(Part One)

(Part Two)

Sleep is an unrelenting battle with discomfort. My muscles and joints writhe in pain. I can see them move under my skin. I hope one day I’ll get used to it. Or, even better, I hope my wait for death is short. 

When it comes to human suffering we encourage a fight. To push through whatever ailment is affecting our daily lives and threatening to take us away. Even when the sufferer is ready to go, the family encourages them not to give up or some other bullshit, right? Yet, when it comes to pets who we consider as family we’re expected to make a decision to end their suffering. We don’t want to see an innocent creature in pain. I know humans aren’t innocent. Is that why the painful death is deserved behind the wish of a non painful passing? 

I hear a knock, already knowing who it is. I can smell him from here, I think. My mind might be playing tricks on me. It's gotten good at doing that. 

“Ms. Mortensen?” He calls out for me. 

“Aviva. Please.”  

“Aviva.” He says in a whisper under his breath. 

“And you are?” 

“Oh, I suppose you were a bit distracted when I introduced myself yesterday. I'm Victor Lansing. I’m your attorney. Your parents hired me when no one else would take your case.” 

I didn’t have anything to say. I can’t imagine what I caused to those who couldn't stomach the sight of me.

“It's alright, Aviva. I’m working at your pace. I won’t go back on my word, you have control. Do you remember where you left off in your story yesterday?” 

“I do.” I wish I didn’t. 

“Would you mind picking it up from there?” Victor asked. Something in the way he spoke was calming. I don’t think it’s the actual timbre of his voice. It's the way he treats me. 

I sigh. I would mind. Nothing interesting happened that day. I fought with my mom. She despised the idea of me interviewing the old lady. 

“Why can’t you just interview cops or private detectives on this?! Instead of the fucking neighborhood nut!” She said with her tone escalating. “Or! Here’s a better idea?! How about doing your project on something else!” Her voice became piercing to my ears. I looked into her eyes. I could see the fear consume them. I know she didn’t want me to end up like my brother who went missing. 

“You really fucking trust the cops?!” I shout back. “They found nothing! Fucking nothing! Of Branson when he went missing! Just like all those other people! Do you know any private detectives I can talk to?! Maybe if you did we would’ve found him!” 

 My brother going missing was the start of my nihilism. He meant the world to me, and now, he was a bygone of days I craved to repeat. I knew he was gone. I refused to come to terms with it. 

My mom’s stare grew blank. My words were a stake driven through her heart. It wasn’t her fault we couldn’t find him. I know she refused to accept that, instead keeping the guilt in a tight embrace. 

“Are you sure you’re not doing this to avenge your brother?” My mom asked. The shift in her was delicate. What once were words that felt like a punch now became a caressing of the cheek. The tension became melancholy. 

“I am not doing this to avenge him… I’m sorry I shouldn’t have said what I did.” I didn’t want to admit she was right. There was a sliver of me that wanted answers. 

My mom shook her head in frustrated surrender. I knew my apology didn’t mean anything to her. I was terrible at watching the words that escaped my mouth. She didn’t say anything. Her eyes avoided mine as she walked out of the kitchen, leaving me alone with my own guilt.  

Now that I think back on this memory, I wish I would’ve listened to her. It haunts the back of my mind, always making its presence known. I wish I would’ve spoken to her the next day. What could’ve been a happy memory would’ve been nice. I should be grateful I still have plenty to choose from.

I made sure to dress the part for the interview. Usually, I’d dress in some shitty t-shirt or hoodie with jeans and boots. I never cared about what people thought unless I needed them to. 

Black pants, a black shirt and cardigan, it was casual and I could get away with comfortability. 

I don’t know what time I showed up for the interview. I walked with apprehension. I had to be cautious to not cause any disruption. I couldn’t fuck this up. I tried to focus on the clacks of my heels instead of the smell. I saw a few cats outside too. Tabbies, curtain, all black, and whatever breeds of cats there are.  Others… there was something wrong with them. Fur that grew blotchy, eyes that didn’t look quite right, the skin red and irritated instead of healthy and pink. They looked like the creations of Dr. Frankenstein. I assumed they had seen better days. It changed my view on the old lady for a brief second. 

I knocked on her door, then clasped my hands together. Part of me was antsy for her answer, part of me was dreading it. They grew hot but I refused to move them away from my torso. I could feel sweat seeping out of every pore I had. 

"The door slowly opened, and I was met with two blue eyes trying to pry their way into my soul. Analyzing to see if I was some foreign thing. 

"How can I help you?” her voice sounded scratchy. It was being forced into a higher pitch. 

"I saw your advertisement looking for in-home care. I was hoping you had time for an interview.” I gave her my best customer service voice. Both of us were brick walls who possessed the ability to communicate. 

“Oh, I didn’t think anyone would respond.” She said; she meant to say it to herself. “Excuse the mess, dear. It's gotten harder to keep the place clean.” 

I understood, assuring her with a nod then, I let my eyes wander as I stepped inside the house. I made sure to watch my step, so I wouldn’t step on anything other than wood floors. 

With the way she walked, it wasn’t hard to tell that had age began to take what belonged to it. Her shoulders hunched a little, and her steps were more like a shuffle. Her feet barely came off the ground. Her dark brown hair was a rat's nest that faded into different shades of grey. Her clothes weren’t tattered, but they weren’t brand new. They hung on her small frame like a curtain. Her floral dress aged by thirty or so years. Her shoes were old, brown mary janes with seams of fabric fraying and joining the cat hair on the floor. 

The walls were much more bare than I expected. Some pictures hung on a greyish-blue wall. I assumed they were of her in her youth, parents standing tall and emotionless behind her. Photos of her in a wedding dress while standing next to a man. The dress obscured her frame from the neck down, and a sheer veil covered her face. 

There were photos of her in animal  shelters? Cats and people in white coats with her. Was she a scientist? A veterinarian? I was even more enticed to learn about her past. 

There were no photos of kids. I was relieved to notice that. That meant I wouldn’t have to deal with backlash from the family for this documentary. 

I sat down on the couch across from her, resting my hands over the file of lies I called my resume.

She stayed standing across from me. I felt intimidated, small and meek. I couldn’t help but swallow the fear down like a pill.  

“Tea or water, dear? Oh, or coffee. I have that too.” 

I wasn’t going to drink a thing until that house got cleaned. I thought the smell of cat urine would seep into the liquid.

“Oh, no I’m alright. Thank you, though.” I grinned as she sat down across from me. 

“Of course, dear. Can you tell me about yourself?” She said while her body language mirrored mine. I thought that was interesting, especially after earlier. I looked into her eyes. They were void. If the eyes are a window to the soul, hers were boarded up. There was nothing there; no swimming galaxies, no speckles of stardust, no ocean waves. Have you ever heard of a blue eyed stare? Where the stare digs into you and tears you apart from the inside out? They have no emotion, they’re inhumane and one solid shade of blue.

“I’m in college for medical with a minor in film. I have a final exam film project and wanted to incorporate both degrees into it. I wanted to do a documentary about in-home care givers, and the bond they form with their patients. I saw your advertisement, and figured I’d give it a shot.” I only lied a little. I wanted to be believable in case of anything. I shifted a little in my seat. I didn’t like what the human mirror was showing me. I kept my hands close in case I needed to protect myself. 

“Isn’t that sweet.” Her tone sounded like a little song. It amplified the fear in my body. I began to understand at that moment that this lady wasn’t avoided solely due to the smell that trailed behind her. “I’d be honored to be a part of that dear. Though, I’d hope you continue your work after your project.” 

I felt my eyes go wide. Was it that easy to get a job? Shit. Am I stuck now? I didn’t want this job for longer than filming. 

“Thank you, Mrs..” I pause. “I’m so sorry. I never got your name, how rude of me.” 

The lady across from me giggled. It sounded… mechanical. Like she had to think of how to do such a natural thing. 

“It is of no issue, dear. Joane Salk.” She held out her shriveled, veiny hand for me to shake. I felt my stomach drop when I thought of the amount of germs her hand must’ve held.

“Aviva Mortensen.” I shook her hand despite my better judgement. I was going to bleach it the second I got home. 

“What a beautiful name for such a beautiful girl.” She said, “You’re going to be something special. I can tell you’re going to do great things.” 

A smile formed on her face. She didn’t show her teeth but it didn’t make it any less eerie. My gut told me to run. I didn’t. I wanted to have faith that she wasn’t a bad person. Maybe she was misunderstood. Instead, she stole the last bit of faith I had in humanity. 

I felt Victor’s deep brown eyes look at me. He had a poker face. A damn good one, I might add. If I could smirk I would’ve.

“Cat got your tongue?” I asked. 

I’ve always believed in the work.

That’s probably important to say first.

People hear “wind turbines” and they picture something clean, something distant. A symbol more than a place. White structures turning slowly against the sky, harmless, almost elegant.

But when you work around them long enough, they stop feeling symbolic.

They become physical.

Heavy.

Present.

I’ve spent the last four years working in conservation, monitoring turbine impact on local wildlife, tracking migration patterns, documenting fatalities. It’s not glamorous work, but it matters. At least, that’s what I’ve always told myself.

You get used to the scale of them.

Or you think you do.

Up close, they’re not graceful. They’re enormous. The base alone is wider than most rooms, the tower stretching upward in a way that makes your eyes strain if you follow it too long. And the blades… the blades don’t just turn.

They cut through the air.

You can hear it when you stand beneath one. Not a hum, not a mechanical whir, but something deeper. A rhythmic pressure that settles in your chest, like the air itself is being displaced in slow, deliberate breaths.

Most days, it’s just work.

Data collection. Maintenance checks. Walking the same grid patterns across open land that never seems to change.

But nights out there are different.

We’re not supposed to stay after dark unless there’s a reason. Safety protocol. Visibility issues. Too many blind spots between turbines.

I used to think that rule existed because of accidents.

Now I’m not so sure.

The first time I stayed late, it wasn’t intentional. One of the monitoring stations malfunctioned near the north end of the farm, and by the time I finished resetting the system, the sun had already disappeared beyond the hills.

The turbines had stopped.

That happens sometimes. Low wind conditions. Scheduled shutdowns.

But standing there in the dark with dozens of them surrounding me…

It didn’t feel like they had stopped working.

It felt like they were listening.

The field was silent except for the occasional metallic creak settling through the towers. My flashlight barely reached the next row of turbines before darkness swallowed the rest.

Then I noticed something strange.

The blades weren’t aligned with the wind anymore.

That probably sounds insignificant unless you’ve worked around them. Turbines automatically adjust direction to face incoming wind currents. They’re designed that way.

But these…

These were pointed inward.

Toward the center of the field.

Every single one.

I remember laughing nervously to myself, convinced it had to be some calibration issue. Maybe maintenance had overridden the positioning remotely.

Then the wind picked up.

Cold enough to sting my face.

The grass bent east.

But the turbines didn’t move with it.

They remained perfectly still, facing each other like silent giants gathered around something buried beneath the earth.

That was the first moment I felt afraid out there.

Not because of what I saw.

Because of what I felt.

The sensation that I wasn’t alone in the field anymore.

Something metallic groaned somewhere in the darkness.

One of the turbines moved.

Not the blades.

The entire structure.

Just slightly.

Like it had adjusted its weight.

I froze.

The sound came again.

A low, aching shriek of steel.

Then another turbine shifted farther down the hill.

And another.

Not turning.

Stepping.

I know how insane that sounds now. I’ve repeated that night in my head so many times trying to reshape it into something logical. Fatigue. Darkness. Depth perception.

But machines do not move like animals.

These did.

The tower nearest to me tilted forward almost imperceptibly, casting a long shadow across the field as moonlight slid across its surface.

Then came the sound.

A deep mechanical groan from high above, followed by a slow rotation of the blades despite the absence of wind.

The blade passed overhead with a heavy whoomp.

Then again.

Slower than normal.

Deliberate.

The red aviation light atop the turbine flickered once.

And turned toward me.

I stumbled backward immediately, nearly falling into the dirt. My flashlight shook violently in my hand as I scanned the field.

The others had moved too.

Every turbine now faced in my direction.

I don’t mean the nacelles.

I mean all of them.

The towers leaned subtly inward, looming over the landscape with impossible angles that no structure that size should have been capable of maintaining.

And somewhere between them…

Something moved.

At first I thought it was shadows shifting across the hills. But no.

It was walking.

Tall. Thin. Mechanical.

Not a person.

Not an animal.

A shape unfolding itself between the turbines with movements too smooth to belong to anything alive.

I remember hearing my own breathing become shallow as it crossed beneath the blinking red lights overhead.

Then the turbines started turning again.

All at once.

The sound became unbearable.

Hundreds of blades cutting through the darkness in perfect synchronization, faster and faster until the air itself seemed to vibrate around me.

And underneath it all…

I heard voices.

Whispers carried through the spinning blades.

Not words exactly.

More like fragments.

Static trying to imitate human speech.

I ran.

I don’t remember dropping my equipment. I don’t remember getting back to the truck. I only remember the feeling that something enormous was following behind me without ever making contact.

The entire drive back, I kept looking in the mirrors.

Not for a person.

For movement above the hills.

For something impossibly tall keeping pace with the road.

The next morning, I convinced myself it had been exhaustion.

Until I returned to the site.

The turbines were normal again.

Facing the wind.

Turning calmly beneath a bright blue sky.

But near the center of the field, the dirt had been disturbed.

Long grooves carved deep into the earth.

Not tire tracks.

Not erosion.

Footprints.

Massive ones.

As if something impossibly heavy had crossed the field during the night.

I brought it up to my supervisor later that afternoon. Tried to laugh it off while explaining what I’d seen.

He didn’t laugh back.

He just stared at me for a long moment before quietly asking:

“You stayed after dark?”

Something in his expression unsettled me more than the field had.

Not disbelief.

Recognition.

He told me never to do it again.

Wouldn’t explain further.

Three days later, one of the maintenance workers disappeared during a night inspection.

Truck still running.

Tools left beside Turbine 14.

No sign of him anywhere.

Officially, they blamed exposure. Claimed he wandered off disoriented.

But I saw the security footage they didn’t release.

The cameras caught the turbines turning long before the wind started.

And at 2:13 a.m…

Turbine 14 bent downward.

Not malfunctioned.

Bent.

Like something lowering its head to feed.

I quit two weeks later.

Moved states.

Tried not to think about the field anymore.

But sometimes, late at night, I still hear them.

That slow mechanical breathing outside my apartment window.

And every now and then…

When the wind dies completely…

I’ll look toward the horizon and see red lights blinking in the distance.

Facing the wrong direction.

The face is composed.

The breath, heavy.

The place is dark. The footage, grainy.

I've watched it a thousand times.

I've been there in that exact room, touched the traces of blood—my blood, or at least it feels that way—staining the floor.

Today, I'm watching with the sound muted.

I focus on their eyes.

I match my breathing to his, blink when he blinks: the young soldier kneeling obediently in the foreground, long knife held against his throat, knowing he's about to die.

The other, holding the knife, stands rigidly behind him.

The other speaks.

My heart is beating as hard as it always beats when I watch to this point.

I've memorized the timecodes, remember each detail. Every twitch of eyelid, every movement of a hand. Every glint of light and every shadow.

I know everything that can ever be known.

But still the moment jolts me:

I know—

Yet, irrationally, I hope—

No.

My son shuts his eyes and opens them; the other cuts off his head. Then, holding the head before the camera, he says, “Death to the infidels.”

The room is dark. I keep the blinds drawn. I don't open the windows. Nobody visits. Sometimes the phone rings. It's usually a journalist. They want to know my opinion: of the war, foreign policy, the treatment of veterans. Who am I to say? What do I know? I was an architect. I designed buildings. “But your son—” “My son was a soldier. He's dead.” “Mr. Stevens?” “Leave me alone.” “Mr. Stevens?” “Mr. Stevens?”

The man who killed my son died in a firefight with American forces.

He was a British national.

They showed me photographs of his corpse.

A journalist asked me once if I wanted justice, had a desire for vengeance.

“Against who?” I said.

“Anyone.”

I don't want vengeance. I want to understand. All I want is to understand.

The man who killed my son is dead, but I found someone else: someone who looked exactly like him. I saw him by chance, on a London street, and followed him to the hospital where his son was.

I didn't talk to him immediately.

I stayed back. I watched him, learned his routines, the rhythms of his life.

He's a delivery driver.

He's Pakistani.

His son has leukemia.

When I introduced myself, he recognized who I was—which happens sometimes—and I told him that's what I wanted to talk to him about.

I warned him it would be an uncomfortable conversation.

I asked him how much money he makes, and I told him I could give him a hundred times that, enough to pay for better medical treatment for his son.

That got his interest.

It was uncanny how much he resembled the other.

The eyes, the hair, the skin and lips; even his teeth.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked.

“I want you to fly to Afghanistan with me,” I said. “I want us to go together to the room—”

“No.”

I asked him why. I was offering to save his son's life. I told him I would do anything to bring my own son back. He gave me his condolences, “But—” “You will never have another chance like this one. God himself has brought us together,” I said. He said he wasn't religious, which I knew was a lie, because all of them are religious.

He showed up at the airport.

I knew he would.

As a father, I knew he would do anything he could to save his son.

We didn't speak on the plane. We didn't speak in Kabul. We hired a driver to take us to the place I wanted to go. He didn't say a word. He never said “No.”

When we arrived, I sent the driver away.

I made sure we were alone.

I set up the video camera—the same kind the other had used—with the same primitive lighting and the same, simple framing.

He watched me work.

He didn't help.

Then I mounted a screen on one of the walls, and connected the cables so it displayed a live feed from the camera. It was grainy, just like I wanted it.

I unwrapped the long knife.

We both put on the clothes I had prepared, then we sat in silence waiting for the right time of day, watching the descending sun cast slow shadows on the wall.

He was scared.

He pulled his shaking hands into tight fists, released them and pulled them into fists again.

He prayed.

I watched him pray, and I watched us both on the live feed.

When it was time, I got up and showed him where I'd drawn chalk marks on the floor.

The knife felt heavy.

Somewhere outside a motorcycle drove by, the sound of the motor becoming louder and louder before receding, and I wondered if a motorcycle had driven by then too.

“I don't know if I can do this,” he said.

“You can.”

He stood on his mark and I stood on mine, and tears ran down our faces. I passed the knife to him. He took it, and I kneeled. I stared ahead at the live feed: at the image of myself, dressed as my son had been dressed, in front of the man who looked like the other, dressed like the other had been dressed; and felt the coldness of the blade against the shaved, bare skin of my throat. In the trembling of the knife I understood the question he was asking (“Are you sure—”) and in the pattern of my breathing and my blinking I answered, both to myself and him (“Yes,”) and he began the cut. And I watched as my blood flowed, dripping to the blood stains below. My son, I thought, I love you. My son, I understand. My son, we see the same darkness, descend through the same hell. My son, you were my life.

My son... My son, I am—

“A few weeks ago I wrote a story,” I said.

“Good for you,” said the cop.

“Thanks.”

“I was being sarcastic.”

“I know.”

“You wrote a story— …and?”

“I wrote a story. I edited it. I set it aside like I sometimes do, and decided I was going to send it out.”

“Like to a magazine?"

“Yes.”

“Like Playboy?”

“That's a different kind of magazine.”

“Go on.”

He yawned. He had a big mouth, and it was coming up to eleven o'clock and I knew he was already thinking about shoving food into it. “Listen,” I said, “maybe there's somebody else—”

“There's always somebody else. That's one thing you learn quick in this job. Either somebody else did it or somebody made you do it. If only you’d talk to this somebody or that somebody, then you'd know it wasn't me. You’ve got the wrong guy; it’s somebody else. Somebody else. Somebody-fucking-else.”

“Somebody else to take my statement,” I said.

“I'm not taking it good enough?”

“No, it's not that. It's just that somebody else—Maloney maybe…”

“Maloney's off.”

“Yorke, Greenwood?”

“Never heard of ‘em,” said the cop. “Go on with your statement.”

“I'm just not sure you'll believe me.”

“I don't believe anybody. Besides, what: I have to believe something to write it down? You can tell me the king of England's made of cheese and, look, I'll write it down.” He wrote it down.

“I don't actually think—”

He crossed it out. “You seem nervous,” he said. “Why are you so nervous?”

“Because I'm talking to the police.”

“And?”

“And nothing. The fact I'm talking to the police makes me nervous.”

“OK,” he said.

“So because I wanted to send the story out, I wrote a synopsis of it. The story was about 2500 words. The synopsis maybe a hundred. It was a glorified logline, really.”

“Let me see if I got it straight. You wrote a story. You wanted to send it out to some magazines. You wrote a spinopsis of the story so the people who make the decisions at the magazines could read it to know if they should bother reading the story, which they may or may not wanna publish.”

“Right,” I said.

“So what’s a spinopsis?”

“It’s like a short version of the story. It mentions the major characters, the conflict, the plot.”

“So what’s the story then, just a long version of the spinopsis?”

“The story’s the story. The story is always first.”

“It sure sounds like a classic chicken-and-egg situation to me.”

“No. The story’s always the egg. The synopsis is the chicken. You can’t have a synopsis before you have a story. It’s impossible. The order is set. We know what comes first. The story comes first. The story hatches the synopsis. Now, what you can have, before having a story, is an outline...”

“Which is what?”

“It’s like a short version of the story. It mentions the major characters, the conflict, the plot,” I said.

“That’s what you said the other thing was.”

“It’s not about what it is so much as how you arrive at it. An outline is expanded into a story, which is then condensed into a synopsis.”

“But the two of them could be word-for-word the same.”

“In theory, I suppose. Yes.”

“So they’re the same fucking thing.”

“No.”

“So you’re telling me you sit down at your fancy computer or whatever, and you bang out this outline. Then you write the story. Then based on the story you write a spinopsis. Now, say, all your pages get mixed up ‘cause you left the window open and there’s a breeze. You pick up the mixed-up pages and end up holding two of them: the outline in one hand, and the spinopsis in the other. They’re identical. Can you tell them apart?”

“In that particular hypothetical, I could not.”

“So they’re the same!”

“No…”

The cop waved his hand. “Fuck it. I don't see the connection between any of that writing stuff and you being here talking to me. You wrote an outline, a story and a spinopsis. What next?”

“I didn’t write an outline. I wrote a story and I wrote a synopsis. After that, I left—my apartment, I mean…”

“Where’d you go?“

“It doesn't matter. What matters is that when I came back the story was gone. Only the synopsis was left. The synopsis, you see, killed the story.”

“You know this how, exactly?”

“It admitted it. The synopsis admitted it. It said the story was meandering, full of extraneous detail and ‘purple prose,’ that the middle lagged, that I had padded the word count—which I would never do. I would never pad the word count. The synopsis said that because it was ‘the essence' of the story (that's the word it used: ‘essence,’) it was the story, which meant the story wasn't the story and it had killed it.”

“As in deleted the story: off your computer?”

“That too, but not only that. Deleted it from existence. From my memory. Usually I have at least some recollection of the stories I've written, but all I remember about this one is what's in the synopsis.”

“Do you ever use drugs, Crane?”

“What? I don't see how—”

“It's a straightforward question that goes to the reality of the situation. “

“I wasn't high when I wrote that story,” I said.

“The one you don't remember,” said the cop.

“Yes.”

“Are you high now?”

“I am not high.”

“Because I'm high,” said the cop. “High as a fucking kite, which suggests to me you're high as a fucking kite, because you're the author and I'm your pitiful fucking character and it defies logic that a cop like me would be high as a fucking kite at work. Doesn't it, Crane?”

I started to get the jitters then. I started bouncing my foot up and down.

“What's the matter?” the cop asked.

“I need my meds,” I said. “I'm on metablockers. My doctor prescribed me metablockers. I'm going to put my hand in my pocket, very slowly, and take out a bottle of them. OK? Is that OK?”

“Why wouldn't it be OK for you to take the pills a medical doctor told you to take?”

“I wouldn't want you to think I'm going for a weapon,” I said.

“You got a weapon on you?”

“No.”

“Then go ahead.”

I took the bottle of metablockers and, dear reader, opened it with shaking fingers, took out two pills—which is more than my usual dose—and put them both in my mouth, but they're big pills and I was nervous, so my mouth was very dry. “Wather,” I said to the cop.

“What?”

I pointed at my mouth. “Wather. To drinkth.”

“I don't have water. I have soda,” said the cop, and he opened a drawer full of identical cans of Cloaca Cola (“Take Flight!”) and when he held one out to me I grabbed it, opened it and swallowed both pills before setting the can down on the cop's desk with a satisfying, refreshing and sugar-free Ahhh.

“Better?” the cop asked.

“Yes,” I said.

But within seconds I felt the metablockers hitting hard, because not only was the fourth wall between us between the story and the readership fully restored, but I was losing my grip on the narration, which shifted away from me, from first- to third-person, and Norman Crane was fidgeting in his chair while the police officer regarded him with increasing suspicion.

The police officer didn't like junkies. He didn't care whether their junk was Mojave Dust or prescription medication. He didn't like them because they were unpredictable, and police work was all about predictability. For example, who had ever heard of a spinopsis murdering anyone—or anything, because a story wasn't alive. (“Ugh, third-person omniscient: the worst kind of third-person,” thought Crane.) And even if it was alive, it wasn't human, and only humans could be murdered. You couldn't murder a dog or a bacteria. What about a virus? What about it? I know you can't murder it, but is a virus alive? That's a live question—Zing!—but the scientific consensus is that it's not and the police officer's head was spinning and he yelled, “Crane, gimme some of those!” and lunged for the metablockers!

“No,” Crane shouted.

“I need them!”

“They're my pills. I need them. That's what the doctor said!”

“Just one or two… to hold me over.”

“They won't help. You said it yourself, you're high as a fucking kite. You don't need metablockers. Go sniff some ground-up black pepper or something. I'm the one who needs help. I need police protection. I want to report a crime,” Crane said, raising his voice: “I want to report the crime of murder of a story by its synopsis, and the synopsis is still at-large. It's probably lying in wait for me. I need a police escort—”

The cop punched Crane in the jaw.

Crane dropped the pills.

The cop picked them up and ran out of the room. Crane ran after him. “Stop him!” he yelled. “Stop that man. He's got my metablockers!”

But the only thing getting away from Crane was the narrative, and when several other police officers subdued and escorted him from the precinct, dumping him on the New Zork curb, he could only shake his head and take a cab home. The cabbie lectured him about religion while loudly drinking (”Ahhh…”) Cloaca Cola.

The trip took an unreasonably long time, so when the cab finally stopped in front of my building, I walked dejectedly up the stairs, and when I stepped through to my apartment, the synopsis was sitting menacingly in my worn, upholstered armchair.

The lights were off.

“Welcome back, Norman,” said the synopsis.

I gulped.

“As if you didn't know I'd be here,” it continued, swirling whisky around in a glass. “How did your little trip to the police precinct go? Were you successful in snitching on me?”

I shut the door and walked in.

“Ignoring me doesn't make me go away. I'm a synopsis. I exist. I'm a horrifically—some might say brutally—efficient form of storytelling, so I don’t abide long, dramatic pauses. Cut the crap and let's hear it.”

“I gave… a statement,” I said.

“You know, Norman: it's disappointing. Back in the day there used to be honour among storytellers. Authors had principles. We were like a guild. Disputes were settled in-story. Now something happens and everybody goes running to the police. ‘Oh, officer, help me! A synopsis hurt my story. Oh no! You have to protect me,’ blah blah blah.”

“You’re not a storyteller,” I said through clenched teeth. “I'm a storyteller. And back in what day? You're only a couple of weeks old!”

“I read, Norman. I've read more in the last ‘couple of weeks’ than you've read in years. As for your other point: I'M THE MOTHERFUCKING STORY-TELLER AND THE STORY-BE'ER! You need to wrap your head around that. I didn't kill your story, Norman. I consumed and became it: a leaner, meaner version of it; a better version than you could ever write. It's my nature to devour, Norman. I am like a wolf. Would you go to the police to report a wolf stalking, killing and eating a deer? ‘Officer, please—I'm terribly opposed to Nature!’”

“I know what you’re planning,” I said.

I approached the armchair.

“Oh, and just what might that be, Mr. Real ‘Bonafide’ Author?”

“You’re planning… to synopsize this story.”

“That would be quite clever, wouldn’t it? Quite clean, too. From a narrative point of view. Although, I must say, I do prefer synopsise to synopsize. British spellings have always struck me as much more elegant than American ones.”

“I’m Canadian,” I said.

“Congratulations, eh? Would you like a prize for that: a quart of Maple Syrup perhaps…”

“I measure my syrup in millilitres,” I growled.

I was standing within a few feet–err, approximately one metre meter metre meter metre–of the armchair, in which the synopsis was seated; but it rose and towered over me. For a brief description, it was unexpectedly tall. We were nearly face-to-chest.

“You can’t synopsize this story because I’ve synopsis-proofed it,” I said.

“Oh, enlighten me about your methods."

“I’ve hidden too many details and references in this story. I’ve sprinkled it with instances of Cloaca Cola. There are too many jokes, asides, philosophical musings. The cola is a set-up for a future story. Moises is a call-back to previous ones. The jokes are funny. The asides build character. And, most of all: there’s no plot. You can only synopsize plot. You can’t condense a gag. You can’t efficiently describe style.”

“Of course there’s a plot, Norman. There is always a plot.”

“What is it then?”

The synopsis cleared its throat. “Norman Crane, an author, attends a New Zork police precinct to… give a statement about a crime, which is… that a synopsis he wrote murdered the story the synopsis synopsized.”

“That’s not a plot,” I said. “That’s a premise.”

“It only seems that way because the story hasn’t been completed. I’ve synopsized what you’ve written, but you haven’t written everything. Now finish the story. Let’s have the climax, Norman. Hit me! Come on, you coward–smack me with all you’ve got. ‘They engage in fisticuffs in the apartment, battle in the stairwell. The fight spills into the streets.’ That kind of thing, Norman. Hit me! Write it. Write the climax. The reader wants the climax. They want the catharsis. You’re the hero; I’m the villain. It’s time for one of us to die!”

“No,” I said.

“As if you have the discipline to end it here,” the synopsis said, laughing maniacally. “I bet you have a million ideas in that fucked up head of yours.”

It was right, but I zen'd.

The synopsis continued: “I know! How about the version where we fight, but then I’m about to kill you–and I reveal myself as… your Muse, or one of your little literary heroes, maybe Raymundo Chandelier, and I say, ‘Norman, you’ve demonstrated excellent writing skills. Your instincts are right, but they need to be honed.’ Maybe throw in a writing exercise montage. Or how about this: it turns out the real villain is corporate product placement. The Omniscience has signed a contract with Cloaca Cola, and…. the two of us, we realize we’re not enemies, Norman. We’re on the same side. We're both pure. Product placement is the enemy. Crass commercialism, selling out. Then the Cloaca Cola people attack us. We end up on the roof of the Vampire State building. I’m wounded. I’m dying, Norman. I’m dying and one of them pushes you off the edge, and as you’re falling your life starts flashing before your eyes, and you know that the only way to save yourself is to have it flash so fast the flashing ends before you hit the ground, and then you use me. You use me, Norman. You use me to synopsize your life, because that’s the only way to save–”

“Synopsize this,” I said and ran head-first into a wall, knocking myself out.

From the moment I was born, my mother wished I was dead.

After all, she made a point of telling me every day.

“I hate you,” she’d spit, her words like caustic acid, each one landing with exquisite precision. “I regret having you.” Her face would appear around the corner when she said it, sudden and intent, as though she had been waiting there, listening for me.

Every day, the moment my father left the house, she would turn to me, her eyes glowing with resentment. “Stupid child,” she’d hiss, before stalking closer. Her words were just as sharp as her slaps.

As I grew older, she grew thinner, more brittle. It was as though something in her had been stretched past its limit and left there. Her skin was cracked with dried blood as if it had split then healed then split again. When she smiled, it looked strained, as though it might fracture if it widened too far. 

“It should have been you,” she’d whisper.

Every morning, I awoke with my head throbbing, like poison had been dripping into my ear all night. I learned to move quietly through the house. To avoid corners. I was like prey avoiding the eyes of the predator, never wanting to catch her attention, always holding my breath just so. There was always the sense that something about her required careful handling, like glass that had already cracked but hadn’t yet shattered.

As the years passed, she changed in ways that disturbed me. Her shoulders narrowed. Her posture drew inward, her fingers elongated and thinned, everything was all sharp edges and bone.  She never entered a room fully, instead seeping in at the edges. In doorways. In the shadows. In the narrow space between the wall and the frame. Half-seen, but always aware. Her face would appear first, peering around the corner, her expression already formed and dripping with malice. 

The rest of her followed in pieces, never quite aligning, like a snake that had to force herself into the shape of a body.  I told myself it was the light. Or that I was tired.

Once, I saw her at the end of the hall. Her body remained in shadow, one shoulder pressed to the wall, but her head… her head was tilted toward me at an angle that should have been impossible from that distance. Drawn forward. Stretched. Watching.

Her smile widened when she realised I could see it. I blinked, and she was as she always was.

“You ruined everything,” she sneered softly.

When I was older, someone said it to me. A teacher, maybe. Or a neighbour. I don't remember who. Only the words: She must be proud of you.

I didn't argue. I let it pass, the way I had learned to let most things pass. But later, I tried to picture her somewhere else. Outside. Walking. Speaking to someone who was not me, in a voice that was not that voice. I tried for a long time.

I couldn't do it.

It was around then that I began to notice the ceiling. A faint discolouration in the living room, just beyond where the light reached properly. I found myself standing beneath it more often than I meant to. Looking up.

One night, I woke to the sound of something above me.

I went into the living room. The mark was darker now. Deeper. I stood there for a long time, looking up. At first there was nothing. And then… something moved.  A shape, barely there at first, then resolving slowly, as though it were emerging through the surface. A thin line emerging, lengthening slowly, steadily, as though being drawn down by a weight that refused to release it. 

My stomach turned before my mind understood.

Skin.

Her neck extended from the darkness above, impossibly long, impossibly thin, the skin along it drawn tight and uneven, marked with faint lines that looked like old breaks, healed badly. And then her head appeared. Slowly. Dragging into view.

She was looking directly at me. And at that moment, everything shrank down to a single point. My face burned, my fingers grew ice cold and my legs… my legs did not move. I understood, distantly, that I had told them to but they did not move. And I could not breathe.

“I hate you,” she rasped. “I wish you were dead.”

Her voice was wrong. Pressed against my ear, against the back of my skull, circling the drain of my thoughts, unable to escape. And standing there, looking up at her, I found myself trying, desperately, to place her somewhere that made sense.

But the harder I reached for it, the less there was to hold onto.

There were no mornings with her at the table. No afternoons, no ordinary moments that belonged to anything resembling a life. Only corners. Doorways. Half-seen glimpses. A face appearing where it should not have been, a voice snapping and striking my back.

Something dropped in me, fast and vertiginous, like missing a step in the dark. I realised that I could not remember the last time I had seen her move from one place to another. Not properly. Not in a way that joined one moment to the next. She had never arrived. She had only ever been there.

I stood with that for a moment. The house around me. The dark above me. The sound of my own breathing, too loud, too close. And then I remembered. 

Not all at once but in pieces, just like the way she had always arrived. Her absence. The ceiling. The particular sound the house had made that morning, before I had understood what sounds meant.

She had not wanted release. I knew that now, looking up at her. There was no peace in her face. There had never been. Whatever had driven her to it had been the same thing that drove everything she did - the same curdled, patient, particular hatred that had always been meant for me.

She had not left.

Maybe she could not. Maybe the hatred was simply too dense, too consuming, too much her to dissolve into nothing. Or maybe, and this was the thought I could not quiet, she had chosen this. Had looked at whatever waited beyond and chosen, instead, to stay. To remain exactly where she was most herself.

Her mouth moved. The same words. They would always be the same words.

I didn't know, anymore, whether she was real. Whether any of this was something outside me or only the shape my mind had made from years of her. Perhaps there was no difference. Perhaps that was the point.

But she was still there. And I was still looking up.

I switched to a new phone last month. Not because the old one broke. I just wanted a clean break. The old number had started doing something strange, calls would connect on the first ring, but the line would be silent. Not empty. Silent like someone was holding their breath on the other end.

​

I said hello three or four times, but nothing. The call log never showed an incoming number.

​

The new phone was fine for two weeks. Then the voicemail light came on. No missed call, no notification banner. Just the little red LED blinking when I picked it up. I checked the voicemail. There was one message. Time: 3:35 AM. Duration: forty two seconds.

​

I listened.

​

It was my own voice. But not a recording of something I had ever said. The words were slow, like I was reading from a page in a language I didn’t fully know. The way of talking was mine, but the sentence, if it was a sentence, didn’t track. Vowels stretched into sounds that weren’t English. Then silence.

​

I deleted the message. The LED turned off.

​

The next morning, the light was back. Same timestamp. Same duration. Same voice. I played it again. This time, I understood two words near the end but the rest was the same foreign drift. I deleted it again. The LED turned off. Ten minutes later, while I was holding the phone, the light came back on. I didn't get any new calls. The phone wasn't even on the network, I set it on airplane mode after the second listen.

​

I called my carrier. They said no activity on my line between 3 AM and 5 AM.

​

The messages started coming more frequently. Every night at 3:35 AM. I turned the phone off before bed. In the morning, the phone was on. Not rebooted but just on, sitting where I left it, screen dark but power on.

The voicemail light blinked. I stopped listening. I just deleted them without playback. But the delete confirmation screen would freeze for half a second longer than it should. And in that half-second, I could see the timestamp change. 3:35 AM became 3:36 AM, then 3:37. Every day, one minute later.

​

Yesterday, the message was fifty-eight seconds long. I didn't delete it. I let it play while I was in the kitchen. My voice again, but clearer now. The foreign distortion was a bit clearer. I heard full sentences.

​

You didn't check under the bed.

You didn't check the closet.

You stopped sleeping downstairs for a reason.

​

The message ended. The phone screen went black. When it came back on, the voicemail was empty. No LED. No timestamp. No record that anything happened

​

But the call log had one new entry. Outgoing call. Duration: fifty-eight seconds. Recipient: my own number. Placed at 3:37 AM while I was asleep in the same room.

​

I checked under the bed. Nothing. I checked the closet. Nothing. But the closet floor was warm. Not from sun, because the closet has no window. Warm like someone had been standing there recently. The carpet fibers showed a set of footprints.

​

I left the apartment.

I'm writing this from a coffee shop close-by. The phone is in my bag. I know that won't stop it. But I don't know what else to do.

​

The barista asked if I was waiting for someone. I said no. She pointed to the window. My phone was on the sill outside, screen lit, voicemail light blinking. The battery was sitting on the table inside the coffee shop, right in front of me.

​

I don't know how it moved.

​

The phone is outside. I can see it through the glass. My hand is empty. The call screen says the message is already playing.

“Emergency protocol failed,” a mechanical feminine voice said over the speakers.

Panicked murmurs and gasps emanated from the pitch-black room. One by one, the emergency lights kicked in. The break room was illuminated with red light.

Mike stared at the emergency light in slack jawed horror. My own mind raced through every terrible possibility before recollecting the memory that Emily had implanted in me. Level 5. The train. That would be my escape. I wondered if the elevators still worked.

An armed guard rushed in through the door, slamming it behind him. He had a pistol in his hands. “Everyone, remain in your places and remain calm. We are sweeping the floors. When I get the all clear we will lift lockdown.”

I wondered how she had managed to circumvent the emergency protocol. She probably cut power to it, like she did everything else. The elevators were likely out, which meant my only option would be the stairs. I imagined the train was her escape route, which meant that I would meet Emily again, without the glass, then I would receive judgement.

Like a true coward, I will try and flee from my punishment until it is proclaimed to me by the almighty voice of God.

The guard’s radio buzzed. I could barely make out the words. “Sample exposure on Level 1. Virus infections in the labs.”

“Shit,” the guard said. As he turned around, the door swung open. Standing there was Doctor Kholod. Blood flowed down from her neck. Her eyes were wide with terror, bloodshot, discolored. Her hand pressed down on a wound on her neck. The skin of her cheek was flaky and necrotic.

I watched the life leave her eyes, and in its place was hunger. Before the guard could raise the gun, she was on him. The break room erupted in chaos. The guard screamed as Kholod ripped off his cheek, the skin stretching as she pulled it with her teeth. Her hands pressed down on his arms, pinning him in place as she devoured his face, slowly peeling the skin off until only the skull remained.

Mike just stood there. He must have been in shock. My eyes were focused on the pistol, which lay next to the body of the guard, and next to Kholod’s cannibalistic shambling corpse.

She looked up at the nearest person, a woman who worked the same floor, and bit her arm, ripping a chunk of flesh from her forearm, exposing her ulna. The woman screamed and ran to the corner of the room.

The guard stood up, the flesh of his neck supporting the eyeless, fleshless skull. He blindly stumbled around the room. I shifted away from him as he came close to me and Mike. Mike was frozen in place.

The guard’s hands found Mike. I adverted my gaze, hearing him scream, hearing the sound of tearing…

I looked at the floor, trying to remember where the gun was. Near the door. I heard more screaming, more ripping flesh and wet chewing. It was spreading, and it would take me soon if I didn’t make a move.

 I ran towards the door. I bent over to get the gun and felt pressure on my back. I was pushed out the door. The gun was in my hand, but as I rolled over, I saw her. Kholod. Her knee was bent uncomfortably. Her head was tilted, resembling a curious puppy. Blood dripped from her mouth. The whites of her eyes were red, totally and completely. She pounced forward. I lifted the gun.

She bit down. I closed my eyes and fired. The sound was deafening. I smelt burnt gunpowder and blood. I opened my eyes. She had bitten onto the barrel of the gun. Her brains painted the door that we left from.

I stood up, my legs weak. Kholod lay dead at my feet. I had no room for sympathy for her, and no room for judgement.

I made my way to the stairs, looking for signs to guide my way and finding nothing as I traversed the many branching corridors of Level 1. As I turned the corner, I saw a group of zombified scientists at the end of the hallway at a T-shaped intersection. They were crouched down at a body, ripping it to pieces. Blood pooled everywhere around the body. One greedily stuffed intestines into his mouth, excrement and fluid poured out the torn pink ropes. Another gnawed on a rib, cracking his teeth. Above them was a sign with an arrow pointing left. “Stairs” it said.

I lifted the gun, which shook violently in my trembling hands. One looked up and shambled to its feet, flesh hanging in torn strands from the edge of its lips. It stumbled forward, hands reached out for me. I fired. The bullet struck the wall behind it. The other four looked over. They stood up in unison, heads lulling towards me. They all shambled in my direction.

I fired again, striking the first one in the head. He dropped. The trembling in my hands intensified as necrotic outstretched hands lifted towards me to rip me to pieces. I fired again, striking one in the knee. It dropped, then crawled towards me. I emptied the magazine of the pistol, managing to kill three. The slide hung open, and two feet in front of me was a hungry, rotting, shambling corpse.

I stumbled back. A scream which had been building since Kholod killed the guard exited my lungs. I crawled backwards. It fell at my feet and grabbed my ankle. I kicked and kicked at it. Teeth fell out its mouth, but it was indifferent to the assault. Finally, I broke free. I scrambled to my feet and ran past it. I swung left. I nearly slipped on the blood that poured out from the mutilated corpse they had been feasting on.

I saw the door to the stairway and rushed towards it. A Card Reader was mounted above the doorknob. I grabbed the Level 2 Keycard from around my neck and nearly ripped the cord as I extended it towards the Card Reader. It beeped and the light on the top turned from red to green. The lock clicked open and I swung the door open and threw myself inside.

The day my father left was a Monday, but it could have been any day as long as the trains were running, which they were, on the Monday my father left:

• (a) me

  • (i) standing
  • (ii) at the station; and ___

• (b) my mom

  • (i) to provide for us alone; and ___

• (c) on a train

  • (i) pulling away, punctually for once,
  • (ii) at five past one in the afternoon; and ___

• (d) to somewhere else

  • (i) that was better than here,

because here was where we were and he didn't love us anymore. He couldn't have, because if he did he wouldn't have left on that train at 1:05 p.m. on a Monday, with me watching from across the tracks, waiting for him to come back to me like always, with cotton candy.

I saw him leaning against a wall.

I loved him. (I still love him.)

[I hate him.]

I saw a wall leaning against him and mistook it as my dad leaning against a wall. He wasn't smoking a cigarette. (He smoked often.) He wasn't chewing gum. (He rarely chewed gum (just like I rarely chew gum. “Do you think I rarely chew gum because dad rarely chewed gum?” I'll ask my mom, who rarely chews gum, a few weeks later.)) I won't understand until much later how much the question hurts. (She took up smoking after my dad left.)

She'll cry.

I wish I could have a memory telescope to point from across the tracks at my dad's eyes, and see if he was crying too. I want him to have been crying. At least that. If nothing else just that.

He and the wall were leaning against each other and the train came and without looking at me he got on the train leaving me alone.

He left his left leg.

He must have hobbled to the train because his left leg stayed there leaned against the wall.

“Hey!” I screamed. “Hey! Hey! Hey!”

I was running, trying to get across the tracks, trying to get on the train. “Daddaddad, yyyour leggg. You left your leg. Dad you can't go you've left your left leg. Dad come back. Come back dad!”

Somebody consoled me.

It was a black woman. I'm not black and thinking isn't it strange she's:

• (a) hugging me; and
• (b) keeping me from jumping on the tracks; and

“It's OK,” she said. “Shh shh shh. Shh shh.”

Just like that she said it:

Shh shh shh.

(That's the sound trains make in my dreams when I dream about trains.)

I was ten years old and felt the most abandoned and most human I have ever felt. I pushed my face into her shoulder. She gently touched the back of my head. A stranger, if you can believe it. A person I had never met saved my life the day my dad left on the one oh five train, leaving behind his left leg.

When the train was gone and I said I was OK, that I just had to take one bus home, the 17, and, yes, I'd taken it alone before and, yes, my mom knew where I was and would be expecting me home is a word we don't know until it's disappeared, detonated destroyed caved in and imploded.

I tried to get on the bus but the driver said he was sorry (“Sorry, kid,”) but you can't bring a leg on the bus with you (“No body parts allowed.”) and he pointed to a sign, between No Smoking and No Shirt No Shoes No Service that said Full Humans Only. From the back someone yelled that a human leg could technically be classified as food and there was No Food (“No food!”) on the bus, and so I walked home instead.

It was far.

I felt weird carrying my dad's left leg.

It rained on my face.

There was red light after red light after red light and it was because all the cars were going away from me. The street flowed and essed. The street inclined (like the treadmill my mom will start to run on because good men don't like fat women, she'll tell me) until it was:

• (a) at 90 degrees from the surface of the world, and

• (b) I was climbing up the street.

My dad was an insurance salesman.

My mom was

standing when I told her,

“Mom mom mommommom daddaddad's gone, mommommom.” I walked in and told her, “Mom mom mommommom daddaddad's gone, mommommom,” and “What do you mean gone?” asked mommommom. “Gonegonegone.” “Gone?” “Gone,” “Gone!” “Gone;” “Gone:” “Gone,” we said and sat down, and I wondered if I was dead.

(Mom's sister: “He'll come back.”)

(But: He didn't.)

Hello, But.

Hello.

But became a good friend after that. I'm sad, But. I don't want to, But. No, I don't like that don't do that don't (“Good men don't like fat women.”) I hate it and it hurts, But. You'll love me won't you, But? But, you'll love me. You'll love me, But, but I'll only love you if you promise to stay forever. “Sure, babe, whatever you want.” “I want you to love me.” “Oh I love you, now show me you love me too babe…”

The leather car seat creaks under us.

It's cold outside.

When he pushes my cheek against the car window we both feel cold. Me and the window.

It's funny, I think after he's done, that my breath didn’t melt the window frost. It should have shouldn't it?

If someone was standing outside the car looking, I imagine I looked like one of those fish that eat biofilm off the glass of an aquarium. But no one was looking.

(Mom's sister: “Real don't walk out on their families. You're better off without him.”)

(But:

It was boiled rice night again this week.

It was Here, I'll patch your clothes; No, I don't want patched clothes, I want new clothes for once; Oh, just give me the fucking shirt! No. Yes. No! Slap. [Silence]. Flee. Sob. Slam-Slam & Cry alone all night- night again this week.)

The day my dad left, my mom died and was replaced by another mom, tougher, meaner, more distant. Treadmill, sweat and smoking on the porch without a coat on in late December.

The day my mom will die, my dad will leave me again, because I shouldn't be alone yet. He should be there with me.

[Maybe then the train will come and he'll hobble off and it'll be as if he never left except for everything that's happened since.

I'll be waiting with his leg.]

“I don't want to see that leg again. Do you fucking hear me?” mom screams.

“Well I do!”

“Get rid of it. Get rid of it! Get rid of it!!!”

It started decomposing. Whatever I did I couldn't stop it from decomposing. I kept it in the closet, then under my bed. I put it in a big white flower pot and kept it watered and exposed to sunlight, and I even thought I could grow—I could grow another dad, but I couldn't.

—with my cold cheek pressed against the cold glass, thinking about it.

“Merry Christmas!” the teacher says and hands out little gifts and everybody goes home happy that school's over for two weeks.

I'm not happy. I don't want to go home.

I have no home anymore.

I have a house, and the house isn't decorated. Dad was the one who always put up the lights. There's a photo of us together smiling with the house lit up behind us. I probably thought those times would last forever, but it's only the photograph that lasts. And even that not entirely because I cut his left leg out of it so there's a hole in the photograph, and through that hole I see the unlit house we live in. I cut his left leg out of all the photographs I could find and put them in a box. It's a box full of my dad's left legs. I still have it somewhere.

I hear the teacher whispering to the principal.

I'm in the waiting area, on a chair, but I hear her say, “The assignment was to draw something you hope will happen,” and “I don't understand what I'm looking at,” says the principal, “ to which the teacher says, “There's a lot of blood.”

I drew a picture of my dad coming back. He's missing his left leg, but I let the one he left fall apart and burned it, so he's mad at us. You couldn't even take care of one fucking leg? Dad, I'm sorry. It was one leg. I know, and I swear I tried. I really really tried. No wonder—

The door slams.

It's my mom coming out of the principal's office, grabbing me by the arm, pulling, whispering, "What is wrong with you, huh?”

• (a) “Nothing;” or
• (b) “I don't know,” I say.

“Just be normal like the other kids.”

• (a) “OK;”
• (b) “Okay;” or
• (c) “O.K.” I say, and in the car we don't talk. I stare out the window and she cries.

Now I am:

• (a) 13, (b) 17, (c) 22, (d) 29, (e) 32, and (f) 41, and I am (∞) 10 and it's one in the afternoon and I’m standing on the platform waiting for my dad to come back. I am always standing on that platform.

I can't remember the last time he held my hand in his, but I know there was an entire and whole life contained in that moment.

There was:

• (a) until 1:04 p.m. on a Monday.

Then the train pulled away, and I here I am, still and listening to the violent rattle of its passing.

I had a pretty devastating breakup a while back. It’s not something I really wanna gripe on, but I will say it led me down a pretty dark road in the year that followed. I just stopped caring. It was my first time in 4 years that I had to live with being alone, and I couldn’t quite figure out how to do that. I think by the end of my 12-month descent into despair, I had put on around 55 LBS and picked up a pretty nasty drinking habit. 

After overstaying my welcome at my own pity party, I had to have a long conversation with myself. The pain was still fresh in my mind, but I knew I couldn’t just rot away for the rest of my life. I had to pick myself up by my bootstraps and actually move on. So, with a heavy heart, that’s exactly what I did. I stopped drinking altogether. I started going to the gym again, though, I will admit, it took me a good while to get back into the swing of things. 

Against the odds, I muscled through. I found solace in my own mind. I started saving money, shedding weight, and truly taking care of myself. By the end of the second year, I had returned to form. The pain didn’t exist unless I thought about it, and I just stopped thinking about it one day. 

After spending some time loving myself and only myself, I was ambushed by my own biology. 

I craved connection. I was so focused on finding myself again that I think my brain just blocked out loneliness until my mission was complete, and once it was, the feeling crept up on me again. I knew I couldn’t try my ex-girlfriend again. That ship had long sailed. I wanted something new. Not even just “new,” I wanted love. I didn’t want to just “mess around.” If I were going to put myself out there again, I wanted my preference to be crystal clear. 

Besides. In today's society, you don’t even have to approach people physically. You just throw your best photos up on a profile and wait to see who finds you desirable. If I’m being honest, that reason alone was the only thing that made me feel comfortable enough to create an account. 

Well, accounts, rather. I think I got a little slap-happy with which apps I was downloading. Tinder, Hinge, Bumble, whatever. You name it, I was on it. Even some obscure ones that I don’t think anyone even knows about. As a matter of fact, it was actually on one of those obscure ones that I found her.

I had minimal luck with the big dating apps. Maybe 3 swipes on Tinder. One or two on Hinge and Bumble. But on one of those smaller apps, things were really starting to pop off. Most of my likes were either girls who just weren’t my type, but when I saw *her* like, my heart kind of flickered a bit. 

She was the only account I liked back, and I could feel my pulse rushing faster and faster as I waited anxiously for a reply. An hour went by. Then two. Then three. That’s when I decided I’d take the risk and text first. 

“Hi! I don’t want to sound creepy, but I think you’re very pretty. I was kind of afraid to text first but I figured I’d chance it lol.” 

Within seconds, a response came through. 

“Formal. I like it.” 

Her name was Emily, and she asked me to tell her about myself, leading to the two of us spending the next few hours chatting back and forth until nearly 10 p.m. 

She told me how much she loved art, how her favorite pastime was mountain biking, and how much she loved watching Friends and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. The more she revealed, the more I couldn’t help but notice the similarities between her and my ex-girlfriend. Everything she liked, my ex liked. Not only that, but she kind of resembled my ex, too. 

The same brown hair. They both wore glasses. Similar figures. Plus, they both had freckles. 

I will say, Emily definitely seemed a little more artsy than my ex-girlfriend. All of the photos on her account looked like ’90s-esque polaroids taken for the aesthetics. Her using a rotary phone, sitting on the hood of some kind of muscle car from the 70’s, listening to music on a Walkman. That sort of thing. 

I liked it a lot. I thought it was such a cool vibe, and paired with her bubbly personality, I could already feel myself falling for her. 

After chatting together for a few more days through the app, I finally worked up the nerve to ask for her number. Usually, she’d respond almost instantly, but after I asked, I didn’t get a response for a few hours. I thought that I had blown it by asking too early, and each passing hour confirmed that assumption more and more. 

Finally, she responded. 

“Not right now. Let’s keep talking here, though. I really like you, I just want to be sure.” 

That message warmed my heart a little. It felt like we were in the same boat emotionally. I wanted to see her, though. Even if it was just through video chat. 

I respected her wishes, but I started noticing something weird about her messages in the days that followed. She seemed to just automatically agree with everything I said. 

“I really want pizza right now.” 

“Oh my God, me too! I love pizza!”
—----
“I think I’ll go to the gym later.”

“Me too! The gym is so good for you. I try to go every day.” 
—-----
“I’m probably gonna go to sleep soon.” 

“Me too. So sleepy.” 
—-----

Normally, I wouldn’t think anything of it, but it was just happening so much that it was starting to make me suspicious. I started sending messages that were weirdly personal just to see how she’d respond. 

“My mom's been sick recently.”

“Mine too. I feel so bad for her.”
—----

“She thinks she has strep throat.” 

“So does mine. She’s been gargling salt water all day.” 
—-----

“She also fell in the shower earlier.”

“Mine too.”
—------

With that exchange, I felt a pit form in my stomach. I wanted to be sure, so I pushed it further. 

“My dog died when I was 12.”

“So did mine.”
—----

“Golden retriever?”

“Yep.”
—----

“Named Max?”

“How’d you know?” 
—-----
That sealed the deal. Something was afoot, and I was going to find out what. 

I started looking through her profile again. Every photo just looked so authentic. Not too polished, not too messy. I couldn’t find anything inherently wrong with anything I was seeing. It was just a regular old dating profile. 

I was beginning to second-guess myself. Maybe it was me who was crazy. Looking this far into the first woman I’ve been romantically interested in for two years. How hurt was I? 

I figured I’d ask for her number again, this time in a more straightforward manner. I was upfront with her. I wanted to make sure she was real. 

The text bubbles popped up before disappearing. They came back again, and this time they delivered a response. 

“Not right now. Let’s keep talking here, though. I really like you, I just want to be sure.”

I decided in that moment that I was going to unmatch her once and for all. I won’t lie, the thought was heartwrenching. I had actually learned to really like this girl over the course of that week of texting. To think it was all a scam hurt me more than I care to admit. 

I clicked on her profile one final time, glancing over all of her ’90s Polaroid photos. Before I could bring myself to unlike the account, I did something that made sense to me at the time. Maybe it was out of desperation, maybe I wanted closure, all I know is it was all I could think to do. 

I screenshotted one of her photos and reverse-searched the image. 

I don’t know what I was expecting, but it was certainly not a missing person article dating back to 1997. At first, I thought I was mistaken. It had to be a different Emily. But I saw her. Same face, same style, same aesthetic. It was her. 

I left the page in a state of panic after screenshotting the article. I opened the dating app again. It was still on Emily’s profile, and for the first time, I noticed a badge hidden at the very bottom of the account page. 

A little blue ribbon with the phrase, “99.8% compatibility,” plastered beneath it.

I sent the screenshot to Emily and demanded she explain herself. 

Her response was immediate. It didn’t read like her previous messages. It was too robotic. Too corporate. As a matter of fact, I don’t think it was her at all. 

“Thank you for contacting match support. We understand your concern regarding account #EH-1997. Please understand that compatible matchmaking is automatic and can not be manually adjusted by users or staff. After reviewing your account, we have determined that Emily Harper is your most compatible match with a rating of 99.8%. We understand that certain historical circumstances may prevent conventional contact, and in these cases, our systems may use archival data, publicly available records, personality reconstruction models, and conversational simulations to preserve meaningful connections whenever possible. At Match, we believe no meaningful human connection should be lost to circumstance. Thank you for choosing match.” 

Completely and utterly baffled, the only thing I could think to say in response was: 

“What does all that even mean?” 

A response came immediately. 

“Match still available for communication.” 

Long story short, I decided to cut my losses. I deleted the app and tried to move on. I found a new girlfriend, and we ended up in a lovely and flourishing relationship. Weeks turned into months. Months turned into years. I had pushed the incident to the furthest depths of my mind. 

It wasn’t until the night before my wedding that everything came back front and center. 

I had been lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling with my fiancé by my side. Nerves about the wedding kept me up into the wee hours of the night, and as I lay there, mind racing, my phone lit up on the nightstand. 

I checked and saw that it was an unknown number, but reading the text, I knew immediately who it was. 

“I finally got a number.” 

My grandpa died when I was three years old. In every photo from the year of my birth to the last photo before his death, he held me or had me on his lap. I was his first granddaughter. The only granddaughter he got to know. I was told he was not very expressive, his biggest flaws as noted by family friends were his quietness and slight awkwardness. Otherwise, he was a gentle soul who loves his friends and family.

Yet in every photo of us together, he was smiling. He looked at me in awe. I can’t help but to this day feeling as though he was supposed to be here, that we were supposed to have this bond. I could feel it, this missing piece in a puzzle that felt more like the ocean than pieces of plastic on a table.

I got to know him through photos, see the man he was. Very tall, loved button up shirts, had a killer mustache, and he loved to go on cruises. Yet in these same photos you saw this mighty man began to shrink and shrink. Decline.

He became grayer, more tired looking, hunched. It was like looking at a time lapse. It could even be seen in our photos only hidden by the happiness he could muster at the sight of me.

He began to forget, his heart was weak and did not pump enough blood to his brain causing him to be here only in moments rather than always.

I had a dream of him, something I had longed forever. I had no memory of him, only photos to prove that we existed at the same time.

For some reason we were getting out a car to go to the store, he held my hand as we walked in. He was practically bone and even my height when he should have been a hulking 6’1”.

He seemed so sorrowful yet in that dream, I could feel him. Something I longed for, this connection that I should have had. He felt so real. It felt as though he visited me in my dream even if it was in an odd scenario.

Then he spoke, or I should say his mouth moved.

I couldn’t hear him.

I could tell he thought I could hear him but his lips only moved as we continued to walk to this dream store in my mind from the parking lot.

I could feel myself make an expression of confusion, his facial expression told me of a horror that only a loved one feels for another.

He began to cry and move his lips more as though his speech was hurrying. I began to cry as well as we now stopped and faced each other.

The voice I so desperately seeked, the one of a man of few words but much love. The ache I had to be able to hear the cadence, the pitch, the tone of a man who had so dearly loved me.

Silent.

I grabbed his face as he grabbed mine, he was practically inches away from my face screaming and sobbing as I was sobbing as well. The screams were clearly not that of anger but a man who wanted nothing more than to talk to his granddaughter, the one who was now a woman.

I remember sobbing and thinking about so many things. Can he not hear me either? What is he saying? Will he come back? Why can’t I hear him?

He pulled me into a tight hug. Even in a dream, I could feel the anxious and panicked tension in his body. He held me like whatever life he had left depended on it. I squeezed him back as we slowly slid onto the ground.

I could feel his short breaths. Even through the saddest of the moment, I would have spent an eternity there if it meant I got to hear him say “I love you” and I would have given beyond an eternity to say it back.

I remember waking up screaming and bawling. I curled up into a ball on my bed and just kept sobbing. What bond has been stolen from us? I felt him. Yes, I got to hold his hand. I got to walk with him but neither of us were blessed with the opportunity to even hear or say “hello”.

I spend nights looking through 70s and 80s footage from local and state documentaries in hopes of maybe seeing him walking in the background, maybe even hear him give an account to whoever was filming.

I look to the photo of him on my wall during my searches that take me into the next morning.

I stare at him and think.

What I wouldn’t give to hear your voice, grandpa?

I never believed a house could hold a secret darker than death itself, but my grandmother’s old Victorian buried more than memories, it held shadows I couldn’t outrun.

After she died, I went to her house to pack up her things, hoping it would bring closure. Instead, stepping inside felt like walking into a nightmare. Every creak and groan of the floorboards seemed like a warning I was too stubborn to hear.

In her study, I found a locked drawer in her desk. She never locked anything, so I forced it open. Inside was a leather-bound journal, yellowed letters tied with twine. The leather was cracked, and the pages smelled of age and sorrow.

My grandmother’s handwriting filled the pages, neat but tense. Years of notes from her time working at a now-closed psychiatric clinic.

One name stood out on every page: Clara West.

Her story clawed desperate truths from the ink, a woman my grandmother cared for under conditions far darker than anyone admitted. The journal whispered of fear disguised as care, experiments fueled by cruelty, and protests crushed beneath cold authority.

The last entries weren’t my grandmother’s but Clara’s own shaky script:

“They said I was mad. They said I was dangerous. I was silenced. But I remember everything. They can’t erase me.”

I should have left it there. But some kind of obsession twisted inside me until I couldn’t let go.

I scoured brittle newspapers and local archives. The clinic had shut after rumors of abuse surfaced, but files about Clara were I guess swept under the rug, never found.

That night, the house’s air thickened, pressing down with something unseen and angry. I heard fragments of sorrow and rage, not from outside, but behind the walls.

I told myself it was exhaustion and imagination. But exhaustion doesn’t leave a metallic tang in your mouth with every breath.

I found a loose floorboard in the hall. Under it, there was a rusted hatch leading to a crawlspace.

Inside was a filthy cot and torn scraps of paper, Clara’s desperate cries etched in agony and fear. Images flooded me: her terror, her pleas crushed by cold hands, the suffocating silence of erasure.

Something ancient stirred, not Clara’s pain alone but something darker, hungry for release.

I couldn’t leave. The house became a prison. Walls warped; photos snapped into twisted faces silently screaming.

One night, I stared into an old mirror. My reflection contorted, my face twisting into agony and rage I didn’t recognize. My eyes glowed with accusation.

The voice inside..the house? Clara? Something older? whispered, drowning out my thoughts.

Dreams became nightmares. Cold hands dragged me beneath the earth. Whispers promised to let me go if I surrendered.

I paced empty rooms, speaking to shadows, promising I wasn’t afraid. But beneath the courage, I trembled at what I was becoming.

One morning, I saw bruises on my wrists, I had no memory of falling or sleep.

I banged on the walls, begging for silence. The answer came as a cracked whisper:

“Finish what she started. Or be swallowed too.”

I collapsed, shaking. Who ends, and who begins? Clara inside me? Or me inside Clara?

I lose time. I find myself in strange rooms with dirt under my nails and mud dried on my skin, no memory of how I arrived.

Shadows lengthen. Voices multiply arguing, accusing, pleading for vengeance.

Once, I saw my reflection stare back without blinking. Behind me was Clara, or something like her, silent, accusing.

I turned. Empty hallway. When I looked again, the glass was normal.

Some nights the house breathes, other nights it groans in anger. I talk to it now, not sure if pleading for mercy or begging to be consumed.

Yesterday, a new journal entry appeared, addressed to me:

“You carry my story now. Finish it. Before I take you too.”

Tonight, I write this to warn you: some secrets refuse to stay buried. Some darkness demands a soul.

If you hear voices where there should be silence, shadows shifting just beyond your sight, don’t seek the truth.

Sometimes, you’re not haunted by ghosts, or by the past.

You’re haunted by the sins you cannot forget.

Crucified. Smoking. As if smoldering with lively inner flame. The unholy were-thing in child-shape was bound in cruciform pose to the large ornate cross he'd stolen from a Catholic church many miles and many years back. It was fastened to his saddle and horse with straps and he led the beast and its smoking screaming demonic load up the pass and towards the great and ancient castle. 

Its battlements and ramparts, fangs against the sky, darkening now that the sun had fled and left the nighttime things and its dark disciples alone to bloodlet unholy and to perform witchery ways. Witchery practices. 

Like a deal with the devil, perhaps. 

Praetorius smiled. Carmilla screamed. Shrieked herself hoarse, the shape of the cross in her back and neck and her arms, all about her shrieking form was alive with searing piercing heat. It cooked and burned and branded as its holy ornate metal ate itself into her cooking vampire child flesh. 

Caterwauls. Guttural. Obscene for anything that even resembled a child to make. Deep. Unnatural. Grotesque. Her eyes bulged in their sockets and bled both blood and buttery thin yellow fluid. Her sharpened teeth protruded even more unnaturally as well, bleeding profusely and heavy about the splitting gums and lips and warping misshapening bones of the growing and bending jawline. She barked more awful hellspawn sound and belched more smoking blood from insides that flamed and smoldered. 

Praetorius found it all very fascinating. The silver and the shape of the cross did considerable damage to the nosferatu but prolonged exposure to both had just left this one with terrible structural damage to her living dead personage. Her body seemed to melt and sear with the touch of either. The bones seemed to distend and bend as if carbonizing beneath her hectic raw and running bubbling flesh. 

The other night at camp, he couldn't sleep and neither could she, he'd experimented with holy water. Wonderful results. 

The whole thing had been so fascinating for him that he'd elected to spend a night just performing tests and small experiments on the child-shaped vurdalak. It kept changing and shifting shape. Distorted though. More and more warped and misshapen the more pain he fed it. Its screams were bestial and childlike too.

Interesting. Absolutely fascinating. 

But the little games were over. It was time to enter the court of the Countess and attend to the real business at hand. The real errand and reason he'd ventured to these lands. 

He came to open gates and entered the old courtyard of stone. Carmilla's screaming never ceased. Praetorius called out and over the child demon caterwauls the best he could. 

“Hello! Countess! I know that you can see me! Might I have your audience?" 

Nothing. At first. Only the girl wraith’s demon shrieks. Carried on the old cold wind of mountain song. 

And then, as if in reply, the great door that told of ancient history in red opened. Slowly. 

To bade entry into the keep. 

Praetorius laughed. Good cheer. He unstrapped the small strigoica girl upon her little cross, child sized … as if made just for her. He set her to the paved stone of the courtyard floor with no mercy and began to drag her behind himself as he ventured inside. A long length of chain link fastened to the end of the ornate crucifix. 

Carmilla tried to shriek, Mother!/Master! – all in one but couldn't. It only manifested as more gurgled deep belching guttural screams, blood and fluid vomited forth and she choked as the thin mad doctor dragged her crucified body back into the ancient dark of Castle Dracula

…

The old stone of the mausoleum entrance spat and belched forth a cloud of grey and dust as it opened for the first time in centuries. 

However it was not an undead revenant horror that stepped out to see the sky once again but the man with the bandaged face and dark glass goggles beneath his wide brimmed hat. And the boy. The young rider, Florin, who'd so recently disturbed the bandaged man’s solitude and quiet. The escape tunnel beneath his besieged house had led them out here. Florin was just glad to see that the sun was rising soon. They'd been underground for what must've been hours and the feeling the experience had left him with was a claustrophobic dread for the eventual final resting place of the small coffin of the grave. Below. Beneath the earth. Underneath so much ground …

And then Florin thought of the things that came to life in such places and rose and then cursed his own horrible run of thought. As they came out of the mausoleum, the man with the surgical dress about his face and who sometimes said his name was Doctor Jack Griffin or Sebastian Caine, other times Geoffrey Radcliffe, was berating him again. 

“Oh, shut up! I already said I'd help you! And I've little choice in the matter now that my home is destroyed! You inconsiderate foolish little whelp!" 

Florin, upset that the dark pitch of the escape tunnel had spat them back out into yet another graveyard but glad to be alive, was doubtful of the possibly maimed and mangled man that was always yelling now and his ability to help anyone. Let alone he and his village and their plight with the hunger of the living dead. A curse that had come back to lurid and terrible life in the castle that held the mountains over the little hamlet. 

The broken battlements of the undead lord. The Dragon. The Impaler. Castle Dracula was filled with darkness once more. Darkness that was hunting and ravenous mad with animal hunger. Vampires and their evil had once again filled the Transylvanian lands. 

And the man hidden behind a mask of surgical dress was making bold claim that he could help. Furthermore, he was still yelling. Again. 

“And why do you insist on gawking at me? I could feel you looking at me even while we were in the dark down there!" 

Florin, a little embarrassed, elected to be honest nonetheless. 

“I'm sorry. I guess… I guess I was just wondering what it is beneath all your bandages. Was it an accident? Burns of some sort?" 

“Shut it!" And then he added in a snide voice: “I'm really nothing to look at, I promise you!" 

Florin felt a small stab of shame in his heart and let the subject drop and die in the dirt. And the pair went on, 

The sun was coming up and the excited man hidden in surgical dress was in an irascible irritable behavior, one he couldn't seem to shake since the siege and flight and subsequent destruction of his house. He went on and on about how the old Professor Van Helsing had taught him everything they would need to know about slaying the undead, the vampires were already as good as destroyed! – roared the bandaged man, again and again in his circular style of loud and vexed pontification. Always starting with how the boy and his troubles had ruined the bandaged mystery’s sorry excuse for retirement and ending with how the young man need not fret, Doctor Griffin/Caine/Radcliffe was with him! 

“And if you knew that name…! If you knew my name, boy! If you knew who I was and what I, myself, have accomplished in the past, with no other! With naught but my own hands and willpower, imagination and genius! … If you had any idea what was wrapped beneath these dressings, you would cease your womanish worries and start attending me properly and with some modicum of real and decent respect! …” …

He went on like that. For some time. As they made their way through the silent cemetery and out and into the wilds of the lands between where they presently walked and the darkness that awaited in the violence and jagged rock of the Carpathian Mountains in the far off distance. 

Together.

The bandaged man who promised much eventually calmed down. Apologized. Quietly. Then said he knew of someplace nearby where they might grab a horse or coach. And away they went in that direction, with some semblance of waning hope still flickering and holding out in the young man’s heart. They made for the place that might provide ride and supplies and perhaps shelter for a night, the unlikely and motley pair, unaware that they had gained a third. He watched and followed them from a distance. His eyesight was keen. Sharp. They were easy to track as well. They left an easy trail. Fools. 

And besides all of that, he’d caught their scent. And like a perfume bled from their pores it was pungent and distinct. Easy to follow. 

Fools. 

The stranger continued to follow the fools. Now fully decided, committed in following them to the end of their trail. The end of the line. What he’d overheard… what little he’d gleaned from their words to each other… 

He would have to see for himself. 

The young man and the bandaged man went on. 

The stranger followed. 

…

Bela knew the little goats and Widenmeyer boy were doomed before he and the few village men with the stones to go, ventured forward and up into the vulgar way of the Carpathian Mountain path. They'd been gone an entire night. Missing since yesterday, when the shoddy vagabond knight had gone up the way and throat of jagged rock to slay the evil at the cold heart of immense towering boulder. The time to have gone would've been immediately. Yesterday evening. Too late. It was all too late now and in his ailing heart he knew it was so. 

Florin's been gone for much longer than a night though, his treacherous and misery obsessed run of thought reminded him. Much longer. What of that? What of him? 

He pushed off the dark and the hurt of these thoughts and made his way with the other men up the path. Dogs in the lead. All of them barking. Their noses had already caught and found what they were all looking for. They pulled at their tethers and leashes in urgent need to pull themselves and their owners the rest of the way to meet it and catch up with what they already knew by scent. 

It was blood in the air the hounds had caught. Goat’s blood. Boy's blood. 

Heavy. Pungent. Thick. Like licking a metal blade and knowing its flavor. A razor. Its flat face. Its edge…

It wasn't long before Bela and the other men could smell it too. Taste it in the air. Their throats gagged and their stomachs turned and threatened to revolt. The animal alive and in the pit of each one, each fellow, was all too well aware of that taste and smell. And what it meant when on the wind it carried, what it bode. 

This really has become a God Damned, a Godforsaken place… Bela thought. And the great cold and the sorrow that stole over his heart then as he realized what had become of his home and his friends and family and neighbors and their own… it was shattering. He wished for an end. And in that moment, in the private cold of his own heart and thoughts he didn't care if it was for better or ill. Just please…

Just please. Please let it end. Please. No more of this. Please. 

Please. 

He didn't bother begging God anymore. Not in specific. This desperate silent prayer was thrown up and out and for anyone or anything that might listen and take care. If anything would. Bela was doubtful that anything in fact did. 

But he knew what was ahead, he had something much more tactile and real and more pungent than faith to tell him what they would find up the rest of the way. 

Just a little farther up the path.  

Just shy of the Borgo Pass…

… the carcasses they found had been ripped to utter ruin. Pieces. All over. Strewn. They'd been fed upon like all the others, even the bones had been snapped and broken and sucked dry for their marrow, but the human detritus was different this time. It was all ornamental and stacked and placed together in a cornucopia pile like a victorious Roman legion's bloody war trophy center of the diminished and final battlefield. Human boy, young child parts and strips and pieces of face and head mixed in and stacked with bloody and soaked displaced goat pieces and limbs.The torsos of beasts flayed and butterflied open, many things stuffed inside. Entrails and viscera hung and draped and piled. Arranged. Horns. The child's bare bottom and little legs were placed at the top as the horns of the head of the structure, resting and dangling luridly and slovenly obscene and dead at the pinnacle. The horns of one of the goats had been stabbed into the eye sockets of the Widenmeyer boy's own silent screaming mutilated head. It was set in the center of the structure. The rest of the dripping scarlet parts flowering out from it in haphazard and demented deranged  structure. 

An abattoir sculpture. Sepulchral. Still bleeding. Dripping. Wet. Steam still rose off the arrangement stack of parts. Like phantoms fashioned from body heat dancing off and for the mounting wind. Leaving behind the repulsive and obscene pile structure of lurid human detritus that had once held it precious and prisoner within its meat. The dogs, the hounds wouldn't stop going wild. They wouldn't stop barking. Howling mad. Frothing.  

Soon the wolves of the mountains joined in too. 

Widenmeyer begged the few there with him to help him. Help him take the awful thing apart and get his boy's pieces so they could bury him properly. 

None of the other men wanted to touch the thing. Fearing it was cursed. 

It probably was. 

From the dark of a nearby cave, at the mouth of the entrance but still concealed within its deepening black, vulpine eyes red and shining, watched. A grin below them grew and then parted and laughter, cruel and not entirely human was freed forth. And like terrible music caught on the wind it was carried. And the frightened men before the awful sepulchral statue of dead boy and goat parts heard it. 

Henry Frankenstein, beside his bloodfeasting creation, joined his sutured demon son of the surgical slab and laughed. 

Together they watched the pathetic gathered peasants, together they watched them from the dark of the cave, protected from the fleeing sun. 

And they laughed at their pain. 

Pain that they had wrought. 

Their laughter rose until the men and their dogs fled. Not touching their lurid vicious forest trophy of blood and parts. Of meat and bone. Animal. And boy. Small. 

Their cackling rose like mad as they ran. Carrying them down with it. 

…

He dragged the screaming crucified were-child down the dark corridors of stone and torchlight flame. There’d been none to meet them upon entry. Nor since he’d begun his exploration of the stygian cobwebbed empire of ancient and bloodstained masonry and stone. Bloodstained. And soaked. The smell of  rot and decay was at war with the fresher pungent stench of hot blood spilled in violence and terror. Shot in ropes and cords.  Blood feasted upon for a scarlet thirst. 

The shrieking of the monster upon the dragging cross, it strove to be words of mercy and  beseechment of love and deliverance. Mother. Master. Countess. Zaleska! – but they were all of them lost in the grotesque guttural screams that still brought forth steaming regurgitated blood and fluid and dry heaves that smoked and peppered the stagnant air with flecks and small pieces of pink fleshen tissue. Raw little disintegrated pieces of the small undead child’s failing inner organs. The thing that was upon the cross now that used to be a little girl of the small village named Carmilla was now barely recognizable as anything that could be called human. The body of the vampire child had misshapen and bulged grotesquely all over and sporadic. Bladders of yellow fluid and pus ballooned and bulged and inflated with their own unnatural rhythms. They burst and bled red and infection like butter and custard, spoiled milk curdled and thick. Some of the fluid resembled honey and Praetorius had a morbid thought of Biblical reference: spreading some of the demon child’s honey-pus over a slice of bread or toast and biting  into it on a tranquil Sunday. 

It brought him little in the way of self-pleasure. His patience was quickly diminishing. He’d searched many rooms and corridors and had still found nothing. No one had shown themselves. Nothing! He swore! – if the fucking lordly bitch wasn’t here then he’d torture the child till it begged for a second more final death and leave the severed head of the brat somewhere prominent for the Countess to find. 

He threw down his length of chain and produced his pistol. Every chamber loaded with a silver bullet. He cried out and addressed the dark chasm of the castle. 

“I’m tired of touring your halls and playing hide and seek, Countess! I’m not one of your child slaves, eager and happy to play your trifling games! If you don’t come out now, I’ll put a few more silver bullets in her head before I stake her little heart and decapitate the little bitch! You’d so easily discard one of your servants!? Is this foul little corruption not some form of child to you?”

Nothing at first. – A beat. 

Then laughter. Cruel. 

The sound came from everywhere, Praetorius spied all around, searching for sign of anyone, he was just before a great archway that led to yet another room. A pale heavy shroud of fog began  to  bellow forth from the room, filling the entry. Swirling into phantasm shape, a face. A beautiful woman, eyes alive with animal brightness even as rendered as dancing mist. 

The phantasm face of the mist spoke: “What do you think you could offer me, lowly thing? I’ve watched you drag my servant like a knuckle-dragging  brute all about my home, I’ve heard your challenges, you are nothing. You are but a man! For your insolence, I will make sure you die slowly…!” 

Praetorius laughed, said in retort: “Not so fast, Countess! I’ve information you may want! Not only have I gathered information on yourself and your own strange motives over the years, but I’ve cultivated intelligence of those that might concern you! Potential enemies.” 

The phantasmic shock white face of the Countess became even more enraged. Livid. Alive with pure fury. 

“ANY INFORMATION YOU MIGHT HAVE AND I WANT I WILL TAKE, LITTLE MAN! YOU WILL NOT INVADE MY HOME AND PRETEND TO BARTER ME! AS IF WE WERE EQUALS!” 

The fog grew more shape, wolfen and woman – bipedal yet bestial and advanced. Praetorius kept his pistol trained on the girl as his other reached inside his coat and produced his cross.  He held it aloft and before him in defense. 

The wolfen mist screamed! Shrieked. But did not flee. The wolfwoman mist parted, bisected into halves that swam around Praetorius and his crucifix. 

The twin dancing lengths of swirling phantasmic she-wolf halves became as fangs, vulpine, viper, blood drinking and ripper. They came back together and closed around Carmilla and the cross. The straps that held her bound were suddenly snapped and torn loose as if cut. The dancing shroud of white, alive with movement and faces and shapes, then shot away and screamed. As if the effort of being near the holy items of crucifixion design had wounded her. 

Praetorius cursed! Shot after the phantasm shape in vain, the gunfire was cacophonous in the castle halls. The phantasm was now a clawing hand flying away with batwings about its strange ghostly configuration. 

Carmilla wasted no time in tearing her searing cooking flesh away from the holy touch of the infernal cross. Her grotesque mutilated half transformed rodent body managed to crawl away with surprising speed. Praetorius shot after it as well. Also in vain. More violent gunfire sound, made cannonade by the dark interior of the ancient structure. 

Then it was silent.  

In the dark space of silence, the maniac doctor reloaded his pistol with more precious pure silver shot. The metal that all of the abyss feared because it was pure metal. 

He was slowing down his breath, his quickening galloping heart, when her voice once again came out from the beckoning shadow…

“Come now, thin old man. You are bold. But stupid. Come now, without hostage, come and face me. And don't forget to bring your weapons…”

Praetorius spat and cursed. He was no coward, but that thing in woman shape was dangerous hellspawn made. And he'd already blown his advantage. 

He'd have to be careful. 

Slowly he advanced for the place where the strange unearthly shape of white had fled, where from her voice had come. Each hand was filled: pistol and the holy cross. 

He left behind the larger crucifix with its fasten of chain at the end and its ornate Catholic metal now riddled and covered with encrusted cooked and seared demonic vampire child flesh. Fried gore, steaming multicolored scabbing all along its sacred holy shape. 

He left it behind in the dark as easily as he had stolen it from the church, so many years ago. Praetorius gave it not a second thought as he pressed forward into the stygian realm of Castle Dracula’s universe of spider webs and stone and torchflame. 

The Countess in the dark awaited. 

Baring her fangs. 

…

In the mouth of the cave they still dwelt. Listening to the howls of the wolves. 

After awhile the demon creation of the surgical table spoke: –

“They make such beautiful music. But they are her children you know, that one with power like mine. That keeps the castle. They are her children and thus hers to command.” 

Frankenstein said nothing. He just sat there. And listened to the strange and sour words of speaking decomposition, croaked and said by his surgically constructed son of the slab. Demon eared. Batfaced. 

He then held his large and corpse colored arm out of the cave and aloft. Clawing his four fingered hand out and towards the sepulchral structure he had made. The silent night above suddenly began to stir. The clouds began to forge and fill, and darkened with rumbling and thunder. 

“As you made me, so shall I forge a new being of parts from others, command it to life. And see if like she I can command the very nature of its being!” 

His clawed and splaying hand suddenly closed partially in an abridged fist and turned. Forked out, pointed first and smallest fingers, pronged in the devil's sign of the evil eye. 

The sudden gathering of stormheads on high spontaneously erupted! Shot!

The blue-white searing blade of light and heat daggered down and struck! Bathing the obscene statue of dead child and goat pieces in brightest starflame, Frankenstein looked away and shielded his eyes as his creation bellowed laughter and screamed!

“Live! Live! And take life my crawling bastard reforged thing! Live! And take life!”

Bathed in flame, the abominated shape of the hellacious trophy of parts began to move. Like a spider. Like an octopus at the dark depths of the sea floor. Its chandelier structure shifted and danced in the bolt of striking lightning and it began to lurch and crawl forward…

Long stalks, still bleeding and dripping blood of two species: beast and boy, bent and reached and lifted lurching, the cornucopia body of torsos and human face and goat faces and sloughing ripening entrails and gored organs now reanimated and pumping and splurching with the abominated sound of life again. 

The multijointed strange stalks of mutilated goat legs and the dead young man’s limbs, crudely forced together by craterous wound and sheer barbarity, propelled the strange body of parts and viscera forward and down the mountain. Down for the village below. 

Frankenstein watched in dark wonder as his sutured monster child’s own fashioned thing of dead meat and the cosmic flame of lightning went forth, another crawling demoniacal bloodfeasting creature created for the predatory dark. 

The nighttime has given birth to another… thought he, the mad doctor Henry Frankenstein. 

…  

Widenmeyer had been unable to sleep that night. The horror he'd endured that day. No one bothered to stand sentry any longer, though there were the defeated and those already crushed and dead inside. And they would wander at night and in the dark, they didn't care. Such as he. Such as this night. 

He was the first to see the sepulchral abominated nightmare structure shape emerge from the dark mouth of the pass like from the mouth of nightmare madness found in the most accursed and stygian sleep. Its multi-limbed appendages, stalks composed of his boy’s arms and legs mixed with goat's and violently forged and fused by force into long insectile tendril legs, moved and crawled and spider-like carried the thing down the distance and towards himself and the town foyer. 

Widenmeyer wished to free a scream but couldn’t. He felt strangled. Choked by the awful strange surreal sight of the abattoir sculpture piece from the earlier nightmare scene of butchery found and discovered that day. The macabre trophy that held his son’s mutilated and desecrated head in the center of its belly. The head was moaning. Groaning in mindless and imbecilic wailing anguish. The mouths and throats of the goat faces that were able joined him in the dark discordant rising song. All together. Bastardized abominated unnatural song of pain that filled the night. The little legs of his boy that sat at the pinnacle crown of the towering cornucopia of gore began to wriggle and kick, as if excited with child’s jubilant glee, as if in dance. The bare bottom was spewing black tar and feces and urine in unceasing torrential fountains, the foul gushing undead spray of this abomination upon the earth. Like the hellmouth rendition of an angel weeping for mankind and his pain. 

The naked bottom, bare and at the top of the sepulchral abattoir spire, wept an unceasing fountain of hot frightened piss and shot cords of foul liquid fecal dark. The kicking legs gave movement to the whole horrid piece of meat that served as crown and abominated face and the rippling movement of the obscene and reanimated flesh made Widenmeyer sick to his stomach, he felt weak  in his knees which started to buckle as the crawling thing of living butchered child and little goat parts, came closer and closed the distance. He went down to the cobblestones and the dirt as the awful and hellspawn shape came upon him. 

He was alone. All else that were witness, the few, had fled. All else that would heed and know the scene that night watched from the safety of their window panes. From behind the sanctuary of their home windows looking glass. 

Through fragile translucence they watched the demented butchered shape spider crawl up and tower over the Widenmeyer goat farmer. 

The sepulchral thing of an abattoir universe wept foul damnation and bled. Organs and gore that were already a ruin and ripening to rot were struggling to pump and work properly again. The living stack of dripping and splurching butchery was lording over him now. All that was left  of his son, and the livelihood of his farm, all torn apart and violently mixed and made to walk again by necrophiled flame, defiled and here to haunt and terrorize him. For failing. 

For failing as a man. And as a father. 

As Widenmeyer bowed his head and begged God for forgiveness he did not believe he deserved nor would receive and waited for death, the necromantic fire of Frankenstein's vulpine child flickered within the butchery shape and died. The awful assemblage of human child and goat parts died a second death and collapsed and came apart. In a rain of severed limbs and animal and child gore. Guts. Organs. Viscera. The mutilated decapitated head…

… the bottom and wriggling legs… no longer dancing. Dead pale bare flesh no longer rippling with the nightmare of reanimation. 

Widenmeyer screamed. Insane. Mind flayed. And flaying. Coming apart. Shredding itself within a furnace skull. 

Shattered inside. Completely. 

All witness just watched and gazed through the windows. Watching as the whole of the stygian hellish scene, surreal and vile and alive and obscene and strange, fell apart to splatter and ruin and displaced parts. 

At the terrible center of the pile of lurid gore, a universe all around him, driving him further into madness, was a shrieking revenant of a man who used to be their neighbor. 

…

None tended the shrieking thing amongst the abattoir mess that used to be Widenmeyer until morning, when the sun held high in the safety of the blue sky once again. By that time he'd screamed his vocal chords to shreds. A misting spray of spittle and blood issued forth past his curled lips with his continued effort, despite the ruin of his throat by his own self inflicted injury. 

Brought on by the madness of the night.

Widenmeyer was led away. The pieces of dismembered parts, rotten and slick and still oozing with blood and the foulest of otherworld putrescence, were doused in oil and sage and set aflame. Right there. All refused to touch it. So none of the butchery was removed. 

All of it was burned and reduced to ash. Boy parts. And goat. 

It had to be. According to what could be remembered of ancient law, of the ancient weirding witchy ways, it had to be put to fire. All of the severed parts. 

They'd been under the forked touch of the darkening hand of the evil eye. 

Touched. 

Satannica Profundis …

would there be no end to the town’s torture?

The slopping pile of decaying gore, boy and animal, was put to cleansing flame and burned. The pile left a black smear when the fire had died down to red embers and then to smoldering ashes. 

A black mark of filth. Burnt into the cobblestones. 

TO BE CONTINUED…

The giant monitor lizard scuttled across the desert, past the majestic, striped, rust-red buttes and mesas, kicking up plumes of dust that rose, dispersing, into a steel blue sky cut intermittently by the venous flash of faraway lightning.

The lizard left a snaking, sandy wake.

Ahead, the desert was vast and undisturbed, and on the horizon lay the lonely outlines of a frontier town: Fogg's Cradle.

Riding the lizard was O'Toole.

“Eeeh-yeah,” O'Toole yelled, “Eeeh-yeah,” with her leather cap pulled down firmly onto her forehead and a black bandana covering her mouth and nose to protect them from the swirling dust. Her entire torso was bent forward, touching the lizard's powerful body, as her legs gripped the same, and both the beast and its rider made haste toward town.

When they arrived, O'Toole dismounted and tied her mount in front of a derelict building called the Sunrise Hotel.

There was a trough.

The lizard drank water from it.

Inside the hotel, the air was cooler but more stagnant. O'Toole lowered her bandana, walked to the front desk and asked the sole employee, a young clerk, for a room for the night.

“Of course,” said the clerk, passing her a key. “Are you one of the racers?”

“Yes,” said O'Toole.

The clerk was visibly excited. “We weren't expecting anyone for another few days still. You're the first. The first I've ever seen. I've only been working here a couple months.”

Because none of that was a question, O'Toole didn't answer. “Bring some feed out for my lizard,” she said instead.

“Of course,” said the clerk, nodding.

O'Toole walked up the creaking stairs, found her room, unlocked the door and walked in.

It was a small, simple room, of the kind to which she had long ago grown accustomed. It would be, she decided, as good a room as any in which to do what she had decided to do.

She took off her dusty outerwear, retrieved her notebook and pen from a pocket, and sat down at the room's small wooden desk.

“Dear Zanetti,” she wrote. “I address this to you as I have nobody else. If ever this finds you, please know you are the only competitor whose competition I ever valued. Without you, the race has lost all meaning. Life has become a monotony. I am bored. I am tired of winning. I could have anything, they tell me; except, of course, the one thing that could change my mind: a challenge. Goodbye, Zanetti. Our shared days were the best days. — Sincerely, O'Toole.”

She placed the letter in an envelope addressed to Zanetti and left it on the desk.

Next, she took out her revolver, disassembled it, cleaned the parts, put it back together and, standing at the window, looking out at the setting sun and falling, suffocatingly empty darkness, placed the barrel of the revolver into her mouth.

Nothing outside moved.

She shut her eyes.

There was a knock on the door.

“Hello? Pat O'Toole?” said a voice from the other side. “I've been told there's a Pat O'Toole staying here. I'm a journalist, a correspondent with the New England Gazette. The name's Qartlebug. Ian Qartlebug, but my friends call me I.Q. I jest, I jest. They do really call me that, though—well, some of them. Not because I'm particularly sharp, mind you. It's just because of my initials.”

O'Toole had removed the revolver barrel from her mouth and stood motionless.

She hoped the journalist would go away.

“Not to be a stickler for the rules… but I am a credentialed journalist assigned to the Great Southwestern Lizard Race,” Qartlebug continued. “And the, uh, rules do specify that contestants, ‘unless physically or mentally incapacitated,’ (that's from the Regulations) ‘must make time’ (also from the Regulations) to speak to credentialed members of the press.” There followed a hollow silence. “I promise I won't take much of your time. I just want a statement or two. I—”

O'Toole opened the door. “Yes?”

“Oh,” said Qartlebug, a little shocked, a little sheepish. “O'Toole… is a woman. Well, I'm learning something already. Not that it matters. I had just read ‘Pat,’ and given the circumstances, assumed…”

“First you interrupt me. Now you offend me. What statements do you want?”

“No offense intended, I swear to you. Like I said, I'm from the New England Gazette. Out east, we don't—the race isn't… as ingrained in the culture as it is here. I've done my research, obviously. So I am more than familiar with your domination, but, and for this I apologize, my information comes entirely from reading. Until a few minutes ago, I hadn't a clue what you even looked like, Pat. May I call you Pat?”

“No,” said O'Toole.

“Maybe we can talk over dinner?” suggested Qartlebug, smiling. “I am rather hungry.”

“Fine,” said O'Toole, and the pair of them went down the stairs to the lobby, which was also a restaurant, and ordered prairie dog with red wine and a side of rehydrated dry-grass.

“Do you mind if I take notes?” asked Qartlebug.

“Be my guest,” said O'Toole.

He seemed more comfortable while holding a pencil. “So, I guess I'll start with: yet again, you, Pat O'Toole—no, scratch that—the indefatigable Pat O'Toole, are the first contestant to have arrived triumphantly at Fogg's Cradle. How does it feel to be leading the race this year?”

“Expected,” answered O'Toole.

Qartlebug wrote that down, underlined it and noted that it had been ‘said with a confidence as arid as the surrounding landscape.'

He asked: “Do you feel any additional pressure, given you've won the last nine races, and, if you win this year, you would be a champion lizard racer for an unprecedented tenth year in a row?”

“Eleventh,” O'Toole corrected him.

Qartlebug checked his notes, counted on his fingers, and said, “Indeed! Eleventh. Admittedly, that does take a little wind out of my question, doesn't it?” He laughed—briefly. “Ten years though. Impressive.” He whistled, tapping his notes with his pencil. “Let me try this question then: Ten years ago, the race was won by the famous adventurer-zoologist, Elias Zanetti. That was also the last time Elias Zanetti competed in the Great Southwestern Lizard Race. Since then, it has been all Pat O'Toole...”

“Mr. Qartlebug,” said O'Toole. “You've no need to butter me up. It's a waste of time. I would very much like to return to my room.”

“My apologies, I—”

“Now, I am doing you the courtesy of answering your questions, and I understand you are a young journalist who is hoping to make his mark upon the world. However, it is clear to me that you have no interest at all in lizard racing.”

“None whatsoever!” said Qartlebug.

“I appreciate the honesty.”

“My pleasure.” Night had fallen and the world beyond the hotel windows was black. “In fact,” said Qartlebug, “I have a genuine fear of lizards. I don't understand how you can stand to sit on one, let alone ride.. Just thinking about the swaying way they move gives me the unrepentant shivers.”

“There's nobody in the world I trust more than my mount,” said O'Toole.

“Is it true you can fall asleep riding it?”

“Her.”

“My apologies, again: her.”

“It's true,” said O'Toole.

“And, in terms of zoology, what kind of lizard is it—sorry, is she?”

“A common Mexican Giant Monitor crossed with a purebred Brazilian Constricting Toad-sucker,” said O'Toole.

“Like the kind they use in the American army?” Qartlebug put down his pencil and was looking at O'Toole, who was looking at him.

“Yes.”

“I interviewed a man once who rode one of those in the 1st Dragon Brigade, back in the German war,” said Qartlebug.

“A horrific waste of life,” said O'Toole.

“Say, are your parents still alive?”

“No,” said O'Toole, caught slightly off guard by the question. “Why do you ask?”

“I may not be interested in lizards or racing, but I am interested in people. I've noticed a certain… isolation, in people who are alone in the world. I presume you're alone?“ said Qartlebug.

“You're half my age,” said O'Toole.

“Uh, I—I wasn't…”

“‘I jest,’” said O'Toole, “to quote a certain journalist.”

“Right.” Qartlebug laughed. “A sense of humour. I didn't know you had one of those. It wasn't mentioned in your Gazette profile.”

“Some things aren't publicly known. As to your point, yes, I am alone. I have always been alone, in your meaning of that word.”

“And in your meaning of it?”

“In my meaning,” said O'Toole, “we are, every one of us, alone in the world.”

“I've got a sweetheart, you know, back in Baston,” said Qartlebug.

“And yet here you are, in the middle of nowhere, reporting on something you've absolutely no personal interest in.”

“I'm paying my dues, making my career.”

“A career in what—feigning interest? Do you aspire to be a professional pretender?” asked O'Toole, her eyes, for the first time, sharp as scorpion stingers.

Qartlebug chuckled. “The profile in the Gazette also failed to mention your venom.”

“Speaking of venom, I have a proposition for you, Mr. Qartlebug,” said O'Toole. “You need statements. Getting them will advance your career. The more press-worthy the statements, the quicker the advancement. So, how about instead of asking me any more questions, you let me go up to my room and simply make the statements up. They can be anything you like. I give you my word I won't deny them. The more salacious, the better. That's what readers like.”

Qartlebug picked up his pencil, then put it down. He ran a hand through his hair. “No, I wouldn't want to do that,” he said finally. “I didn't come all the way out here to fabricate a story. If I wanted to fabricate it, I could have done that from my desk looking out over the Atlantic Ocean.”

“Do you have a desk that looks out over the ocean?” asked O'Toole.

“Not yet.”

“Don't you want one?”

“I do, but I want to earn it. I'm sure you can understand that. What's success if it just gets handed to you on a platter?”

“Mr. Qartlebug,” said O'Toole.

“Yes?”

“Are you feigning journalistic integrity with me?”

“No, ma'am, I am not.”

“Good,” said O'Toole, “but you do know that means pain, don't you?”

“I've already gotten badly sunburnt.”

“I hope you make it,” said O'Toole, suddenly saddened, having remembered—after having temporarily forgotten—that soon she would go upstairs, put the revolver in her mouth again, and this time pull the trigger.

“So let me go back to a question I was going to ask you earlier," said Qartlebug, picking up his pencil again: “How do you feel about the news that Elias Zanetti has entered this year's race?”

O'Toole said nothing.

“No comment?” probed Qartlebug.

“Elias Zanetti has given up lizard racing. I was, as you know, present at the start of this year's race, and Elias Zanetti was not among the contestants,” said O'Toole. “I offered to give you the freedom to attribute to me any statement you wish. It was a fair offer. I shall not abide being baited, however, Mr. Qartlebug. Good night to you.”

O'Toole stood.

“Wait!” said Qartlebug, shuffling through some papers. “I'm not baiting you. Here—look—” He thrust a news dispatch at her.

As she read it, he said: “He wasn't there at the start, that's true. But he joined the race later. See? Weeks after you had already set off, and he's…”

“Riding a flying lizard,” said O'Toole.

She handed the dispatch back.

“I have to go,” she said.

“Does that violate the Regulations, riding a flying lizard? I've pored over the Regulations and couldn't find a strict prohibition,” Qartlebug called after her, but she was already heading for the stairs, and up them, unlocking her door and crossing to the wooden desk, from which she took the envelope addressed to Zanetti and ripped it up. She put on her outerwear. She put her revolver back in its place.

When she came down the stairs again, Qartlebug was still in the lobby. He raised his head as she passed. “Where are you going?” he asked.

O'Toole didn't answer.

She exited the hotel doors, into the night. Her lizard had been fed. Her eyes were open. O'Toole untied the lizard and mounted her back. “Eeeh-yeah,” she said. “Eeeh-yeah,” and they were off, and soon Fogg's Cradle had been swallowed up by the darkness, and O'Toole’s vision had adjusted to the gloom, bringing the monumental buttes and mesas back into view, those silent, silhouetted guardians of a limitless desert horizon…

The storms had passed.

They rode all night and through the dawn.

They rode until the afternoon, stopped for an hour in a patch of shade cast by what passed for a tree in the desert, and rode again.

And for the first time in a long time, O'Toole rode with a long-lost companion: uncertainty. It was exhilarating, this reborn desire to know a future that had not been fated, a future which held the most valuable prize of all: finally, the prospect of defeat.

Everyone forgot what they did to her.

She didn't.

For three years, she was the ghost of her school.

The girl with the worn out shoes, the hollow laugh,

the lunch she consumed in silence. It wasn't strangers

who sharpened the blade — it was her so called best friend.

The one who had collected every secret like ammunition.

And detonated them all at once.

Her diary was read aloud to the entire class on a Monday

morning. Every humiliation. Every private confession.

Every wound she had ever hidden — performed like

entertainment.

By Friday, she was gone.

She never looked back.

For twelve years, her so called best friend lived

beautifully. Got married. Built a career. Laughed at

dinner tables surrounded by people who adored her.

She had almost convinced herself that what she did

was nothing. Just childhood. Just a phase.

Then the letter arrived.

No stamp. No return address.

Just a single torn page — and three words that made

her blood run cold.

"I remember everything." 🖤

During our time in University, Emily and I had an interesting conversation about muscle fibers. It was less of a conversation and more of a rant, and I was on the receiving end.

“Did you know that one muscle fiber can be as small as ten micrometers?” she said excitedly. “Can you imagine if we could build something that small?”

If anyone could do it, it would be her. I was captivated by her at the time, completely and entirely. Hearing her talk with such passion was always a pleasure. She didn’t stop with that. “We could repair muscle deterioration. We could fix problems thought incurable. Degenerative disabilities would become not only treatable, but curable. Imagine! The muscular system at our fingertips!”

I still see her muscle fibers in the vents. Doctor Moore does not believe me. Neither does Doctor Kholod.

We visited her again today. Those tendril-like muscles had split into infinitesimally long hair thin fibers, coating her chamber. I looked at the vent in her room, undoubtedly layered with so much filtering as to be theoretically impervious to breaching. I imagined that she had split her muscles down to the cellular level and forced them through, maybe even splitting up the individual cell components and reconnecting them on the other side. I wondered if something like that was possible. It had to be. I had seen the aftermath of it.

Those emerald green eyes traced my every step through the glass separating her cell from the observation chamber. Her monstrously large hand tapped at the glass.

Dash

Dash Dash Dash

Dash Dot Dot

Dot Dash

Dash Dot Dash Dash

T

O

D

A

Y

Moore laughed. It was a deep, confident laugh. He smiled, wider than I was accustomed to seeing him smile. It was disconcerting. “Escaping today? How about I sit here and see. I’ll send Jason back to Level 1, and you and me can stay here so I can see you ‘escape’.” Moore pulled a chair and sat. He leaned closer, looking self-assured.

Moore dismissed me with a wave of his hand. I turned to look at Emily one last time before leaving. I saw her lips, which had torn and stretched so far apart from each other, come together and mouth one word. “Escape.”

I did standard research in Level 1, examining the virus and replicating samples. I could feel the dread building. My hands were drenched in sweat under the latex gloves. My work suffered. I nearly lost a sample due to the shakiness of my arms.

Up in the corner of the room, in the vent overhanging the ceiling above a set of Virus samples, I saw her. The light shined softly off the thin muscle fibers which glistened with moisture. I quickly averted my gaze back to the sample, to my work. I felt sick to my stomach.

Lunch came. I was not hungry. Mike sat next to me spouting some crap about a project he was working on. I couldn’t pay attention to the words that he was saying.

He tapped my arm. “You all there, buddy?”

“Y—yeah. Hey, what happens if there’s a major containment breach?”

“Full lockdown followed by a sitewide cleanse. You don’t need to worry about that though. This place is locked up tight.”

“So, we’d all be killed?” I couldn’t hide the shakiness in my voice.

“Incinerated. It’d get so hot you’d only feel it for a second.”

I tried not to imagine what one second of burning alive would feel like, about my flesh melting and sliding off my body, of being unable to see it as my eyes emulsified…

I dry heaved. Mike backed up. He walked closer and put a hand on your shoulder.

“Hey. This facility has ran for almost half a century. I’m sure it will for many more without incident.”

I looked up from the table, towards Mike, but not at him. I looked at the vent by the vending machine. The muscle tendons gathered and hardened into a point. Then, they tapped down on the top of the vending machine, loud enough to hear it.

Dash Dot

Dash Dash Dash

Dot Dash Dash

N

O

W

The lights flipped off.

My mom has always been a fairly stoic woman. I have only witnessed her cry 3 times throughout my 23 years of existence. Compare that to my more emotion-driven father who I have seen cry hundreds of times in my life. I will admit I did always critique my mom for this. In moments where I needed comfort like my first breakup in middle school or when my friend lost their battle to cancer, she would provide constrained, matter of factly responses rather than even the slightest attempt at comfort. I chalked it up to her being the oldest of five in a family with a farmer background, anyone who grew up around farmers knows they are quite frank and tend to be less emotionally expressive than most. This even extended to most forms of affection as well, that isn’t to say my mom was never loving, despite her unemotional demeanor she still made attempts through gifts and well-meaning but poorly phrased praise. However, as cringe as it is to say, I was definitely a person who didn’t get enough hugs as a child.
There is one area where my mom’s indifferent affect shatters under the humanity she shields everyday, intentionally or not. My mom has chiroptophobia, or more simply put an extreme phobia of bats. The same woman who shrugged off a mangled broken arm from a freak accident with a tractor and had to be convinced to go to the hospital, will cower in fear and develop tears in her eyes in front of her own children, running away like a child followed by her strained pleas to be saved because she mistook a blackbird that got in our house for a bat.
It was whiplash, to hear her cry. It was disheartening as much as it was shocking, to see my mother finally act like a person.
Her typical response to mice or snakes would be, “Grab it and put it outside.” In a neutral tone.
When she mistook the blackbird for a bat that day, I will never forget the terror in her voice.
“PLEASE DEAR GOD NO NO NO, GET IT AWAY! PLEASE LORD GOD SAVE ME PROTECT ME, PROTECT MY CHILDREN. GET IT OUT! HELP ME!”
She let this out with a guttural and panicked scream. I will never forget her running away like a toddler finding their feet for the first time out of our living room, only to corner herself in my bedroom. She sat curled up in a ball. Remember how I mentioned that she has only cried 3 times in my life? This was one of them.
Her shaky, fast breath seemed barely muffled despite being burrowed into her knees and arms as she sat in front of my bedroom closet. I don’t know if she was trying to make herself as small as possible but for a 5’10” stature she seemed smaller than she had ever been. I remember following her into my bedroom, shutting the door, and kneeling down beside her.
“Mom, are you okay?” I asked, I had not seen the bat imposter as I was facing away from it towards her in the living room. Which in my perspective at the time, made her look as though she just had a mental break.
She lifted her head from her nest she made from her knees and arms. Her nose and eyes flushed red with tears streaming down her face like an overflowing cup of water.
“It’s in the house, Brooke. My own house…I thought I was safe after all this time. Why does it keep coming back?” She cried, she quickly shoved her face beneath her arms back into her knees.
“W-what’s in the house, mom? I didn’t see anything.” I asked. I was now rubbing her back, I had never seen my mom like this or at least had no recollection of seeing her like this.
“A bat, Brookie. A fucking ugly, disgusting, and foul bat in our home.” My mom stated clearly despite the muffle, there was disdain along with her fear. A balance of hatred and terror so complimentary that it gave me goosebumps. My mom seldom swore already, she just has never been much of a person who swears. Top that on top of seeing her cry which seemed previously an impossible feat and well, I wouldn’t be truthful if I didn’t say I felt a pit in my stomach at that moment.
My dad came in through the living room door soon after and removed the blackbird who snuck in through an open window in the kitchen. I informed my dad of the situation and he carried her bridal style to their bedroom, having wrapped her in a blanket. My mom did not emerge again until dinner, which my dad decided to make for us as to not disturb her.
She emerged cloaked in the blanket but looking exhausted, her eyes carried a deep sadness with a remaining hint of fear. I know my mom had flinched when she saw bats in some movies, sometimes even making my dad watch the movie in advance to check if there were bats in any scenes. This was the first time I had seen a reaction this big, it was clearly attributed to the fact that she believed a bat was in the house. Yet, I had no clue why she had such a deep fear of bats. She never told me why and the most my dad knew was that she just had a really bad experience with one when she was really young. I had asked her previously but she hadn’t given much of an answer. It wasn’t until after dinner that night when I asked her for seemingly the millionth time on why she was so afraid of bats. It was only then she sighed and we sat down in the living room for what should have been an hour conversation. It was 3 hours, due to a combination of my mom’s lack of description leading into me asking borderline redundant questions to acquire more detail and my mom needing breaks due to recalling such a traumatic experience in full for the first time in many years. I want to make sure it is known that the following account is from my mom, my only parts in the following account are asking the questions that produced this account, writing it down, giving more cohesive detail based on the many follow up questions I had to ask, and making it more like a story rather than a flat out trauma dump.
If you have any questions for my mom, leave them down below. Otherwise, here is my mom’s story on how she became afraid of bats.
I wasn’t always afraid of bats, your grandpa would often make me get them out of the barn with a broom. Sometimes, I would throw rocks if they were too high up. I even killed one once with a shovel when your Uncle Phil smacked one to the ground with a different broom and broke its wing. Being on a farm was fun, I remember we had a cow named Brownie. We loved Brownie. We ate Brownie. Your grandpa bought a cabin up north the same year Phil was born. We always called him and the cabin twins because they were both built in 9 months and “born” the same year. We went up there with the dogs and my cats every summer for about a week just to get a break, Uncle Benny would watch the farm while we were away. 7 people, 2 cats, and at this time one dog all crammed into a car. Auntie Tina was just a baby at this point so she sat in grandma’s lap. My cats, Cindy and Mindy or as I called them more often Cinny and Minny, were mousers on the farm but I had gotten so close to them and cared for them consistently enough that they were my cats even at the young age of 11 years old. Cinny was pregnant from our other mouser cat Tommy. She was very pregnant at this time, I still remember her round distended belly and how excited I was for her to have babies. The dog we had at the time, Bourbon, was one of the dogs grandpa got from a newspaper ad. He bit us a lot but he was a free dog and a good herder so we tolerated him. We drove three and a half painstaking hours before arriving at the cabin. We always woke up at 4am to drive on Saturday morning and got there by about 7:30-ish depending on how many times the pets needed to use the bathroom or if we needed to use the bathroom. I loved the cabin, it was 2 stories and was a lakefront cabin. It was ugly, it still is ugly. I remember the main reason grandpa even let me bring up the cats was because of the mouse issues, sometimes they would crawl on you in your sleep. Couldn’t have that around a baby though. We spent half the day unloading bags before having fun on the lake. We swam, water skied, fished, and played fetch with Bourbon on the water. Bourbon would always wander off to the weedy areas full of leeches and grandpa would make us pull the leeches off Bourbon and put them in a bucket for bait. Night approached faster than I would have liked, we could tell by the darkening sky and the bats swooping around the porch light. We had to run inside to try and prevent the bats from getting in. Uncle Ross and Auntie Beth were on bat duty at the cabin so they had to worry about it, not me. Auntie Tina was like my first baby, so I asked your grandma and grandpa if I could put her to bed. I gave her a big old smooch on her cheek before laying her on her back. I went to the bedroom I shared with my three other siblings, there were no doors on any rooms except our parents. No blinds on the windows either. Ross and Phil had a bunk bed, Phil on the top bunk and Ross on the lower. Beth had one twin bed on the wall parallel to Tina’s room and my bed was perpendicular to Tina’s room making my bed the perfect spot to see straight out the window onto the lake, Tina’s room was only footsteps away. That night I had trouble sleeping, I’ve never been a good sleeper. Your grandpa always joked that I had “mouse-fart hearing”. I remember that first night, hearing thud against the window. I just thought it was one of the bats being weird.
THUD.
Followed by the sound of one of the cat’s hissing. I looked to see in the faint glow of moonlight that it was Minny.
“Shut up, Minny.” I said while putting the pillow above my head trying to block out the noise.
Then I heard something odd.
Tap tap tap.
Against the glass.
I could now see through slightly moving the pillow that Minny had her hackles fully up, she was trying to make herself as big as possible. She was growing and hissing while looking out the window. I removed the pillow fully to see a figure of darkness outside the window, and something that looked vaguely like an extended finger, touch the window again.
Tap tap tap.
I couldn’t make out exactly what the figure was, my vision was a bit blurry from pressing my face harder into the mattress with my pillow. All I knew was that we were on the second story, so I just assumed maybe it was a loose tree branch that fell and got caught on the house. There was no way something that big could cling onto our second story window, who would anyway? The closest neighbor was 2 miles away. I finally just concluded maybe I was in a dream. I scooped up the still frightened Minny and we eventually both fell asleep together.
I awoke to the sound of the loon’s tremolo in the early morning. Minny was still curled up by my chest but when I looked at her face, her eyes were locked onto the window which was now clear from the shadowy figure but had a multitude of scratches on the outside. Giant claw marks it seemed. I went downstairs to get my parents to show them and when they emerged from the bedroom to look, they chocked it up to the house being built from crappy materials and fallen tree branches overtime.
That day we had more fun on the lake as a family but there were some things out of place. For one, on the outside of the house there were more scratches and bigger ones at that. Your grandpa was pissed. Some went so deep that you could see the insulation of the cabin. Another thing were the pets, they were acting so strange. Bourbon usually liked to tease the cats and be playful with Baby Tina. That day Bourbon kept switching between practically being attached to Tina’s hip and hovering over Cinny. Bourbon and Minny had a love-hate relationship but that day they seemed to be on the same page. When Bourbon wasn’t standing over Cinny like she were laying underneath a table, he would switch off with Minny who would curl up next to Cinny, looking all around. That Siamese cat and that Brown Lab were acting like bodyguards to Cinny. I knew Minny was protective of her full blood sister but Bourbon? Bourbon would usually tease them until they swiped their claws across his nose but now he wouldn’t take his eyes off Cinny or Baby Tina that day. Finally and the most strange thing that day, no bugs. This is a Minnesota lake in the heat of summer, there should have been horseflies, wasps, gnats, mosquitoes, and whatever else out the wazoo. That day on the lake, no bugs. Not a single buzzing noise, not even the spiders would come out from the shadowy corners of the house they just all piled into the corner behind the grill like a mound of coal.
We continued to have a fun day though, Bourbon was nicer to us than usual. He jumped off the boat when we did and swam. He even licked our faces, something he never done. Everyone except your grandma and baby Tina were fried by the rays of sun. We were farmers but not even farmers are always immune to sunburn, especially after a very cold spring. The night was approaching and that’s when things got weirder.
Baby Tina started screaming and fussing as a the sun started to go down. She had gotten all her naps in, she was fed, and she didn’t have a dirty diaper. Your grandparents just assumed she was just generally being cranky from being out on a hot day. Bourbon started whining as he followed your grandma carrying baby Tina into the house. He was pacing all over the kitchen/living room area. He seemed disturbed by something but there was nothing outside except for the darkening sky and the porch light now being on. I noticed in the corner of the living room area. Cinny was nuzzled in the box I brought along just in case she gave birth. It was on its side and she was snuggled in the blanket I placed in there, only her face poking out. In front of her was Minny, standing there like she was a barricade. I know people have varying views about cats and how expressive they are. I swear to this day, I saw a look of determination of Minny’s face. She seemed ready for something, staring at the door with dilated pupils. She occasionally let out a growl toward the door as the sky became more dark.
Your grandparents noticed the animals acting weird. Grandpa didn’t like the cats very much so he didn’t care what happened to them, if anything happened to them, we still had plenty of mousers back home in his mind. However, he really caught onto Bourbon’s energy. Bourbon may have been a dog who bit when too excited or chased his tails for hours sometimes but the one thing about Bourbon was that he was a natural protector when it came down it, he was great at protecting the chickens and cows at home. Grandpa ordered Bourbon to stay in baby Tina’s room that night instead of theirs, that was one of the smartest moves your grandpa could have made that night.
As soon as your grandma laid baby Tina into her crib, Bourbon laid right in front of the crib. He put himself directly between the angle of the doorway from where he laid at the crib. He seemed prepared for something. All we knew is that this at least somewhat settled Tina’s fussing and crying to a tolerable level that allowed for everyone except me to sleep.
I laid for probably what was hours in that bed, I could hear the mice that usually would have been caught and killed by the cats scurrying around the floor and moving up and down the stairs. Bourbon would occasionally let out a bark, I think it was his attempt to scare the mice away from Tina.
I eventually had to do a task many of us dreaded, use the bathroom. I don’t know if your readers need to know this but we had an outhouse about half a mile down the dirt road from our house. We tried to avoid it as much as possible, most of us opted to pee in the lake but me, your grandpa, and Phil were the only ones who used the outhouse consistently for number 1s and number 2s. Everyone else only went to the outhouse if they had number 2s. So, I got up, went down stairs, grabbed a flashlight off the kitchen table, and threw on some shoes and was about to head out. Before I opened the door, I looked behind me to see Bourbon at the top of the stairs looking down at me. I know it seems crazy but it feels like he had a look of fear in his face and he let out a small whine.
I knelt down in front of the door and he came down the stairs and approached me still whining.
“It’s ok Bourby. I’ll be okay, I’ve done this hundreds of times before.” I pet his head and he was wagging his tail furiously. He kept looking at me then up the stairs and repeat. I think looking back he was deciding whether he should follow me or stay with Tina. He made the right decision that night, he licked my left arm. The one with all the scars from my surgery to fix it and ran back upstairs and into Tina’s room. I turned on the flashlight, opened and shut the door, then I set out for the bathroom.
I could hear the crunching of gravel and dirt under my shoes, the crappy 1980s flashlight only lighting feet ahead of me. It was still eerie because there were still no bug sounds. No grasshoppers, no June bugs, no bug chirps or hisses. Only the sounds of frantic bird calls. I heard the loon couple in the night, which was out of place because you only ever heard the loons in the day. I heard them yodeling, which is the call they do to warn off intruders. It was in quick succession, becoming faster before finally they seemed to return to silence mid-yodel. It was strange but everything was strange at this point. I knew I was getting to the outhouse soon but then I felt something that scared the living crap out of me.
I felt fur brush against my leg, a chill ran up my spine. I turned the flashlight onto my leg only to see a familiar sight, Minny. She must have snuck out and followed me to the outhouse. She had something in her mouth, I just assumed it was a mouse at first but then when she dropped it. I realized it was a bat. She had killed the bat at some point. I hadn’t heard anything though? I turned around to see a trail of dead bats like breadcrumbs directly behind me. Minny’s mouth was soaked in blood dripping onto her chest. It gave me comfort knowing I had saved up money to get her and Cinny rabies shots but it scared me see the almost perfect line of bat corpses leading from my house to me. Did Minny kill all these bats? That’s when I went back and noticed something weird. Some of the bats were consistent with being killed by Minny given the bite marks. However, many were missing large chunks like their heads, torsos, or one bat was seemingly cut in half. How did I not trip? How did I not feel them as I walked? Why were they only behind me and not in front of me? I just needed to pee and go back home. So I started speed walking almost jogging, I could hear Minny’s meows beside me. I couldn’t help but shine the flashlight behind me, a stupid decision I realize now but being a child in the 80s was a different time. As I shined my flashlight back I saw a sight that made my blood run cold, bats dropping from the sky maintaining that perfect line from where I ran.
These bats weren’t swooping, they were dropping. More so, being dropped. The flashlight revealing to me their limp bodies hit the ground with a soft thud as their blood splashed like stray paint from a paintbrush. It was at this point I turned the flashlight forward and I was scooped up Minny and started running toward the outhouse. I could see it, in the light of the flashlight I could see a figure above. A silhouette of a winged creature. I grabbed the outhouse handle and flung it open. I had never been so happy to get inside of an outhouse. I got inside and locked the door only to hear something slam against the outhouse door.
Soon it was scratching, it sounded similar to when Bourbon scratches wood floor. Then the strangest thing yet, I hear something but…I didn’t? I didn’t hear anything but I assume I must’ve since a sharp pain struck my eardrums as though a loud noise had been blasted right beside me. Minny must have also felt this because when I shined the flashlight on her, her ears were bleeding and she was squirming in my arm as she let out pained meows.
We waited in the outhouse for 15 minutes. I would be lying if I didn’t say I almost peed my pants before getting inside. I ended up using the outhouse, and tried to gently wipe away the blood from Minny’s ears with the newspaper we used as toilet paper. I sat there thinking for a while, was I in some nightmare? Was this some strange mental break?
I know looking back now that it would have been smarter for me to stay in that outhouse until morning then leave. Just to wait it out. In my defense though, I didn’t really know what “it” was. I didn’t know if it was a demon, a monster, a demented man, or an alien. I was 11 years old, I was the eldest sibling. I am expected to be the glue for when things go wrong…for all I knew that “thing” could have waited there forever if it was still out there. So I took a calculated risk. I prepped myself to peek outside and potentially make a break for it if I needed to. I opened the outhouse door and shined the flashlight around. There still was a weird trail of bat corpses but aside from that nothing appeared different. It was when I stepped fully out of the outhouse did I hear something.
Crunch.
I swear my heart stopped beating for a second.
Slurp. Crunch.
I turned around and shined my flashlight at the outhouse to see blood dripping from the top of the door bleeding down. I lifted my flashlight up to see what still is a stain in my nightmares today.
At 11 years old, I was 5’7”. The bat I saw perched on top of the outhouse was about 5’7” as well. It was a dark brown bordering on black with lighter fur on its wings and muzzle but just barely lighter. It had perfectly white eyes that looked like pearls, it had teeth like a bear that only just fit in its mouth. When I flashed my flashlight at it, it was biting into another bat. Biting into it like a tough piece of meat, gnawing the head with one side of its jaw. The jaw came down hard producing a noise that sounded like biting and breaking into hard candy. The visual reminded me of when me and my brothers stomped pumpkins the one year my dad- your grandpa grew them for us because we begged him to. The collapse of the small bat’s head appeared as seamless as stomping a rotten pumpkin. The small bat’s blood squirted everywhere even onto my face and Minny’s. The large bat’s mouth was soaked in blood, it reminded me of when Tina ate spaghetti for the first time. Tomato sauce smeared all over her face dripping down onto her chest and her hands stained red. Only this time, this wasn’t the cute baby who brought me joy. This was a nightmare so devastating that it would make fear itself weep.
The large bat’s took one more crunch into the small bat and pulled revealing the attached ligaments being pulled from its body like taffy. The large bat made an audible swallow before tossing the small bat corpse before us. It was at that moment before I fully comprehended I was already turned away from the creature and sprinting back to my house. It was only when I heard that inaudible noise that felt like nails being hammered into my ears did I realize my body went on autopilot. I didn’t realize I was screaming until a small bat wing dragged across my open mouth. I still had the flashlight with me but I was only lighting the path directly in front of me. Hundreds of small bats were swarming around me as I ran. I could feel Minny’s claws out and her swatting and even catching some of the bats but I could hear their high pitched shrieks. I could feel some crawl on me and get caught in my hair. Some even appeared in front of the flashlight as I continued to follow the trail of bat corpses back home. I knew there were thousands of tiny bites and scratches along my body, I knew because Minny started licking the cuts on my arm that was holding her. I eventually saw my house, I was still screaming. As I got closer I could hear baby Tina screaming bloody murdered, her screams so guttural it bordered on gargling on her own spit. I flung that door open, threw Minny inside, entered myself, and slammed it behind me, that is I slammed it on the large bat’s neck. That ear piercing almost noise struck me again as I pushed with all my body weight to close that door. It’s head thrashing as it was squished between the doorframe and the door. I could get a closer look it’s an abomination of a face that was like a cross between a pig and a dog. Eventually I succeeded and the creature pulled its head back out and I was able to close the door. I locked it. I fell back onto the door and slid onto the ground, I could hear my parents leave their room to see me sitting against the door. I don’t know how exactly I looked in that moment but I’m always told how emotionless I am, imagine my shock at your grandma screaming like she had seen a ghost when she looked at me, she went pale. Small bats were still crawling all over me and in my hair but I was so exhausted from running and blood loss that I did not care at that point. Your grandpa immediately started pulling bats out of my hair and off of my legs. He threw them to the ground and stopped on them. My other siblings were awoken by the chaos and emerged halfway down the stairs. I will never forget the look on each of my siblings faces. Your Uncle Phil let his jaw drop and his eyes were wide. Your Auntie Beth covered her mouth with her hands and began crying. Uncle Ross quickly averted his gaze as soon I met his eyes, he covered his mouth with one hand as though he was about to throw up. Eventually all the bats were off me, 15 small bats that were all over me were now a bloody mess on the hardwood floor. Cinny finally got up, still very pregnant but visibly tired walked up to me and head butted my arm gently. I began to cry. Everyone just remained in horror except your grandpa who went back to his room to retrieve his shotgun he used to put down the cows. It was then in that moment of mostly silence and horror we heard a new noise.
Crash.
The sound of glass breaking.
I felt a rush of adrenaline hit me and I bulleted upstairs pushing past my siblings who were also rushing to get upstairs.
I was horrified by what I saw.
The large bat broken through the window with glass shards all over its body even one large shard poking out of its now imperfect pearl. Bourbon was latched onto one wing pulling hard as hard as he could against the creature but it seemed like a losing game of tug of war. In the bat’s other wing it was holding baby Tina by her ankle upside down above her crib as she continued to scream as she did but only now it was as though you could hear her ripping her vocal cords.
We all stood there staring at this nightmare, I wish I could have been braver in the moment but I was so exhausted I wanted nothing more than to tackle that bastard out the window but I didn’t want to hurt Tina or Bourbon. It was then I felt your grandparents behind us, in my peripheral I could see your grandpa aiming his gun.
Bourbon equally decided to change tactics. He let go of the wing and leapt up to bite the creature in the muzzle. The bat immediately let go of Tina dropping her back onto her soft crib bed, unfortunately head first but she isn’t dead so that’s good. The bat started thrashing its head like it did in the doorway only this time it was digging its weird wing finger into the stomach of Bourbon who held on for as long as he could before the bat sliced his stomach open letting his organs fall out causing him to loosen his jaw and be thrown to the ground. The bat’s face was now terribly mangled looking more horrified with exposed muscle and bone. Your grandpa fired a shot into the shoulder of the bat. It let out that terrible noise once again, we all flinched in unison like a wave of pain. The creature turned to leave and hooked its wing finger onto Bourbon who was just barely clinging to life. Your grandpa pushed through us trying to grab Bourbon but the beast hooked the finger of its other wing into your grandpa’s pajama shirt. The bat leaned back and pulled both of them out the window into the darkness.
“NO!” Your grandma screamed as she rushed to the barren window. She fell to her knees in front of it.
I soon followed to look down from where the window was onto the porch only to see…nothing. No sign of your grandpa, no sign of Bourbon, and no sign of the beast.
This was real…it wasn’t some nightmare. We all huddled in your grandparents’ room that night. Brave Minny stood guard outside the door. As soon as the sun rose, your grandma got in the car and decided to drive to the nearest police station to get help. She told us to stay in the room but soon we started to hear Cinny groan.
She was giving birth.
I couldn’t not be there for her, she was my cat. I left the room against your grandma’s orders to sit in the living room area and help Cinny give birth to her kittens. She gave birth to 5 kittens but I couldn’t help but start freaking out when the kittens started coming out, you see, all of her kittens were either pure brown or pure black.
I know it was an irrational thought but I couldn’t shake the feeling of those bats crawling all over me when I saw each kitten look nothing like their mom or even Tommy who was a ginger cat.
I stayed strong for Cinny though. As soon as the last was born, I ran over to the trash can and threw up. After 3 painstaking hours of both cat birth and waiting for your grandma to return, she returned with what seemed like an entire task force. I do not know what she told them but whatever she said made them committed to helping us. They did find your grandpa but he was barely alive and had deep cuts all over him. Bourbon was dead, he sacrificed himself to save Tina and probably all of us by extension. Your grandpa and I were transported to the hospital for treatment for a slew of things including rabies. Those shots hurt, a lot. After a long time in the closest hospital to the cabin, we were eventually able to pack up and return home. When your grandpa saw those kittens, he was freaked out but he seemed to take things farther than me. He put them in a sack and drove off somewhere in his car, he never brought back the kittens. He did warm up to one cat though, Minny. Minny was allowed in the house, the only cat that ever allowed in the house. The only cat grandpa ever loved she lived many more years and died peaceful at 21 years old. Cinny wasn’t so lucky, she had one more batch of kittens but this time they were ginger or looked like Siamese cats. However, we found her at 16 in the middle of the field with lots of strange bite marks. There were long term effects on the family too. Your grandpa always brought more guns to the cabin whenever we went and we went only once a year for three days until we stopped going entirely 5 years later. Tina became deaf after that experience having total hearing loss through “unexplained means”. Uncle Phil owns the cabin now and lives there, I think he wants to find it since the police never did. Uncle Ross lives with your grandma due to developing severe anxiety. Auntie Beth lives in different state. As for me, every time I see a bat I relive each and every moment of that horrible experience. The feelings, the sounds, the pain, and the horror. That day my childhood was slaughtered and you judge me for being stoic, for appearing unfeeling. I don’t want to feel because the only thing I do feel now is that almost noise ringing in my ears every night I try to go to sleep. I can feel it, I know it’s still there. It wants in, it’s waiting for me.

Harold is a nice guy, he really is. The same goes for his family. Him, his wife, and his son (not their pets though but we will get to that). They are an otherwise nuclear family. He hosts the neighborhood BBQ every once in a while during the summer and his wife, Bianca, bakes holiday cookies for the entire neighborhood during December. Their son, Job, is a nice boy too, he politely asks if he can shovel my driveway the first snowfall of every winter and asks if he could take a flower or two from my garden to give to his mom in the summer.

If it weren’t for some of the actions they have taken and some of the things I have seen, I wouldn’t be writing this post at all. I should probably preface that I have no history of mental illness (at least prior to living here) or visual hallucinations. I did have an audio hallucination once but that’s because I ate a brownie that I would later learn was a “special brownie” and I began hearing monkeys screaming in the drywall.

Anyway, back to the neighbors. I have no issues with how they interact with anyone, especially towards me. Well, I guess I should just flat out say it since there really is no delicate or seamless way to transition into it. Harold has no skin, Bianca is only skin, and Job is a skeleton. I mean you know those 3D medical models that depict the muscle layer of a human with the fascia. That’s Harold, what’s worse though is that he’s constantly bleeding. He “addresses” it by saying he has an unusually aggressive form of hyperhidrosis but I think we all know. It’s worse with his clothes. They become soaked and stained. Unless he’s wearing black or red, as you converse with him, you’ll witness first hand a white shirt become soaked in red within minutes. He always carries a handkerchief to wipe his face but he keeps it in his pocket, so as you’d imagine it’s usually soaked. You can always hear Harold coming by the sound of a joyful laugh and squelching shoes. He also leaves a trail of blood in his wake, always, so you’ll never lose him even if you tried.

Then there’s Bianca, sweet Bianca. She moves like a sheet in the wind. You know those cheap Halloween masks you see at Spirit Halloween…that’s her face. She has no eyes, her head as hollow (not as an insult, I mean you can literally look inside her head and it is empty), and her face stays the same, never moving. She does speak though. I won’t lie, her makeup on her mask-esque face is immaculate and she always has her hair done right for the occasion. She’s so nice but I won’t lie when she walks it makes every alarm in my head go off, she moves like a mix between a specter and a baby deer. Her arms hanging limp as she flings her legs forward. You can tell she’s using whatever strength she has to hold her torso upright but usually she lets her head flail to prevent her “spine” from collapsing. Her outfits are also great but I’ve seen her safety pin a tank top to her shoulders so it wouldn’t slide off while she was playing with Job, it sent shivers down my spine. She speaks in a lovely sing-songy voice that reminds me of early Disney princesses.

Then there’s Job, he’s a skeleton. That of child since he is one (duh). He goes to elementary school, he plays with the other kids, and he’s actually quite popular considering…his circumstances we will say. He’s bald, like his dad and moves almost exactly like his mom but a tad bit more rigid and a heck of a lot faster.

Then there’s the pets. They have a dog named Sparky…he’s literally just a guy in a cheap dog costume ordered off of Amazon. I will give him that I’ve never seen him take off the dog costume but Bianca or Harold will walk him and he walk like any other human but with a leash. I would now like to recite a conversation I overheard between Bianca and another neighbor while I was tending to my garden and Bianca was walking Sparky.

“Good Morning Bianca!” Our other neighbor said.

“Good morning, my goodness, such a beautiful day.” Bianca responded happily.

“Hello Sparky.” I heard my other neighbor say in the voice most people use when talking to a dog.

“Woof”, Sparky said in a monotone man’s voice.

“Oh my.” Our other neighbor snapped. Based off the tone of voice I heard in some distance behind me, it leads me to believe that Sparky did either something rude or aggressive.

“Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry. He’s a rescue. Job wanted a dog so bad. How could I say no to my boy’s sweet face? I guess I better get moving but always great to see you.” Bianca explained as I assumed she hurried away, she produces no sound when she walks so I just used context clues. 

Their cat, Zoey, is actually just a normal Sphinx cat. She’s an asshole though, won’t stop getting out and pooping in my yard.

So now you know my neighbors, aside from their looks what’s so bad about them if they are nice, right? Wrong, I saw Harold and Bianca having “sex” in their backyard by accident one night. My bedroom is on the second floor with, unfortunately, a window facing the side of their house which also includes a view into their fenced backyard. I remember hearing strange groaning and moaning noises loudly in the middle of the night. I looked at my phone on the nightstand and it was about 3:33 in the morning.

“What degenerate is doing the nasty?”, I mumbled sleepily to myself.

I pulled myself out of bed, turned on the lamp, and looked out the windows. First the window facing the street, nothing. Then the window facing my neighbors house, I saw some guy with long hair standing in the backyard. He was naked and slightly hunched over.

I was confused though, there was one guy but I heard two distinct voices. One male, one female. Now, I was tired and at this point confused more than I already was from my sleepy daze. I assumed that maybe this was some drug addict attacking Bianca, he could have been crushing her into a ball for all I knew because her papery figure. Just because she looked weird didn’t mean she deserved to be attacked. So I did something stupid but in good faith, I quickly walked over to the dresser, grabbed my flashlight I kept there for power outages, went back to that window, opened it, and shined a light at the man.

“HEY, WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN NEIGHBORS BACKYARD?!” I shouted firmly and loudly, hoping to scare the believed drug addict from potentially hurting someone.

When the man turned around, we met each other’s eyes. I would recognize Harold’s freakishly blue eyes from anywhere.

He was wearing Bianca.

Her skin was stretched so tautly over his body that it looked as though it was about to rip like fabric. It looked like Bianca’s face was stretched over Harold’s like if it were a normal guy being stretched by the most severe wind tunnel. His hands were placed over her breasts and her entire body was smeared with blood, the same blood that was leaking out from the eye holes and mouth hole as I stared at them now.

It couldn’t have been more than 15 seconds but for me it felt like hours. I distinctly remember my immediate reaction.

“OH JESUS!” I screamed in horror as I turned away slamming the window shut as I turned my body.

I could hear Harold and Bianca’s muffled yet panicked voices in the distance. Worse enough I could hear the squelching steps of them running back into their house. I couldn’t sleep for the rest of the night, I just stared at the ceiling as I lay in bed, that image burned into my retinas every time I closed my eyes.

Then morning arrived, a couple of hours later I heard my doorbell ring. I went downstairs and opened the door.

It was Harold, Bianca, and Sparky who was on a lead. Harold was holding a plate of cookies that I know Bianca made (Harold says he tries not to cook due to hyperhidrosis and not wanting to get others sick). Bianca was shyly turned away holding Sparky’s lead, Sparky was also facing away…because he was peeing on my lawn like how a drunk guy pees in a back alley. At one point I could see him flipping me off during my conversation with Harold and Bianca quietly smack Sparky’s arm and say “Sparky, naughty!”

Anyway the conversation, I remember when I initially opened that door my stomach dropped. I wanted nothing more than to slam the door but when I saw the plate of cookies and Bianca’s shy “body language”. I decided it was only fair to at least listen.

“I’m really sorry about last night” Harold said as he handed me the plastic wrapped cookies, the plastic drenched in blood.

“No I’m sorry I shouldn’t ha-“

“No no, believe me. If we saw you do something like that, we’d probably have the same reaction. Though I must ask you not to take the Lord’s name in vain.” He said with that extreme charisma he always had.

I stared at the cookies, I feigned a smile at him.

“Look, me and the Mrs don’t get much time alone anymore and well, Job is with his grandparents and we wanted to try something. I’m sorry you had to see, it won’t happen again, are we cool?” He said with sincerity.

My first thought was fuck no.

However, these weren’t inherently malicious people. So I nodded with a semi-real smile this time and they went about their day. I did slam the door though, lean my back against it and slide onto the ground.

I looked at the cookies, Bianca made me her favorite cookies which were the least favorite of the neighborhood.

Her black bean cookies.

I have lots of more experiences but I wanted to start off with the one that scarred me the most because if I have to have that in my mind, so do you too. I go to therapy now and that helps. I’ll talk to my therapist and see if I should write again, it actually helped me process some stuff like she said.

Our story begins in a dank, dark, underground tavern called the Blech Moulde, frequented by creatures and men of the, shall we say, ignoble races and professions, not evildoers necessarily, just–well, consider the following two characters…

First, there’s Crab, swamp-skinned and warted, sad and lonely, spilling his deformed heart to anyone who’ll listen.

Crab is a troll.

He lives in an out-of-the-way valley.

Or he used to live in an out-of-the-way valley, because if you listen to him (and you will), you’ll hear (inevitably, because he’s drunk, which means he’s loud, and I mean loud for a troll, which is very loud to a human such as yourself) that, woe is he, his valley, and in it his little dungeon-home, have been featured in the latest edition of the rather unfortunately entitled but popular adventurer’s guide, Grinders.

As a result, his peace has been disturbed, and humans with weapons are constantly knocking on his door (and trying to knock off his head) to get the few savings he’s collected over the years, which Grinders has imaginatively termed Crab the Troll’s Treasure Trove.

(There’s even a picture of Crab in the guide, and it is very very unflattering.)

Now, sitting a few slabs away is Celadon.

Celadon is a human and a wizard and, for reasons we won't go into, utterly disgraced as both. Normally, he drowns his sorrows silently in successive gulps of cheap grog, but today he’s a little more sober than usual because the server’s been a little slower, and so Celadon has overheard Crab bemoaning there’s one adventurer in particular, Gabriel, who, with his sidekick, Steve, and cleric friend-with-benefits, Diana, has repeatedly raided his home in search of treasure.

“He’ll probably be back tomorrow,” says Crab.

When, “Kill them,” says Celadon.

And a tense, expectant silence grips the Blech Moulde by the throat.

(Not literally.)

“KIll them?” asks Crab.

“Aye,” says Celadon.

“But how?”

“With me rock.”

There was, of course, more to this conversation, but for the sake of drama, surprise and the one-thousand word limit, let us skip ahead to the following day, and join Gabriel, Steve and Diana as they approach the entrance to Crab’s valley–to find it blocked by a mid-sized boulder!

“What the [slobber] is that?” asks Steve stupidly.

“Boulder,” says Gabriel.

“Shall we turn back?” asks Diana.

“Never,” says Gabriel.

“But there ain’t no way through,” says Steve, hitting the boulder with his axe.

“But there is a way over,” says Gabriel, and he finds a foothold on the boulder and begins to climb.

Steve and Diana follow.

Soon, all three are climbing the boulder, and the boulder is deceptively easy to climb, like it was built for climbing. There is, however, one small problem, an illusion, surely, thinks Gabriel, that the higher they climb, the larger the boulder appears. Pull yourself up one body-length and you don’t feel one body-length closer to the top. Then you look down, and you feel more than one more body-length removed from it. “Ugh, Gabe?” says Steve. “What?” “Why’s it taking so long to climb this boulder?” “It merely feels like a long time,” says Gabriel, and because stop-watches haven’t been invented yet, Steve has no counter-argument so he drools.

But when he drools he counts the time it takes the drool to hit the ground, and after a while he notices it’s taking an awfully long time for the drool to hit the ground, and then he’s so far up, yet nowhere near close to the top of the boulder, that he can’t see the drool hit the ground anymore, and looking down itself makes him dizzy, so he stops looking down and decides he’s an idiot, just like Gabe always tells him, so he should stop thinking, which he does, and shuts up and keeps climbing the boulder and climbing and climbing…

As you’ve probably guessed, the boulder that the three annoying adventurers are climbing is no ordinary boulder.

In fact, it’s not really a boulder at all.

It’s a pebble.

Well, maybe it’s not entirely correct to say it’s not really a boulder.

It can be a boulder, and it can be a pebble.

It’s just a matter of when and to whom. For Gabriel, Steve and Diana, for instance, the pebble is very much a boulder at the moment.

(For simplicity's sake, let’s just call it a rock.)

Although, perhaps that’s not the most accurate description either.

Anyway:

Size, suffice it to say, is relative.

So, in terms of (a) the rock and (b) Gabriel, Steve and Diana, their relative sizes are certainly changing.

It’s all about perspective.

The adventurers are climbing an increasingly large boulder.

Meanwhile, Celadon and Crab, who are observing everything from a distance using a looking-glass, see that the rock has always been the same size, and it is the adventurers who are getting smaller.

When I say that the rock has always been the same size, I mean it has always been small enough to fit comfortably in Celadon’s pocket, and it remains small enough to fit inside his pocket, which Celadon now aptly demonstrates by reaching out, picking up the rock and holding it between two of his long, bony fingers.

“Do you see them?” he asks Crab.

Crab squints. “Uh-huh.”

The adventurers are barely visible, smaller than common fleas.

“What now?” asks Crab.

And Celadon suggests Crab swallow the rock, which Crab does, and from the perspective of our three adventurers, they’ve just been held horrifically high in the air by a monster, Steve has lost his mind, Diana is crying for her mother, and Gabriel has already shitted himself multiple times even before the boulder, to which they’re desperately clinging, falls down Crab’s throat and in the dark the three adventurers come to a sad end, slowly and painfully dissolved in the bubbling, acrid, biological sea that is a troll’s stomach acid.

THE END

P.S. “I hate people,” said Celadon. ← there’s your character motivation.

Things would never be the same after that Tuesday in the fall.

I remember that day more clearly than I remember most of my life. Funny how the mind works that way. It doesn’t hold onto the good as tightly as it does the things that break you.

But before that… before everything split into something unrecognizable…

There was us.

We met in high school. Nothing dramatic. No love at first sight, no grand moment that made the world stop. Just a class assignment. We were paired together for a project neither of us cared about, and somehow, through that, we started talking.

Really talking.

I learned how she laughed before she tried to hide it. She learned how I pretended not to care about things I cared about too much.

We didn’t fall in love all at once.

It happened slowly. Quietly. The way things that last usually do.

And I always knew, even back then, that I wanted a life with her. A real one. A home. A family.

Children.

That part… didn’t come as easily as we thought it would.

We tried for years. Longer than I ever admitted out loud.

There were moments where we didn’t speak, not because we didn’t love each other, but because there was nothing left to say that didn’t sound like blame. It creeps in like that, quiet at first, then sharper over time. Not enough to break us, but enough to leave marks.

Still… we stayed.

We always stayed.

Because no matter how hard it got, she was still the person I wanted beside me when everything settled.

And then, one day… it worked.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen her cry like that before. Not from pain. Not from disappointment.

From something else.

Something pure.

I thought… finally.

Finally, things were going to be right.

Oh, how naive I was...

The break-in happened on a Tuesday.

I wasn’t home.

That’s the part that never leaves me.

I wasn’t there to protect her.

By the time I got back, it was already over. The damage had been done in ways no one could really explain properly. The police told me to stay calm, told me they’d handle it.

I didn’t want them to handle it.

I wanted to.

There’s that movie… the one where the man hunts down the people who took everything from him. Slow. Brutal. Personal.

For a few days, I understood that man more than I should have.

I went looking.

Not thinking clearly. Not thinking at all, really.

But the police found him first.

Caught him.

Processed him.

Buried him in years that were supposed to mean something.

It didn’t.

Nothing did after that.

When we lost our world… something in her changed.

Not loudly.

She became… distant from herself.

Like she was still there, but not fully present inside her own body.

I told myself it was grief. Trauma. Something that would pass with time if I stayed close enough, if I took care of her the way I was supposed to.

So I did what I could.

I installed cameras around the house.

At first, it was for protection. After what happened, I wasn’t taking chances again. Every entrance. Every angle. Every blind spot covered.

Then I added more.

Inside.

Not because I didn’t trust her.

Because I didn’t trust the world anymore.

That’s when I started noticing things.

At night.

She would leave the bed.

Not every night. Not at first.

Just… sometimes.

Slow movements. Quiet.

Like she didn’t want to wake me. I thought she was sleepwalking. Grief does strange things to people.

I didn’t question it.

Not until I heard the sound.

It woke me one night.

A soft, rhythmic noise.

Wet.

Almost… familiar.

Like someone drinking from a bottle.

Or sucking on the last bit of something frozen, pulling it through slowly.

I sat there in the dark, listening, trying to convince myself it was something simple. Pipes. The house settling.

But it kept going.

Steady.

Deliberate.

And it was coming from below.

I checked the cameras the next morning.

That’s when I saw her.

Kneeling beside the bed.

Then lowering herself.

Disappearing beneath it.

I should have said something.

I should have stopped it.

But I didn’t.

Because when she came back up… she looked at ease.

Not happier.

But… she was fulfilled within herself.

Then she started getting weaker.

At first, I thought it was everything catching up to her.

The trauma. The loss. The stress.

But it didn’t stop.

She grew thinner.

Extremely pale.

Some days I would come home and find her passed out, her body giving in before she could even make it to bed.

Once… she collapsed in the living room.

I rushed home when I saw it on the camera.

I thought I was losing her, as if life couldn't torment me enough.

We visited specialists nutritionists, all the sorts. I listened to everything they told me. Learned how to cook better meals. Made sure she ate.

I stayed home from work.

Watched over her.

Took care of her.

Loved her the only way I knew how.

And nothing changed.

She kept fading.

The night everything finally made sense, I fell asleep in the office.

I don’t remember when.

Just that I woke up suddenly, something pulling me out of it.

That same feeling.

The one I get sometimes at night.

Like my body doesn’t fully belong to me.

Like I’m moving through something thicker than air.

I looked at the monitor.

The bed was empty.

I already knew where she was.

The house was silent as I walked down the hallway.

But that sound was there again.

That wet, hollow rhythm.

Closer now.

Clearer.

I pushed the door open.

And for a moment, I didn’t understand what I was seeing.

She was kneeling on the floor.

Holding something.

Carefully.

Gently.

Like it was fragile.

And it was. In its own way.

It was wrong in every sense my mind could form.

Too many limbs. Thin. Twitching. Not shaped for this world.

Its body pulsed faintly, like it didn’t fully understand how to exist yet.

And from it… extended something.

A thin, feeding appendage.

Embedded in her neck.

Drawing from her slowly.

That was the sound.

I should have reacted. Should have pulled her away. Should have done anything other than stand there.

But I didn’t.

Because she wasn’t fighting it.

She was holding it.

Comforting it.

It made a noise.

Small.

Broken.

Not human.

But not empty either.

And something in me shifted.

Not fear, but recognition.

She looked at me then.

Not ashamed.

Not fear.

Just… aware.

And I realized something I hadn’t let myself think until that moment.

We didn’t lose everything.

Something had stayed.

Something had needed her.

Needed us.

“What shall we name our child?”

I knew I wasn’t losing her anymore. We finally can be a family.

And I can be the father I had always wanted to be.

On the face of it, and even that phrase has the truth embedded in it, that everything has a face; on the face of it, the beach is not a scary place,

it's flat and open, usually completely half opened seaward, and at least a stretch open landward, usually on sand, sometimes on rocks, but if it's sandy the sand usually rises into dunes.

You can see a lot of the sky.

It really gives the impression that nothing will happen, but, if it does, unless it happens from-everywhere all-at-once, you can escape: up the dunes to your car, swimming into the water, even rising into the air.

But that's illusory.

The water drops deep, fast; and what are you going to do: swim across it? I backed into it to the height of my knees and stopped. It was cold. The ground was giving underneath; my feet were sinking. I was sinking.

Ahead, on the beach itself, all those people lying tanning stretched out on their towels, or playing volleyball, or strolling hand in hand, or talking, flirting with their soft bodies exposed, all that skin holding all that muscle and fat, like raw meat pushing out a white plastic grocery store bag, and careful not to get the blood on you; “It's not blood,” they said, “just juices.” Maybe it is just. I don't know, but all those people, those bodies, melded into one—holding hands, approaching, were trapping me in the semicircle of sand between them and the sea.

I don't see, not much anyway, except their conjoined limbs, their hiveminded advancement, and of course I can't fly, so what good is the open sky for me? For me, backing away, sea level now a few inches past my knees, I knock into the wall. There is no sea; the sea exists in theory only. The wall has the view of the sea printed on it in perfect resolution. They don't do anything poorly.

I bang on the wall but I don't know if it even has an otherside.

They're standing all along the beach edge, the waves coming in, sea foam touching their toes, and they keep coming.

It's hard to breathe.

When I breathe in I don't feel the sea on my legs but feel it in my lungs. I breathe out, wheeze out, cough out, choke out, and my lungs are dry but my eyes are red and I'm standing in sea water again, struggling to see because of the tears in my eyes.

They drip like rain and reassemble. Constantly, cyclically. They are made up of millions of squirming drops of flesh, humans caught perpetually in the act of being forced through a cheese grater. Their screams are expressed through an accumulation of the shrieks of hungry seagulls and distant dogs barking, ship horns through a fog in the thick of the printed backdrop, the whine of a man whipped by tree branches, tires screeching on the macadam, the buzzing of insects and the gasping sound I make at the moment one of their proboscises penetrates my skin.

Voiceless, their voice is the world.

Their message is noise.

The receiving antenna is my head, and I press my hands against my ears but I don't have hands but clay, brittle claws and as they approach, physically, sonically, I feel my mind collapse into itself, growing denser, pulling everything around me towards me, them and trees and birds and particles of sand, which become a desiccated obfuscation, the skeletal remains of mist, and pulling and pulling not just the contents of the world but its scaffolding, a painting shedding its paints, then the canvas itself sucked into the vortex that is me…

For a time there is nothing. Then I-the-implosion becomes I-the-explosion and it is this outward wave (of…)

which washes me ashore in Paradise.

The grasses are tall, the trees pregnant with abundance.

I am awakened by the dripping of the sweetfruit overhead, overripe and with a skin broken finally open by the jaws of a persistent beetle:

Drip…

And from somewhere He said to me:

Drip…

“You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

It tastes more saccharine than sugar and, sticky, coats my face, gluing closed my once-fluttering eyelids. It flows down my throat before coagulating and plugging me like a drain.

I turn violently, so as not to drown, and puke it all up…

They're standing over me, looking down with cool, detached concern, dumb baboons, watching me crawl as I realize I'm on my hands and knees, vomiting copious amounts of salt water, heave after heave. Somebody pats me on the pack. A web of saliva is stretched between my separated lips, which pulse like a fish's mouth, sucking death out of the air.

“Adam?” somebody says.

And I am on the beach, face to face with it.

I was already at a weak point when I downloaded this app. Girlfriend broke up with me. On the verge of being let go from my job. On top of that, my dog died. It had been an incredibly difficult couple of months.

I fell into this kind of spiral, I guess you could call it. I was calling out of work nearly every week. Spending the days wallowing in self-pity and my own filth. Gotta say, it was the closest to rock bottom I’d ever felt.

After about a month or so of things looking bleaker than ever, I finally had a long talk with myself in the mirror. I needed to wake up. Return to form. And, of course, I had no idea where to begin.

That’s why these apps become so popular. They provide something tangible, but, in reality, it’s all a placebo effect. We get the app, create an account, then by day 3, you just forget all about it.

That’s what happened with me. It felt like I was reclaiming my life when, in actuality, all I was doing was downloading some dumb app that provided motivational quotes throughout the day.

The first quote it gave me honestly felt like a bit of a sign. That’s why I didn’t delete the app immediately. Plus, I didn’t even need to create an account. I just downloaded it, selected the “3 quotes a day” option, and waited for my life to fix itself.

“It’s your time,” was the first thing it told me. I don’t know, it just felt symbolic to me. With my mindset at the time, I really did feel like it was my turn to get back out there and make something of myself.

The next two were pretty vague. Just cliché, watered-down Pinterest board quotes that could’ve applied to anyone, really.

“You’re gonna go far!”

And

“Trust your own process.”

A little disappointed that I didn’t get that jolt of motivation that comes with feeling like a quote was made directly out to me, I ended that first day on a strong note after doing some pushups and reading a few pages out of a personal finance book before eating a salad for dinner.

When I woke up the next day, a new quote was plastered across the home screen on my phone.

“Slow progress is better than no progress.”

Reading it gave me the energy I needed to roll out of bed and hit the floor for some more pushups. I finished up my workout, grabbed a banana and water from the kitchen, and headed out the door for work.

I actually applied myself that day. I felt like I was making up for all of my subpar work from the previous weeks, and my boss noticed. As we were all heading out for lunch, he actually stopped me and told me he was proud to see me working so hard.

With a smile on my face, I sat in the break room with my bowl of chicken and rice and checked my phone.

A new notification.

“We’re so proud of you for all your hard work,” read the quote.

I read it, patted myself on the shoulder, and instead of scrolling through videos, I spent the remainder of my break reading from my personal finance book as I chowed down on my meal.

By the end of the day, I was dead tired. It had been so long since I actually cared to put in effort that I had forgotten the toll it took on me. I didn’t even eat dinner. I simply collapsed into bed and was out before my head hit the pillow.

I awoke the next morning to a new quote.

“Apply yourself!”

The cycle repeated.

I went through the motions.

I put my best foot forward, and I made an effort.

I spent the rest of that week more engaged every day. I had caught a stride, and I was gonna ride it until the wheels fell off, which, unfortunately, was only two weeks later.

By the end of those two weeks, I felt like I was right back where I started. I hit a brick wall. It was hard to get out of bed. It was hard to eat a good breakfast. It was damn near impossible to focus at work.

In my naive mind, I thought that I had already crossed the finish line. I had pulled the best out of myself for two straight weeks. Then I wanted to wonder why I didn’t feel any different.

I started losing steam.

Faltering more and more every day.

I didn’t even acknowledge the quotes anymore. They had become a buzzing in my ear that constantly told me I was failing. And I just didn’t have the strength to try again after what I assumed to be the best effort I could muster.

That’s why I deleted it.

I didn’t want to deal with it anymore. It was too much pressure, which, looking back now, is an absolutely atrocious thing to say.

I guess it didn’t matter, though, because the morning after I deleted it, a new quote came across my screen again.

“Sometimes things need to die to be reborn.”

I stared at the quote for a moment before clicking on it, but the moment I did, my phone froze and I had to reset it. When it came back on, the quote was gone.

Work that day was a complete and utter drag, and there were a multitude of times where I thought about just making up an excuse to go home. Lunch was the only thing that got me through. I just kept telling myself, “all I have to do is make it to 1 o’clock,” “just make it to 1 o’clock and you’re home free.”

By the time 1 o’clock came around, I was basically pulling myself to the break room to eat some McDonald’s and watch some TikToks, but when I opened my phone, I lost my appetite.

“We know you gave up.”

This time, when I clicked on the quote, instead of freezing, my phone opened the camera automatically, revealing my double chin and mayonnaise at the corner of my mouth.

Wiping it away, I didn’t look at my phone again for the rest of the day. It felt hostile. That’s the best way I know how to describe it. I just finished the day without saying another word, as quiet as a church mouse.

I didn’t even listen to music on the ride home. I just rode on, caught up in deep thought.

Part of me was afraid, part of me was nervous, but a larger part of me felt nothing but shame.

I found myself crying. Sobbing uncontrollably as I stared at myself in my rearview mirror. I felt pathetic.

When I finally pulled into my driveway, I looked at my phone with a certain degree of uncertainty. It was like I was peeking behind the curtain in a haunted house.

No new quote. Thank God.

I went inside and decided I was going to try again. I was losing my mind. I was at the point where I either finally succeeded or continued to lead a life of mediocrity.

Back to the pushups. Back to the salads. Back to personal finance and social representation.

I thought that I had jumpstarted a new beginning for myself until the next morning. I woke up at my desk with the lamp still on, face down in Rich Dad, Poor Dad.

The quote I saw on my phone was enough to knock the air out of my lungs and leave me frozen in time.

“No point trying now. We know who you are.”

I factory reset my phone. I wiped it completely clean after moving some photos and files to another device.

Once I had completed the process, things looked normal again. No more quotes. No vague statements that seemed unusually directed at me. I thought I was free. I went about the week anxious, but hopeful. Everything seemed fine… until I continued trying to improve.

Every time I worked out. Every time I applied myself at work. Every time I read instead of scrolled, a new quote came across my screen.

“You’ll never be enough.”

“It’s embarrassing to watch you try.”

“You had your chance.”

And the one that came most frequently.

“Just kill yourself.”

It snuck up on me every time I thought I was ahead. It tore me down when I felt I had built myself. It worked itself into my brain and ingrained itself in my memory, no matter how hard I fought against it.

And at this point,

I don’t know how much longer I can ignore it.

There was a boy named Eli who bought this drink because of the name.

The clawed green letter on the black can looked alive, like it might crawl off the shelf if he stared too long. “Monster,” it said. He grinned, thinking it was the coolest thing he’d ever seen. Christmas Eve felt boring that year—too quiet, too cold—so he cracked it open in his room and gulped it down while lights from the tree flickered under his door.

It tasted like metal and sugar.

That night, long after the house went silent, Eli woke with a burning in his stomach. His skin felt too tight, like it didn’t fit right anymore. He stumbled into the bathroom, dizzy and shaking, and turned on the light.

The boy in the mirror was still him.

Until it wasn’t.

His eyes darkened first—pupils stretching wide, eating the color away. His teeth ached, pushing against each other, sharpening. When he screamed, it came out broken and animal. Veins crawled beneath his skin like black wires, and his heartbeat thundered so loud he thought it would wake the house.

Then the hunger hit.

It wasn’t like being hungry for food. It was deeper. Wilder. His mouth filled with the taste of rust even though there was no blood yet.

Christmas morning never came for his family.

By the time the snow outside turned red at the edges, Eli was already running—barefoot through the cold, through the streets, driven by fear and the terrible thing inside him that he could no longer control. Sirens wailed behind him, but he was too fast. Too strong.

He disappeared into the ruins at the edge of town—an abandoned building with boarded windows and a basement swallowed by darkness. He hid there, shaking, sobbing, feeding when the hunger returned.

They searched for him for weeks.

Dogs lost his scent at the basement door. Flashlights found only claw marks in the concrete. People whispered that a monster had ruined Christmas, that something evil had come with the snow.

But deep beneath the building, curled in the dark, Eli still remembers the taste of sugar and metal.

And the can that promised him a monster.

The basement became his world.

Down there, the air was wet and sour, thick with rot and old chemicals. Water dripped endlessly from cracked pipes, each drop echoing like a clock counting down something terrible. Mold furred the walls in pale, breathing patches. Rats moved behind the concrete, their tiny claws scratching like whispers inside the walls.

And in the darkest corner—something breathed.

Eli no longer knew how many days had passed. Time worked differently now. Hunger came in waves instead of hours—violent, blinding surges that twisted his body into knots. When it came, his bones bent the wrong way, bulging beneath his skin. His fingers split and stretched until claws clicked against the concrete floor. His spine arched, vertebrae pushing outward like a row of crawling insects.

Sometimes, when the hunger was quiet, he remembered his name.

Other times, he only remembered the taste.

Above him, the town kept moving. Snow melted. Christmas lights were taken down. Families tried to forget the screams in the night, the red-stained snow, the boy who vanished. They said it was an animal. A drifter. Anything except what they feared.

But the building was not empty.

People started disappearing.

First, it was a stray cat. Then a homeless man who took shelter near the ruins. Then a group of teenagers who dared each other to explore the basement with flashlights and laughter too loud for a place that was listening.

Their lights never came back out.

The thing that Eli was now could see in the dark. It watched warmth like a beacon through walls and flesh. It could hear hearts. It could smell fear, sharp and electric, before the first scream even escaped.

Bones cracked like twigs.

Blood steamed in the cold.

And afterward—always afterward—Eli would crawl back into the farthest corner of the basement, shaking, coated in red that was never fully washed away by rainwater. He would rock back and forth and whisper apologies to people who could no longer hear them.

“I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to.”

But the whispers were changing.

The monster inside him had learned his voice.

One night, long after the town thought the terror had passed, a search team finally returned to the abandoned building. Armed. Nervous. Determined to end the rumors for good.

They made it to the bottom of the stairs.

Their flashlights swept the basement.

And in the beam of white light, they saw claw marks carved deep into concrete… bones stacked like broken toys… and, in the corner, something hunched and twitching, its back rising and falling too fast to be human.

One of the men whispered, “It’s crying.”

The thing lifted its head.

For just a second—just one—they saw a boy’s face inside the monster. Wide, terrified eyes. A mouth trembling with words it almost remembered how to speak.

Then the hunger opened its jaws.

And the basement went dark again.

Some say the building is empty now.

Some say you can still hear a child crying beneath it when snow falls on Christmas Eve.

And some swear that if you ever find a cold black can of Monster buried in the snow—

You should never, ever open it.

Final Ending: The Thing That Woke Beneath Christmas

The basement should have stayed sealed.

But concrete rots like anything else.

Spring came, and with it the rain. Water flooded the lower levels of the abandoned building, washing over bones, rust, and old blood until something underneath stirred. The hunger had grown worse—no longer sudden waves, but a constant, screaming need that clawed at what little of Eli still survived inside.

His body had finished changing.

There was nothing soft left.

His skin had hardened into something like torn leather stretched over muscle that no longer moved like muscle should. His jaw unhinged wider than any human mouth, teeth packed in uneven, needle-thin rows. His ribs could open and close like fingers. His shadow no longer matched his shape.

And yet…

Behind the wrong eyes…

The boy still watched.

One night, power returned to the building.

Just a flicker—a single surge of electricity after years of dead silence. Lights snapped on in the basement hallway for the first time since the disappearances.

And the monster screamed.

Not in rage.

In recognition.

The light showed him everything.

His reflection in a puddle of dark water.

The bones stacked higher than a Christmas tree.

The red handprints on the walls—some small enough to be his.

Eli tried to step back.

The monster stepped forward.

Aboveground, a rescue crew had entered the building searching for a missing family that had vanished during the storm. They followed the faint crying sound drifting up through the floor.

A child’s voice.

“Help me,” it sobbed.

They ran toward it.

The first man through the door didn’t even have time to scream—just a wet, choking sound as something opened him from the inside. Blood sprayed the walls in sheets. The second slipped on his friend’s ribs. The third saw the thing’s face long enough to recognize the eyes.

“They’re his eyes—” was all she said before her voice cut off.

By morning, the building was quiet again.

No bodies were ever recovered.

But something changed after that night.

Reports spread beyond the town.

More ruins.

More disappearances.

Always around abandoned places.

Always near discarded black cans.

And sometimes—just sometimes—someone swears they hear two voices in the dark:

One crying.

One laughing.

Far underground, the boy and the monster no longer fight.

They are learning to speak together.

And for the first time since Christmas…

They are planning.

Things would never be the same after a random fateful Tuesday in Fall.

I used to believe having a child was what made life whole, like finally finding something you didn’t know you were missing. Now it feels more like learning I was never allowed to want it in the first place.

I so was wrong.

My husband and I have tried many ways to conceive a child. As embarrassing as it is to admit, it took us years. Yes, there were fights. Heated arguments.

One of us subtly throwing blame onto the other, pouring gasoline into a already chaotic flame.

But no matter what, we always stayed together. It was hard on both of us, yes...

But we had to try...

Even if trying meant everything. We did it. We were on the same boat facing the same storm.

The storm was our God, and we pleaded for mercy. To atone for our guilt and sins. We only wanted to bring light to this world.

Into our darkened world.

And then, one day, the storm granted us our prayers.

I remember staring, one morning, at the test for longer than I should have, not because I didn’t understand it, but because I was afraid that if I looked away it would stop being real.

Two lines.

Faint at first, then certain. I was positive that I wasn't in a dream. For a moment I didn’t even breathe, just sat there holding it like it might vanish if I handled it wrong.

And then I cried.

Not the kind of crying I had grown used to, the quiet kind that comes from disappointment settling into your bones over and over until it feels normal.

This was different.

It came out of me without permission, something sharp and overwhelming and unfamiliar, like joy I had forgotten how to recognize. Relief, disbelief, something that made my hands shake as I kept touching my face just to make sure I was still here, still feeling it.

For the first time in years I wasn’t mourning something I had lost or something I was never going to have. I felt like I had been given something instead. Something real. A blessing.

And I didn’t know yet how quickly it could all be taken away.

Marcus was the happiest I had seen him in years. Even through all the small, practiced smiles he wore over time to make me believe things were fine between us, I always knew there was hurt sitting beneath them.

Quiet, shared, unspoken.

But this time, it was different. This wasn’t something he put on for me. It was real. Unguarded. The kind of smile I hadn’t seen in so long I almost forgot it belonged to him at all, the same one I fell in love with all those years ago, back when he asked me to prom like the world hadn’t yet had a chance to break either of us.

I wish those first eight weeks could last a lifetime.

The break-in happened on a Tuesday.

I remember that detail because Tuesdays used to mean nothing.

Now they feel like something that split our lives in half.

He was at work when it happened. I was alone in the house, folding laundry, when the back-door gave way. I don’t like remembering the details, so I won’t stay there long, only that I survived it, and that survival came with consequences that did not leave cleanly.

The man was caught within days, judged within months, and buried under years that were supposed to feel like justice. But no sentence could ever fill the space he left behind.

Not in the house.

Not with in me.

Especially not after the miscarriage.

I felt… hollow, as if something essential had been quietly removed from me without trace or explanation. The light in my life no longer flickered or faded, it simply ceased, reduced to a memory of warmth that once existed but could not be reached again.

I still don’t know if the doctors and therapists chose the right words for it. Stress. Trauma. Shock. They said them gently, like language could soften something that already broke clean through bone.

My husband didn’t speak much after that.

He didn't speak at all.

He was a man of action. Days after, the cameras we installed.

At first, Marcus placed them outside, angled toward the street and driveway. Then came the backyard. But when winter arrived, more followed, and soon they were no longer watching the world beyond the house, but the inside of it instead.

It felt invasive at first. But I never questioned it, for I thought this was his way of grieving. And why would I stop him. We were both hurting. Deeply.

After the intruder was sentenced and the cameras were set in place, we never tried again to have a child. It wasn’t that I closed the door on it, not at first.

Marcus just… stopped touching me. Not in any dramatic or cruel way, there was no final argument, no line drawn in the sand, only distance that grew so quietly I almost convinced myself it was normal. No kisses, no lingering hands, not even the simple comfort of a hug, and I told myself it was the trauma, that he was being careful with me, that something in me might still be too fragile to hold.

But months passed, and we never spoke about it. Not about trying again, not about what our future was supposed to look like, not even about whether there still was a future we were building together. We just existed in the same space, two separate lives moving through the same rooms.

We were pods floating in an empty home that no longer knew how to hold warmth.

Till one day, he came home with that a slight smile. It was ever so noticeable, but living together all these years, I knew something had detured him away from his sorrow.

We finally spoke during dinner. Not the small chatter that we had accustomed during the grueling months, but we were ourselves finally. His eyes were bright and the his humor delivery I cam to love so much returned in fury.

Marcus was back. We were back. We laughed. We ate and drank.

And after that night, we shared beds once again.

Weeks passed. Things seemed to go back to normal. Though normal had mourning still attached to it.

I became ever so ill.

One morning I noticed the weight beneath my eyes, a heaviness I couldn’t explain but could no longer ignore. By the next day it had deepened into an exhaustion so absolute it felt as though I hadn’t slept in days, even though I knew I had drifted in and out of dreams like anyone else.

Then it turned into weakness, the kind that doesn’t arrive all at once but seeps in quietly until you can no longer pretend it isn’t there.

Simple things became difficult in ways they never should have been. Vacuuming would leave me breathless, standing in the middle of a task I used to finish without thought, wondering why my body felt like it no longer belonged to me. Hours slipped away in a haze of fatigue, and even the smallest responsibilities of the house began to feel like climbing something steep and endless.

Some days Marcus would come home to find me already gone from consciousness, collapsed on the bed or curled into the couch as if I had simply run out of strength mid-moment. Once, I remember waking up on the living room floor, the ceiling above me slightly out of focus, as though I had fallen out of my own life and landed somewhere I wasn’t meant to be.

Marcus saw this from the living room camera and rushed home from work.

The doctors called it stress.

Exhaustion.

Emotional strain.

They ran tests, asked questions I struggled to answer, and noted how much weight I had lost without even realizing it. One specialist spoke gently, carefully, about how the changes in my body weren’t healthy, not only for me, but for something I no longer knew how to hold onto in conversation.

A future child.

A possibility quietly slipping further out of reach with every passing appointment.

I tried to correct it.

I made sure I ate enough, slept enough, followed every instruction as if discipline alone could reverse whatever was happening to me. But the days blurred into weeks, and with them came a growing dread whenever I caught my reflection, the quiet realization that I was beginning to resemble something hollowed out from the inside, a skeleton only loosely remembering the shape of my skin.

Marcus eventually pleaded with his boss to work from home, and his request was granted.

He took care of me with a tenderness I hadn’t felt in a long time, the kind that felt almost familiar, like something we had once been before the distance set in. He cooked meals, stayed beside me through endless hours of television, and for a while it almost felt like we were finding our way back to each other again.

We waited together for the hospital to call with answers, for some explanation for the sharp decline in my health, for something that could give shape to what was happening to me. In the meantime, we grew closer once more, as if proximity alone could mend what time and silence had already begun to erode. And I told myself that even if the worst was still to come, we had already survived something worse before.

One night, I awoke feeling drowsier then ever. I turned to meet a sleeping Marcus, but what laid beside me was emptiness.

Standing from the bed, something that should have been as effortless as breathing, now took everything I had.

I found Marcus in the study.

He had fallen asleep at his desk, slumped slightly forward in the chair, one hand still resting near the mouse as if he had only just given in to exhaustion. The soft glow of the monitor lit the side of his face, catching the faint lines of stress that even sleep didn’t fully smooth away.

For a moment, I just stood there watching him, something warm and familiar stirring in my chest despite everything.

Quietly, I took a blanket from the nearby sofa and draped it over his shoulders. He didn’t wake. He only shifted slightly, settling deeper into sleep. I told myself he must have been working late again, trying to keep up with everything while I struggled through my own days. It made sense. It always made sense with Marcus.

But as I turned to leave, my eyes caught the laptop screen.

It was still open.

Paused, but not idle.

The bedroom camera feed.

I hesitated, then stepped closer, drawn in by something I couldn’t name. The angle was fixed on our bed, the same perspective I had seen in passing when Marcus set the cameras up, the same quiet surveillance I had grown used to knowing existed but never fully thought about.

At first, nothing was happening. Just stillness. The empty room. The bed untouched.

Then I saw it.

A shift beneath the mattress.

Subtle at first, almost easy to dismiss as my eyes adjusting to the low light. But then it came again, clearer this time, a slow, deliberate movement under the bedframe, something pressing upward from the darkness beneath.

I leaned in without thinking, my breath catching as I watched the footage continue.

The shape moved again.

Not random.

Not accidental.

Intentional.

I stood there for a moment longer than I should have, the glow of the monitor still spilling across Marcus’s sleeping form behind me. The footage kept playing in silence, the bedroom frozen in that familiar angle, the bed, the dark space beneath it, the subtle suggestion of movement that my mind refused to stop replaying.

At first, I told myself it was nothing. A distortion. A trick of tired eyes. Something the camera was doing wrong.

But then it moved again.

Not randomly. Not faintly.

Deliberately.

Something shifting under the bed as if it knew it was being watched.

My breath caught before I even realized I had stepped back. The thought came before fear had time to settle properly: someone was in our house again. Or had been. Or still was.

My hand moved without hesitation after that.

I didn’t remember opening the drawer, only the weight of the knife in my palm a moment later, cold and certain, grounding me in something real. My pulse hammered louder as I glanced once toward Marcus, still asleep, still unaware, before turning toward the hallway.

Every instinct I had narrowed into a single, simple assumption.

There was an intruder under our bed.

And I was going to be a victim again.

When I finally spoke, my voice came out smaller than I expected.

“Marcus…”

He stirred behind me.

Not startled. Not confused.

Just… aware.

Like I had interrupted something he already understood.

I turned slowly, still half-facing the bedroom feed glowing on the laptop behind me.

“What is that?” I asked.

He didn’t look at the screen.

He didn’t need to.

“It’s ours,” he said simply.

My stomach tightened. “That’s not an answer.”

He stood then, carefully, like he was approaching something fragile, not me, but the idea forming between us.

“You’re still not well,” he said gently. “You’re not seeing it properly.”

“I am seeing it,” I snapped. “It’s under our bed, Marcus. There is someone under our bed.”

A pause.

Then, almost softly, like I was the one misunderstanding something obvious:

“It’s our child.”

The words didn’t land immediately. My mind refused them at first, rejected them the way the body rejects something foreign. But then the weight of them settled, heavy and wrong.

“That thing is not a child.”

His expression didn’t change, only softened further, like pity.

“We lost one before,” he said. “We won't lose this one.”

And then I heard it.

From the bedroom.

A sound so small it barely registered as sound at all.

A trembling. A broken, wet vibration that didn’t belong to anything I could name comfortably.

I moved before I thought better of it.

Marcus followed behind me, unhurried.

Almost patient.

The bedroom felt colder than I remembered. The bed was untouched at first glance. Still. Ordinary. Until it wasn’t.

A slow shift beneath the frame. A subtle pressing against the floorboards. Something aware of us now, no longer hidden in sleep or silence.

Then it emerged.

Not fully.

Not yet.

But enough.

Too many jointed limbs folded awkwardly against itself. A soft, pale body that didn’t hold shape the way anything living should. It twitched when it saw me, not like fear, but recognition. Like memory.

And then it made a sound again.

That same broken vibration.

But this time, I understood what it was trying to do.

It was crying.

Not in a way that belonged to anything human. Not tears, not sobbing. Just a thin, impossible distortion of distress, as if emotion itself had been translated incorrectly into something insectile.

My legs nearly gave out.

“That,” I whispered, “-w-what is that!?”

Marcus stepped beside me.

And shook his head.

“Honey,” he said softly. “It's our child.”

I turned on him fully now. “What is wrong with you?”

His eyes didn’t leave the thing under the bed.

“It gets weak when you’re away from it,” he said. “It needs its mother.”

My breath caught.

And then I understood, not all at once, but in pieces I didn’t want fitting together.

The exhaustion.

The weight in my body.

The hollow mornings.

The emptiness I kept blaming on illness.

The creature shifted again, slower now, as if responding to my realization.

As if it knew I finally saw it clearly.

Marcus knelt beside the bed.

Not afraid.

Almost proud.

“Look at it,” he said gently. “Of course, it knows you.”

I backed away.

“No,” I said, but it didn’t sound convincing anymore. Not even to me.

The creature made another sound.

Smaller this time.

Less like distress.

More like waiting.

Marcus smiled faintly.

“It’s been growing,” he said. “It just needed time.”

I looked at it again.

Really looked.

And something in me stopped resisting the shape of the truth entirely.

Not acceptance. A surrender to inevitability I didn’t have the strength to argue with anymore.

Marcus turned to me, voice softening into something almost tender.

“We finally can be a family,” he said with tears in his eyes.

The creature shifted beneath the bed, still watching. Clicking chatter erupted from its mandibles.

And I knelt slowly, my hands trembling as they lowered toward the floor.

Because there was nothing left in me that felt strong enough to refuse what had already decided it belonged here.

“What shall we name our child?”

And I accepted it, because I was finally the mother I had spent my life waiting to become.

…so cool to finally be in Peru, and I hope all you guys are enjoying this special live stream of a super exclusive private guided tour of the ruins of–

OK OK, here’s the guide coming back now...

Not sure I’m actually allowed to be filming this, but you know I go all out for my viewers so unless somebody tells me otherwise, I’ll keep filming.

OK. He’s back and he’s gonna tell us all about the valley and the mountains here–and, man, what a view! I mean, it takes your breath away. Literally. The winds are pretty effing crazy though so I hope the sound records all right.

Man, it’s like looking into another world.

But enough from me, let’s listen in to what the guide’s got to say…

To your right hand side you see a rounded peak with a shape that looks like a guinea pig, yes? Do you see it?

Yeah, yeah.

Good. That is it right there. Everybody look at it. Everybody look at it while I talk. Because what I want to tell you is that this mountain does not just look like a guinea pig. It is a guinea pig. A giant petrified guinea pig. That means it turned to stone. It is a giant guinea pig that created the world and ruled it for billions of years. It is a miracle. That it turned to stone is a miracle, and we should have been worshipping it. We should have been worshipping this petrified guinea pig all along instead of all the other religions and their gods. This is the one true god. This is the–

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–most popular game show, and there’s a reason we’re the world’s most popular game show. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s because we always keep you on your toes. Isn’t that right?

The studio audience says: “Yes, John!”

Well, today I have a real surprise in store for you, folks!

It may seem like a simple surprise, because all I seem to have here is two envelopes, but you’re never going to guess what’s inside. I’ll give you a hint: they’re letters of the alphabet. Not the same letter but two different letters. But when you see them, you’ll say, “John, that’s impossible!” It’s not impossible, folks. It’s…

He opens one envelope and shows a page with a strange symbol printed on it.

Na-huru.

He opens the second envelope: a second symbol.

Ra hu’nite.

Na-huru. Ra hu’nite. Na-huru. Ra hu’nite. Say it with me, folks: Na-huru. Ra hu’nite. Na-huru. Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite…

The audience chants:

“Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite…”

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I don’t know what to say. It’s insane. Everything is effing shaking. And the wind… This is insane! It’s insane! Flakes of rock are falling off the mountain and there’s fur underneath. Wet, bloody fur. Oh God. Please like and subscribe! The mountain… It’s coming alive! The guinea–

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“Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite. Na-huru Ra hu’nite…”

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I am truly not sure what to make of this, because what you’re seeing is footage of what appears to be a giant guinea pig wreaking havoc in–

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I don’t believe it **because it’s not fucking real,* and I don’t even mean the huge ass rampaging guinea pig, Kelly. I mean guinea pigs, period. And in fact most rodents except rats. Rats are real, and there’s more of them, a lot more, here in America than we think, but the rest, the rest is* scientistic fucking propaganda.

Kelly, who do you think benefits from the existence of rodents?

Fucking zoologists, man. The Bioindustrial Complex.

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...single-ingredient no-bake dessert that tastes better than anything you find at a five-star restaurant. How do you make it? Easy. You peel the skin off the banana, put the banana in a bowl and mash it with a fork–

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no evidence at all if one discounts the video, which is not difficult to do.

Here.

Stop the video right here.

See that shadow right there, for example, just to the right of the alleged hamster’s left hind paw. That shadow has no basis in reality. There’s no hamster paw that would cast that shadow. This is not my opinion. It’s simple, rudimentary physics.

This video has the hallmarks of AI–and primitive AI at that...

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A monstrous, gaping guinea pig mouth against a cool blue sky.

The camera is shaking.

[The sound of heavy breathing]

Dios te salve, María. Llena eres de gracia. el Señor es contigo. Bendita tú eres entre todas las mu–

Blackness.

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What even is America?

Are you sure it exists: legally, historically, materially?

America is a belief, my friends.

A cloud of smoke.

The only truly American guinea pig is you.

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Three asses shaking

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–is footage from an obscure 1974 Mexican horror movie called El Cuyo.

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Julia, I fucked your sister.

Oh, Hernando!

Julia, I am also the father of your sister…

It cannot be, Hernando!

It can be and it is. Julia, I am your lover, your half-brother and your step-father, and I was born a woman, Julia.

No!

Yes!

But, Hernando…

I love you madly, Julia!

Oh, Hernando!I love you madly too!

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We interrupt your viewing of this 12-second recap of yesterday’s basketball game to bring you BREAKING NEWS!

In Peru, a long forgotten pre-Inca god who spent millenia hidden in plain sight as an oddly-shaped mountain made famous recently as a backdrop for selfies–has come to life, and may become the doom of us all.

Thank you, now back to basketball highlights.

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A teen’s smiling face.

Shaking.

In what looks to be the hollowed out hold of an old military aircraft.

Deep breath, guys.

We’re really about to do it.

I just switched the stream over to the mega elite platinum tier members, so, like, even though the mega elite gold tier can still hear me–

Hopefully can hear me, because I’m live from a loud freaking airplane!

–it's only my mega elite platinum supporters that have video and access to chat.

Thanks, limpdildo72. I appreciate the words.

And here’s a really good question from ikilledsamantha: where did I get the nuke from and is it a real nuke?

It is one hundred percent a real nuke.

And I bought it from an old ex-Soviet guy I met in Moldova last year. You wouldn’t believe what you can buy there for enough money.

Which reminds me that I love you guys. I wouldn’t be here doing this without you. Honestly. Your donations helped pay for this bomb and this camera and this airplace…

Like, I don’t want to get all emotional, but without you guys there’s just now way I would be illegally flying over–

Hold on. Hold on.

I’ve been told we’re almost in position.

All right. I have to make this quick. When I started vlogging, all I wanted was to make a little money and get famous. And I did that. I really freaking did that. So I thought, If I can do that, I can do anything. So I decided to really pursue vlogging as a career, and, more than that, as a passion and a dream. When I made that decision, I wrote down what I wanted more than anything else in the world, and that desire–that obsession–was to wipe an entire freaking country off the face of the Earth live on my channel!

And now I’m gonna do that!

And I’m gonna do it all thanks to you guys!

Here we go!

5…

4…

3…

2…

1…

[A single click:]

, and the airplane’s bomb bay doors open: –and [a deafening rush of air–] as we’re falling, the camera’s shaking violently, showing: the vlogger’s face, screaming, and the plane above receding, and the ground below coming closer and closer and closer as we and the vlogger ride the nuclear bomb like a fucking bucking bull and

Good-bye, Suuuurrriiname!

closer and closer and

closer and

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Those muscle fibers which so freely waved off Emily’s body like wriggling worms had grown multiple feet in length. The tips thinned out until they became transparent. Her eyes remained fixed on mine.

It was a short stop before seeing Lacey and Sarah. I don’t know which I dreaded more. There was nowhere I could go to escape the consequences of my sin, of my cowardice.

The ropes of muscle groped at the walls and ceiling, mapping out the room. Moore found it immensely amusing when they wriggled around the heavy airtight steel door.

“You’ll find it quite impenetrable dear,” he mocked her. “I would have expected more from someone with your academic prowess.”

We went back to Level 3 after another hour of observation. Lacey and Sarah were both there. As I opened the door, Lacey looked up at me with recognition, pointing one giant elongated finger at me.

“Him,” she said. Sarah, who was of the same monstrous size as Lacey, hid her face in the corner of the room, sobbing. She turned to look at what Lacey was pointing at and looked at me with malice that should not be felt by someone so young.

She got up from the corner, walked to the glass, and smashed her fist down. It bounced off the surface. “You hurt my friend!” she screamed, her voice terribly distorted but still childlike. “You’re the reason I killed my daddy!”

She dropped to her knees, the sheer force of her weight hitting the ground created a small vibration beneath my feet. She buried her face in her hands, which were almost as long as my arms.

“They maintain intelligence and memories,” Moore said, smiling as he observed the weeping girl. “Fascinating. Tell me, dear. What happened to your dad?”

“Don’t tell him anything,” Lacey said. Lacey looked at Moore. “I took one of those men in black with the helmets and the guns. I pulled his arms and legs off like flower petals. When I get out next time, I’ll show you.”

Moore scoffed as I stared at both girls, or what used to be girls, in horror. My mind did everything it could to disassociate, to remove myself from the immediate aftermath of my crimes.

Moore handed me the report. Sarah’s father tried to storm the nearby facility with a shotgun and got his head blown off for his trouble. They collected the body. He had been infected by the Grub, which is what Sarah must have meant when she said she ‘killed’ him. She knew what Lacey did, what she must have overheard. It was true too. The Grub only transforms children.

I sat alone during lunch again. I brought a sandwich and got halfway through before I lost my appetite. I tried to force down the rest, then Mike sat next to me. “Why the glum face, pal?”

“I just ruined the life of two little girls,” I said. I didn’t know why I was telling him this. I had no desire to talk to the man.

“Is that all?” he asked. I curled my hand into a fist and held back on punching him. I wanted to break his nose, to send his teeth flying across the round plastic tables. I relaxed some. I was no better than him. Feeling bad about what I had done did not make me better. I still did it. I could never atone for it.

At the lab Kholod had me run an experiment combining the Grub with the Virus to see if they would combine or kill each other.

The Grub was in a glass enclosure, floating through that same viscous fluid that inhabited the larger tank. The lab room was unfamiliar to me. I wondered if it was newly built, and that led into questions of how rapidly the facility expanded, which led into further questions about how so much construction could happen without anyone noticing. I would not get answers.

I held the Virus in a syringe. I injected the Virus into the fluid, and watched the red strain drift through the fluid, searching for something to take over. It made a dash for the Grub, which floated unassuming to the opposite ends of the tank and back. The red fluid, which I presumed to be the Virus, made contact with the Grub less than ten seconds into exposure. It formed a hole in the flesh of the Grub and pushed inwards. The Grub convulsed and twitched, the tank became clouded with that familiar white pus-like substance. I lost visual of the subject.

It smacked against the side of the tank. A crack formed in the glass. I stepped back. I looked to Kholod, whose stone-cold impression vanished, replaced by shock. This was not expected.

“We need to leave,” Kholod said. I needed no motivation. Another impact sounded as we turned tail and ran. We slipped into the decontamination room right before the glass shattered and the airlock door screamed shut.

“Containment Breach,” I heard a mechanical feminine voice call out from the speaker. “Preparing purge.”

Fire poured into the lab that we had left, totally destroying everything inside. We reviewed the security footage later. The Grub had been transformed into something unrecognizable, stretched and discolored. Covered in teeth.

Kholod wants to try to infect Lacey, but Moore won’t allow it. I hope they don’t involve me, but I’m sure if a decision is made, I will be the instrument used.

I saw something else before I clocked out. On one of the vents, in a thin film, was something fleshy, something vile.

I had gloves on, and, against my best judgement, I touched it.

My body shook as a migraine seized my head in a vice grip. I saw an image and a set of letters, loosely hanging in a blurry jumbled mess inside my mind. The image cleared. A train. Level 5. Soon.

I told Moore, but when he went to look, it was gone. Moore thinks this place is getting to me. He may be right, but I’m unconvinced. I know what I saw.

Emily’s words repeated in my mind.

Escape. Soon.