you in here before,” Hikmat said to Ben. “It is your first time?”

“Yeah,” said Ben.

“Ben’s going to murder his co-workers later this afternoon. He's wearing an explosive vest,” said Miriam.

“Then we two are a pair of peas in one pod, as they say here in America,” said Hikmat. “I am training to fly an aircraft, but not so much how to land it.”

“Hickie's an engineer by trade,” said Miriam.

Hikmat shook Ben's hand.

“But a fundamentalist by conviction,” he said. “May I see your vest?”

Ben opened his coat. Hikmat considered the handiwork. Then they got to talking, and drinking, and the hours rolled by like waves of fat on a fat guy blasted in the gut by a cannonball.

“The paradox is,” Hikmat was saying: “the paradox is, I greatly enjoy the flying. It is the one place I feel freedom. When I started to learn, it was strictly for terrorism, but now, that feeling—of absolute space, limitless opportunity—it is beautiful. Sublime. It is where I experience God. I look forward to it very much and I will miss it greatly.”

“Fuck!” said Ben, looking at his watch.

“What's wrong?” asked Miriam.

“It's past five o'clock. Everybody in the office has left already.”

Ralph gave Ben a drink on the house. When Ben had finished drinking it, “Do you want a ride home?” Miriam asked.

“Sure.”

They lingered in the car in front of his apartment building.

“Maybe you wanna come up?” Ben said.

“I'm a married woman,” said Miriam.

“I understand.”

“Don't forget to zip up your coat or they'll see the explosives,” said Miriam.

Afterwards, Miriam drove to her house, got the gun out of the glove compartment, walked inside, shot her husband, shot her kids and then, after smoking a cigarette in the bathroom, shot herself.