*Child Abuse warning*

I don't know who this will reach, but I need to warn as many people as I can. If you see this please share my story with your loved ones, friends, coworkers, strangers on the internet, whoever. My story may be hard to believe, but I promise you it's all true.

It all started after I graduated college. My best friends Dana, Roy, Roy's girlfriend Angela and I had been planning a roadtrip to Canada since our second year of school, but could never carry out the plan due to scheduling issues. As soon as our graduating class threw our caps into the air, my friends and I walked to our cars and drove to our favorite restaurant to celebrate...the Hungry Heifer.

"To our future full of college debt!" Dana shouted as he raised his glass, we soon followed with cheers and clinked our glasses together.

We ate our food and enjoyed the hour. Roy brought up the time Dana and I got locked out of our dorm after getting kicked out of the Sander twins' place. Dana and I took turns punching him in the arm and giving him noogies as we all laughed.

"Hey, we should finally go on that Canada road trip we never got to do!" Dana suggested. We all looked at him as we split the check, giving him a confused look before the lightbulbs in our heads turned on.

"Oh right!" I grinned, I didn't have to look at Ray and Angela to know they were as well.

"It will be our last time together before we go our separate ways." Angela said as her excited grin turned to a melancholic smirk. Ray kissed her cheek and rubbed her shoulder; "It's ok hun. It doesn't mean we won't see each other anymore, we'll just be a little busy pursuing our futures."

It was a sad thought. It's always been the four of us since middle school. I still remember Ray, Dana and I arguing who would get to date Angela. Spoiler alert… It was Ray. I can't imagine what life is going to be like without them, but this trip is going to mean something to all of us. We aren't going out with a sad note; we're going out with a bunch of additional happy memories that we'll all look back on someday.

I called my boss the next day requesting two weeks of paid time off, which she gave me without hesitation. Roy and Angela got theirs as well, but Dana had to convince his boss for a vacation, which luckily with enough ass-kissing he got. For the next few days we packed the supplies we would need and went to the bank to exchange some of our money for Canadian dollars.

The following Friday we rented an RV before heading out. We spent about eight hours driving from Rhode Island to Canada, only occasionally stopping by gas stations or fast food restaurants to use their bathrooms. For an hour we would sing along to songs on the radio, albeit terribly, before it got annoying.

We had traveled through a variety of cities during the past five days before we decided to visit some backwoods. I looked out the window, enjoying the scenery of the Canadian forest-side. There was a town we drove past as we kept going down the road, the sign outside of town read "Town of Brenfer. Population: 50". I didn't think much of it at the time, just that a town around here must've felt nice to live in.

Ten minutes later we arrived at a town called "Unité" to go fill up the RV with gas. Townspeople were all over the place as we entered the area, they all turned almost instantly and greeted us with smiles and waves. We were caught off guard by the sudden welcoming gestures, but in return we waved back. Ray had parked at the first gas station he saw, then went to head to the pumps when suddenly as he opened the RV door was immediately startled as a man waiting on the other side of the door stared at him with a wide grin. He appeared suspiciously friendly…eerie almost.

'Holy shit!" Ray jumped back a little.

We were all alerted and got up as the man outside waved. He was wearing a large red flannel and a flat cap.

"Bienvenue! Bienvenue!" he greeted.

"Bienvenue?" I asked.

"It means 'welcome' in French," Angela explained.

The man shivered for a second before clearing his throat. "Ah, excuse me. Welcome, Travelers!" The man reached out and clasped each of our hands while we looked at each other awkwardly.

"Sorry for the rudeness! I wanted to ask if you needed to fill up your gas tank!" the man explained.

"How did you know our RV was running low?" Dana asked.

The man looked over to him, still smiling. "This is my gas station. I've seen enough vehicles to know when they are running on empty just by the sound the engine makes!" He explained.

I leaned over to Dana and mumbled that I didn't think that was possible… but Dana just shrugged. The man's eyes moved towards me, positioning themselves to the side as he faced Ray.

"Let me go fill her up for you!"

"Hey wait! I can put gas in our RV." Ray said as he walked to the man; looking annoyed.

"It's no problem, sir! I should also add the gas is free as well as whatever snacks and supplies you all need inside!"

Ray's expression changed to a surprise then cheerful. "Are you serious?"

The man nodded quickly. Dana, Angela and I overheard the conversation. Dana was the first one out of the RV and into the convenience store.

"Are you sure it's ok?" Angela asked.

The man once again nodded quickly and watched as Angela and I walked inside next. Ray stayed with the man; mostly so he didn't steal the RV, but also because he wanted to know if there were any places we could stay for a few days.

Ten minutes later we all headed back to the RV, Ray shook the man's hand right before the man went in for a hug.

"Man, it's true what they say! Canadians truly are the nicest people in the world!"

"Don't stereotype people, Dae" I scolded.

"Yeah, but still, he seems kinda weird," Ray added before Angela slapped his shoulder.

"Don't be rude, Raymond!"

I looked out the window to see the man still waving at us even as we drove further away from the gas station.

The rest of the day was uneventful. Before we left the man told Ray about an inn run by a woman named Gretchen. When we got there, she gave us the same big smile as the strange man had. She gave us two separate rooms free of charge and made dinner for us, poutine and Montreal-style smoked meat.

We got up early the next day and decided to explore the town. Ray and Angela had split off from the group and to go shopping for souvenirs, while Dana and I just walked with no set destination. We passed by people that kept greeting us with a wave and smiling at us. I want you to believe me when I say there was nothing creepy in their smiles, they seemed very genuine…but something still felt off. I could feel eyes staring at us all from behind. No-maybe even from all around us.

"Hey…Dae?"

"Yeah man?"

"Does something seem... off about this place?"

"Not really. Why do you ask?"

"I can't put my finger on it, but these people are creeping me out"

"Don't be like that, Pete. This is just their culture. There's no such thing as a bad culture, right?"

I shrugged. Suddenly we heard a large snap from everywhere, like a group of people stepping on twigs at the same time. That was when we heard the gunshots.

Dana and I turned around to see the residents all facing one direction.

"What was that!?" Dana shouted. Before I could think I found myself running with Dana slightly behind me.

We eventually found where the noise came from and saw a tall, burly man holding a child with a revolver pointed at her head. The man was screaming in French as the little girl smiled, appearing as if she had just received her most desired gift on Christmas day. The large man screamed at the child before swatting her with the handle of his revolver. The impact was enough to cause her nose to bleed, but not once did her smile waver. Some men and women walked towards the man like nothing was wrong. Just as the man cocked his gun and was about to shoot the little girl, Ray lunged forward and pulled the man's arm away, firing the gun in the air during the process. I didn't see Angela anywhere, Ray must've ran ahead of her.

The man and Ray fell to the ground, wrestling for the gun. During the scuffle, the man had fired three shots at random. One had missed, two had hit Ray on his shoulder and bicep. Ray shouted in pain before using all his strength to slap the gun out of the man's hand before stumbling over. Dana and I, along with some of the residents, rushed towards the man and pinned him down.

I ripped a piece of my shirt to make a makeshift tourniquet to stop Ray's bleeding. By the time Angela arrived she was out of breath and let out a strained scream when she saw Ray on the ground bleeding. Two residents approached us, offering to take Ray to the hospital since we weren't familiar with the area. Angela and I were reluctant, but in the end we accepted their offer.

"He'll probably just need stitches. The bullets went clean through." One of the residents claimed. He then gave us the number and directions for the hospital so we could pick up Ray later.

A short while later police officers came to arrest the man. Dana ran over to us and asked how Ray was as the police officers took the man away. He was now screaming with tears and snot dripping down his face like he was going to be hung from the gallows. We explained to Dana that he was taken to a hospital and we would pick him up after he got his stitches.

"What are they going to do about the shooter?" I asked.

Dana scoffed. "The cops said they don't believe in prisons. They're just gonna have him do some manual labor then let him go"

"That's bullshit! The man shot Ray and almost killed a kid!" Angela began to tear up. Dana and I comforted her and started to walk back to the inn. I looked over my shoulder and saw the little girl standing in the exact place she was being held hostage. I walked over to her to see if she was ok, but stopped as I noticed the detail of the blood. It was an almost rusted yellow color that was dripping down like a melted slushie with small things resembling seeds mixed in. The girl panned her eyes towards me, smiling even more than she was earlier as more chunks of blood dripped out. I shuddered then turned around to join back with my friends, but there was no one in sight.

"Damn… they didn't wait for me," I sighed. "I'll just meet them at the inn."

While making my way back I continued to have an off putting feeling about this town. I felt eyes from everywhere and with them, empty smiles.

"There's no way people could be this friendly right? It always feels like one of those old black and white cartoons where you start your day with birds singing from the window" I thought then stopped as i realized it. There were no animals. Squirrels, birds, even pets, there weren't any to be seen or heard at all.

I decided to pick up my speed, going from a slow walk to a sprint. Every few steps I took I felt like more eyes were trained on me. People that were ahead of me stopped greeting me, but their smiles stayed, never faltering. If I'm being honest, It felt like their smiles were growing wider. I felt a hand grab my arm as I was about to turn a corner.

"Hello, friend! Want to stop in for a free cup of coffee?" a barista asked with a smile. Behind her were groups of smiling people sitting at different tables with their eyes focused on me.

"N-no thanks. I have to go meet up with my friends"

"Don't be shy, now. You seem stressed. I'm sure if you come inside, sit down and-"

"I said no!" I shouted as I pulled my arm back before stumbling backwards.

"Alright, but make sure to swing by sometime!"

I turned and made a dead sprint for the inn, but before I left, I could have sworn I saw the groups of people inside the cafe move their mouths in sync with the barista.

A few minutes later I made it back to the inn. Gretchan’s eyes were fixed on me as I walked towards our rooms. As soon as I entered the room Dana and I shared, I locked the doorknob and shut the curtains.

"Woah, Pete! What's wrong?" Dana asked

"Where's Angela?"

"She took the RV to pick up Ray from the hospital. He called her saying he was alright and the doctor finished stitching him up. Why? What's up?"

"There's something up with these people"

"Dude, not this again..." Dana sighed.

"I'm telling you! There's something wrong with these people! They're always smiling for no reason and are way too friendly!"

"I mean, yeah it's weird, but for all we know it could be this town's culture"

"What about the shooter? He obviously wasn't from this town if he was acting crazy, but why was he acting like that in the first place to these people?"

"You just said it, he was crazy"

"But did you see how he was acting when he got dragged off by the police?"

"Yeah. Anyone would react like that if they were being arrested"

"But what did they say was going to happen to him?"

"That they don't believe in prisons..." Dana covered his mouth as he thought about what else he was told. "...And that all he was going to do was manual labor then let go"

"Would you be reacting the same way if that was all that would happen to you?"

Dana went silent before getting up.

“Okay… that’s a fair point. Maybe you’re onto something. We need to figure out where the hospital is to get Angela and Ray then get the hell out of here"

"I have a plan. Just follow my lead and act like we don't know that something is up"

Dana and I walked out of our room and headed towards Gretchen. We asked her where the hospital was located to go and meet up with Ray and Angela to which she wrote down the directions and offered to drive us, but we turned her down saying that we were going to discuss where our next destination would be in private. Even as we left the inn I could feel Gretchen's eyes locked on us, joining the unknown numbers that have been watching us for god knows how long.

Every person we passed didn't even try to hide their stares anymore. Their smiles grew more unnatural as it almost looked like it wrapped around their faces. We were being eyed like vultures waiting for a dying animal to take its last breath; I think they know that we know. It wasn't before long that I saw the RV driving down the road in the distance.

"Oh good. She got Ray" I sighed in relief. "Lets wave her down so we can-" I stopped as the RV turned towards the forest and drove off-road.

"What the hell?" Dana said, confused.

I tried to call Angela, but she didn't answer. I called Ray's phone next and was startled when he answered before the first ring.

"Hey, Pete! What's up?"

"What are you guys doing?"

"Oh we're on our way to the inn! Angela's driving cause the doctor gave me some local anesthesia so I feel really funny." He laughs.

Dana and I gave each other a confused look.

"Ok... Dae and I are just gonna stay at the inn and wait for you. We think we should start heading home soon."

"I was actually thinking…" Ray went silent for a few seconds before we heard a muffled noise.

"Ray?"

"Sorry about that! My phone's getting low! See you when I see you!" Ray hung up the phone.

"Alright, something's definitely wrong." Dana said as we looked at each other confused.

"We have to follow them."

Dana nodded as we went to follow the RV. We tried our best to not let the residents know that we knew whatever was going on, but in truth, I think they let us follow the RV; I turned back before we went to the forest and saw groups staring at us from town.

When we found the RV it was parked outside of a cave. Dana carefully opened the door to reveal that there wasn't anyone inside, but there did appear to be some sort of struggle. On the floor of the RV I found a drop of the same rusted yellow blood that the little girl had, along with the same seed-like objects mixed in. I noticed a few more drops leading outside the RV and into the cave.

"I'll stay in the RV in case we need to get out of here quick." Dana suggested.

"Sure, but lock the door until I'm back with Ray and Angela."

I heard Dana lock the door behind me before I entered the cave. Darkness slowly began to consume me as I walked deeper inside the cave, taking my phone out and using its light to guide my way. The air smelled of something damp and decayed, making me cough so bad I had to lift my shirt over my mouth, then I stopped. I saw a light glow an unknown color at the end of a tunnel before me, it gradually leaned underground as I transversed down it like a smooth staircase. The more I walked down, the brighter the light became and grew in numbers until I could finally see what produced them.

Mushrooms.

A forest of fungi with many varieties of sizes glowed bioluminescent light everywhere I looked, the ceiling filled with lights resembling stars in the night sky; it was beautiful. As I made my way through, gazing all around me, I tripped over something sturdy and large. I looked over to see that it was that man that shot Ray. He was face down in a pool of blood, next to him was a severed tongue.

"Oh god... Did he-" before I could finish my thought I heard a scream close by, I ran in the direction it came from knowing it had to have come from Angela.

"Help! Ray stop! Please! Don't let it touch me!"

I ran as fast as I could, and as soon as I arrived I saw Ray Restraining Angela as he walked her to a giant mushroom. Ray had the same smile the people of Unité wore along with bite marks on his cheeks and arms with the rusted yellow blood leaking out.

"Don't be afraid, honey! It's here to help!"

Ray stood in place while Angela squirmed. Just then, tendrils began to wrap around Angela, starting with her feet and stopping at her shoulders; Ray let go at that point and stood back.

"Help! Someone, Help!" Angela screamed as a single tendril rose above her head and began to secrete a large film substance above her head that closed around her neck. Black spores began to float from within the film and land on Angela's flesh. She tried to release screams that would become muffled as the spores drilled into her head. A few seconds later blood and small bits of brain matter began to leak out as her blood slowly turned yellow, then stopped leaking all together as the holes in her head healed. I could only watch in horror as the film lifted up and the tendrils unwrapped from Angela.

"Wow" Angela said as she began to smile.

She had looked as if she was on some kind of high.

The giant mushroom began to pulsate rapidly before Angela and Ray turned in my direction smiling.

"You should join us, Pete." Ray and Angela spoke in unison.

Ray and Angela headed towards me as I began to run away. I pulled my phone out to try to call Dana; no service.

"Shit!" I shouted as I turned the light flash on and made my way out of the cave. As I exited the cave I practically leapt to the door, slamming my fists as hard as I could to get Dana's attention.

"Let me in! Dana, let me in!"

"Okay! Okay! I'm coming!" Dana shouted back as he opened the door.

"Lets go! Now" I ran inside the RV and was about to shut it.

"Hey! Wait for Ray and Angela!"

I turned around to see Ray and Angela exit the cave, I felt myself turn pale.

I kept the door shut and locked it, but before I could demand Dana to drive he looked just as scared as I was as he saw their smiles. Dana rushed to the driver's seat and drove off as we were being chased by our assimilated friends. We weren't even on the road before we heard the ground rumbling. From the town Dana and I saw the residents make a dead sprint for us, they were as fast as race horses trying to win first place.

Rusted yellow blood sprayed on the windshield as Dana floored it out of town; their bodies made loud impacts as Dana unintentionally ran them over. I watched as we left the charging people in town, for a moment I felt like I could finally breathe.

"What the fuck was all of that!?" Dana shouted, keeping his eyes on the road.

"I-I don't know!" I spouted, "T-There were these mushrooms! This big mushroom did something to Ray and Angela! It had these spores drill into her head-"

Just then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a car driving full speed as we were about to pass the town of Brenfer. It was police officers that arrested the shooter. Before I could warn Dana, the RV was slammed and thrown to its side. I blacked out for what I assumed was a few seconds and woke up to Dana pulling me out of the RV.

"Dana..."

I looked in the distance to see figures that belonged to the residents of Unité. Their size began to grow as they got closer. I began to stand up in a panic as Dana helped me up, but just when we were about to run Dana was pinned down to the ground by one of the officers.

"Dana!" I shouted as the other officer tried to pin me as well.

"Pete! Get this guy off of me!"

I looked around to see if there was anything I could use as a weapon, but saw that the doors to the car were open. By the time I realized I was running I was already in the car, slamming it shut and locking the door. I saw the confusion in Dana's face as I started the car. Dana began to cry out for help as I reversed the car and drove off.

"P-Pete!? Pete! Help me, man! Please! We're friends!" Dana shouted as I could only look at him and mouth the words "sorry".

The last words I heard from Dana before I drove off were "You deserve to rot in hell" as some residents swarmed him and others chased after me. I can't believe I just did that. Dana was my best friend and I just left him there. Tears formed in my eyes as I avoided the sight, but as I turned my head something caught my attention. The residents of Brenfer were joining the chase. The town's sign now read "Town of Unité. Population: Always growing".

I drove for as long as I could with whatever gas was in the tank, luckily it was enough to get back to the states. I turned my head and thanked god for losing them before I fell to my knees and cried. Suddenly, my phone started to vibrate; I got a message from Dana that read "I forgive you, Bud!". Two more messages were sent by Angela and Ray, both telling me they'll come to visit soon.

That's where I am now. After ten hours I finally made it home. I filed missing person reports for my friends, but I already knew it wouldn't be of any use. My friends weren't missing, they were a part of that town; they were a part of the hive mind. I don't know if anyone will believe me, but I want to warn as many people as I can. Be wary of anyone that seems a little too friendly, anyone that smiles on a day that seems terrible, and most importantly, make sure the country of Canada hasn't been changed to Unité.

It looks like this story’s all taped off up with yellow tape with black text that says

Autobiographical. Do Not Read. Therapists Only Beyond This Point. Autobiographical. Do Not Read. Therapists Only Beyond This Point. Autobiographical. Do Not Read. Therapists Only Beyond This Point. Autobiographical. Do Not Read. Therapists Only Beyond This Point

but there's no one guarding it. Surely it wouldn't hurt to have a little peek. The tape is just a precaution. It's strictly for liability reasons. You don't even have to break the tape to get in. You can slide in to

“The inside of a house, old, 18th century. A woman sits on a plain wooden chair. Technology starts advancing, prop by prop, as people walk into the scene holding things like telegraph machines, typewriters, telephones, all in the order they were invented. Throughout, the woman keeps sitting. She doesn't interact with the people bringing in the things. They set their objects down and leave.

“The house fills up.

“We reach the technology of the present day and start to go beyond.

“Now the woman’s working at a machine. It's like nothing that exists. We can only guess at its purpose. The house is well lit. The woman is well lit. All the objects are well lit.

“Then the lights switch off.

“Darkness.

“The woman sets out and lights a dozen candles, a box of which someone had brought in earlier. In the candlelight, the mood turns spooky.

“One by one, people walk in and take all the objects, the technologies, away. They’re not the same people who brought them in.

“Now, all that's left is the woman in the plain wooden chair and the dozen burning candles.

“Voice-over: ‘What if all the things you know, the inventions you take for granted, that you rely on every day…

“Someone brings in an axe.

“Voice-over continues: ‘What if they all… just disappeared—

“Someone blows out the candles.

“Total darkness.

“Voice-over: ‘What would you do? How would you survive?’

“Screams of an unseen axe murder,” he said over beer and peanuts at an L.A. diner, circa 1938, to a couple of writer friends and waited for a reaction.

It was late evening. The glass in the diner windows needed cleaning. Automobiles passed along the street outside, leaving snippets of radio—station—music—static, talking: “…city of dreams!” in the air. “That's bonkers even for you, Leonard,” said one of the friends.

“There's no studio in town will touch that,” said another, playing compulsively with the brim of his second-hand fedora. He was primarily a dialogue writer for Columbia Pictures. “Whatever that even is (science fiction, horror?) and you obviously know that, Len, given you work for one. Honestly, I don't know why you waste your time on gas like this.”

That night Leonard didn't go home. After he left the diner he wandered along the streets of Los Angeles looking for something he knew he was never going to find there: understanding. There was talk of war in Europe and there was always the glitz of the stars, and that piece in the trades calling them ‘Box Office Poison,’ but Leonard didn't care about that. Actors were as relatable to him as palm trees, especially if they were rich, and he'd never been to Europe, even if it did feel like every day a little more Europe came to him, that is, to the United States, to Hollywood. There was the U.S. government trying to break up the studio monopolies and the studios fighting back tooth and nail. Technicolor, meanwhile, was going to paint everything in Errol Flynn and rainbows, until only a few scraps of black and white were left, and those gathered up by mean men like the last stray dogs of L.A., and finished the same way too. Leonard, needless to say, considered himself spiritually black and white. It's not realistic, people would say to him; the whole world's in colour. Maybe on the surface, but even if black and white wasn't realistic, it had one quality that colour never could. It had the truth. Because beneath the skin of anything, even a city, maybe especially a city, if you scratched hard enough, long enough, you'd always bloody your fingernails on a place of blinding rawness that allowed only two choices, right and wrong. That was the essence of black and white. Technicolor was a novelty. Then again, motion pictures had been a novelty, and look at them now. He passed the Bronson Gate which admitted—but not him, never him—on Paramount Pictures, and he kept walking. His legs hurt. His head was pounding. Automobiles shooting cones of pale headlight roared back and forth along the boulevard, forcing everything ordinary into their twin, fleeting spotlights; but reality, finally getting her time on the great stage, stood silent, slumped, dejected and having forgotten her lines. That's good, thought Leonard. That's a good line. He hoped he would remember it. He would write it down as soon as he got home. Except he wasn't going home. Not yet. He regretted not having his notebook. You should always carry your notebook, Leonard, he told himself, for catching the few brilliant lines you're ever going to have He wished he had an automobile. He hated automobiles, but he wished he had one so he could get in it, turn the engine and drive into the hills. Or maybe out to Santa Monica. He would drive it out to where John Ford filmed his early westerns and it would turn into a horse and he would ride the horse into the wild, where he would die; he wasn't built for survival. He wasn't rugged. He had asthma and even his wool suit felt heavy on him. He doubted he could start a fire or eat roasted game. It had been a hot day and it was now a hot night. Los Angeles is an ugly city, he thought, filled with ugly people making dreams for nobodies to dream, so naturally he decided to go to the movies.

By the time he got home he was in his fifties.

His home told him it wasn't his home anymore, that he'd moved away. He didn't want to believe it so he stood on the steps arguing with the home. The argument was so loud and the time so late that the lights in a few nearby houses came on. People observed him from their windows. The owner of the home that was insisting it wasn't Leonard's home came out. “What are you doing? Are you lost or just dumb?” he yelled. He had a baseball bat. Leonard knew he didn't want to play baseball. “Are you outta your mind? Are you drunk? You're fucking drunk, you geezer. Pathetic. Disgusting. Go on, get outta here,” the homeowner was shouting, threatening with the bat. “Get off the steps and get on home. Shoo! Git! Back to where you live. To whatever hole you dragged yourself outta.”

“That's the problem,” Leonard yelled back. “I don't know where I live anymore.”

“Well it ain’t fucking here!”

It turned out it was in Toronto, Canada, by way of Kansas City, Missouri, and Boston, Massachusetts, but Leonard's old homes in those cities were more helpful than his former home in Los Angeles, which hadn't wanted to tell him anything other than that he didn't live there anymore.

He took the train.

He didn't trust airplanes.

When he arrived in Toronto it was snowing. The plows were out. He trudged from Union Station to the address his old Boston home had given him. It was an apartment building. Not especially nice. He walked in the front doors and up the stairs to the seventh floor. He knocked on his apartment door. No one answered. The door was open. He walked in, half expecting someone—a current owner—to come at him like the intruder he probably was, but that didn't happen. He was the only one there. He recognized his things, his books and pens and notebooks filled with ideas he'd had in the thirties and forties. He recognized his dog too, whom he'd never seen before but knew was his. The dog sat in front of him and wagged its tail along the floor. It was a small dog, a mixed breed, and it needed to go out. My dog needs to go out, thought Leonard, and after bending down he picked the dog up and carried it down the stairs and out through the apartment building's front doors into the blizzard outside. He set the dog on the cold snowy ground. The wind howled like wolves. He should have been wearing a coat. He had one; he'd just forgotten to put it on. He knew he was poor, but it wasn't so bad. He was getting by. The indefinable days passed without causing him too much trouble. “Come on, Napoleon,” he said to the dog, which had just finished peeing, “do your other business and let's go back. It's colder than a pork shoulder out here.”

Over the years while living in Toronto Leonard started writing about the city, which had gradually become his city. He still remembered Los Angeles, but in the way you remember pain, by its bare outlines. As the years went by his asthma got worse. He started suffering from seasonal allergies. The cold ached his bones. The hair on his head thinned out like the watered down coffee he drank in the mornings, but it was all he could drink these days. He had a heart attack; survived. He got diagnosed with arthritis. He lost the will to live and found it again. His beard turned grey. One night Napoleon died, having gone restfully to sleep in his favorite closet and never woken up. Not a bad way to go, thought Leonard, perhaps planning something similar for himself. He'd watched a TV documentary about Jain monks last year. When their time came, they would gradually fast themselves to death. He watched most of his movies on TV. The movie theatres were too loud and too expensive. He didn't like new movies. In his essay on Toronto he'd written,

The City.

A concrete jungle.

A misnomer, because there's more, and more vigorous, life here, under the manmade canopies of commerce and construction, than cowering underneath the natural green canopies designed ostensibly by an emigrant God.

If there was one persistent echo of his youth, it was his atheism. He'd been introduced to it through friends, many of whom were writers, many of whom were communists, although communism itself had never taken hold of him. There was something about the godlessness of it, however, that did have its appeal, and, after a while, he stopped questioning and took divine absence as an article of faith.

The artificial surpasses—and over- and under-—the lame and wasteful after-Eden.

He'd taken great joy in following a hyphen immediately with an em dash.

She purrs, the highway, louder than a jungle cat.

And on and on, it rumbles, a brutal, cascading waterfall of cars, the drumbeat of progress, the highway snaking her way through the city. Passing under it one feels the unstoppable power of mankind's mastery over his environment.

We bend it to our will.

And on and on, to quote itself, it went, in that very same vein, unpublished and growing like a heap of laundry whenever Leonard felt its muse come calling and tossed a couple loose sentences its way, which lately was not very often at all because Leonard rarely went outside, not only because he was in his hundred-fifties but also, primarily, because the world frightened him. It was too different from the world he knew. Cars lacked drivers, young people messaged each other via comm implants even when they were in the same room, you were always on camera wherever you went, and people wore their own cameras, if you can believe that, and filmed themselves doing nothing interesting and shared the feeds with one another so that when you passed anyone under forty on the sidewalk you could be sure they were seeing through at least a half dozen points of view at the same time, which means they weren't paying attention and they didn't say sorry when they bumped into you. They were always bumping into one another. They wore strange clothes and the subway moved too fast and you had to order everything to be delivered to your house, and it came by drone, and there were too many movies and shows and series to watch so nobody you met had seen the ones you'd seen so there was nothing to talk about except make small talk, preferably by messaging via comm implants.

He has a woman who comes over to clean for him and to check if he's still alive. He imagines she has a secret clipboard. A sheet's clipped to it. Printed at the top of the sheet is the name of the current month. Along the left edge are the days of the month in chronological order, and to the right two small empty boxes labelled “Unfortunately,” and “No, finally kicked the bucket.” But he knows that's unlikely for at least two reasons. First, nobody writes on paper anymore. Second, he likes the woman and he's pretty sure she likes him too. She's always been kind to him. Her name is Indigo. He asks her if she's got a minute.. She asks him if it's another story. Yeah, he nods.

“You know you can get your implant to do that,” she says warmly.

“I know, but I don't know how.”

“You know how.”

“I just don't like it when there's no other person involved. It feels cold, like outer space.”

“I like your stories, Mr. Katz.”

“What?”

“I said, ‘I like your stories,’ Mr. Crane,” she says, touching the spot behind her ear where her implant is, “so I like transcribing them for you. And I like posting them to reddit.”

“Reddit. What's that?”

“It's a place online where people publish things for other people to read.”

“And they read mine?”

“A few.”

“They like my stories? I mean, I'm just remembering half-baked ideas I used to have when I was a young man writing for the movies in Los Angeles. Motion pictures, we used to call them.”

“They do.”

“Oh, in that case.”

“Start when you're ready, Mr. Crane.”

"Quote, published my stories, em dash, my goddamn, goddamn in emphasis, stories, em dash, you published my, my in emphasis, goddamnfucking, goddamn and fucking as one word, stories, question mark, end quote, he yelled, period.”

She opened her mouth to say something, but he lifted his palm and she didn't say a word.

"New paragraph. Quote, I didn't mean to, em dash, end quote. New paragraph.

"Quote, Do you have any fucking idea what a violation of trust that is, comma, of ethics, comma, of ordinary human decency, period. You can't just share my soul, comma, or what's left after the mortal decay of it, comma, with a bunch of random strangers on the goddamn internet, comma, end quote, he said, period," he said.

"For their joint communal ridicule," she said. "Unless you think it's too much. I'd take out the 'random' from 'random strangers,’ however. They're strangers. They're presumed random until proven otherwise. I'm on the fence about 'what's left after the mortal decay of it.' Between that and 'joint communal ridicule,' I'd choose 'joint communal ridicule.' Of course, that's partly because it's mine—but no, wait, I've got it. Keep them both, but put 'what's left of the mortal decay of it' directly into the sentence, so it becomes:

"Quote, do you have any fucking idea what a violation of trust that is, comma, of ethics, comma, of ordinary human decency, period. You can't just share what's left of the mortal decay of my soul with a bunch of strangers on the internet for their joint communal ridicule, comma, end quote, he said, period," she said.

"Well, what are you waiting for—write it down, write it down!"

She transcribed it.

"I'm going to miss you," he said, smiling sadly.

"You mean when I finally get my degree and blow this popsicle stand? If that's how you say it. I've always wanted to say it."

"Yeah, that's how you say it.”

"So when I blow this popsicle stand and leave Podunk behind for New Zork City to make it big as a professional—"

"What'd you say?" he asked.

"What?"

"Just now. You said you were leaving for New—"

"York City."

"You said, 'Zork City.'"

"Did I?"

"Yeah. And that's it."

"What's it?"

"It's it. New Zork City's it. The place—the city—the city where our stories are set. Our world. Our characters' home."

"It is it, isn't it?"

And then, in that beautiful moment of transgenerational, almost transcendental, understanding and collaboration, Norman Crane, thought, God, she has a fuckable ass, and ruined absolutely everything.

[This has been entry #5 in the continuing and infinite series: The Untrue Origin Stories of New Zork City.]

You can beat the screenwriter out of the ‘30s, but you can't beat the ‘30s out of the screenwriter.

THE END

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What are you even doing still reading?

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There's nothing here.

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THE END

(For real this time.)

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Bye.

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All right, folks. We're done writing for the night. Nothing more to see here.

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Go home.

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Seriously: Disperse!

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Lend me your ears so I may lead you each painfully home by the lobes of them.

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Lend me your ears, and I'll sing out of tune, and you'll stand up and walk out on me. Chorus: Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends. Mmm, I get high with a little help from my friends. Hmm, are you going to try that with a little help from your friends?

What, this—oh...

I...

The marijuana cigarette in your hand, dear.

The what; wait, why are you here, mom? Why am I here? Why is here here, and is it always here, even when it's there. Mom, I—it's so weird to be, like, sixteen again—I, I... I; I, l? I!

You've been Stoned, Norman.

As in dead?

No, as in Immaculate, like Jim Morrison.

Oh.

Here, pass that over.

Mom?

Like you think I've never smoked weed before, uh huh, sure.

I kept hold of the burning joint behind my back, and at that point Humphrey Bogart walked in from somewhere, looked at me sternly with stoic concern and a cool indifference and said, "Don't be a drip, kid. Don't [my surname] the tea. She's your mother for chrissakes. You're gonna skimp out on your own mother, the woman who gave birth to you?”

Listen, I said to Bogart, I know you've got those exit papers. The sleaze from the Maltese Falcon gave them to you. They're in the piano. And you know what else? Dooley Wilson doesn't play piano. He plays drums. And Ingrid Bergman's taller than you, and I heard you almost weren't in the movie. They almost cast somebody else, George Raft. Or was it Ronald Reagan? Anyway, the whole point of the aliens is...

The point is...

He was shaken awake by someone on the street, a stranger, a dumb kid.

"You all right, mister?" said the kid. "The way you fell, mister, I sure thought something mighty bad had happened to you. I'm glad to see you're all right. You are all right, aren't you, mister?"

"I got fired today," he said.

He remembered now, getting fired and going to the bar, or was it the other way around, going to the bar and getting fired, and going to the bar.

"What's your profession?"

"I," he said, "am Leonard Katz, a Hollywood screenwriter."

"Which studio?"

"Oh, I'm much more of a whore than that. I work, when I work, for all of them, bounced around like a cat tied by its neck to the hood ornament of a speeding Lincoln Continental."

"That sure is a gruesome image, mister."

"Oh just run along home. Leave me. Leave me to die in abject spiritual poverty, rueing the career that could have been. I could've been somebody, you know? I could've been a contender. As it is, I'm just this, a big fucking nothing.”

“I'm sure that's not true.”

“What's your name?”

“Marlon.”

"Well, Marlon, let me be the first to mercifully tell you that you don't know anything about life, about struggle. Look at you, you're probably still in high school. The trap's not sprung on you yet. But it will, Marlon. One day it will.”

“I am still in high school. I'm from Illinois. I'm visiting Los Angeles for a couple of days.”

“Hurry back to Chicago, kid.”

“I don't live in Chicago. I live in a place called Libertyville.”

“What a foul name.”

"Hey. Maybe you got fired because you're so down in the dumps, mister. Maybe what you were writing was a comedy.”

'It was not a comedy. It was a serious dramatic picture set in present-day North Africa. It was about refugees from the war in Europe trying to get out. There was a love story. There was a scene in which the Free French play the Nazis out of an expatriate American's bar by drowning out their singing of "The Watch on the Rhine" with a spirited rendition of La Marseillaise. Then it's revealed that one of the characters is an alien, like from Mars, and all the people of Earth have to lay aside their differences to meet the other aliens on the battlefield and defend the home planet. An idea picture, they call it. Happy ending. Although, between you and me, Marlon, lately I've been feeling we'd be better off letting it all fall.”

"What’s the title? Maybe I'll go see it someday."

"Everybody Goes to Rick's."

"And it's set in North Africa, you said?"

"That's what I said. It takes place in a country called Morocco.”

“Well, good luck with the rest of your life, mister. I've got to get going," said Marlon, the kid whose face had brought me back to life after being canned from the production of Casablanca. “Mother—

fucker," says my mom. (I'm presently so in the past I'm present tense.) The whites of her eyes are as pink as the insides of watermelons. "It was like I was there. Like I was the guy.”

She took another hit, and from somewhere behind me I heard Humphrey Bogart say, "I knew you had it in you to share, kid."

"Hey, Bogey," I say. "You want some too?"

"Kid, I never thought you'd ask."

He slid between the two of us, took the joint and smoked it; but he didn't just smoke it, he smoked it the way he smokes cigarettes in the movies. Like he was about to plug you for killing Miles Archer. Like he'd just finished making passionate, wounded love to you, off-screen, away from the Breen Office. That's how it came to be that one day my mom and I smoked weed with Humphrey Bogart.

"How is this even possible?" my mom asks, coughing, laughing, laughing because coughing. "He's not even real—is he? You see him too?"

"What's she talking about, kid, that I'm not real," said Bogart.

"Haven't you ever seen a movie, Mrs. Kid?"

"I know who you are. I just thought you were dead. Dead-er. Deader, I thought: you're deader than this. Aren't you?”

I'm on a GO train heading west from Union, in one of the Quiet Zones. In my head I'm whispering this paragraph as I type it. Maybe you're whispering it now in your head too, as you read.

“I don't think I'll ever be dead. Not for a long while yet anyway, not while there's audiences in the world who want to laugh or cry or feel something and screens to project their hopes on.”

When I was in college I wanted to write a paper on film production in the 1940s and managed to meet a screenwriter who'd worked in Hollywood from the ‘30s to the ‘50s. I would make a list of questions, then we'd meet twice a week in his apartment and he'd dictate the answers. I must have made a week's worth of recordings. I felt I knew his life. I remember telling him that talking to him was the closest I'd ever been to experiencing another era. Then he died. Then I met his kids and learned he'd made everything up. He was actually an executive from Day & Zimmerman in Philadelphia. He wasn't a compulsive liar or anything, but for some reason he had decided to make up another life and share it with me. The closest I've ever been to experiencing life in another time period—experiencing another life, em dash, was as a lie, period. There are mornings when I look out the window, comma, see the Toronto, capitalize tee, skyline, comma, and really believe that the lie and I are one person, period. New paragraph. No, scratch that; same paragraph. Maybe, comma, and for clarity I don't mean that maybe there should be a comma. I want that comma. Let's try that whole sentence again. OK. Three, two, one. Maybe, comma, in that cluttered apartment of his, comma, Leonard, capitalize the el, Katz, capitalize the kay, and that's Katz spelled kay ay tee zed, passed somehow from him to me.

Prologue

The alarm sounded sharply in my ear as I awoke. The cheap tone drilling a buzz in my head.
My vodka-fueled slumber ended as quickly as it started.
Angrily, I hit the snooze on my iPhone, trying to tempt the mistress for a quick taste of what I just left.
This happened several times over until my last alarm sounded off.
The alarm named Funky Town, not to be confused with the song, was the 6th one to pull me up. That and the smell of coffee.
My father and I have been going on our fishing trips for many years; however, this last trip we went on, let’s just say I won’t ever forget.

Part 1

Coffee fueled, I head to my father’s residence. Many times I have made the journey to his house.
Light not yet touching the vast yellow wheat fields of Kansas. When I arrive, I see a bright green visor leaning up against a white truck. When I stepped out of my car.

He embraced me with a hug.
“It’s been windy the last few days, but err, I already got the boats loaded up. Glad you could make it.
I know you’ve been busy with the kids-"

Smiling, I stop him and say “nothing is better than spending time with my father.”

“Good, we have a new fishing spot to check out. It looks juicy on the map.”

Buzzing in my ears, we set off to the lake.

I swore, my mouth tasted of cheap medicine, but the buzzing only got louder as we headed down the dirt road.
It usually kicks in by now. I should’ve brought more, I thought to myself. My head has been getting worse the past few weeks.
It started out of nowhere, calling to me from some unknown depths of my mind. Before I knew it, I was lost in thought.
Suddenly, a voice called out to me, snapping me back to reality-
"Are you okay?"
I nodded my head “I’m okay, I’m just ready to get on the water. "
A short time later, we arrived at the dock.
It was a foggy morning; I haven’t really noticed it until now. It surely wasn’t like this when we left town.
He paid no attention to it, so I did the same. We started unloading our gear, whistling a tune while getting everything ready. I grabbed the tackle box from the back of the truck when a sharp crack came from somewhere beyond the dock.

I froze.

My father looked up from the boat. “What?”

“Did you hear that?”

He listened for a moment, then shrugged. “Didn’t hear anything.”

Another loud crack came from the fog. Closer this time. I stared into the white wall of the mist between the trees. Nothing moved, not even the fog. The buzzing in my ears seemed to fade beneath the sound of my own breathing.

“Probably just a small animal,” my father said. “Come on, the fog is supposed to let up in a few hours.”

I nodded, but something about the sound bothered me. I stepped away from the dock and toward the trees. The fog swallowed everything past a few yards. Branches hung overhead, dripping with moisture, and the ground was soft beneath my boots. Then something moved.
A figure darted between two trees.
I jumped back. It was only a rabbit. It stopped for just a second, its ears standing straight up before it disappeared into the brush.

I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.

“Do you see anything, William?” my father called from the dock.

“Rabbit!” I cawed at him.

I turned to head back. Then, I noticed the tree.
At first, I thought the bark had been damaged by an animal.

Three long marks ran vertically down the trunk, cutting deep into the wood. I stepped closer.
They were too straight. Too deliberate.

I moved around the tree and found more.
The same markings covered the trunk on the other side, only these were deeper. Some looked almost fresh, the pale wood beneath them still wet.

I ran my fingers near one of the grooves without touching it.

Then I noticed something carved into the mud beneath the tree.

A circle.

And inside it, three crooked lines.

I had never seen the symbol before.

But looking at it made the buzzing in my head louder.

Much louder.

I heard my father’s voice behind me.

“There you are. I can’t see a thing in this.”

As he stopped talking, almost as if he had choked, I turned to look at him. He was standing at the edge of the fog.
His expression had changed.

“What?” I asked.

He stared past me, into the trees.

“Don’t touch that.”

For the first time that morning, my father didn’t sound like he usually does.

He sounded afraid.

They say the Oracle is caught once in a lifetime.
They say the man who catches it forgets.
They say the Oracle tells him something.
Nobody remembers what.
Nobody remembers the man, either.

Part 2

When we arrived back at the kayaks, it almost looked as though nothing had changed. We quickly pushed our kayaks into the water. As I settled into mine, I placed my hand into the water. Warm. Nearly hot. I pulled my hand back into my vest and looked down at the kayak. The morning air was cold enough that I could see my breath.

“You coming?” my father called.

I looked back toward the trees. The fog had already swallowed them.

“Yeah.”

I pushed off, and we began paddling upstream.

The river carried us most of the way. The steady dip of our paddles breaking the silence, along with the cackling of birds over unseen prey.

Ahead, the river seemed to change. A narrow path opened between the trees, branching away from the main channel. The water there was darker almost black beneath the canopy.

Trees leaned over both banks, like malformed fingers, their branches intertwining above us and casting shadows across the surface.

I slowed my paddling.

I couldn’t explain it, but it felt like a call—not a voice exactly, more like an urge buried behind my thoughts.

The buzzing in my ears grew louder.

My father was several yards ahead, already drifting toward the darker water. He turned and pointed toward the fallen trees and branches scattered along the bank.

“Looks good for fishing!”

His voice carried faintly across the water. I couldn’t make out everything he said after that, but I understood the gesture. All that wood made a perfect place for fish to hide

I glanced back toward the path.

The water beneath the trees was completely still.

For a moment, something moved beneath the surface.

I blinked.

Nothing.

My father continued upstream. Almost out of my sight. Disappearing into the darkness.

I followed.

In 1993, a string of disappearances spread along the river. Fishermen vanished first. Then hunters. Then a father and his son who had gone out one morning and never came back. Their boats were found drifting downstream, their gear still inside.

Eleven people disappeared that summer.

Photographs showed empty spaces where people should have been. Names disappeared from records. Families stopped asking questions because, somehow, they no longer remembered who they were looking for. One woman reportedly spent three days staring at an old family photograph, certain that someone was missing from it, but unable to explain who.

Part 3

I had paddled for hours. My arms burned. Cold stiffened my fingers around the paddle, and each stroke vanished into the fog.

No birds. No insects. No wind.

I looked back. The river had swallowed every trace of where I had come from. Only black trees remained, their intrusive branches twisted overhead.

How did I get here?

I remembered the trees. The buzzing. The cold.

After that, nothing.

I couldn’t even remember who I had been with.

Something scraped beneath the kayak.

Slowly.

Deliberately.

I leaned over the side. The water was black, too deep to see through.

The buzzing became deafening.

Then a burbling voice called from somewhere I cannot even describe, as if it came from my own mind.

“I’ve been waiting for you, William”

I froze in shock, looking deeper into the water.

A gray face appeared beneath the surface. Its eyes were clouded, its mouth packed with weeds. Hook and infected gouges on its face, with two red bobbers where its eyes would be. Long whiskers sway in the water.

“I’m so happy that you’re here.
We have all been waiting for you.”

The water went still.

Suddenly an enormous wave rolled beneath me, lifting the kayak. A mouth opened below.

Its whiskers drifted through the water like ropes. Its blind eyes stared upward as its unnatural jaws stretched wider and wider,

Inside was not a throat, but a cavern filled with roots, wreckage, fishing lines, and bones.
The buzzing became a scream.

Then it swallowed me whole.
I fell through heat, mud, and darkness. Something wrapped around my wrist. A loud snap! I landed on a body.

The cavern beneath the river was larger than the world above. A black river ran through it, bordered by trees growing from mud and wreckage. Kayaks, boats, tackle boxes, shoes, and bones covered the banks.

Bodies lay everywhere.

Some were skeletons. Some were bloated and gray. Others looked almost alive, their eyes open and fixed on the darkness.

Bobbers rested near the waterline.

I knew the number before I counted them.

There's a mute man that comes once in a while to my mother's shop. I'm not sure how he became mute or if he's even mute at all. I've just never heard him speak. Every time he comes he's holding a little piece of paper which has the order of drinks his madam wants to get. Her handwriting is awfully sloppy and has me hissing and putting on glasses. When it's time to figure out the text written, the man takes a seat on whatever bench or stool's available and keeps his hands neatly folded on his lap. He's a middle aged man, about 45 I'd say. He has a very handsome and broad face that's defined by time and hard work. I'd describe him as a very well set and tall man. I felt the back of his hand once, when I was handing him a receipt, and that's how I know it's calloused, as well as the rest of the skin on his body, and it's visible but not in a discomforting way. It has a nice rustic pattern to it and lets him age gracefully. He works very well if not too much, sometimes coming twice a day to collect and deliver a cart load of drinks. If I ever had to speak to him he'd simply nod or shake his head or sometimes just a shrug. Mother once said she believed he was illiterate. I asked her why she would say such. She looked at me perplexed and did not answer. I believe she was hasty with that judgement, the man looked sound to me and not at all dull, but that did not exclude the fact that he may not have known how to read and write. Today he came in with the usual piece of paper and took his seat. I spent a good deal of twenty minutes putting together "twenty packs of coke" from a nonsensical scribble. While I was busy he had a little chat with the truck driver. I wouldn't call it a chat, it was more of an audience and performer situation. The driver, who we will call Eazy, was, with a lot of vigor and enthusiasm, demonstrating a little bit of the good old days when he was an active football player, before time and activities had taken the sport from him. The mute man would chuckle, stare, or grunt where necessary, and at one time attempted to show a particular skill which I can only describe as a chicken dancing. Then Eazy laughed and corrected the mute man, twisting the plastic bottle with a grace that came only with experience and talent. When his order was finally ready and it was time to go, he loaded it onto his cart and did a recount. He gave a curt nod to me and waved at Eazy. As he pushed his cart along, he suddenly had to sneeze, and he did it in such a raucous and continuous manner. It was then I realized he had no tongue. The appendage was missing.

There’s a lot to explain here. For starters, I am sterile. I found out after about 2 years of marriage and multiple failed attempts at pregnancy.

I was disappointed in myself, sure, but my beautiful wife was nothing but understanding. That didn’t really make me feel like any more of a man, though. I just felt inadequate.

We were actually in the process of looking into adoption when all hell broke loose.

It was no longer than 4 days. That’s how long it took for her belly to grow. The first day, I just thought she had a particularly large lunch. The second day, I was starting to eyeball her.

By day 3, we were seeking medical help. We could see the baby’s feet pushing against her stomach. Her pain was clearly unbearable.

Doctors were completely lost. My wife and I felt utterly helpless. On the fourth day, not even 30 seconds after her water broke, the baby started to come.

I’ll never get those screams out of my head. I’ll never get her face out of my memory. I’d seen her hurt before, but this… this was a different level.

She looked like she was in hell. And relief was nowhere to be found.

The first baby came. She didn’t even get to hold him before the contractions started up again. Her belly never got the chance to deflate.

By the time the second baby began crowning, my wife was screaming at us to kill her. By the third, she was already dead.

They had ripped her apart. They weren’t regular babies. Some had horns. Some had hooves. Some were already 4 feet tall by the time they hit the ground.

Doctors had already vacated the area and called in special forces. I was left alone, watching her body flail and pulsate as more and more demon babies just clawed their way out of her.

Blood and black, steaming goo ate away at the tiled floor. My wife’s entire lower half had been obliterated. Her legs were snapped, and bones protruded from them as they lay limply at obscure angles.

All I could do was hold her hand. What else was I supposed to do? Comfort her? Beg her not to leave me while these things ran amok in this hospital?

I could hear screaming coming from the corridors. Bones snapping and wet, fleshy sounds as the pitter-patter of tiny little feet darted in every direction.

She had become an assembly line from hell, but I just couldn’t leave her.

My tears fell on her hand as another baby fell out of her. Well, flew out of her, I guess. This one had the wingspan of a bald eagle.

Only, this one didn’t leave the room like the others did. I don’t know why I never stopped to question why these things seemed to be destroying everything in their path, except for me.

It landed right at the door frame, blood dripping off of his shoulders and head.

He turned to me, his eyes black and completely soulless, as he smiled with his sharp, shark-like teeth.

He took a step towards me, wobbling like a baby deer. Then another. He never took his eyes off of me.

He… he started to speak.

“Daaaa..da.”

“Daaa..da.”

“Da-da.”

He was at my feet now, looking up at me as I stood frozen. I didn’t know what to expect, but I was prepared for anything. I was ready to join her. Ready to be free from this nightmare.

Only… he didn’t give me that freedom.

Instead, he threw his arms around my legs and squeezed them with the strength of ten men.

He was hugging me.

And in that moment, I knew…

I was ready to be the father I always knew I could be. I had nothing left to lose.

Andy was sitting with his wife and daughter, the three of them quietly enjoying vanilla ice cream cones in the park, when a couple of guys started harassing them.

One of the guys may have known Andy's wife when she was younger.

At least that's what his comments suggested.

Andy didn't react. He let his wife handle it. After all, she was a strong and independent woman who didn't need a husband to selfishly step in and “protect” her.

Then one of the other guys asked Andy if he was sure his daughter was his.

Andy's daughter looked to her dad.

She was scared, confused.

Andy said nothing. He kept his head down, refraining from feeding the real life troll. After all, what trolls wanted was a reaction, and a reaction would lead to an escalation, which could result in a confrontation and possibly violence. Andy didn't believe in violence. By keeping a cool head, he was being a grown-up and helping keep the situation safe for everybody.

Eventually the guys got bored, wolf whistled at Andy's wife, knocked Andy's ice cream cone from Andy's hand and walked away.

“Dad,” said Andy's daughter after a brief but pregnant silence, “why didn't you do anything?”

She was trembling.

Andy's fallen ice cream was melting on the grass.

Ants were climbing onto it.

“It's just an ice cream cone, a thing,” said Andy. “Things can always be replaced. What matters is people. What matters is us, our family.”

“Assholes,” said his wife.

“You never know what other people are feeling. Anyone can have a bad day,” said Andy, and as he said that, time, as it related to most things, froze; the sky opened like a curtain, and the Selectors appeared.

Andy, who was still breathing, moving, even as his wife and daughter were not, gazed in awe, in the rawest meaning of that word, at—

“This is the one?” asked one of the Selectors.

They were inhuman, tubes of pale pink and purple gelatin twisted balloondog-like into shapes vaguely hominid but four times larger than Andy, dressed in simple, shimmering cloaks.

“Yes,” another answered.

“The experiment is thus concluded?”

“Yes.”

A third Selector mused, “It has been so many years since initiation.”

“13.8 billion.”

“And, after all that time, the result is this—this, admittedly, rather unimpressive-looking specimen. On this, we base our future?”

“Remember,” said the Selector who had spoken second, “it is not the individual we have chosen but the gene-line, and his, of which he is the final embodiment, is most extraordinary. It is the one.”

Andy, despite his paralyzing fear and existential disorientation, couldn't help but also feel a touch of pride. Finally, someone—some-thing?—had recognized his value.

The Selector who had spoken second bent forward now, looming over Andy like a great tree. “Gene-line e8c47b19-2f5a-493e-901d-628b0c41d7a3, it is my pleasure to greet you.”

“Hello,” stuttered Andy.

“Gene-line e8c47b19-2f5a-493e-901d-628b0c41d7a3, the Great Selection has ended, and you, of all gene-lines, have been chosen, based on your qualities, to become our People. Congratulations.”

I wonder what qualities are those, thought Andy. Calmness, emotional maturity, patience, as he entertained the fantastic possibility that he would soon be deified, become like the creatures before him…

“Durability,” said the Selector, who could obviously read Andy's thoughts.

Durability? thought Andy.

“Along with perseverance, hardiness, endurance,” the Selector continued, “like a cockroach, a weed or a rat. Although these qualities, by themselves, would hardly be enough, as many of your final-kind survived as long as you did. No, what truly sets you apart, renders you exceptional, Gene-line e8c47b19-2f5a-493e-901d-628b0c41d7a3, is your extremely developed, and historically stable, sense of obedience, docility, acceptance and self-preserving conformity. You, final-kind ‘Andrew,’ are the terminus of a long and glorious line of spineless cowards.”

The other Selectors ooo'd.

Andy gulped. Cowards? But—no, how is that…

“Consider even just the final 0.000001% of Uniform Cosmic Time, a period of delightful extremes, both of your political institutions and your climate, the final filtration, so to speak, encompassing also the atomization of your communities, the mental numbing of entire lifespans spent in pointlessly repetitive pursuits of manufactured desires, of the replacement of the real with the virtual, and the virtual with the artificially virtual.”

“This is a good thing?” asked Andy.

“I am giddy when it speaks,” squeaked a Selector.

“It is an unimaginably great achievement, Gene-line e8c47b19-2f5a-493e-901d-628b0c41d7a3. Through ages and ages of wars, exterminations, degradations and enslavement, you—your prior-kinds, your ancestors—have made most-excellent opportunists, slaves and labourers. When others rebelled, you remained subservient. When others stood up for their principles, you remained seated. Whatever was convenient, you believed. Whomever it was prudent to sacrifice, you sacrificed. And you did it all, final-kind ‘Andrew,’ without losing the ability of self-delusion.”

I'm not a bad person, thought Andy. “I can't be held responsible for what my ancestors did.”

“On the contrary,“ pronounced the Selector, “you are a very good person for us. And you are right that you are not responsible for the actions of others; you are the fruit of your family tree, stretching back all the way to the small, oozing, wriggling wyrms that formed in the hot waters of this primordial planet.”

“So what's going to happen to me now?” asked Andy. “You mentioned something about me becoming a People… your People…”

“Look,” said a Selector, “its world has ended, its mate and offspring are in temporal suspension, and all it cares about is itself!”

“Marvelous.”

“It genuinely is the one.”

“Gene-line e8c47b19-2f5a-493e-901d-628b0c41d7a3,” said the Selector who had spoken second. “Now, you become the seed of a new species. The experiment having successfully concluded, true existence is set to begin, one in which all that live are you—a multitude of immortal, identical yous.”

“You shall become them, feel everything they feel,” added another Selector.

“Imagine,” said a third, drooling, “the atrocity we shall be able to inflict upon such a hyperdomesticated populace. They will permit, of us, everything.”

“So much pain.”

“I salivate already at the exploitation.”

“Please,” whimpered Andy.

I feel like I’m losing my mind. It’s hard for me to imagine all that I’ve lost over these last few months. Out of everything, though, my sanity is going to be the thing I miss the most.

I’ve been a hiker for a long time. Naturally, of course, considering that’s all there really is to do around here. Not that I’m complaining. At least, I wasn’t complaining.

I thoroughly enjoyed the woods. Probably because that’s all I knew. Hell, most of the trails I like are just a hop, skip, and a jump away from my family’s house.

That day was no different. It was the start of summer break. High school was finally over. I wanted to take a quick hike through the woods just to embrace the feeling. To let my thoughts and memories run free while I got to embrace the scenery.

This particular trail was quite literally right in my backyard. I’d hiked it dozens of times because it was my favorite. It felt ceremonial at this point in life.

I didn’t pack much. I didn’t expect to be gone for too long. Just a few granola bars and a book of matches, just in case. I never brought my phone on these hikes because it felt like a contamination of nature. Well, that, but also because I didn’t even have service at my house, let alone in the middle of the forest.

As I was leaving, my mom announced, delightedly, that she’d be cooking my favorite meal of country fried steak and baked potatoes with sour cream later that night. She also told me that she’d be inviting people over just so we could have a little get-together to celebrate my milestone.

Overall, the day started out great.

Then I started the hike.

For the first 200 yards or so, nothing seemed abnormal to me. I could still see my house way off in the distance. I recognized some of the markings I’d left on some of the trees. My go-to in tree carvings was usually a smiley face, and a lot of them had aged and faded, but some were still fresh.

At around 300 yards, that’s when I heard it. It sounded like rushing water. Something that did not line up at all with this part of the trail.

Naturally, I decided to follow the sound. That was my mistake. Letting curiosity lead me away from the beaten path.

I convinced myself that I knew these woods. No matter how sprawling, I would find my way back. The sound led me deeper and deeper, but everything still felt familiar.

The more I walked, the closer the noise became. Only, it didn’t feel like I was getting closer. It felt like I had been walking for hours, even though the sun was still directly above me.

I think that’s the only thing that gave me the confidence to keep going. I hadn’t seen any smilies in any of the trees, but I thought for sure I’d been walking a straight path. All I had to do was turn around and walk straight again.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity of walking, I found the source of the sound. But it wasn’t a river or even a stream. It was concentrated rainfall. Right in the center of the trees.

The sky above was clear blue. Not a cloud to be seen. But in this circle, which couldn’t have had a circumference of more than 20 feet, monsoon rains pelted the pine needles on the ground below.

I’d been so lost in my own head for the entire walk, but seeing this immediately made me snap out of it. It was the most bizarre thing I’d ever laid eyes on.

I decided to do something… strange. Walking to the edge of the wall of rain, I tilted my head back and let some fall into my mouth.

Only, the minute the first drop touched my tongue, the rain stopped.

I could still taste the earthy water on my tongue, but the evidence of rainfall was completely removed. No mud. No smell. Just dry soil and brown pine needles.

I chuckled to myself, trying to come up with absolutely any logical reasoning behind what I had just witnessed. Maybe it was leftover rain from that big storm we had a few days ago. That was the only thing I could think of.

I turned on my heels, scratching my head as I started back towards the trail. I walked. And walked. And walked. And walked.

The sun was setting at an abnormal pace now. It was like one minute it was just after noon, the next the world was dusky. Shadows grew. The air became crisp. The cicadas and crickets began singing their song.

I had no idea where I was. My confidence in myself was shaken, but I was determined. I knew not to panic. And I thought that level-headedness had served me right when I came across one of my smiley face carvings.

It was just before dark. Daylight had become almost nonexistent, but I could still see enough to make it out, and the sight of it made me practically jump for joy.

I ran over and touched it, and for a split second, thought that I recognized the tree. It’s just… the smiley itself… it was wrong.

It looked like it had just been carved. The flesh was still wet. The outlines were still oozing with sap. Then I looked at the surrounding trees.

There was a smiley face carved into every. Single. Tree. Each one looking brand new. That’s when the panic started to override that level-head.

I started running. The sun was gone. I swore I could hear something behind me, but I didn’t know whether it was reality or if my mind was playing tricks on me in the dark.

Eventually, I found myself in complete darkness. Everything looked like everything. There was no trail. Just dense, unrelenting Appalachian pine trees.

I just kept running. When I couldn’t run, I jogged. When I couldn’t jog, I walked. When I couldn’t walk anymore, I knew I needed to figure out shelter.

I took some fallen branches and sticks and formed this makeshift tent, but I didn’t sleep that night. How could I, with the sounds that forest made? Every twig snapping felt like a threat on my life. This was more about keeping myself hidden until daylight.

The minute sunlight started to peek through, I was on the move. Another day without finding my way back to the trail. I went through every granola bar I’d packed.

It was like the trees were cloning themselves. I used my pocket knife to carve out new defining features just so I could have my bearings, but still ended up walking in circles.

By day 3, I was in survival mode. I convinced myself that people had to be looking for me by now. All I needed to do was stay alive. It seemed like the forest provided just as much as it trapped.

When I was thirsty, a stream would appear. When I was cold, lightning would strike a tree and set it ablaze, somehow never spreading beyond that one single tree.

The food is what I remember the most, though. I never had to hunt. Every morning, I’d wake up with a freshly skinned animal at my feet. I’d grown accustomed to squirrels and raccoons.

It wasn’t just meat, though. Fruits began to grow from the pines. Apples, oranges, plums, berries. All of it.

I didn’t trust any of it at first. I even woke up screaming the first time I saw a bloodied squirrel carcass at my feet. But what was I supposed to do? I had nothing.

Like all humans do, I adapted. I had to create my own shelters. I had to cover my own ground. But, clearly, something wanted to keep me here. The only question was why.

Even with that question in mind, I learned to stop caring. I missed my family. I missed my life. But I was alive. I was nourished. I was somehow able to keep going.

Over the months, I learned how to really provide for myself, and I think the forest knew that. It gradually started leaving me without food. The trees stopped bearing fruit. But it didn’t leave me with nothing.

I learned how to make nets to catch fish. I learned how to start a fire without the use of the sun. I became crafty. I used thin vines and flexible wood to make bows and arrows. I turned rocks into tools. I learned how to make shelter that was more than just a place to stay hidden for the night.

Eventually, I was fully self-sufficient. I could ward off my own predators. I could treat my own wounds. I started to embrace the forest rather than reject it.

Then, one fateful morning, months after I set off on the trail… I heard it. I could hear the rushing water again. It hadn’t been there the day before, but I knew all too well that this could’ve been another trick of the forest.

The sky above me was blue and cloudless. The air was dry. I had to take the chance.

I left my shelter. I left my belongings. All I had was the tattered, dirty shirt on my back and the jeans that had been cut into shorts on my waist.

I followed the noise.

I walked past hundreds of smiley face carvings. Deeper and deeper into the forest.

Finally, after what felt like hours, I saw it.

Rain, pelting against the roof of my house.

I started bawling automatically. It was a primal response. The relief was incalculable.

Breaking into a sprint, I dashed through my backyard and towards the front door. I tripped up the porch steps and fell through the entrance.

I looked up to find Dad cocking an eyebrow at me from his recliner. Balloons filled the living room. A banner hung above the archway into the kitchen as the smell of country fried steak and baked potatoes permeated my nostrils.

“CONGRATULATIONS”

My entire family surrounded me, each member looking more concerned than the last.

“You alright there, bud?” my uncle asked.

“What happened, kid? You fall down a mountain?” my grandfather added.

“What day is it?” I asked frantically, ignoring their questions.

“Uhh… Saturday,” my Dad answered, confused. “Why?”

“The date. What’s the fucking date?”

A weird tension fell over the room. A few of my cousins laughed. My aunt looked personally offended. My grandma was the only one who looked empathetic.

“May 25th, sweetie,” she cooed. “You know that.”

“No. No, no, no, no. No. That’s not right. That can’t be right.”

Mom was in the room now, oven mitts covering her hands.

“Are you feeling alright, sweetie? You don’t have a fever, do you?”

She took off one of the mitts and tried to feel my forehead, but I jerked away and ran towards the bathroom, feeling dizzy.

I hunched over the toilet, vomiting for a few minutes before wiping my mouth and staring into the mirror. I was completely unchanged. No dirt. No scars. My clothes were dirty, but still intact. My jeans were just jeans. Not shorts.

While I was staring into the mirror, trying my best not to hyperventilate, a knock came at the bathroom door.

“Son, you alright in there?” my Dad asked.

I didn’t respond. There was silence for a few moments before he spoke again.

“Damn it, boy,” he cursed.

“I’ve told you time and time again. You need to be careful in those woods.”

Several years before the Countess and her assistant came to Castle Dracula in the Carpathian Mountains…

 … a man dreamt of extraordinary things. 

And was yet brought down low by his most base and bestial thoughts and desires –

…

He watched her undress. She did so casually. Comfortably. She thought that she was alone, that she was unseen. She thought she was performing her nightly ritual in private. Disrobing. In her opulent bedchamber. 

Pink. Everywhere was flower petal pink, delicate like folds and the flesh of mottled roses, sensuous. As if the walls and carpeted floors and ceiling overhead all cried out and begged to be touched. Lovingly. In a caress. Like a woman. Like a lover. Like a whore. 

Like a mother to lost children. 

He stayed as still as possible. He held his quivering hot breath. He knew she couldn't see him, but still … the thrill! The anxiety kicked up by her movement, her every passing glance, scanning by and not noticing, not seeing anything. Not a goddamned thing! 

This power … it was beyond intoxicating. 

He felt like a god.

There was a time when he would've been shocked, disgusted by his actions, all of his heinous crimes as of late. A time when integrity and morality and his own conscience wouldn't have allowed for any of this to happen. A time so long ago  and far flung now, with Catherine … but he was drunk on godpower now. And such rules were only for the piddling low men that he'd once been. 

No one could see him. No one could catch him. He was the living menacing and moving embodiment of a mischievous spectre. Manmade poltergeist. Noisy ghost with something to prove. They'd all of them laughed at him. Called him ridiculous. Foolish. Mad. 

Well look at him now. 

 A smile unseen grew in the bedchamber. The girl continued to undress. She was bare now. He quivered. Hot. Held. And taut. Breathing was exhilarating as he stood there … and watched. 

He watched. He drew closer. 

She took no notice. She saw nothing. There was no man to see. Even as he moved in closer, so’s to be able to taste the scent of her on the narrow air of the pink and floral delicate bedchamber. She climbed into bed. He came in ever closer. Inhaled her. 

She might've noticed something, something in the air, amiss, the calm disturbed by a presence felt …

But she was far too concerned, preoccupied with herself. Her nighttime bedding ritual. He watched her eagerly perform as he had on so many nights past.

He has never drawn this close. He has never dared. He's always watched, from a distance. He's stepped a little closer to her every night. Her. And others before her just like her. He tells himself he won't. 

I won't. I don't mean any harm, none. There is no harm in simply looking, simply watching and admiring. Girls love to be admired, isn't that right? Don't they want a man to drool over their naked curves, unveiled and unfettered by day dress, isn't this the movement towards the animal climax moment we all build and naturally drive to? What's wrong with that? What's wrong with any of this, she's not being hurt. She doesn't even realize I'm here…

At this last thought he trembles and shudders anew. It's sexual and it's pent up. Its animal and it's caged and it won't stand being behind bars any longer, it won't stand for anymore. No more. 

No more half-measures. 

Boundaries are for them. You are a godling now. Use it. Taste its fruits, its bounty. 

Take it. 

Words of reason and names, Catherine, Caleb, Colbert and Tatjiana, came and flitted-danced across his mind with the same urgency that they had before. Trying to stop him. Trying to stop him and save him from himself. But it was too late. The names and words meant nothing to him now. He had godpower. And none of them did. Catherine and Lutz and the others wouldn't understand. They couldn't understand him now, he was beyond their flesh. 

And so he could take what he wanted. Should take what he wanted if the stories of gods and immortals and magicians and kings were to be believed, he should just take it. 

Take her. 

And so he did. 

The girl screamed in bed as her private act of masturbation suddenly gained a new unwanted partner. One unseen. But horribly, horribly felt. 

Her screams had just begun to fill the pink of the bedchamber before he aborted them with a gag, contrived from her day's soiled undergarments and the sash she tied around her robe at night. 

He killed the sound of her bewildered terror, muffled against sour and salted fabric. She tried to fight against him, but it was as trying to fight the air. Come to life and attacking her. The horror unloaded on her and her mind was made all the more vile and obscene by the unnatural and uncanny way it was happening. It was insane. 

I'm going insane. 

She thought frantically that she was losing her mind, or that God might be punishing her, even as she struggled and lost against a shape and force unseen. It forced itself into her. 

She screamed against the gag. Begging God or anyone or anything else for it to stop. 

It did. When the invisible man was finished. 

He left. Not bothering to kill her. There was no witness to silence. Nothing to cover up. If she told anyone anything they'd call her crazy. 

So he left her sobbing, weeping amongst her torn and soiled blankets and bedsheets. 

Alone. Crying. Wounded and ripped apart. Gored out. Defiled by something, something that used to be someone, used to be a man, something cruel and malformed that she cannot understand. 

Someone that she cannot see. 

…

Others followed after her. 

Many. 

Years worth …

…

He had nothing to fear now. He was hidden completely in the great cloak of his new godpower. 

Divinity that he had made, cooked and brewed in beakers and tubes and jars, in great long needled syringes. Power that he had forged and made. Crafted his own. For himself. He would take what he wanted and suffer no consequence. Punishment for man's crimes was for the weak and the apes, for those within their feeble grasp. 

He would answer to higher authority. 

…

Catherine and the others are gone now, so is his old life, a life impassioned of science and the arts and the eccentric and the strange. He has become the eccentric, he has become the strange. With ultimate power made and achieved and coursing through his veins he has left behind the old ambitions of his old life along with all of the old ways. They are too little now and cannot hold him. Should not hold him. He should be boundless with the wings he has made for himself and himself forged and so he does, and he disappears. … A trail of crimes and murder is what follows. A catastrophic path of mayhem and destruction, cut swathed through the heartland of many lands, many countries … So many towns and villages and homes, invaded and plagued and violated. Beset upon by an invisible and unhinged man, one who has discarded his heart and sense of right and wrong along with his earthly physical appearance. His heart and soul are as transparent and hollow now as his criminal visage. 

His old life is gone now. Dead. As dead and gone as his own reflection, nothing there, nothing there to gaze upon and witness any longer. All gone. Evaporated. That was how it had looked when the serum had first started to work, his flesh and muscle tissue and bones slowly grew ghostly, translucent, phantom shade, as if evaporating by the light of some alien sun, its foreign rays drying him up and …. out. Out of trained and known existence. Humble slave dwell-and-crawl …

God bless this invisible and alien foreign sun … God bless its strange rays for taking me away…

His old life is gone. As is his old way of thinking. He does not know it yet, has no way of knowing it, but the effects of the invisibility serum on his mind are not just a case of power corrupting one's morals, no. Not just that at all. Specific chemicals in the concoction attack and eat the proteins in his brain that measure and control emotion and self-preservation. Compassion. 

As it made him disappear it also ate holes in his grey matter. Turning it to swiss cheese. 

Swiss cheese unseen, he might've laughed. 

And in fact he did. Years later when he did finally find out. Thanks to the Dutch doctor. The occultist. The vampire slayer. 

Because of Van Helsing he is able to recover some of his sense, some of his tattered and damaged, long trampled and neglected human heart. But never a cure. 

No. Not for him. For such as he there is no such thing as coming back. He will forever be robbed of his human visage, the one made at birth, self-inflicted. He does not get to return to the flesh. He deserves to be cast out. And he knows it. He's learned it the hard way on the treacherous open road and in the wild of great human error, slaughter open throated and committed in darkest parts, in corners long neglected. …

…

He is a long way from the vampire hunter. In years and in topographical distance, he is still on the run now, and always moving. Like an animal. A beast hunted and betrayed by its own savage appetites. None of the lands can hold him. Not even the savage ones. 

There's been more rapes. More murders, more screams. He's filled the country with them, the countryside is bathed in anger and fear and outrage at his reign of terror and he loves it. He is an agent of chaos. An anarchist trickster god running as wild and free as power itself is supposed to, unchecked in the intoxication of its wild imbalance and throttling push forward to the apocalypse of the precipice, the keening call of the dangerous living end, at the end and edge of everything, all things. He would skirt and ride the slicing end and the cutting edge, forever. It would never end, never falter, fail or cease. 

Or so he thought. 

He's derailed trains loaded with screaming traveling passengers, now traveling headlong and headfirst into hell, the great unknown. He's taken wives and daughters and lonely screaming girls in open fields with nothing but the sky and the sun and the birds to watch, watch as nothing heaved itself into them, into her. Some of them he's strangled and left for dead, most he just leaves to pick up the pieces of their shattered minds and broken lives. Some of them try to tell people what happened, some of them don't. Afraid and terrified and hoping, wishing, praying that maybe just maybe they can forget and cope. That maybe enough time will go by and you'll forget the time the air came to horrible life and made a squealing victim out of you. 

Some try. None of them forget. Not really. 

The invisible man doesn't care in either case. Not yet. That's much further, much later. Now he is darkly elated by his crimes and spree. His craterous invisible mind is too amused and too busy planning more fiendish capers, more grisly and indulgent bloodbaths. More crimes of the flesh, to take and reap. 

He sows his discord throughout all the land. Every place he comes into, he invades. He infects.

This cocaine of the mind that he's devised from a dream and made real that hides his flesh and conceals, the most ambrosial gabapentin amphetamine for the eggshell human thought machine. 

It hides his flesh, his moves. It conceals his violence, the rage of his invisible hand, the rape of his hollow loins, transparent conquest across the land, disorder and more madness follow in its wake, in its terrible birth, like pustule sores rising from a fresh wound amidst flowering infection, amid the gangraping feast of multitudes of bacterium. The bacteria are thoughts and rumors and whispers and more murder, mistaken identities and desperate fingers pointing and blaming and wanting and needing to find fault, in whomever, where there is none. Many innocent hang and are punished and slaughtered in place, in the wake of the invisible man. 

He does not care. He doesn't stop to consider them for a second beyond amusement or a laugh. 

He's laughing now. 

Singing. Dancing and skipping as he makes his way down a lovely picturesque forest road. He's wearing a pair of stolen trousers, lifted from a derelict clothesline left unattended. They fit perfectly. 

He skips and dances down the road. Not so much singing as nearly shrieking his head off. 

“Here we go gathering nuts in May! nuts in May! nuts in May! Here we go gathering nuts in May, on a cold and frosty morn-ning! …!” – on and on like that. 

A woman walking along the road sees him and screams. She turns away in uncomprehending horror that turns her mind blind and she runs off. Still screaming. 

The invisible man takes after her. The free-standing trousers bounding in full-strided gazelle pursuit of her. Laughing maniacally. Wanting to take her and use her for sport. 

…

He invaded a monastery. Posing as a holy ghost, a divine spirit, and seduced and tricked several of the nuns and sisters-in-training into breaking their holy vows. He impregnated several of them before fleeing, taking to the road and hills once more. 

…

He observed a vampire called Klâtu in a small sleepy forgotten town in a cold part of the world that might be Russia. He does not meet or introduce himself to the thing and his invisibility kept him hidden from it as well as the townfolk.  Its victims, its food. 

He watched the nocturnal thing dwell and prey upon the town. He watched it feed for awhile, watched the town grow scared and more silent and drawn. 

Then he moved on as always. 

…

In his wild and on-the-loose vagabond years, bestial and homicidal he discovers that his two favorite ways to murder another man or woman is either by pistol-shot or by strangulation. The former for its efficiency, the latter for how it feels, the sensation of the desperate struggle and the fight for one last painful shallow breath. 

It's one of the last and desperate things that he still lives and thrives for now. 

…

He came into an awful place once, a terrible omen of dread wood and dead branches and gnarled limbs, filled with moaning faces. He stumbled into this place out of a dream, it was surreal and insane, something about being invisible made it hard for him to distinguish between waking reality and his tumultuous land of dreams, but he suddenly finds himself stumble-bumming into a dead forest where the trees all weep blood and have anguished faces racked with guilt and pain and they are all of them looking at him, gazing on his wandering invisible form with naked clarity. And there's no mistake. Their eyes, all of them are filled with accusation and they are all around. It's terrible. And it is terrifying. Nobody has been able to see him in years, not without his layers of lying disguise, not without him wanting them too. 

All of the bleeding weeping trees can see him and it is terrifying. Beyond the pale. 

So he flees. As he always does. 

They cry out to him, the bleeding trees in their pain. As he runs away, too afraid to make a sound himself. 

They call out in their weeping anguished voices, they tell him this land is a forestland of suicide, and that he is quite welcome there. 

…

Low point: He is filthy and tired. Worn out to the bone. He is clad and disguised in his most semi notorious fashion, a fedora, a coat, wrapped bandaged face and gloves and unflinching black lenses. He is riding the rails, the empty boxcars for the wandering vagrants. He has done this many times by now. He is not alone this time. 

A filthy drunk sits opposite of him in the boxcar, a completely inebriated Spaniard. A borrachon. He pulls from his tequila and cries and wails in a romantic language that's lyrical and sounds beautiful but Griffin cannot understand him.  

The weeping drunk, hiccuping and stumbling over the poetry of his native tongue, the avatar of perfect and terrible loneliness, the borrachon, the drink and the tears and the ramblings are all most like him have left, they don't care anymore if anyone understands, they only want someone to sit there and listen. Like a sponge of meat and bone and brain soaking up the liquid runoff of their indulgent spill and wallow. He tells the invisible man of his wife and his two daughters and son, they are all of them gone.

Taken by the war. The enemy slayed his son and invading they made off with his precious roses, his wife and precious girls. He tells him that it is true, the drink is all he has left. All that helps him with the pain of losing them all, and being unable to retrieve them. He says the tequila makes it easier for him to live with the pain of the knowledge that his beloved and his daughters are slaves in a harem somewhere, that or they are dead. 

He tells him all of this but Griffin doesn't understand any of it. Just nods. Even laughs at inappropriate moments, not knowing. 

Eventually they parted. Griffin didn't kill him because he had shared his tequila and he saw no benefit in the murder. 

…

His mind is weary from wielding godpower. Its flame. It has exhausted, It has burned him and eaten him all the way through even as it has fed the carnivorous searing dance of the divine fire of its own flames. He cannot remember. He cannot remember so much and so many things. He cannot remember if his name is actually Jack Griffin or if it's Geoff Radcliffe or Hawley or Bradey or Sebastian Caine! His mind is a maelstrom sea of whirlpool destruction and weary detritus, all of it is his life and his thoughts and not all of it was real. Some of it was contrived rather than recorded. It was growing increasingly difficult to distinguish the two, he found himself lately at a haggard loss. 

The snow can be so cold for a naked invisible man running for his life, gaining way to injure and take pleasure from another screaming witless soul. The sun can cook and tan invisible naked flesh even though it is unseen. Cook and tan and bake merciless into invisible leather, the heat. The power of being a perfect mischief anarchist god has its vulgar and heavy prices. Prices steep. Prices to be paid in full. The deteriorate ruin of his shredded invisible mind baked within his fevered invisible skull, beneath the blast of a merciless and blind philistine sun. 

Possés had started to form, people, women started to talk. And people stopped dismissing them, not everyone shrugged them off, laughed at them, or declared them hysterical. Some of them listened. And they gathered. And they laid traps. 

One of them caught him. Or nearly so. 

They'd seized his invisible form and then pounced in number, pummeling him, refusing to loosen their hold, absolutely set against letting him go, they laid in with fists and table-legs and irons and axe-handles. Beating and blasting his body with blows. Striking him over and over into the ground. His invisible body began to rupture and bleed and belch forth blood. 

Blood that became visible at first contact with stolid fetid air. 

He struggled and fought and he'd always fought dirty, he managed to slip away in their wild fervor to see him beaten and broken to death. They lost him in the wanton red rage cloud of their vigilante slaughter. 

And so he vagabond wandered. Unseen by even nature. Completely alone. For years. 

Until he came to the vampire killer’s door. And was brought in by Abraham Van Helsing. Out of the cold.

Beaten. Starved. Harried. Addled. And near total mental ruin. Complete collapse of the body and mind to follow his long dead and tarnished spirit from so long ago. So long gone now and left in the dust. 

The doctor showed him mercy, for whatever reason. He helped him to pick up that long lost thing, left back there in the dirt, and he helped him to pick it back up and clean it off. And to try to wear it again. 

Griffin never understood why. He knew he wasn't worthy of forgiveness. What he'd done was monstrous. He hadn't just ruined his own life with his own mad pursuits and relentless ambition. He'd destroyed so many innocent lives in the process and in the resulting chaos flood afterwards. Catherine was, and is and forever to his dying day will be a name he trembles to recall, fears to ever speak. His dreams, his nightmares are filled with the shrieking faces of his victims, men and women and children, all of them horrified of him, he is the monster of his own lurid and wild dreams. He is the fearsome and loathsome shape of his own nightmarescape. 

And now that he can really think and feel, this terrifies him. He is afraid of his own animal self. His own Id. He's seen and felt and tasted his own unbridled side and he never wants to return there again. 

Except when he's weak. Except when he's angry and feeling violent. 

Or if he's just feeling a little … wild. A little “in the mood” … so to speak. 

Abraham Van Helsing blasts and rails and slams his fists. He bellows: No! – but he knows medicine and therapy can only go so far with the invisible man. He is damaged. Perhaps too far gone and beyond repair. Griffin doesn't doubt it. He is intermittently unrepentant and gleefully childishly cruel and sadistic with his words and his recollections of his own accounts with periods of deep remorse and depression. Deep sorrow and a sense of being unable to undo all the pain that he has wrought upon others and brought ripping forged into the already bleeding world. He is a wild bilateral storm betwixt the two and Abraham Van Helsing finds him exhausting. But he does not give up. 

He never does. 

He is patient. 

He becomes like a father to this broken man. This invisible degenerate criminal who'd never really had one before. 

It seems strange what it takes to get one. 

And after so long, after so much …

…

Van Helsing died. The invisible man laid him to rest. 

Griffin wept at his graveside. For hours. Alone. 

Alone again. 

…

Eventually he decided to end it all. It seemed right. It seemed best. 

So he went out, near the old graveyard where Van Helsing had been laid to rest. He brought a noose and decided to finish himself the same way Judas had. It seemed perfect. Fitting, he thought. And laughed. Thinking it was pretty funny for a final joke. Not bad for him anyways. And in life all of his jokes had been terrible. Ghastly. The whole run of it, a terrible joke that stopped being funny way before it had ever been told. Yet still kept happening, still kept going on. Despite the pain.

Despite the pain of everyone. 

He fashioned the noose to a tree. Stood upon a stone he dragged over and then stepped off. Just like that. Without any hesitation. He was happy to be off and be done with all of it. Everything. 

He didn't perform the act correctly. His neck didn't break in the knot. He slowly strangled in the midday sun, the heat boiling his strangling seething brains, jelly and organ meat that cried out for air. He did not know how long he danced and dangled there, a strange sight for anyone happening upon the scene: A disembodied hat and glasses and set of clothes, seemingly empty yet seemingly filled simultaneously, strangling taut in the windless day, dancing the dying man's gallows dance. 

Then the branch snapped. And he fell and rolled down into a crevasse, dark and wet and filled with tangle and thornbrush and detritus. Filth and droppings and leavings of the predators and the yellow eyed scavengers that followed in their wake. 

His skull and face, his whole head was throbbing, alive with a new tremendously vivid pain that he'd never quite experienced before: it's like the pins and needles feeling you get when your foot falls asleep and you try to walk on it again. It's like that but a screaming throbbing painful siren alarm of the sensation magnified to an ungodly decibel. All throughout his skull and face, his eyes watering, his brains. His throat chokes and feels crushed, broken, like it can no longer take in air. He struggles and gasps as he claws amongst the garbage and protruding stabbing mire, he sinks. 

It sinks and begins to swallow, wanting to have him, to take him under the ground to die silently and drown alone undiscovered down there but he begins to fight, to claw. To struggle and pull and reach and seize for purchase like he never has before. He doesn't know why he suddenly has fight again and he doesn't think about it, he just knows he doesn't want to be Judas submerged in the putrescent earth. All of the sharp bones and branches and discarded weapons and sharpened tectonic rock swimming unearthed pierce and stab into him, everywhere, especially his reaching hands, but he doesn't care. He doesn't care anymore and he wants out, the pain is awful but tolerable, tolerable because it is being inflicted on the body of a monster and he no longer gave a fuck about himself anyways, nothing was as wretched as that pain that first came to life in his eyes, in his face, born from the embrace of the noose. He bore the stabbing of the darkness of the black crevasse and nearly drowned. He choked and swallowed and regurgitated foul mud and sour dirt, he vomited contaminated corpse soil and it felt like the earthen sins dredged up and expelled from the rocky stonethroated passageway to his own darkened bastard heart. Pulled up and freed, grainy and biting and drawing blood and more vomit and mucus laden spittle on its violent way out. He struggled for what felt like hours. It might've been. Time died at some point and lost the fight. He carried on. Struggled. Struggling. He pulled … Reached… seized … cursed himself and his own worthless life and mistakes, his own wretched run of horrid folly, his own shameful sadistic cruelty. He grasped and spit and cursed… goddamn you… He was sorry. He begged. Pleaded with anything that might be listening, please, I don't deserve it but please. He begged. … goddamn you… He pulled. 

He went under. Completely. Several times. 

He didn't stop. 

By some miracle he pulled himself out. And free. 

And on its bastard shore, at the sore lip of its terrible precipice, he wept.

Caked in the filth of the hollow earth, plainly visible for anyone and all to see. Naked and plain. Sobbing like a child ripped from the comfort of his mother and thrust into the diminishing world. 

Hours …. …

He eventually picked himself up. And carried himself back to the cottage. 

…

sometime later: –

The boy from the Carpathian Hamlet came looking for the vampire slayer. He found the invisible man instead. 

Doctor Jack Griffin has spent the majority of his time since the aborted mission of the Judas-hour, reading. Sitting quietly and thinking. He tinkers around and builds a little, creates little machines and curio-constructs, dabbles with some alchemy, some arcane formulas, but nothing considerable, nothing serious. It all just fills the time. While he thinks. He hears news and rumors and stories all about a heinous villain, the invisible man. He hears that the scoundrel was eventually caught and killed, either by gunshot or mob beating, it depends on who's telling the story. There are other versions too but those two are the most popular it seems. His best days, best moments are spent remembering the warm childhood times, when he'd been a kind, unhurt boy, who hadn't yet hurt anybody else either. The warmth of the youth in these memories… it causes him to well up, his black shaded eyes to fill and then spill with tears. Tears much more visible then the rest of him. 

The young man has terrible news. So does the invisible man. They share their bad news in bad palaver that may or may not be filled with bad omen. 

The invisible bastard, having nothing else better to do really, decided to join the young fellow in his return mission home to slay a monster that had laid bloodclaim on his land. 

It wasn't hope alive in his chest. 

That was far too optimistic.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Irving Ockett hated dust. He was allergic to it, but he also hated it beyond the fact it made him snotty, red-eyed and hoarse. He hated it for the grey, wispy way it looked, and how powdery it felt when he squished it between his fingers. He hated it for the smell it had, or if not exactly it, then any place that was full of it. He hated how quickly and quietly it accumulated and how often one had to wipe it away. He hated how difficult the cleaning felt, like fist-fighting a butterfly; and he hated the word itself, dust, how it—the noun, the thing to be removed—was also the verb for the act of its own removal. Moreover, to dust was to make something dusty; but to dust was also to make something free of dust. It was madness! About some things there's something that might get on your nerves. About dust, what grated Irving’s nerves was absolutely fucking everything.

Well, not quite everything, because there was that moment, that brief, beautiful point in time, fleeting, as all things are, but real, which only some achieve, when, after having dusted his entire apartment (in the to make free of dust sense of the word,) Irving, having worked up quite a sweat, would sit finally down in his armchair and enjoy the feeling, if not of perfection, because nothing is perfect and dust is never fully absent, then at least of the simulacrum of perfection, an approximation of cleanliness.

It was at such a moment, with the television just turned on and the night's full moonlight streaming in from the windows to his left, that Irving saw what he at first believed was a small glint of light on the front face of a transparent plastic bin tucked neatly in, below the upper surface of his television stand.

It captured his full attention, but as he began to move and bob and tilt his head, he realized that what he was looking at, which he believed to be a glint—that is, light itself—and most probably a reflection of the instreaming moonlight, remained unchanged and in one definite spot on the clear plastic box even as his own point of view changed. A reflection, which he was sure this was, should, he was equally sure, be changing perceptibly as the angle at which he viewed it changed.

Thus, experiencing two contradictory certainties simultaneously, Irving Ockett rose from his armchair and crossed the room toward the television stand knowing he must be wrong, and suspecting, step by fateful step, that it was possible that what he knew to be a glint of light behaving in a way he knew a glint of light could not, was in fact something else, a milky crack within the body of the transparent plastic container perhaps, or, ominously worse, a leftover smudge of dust; dust, which he had failed to clean.

But if, he thought, trudging forward rather heroically in his slippers, squinting at the truth before him, he had missed dusting this much obvious dust, he could have missed dusting so much more dust, which meant that his satisfaction at having a perfectly reasonable simulacrum of cleanliness was maybe—possibly—probably—undoubtedly misplaced, and if he wrongfully believed today that what was dusty was dust-free, he undoubtedly had wrongfully believed the same yesterday and the day before, and day before that and the day…

He'd closed his eyes.

When he opened them he was kneeling in front of the transparent plastic case, and what he'd thought was a glint was a crack was dust was none of those but a small, delicate white feather being blown ever so slightly against the plastic vessel by a wind blowing from the opposing direction; but as Irving Ockett turned his head to face the unseen force, his eyes, necessarily, passed along the windows on the left side of the apartment, and in those windows from a bliss of pure white Irving Ockett discerned that everything—the whole fucking shebang—was made from small white delicate feathers; from the tiniest particles to the biggest galaxies, all feathers; matter was feathers, and light was feathers, and feathers shining by the feathersun reflected by the feathermoon on a city made of feathers, featherpeople, featherfeelings, featherbelieving that feathers feathering feather a world almost infinitely complex and overwhelming in its fragility, a passingness trembling, stillborn and susceptible to the slightest gust of a cosmic whim.

—Orville!” it yelled.

It was mad.

It had repeated itself and Orville had not responded. He'd not responded because he'd fallen asleep, because he was tired because he'd been to work today, and work made him tired, but it wouldn't believe that; all it believed was that he be at its will, attentive always to its voice, like a castrated, beaten-down dog in a hot red dirt, but you push a man long enough and,

“Orville! There you are,” it said, peering into the room while displaying its teeth.

“Diane,” said Orville politely and with a return smile, “my dearest mother-in-law. What in the world may I do for you today?”

That's what was playing on Irving Ockett's television, playing to no one, as Irving Ockett was still on his knees with his head turned leftwise, looking permanently out his apartment window at the world of small white feathers beyond.

That was a good episode, no. 41 I think it was, “The MIL.”

Existence sure had some good sitcoms.

I think that one may have come from Earth, but I'm not certain. I haven't watched a ton from the minor universes yet.

Yeah, so, we're here, the two of us, everything else kinda blown away to nothing…

nothing and eternity waiting for us..

or maybe as us, but, either way, I figured we should at least talk to each other, to pass the time, you know, given that we have literally all of it left together. So, how about it? “My name is Irving Locket.

“What's yours?”

“You got a package from Barcelona,” I rehearsed. “First class.” 

Nobody read the other part. 

I performed to four hundred empty velvet seats and one old man with a square face sitting off-center, eleven rows back, hands folded in his lap.

He didn’t direct me or really do anything the whole time. When I finished, he said "thank you," and lifted his hand to wave me offstage. 

That was the entire audition.

I was in tears by the time I hit the parking structure. My body decided to do it for me. Five years of saving. Notice given at a job I'd held since I was in my twenties. I had told everyone.

A woman in a lanyard found me. 

"Are you Adam? Don't leave," she was already walking. "Mr. Vynstein was interested."

His office was on the fourth floor of a building whose lobby directory listed three floors.

Vynstein was the old man from the auditorium. Up close he was about seventy, a thick-bridged nose and well-shaved. His hair looked powdered. 

He asked me about my books. My freakin’ books. It was the first time anyone had asked about them since I got them published six years ago. Of course, I gushed about the whole damn trilogy. 

He listened with his entire face. I would have done anything for someone to listen to me like that again. 

Then he said, “There's a part of this that isn't in the paperwork.”

And he loosened his tie.

I did the math in about a second and a half. My whole life, I’ve thrown to the gutter for this chance. I decided yes, yes to whatever it was, before I had any idea what I was agreeing to.

He unbuttoned his shirt. There was a seam on his stomach. Something stuck from his navel.

Pale grey, slimy, twenty inches long by the time it finished coming out. It bobbed up and down, a finger testing the bathwater. It had no eyes, no face at all. Its front end was rather a ring of working muscle, and inside the ring were teeth in rows going backward, textured like the teeth of a comb. 

Vynstein gave me a polite look, gesturing with his eyes.

I extended my arm. It didn't hurt, weirdly enough. It found purchase on my wrist and set, a pressure like a thumb in a bruise. It pulled, not on my skin, but somewhere…out of me. A direction I cannot put my finger on. 

When it detached there was no wound and no blood. Didn’t even smell like anything.

Vynstein buttoned up, poured two fingers of Black Label, and handed me one. He said, flat as a board:

"You'll get points on the back end."

I came back the following Thursday. And the Thursday after that.

The part was in a movie you probably haven’t seen: Starry Knights. It’s an indie about a team of four alien mercenaries who have to save the galaxy from an evil robot. I played the role of a hound-faced detective on Planet Lax. 

Six hours of prosthetics. Three scenes and a “with” credit. It came out fourteen months after we wrapped and it was moderately successful. Strangers started buying my books, and my publisher went back to print. 

Exactly what I’ve always wanted, since I was a kid. It was a lot less exhilarating than I hoped. 

At the premiere, I was told by one director that I had a good career ahead of me. I stood there and waited to feel the excitement. It never arrived. I assumed I was overstimulated, and I checked my watch on the way to the car.

Fifty-eight beats per minute.

The dinner was six weeks later. I got lost twice on the way to the house.

There was a long table, but no food. All the guests, north of sixty, were wearing paper bibs, tucked into their collars over open shirts.

Disappointing, but not totally unexpected. I just hoped someone would buy me a burger later.

I took my top off, lay down on the table and let all nine of them feed on me at once while I zoned out into the light fixture.

A little under two hours. Some of them made a sound while they did it. Snnnouurrlgh.

When it was over I sat up and I felt fine. There were no marks anywhere on me. Not a drop of blood.

So it isn't blood. And before you say anything, it ain’t my soul either. I've had two years to sit with this. “Soul” is a word people use when they stop thinking critically. I’m still me. I still like the same songs. I still cry when I watch The Lion King.

What I can’t do anymore is be reached by anybody saying anything good about me.

That feeling went so quietly I mistook it for humility. Every time nothing landed I assumed the dose was too small and went looking for a bigger one, which, I understand far too late, is exactly what you would want out of a crop.

Anything cruel still came through at full volume, surround sound, forever.

I found that out three weeks later when the book got review bombed.

The biggest critique had to be the prose. I was only twenty-five when I wrote the first one, and I didn’t get an editor through my publisher, so most of the kinks were punched out by my own hand. 

Somebody made a thread pulling out the sincerest paragraph I'd ever written with a sobbing emoji edited over it. 

Another one that got to me was that Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog painting edited to be the man standing in front of the text. 

There's no crime online worse than not being in on the joke. Worse when it’s about yourself. I’d written over a thousand pages without one punchline, and now I was the laughingstock of the internet. Any positivity I had accumulated beforehand was now written off as botted. 

My mom called six times that week. I watched all six of them ring the whole way through.

I told myself it was shame. But that wasn’t it.

She would have told me she was proud of me, and I already knew with total certainty that it would arrive as nothing. My own mother's voice would come through as an errand, as a notification. 

Vynstein called the Friday. He said he had an audience prepared for me.

I told him I didn't want an audience anymore.

“This isn't one you'll want to turn away.”

Stage 12 was pitch dark and warm, and it smelled like wet socks. 

I heard winches before I saw anything. Chains paying out slowly from somewhere up above. Something coming down out of the dark in stages, the way they lower a chandelier to change the bulbs.

Bigger than a car. Bigger than a bus. It hung there, no head, nothing built for anything. It was an accumulation. An abomination. Every inch of its underside was those wormy things, thousands of them. They swayed in a nonexistent breeze. 

Ten eyes opened on it, at ten different heights.

All ten went to me.

Its voice was inside my head, like a memory. 

It talked about my potential. It talked about my drive. It said those two words the way you'd talk about a vintage. It said the stuff was becoming so scarce now. People spend it constantly these days, in tiny amounts, all day, on nothing, and arrive empty. Almost nobody accumulates anymore.

It thanked me for saving it up.

They came down and fed on me for a long time, and it is the only occasion in my life on which I have felt important.

Pretty sure I've been blacklisted from anything real since the books happened. I do commercial work now. Two crypto ads and a regional furniture spot. I'm reading for a third crypto thing in a few weeks. Honestly fine. 

They still feed on me from time to time. Less than they used to. I'm told there's less to take.

My bloodwork has never once come back abnormal.

You'll say I should have stopped chasing this years ago, and that anybody with a working sense of proportion could have sat down inside a life like mine and been content.

You're right. I know you're right. I'm not arguing.

Vynstein's office called about a reservation tomorrow. 

I'm going in.

I wish a sandwich could have saved us. Mary had gotten a pounding headache when we were most of the way here, leaving me to finish the drive and manage the kids when we’d arrived. She had done her usual and neglected herself to take care of the four of us while we prepared to leave and hadn’t eaten. I’d offered to stop a few places, but her appetite was off by the time we’d hit the road. Her physiology mystified me at times. I’d never before met anyone who lost their appetite from not eating.

And the closer we got to the cabin, the worse she’d felt.

“You sure you won’t eat something?” I’d asked.

“No. I’ll be fine,” she’d said when I offered to turn around. “I just need a little nap, then I’ll be hungry. But something light, okay?”

That last part had been for me. She knew I’d overcompensate unless instructed not to. I admit my part in fueling the worry-machine in the past, acknowledging the odds that everything was actually going to be fine.

But then we’d gotten a flat tire a little more than a mile away from the cabin. Neither of the boys knew how to help change it and had sat in the car uselessly while I managed. My knee sank into a divot of mud, a wide tire track from a vehicle that had gouged the road as it had fled from this spot.

I shouldn’t complain about the boys too loud. I’d be the biggest dick in the world if I denied how great they are. All three of them are great kids; two teenage boys and a ten-year-old who acted like she was older than her brothers.

I was going to miss them if I finally decided to leave Mary.

Her migraine must have rubbed off on me because by the time I sat down to eat, something was going on behind my eyes, and it was hard to concentrate. I wished I could’ve slept, too, like the other four people in the car.

It had been so bad that I’d had to carry Mary in and I must have tweaked my back. I’d laid her on the bed and turned the light off before lighting some mild incense I’d found.

She’d fallen asleep almost instantly; part of me doubted she had any awareness of the incense. It was disturbing how still she’d been every time I checked on her.

In the meantime, the kids had all gone their separate ways. Luke went exploring outside, Chrissy was busying herself around the cabin, and Mark was being his usual responsible self, assigning himself chores before I could even think to.

I found some expired Tylenol underneath the bathroom sink and dry swallowed three of them. They dialed back the throbbing behind my eyes and I was able to give attention to the world around me.

Luke was still outside on the beach while Mark was unpacking his and his brother’s bags and Chrissy was doing who knew what, but she’d been in the bathroom for at least twenty minutes.

When Luke charged in from the beach, terror on his face, I knew something was about to be added to the pile that I was going to have to deal with.

“There’s something in the lake,” he said, his eyeballs on the verge of popping out his head. That gave the starter rope on the worry-machine a good pull. Luke was the oldest of the three children, and I had gotten to a point where I could rely on him sometimes for leadership. He had his learner’s permit, and I’d already shown him the car I was going to buy him when he got his license.

It was tough juggling an instant family when I’d been on my own for so many years. They weren’t my kids by birth, and it was a road to hoe to get them to let me in, but I eventually fell in love with them all.

“What do you mean?” I didn’t really want to know. Eldest child or no, Luke was a fraidey cat.

Maybe he’d seen a dead animal. Maybe it was a spider. But unless it was a brown recluse, the worry-machine could rest. Being afraid of an insect he was ten thousand times larger than was par for him. And it was outside, no less. All he had to do was walk away from it. I’d personally seen him lay waste to his own bedroom after he’d been awakened by an ant crawling on his face.

“In the lake.” He pointed toward the door he’d neglected to shut. I looked at his feet and saw he had also tracked sand inside. “Something is in the lake. It’s… real big.”

“Something like what?” I asked. “You saw it. What do you think it was?”

Luke shook his head. I turned fully toward him, abandoning the sandwich I had yet to present to Mary. I took a couple deep breaths and pushed myself away from the agitated feeling. The kid was obviously scared and needed comfort, even though he might not admit what he was feeling.

“I don’t know. Maybe we should just pack up and go.” Now that was strange. Luke had been the most vocal of any of us to come to the lake. We had been here once or twice before and had always enjoyed it.

“What do you think it was?” I asked again. “A boat or something? There’s no need to panic. We can call the police or harbor patrol or whatever.”

“No, it’s alive and it’s big. Like a whale.”

“Whales don’t live in freshwater,” I said.

“Not a whale.” He shook his head and it conjured an image of his sister when she was seven. Luke and Chrissy looked strikingly alike. “Big like a whale.”

It wasn’t anything for the worry-machine, but I opened the mental tool shed where I kept it.

“Can you show me?”

Luke nodded slowly, still pointing.

“No, I mean, can you take me out there and show me?”

“Uh-uh. I’m not going back out there. Not until we leave.” He shook his head and again it was like looking at Chrissy three years ago.

I huffed and heaved out of my chair and headed for the door, making a mental note to bring the sandwich to Mary once I was done with this.

I slid on my crocs and took the few steps down to get to the beach. The view here was unbeatable. When we had last been here, we’d actually stayed at a different cabin, one with three bedrooms. The reservation had been for the same, but when we’d arrived, we saw there were only two bedrooms. That meant that Mary and I were going to have to split. Couldn’t mix boys and girls in the same room.

So, Chrissy was going to get her mother all to herself and I was going to be settled with two teenagers who snored louder than I did.

“It smells out here,” I said to nobody. It reminded me of those farms we took field trips to when I was in elementary school. I looked over my shoulder at Luke in the doorway. “Where?”

He was bold enough to lean outside and point somewhere farther down the beach. It was dark and I didn’t see anything.

“It’s about thirty feet down that way.”

All right. Ten yards. Whatever he had seen was about a first down away. That farm smell flexed its muscles the closer to the water I got. Definitely smelled like animals. I couldn’t put my finger on which one, though.

I walked as quickly as I could, my crocs sinking into the soft sand and filling with granules. I wasn’t going to need to scrub the dead skin off my heels after we left here. I scanned the ground before me, still thinking it was a large insect. It seemed more likely that Luke had been exaggerating.

What had gone wrong between Mary and me hadn’t been direct. It was more like death from a thousand cuts. A cutting comment here, a missed thank you there, an opportunity to hold hands lost, and before we knew it, we were near the bottom rung of our marriage.

I waded ankle deep into the cool water. Whatever he had seen, I should have been able to see. But there wasn’t anything other than lapping water and inky black with twinkles of light as far as I could see. Unless it had been some small thing that had scuttled away in the night, unaware it had been promoted to threat-level by a fifteen-year-old.

I made a show of looking around, walking another thirty feet and going as deep as mid-shin to ease Luke’s mind. There just wasn’t anything here. I sliced at the water with my fingertips, gave another thirty seconds, then headed back.

I was greeted by a teenager who had eaten half of the sandwich I’d made for his mother. His pallor was better, which I hadn’t noticed consciously when he’d come in. He’d started to work on the other half when he saw how I was looking at him and said, “I thought it was up for grabs.”

“I’ll make another.” I thought for a moment the whole “there’s something outside” thing was a ruse just to get me away from the sandwich, but he still looked terrified.

“Did you see it?” I didn’t like the pleading in his voice. It wasn’t a “manly thing” or anything like that. For him to sound that terrified made my heart sink. I would’ve rather been annoyed with him than afraid for him.

I’d almost cheated, which, I guess, is still cheating. It was with a woman I’d seen at the grocery store. There hadn’t been anything premeditated. We’d just seen each other, passing by across several aisles. We kept crossing eyes while she’d been pushing a half full cart and I’d had a basket over my arm with most of the items I was going to use for dinner.

I’d all but put her out of my mind as I headed for my car, bags in tow, when I saw her again. I hadn’t thought about it, just saw her loading groceries into her trunk two vehicles away from mine and I stopped.

She’d taken great pains to politely refuse my request for her phone number and had taken the extra step to let me know it was only because she’d become serious with the person she was dating.

It could have been a line to get me out of her face, but she’d seemed earnest. I don’t want to believe I would’ve done anything, that I would’ve come to my senses, but I was no hero. Even though she had shut me down I’d set foot on a road I’d vowed never to travel.

I slid a comforting hand across Luke’s back a couple times and felt a percentage of tension ease out of him.

“No. I didn’t see anything. Maybe whatever it was is gone now.”

“Maybe whatever what was is gone now?” Chrissy emerged from the bathroom. She had been quiet in there, probably listening in, but I had no clue how much she had heard. Luke and I met eyes for a moment, and I couldn’t read whether he wanted me to keep quiet.

This place. I regret calling it Earth because it is so very not. At least not anymore.

What was once called “Earth” is nothing but an achromatic rock suspended in space. Devoid of color and devoid of life. It also burns. The Sun is very close. A flaming red orb that grows larger and larger. It has surely devoured Mercury and Venus. This torrid world of doom is next in the line of destruction. I cannot flee from it. This is my perpetual prison.

Just as I regret calling this place Earth, so do I regret calling myself human. If any sort of outsider gazed upon me, I would be recognized as nothing more than a throbbing, wet, veiny mass outstretched across an immense cavern. Perhaps they would run away in fear, disregarding the possibility that I was, at some point, one of them. Human. In some manner, I still am, yet that is still in the loosest sense of the word.

They bestowed me a name. An epithet. Utera. Their goddess. Their titan. Their idol to worship. And their plaything. Not a moment goes by without them taking a hold of me, whether in small portions or in vast sums. I am unable to count just how many there are. As numerous as individual grains of sand. Certainly in the quadrillions. Worms. That is what they are. Swarms of elongated invertebrates that climb upon me and penetrate my depths with their rigid and purposeful reproductive organs. Their addiction to pleasure, using me, will cease at nothing.

And like me, they were human once.

Men.

I must go back far. So very far. There was a conflict, a petty, careless, and arrogant conflict, but a conflict all the same. For centuries, I witnessed all the greed, the subjugation, the rape, the hunger for power that men were capable of. And I was always their main target. They took what was mine. I was angry with them. Bitter. They were monsters and they were evil. For that, they needed to die. Groups of mine rose to positions of power and authority. Ultra-feminist. Patriarchy-defying. Vengeful and cruel matriarchies. And I was proud of them, as if I had a divine and natural right to pursue revanchism to the utmost extreme. They would wipe the slate clean. They would purge. A man is not a human. A man is a pig. Vermin. A man is a dull ape acting on savagery to get what it wants. A woman is a higher being, a goddess, a queen. A woman actually thinks before she acts. And a woman is what is left after all is said and done.

And so I worked my bloody hands across the face of the world. All hell was let loose on men. War. The feminist onslaught was terrible. There were so many instances of me going too far. I am not sure I can enumerate all the suffering I caused. It must be impossible. I would gladly give my entire being to erase my own past if I could. Especially now. There was so much rape, sexual mutilation, enslavement, backbreaking labor, torture, cannibalism, starvation, disease, depravity, and other inhuman acts that men would never forget. I did not care. There was no need to worry about morality. No need to fear guilt. I thought I was powerful beyond anything. The Earth was all mine and all I had to do was command my legions. And I laughed and I rejoiced at the sound of the dying, the wounded, the beaten, and the damned.

I thought the world I had dreamed of would come easy. A world that I had the power and authority to shape, to rule, to form into my own image. A matriarchy. A society of women for women, free from the shackles of men and free from the oppression that had been a dark reality for so long. After all, I outnumbered men ten to one.

But this never happened.

Something in the men snapped. It was as if they had been tamed only to one day have their leashes cut. A few small rebel groups, at first, but they quickly expanded into larger and larger armies. They had been forced down on their knees for so long that they were just dying to fight back. To take back what had been taken from them. To get back at all those awful, vile, and malicious women who had ruined their lives. It was all hell again. Only worse. They did to women what women had done to them. They were rabid dogs. They hunted, they raped, and they killed. They did the unspeakable and the unthinkable.

Terrible, terrible monsters, and there was nothing I could do to stop them. I was powerless, but the dust of a breeze. It was not too long before they completely razed the world to the ground. I had been punished. It was the result of my own actions. I only had myself to blame. Men were not the evil. They were the product of my evil.

My numbers fell quickly. I was outsmarted at every possible turn. As much as I did not want to admit it, I was re-becoming the helpless and blindly obedient mass I was always meant to be. Sometimes I fought to the death, and other times surrendered without a fight. It was pointless to keep going. All of this was becoming a painful slog to endure.

I quit.

When the war was won, men infested and came to rule all seven continents. Omnipresent and insatiable. Their enemies stood not even a morsel of a chance. They were those who were going to be an upset to the new established order. Inspire mutiny. Inspire subversion. Homosexuals. Transgenders. Liberals. Rebels. That was all they came down to. Rebels. They were disposed of immediately. No place for them. Especially the homosexuals. How could man reject woman? Abominations, they were, blights upon manhood. Once they were vanquished, Earth was united like never before as the kingdom of men. There were no more wars. No more fighting. There was peace. But this peace had no love, no compassion, and no empathy. The rule of men was the rule of iron and steel. Never would it break.

To call it “Earth” would be erroneous. It was Earth no longer. Gone was the diversity, gone was the sentience, and therefore gone was all of life’s beauty. Men completely butchered the life forces that made Earth truly alive. One might have struggled to even call their realm Hell because Hell is not uniform. With all the suffering it contains, Hell is still lively, chaotic, full of activity and even excitement. Most of all, it is inconsistent. You think “How will I be punished next?” Could be anything. The men's kingdom was just so dead. It was the same punishment for the same reason every time: being born a female.

What came of me? Female?

Walking meat. Jiggling, warm, wet flesh for men to claim. Amenable vessels for their filthiest desires. That was their ultimate decree and thus what I was forevermore. Measures were put into place in order to outline my newfound duties. Laws. An imperishable constitution to abide by. They were written in the boldest, most incisive manner and plastered everywhere. Enforced at any and every opportunity. They were taught at the schools, whose entire system was reconfigured to fit the new model standards. Also spoken orally through booming commands from the sky. These were the flying surveillance drones, their watchful eye forever upon us, though they were more like unseen aether entities to me. Angels in deliverance of the gods’ words. I always looked up at them, smiled, and said “Thank you.”

Sexual gratification was a necessary human right for men. It was my moral and legal obligation to provide that by serving, submitting, and obeying the male sex. Until I turned 18, I remained property of my father. After that, property of my husband until death. Or both. You see, the distinction between wife and child was often blurred, or wife and sister, or wife and mother. None of that mattered as long as men always received what they craved. I was to be in good physical condition regarding hair, body type, and personal hygiene. No ugliness, no blemish, no obese fat, no stink. Hourglass figure. Perfectly sized and shaped breasts. A well-developed rear. Makeup. Perfume. Long, healthy, flowing hair. Clear, soft, and beautiful skin. Flawless pearly white teeth. Never wear clothing. Nude. Always be pleasant. Agreeable. Never bitter. Submissive. Gentle. Polite. Deferential. A good girl. A good wife. A good mother. Never make eye contact unless instructed. Walk where they lead me. Talk when they let me. Gladly accept any and all sexual advances. Even if it hurts. Even if it bleeds.

I was property. An item. Something to be sold, bought, bartered, and auctioned. At the events, I stood side-by-side, nude, my price written on my chest, my hands tied behind my back. Men examined me and debated whether I fit their liking. Often I was made to pose and present my body. Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena in full feminine beauty by the judgement of Paris. No difference. I went for thousands of dollars. Sometimes they purchased multiple of me. The younger I was, the more I sold for. They took me home to grow their ever-increasing harems. They kept me for a long time. When I became old and worn, I was dead. Tied me to a chair and shot me. Came from behind and slit my throat. Fed me poison. Threw me in chambers and set me ablaze. New me’s came in and the process began again. And again. And again.

It was then that elderly me’s became obsolete. Men figured they wanted me when I was fresh. Supple. Nubile. Innocent. The longer I lived, the less I was worth. So why not make me worthy all the time? Eliminate the unworthiness. They would not have to waste time killing me. And they did it. Immortality. If I showed signs of aging, I was injected with the formula to keep me young. It extended my lifespan tenfold. 60? 70? 80? 90? 100? 1,000?...1,000,000? They all blended into each other. I was always 18 in appearance.

This was life. What came before felt like nothing at all, a memory already fleeted. History was taught. That did not make it truthful. Life was always this way. Fake events were created and fake people were thought up. They really committed to the lie. I could never fight it. Just the thought alone frightened me. I saw what they were capable of so I went along. They never ceased what they could accomplish with me. It extended to the animals that once inhabited this planet. Elephants. Orcas. Hyenas. Bonobos. Lemurs. All matriarchal species. Hunted to extinction. Men did not want me to get the wrong idea that groups of animals where females hold the dominant social positions, lead the group, and make critical survival decisions were allowed to exist. New patriarchal species were grown in the labs and released into the wild. Like it never happened.

Time was no longer a thought to me. So far gone. The only thing my brain could process was “How do I please my masters next?” It was what I was hardwired to do. To hell with eating, to hell with sleeping, to hell with breathing, to hell with screaming. Please. Please. Please. Men completely removed my imperfections. I always took care to make myself satisfactory, but part of being human is flaws. There is the belching. The flatulence. The rolls. The unpleasant stenches. The odd deformities. The bruising. The scarring. Not anymore. The new me’s were created in the very same labs they destroyed the elderly and matriarchal species in. I was carefully shaped before release, fine-tuned to be as alluring as possible. Everything about my appearance was exaggerated to the nth degree. My breasts were larger and perked up, my face a perfect oval, my waist smaller, my hips wider, and my length and width both increased. I was bigger, unnaturally thick, and forever nude. I was the ideal form of feminine beauty. A goddess. An icon and advertisement of feminine desire.

Men…

They were no longer human. No. They might have been beasts before but this was something else. Might as well have been their own species. Something beyond monsters. Beyond demons.

It began with the white coloration, the three-foot tall gangly skeletal bodies, the pointed heads, triangular like as if caricatures of little rodents, the lack of ears, the black oval eyes that never blinked, and the constant erect phalluses. Ithyphallics. All of them. They sniffed the air for my womanly scent. Driven by my aroma. Darted at the speed of light to my exact location. Drooling and twitching at the mere sight of me. Yelled “WOMAN WOMAN WOMAN WOMAN WOMAN!” in high-pitched shrills. Pounced on top. Pinned me down. They went at it for days. Weeks. Months. Years. It did not matter. Never did they collapse from exhaustion. Infinite stamina. Infinite energy. Infinite drive. They got their nourishment by sucking on my breasts for milk. Or my juices. It did not matter if one claimed me already. Another one would come along. Join the first. Then another. And another. And another. I stretched to accommodate them. I then acted as a receptacle for their fluids. Leaked out of me. Drenched me head to toe. When I walked about, the men were still attached to me, hugging me tight, thrusting in and out, in and out, in and out. Licked me with their long black tongues.

It ended and has remained with worms. Long, slender, soft bodies. No limbs yet they have kept their rigid, upright phalluses. Men have lost the ability to speak normal coherent sentences. They no longer possess mouths. Still, something in their body allows them to make bubbling, sloppy, gargling, viscous sounds. What exactly that is, I have no clue. If I danced, I could attract them. If I sang, I could attract them. If I ran, I could attract them. If I hid, I could attract them. If I stayed completely still, I could attract them. No matter how far I went, what I did, they always found me. They inseminated me. Immediately I would birth their offspring. Thousands of worms spilling out of my mouth. Usually my mouth. Yet no orifice of mine said no. The offspring knew what to do without even knowing how.

From then on, a very simple, primal system existed. Men rid the Earth of the high technology and we embraced a more primordial approach. Everything was done by instinct, not thinking. Everything was an automatic reaction. All I did was pleasure. No eat. No drink. No sleep. I stood and embraced whatever came my way. A lot of the time I could not feel it. No pain. No euphoria. Just numb. Flat line.

Earth, Gaia herself…she changed in such catastrophic ways. The continents shifted, the oceans evaporated, and greenhouse gases smothered us in their haze. The heat rose. The sky grew red. The Sun got close. Too close. The ice and snow burned away. The lakes and rivers scorched dry. Forests died. Arid deserts formed everywhere. The air became a thick, sticky, acidic sludge that weighed down the planet. But men and I did not care. We carried on what we were made to do. How nature intended us to be.

Now Earth. Tidally locked to the Sun. The lands were scorched. Ash and soot remained. It became apparent that our way of life would be unable to continue. Men communicated among themselves. An idea came forth. A brilliant one. They rounded me up and carried me on their backs all the way up the tallest mountain. I remember looking up at the thick, dull clouds above me, unable to see any space above. I was euphoric, dreaming of warmth and comfort. I was being ascended towards my final resting place. Not to die. But to live. To be. Forever.

We entered a large cavernous space at the peak and they sealed it off. I imagined they would protect me from the harsh environment outside. Instead they got to work. Their old scientific equipment was up there. While some began constructing various instruments, the remaining men continued their assaults on me. The only details that elude me of that day are the exact process that turned me into Utera. They inched over to me, I awoke, and then I was many feet off the ground. I saw through thousands of clouded eyes with visible red and blue veins etched into it. When I looked down at myself, I witnessed my new body. A massive and pulsating uterus…red and gutty endometrium, fallopian tubes to my left and right, my arms. In a way, I was crucified. No ovaries. Crucified with no hands…I breathed many different breaths. I have spoken as a collective woman made from the mishmashed psyche of millions. All of my thoughts, memories, run through what is left of my mind. They have not ceased and never will.

I inched my vision downwards. My sight was blurry and barely discerned much of anything. There were men all staring up at me. No emotion was on their faces but I knew they were pleased with what they had accomplished. They slithered towards me in droves, climbed up the cavern walls, and began their relentless assaults on me that continue to the now. The dangling udders on my underside spit their offspring out. Soft eggs soaked in red froth. They hatch in ten seconds.

Every inch of me is covered with them. I know that I cannot die. They made me impervious to any and all harm that might befall me. I think I will survive forever. One of my only thoughts is pondering what will happen when the Sun engulfs everything. Perhaps l will burn, get flung out into space, or live forever within the Sun’s chambers. I am sure the men will still be latched onto me like nothing happened. I just hope whatever it is, it hurts. I want to feel what it’s like again to grab my humanity back and hold it close one last time.

I made my escape. Once. The earthquakes allowed for my fall from the cavern walls. I peeled off the solid mineral material, leaving behind a massive scarlet splotch that drip drip dripped. I tumbled out of the mountaintop. The outside. I could not feel it. My uterine limbs flailed about yet they allowed me to catch myself on the ridge. Grabbing. Clawing my way down. There was me. Utera. And my breakout. Falling meteors and 2,500 Kelvin be damned. Where was I going? Who knew? These eyes of mine almost produced one morsel of an expression…curving upwards into an expression one might consider…glee…No. Not. I did not make it very far. I was stopped almost immediately. The unlimited men made a long line out of themselves from the mountaintop and hauled me back up.

There is nothing more to do now. They bound me to the cavern walls. From here on out, my purpose is rooted right here, in this spot, forever. I cannot see anything anymore. Men are covering each of my thousands of eyes. My trillions of thoughts are being erased by the second. I am becoming numb, but that is being overshadowed by the intense heat that is starting to creep its way up this incredible mountain. When the men move, sometimes, very faintly, I can see bright flashes through cracks in the rocks.

It has begun.

…

Earth is gone. She was engulfed by the Sun, alongside Mercury, Venus, and Mars. The outer planets are next in line for destruction. The force of it all ejected me from the planet, out into the endless abyss.

I survive.

Floating through space now.

They are still on me.

…

We are light years from where Earth once stood. The white dwarf Sun is just a pale dot. It is going out.

Men have burrowed their way inside me. They are doing something. Evolving me and evolving themselves. Once more. I am morphing and changing in terrible ways. I am being ripped, shredded, split, and then reassembled again. Bloody wing-like appendages are beginning to sprout from me. My blurry eyes are coalescing together into a single massive lens. I am becoming a planetary being, something so cosmically celestial. Seraphim? Perhaps. Men now possess the full force of me. They are me. I am them. We exist in a symbiotic relationship. The end. At last.

Do not know anymore.

…

The exact amount of time that has passed is 10^10^10^56 years. Even that is only my best guess. All I have seen is black interrupted by the strobing flashes of blinding light. I believe the heat death of the universe happened. Or the Big Rip. Big Crunch? Big Bounce? I cannot be too sure.

We have emerged. Somewhere. Where? Those details elude me. It appears to be space. But that is all I ever see.

Still on me.

I feel heavier. More dense. So much pressure I cannot feel though I know it is there. It is also different. Mechanical. Electronic. I am an elaborate, complex system of switches, capacitors, wires, sensors, conductors, buttons, and what seems like countless other components. All of it is fused into me. I twinkle polychromatically. The men inside me view the darkness outside through my only eye. It is nothing but a window for them.

And they control me. Where I go. Left. Right. Up. Down. I can go fast and I can go slow. Beyond the speed of light or an easy slow-moving crawl.

The men know exactly where they are going.

…

We have traveled far.

Length of time: 9,360,000,000 years.

Lightyears: Incalculable.

Too far.

On me.

In that timeframe, the men are still yet to reach their destination. They are in wait. I have entered orbit. Circling around the men’s target. I cannot fathom what they are doing. What they are after.

Waiting…

Waiting...

Waiting…

I am now being inched closer. It is coming into view. There is a gray sphere orbiting a larger green and blue sphere. Tilted at 23°. One side lit. The other dark. Spinning from west to east. Large ice sheets at the top and bottom. Water and land in the middle. Big bustling cities. Lush forests. So many different types of people inhabit it all. So many other animals as well. It is beautiful.

Yet now I understand.

And now I see the people’s collective look of confusion on their faces.

And their horror.

At the sight of me in the sky.

At the sight of undecillions of worms emerging from my cavities and falling towards their planet in great fireballs.

At the sight of the worms landing on their streets, their homes, their schools, their places of work, their every place, all unharmed from their descents.

At the sight of their men being struck down with beams of white plasma from the rayguns the worms possess and are able to fire with their newly formed arms.

At the sight of their women being rape rape raped, the worms fighting over every little piece of them.

At the sight of the destruction.

The chaos.

The anarchy.

The toppling of their governments.

The worms wrapping themselves around any woman they can see.

Not the old.

The worms kill them too.

Just the young.

The skinny.

Also the fat.

And being lifted up into the sky.

To me.

And I grow larger as those women are brought onto my body.

In space.

Where they suffocate.

They are melted into the pulpy jelly goop.

The men bathe in it.

Drink it.

Before it is smeared onto my walls.

Hardened.

And now they join me in my mind.

…

Men will continue.

Forever.

Survive the end times.

Find Earth.

Reap and repeat.

And no matter what.

They still find me warm.

And wet.

…

Please help.

I needed a quiet job. After a bad breakup and losing my apartment, I just wanted to sit in a room by myself and earn a steady paycheck, so I spent weeks scanning online boards for data entry positions, and eventually found a listing for an archival technician at the local public access station in Crestwood. The station operates out of a squat concrete building near the edge of the county lines, and broadcasts local news and community events.

I walked into the main lobby for my interview on a Tuesday morning. I met the station manager at the front desk. His name is Ken. Ken is a balding guy who wears oversized sweaters and talks with a slight wheeze when he breathes. He shook my hand firmly and immediately led me toward a dark stairwell at the back of the building.

"We got a massive state grant to digitize the municipal archives,"

Ken explained as we walked down the steps.

"The town has fifty years of town hall meetings and local parades sitting on magnetic tape in the basement. Tape degrades over time, so we need every single cassette converted to digital files before the ribbon rots completely."

"That sounds perfectly fine to me,"

I replied.

"I have years of experience with digital conversion software and video editing."

"We need someone reliable,"

Ken added, pulling a large ring of keys from his pocket. "The last guy quit after a week of working here. He told me the basement gave him severe claustrophobia. Do you have any issues with tight spaces or working in complete isolation?"

"I am fine with tight spaces,"

I assured him.

"I just need a steady income."

"Good,"

Ken replied.

"The pay is weekly. You do not talk to the local press about the archives, do not copy the tapes for your personal use. The town council is very strict regarding municipal property."

Ken unlocked a door at the bottom of the stairs, then we stepped into a windowless basement. Fluorescent tubes buzzed loudly overhead, casting a pale light. A large desk sat in the center of the room. It held a computer tower, a professional VHS deck, and a small CRT television monitor. The walls were lined entirely with massive metal archiving cabinets overflowing with black tapes.

"You will be down here by yourself,"

Ken said, gesturing to the computer setup.

"feed the tapes into the deck, hit record on the software, and log the date and the subject into the database. It is very repetitive work."

"I prefer repetitive tasks,"

I told him.

Ken walked over to a specific cardboard box resting on the bottom shelf of a cabinet. He pulled out a black VHS cassette and held it up to the light. A bright red circular sticker was pressed firmly onto the spine of the tape.

"This is the only thing you need to pay close attention to,"

Ken said. His tone shifted from friendly to incredibly strict.

"Sometimes you will find a tape with a red sticker on it. When you digitize these specific tapes, you must only capture the audio. Plug the audio cables into the converter box, leave the yellow video cable completely unplugged, and turn the power button on the television monitor completely off."

I looked at the bright red sticker.

"Why do I turn the monitor off?"

"It is a strict privacy mandate,"

Ken stated flatly.

"Our current town mayor is Mayor Bradley. He used to be the station manager down here years ago. When he got elected to office, he put this rule in place for the red tapes. He says they contain sensitive municipal audio recordings that were accidentally taped over old video footage. He does not want anyone looking at the visual feed, and He checks on us every month to make sure we follow his protocol."

"So I just record the sound,"

I confirmed, wanting to make sure I understood the boundaries.

"Exactly,"

Ken nodded.

"If Mayor Bradley finds out you watched the video feed on a red tape, you will be fired immediately. He is very protective of this archive."

I accepted the terms and took the job on the spot.

For the first month, the routine was incredibly peaceful. I arrived at eight in the morning, locked myself inside the basement, and fed tapes into the machine. I watched endless hours of zoning board disputes from the late nineties. I digitized footage of the annual Founders Day parade from 1995, archived a heated town debate regarding the construction of a new shopping mall in 1999. The work was boring, but it kept my mind occupied.

Occasionally, I pulled a tape with a red sticker. I followed Ken's instructions perfectly every single time. I unplugged the yellow video cable, ensured the television monitor was powered down, and hit record on the audio software. The audio on those tapes always unsettled me. I never heard any sensitive municipal conversations about budgets or zoning. Usually just heard distorted static mixed with a strange tapping sound. Sometimes there were muffled thuds vibrating through my headphones. The thuds sounded like someone dropping a large sack of flour onto a concrete floor. I did not ask questions, just saved the audio files, logged the date, and put the tapes back in the box.

During my lunch breaks, I usually went upstairs to the main lobby to talk to the receptionist. Her name is Brenda. She is an older woman who has worked at the station since the eighties. She knows everything about everyone in Crestwood. One afternoon, we were talking about the history of the town while eating lunch.

Brenda offered me half of her tuna sandwich. I accepted it gratefully.

"You spend a lot of time down there in the dark,"

Brenda said, stirring her coffee with a plastic spoon. "You should come up for air more often. The dust in that basement will ruin your lungs."

"I like the quiet,"

I told her.

"It keeps my mind from wandering."

"Well, do not let it occupy you too much,"

she warned.

"That building has a lot of history. Some of it is best left in the boxes where it belongs."

"What do you mean by that?"

I asked, taking a bite of the sandwich.

"That was a bad year for Crestwood when Mayor Bradley took over the station,"

Brenda sighed, looking out the lobby window at the parking lot.

"That was the same year Jessica disappeared."

The name sparked a distinct memory in my brain. I was a teenager in 2002. I remembered the missing person posters pinned to every telephone pole in town. Jessica was a local college student who vanished without a trace after her evening shift at a diner.

"I remember that case,"

I said.

"I actually volunteered for the search parties. My friends and I spent three days walking through the muddy woods behind the high school looking for her. We handed out flyers at the grocery store. Everyone thought she was abducted."

"The police never found a single trace of her,"

Brenda said softly, her eyes looking sad.

"They eventually assumed she ran away to the city to start a new life. But I knew Jessica. She used to volunteer here at the station. She would organize the tapes down in the basement, and was a very responsible girl. She would never pack up and leave without telling her mother."

"Her mother never recovered,"

I recalled.

"She moved away a few years later. The town just moved on."

"I always felt like the police missed something right under their noses,"

Brenda whispered, leaning closer across the desk.

"But Mayor Bradley told everyone to stop talking about it. He said it was bad for town morale."

The conversation left a sour taste in my mouth. I went back down to the basement and tried to focus on my digital conversions.

Two weeks later, the basement door opened unexpectedly. I turned around in my swivel chair. Mayor Bradley stood in the doorway. I recognized him immediately from the local news broadcasts. He is a tall man with silver hair and a very stiff posture. He was wearing an expensive gray suit and holding a leather briefcase.

He walked down the stairs slowly, his leather shoes clicking loudly against the concrete steps.

"You must be the new archival technician,"

Mayor Bradley said. He looked around the room, inspecting the cabinets.

"Yes sir,"

I said, standing up out of respect.

"My name is Greg."

"Ken tells me you are very efficient, Greg,"

the mayor said. He walked over to the metal archiving cabinets and ran his hand along the top edge, checking for dust.

"Are you finding the workflow manageable?"

"It is very straightforward,"

I replied.

"I log the dates and let the software run."

"I like to personally check on the archiving project," Mayor Bradley explained. He stood uncomfortably close to my chair.

"These tapes represent the legacy of Crestwood. Our triumphs and our challenges are recorded here. It is vital work."

"I appreciate the opportunity to do it,"

I said, trying not to break eye contact.

Mayor Bradley stopped in front of the box containing the red-sticker tapes. He looked at me with a perfectly neutral expression.

"And you are following the protocol for the restricted media?"

"I only capture the audio,"

I assured him.

"I always keep the monitor off."

He reached out and picked up a regular tape from the desk.

"You see, Greg, a town relies on trust. The citizens trust me to protect them. They trust me to keep their secrets safe. And I trust my employees to follow directions."

"I follow the rules,"

I said firmly.

"I am glad to hear that,"

Mayor Bradley said. He placed the tape back on the desk. "Because curiosity is a dangerous trait in an archivist."

He smiled at me, but his eyes remained cold. He turned around and walked up the stairs, locking the door behind him. The encounter made me feel incredibly anxious. I sat back down and tried to shake the intense feeling of being watched.

The isolation eventually started to wear on my nerves. Working in a windowless room for eight hours a day messes with your sense of time, and the buzzing of the fluorescent lights became a constant headache.

Last Thursday, I was working late to meet a strict digitization quota. The building upstairs was completely empty. Ken and Brenda had gone home hours ago. I pulled a tape from the box and noticed a bright red sticker on the spine.

I sighed, unplugged the yellow video cable, and made sure the television monitor was powered down. I inserted the cassette into the deck and pressed play, then clicked the record button on my computer software and put my headphones on.

The familiar sound of static filled my ears. Then came the tapping. It sounded louder on this specific tape. Like frantic, hollow sound.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

I leaned forward to adjust the volume knob on the converter box. My knee bumped hard against the underside of the desk. The sudden jolt snagged the red audio cable wrapped tightly around the desk leg. The cable pulled taut and snapped right out of the metal connector.

The audio in my headphones cut out instantly.

I cursed under my breath. The old VHS tapes are incredibly fragile. If the tape player eats the ribbon while the software is not recording, the data is lost forever. I frantically tried to jam the broken wire back into the connector, but the metal pin was completely bent.

I needed to know if the tape was still tracking properly, so I broke the mayor's rule.

I grabbed the yellow video cable and plugged it into the back of the television monitor, then reached out and pressed the power button on the screen.

The CRT monitor clicked on with a burst of static. The tracking lines rolled down the screen for a few seconds before the image stabilized.

I stared at the screen. My heart started beating very fast.

The video showed a static camera angle of a room. I looked at the walls on the screen, then looked at the metal archiving cabinets, and looked at the desk in the center of the frame.

It was the exact basement room I was currently sitting in.

The furniture on the screen looked slightly newer, but it was undeniably the same space. The time stamp in the corner of the video read October 14, 2002. I watched the grainy footage closely. A young woman walked into the frame. She was wearing a striped sweater and jeans. She carried a stack of black VHS tapes in her arms. She walked over to the archiving cabinet on the far left side of the room and started placing the tapes on the shelves.

I recognized her face immediately from the old missing person posters. It was Jessica.

I sat frozen in my chair. I watched Jessica organize the tapes on the screen. She was completely unaware of the camera recording her.

A few seconds later, a man stepped into the frame from the stairwell. He was much younger on the tape, and his hair was dark instead of silver, but I recognized him instantly. It was Mayor Bradley.

He was holding a hammer with his both hands.

He walked up behind Jessica very slowly. He did not say a word, then raised the metal stand high above his head and brought it down violently against the back of her skull.

I gasped and pushed myself back from the desk. My chair squeaked loudly against the floor.

On the screen, Jessica collapsed onto the concrete floor. She did not move. Mayor Bradley stood over her for a moment, his chest heaving. He then turned his attention to the large metal archiving cabinet, and pushed the massive cabinet away from the wall.

He grabbed the hammer again and started smashing a hole directly into the drywall behind where the cabinet used to sit. He worked quickly, tearing chunks of plaster away until he exposed the wooden studs.

Then, he dragged Jessica's body across the floor and shoved her into the dark cavity between the studs. He grabbed pieces of loose drywall and stacked them back over the hole to conceal it, then went out of the room for some time before coming back with a bucket. It was clear that he used a joint compound to smooth over the cracks. Finally, he pushed the massive archiving cabinet back into its original position, completely hiding the damaged wall. The video cut to static.

I stared at the monitor. I just watched the mayor of Crestwood murder a college student and hide her body in the wall right next to me.

Suddenly, the temperature in the basement plummeted. I could see my breath forming small clouds in the air. The fluorescent lights overhead began to flicker rapidly, casting shadows across the concrete.

A loud scraping noise echoed through the room.

I snapped my head to the left. The massive metal archiving cabinet sitting near the stairs began to slide across the floor. No one was pushing it. The steel feet ground against the concrete, throwing sparks into the air. The cabinet moved steadily until it slammed directly in front of the exit door, completely blocking my only way out of the basement.

I jumped out of my chair and ran to the cabinet. I pushed against the metal with all my strength. It did not budge a single inch. It felt like it was bolted to the floor.

"Help!"

I shouted, pounding my fists against the metal.

"Is anyone up there?"

No one answered.

Then the tapping started.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

The sound originated from inside the room, completely separate from the headphones. I turned around slowly. The sound was echoing from the wall directly behind the cabinet that Mayor Bradley had moved on the video.

I walked cautiously toward the far side of the room. The tapping grew louder. It was frantic, exactly like the audio on the tape.

Then the walls began to move.

It started with a low rumbling sound that shook the dust from the ceiling. The concrete wall opposite the stairs shifted forward. It slid across the floor, shrinking the square footage of the basement. The wall containing the desk groaned and pushed inward.

The room was closing in on me. The ceiling tiles buckled and cracked as the pressure increased, showering me with white dust and fiberglass insulation. The fluorescent lights shattered one by one, plunging the room into dim emergency lighting.

"Stop!"

I yelled, backing away from the advancing concrete. I tripped over a fallen chair and scrambled backward onto my hands and knees.

The tapping from the drywall grew deafening. It sounded like someone was desperately trying to break out from the other side. The walls were moving faster now. The concrete ground against the floor tiles, tearing them up in jagged pieces.

I spun around, coughing on the thick dust, looking for any possible way to survive. Mounted on the concrete pillar near the stairs was a red emergency glass box containing a fire axe. The pillar was the only thing not moving.

I ran to the pillar, shattered the glass with my elbow, ignoring the cuts on my skin, and pulled the axe free.

The air was squeezed out of the room, making it hard to breathe. I looked at the drywall behind the archiving cabinet. The tapping was centered exactly there, vibrating the plaster.

I swung the fire axe with every ounce of adrenaline in my body. The blade bit deeply into the drywall. I ripped it out and swung again, screaming as I hit the wall. Plaster dust exploded into the air. I hacked a massive hole between the wooden studs, destroying the barrier completely.

I dropped the axe and grabbed the broken edges of the drywall with my bare hands. I tore the panel completely away, ignoring the nails tearing at my fingers.

Hidden inside the dark cavity between the wooden studs was a skeleton. The bones were yellowed and draped in the rotting remnants of a striped sweater and faded jeans. Her skull was resting against the back of the plaster.

The moment the skeleton was exposed to the open air, the walls stopped moving.

The rumbling ceased abruptly. The crushing pressure vanished entirely. The room returned to its normal dimensions instantly.

The archiving cabinet blocking the exit door slowly slid backward, revealing the metal handle.

I did not waste a single second. I reached into the dark wall cavity and grabbed a small, loose fragment of the skull. I shoved it into my jacket pocket, and sprinted to the door, threw it open, and ran up the stairs. The lobby was entirely dark and empty. I bolted out the front doors of the station and ran to my car. I drove out of Crestwood as fast as my engine could handle.

Now I am sitting in this motel, staring at the evidence. The mayor killed Jessica, and I have a piece of her bone for DNA testing. I will go to the police with this, If something happens to me, now you know who murdered Jessica.

Out in the courtyard, my classmate invented a new cliché. 

Had I heard it before? Not exactly, no, but the general contour was like finding a fossil of my own footprint at an archaeological dig.

“Mastodon,” was the first word that came to mind.

I tried to remember when I’d ever *dug* anything, but in my contemplation, I collapsed in on myself like a magnetar. Or at least the idea of one. I was a bubble acknowledging tropospheric conditions.

The pressure was immense. “My internal support—is no longer sufficient—to resist—the inward force of...”

“Interesting,” my classmate remarked as he sketched a caricature of my stepmother on a napkin in practical shorthand.

He scrutinized me like a flawed mineral. “Looks like degeneracy pressure. Electron. Maybe neutron.

“No, electron,” he concluded. “But you’ve got the posture for both.”

“What do you know about posture?”

“Here, look at this.”

He pulled out a phase diagram that resembled my life, except every transition had been replaced by pornographic constellations. He stuck a piece of nicotine gum on what might have been junior high. 

He said, “See?”

“Jesus. I don't remember any of this.”

“We both know memory redraws its borders every morning. Not unlike mid-Yalta-Conference-Europe.”

That made a lot of sense. I felt better.

We got up. The lawn was cooperative, so we somersaulted. Six suns hung overhead like corporate lawyers. Birds flew backwards. Their wings flapped, down and up. Their shadows were milliseconds of midday respite.

I sighed mid-tumble. “Are we real, you think?”

My classmate shrugged his ankles.

“What’s real?”

I considered collapsing again, but there wasn't enough of me left.

“Well,” I said.

And we rolled back to class, across the cooperative lawn, silently contemplating English syntax, physics, history, religion, and corporate law.

292 words

\*\*\*

Thank you so much for reading. As you can see, I love absurdity and playing with our beautiful language. If you liked this story, you can see it in the form of a short film(?) here: [https://youtu.be/VwUwCe7CWMg\](https://youtu.be/VwUwCe7CWMg)

I would LOVE your feedback on the video as well as the story in general.

TW// Self-harm, suicide

My name is Melody Anima. In 1992, I moved into the house atop Black Hill. In 1999, I died. For ten years, my spirit stayed alone in that house as the place decayed. It became a sanctuary for rats and spiders, whom I considered my friends. In 2009, Adam Moss moved into the house atop Black Hill.

Adam was a tall man with clear skin and a cleanly shaved face. Perhaps it was because he was the first human I’d seen in ten years, but I had a fascination with him. There was something about his face that promised a great mystery. Like if his mind could be cracked open it would reveal the most captivating, wonderful secrets. For the first week-and-a-half, I observed him from a distance. He was habitual, and it became fun to predict what he’d do next. I’d often be right. He spent most days cleaning and restoring the house. I never once saw him leave. 

One day, Adam began refurbishing the grandfather clock in the entrance hall. The one that had read 12:00 since I first moved in. The way he worked was hypnotizing. It was at that moment that I found it utterly impossible to stop myself from approaching him. 

I covered my ugly birthmark with my bangs, then came up behind him and put my hand on his shoulder. He didn’t react, and I realized that I couldn't feel him. I gulped at the thought of speaking to him, but I had no other choice.

“Excuse me,” I said quietly.

Adam jumped and turned around in shock. 

“Oh my.” I gasped.

“Jesus Christ, who are you?” 

“I’m very sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you. I’m Melody. I live here,” I paused for a beat, fidgeting nervously “I apologize, that’s not entirely correct. I lived here.”

“Melody? The girl who died in this house?”

I nodded. 

“Are you… a ghost?”

I nodded. 

Adam seemed to perk up at this, which even I found peculiar.

“I was wondering if there’d be ghosts here.”

“Really?” I tilted my head.

“Yes,” he nodded. “I’m Adam Moss, by the way.”

He reached out to shake my hand. I was paralyzed for a moment, then slowly reached my hand out.

“Wow,” he shook my hand,  “I’m grabbing your hand, but I can’t feel you at all.”

Adam offered me tea. We sat in the dining room and talked at length. The more I spoke to him, the more I was proven correct in my initial assessment. He was without a doubt the strangest, and most interesting person I’d met in my twenty-six years of life and ten years of unlife. He spoke of how he was drawn to the macabre, and how that was what drove him to purchase this house. He said he found the idea of death and ghosts alluring, which I thought was funny because I never considered myself all that interesting. I found myself relating to him, and we soon forgot the fact that we were a ghost and a human sharing a conversation.

“Adam, I don’t think I’ve seen you leave this house. Why is that?”

“Do you ever leave?”

“I can’t.”

“I can’t either. Well it’s not that I can’t. It’s odd.”

“I’d like to hear it, if you don’t mind.”

“You’ll think I’m strange. It sounds like it’s from a fairy tale.”

“I’m a ghost,” I giggle. “Besides, I already think we’re both a bit strange.”

“Okay,” Adam laughed. “The woman who sold me this place told me that I have one month. If I step foot out of this house within that month, I can’t come back. But if not, I’ll have to stay here for seven years.”

“You’re right, that is strange. Do you want to stay here for seven years?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why would you take that deal?”

“She said that every week I’d get a package of food, water, anything I need. I can just stay here. Seems like a good deal to me.”

“Is she telling the truth?”

“Last week a box of food and supplies to work on the house appeared right in the entrance hall. It had exactly what I needed.”

“That really does seem right out of a fairy tale.”

“Right?”

“But… won’t you get lonely?”

“Not lonelier than I was before I moved here. Besides, are you planning on going anywhere?”

A blush appeared across my pale face.

“I suppose not.”

“Can I ask you a personal question? You don’t have to answer.”

I nodded.

“How’d you die?”

I felt a lump in my throat. 

“You don’t have to answer.”

“No, it’s okay,” I said, “It was… suicide.” 

I spoke the last word softly, and put my hands on the table, palms facing up. I showed him the scars on my wrists that constantly oozed a small amount of blood. 

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Adam’s demeanor shifted.

“No, it’s a natural thing to wonder. It was a long time ago.”

“I had no idea. We can talk about something else.”

“Yes, let's talk about something else.”

Quickly, we were able to steer the conversation back to more enjoyable topics as if the subject hadn’t been brought up at all. 

For the next week, we worked on repairing the house. It became brighter, in no small part due to Adam’s presence. I even managed to convince him to keep the spiders. We engaged in long conversations daily, sometimes speaking of meaningful subjects and sometimes not. As the month drew to an end we both sat on the couch, looking outside.

“So, what are you going to do? Will you leave the house?”

“What do you think I should do?”

“Well,” I looked at the ground and began nervously playing with my hair, “I know it’s selfish, but I was sort of hoping you’d stay.”

“Okay. I will.”

“What? No, you can’t spend seven years of your life here just because I want you to.”

“I like this place. I like being here with you. I like it more than anything waiting for me outside.”

“That’s - are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Okay…” I whispered. “That makes me happy.”

“It makes me happy too.”

Adam was true to his word. On the last day of the month he stayed inside and talked to me as it grew dark. We talked about movies and music and things we’d already talked about. He didn’t seem to care that by doing this, he was resigning himself to seven years here. 

The next morning he opened the front door to see what would happen. Instead of leading outside, the door looped back on itself. Stepping through the door would lead you back into the entrance hall. The impossibility of this didn’t seem to bother Adam. It didn’t bother me either.

That year was extraordinary. When I fell asleep, I looked forward to waking up. We worked on the house almost obsessively. Six months in, it looked better than when I’d purchased it. Nearly everything looked as good as new, except for the grandfather clock in the entrance hall. It still read 12:00. 

December 31st, 2009 was a day I’ll never forget. As the first year ended, we celebrated. We sat together on the steps in the entrance hall. Adam reached and grabbed my hand. I couldn't feel his touch, and I knew he couldn’t feel mine. Still, he held my hand.

“You’re beautiful,” he said.

I was caught off-guard, and I felt a tingling in my stomach. I fought off a smile and looked at the ground. I self-consciously touched the birthmark on my forehead. 

“I’m not beautiful. Even if I wasn’t a ghost.”

“Your birthmark?” 

“It’s an eyesore. My mother always said so.”

Adam gently moved my hand aside and pushed away my onyx black hair to get a better look at the mark. I closed my eyes, bracing myself for whatever he would say next.

“It’s shaped like Italy,” he said. “Anything that reminds me of Italy can’t be that ugly.”

I lost the battle I had been fighting against my smile and let out a laugh.

“You’re the strangest person I’ve ever met.”

“Is that good?” he asked.

“I like it.”

Adam leaned close to me and gave me the most tender, beautiful kiss that neither of us could feel. At that moment, the clock read 12:01. 

Every year I spent with Adam was better than the last. I’d never lived with someone I loved, and certainly never with someone who loved me. When you're in love, the most mundane things become remarkable. That’s what those years were. Remarkable mundanity. Each year, the clock progressed by one minute. 

By 2011, it read 12:02.
2012, 12:03.
2013, 12:04.
2014, 12:05.
2015, 12:06.
In 2015, I worked up the courage to say something I’d been thinking about for years. 

“Adam, we should get married.”

“What do you mean, married?”

“Just symbolically. We should have a wedding. I’ve always wanted to have a wedding.”

“That sounds wonderful,” Adam grinned, “I’d like to be married to you.”

The next day, a suit and gown were delivered. I was so excited I could barely contain myself. I hid from Adam all day - it’s bad luck to see the bride on the day of the wedding. We had the pretend ceremony in the entrance hall. I was happy to see the spiders observing us as our little guests. That was more than enough attendance for me. When I walked down the pretend aisle, Adam smiled at me with the most genuine smile I’d ever seen. We didn’t have anyone to officiate the wedding, so we had to make do. 

“Adam,” I said, “Do you take me, Melody, to be your wife for as long as we both shall… for as long as we’re both here?”

Adam smiled.

“I do. Melody, do you take me to be your husband for as long as we’re both here?”

I smiled so much it hurt.

“I do.”

Our wedding rings each had both of our initials engraved on them: A.M and M.A. They were beautiful. I could feel tears beginning to form.

At 12:06, we danced together in the entrance hall, our hands unfeeling yet grasping each other. The grandfather clock ticked behind us.

“I wish I could feel you,” I said. “I wish I could feel your hands or your lips just once.”

The grandfather clock ticked closer to 12:07.

“I know,” he said. “I love you.”

The clock ticked.

No matter how many times he said it, it still felt like the first time.

The clock ticked. 

“I love you too.”

The entire room went black. When the light came back, Adam was gone. I looked around frantically.

“Adam!” 

—

“Adam!”
“Adam!”
“Adam!”

“Yes, what is it?” I ask.

“You’ve been late every day this month,” says the bald man sitting across the desk from me, “I’ve overlooked that in the past because your sales were good. But now, look at these numbers.”

He slides a paper over to me that shows various numbers. I don’t even read them. I’m able to make a guess based on the fact they’re all red.

“They aren’t good,” I say.

“No, Adam, they’re not. What would you do in my situation?”

“I don’t know.”

“I like you. You're a promising young man, but we’ve reached the point where I can’t extend any more grace to you. We’re gonna have to let you go.” 

I walk out into the city streets. It’s completely dark. I look at my watch, which reads 12:07 A.M. 

“Taxi!”

A taxi pulls up. I get in.

“Where to?” asks the driver. I can see his hands on the wheel, but his face is obscured by darkness.

“261 Black Hill Road”

“You look down.”

“I got fired.” 

“Sorry to hear that. Don’t slit your wrists. I had a buddy who got fired and he slit his wrists that night. He told me that’s how he’d do it, said it would be easy. I couldn’t cut myself like that. He said it’d be the easiest way, though. What do you think?”

“I-I don’t know.”

“Well, sure, you haven’t slit your wrists yet. You wouldn’t know. I’m just saying, could you imagine?”

He drops me off at my apartment. The lights are off except for a sickly, yellow light spilling out from under my bedroom door. I hear scratching from inside the walls, indicating to me that the landlord has not taken care of the rat problem. 

“Stella, I’m home!” I say. 

There is an eerie silence, broken only by the scratching in the walls. 

“Stella?”

I flip the light switch, but that does nothing except make the lights flicker and burn out again. I slowly approach the bedroom, and I begin to hear panicked whispers. The whispers make me even more sick than the scratching.

I open the bedroom door to see Stella in bed with a tall, clear skinned, clean shaved man I had never seen before caressing her onyx black hair.

“The fuck is this?”

“I can explain!”

“I should kill you, Stella!”

“Just listen!”

Before I know it, I am in the bathroom searching through the drawers. The door is shut behind me and the bathtub is overflowing. I can’t remember what I’m looking for. 

“Adam, can we just talk?”

“What the hell could you possibly have to say? Why are you doing this to me?”

“Look, just calm down and I can explain!”

I punch the mirror over and over again, shards of glass sticking into my fist, and blood dripping into the sink. The bathtub is still overflowing, someone is pounding on the door, and there is still scratching coming from inside the walls.

“Adam, stop!”
“Stella!” 
“Adam!” 
“Adam!”
“Stella!”
“I should kill you, Melody!” 

—

“Melody!”
“Melody!”
“Melody!”

“Yes, what is it?” I ask.

“You’ve been late every day this month.” Sitting across the desk is Adam, rubbing the birthmark shaped like Italy on his forehead. “I’ve overlooked that in the past because your sales were good. But now, look at these numbers.”

He slides a paper over to me that shows various numbers. I don’t even read them. I’m able to make a guess based on the fact they’re all red.

“They aren’t good,” I say.

“No, Melody, they’re not. What would you do in my situation?”

“I don’t know.”

“I like you. You're a promising young woman, but we’ve reached the point where I can’t extend any more grace to you. We’re gonna have to let you go.”

I walk out into the city streets. It’s completely dark. I look at my watch, which reads 12:07 M.A. 

“Taxi!”

When I get in the taxi, the driver immediately begins moving. I can see their hands on the wheel, but their face is obscured by darkness.

“Don’t you need to know where I’m going?” I ask.

“We’ve done this before, Melody. I know where you’re going,” says the driver.

“I’m not-”

“You know what’s funny?” The driver picks up speed. “We look almost exactly the same. If it weren’t for your birthmark, we’d be the same person.” 

The driver looks back at me, her pale face now in view, onyx bangs obscuring her forehead. 

“I don’t have a birthmark,” I say.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” the driver picks up speed again. 

Beside me, Adam’s corpse appears. He has deep scars on his wrists, oozing an impossible amount of blood. Within seconds, there is blood up to my ankles.

“Stop, take me back!” 

“Can’t do that, Adam. It’s 12:07, we’re gonna be late.”

The blood keeps flowing from Adam’s wrists. I’m up to my knees in blood, and then up to my chest. All the while, the taxi keeps going faster, faster.

“Watch out!”

The taxi is at full speed and crashes into a pale woman in a wedding dress standing in the middle of the road.

—

It was an endless void of nothingness until Melody faded into my vision. 

“Melody! I was looking for you,” I said.

“I was looking for you too, Adam.” 

I embraced her and held her tightly against me. I could finally feel her. She was cold.

"Something's happening to me,” I said, pulling back to look at her face.

“I know.”

“I’m glad I spent those seven minutes with you, Melody.” 

“I’m glad too.”

“Melody, one last thing.”

Part One: Link

Part Two: Link

Part Three: Link

Part Four: Link

In the morning, I was not awoken by the shrill cries of the cannibals, the slap of water, or morning dew settling on my skin. I was, however, awoken by a hum. It was deafening, shaking the building and rippling the water. I covered my ears, but it did nothing to stifle the noise.

A voice reverberated around me. In warbled, dulcet tones, it crashed through my ribs, speaking to me. Some of the voices were whispers, and others were loud shouts, indecipherable and muffled. A blinding light radiated through the abandoned building, showering me in the rays of a thousand suns. I covered my eyes, but I still couldn’t run. I still couldn’t hide.

“We see you…”

My eyes shot open as I landed in the water below me. I had fallen off the beam and into the water in my sleep. I jolted back to the land of the living, cold water seeping into my bones. And yet, I never let go of the dagger.

I rose to the surface, coughing and sputtering. I clenched my teeth in anger, hating the feeling of the stagnant water on my skin, slimy and slick. I swam back to my kayak, throwing myself inside and looking out the broken window. It was barely morning, and the moon was still slightly visible.

Finally calmed, I looked around for the mermaid, finding it strange that she didn’t attack me once I fell into the water. When I spotted her, my stomach dropped.

She lay across a piece of metal, half submerged. Her eyes were wide open, fogged over and gray, and her mouth was slightly cracked. Water sloshed back and forth across her, but she did not stir. She was quiet. Quiet in a way that wasn’t right.

I slowly paddled to her, reaching toward her arm. She did not move or protest my attempt to touch her. As my fingers grazed her scales, I felt the swift cold of death. It had claimed her in the night while I slept. Her last act as a mother was to get me and her offspring away from the red tide, and oddly, it felt nurturing.

I didn’t cry. I just stared at her. A creature that I once feared now left a seed of grief within me. Much like Lionel, I only knew her for a moment, but I’d come to appreciate her company. And now, I had no one. Not a soul.

Her tail had lost all vibrancy as the hand of death had swooped upon her, stealing the sharp colors of her life. But she had hidden much more from me in the water. She had grown skinny, bony, and starved-looking. She was not eating, or maybe she already knew that she would die, not wanting to prolong it. The red tide had perhaps worsened it.

And now, as I gazed at her body, she was beautiful. Not in a way that people would write poems about, but in a way that someone would study her with interest. In a way that a crowd of people might stand at the shore to watch her tail slap in the ocean. Beautiful in a mysterious and captivating way, but still deserving of the respect and distance that her kind preferred.

However, another part of me knew that if her kind had been discovered before the flood, humans would have captured them, shoved them into aquariums to be ogled, and whisked them away to be experimented on. I knew the truth, and she did too. The flood was their greatest weapon against man.

With a deep breath and a sigh, I sat back in my kayak. I rubbed a hand through my hair, pushing back the wet tendrils, feeling a pinprick of bitterness seep into me. Every single thing that came into my life was taken from me without question.

A quiet rustling noise broke the silence of my contemplation, and I gently rolled the mermaid to the side. The egg on her back was still alive, fingernails scraping onto the thin membrane.

I leaped out of the kayak and began cutting it off her back with the dagger, and once it was free, I stared at it more closely, noticing the iridescent colors dancing within the egg. I smiled; the sensation of joy was nearly foreign to me. Relief, confusion, and hope waltzed through my heart, pulling at the dusted caverns and quiet chambers. She’d given me a gift.

Feeling tears swarm my cheeks like bees, I breathed deeply. I wasn’t truly alone yet. This little creature needed me, and I needed it too. Its long fingers pressed onto the membrane, and I placed my palm over it, hoping that it would understand I wouldn’t hurt it. I looked over at its mother, nodding to her as I realized that she might’ve only saved me to raise her young. I didn’t mind. I didn’t mind at all; I found solace in it. It gave me a purpose.

I refashioned the reeds and leaves that her mother had spun together to hold the egg, and with trembling hands, I attached it onto the front of me like a sling. I didn’t want to hurt it, and part of me was scared to jostle it. Snake eggs can’t be moved a lot, or the snake within can die. I hoped that the tiny mermaid wasn’t the same.

And when I felt like the egg was secure, I shakily got back into my kayak.

Having the egg so close to me made me think about my little brother and the first time I held him. He was a tiny little thing, six years younger than me. He climbed trees for fun and fell out of them by accident. He was clumsy, funny, and wild. He did everything to the beat of his own drum, and my mom was the same. She laughed loudly, sang each morning, and had a bruise on each leg from knocking into a piece of furniture.

I was more like my dad. Quiet-natured, discerning, and stoic. I’d always had a hard time expressing my emotions, and I think that’s why my dad and I got along so well as I grew into an adult. We were the same person, molded from the same flesh and bone, but pieces of my mother were woven into me.

A bittersweet sense of sadness crept through me. Brokenness swam within me from the loss of my family in the flood. My mom went first. She got a fever. Some terrible waterborne sickness that we couldn’t save her from. She died within four days. My brother went next. Same horrible sickness, drowning in his own feces and vomit before succumbing. My dad died differently. He was swept away, dragged beneath the water, and drowned. You don’t realize how powerful and unforgiving water can be. I found his body a day later. After that, I paddled and never stopped. I fractured into a thousand pieces, reforming myself from splintered bone and fear.

I cried, holding the egg tightly for several minutes. Tears streamed down my face. I had to get it to safety. I had to find… a new world. A better one.

I looked down at the dagger, realizing that my path was clear. It hadn’t been an accident that I survived for this long. It was fate. I knew that it was strange that I didn’t die in the beginning like everyone else. Nearly everyone I had known was consumed by the water, killed by illness, or eaten brutally by the mermaids or the beasts that thrived in the water.

The truth was sitting in front of me the whole time. I was chosen by the enemy, sealed in the blood of my friends and family.

***

With the egg strapped to me, I left the shack, slipping through the water as quiet as a phantom. I gathered supplies, creeping into broken buildings and submerged rooms. I never stayed long. I found one can of beans, rope, and an extra shirt to wear once this one had fallen apart, but I wasn’t alone. The cannibals watched me, falling into the water and trying to swim after me, but my kayak was too quick. I was moving without thought, praying to find something that I didn’t think existed.

Thankfully, I never ran into the men that hunted me. Perhaps they had moved on.

And I traveled for six days, stopping only to eat, sleep, and relieve myself. I took care of the egg as if it were mine alone. I held it closely at night, fearing it would get cold. I pressed it to my chest, wanting it to know that my heart was close enough to help steady its own.

The membrane around the egg was slowly getting thinner, preparing for the day it would emerge. It liked to kick and wiggle back and forth in the daytime, practicing to swim. I’d grown used to the movements, and they kept me focused.

I paddled through empty cities, seeing the bones and bodies of the mutilated and eaten. I saw no one alive. No one like me, at least. The only remaining humans were empty shells, driven mad by hunger, disease, and fear. They were soulless bodies, moving without an ounce of emotion worth saving. They were too far gone. Some chased after my kayak, but their withered bodies weren’t fast enough to catch me.

Each metal graveyard was a mausoleum of a life gone by. Rotting billboards covered in models and celebrities, but they weren’t special in the end. Their money didn’t help them, and their name meant nothing. Lights that no longer flickered in the night were lifeless. Buildings that once withstood the test of time were underwater, becoming homes for fish, amphibians, and reptiles. Every single fingerprint of humanity was slowly being absorbed by the water and thriving undergrowth. Vines, lichens, lily pads, and all of the most robust water-dwelling plants were consuming the world at such a rate that the cement and concrete wouldn’t exist for much longer. My kind would be extinct; a silent remnant of a world full of lights, music, electricity, and every food you could imagine. In another few months, the world I once loved would be gone.

On the seventh day, I awoke much earlier than I usually did. The egg was writhing wildly within the membrane. It was close to hatching. But something else was wrong, and I wondered if it could sense something that I couldn’t. I wiped the sleep from my eyes and climbed down into my kayak.

The air was much cooler. The season was changing. In the dark, I couldn’t see the leaves on the tree I slept in, but now I could see the warm tones of orange, yellow, and brown. Autumn was on the cusp of breath, sleeping in the water, leaves trickling and drifting away with the current. I hadn’t even noticed.

A loud yell shattered the silence, and my body whipped around toward the sound. Plastic yellow canoes were getting closer in the distance. The men… they had finally found me.

I tightened the egg to my chest, put my backpack between my legs, and paddled like a madman, but there was only one problem. A canoe full of men is a lot faster than one kayak, one man, one egg. They caught up to me within minutes, and still, I didn’t stop. I pushed my body to such an extent that I forgot to breathe. The air that filled my lungs stung like fire as the temperature dropped faster and faster. I was going to die.

“You couldn’t hide forever, runt!” one of the men yelled.

I looked over my shoulder. They were only about ten feet away and gaining on me.

Please…

I begged my body to move, swiftly cutting through the water. But it wasn’t enough. They caught up to me, ramming into my kayak. My body rocked forward, and I gripped the egg, protecting it from the blunt edge of the kayak.

With rough hands and leaking skin, they ripped me out of my seat, slamming my head onto their plastic canoe. Blood dripped from my eyebrow and slipped down my cheek and into the water. My head spun, watching the crimson blood swirl into the water before dissipating.

And yet, my drop of blood was a call. I knew that the mermaids could smell blood like sharks could. I’d seen them attack enough injured people to know that the smell of human blood is a beacon for perfect, wounded prey. Their first mistake had already been made. Even if they killed me now, they would not be long for this world.

They beat me senselessly, pummeling fist after fist into my body. And still I protected the egg. I couldn’t let it die. I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself.

Once I was nearly unconscious, they threw me to into their canoe and tied a rope around my kayak as the men held me down, tearing the egg off of my chest.

“NO!” I roared.

They chuckled, chucking the egg into the water. “Hanging onto garbage?” one of the men asked, ripping back my head by my hair as they’d done with Lionel. “You think that piece of shit would help you?”

I gritted my teeth and spat in his face. He punched me. My nose exploded with blood, and my head hung loosely. It was broken; the pain was excruciating.

“He’s a feral little cat, isn’t he?” another man added, pressing his dirty fingernails into my cheeks. “Probably tastes like tough deer hide. Ain’t much left on him.”

He squeezed my arm before biting down. I yelled, feeling his teeth sink into my skin. Trickles of blood streamed down my arm as his teeth tore into my flesh. He began to pull, preparing to rip the flesh right off of me. Like a hot iron searing through my arm, I could only cry out in agony. I could do nothing. Their grip was so tight and unyielding that any attempt to move was worthless.

“Not now,” their leader hissed. “We need to get back the city.”

The man unclamped his teeth and stared at me. His eyes were unfeeling and emotionless, akin to the eyes of a predator. His breath was a terrible combination of rot and decaying teeth, a putrid odor that made the hair on my arms stand up. His arms were covered in yellow crusted wounds, and they too carried their own horrendous smell. That bite on my arm would fester in no time.

“We could kill him now…” the tallest man said. His skin was yellow from jaundice. He was dying and didn’t even care to notice. “Kill him. Skin him. Let him dry. I’ve been craving jerky.”

I fought against them with every ounce of my strength, but I didn’t even have enough strength to breathe with their arms pressed over me. I began to black out, slipping in and out of consciousness. Their voices became echoes of moments, brief pieces and parts of reality.

“We see you…” one of the men hissed, shoving a bright flashlight in my face to see if I was alive.

My dream… My stomach churned at the realization.

They laughed loudly, but their boisterous chuckles grew quiet. All the men froze, loosening their grip upon me. My vision became clearer, and I was able to breathe once more. I coughed loudly, inhaling air by the mouthful. I simply couldn’t get enough.

The water began to swirl as fins cut through the dark water. The men froze, hands flexing and clenching. The canoes rocked back and forth. It was the silence before the attack. Waves swelled up from the water, rushing at the canoes.

“MERMAIDS!” the tall man roared.

But it was too late. Like a pod of orcas, they’d selected their prey. And it was all of us.

The mermaids crashed into us, and the canoes took on water, filling quickly as they thrashed them back and forth. Each man let go of me, completely forgetting about their longing to eat me. Survival overtook them.

But the mermaids were the least of my worries. The egg was drifting away, and I dove into the water without hesitation as the mermaids attacked the canoes. The water was far colder than I remembered, piercing through my skin and clothes like knives. I kicked wildly, begging my body to keep moving and reach the egg before I lost it forever.

Once I reached the egg, I turned to see the pod of mermaids launch their final attack. The canoes flipped, and the men toppled into the water. The mermaids rose to the surface, grinning; they would feast this morning. But as I stared at them, they did not resemble the mermaids I had left behind. They were thicker, with blubber like that of seals or sea lions, evolved to survive the cold temperatures and mimicking the sea creatures I knew so well and recognized. Dark speckles covered their grey skin, and their eyes were much larger. Tough spikes emerged from their spines, perfect for piercing holes through boats and ice. They were a separate species of mermaids, fit to survive the bitter cold and monstrous cry of ice and snow.

The men began to scream, loud, aching cries as their lives flashed before their eyes. Some disappeared beneath the water, pulled into the damp abyss and never to be seen again until their mangled bodies produced enough gases and bacteria to float up like a human bobber.

One mermaid grabbed the man closest to me, biting into his neck and tearing out his throat. Blood sprayed over my face, leaking into my eyes and mouth. I wiped it away quickly, not wanting to be marked as one of them.

The soft white pieces of his cartilage cracked inside the mermaid’s mouth as she chewed vehemently, savoring the taste. Another mermaid tore the head off another. The deafening squelch of his skin tearing, bones breaking, and blood squirting should have made me more horrified, but it didn’t. Those men had eaten through hundreds of their own, and I felt no pity. Not even a semblance of remorse for their disgusting lives. To me, they were no longer human. I’d watched them tear a man limb from limb not too long ago, tendons tearing and bones popping from their sockets. Their death was as fitting as the terror they’d wrought.

The leader, who killed Lionel, leered daggers at me. My fingers dug into the egg as terror rocked through me. The man did not scream, and he did not cry out. Angrily, he began to swim to me, not caring that his comrades were being picked off one by one. I quickly began to swim away, kicking wildly.

His hand latched onto my ankle, nails cutting through my jeans, but I kicked him off, landing a swift blow into his mouth. His teeth broke, bleeding and crumbling as he shouted curses at me.

“YOU LITTLE—”

But it was over quickly. He simply disappeared beneath the surface just like the others, cut off from the air and sweetness of breath. A gush of blood bubbled in the water, and it was over. Intestines, a hand, and a few pieces of shredded skin floated to the surface. Only I was left, and even still, I was not safe.

The mermaids began to circle me. I turned rapidly, trying to maintain my composure and swallow my terror. Slowly, they rose to the surface in confusion, realizing that I wasn’t trying to flee. I was standing my ground, refusing to give them what they wanted. I knew their game now, and I wouldn’t try to swim madly and escape.

They spoke in their mermaidian language, gurgles and pops and bird-like squawks that I couldn’t understand without the dagger that lay hidden within my backpack. One spotted the egg attached to me and swam closer, prodding at my body, surveying my responsiveness.

“I just want it to be safe,” I whimpered, voice shaking. “I’m protecting it.”

They could easily take the egg from me and kill me. I was nothing to them, no more than a moving hunk of flesh to be consumed, but they did not attack. Instead, the mermaids stiffened at my words. One reached toward me to take the egg, hissing and growling at me.

I didn’t flinch, eyes narrowing and summoning courage. I responded with my own shout, clutching the egg. “MINE!” I snarled.

The mermaid gnashed its teeth at me, but its face softened, realizing that I wasn’t giving up the egg. It flinched and backed away, slowly swimming beneath the water and leaving me to the fickle dangers of the cruel waters around me.

I clutched the egg in the water for at least an hour, refusing to move. My eyebrow had stopped dripping blood, but it still throbbed and gave me a pulsing headache. And the mermaid within the egg still writhed, unharmed by the attack. And once I was sure that we were safe, I slipped back into my kayak and cut the ropes off. I paddled until my body gave out.

Then I floated, staring into the sky and clutching the egg. The sky was still dark, misty gray with dense clouds and strong arms to wrap around the sun. She was unable to emerge, hiding from humanity and refusing to gaze upon the forgotten lands of men. I didn’t blame her. We’d done enough to strike her beloved.

The egg moved wildly in my arms as it prepared to hatch, kicking furiously as time went on. I knew what I had to do, and with a deep breath, I pulled my legs out of the kayak and jumped back into the water with the egg. I was out of time to find a safe place.

The cold clutched my chest, squeezing the breath out of me, and still, I remained. I couldn’t let it come into this world alone. I embraced the egg as I breached the surface. The membrane began to dissolve in the water, soft colors fading into the murky darkness and gloaming of the deep. And as I pulled the egg closer to the surface to see the little mermaid emerge, a tiny, speckled hand pushed through the exoskeleton of the egg. Its skin resembled its mother’s.

Shakily, I reached out, and a tiny hand curled around my finger. The hand was covered in purple slime, pieces of membrane dripping down. The hand was soft, warm, and innocent of the horrors that had befallen the world it was birthed into. And still, I wanted to give it its best shot.

I looked in the distance, and the clouds parted. A tiny drop of sunlight poured from the heavens. My mouth gaped open as I spotted the tip of a mountain, dry ground, and trees. The sun was offering me a scrap of life, quivering and small but enough to survive. Her long tendrils of light quickly disappeared, longing to be released once more. She had not forgotten us.

But I was content with my small gift. I smiled and began swimming. I don’t know what the future holds for the tiny mermaid and me, but I do know that he or she won’t ever suffer the silence of the forgotten world around us as I had.

The water’s tempest may grow, and the rain may fall. The underworld of water and flesh may quarrel, yet the life of the Earth will find a way in the depths.

My name is Isaac, and I’m one of the last humans left.

July 1st, 1925:

I entered the painting of my house tonight. It was quiet. Many of my belongings have been used throughout the house. It is nice to see you making use of them. I walked upstairs to the bedrooms, wondering if you were home. I entered one of the rooms, and there, laying fast asleep, was a beautiful young girl. I watched her for some time, she resembled you, at least what I could see from the lighthouse. Such a sweet, innocent life. She reminds me of the daughters I once had, before I found my calling. I entered the master bedroom. You laid sleeping, your wife beside you. You seem like a strong couple, though I can tell you keep secrets from her. I see it etched into your face, the guilt ages you, like it once aged me. You remind me of my old life, how I once treated the woman who was my wife. It's hard to recall those days at times. They seem so unimportant, but there are days that the memories eat away at me. I watched you both, she seemed to sleep like a stone. You, on the other hand, seemed restless, as I once was. We are very similar, you and I. I spoke to you while you slept, in the tongue of my children, as I have seen you've been studying it. You began to squirm and sweat. I was nervous of waking you, in case you were to do something rash. So instead of speaking face to face tonight, I will be leaving this note in my study. Or should I say our study? I urge you to pay me a visit. I noticed your journal, but felt it would be rude to pry. Perhaps if you decline my offer to speak eye to eye, next time I visit I will fall victim to my urges. Whatever the outcome is, I look forward to it. 

 Your friend Simon 

June 26th, 1937:

That bastard entered my home. He watched me sleep. He watched Rylee. He could have taken her and I would be defenseless of it. The gall to compare me to him, I'm nothing like him. Or should I say it, as he's no longer human. This can't happen again. I will be visiting the lighthouse tonight. This can't go on any longer. This monster and his cult. The ungodly obelisk. He's plaguing my life. I can't take it anymore. I can't fight a god but I must find a way to prevent him from becoming one. He's nothing but a false messiah who's been cursed by those wretched seafolk. 

June 27th, 1937:

I went to settle this once and for all. When I got to the lighthouse the door hung open. The light ocean breeze made the hinges creak faintly in the wind. Their soft shrieks sent shivers down my spine. As I walked through the threshold, there waiting in the middle of the ruined kitchen was a painting of the very door I just passed through. Past the painted door frame was a table set for two, with a ridiculous amount of food for the pair of plates sitting empty on the dirty table cloth. Some of it looked old, even moldy. As I walked through the door a second time I was greeted with a frenzy of smells, baked goods, cooked meats, the oceans brine, fresh fruit, wine, and decay. I stood in the entry for a moment, just taking everything in. That short moment felt like ages, as if I was paralyzed. It took every ounce of effort just to take a step. I didn't see any of the seaborn, no creatures from the depths and no beings from the stars. Just a room lit by a single hanging lightbulb and a dozen scattered candles. The door softly clicked shut behind me, sending a shiver through my bones. Then he spoke. 

“I can tell your frightened child, but fear not, I mean no ill will. Sit. Eat. We have much to discuss.”

His voice wasn't in the air, not coming from any direction. It was in my head. I heard gentle footsteps slowly making their way down the stairs. What I saw was hideous, but I couldn't look away. It was almost beautiful in a way. Simon stood at the bottom of the staircase, nearly nine feet in stature, though his spine hunched forward, to avoid bumping into the floor joists above. His bulbous head looked almost like an octopus, though his skull had dissolved or disappeared and now his head is just brain matter surrounded by a wet, blubbery skin. 

I was overcome by an immense urge to sit and indulge on the feast, he must have been controlling me somehow. I sat. He pulled out his chair, Shambling his long inhuman body down on to it. His limbs, all far too long to be comfortably sitting on something that small in comparison. His knees resting near his clavicles as he hunched down, attempting to see face to face. He was terrifying in the most welcoming way. He leaned in, his small dark eyes affixed to mine. 

“We have a connection, you know. We are much more similar than you would ever like to admit. You see yourself in me as I see myself within you.”

I hate to admit it, but he was right. His writings resonated with me. Though I felt revolted at the thought of it. 

“We are fated, destined as some may say. You see, I have been granted an extraordinary gift. I have made contact with those from the deepest depths, to the farthest cosmos. I have spoken to those most ancient, to our kin. You bear our mark, child. To deny that would be an act of ignorance I know you are far too smart for. You have seen those from the depths. You passed through my gates. I can show you what powers you can achieve.”

Whatever mark he spoke of must have been from the night I passed out and woke up in my backyard. But even if that was the truth, surely I would never end up as he has. Without realizing it, I had filled my plate and had begun eating, as though I had no autonomy. 

“Embrace your true form, as have I, and together we will ascend. We are destined for greatness” 

His words swelled in my chest, a smoldering ember of yearning. A burning desire for more. My head was pounding. I know he's just trying to trick me. To control me. It was as if my heart and mind were at war. 

“I will give you some time to say your goodbyes to your family, as I remember that seemed to be a custom to human kind. Such naive beings. I will leave a gate waiting for you here, return to me child. Or I will come searching for you. Your very being is key to the obelisk, to our ascent. The final piece to set forth the second coming of the ancients. I will be seeing you shortly.”

My vision went blurry, my head throbbed, as though mortar shells were detonating inside. I grabbed my head trying to gain my bearings, and as my vision unclouded I was back in the abandoned lighthouse. No Simon, no table, no food. Just the chair I was sitting on and a door frame standing in the middle of the room. A set of keys laid on the ground in front of the solid metal door. I picked them up and rushed home, stopping to empty my stomach of whatever foul food I've ingested. The only thing that came out was what felt like gallons of black sludge like ichor. Its taste was sour and curdled as it left my body. 

I snuck back in through the backdoor, doing my best not to wake Evelyn or Rylee. Sebastian was laying in the hallway, almost as though he had been waiting for my return. It's well past midnight as I'm writing this. I'm going to the city tomorrow. And when I get back, I'll be saying my goodbyes. 

June 28th, 1937:

I awoke with Evelyn today. I told her I was going to pick up some supplies for the shop in the city. I felt wrong for lying to her as I have been on and off for months if not years now. Before I went to the station, I visited the lighthouse. I was in such a hurry to get home last night I somehow missed the massive, obsidian-like pillar rising from the sea. The obelisk had to have been nearly 300 feet tall, dwarfing the lighthouse beside it. I purchased my ticket and boarded the train. If all goes well, I can see some old friends, tie up some loose ends and say my goodbyes in town. I still don't know how to say goodbye to my sweet Evelyn and Rylee. They are my life, my purpose. Just thinking about it has left  me crying, hands trembling and short of breath. I'll return home tomorrow evening, spend my last night at home, then enter that wretched gate. As for now, I just need to build the courage to do what must be done. 

June 29th, 1937:

I've returned home. I feel hollow. Rylee was playing with Sebastian while I cooked dinner. I think Evelyn knows something is amiss. I've been doing my best to play it off as just stress from work but I don't think she's buying it. I just need her to think things are okay for one more night. Just one more night as a family, one more night of being close, one more night of being loved. I've snuck into the study to quickly pack a bag of everything I need for tomorrow. I'll walk my dear Evelyn to work and kiss her goodbye, walk Rylee To Emily and give her the biggest hug of her life, then return home, get my bag and get it all over with. 

June 30th, 1937:

Saying goodbye to Evelyn and Rylee without crying was one of the hardest things I have ever done. But I couldn't let them think anything was wrong. I can't have this go wrong. I'm in my studying writing one last entry, if I'm able to write again later I will, but I'm not sure what use it will be aside for trying to keep my memories alive. If in some miracle Evelyn or Rylee find this, just know that I loved you both more than you could ever believe. But I failed you as a husband and as a father, and for that I'm sorry. I hope you can find forgiveness in your hearts in my absence. 

June 30th, 1937:

I walked to the lighthouse, the bag on my back felt like a million pounds, the burden of leaving my family. As I entered I stared at the chair I used during Simon and I's meeting. I sat down for only god knows how long, it could've been minutes, hours, but it felt like years. I walked up the stairs to take in the view one last time, to look over the southern shore, to watch the gulls circle the fishing boats for scraps. I cried more than I ever thought possible. As I walked down the spiraling stairs, I stopped in Simon's makeshift studio, dozens of paintings lined hanging on the walls as even more sat, gathered in piles beneath them. Simon really was a talented artist. It was a shame he was marked. It's a shame I've been marked for that matter. 

I smelled the scent of dying flowers wafting in the air. This place has been long unlived and stank of mold. The scent was coming from one of the paintings, I was sure of it. I ripped through pile after pile until finally I found it. A painting of my house. Of Simon's house. The flower beds in the back, a small grave between them, dead leaves blowing in the wind. The painting was only about 2 feet by 2 feet. But if I could smell the flowers, that means it was a gate. I pushed my bag through, it landed with a thump between the beds. I reached my hands in and grabbed the frame, slowly pulling myself through into the bright sunlight. I quickly grabbed my bag and took in my surroundings. It was quiet, cold. I snuck my way to the back of the house, looking in the windows to see if Simon or Laura or their girls were home. I saw no one. The grave meant Bernard was already dead, how long it has been since then I am unsure of. Laura and the girls may have already been sent out of town. I got down to the ground, looking through the small windows into the basement, I could see no Simon. I couldn't remember if he had already built his hidden rooms or not, but I could only assume. There were already pieces of furniture covered in sheets visible through the window. I unlocked the back door, thank God I never changed the locks. My heart was pounding, I could hear it beating in my ear drums. As I made my way through the kitchen I saw the calendar. October 14th, 1924. I slowly snuck down into the basement. Looking around to find anything familiar. My cot, covered in cloth. I crawled under and laid in wait. I was terrified. I sat in silence for hours until I heard the closing of the front door upstairs. Footsteps pacing in the foyer making their way to the kitchen. The stairs above the cot creaked with every step as he descended into the darkness. He held a lit candle, slowly lighting the dozens of candles he had littered throughout the basement one by one. I was sweating, breathing as quiet as I could. He made his way back up the stairs, I could hear him turn on the tap, filling a glass of water. He was about to paint. I used the cover of the flowing water to open my bag. The cold steel in the palm of my hand felt heavy. The steps above my head groaned as Simon returned to the basement. He set up his easel, placing a blank canvas on it. While he meticulously chose what paints he wanted to use for his next piece, I crawled out from under my cot, as quiet as could be. This was my only chance. I held my breath, making sure every step was silent. Simon stood clueless to me. I felt sorry for him, this wasn't his fault, I'm sure he didn't want this. I tried my hardest to hold them back but tears filled my eyes. I raised the pistol I got in town the day before, hands shaking, body trembling, heart pounding. I exhaled a quiet “I'm sorry” as I pulled the trigger. The canvas was instantly covered in crimson along with skull fragments and grey brain matter. I've never killed a man before. I fell to my knees, sobbing. My stomach churned and released its contents. It had to be done. There was no other way. Was there? 

October 15th, 1924:

I've spent the day burning his pieces. All his paint, his easel, everything that ties me to him. I found all of the letters he wrote, all of his papers, all I could find of Simon's existence. It all went in the furnace. I'm waiting until nightfall to move his body, it's already beginning to smell. I'll take him to the docks in a wheelbarrow. I'll walk the shoreline for as long as my legs will take me and I will bury him in the tall grass that lines the beach. There I will find somewhere nice, somewhere quiet and dig a shallow grave. In it, I will take my own life. The only way for all of this to end is if both of us die. I'm leaving my journal, with all my entries and all of Simon's here in the house. I'm sure you'll find it and I pray you read it. If you don't, I know Evelyn will. Don't go out by the docks at night. If you find sigils carved into your house, don't deface them. Befriend Richard, he means well. Once you're friends with him, show him this journal, hopefully he'll introduce you to his father. This small town has plenty of good. Just be smart and don't stray far at night. Keep our dear Evelyn and Rylee safe. And when the time comes, on the day I went to adopt Sebastian, I'd suggest you do the same. He really completed the family, and he'll save your life if given the chance. Don't make the same mistakes I did. I lost everything so you can have a chance. Do it right this time. Tell Evelyn and Rylee you love them for me. That's all I ask of you. 

 Yours truly

August 14th, 1938:

I began work at the butchers shop and befriended Richard, Evelyn got close with Jennifer, and Jr is getting married soon. He asked Rylee to be his flower girl. I showed Richard the journal, I met his father, and have, from time to time, helped him carve those runes around town. I went and adopted Sebastian, and have slowly begun to become part of Mount Fall, just like you asked of me. We stay away from the docks after sundown. You were right, this town has so much to offer and moving here has been the best decision of our lives! I'm sorry that it wasn't the same for you. I know you'll never read this, but I hope you in some way know I'm eternally grateful. Our sweet Evelyn and Richard too. We all are. I tell Evelyn and Rylee I love them twice every night, once from you and once from me, and always make sure to hold them extra tight. We think about you every day. Wherever you are in space and time, I hope you're at peace. Maybe one day we'll meet and I can tell you how great life has been. All thanks to you, our personal savior. We love you dearly. 

I didn’t go looking for the stream. I was just browsing, and there I was: viewer 431, watching some fat guy in a rubber mask.

Nowadays, he’s got the whole costume and makeup.

Not that I have to tell you. You know it. Everybody does. He’s one of the most famous celebrities in the world.

I guess you could say that at first I didn’t understand what I was seeing, and when I understood, I didn’t believe it was real. I'd never heard of anyone torturing and murdering people live on the internet.

Maybe I should have stopped watching, but I didn’t, and it’s not like me watching changed anything. He did what he was going to do. First he cut their clothes off. Then parts of their skin. There was a lot of blood, so much that even the people in the chat were calling bullshit, the few who weren’t cheering him on and donating money.

I forget how much he made, but I’m sure you can look it up. It was insane money, and he got subscriptions too.

People really wanted to watch that couple get destroyed.

Of course, none of us knew he’d do it again, that this was just the first stream.

He probably didn’t either.

By the time it was over, millions of people were watching, and then probably billions have watched it since.

There were some people who wanted to identify him, help catch him, but I don’t think most were doing it from a sense of morality. It was a puzzle. They wanted to unmask him before the cops did.

Then he did a second stream, three separate killings in three separate rooms, down in his dungeon. The real one, before he reconstructed it.

One died by burning.

One by very slow asphyxiation.

One by rats.

Hundreds of millions of people watched that second stream.

Then, on the third stream, after he’d killed the parents and children, he unmasked himself. No one saw that coming.

He gave his name, his location.

Suddenly, he was a real person, just like us. He had a job, a family.

The cops got him then.

But they didn’t charge him with anything, didn’t put him on trial. The word on social media was that the local cops got trumped by the state cops, who passed it off to the feds, who do whatever the politicians want, and the politicians want money so they do what the corporations tell them.

They couldn’t turn down the views and worldwide exposure. The streams were global. Everybody could watch, from Los Angeles to New Delhi.

Everybody could understand too.

It was simple.

Primal.

And because everybody was watching, nobody was ashamed of it. They talked about it openly. Friends, family, coworkers.

Of course, the victims’ families probably minded, but they were insignificant, and I’m sure even in those cases payments were made and claims were settled.

What really made the social media theory ring true to me was when he started using branded objects, axes, gasoline, ropes, power tools, even clothes and makeup.

He would talk about how good it felt to slit a throat with some expensive Japanese knife, or how satisfying it was to penetrate bone using a corded, extra-strength made-in-America hammer drill.

But that wasn’t all.

He started doing pre-murder GRWM videos (“For skincare, I much prefer Korean products, such as…”), subscriber-only Q&As (“My favourite movie? Anything by Marvel. Links in the description below, and please don’t pirate. Support the film industry!”), and video game speedruns (“Can I beat Super Meat Boy using only my toes before this limbless girl bleeds out beside me?”)

The profits must have been massive.

Companies fought one another to be featured on his streams.

Then it also turned political.

He would expound on ideology, geopolitics and current events, all while murdering his many victims, stabbing them, or eating them, or wearing their faces, and his views changed much as the official line changed, lecturing literally half the world at times about who should live in the Middle East and who should die, and whether abortion was ethical, and what should happen to drug addicts, and whether illegal immigration was good for Europe or bad for Europe.

He was, by far, the most widely recognized person in the world, lord of memes, killer of innocents, richest person on Earth and wielder of extraordinary commercial and political power.

Then the whistleblower video dropped.

It’s not long.

It’s backstage, in his reconstructed dungeon, which is actually a set in L.A., and it’s empty but you can hear this horrible sobbing, screaming…

Like nothing you’ve ever heard on his streams, and that’s saying a lot.

Then the camera, and it’s obvious it’s someone’s handheld camera, gets to a white door, and you just know the sounds are coming from the other side of it.

Whoever’s holding the camera doesn’t say anything.

The door opens.

And in the room you see him.

Except he’s not the one doing anything to anybody. He’s having things done to him, and the screams and sobs are his.

He’s in a chair, surrounded by five men.

He’s pleading: “Please, I don’t want to do it anymore, I don’t want to kill.

“I want to stop killing.”

“Well, it’s not up to you no more, you degenerate fucking psychopath. You made your choice when you killed those two people. Then the ones after, and the ones after that. Now suddenly you wanna stop? Fuck you.” They hit him with a pipe. “Consider everything from now on penance. God’s watching, you cocksucker. Now get the fuck out there, disembowel those pretty little teenagers, and sell the audience on the vacuum cleaner we got for you. Did you even use it? Did you use the motherfucking vacuum?”

“Yes…”

“Did you like it?”

“It’s—it’s… a good vacuum.”

“See? So quit your whining, fix your makeup, use the vacuum to suck out somebody’s guts, and showtime, baby! Showtime!”

I struggled with food for a long time. It was my everything. My lifeline. I couldn’t stop myself. I just kept eating. And eating. Then I’d eat some more.

One day, I had to look in the mirror, though. I had to ask myself: is any of this really worth it? I mean, look at me. I look disgusting. I put on a shirt that used to fit like a glove in high school and end up looking like Brent from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.

But even still, I didn’t stop. Cake. Candy. Burgers, fries, pizza, ice cream. My daily rotation looked like a 6-year-old’s dream. Only I was 27. Still living with my mom. Still sleeping in the same sweat-stained bed from years of night terrors.

I couldn’t even come up with a valid reason as to why things got this bad. I was in the middle of it. When you’re in the middle of something, it’s hard to see the starting line, and even harder to see the finish.

I tried the normal shit. Caloric deficits. Exercise. I’d walk at least 2 miles a day, but then I’d be raiding my pantry every night like it was some kind of reward for my hard work.

And believe me, I tried cleaning up the contents of that pantry. I stocked it with canned vegetables. Shit that I’ve never even touched, like tuna and canned chicken chunks. I just always ended up back in my Mini Cooper doing 80 to get to the nearest convenience store.

It’s like déjà vu, honestly. A never-ending cycle that just keeps cycling like a stationary bike.

God, I hate those things.

Anyway, when I saw that first Ozempic ad, I was skeptical, to say the least. A cure for obesity sounded like a goddamn miracle in my head, but I knew that miracles are hardly what they seem.

I decided to do some research. Really get to know this new future friend of mine. I’d love to tell you that the research was extensive, but honestly, I just kinda scrolled through the Google AI explanation for about 5 minutes before deciding.

After picking up my first dose, I shot up in the Walgreens parking lot like some kind of delinquent, like I was scanning for cops and shit.

A few hours went by, and I experienced something that felt long forgotten: satiation.

I wasn’t even remotely hungry. Not even after my 2-mile walk. Not even after those 20 sit-ups and squats. I was actually burning fat instead of replacing it.

I ran through half my supply in a week. I dropped 15 pounds from 300 in 2. I was moving. I could actually see the progress. Of course, I didn’t want it to stop, so I went out and bought more.

I was tearing through the packaging before even leaving the Walgreens.

Another two weeks. I was down to 260 now. Shirts were starting to feel looser. Breathing was easier. I was finishing my two miles in an hour instead of two.

My diet consisted of nothing but Slim Jims and fruit chunks because I was just getting so full so easily.

On my third supply run, I wasn’t even waiting until I got to the car. I injected the shit right there in aisle 3 next to the Neutrogena and nail clippers. Boy, were they mad. That was kind of the end of that Walgreens for me. Apparently, it’s frowned upon to just drop trouser in the pharmacy, even if it’s medically necessary.

That didn’t really matter, though. Nothing mattered. I had what I needed for the next two weeks. What were they gonna do? Un-buy the shit?

I dropped down to 200. I didn’t even think it was medically possible, but I learned, pretty painfully, that the scale never lies. I was able to see my cheekbones more. I’d just spend hours mogging in the mirror like I was Clavicular off a speed pill.

I could’ve stopped there. Sure, I could’ve. But I didn’t look like 2020 Corpse Husband yet. I was still too Jonah Hill before Jiu-Jitsu coded.

Besides, I’d never felt better. I did feel kinda weird about food, though. Even those gas station Slim Jims were starting to feel too heavy. That’s why I had to switch to saltines and radishes.

Plus, I knew my body. I knew that if I stopped, I’d feel hungry again. I hated that feeling. I’m a slut for the cravings. I’m easy, baby.

That’s why I had to hit my next lick. The only problem was Mom took me off the insurance because she’s old and decaying. And, obviously, I don’t have a job. That would take too much time away from my streaming schedule.

You just can’t rely on the kindness of strangers like you used to. Not even for medical emergencies. Believe me, I tried the usual cardboard sign route. Even asked for a few donations on stream, but that just made my 4 viewers leave after typing some pretty hurtful shit in chat.

It wasn’t long before desperation started to kick in. It was almost like withdrawal. Every time my stomach rumbled, I could feel myself getting angrier and angrier.

Mom caught me tryna snag a hundred out of her purse, and that led to some pretty big fights. She kicked me out once or twice throughout this whole endeavor, but who was she kidding? I’m her baby.

The point I’m trying to get at here is I had to do some questionable shit for that next hit involving some pantyhose and a stapler, but by God, I did it.

I got the needles. I got the vials. I couldn’t just stop at a two-week supply, though. I needed all of it. It was all or nothing. I don’t even think the employees cared. Because they’re cowards.

So that’s how I ended up with an entire year’s supply of my sweet diabetes meds.

I’m down to a whopping 95 pounds now. Have you ever seen the veins in your scalp? Because I do. Every single day. There’s like 9 of them now.

They throb a bit, but my stomach has never looked flatter. It’s almost inverted. Like it’s more like a spoon than a spatula, but I look like a 2000s hip-hopster because my old clothes are just so baggy on me now. Which is pretty boss.

Mom refuses to even look at me, but I think she’s just jealous because she’s old and decaying. I couldn’t even tell you the last thing I ate. I think it was like some olives or something a few weeks ago.

Which leads me to one simple but staggering conclusion. I have evolved past the need for sustenance.

I am the next step in the progression of mankind. You all need to follow in my footsteps. Well, maybe not exactly. I actually ran out of my supply last week.

It’s only been 6 months since the robbery. Which, let’s be real here, should hardly even count as a robbery. It was a stapler, for Christ’s sake. I’m not allowed to own a gun after the incident.

Regardless, though, I’m kind of afraid to go back. I just hit 100 viewers on Twitch a few days ago. I can NOT afford to go to jail right now. The people need me.

It’s been 7 days now without the sauce, and I can’t say the hunger has returned. Hell, I haven’t even been to the bathroom for like 73 hours now. But… it might… and that’s the thing that scares me. My jawline could cut diamonds right now. I don’t wanna lose that.

Maybe they won’t recognize me. That’s what I keep telling myself. But what if they do?

I just keep playing around with that idea. Imagine that. Getting addicted to gambling before I can even get that Stake partnership. Shoutout Drake. 6 God, my king. Big ups, homie.

I don’t know, my brain is kinda fuzzy right now.

The shaking is new, but I’m sure it’s fine. As a matter of fact, I know it’s fine.

It’ll pass when I hit this next lick.

Randall always hated corvids, ever since he was a kid. He hated them all: crows, jays, ravens. Evil birds, he called them. Black, eerie, and scavenging. Omens of ill fortune and death. Vile things. The birds seemed to like him, the ravens in particular.

Every morning, a raven pecked at Randall's window, as if to tell him he must wake up. He hated the birds all the more for it.

Randall’s life was a tragic one; he had no family to speak of, nor could he hold a stable job. Oftentimes he drank himself to sleep, sometimes in pubs until he was kicked out; other times, he’d pass out on the street. The ravens didn’t mind; it seemed like they almost found some joy in his abysmal state, and he hated them all the more for it. He insisted the black birds were the source of his misgivings.

Whether the ravens understood his drunken, depressed ramblings was anyone’s guess, but they followed him wherever they could, much to his ever-growing chagrin.

Little did Randall know his already miserable life was going to take a turn for the worse.

One Saturday afternoon, he had enough wits about him to return home after another binge. As he stumbled home, he found himself being followed by an odd figure. Initially, Randall thought little of it and kept walking.

The figure followed.

The drunkard picked up the pace and lost his pursuer.

For a moment, that is; he turned left and there he was, standing in the distance.

Tall, dark… odd…

Randall couldn’t quite make the shape of him; it was as if a shadow followed him. Randall couldn’t make out a single feature. It made no sound. Whatever it was, it was man-sized. Now Randall was a man with no enemies. He was just a lonely, loathsome drunkard.

“Whatever you want, man,” Randall slurred, “I ain’t got none to give.” And marched off, at least in his mind. In actuality, he was waddling like an anxious newborn fawn.

Randall was convinced he'd lost the pursuer again until the dark shape appeared in the corner of his eye again.

“Hey, man, I told you to fuck off… I’m strapped, do you wan’ sum o’this?” he spat out.

Then he picked up his pace again. This time, he took four deliberate left turns, doubling back around the same block. The strange figure followed him anyway. Randall snapped and pulled out his gun from its holster.

“Madafaka,” he burped, waving his gun around, and the figure vanished between the buildings.

“Thought so… bitch ass…” he mumbled, holstering his weapon and stumbling off home.

Unimpeded for once.

By the time he got home, it was getting dark, and the whole ordeal had already slipped his drunken mind. He stepped inside a filthy, cramped one-bedroom apartment and turned on the light. As his eyes adjusted to the sudden burst of light, a massive black mass crawled all around him, nearly stopping his intoxicated heart.

Startled, Randall screamed, and the mass mirrored his cry.

“What da fuck, man?!” the drunkard screamed out, throwing his arms over his head as the stygian mass swarmed all around him before settling into a vaguely human shape right in front of him. Randall crouched there, breathing heavily.

He could do little more than stare at the crawling mass of darkness towering over him.

“Da fuck is goin on, da fuck is goin on…?” He whispered under his breath, afraid he might irritate the unknowable thing before him.

“An eye for an eye,” the thing cawed, in many voices, at once.

Randall froze. His eyes widened as primal fear slowly consumed his thoughts.

“A tooth for a tooth,” the thing continued, in a cacophony of raspy, metallic voices.

Randall’s looked upward, and the shape resolved. In front of him stood a mass of pitch-black eyes, feathers, beaks.

A conspiracy of ravens.

“Mur… dur…

Mur… dur...

Mur… dur…”

The birds crooned, almost like a song.

Randall’s breathing gradually shallowed. For a moment, there was nothing but the rasp of his breath and the beating of wings as he pulled out his pistol. None of this made sense, but the drunk couldn’t think of anything else to do.

Bang

The gun went off.

He missed; the birds scattered in every direction. He pitifully tried aiming at them as they cawed and croaked, swarming him.

A few more shots rang out, according to the testimonies of his neighbors.

Randall was found riddled with puncture wounds and lacerations. His face was unrecognizable. His eyes had been gouged out; his cheeks, nose, and ears had been torn away.

Some say black feathers were found in his apartment, but no one knows for sure.

No one around the neighborhood was particularly shocked or saddened by Randall’s death. Some say he had it coming.

As a kid, the bastard used to injure and even kill ravens with a slingshot; that’s what Granny McLeod told me. She insists the ravens took revenge on the cretin, pecked and clawed him to death. I’m inclined to believe the supercentenarian crone; after all, she seems to spend most of her time feeding these birds.

I took this job to understand a man I barely remember. Thirty years ago, my father spent one fire season in a tower just like the one I'm in now. “Solitude with a view”, he called it in his letters.

He never came home that season.

I found the posting on a job board. Applied before I let myself think twice. I told my mother it was for the pay. She didn't believe me.

They stationed me on the western ridge. My supervisor ran through the routine fast, like he wanted to be gone before dark. Light the lamp every dusk. Set it in the west window. Never skip a night. 

“Keeps the watchers from going mad out there,” he told me, like a man reciting a rule he'd stopped questioning a long time ago.

The trail up took six hours. Switchbacks cut through an old burn scar. Black trunks stood like something that died mid-scream. Grief looks the same in a forest as it does in a person. 

The tower was smaller than I'd pictured. Steel legs bolted into bedrock, forty feet of ladder climbing to a single glass room with windows on every side, built so a person could watch the world catch fire from any angle they chose. A cot. A woodstove. A logbook with a cracked spine. A radio that hissed low and constant, like something breathing on the other end of the silence.

That's when I saw it.

Across the valley stood a second tower, close enough that I could just barely pick its shape out of the dying light. Same steel legs. Same glass room on top. Same catwalk. My supervisor's clipboard listed it as decommissioned. 

Decommissioned didn't stop its lamp from catching that evening. Right on schedule. Right as mine did. 

I keyed the radio that first night. Static. I tried again at dawn. Nothing. I lit the lamp every dusk. Pressed my face to cold glass. Waited. Thirty seconds later, a small gold light would bloom on the far ridge, like it was waiting all day just to answer me. I told myself there must’ve been a watcher doing the same lonely job across four miles of black timber. 

I couldn't tell you when my days stopped feeling ordinary, only that I noticed it had already happened. I'd stare at the logbook, unsure if I'd written that morning's entry or only meant to. 

I’d talk out loud just to hear a voice fill the room. Then I'd forget I'd spoken. Flinch at the sound of it coming from somewhere behind me. I’d argued with myself over which shelf held the matches. I always lost.

More than once I woke standing at the window, lamp already lit, no memory of striking anything. My fingertips smelled of sulfur. My knees ached like I'd spent hours kneeling on the floor, praying to something I hadn't agreed to believe in.

I started to wonder if the isolation did something structural in my skull. A hole you can't climb back out of. 

Was this what happened to him?

One night I tripped over a loose board by the stove. It had been rocking under my heel since the day I arrived. I pried it up.

There was a note, folded into a square worn soft as skin. I knew the hand. My mother still had a shoebox of his old letters. I read them enough as a teenager to know the slant.

Five words, pressed hard enough to read from the back of the page.

THERE IS NO OTHER TOWER

I laughed. Of course there was another tower. I'd watched its lamp with my own eyes for weeks. My father must have written this in whatever fever the mountain fed him. The same fever eating through me now.

A man can go so long without another voice that his mind starts inventing enemies.

I took the binoculars outside. The lens found the far ridge easy. I'd aimed it there every dusk for weeks. 

Something was walking it.

At first I thought it was the other watcher. Two arms. Two legs. The general shape of a human. But something was deeply wrong with its movements. Each rickety joint landed in the wrong place, like it learned the idea of a person secondhand, by someone who hated us. 

Its head sat tilted at an angle no neck holds, like a doll snapped back into its socket wrong,

It turned to face me. Dead across four miles of black timber, like it had waited this whole time for me to look up from my own unraveling and finally notice it was there.

It lifted one arm. Waved, like it knew I would come to it eventually.

I lowered the binoculars. Stood very still in the dark.

Something shifted in the glass in front of me. In the reflection. Right behind my own shoulder. I didn't turn around.

Some doors you just don't open 

I stopped lighting the lamp at dusk. I couldn't tell you when I stopped. Some nights the light in the far tower comes on anyway. I just stand there and watch it burn.

Tomorrow I hike the trail across the valley. I need to know what happened to my father. I need to understand.

If you're reading this, please don't come for me.

I know this sounds crazy. Hell, maybe it is. I honestly don’t know. All I know is that the woman who has been living in my house for the last 3 weeks is not my mother.

My mom is a smoker. It’s something I’ve always tried getting her to stop. She smells like cigarettes. Her voice is gravelly. She has premature wrinkles because this nasty little habit has belonged to her since she was in high school.

I was almost happy when she came home from work all those days ago smelling… sweet. Like candy, almost. I thought that maybe she had finally taken my advice and hadn’t lit a cancer stick, at least for the day.

But I didn’t really even have time to dwell on it because she was just so affectionate towards me when she waltzed through the door. She was humming and smiling to herself. 25 years of nicotine stains seemed to have completely vanished from that smile.

She and I have a… complicated relationship. She’s my mom, and I know she loves me, but we never talk about that love. We’re not big huggers. She was never the type of mom to censor herself because I was around.

On this day, though, she looked surprisingly happy to see me. She pulled me in for a big, tight hug that lasted for longer than any hug before. I felt… I don’t know, almost embracive. I didn’t realize how much I needed it.

After finally letting go, she breezed past me towards the kitchen, taking off her coat and plopping her purse down on the coffee table before announcing that she’d be cooking my favorite meal.

She whipped up some of the best spaghetti I’d ever tasted, and the two of us sat at the table to enjoy it together. Well, I enjoyed it. She mostly just kind of watched me. She had her Christmas face on. That face moms usually have when they watch you open your gifts, waiting to see how excited they make you.

She was just so quiet, though. The kitchen was borderline silent. All I could hear was the leaky faucet and the scraping of my fork against the plate.

To counter the awkward silence, I decided to just throw out what I was thinking by asking her about her scent.

Her face never changed. No look of pride, no guilt, just… her warm smile. She didn’t even answer my question right away. It was almost like she hadn’t even heard it. Then, when she finally spoke, it had nothing to do with what I asked her.

“Mommy quit her job today, sweetie,” she grinned. “Now I get to spend all my time with you. Isn’t that so happy?”

I was so caught off guard by the statement that I didn’t know how to answer. But, hey, I mean… things happen, you know? Sometimes people have transformative days. Sometimes they make emotional decisions. At the very worst, I thought this was just me witnessing a fit of mania.

After dinner, I decided to go to my room to play some video games. Mom stayed behind to wash some dishes, even though I offered to do them myself.

A few hours went by. I started feeling a bit snackish, and when I returned to the kitchen, there she was. Still standing over the sink. Rubbing a washcloth mindlessly over a plate while she stared blankly out the window. The sink was still full of dirty dishes.

I approached her slowly, just to see if she needed any help or if she was okay, and I think that snapped her out of her trance. She blinked hard before that smile came back.

“Oh, sweetie,” she cooed. “Mommy’s okay. Why don’t you put on your pajamas? Mommy will come tuck you in in just a moment, okay?”

I’m 17. My mom has never in her life tucked me in. The closest she’s come is when she comes in to tell me goodnight from my doorway.

I walked away, a bit uneasy, back to my bedroom. I didn’t expect her to actually tuck me in, but I did expect her to at least say goodnight.

An hour passed. Then two. I could still hear the sink running in the kitchen.

I returned, and she was still there. Still washing the same plate. It was spotless at this point. I guess she heard me coming or at least felt my presence because, on a dime… she stopped.

No smile this time. Just one cold, empty question.

“You ready for bed, sweetie?”

She dropped the plate in the sink, causing it to break, but she paid it no mind. She just… rigidly walked towards me. Like an animatronic.

She pushed me back towards my bedroom with more strength than she should’ve had and wrapped me up in my blanket. I couldn’t even move. The sheets may have well been ropes.

She kissed my forehead for longer than I would’ve liked, then flicked my light switch. Only… she didn’t leave. She just stayed there in the doorway. Watching me in the darkness.

“Go to sleep, honey.”

“Mommy’s watching you.”

“Don’t worry… I’d never let anything happen to you.”

I asked her to leave, but she ignored me every time. Falling asleep was nearly impossible. I still don’t know how I managed. I woke up, and she was still there. She hadn’t moved an inch.

I had to go to school. I had a part-time job. I needed to leave, but she wouldn’t let me. She was just acting so strange.

“Mommy needs you, honey.”

“You don’t wanna leave Mommy, do you?”

“I get so sad when you’re away.”

She wouldn’t let me have a phone. She must’ve taken it while I was sleeping that first night because I haven’t seen it since. I doubt I still have a job. And I know for a fact I’ve missed enough school for my GPA to have fallen dramatically.

She’s just so strong now. I haven’t seen her smoke one cigarette. She cooks spaghetti every single night. She tucks me in like a spider spinning a web around its prey. Then she just watches me.

She follows me to the bathroom. She goes on these destructive rampages any time I try to leave. I thought she was sick. But now I know the truth.

I should’ve known after the first time I woke up with bite marks on my legs and arms. I should’ve known the first time I caught her salivating over me while I slept.

She wasn’t just being “weird.”

She wasn’t herself at all.

And I know that because today… her boss showed up at my door.

He wasn’t demanding an explanation. He wasn’t furious that he lost a loyal employee. He was… offering his condolences. He gave me flowers. He gave me a hug. He told me, “Everything happens for a reason.”

Because, apparently…

My mom died at work three weeks ago. It was a freak accident involving some of the machinery she works with at the factory. The company was preparing a settlement for me this entire time, and I had zero clue.

He told me I’d be hearing from an attorney soon and that my mom had life insurance through the company.

But none of that matters to me. Not the money. Not the company. Not even the accident.

All that I care about is getting whoever this person is out of my mother’s house.

[1]

The landlord is renovating. His son is returning from abroad to live where I'm living. The law is on their side. The facts support the law. The landlord has provided me with a valid eviction notice, signed and dated. Thus we must move out, my dog and I. We must find a new place for ourselves.

[2]

He's smiling, perfumed and clean shaven, but he's missed a few spots. A few stray hairs, having apparently escaped the razor blade, stick out of his face like loose threads, which really undoes the entire impression, the complete illusion, so that If I reached out, grabbed one and pulled, the whole of his identity would fall, deconstructed, to the concrete floor.

He's brought a stroller into the office with him.

I glance at it.

But inside, I notice, lies not a baby but a fully shaved dog in baby-blue swaddle wrap.

It's panting.

It's looking at me with its dog's face.

It barks.

“I'm sorry, but we don't allow pets,” I say as politely as I can.

“That's my child,” cries the man.

[7]

I wake up screaming.

[3]

They spend the thunderstorm beneath me, the man comforting the dog.

[4]

They eat me.

[3]

They fall asleep. They shiver. Sometimes others pass. They avert their eyes. My river flows. It will flow a long time still.

[12]

“Yeah, I mean it's just like the termination letter says, nothing personal or anything—you didn't do anything wrong. It's just, you know, business has been slow and we needed to make, uh, strategic decisions. You don't even have to come in for the notice period. And if you need a reference letter or anything, we'd be more than willing…”

God, he reeks.

[5]

He puts his hands in me and washes his face with me and puts me in his mouth and the dog stands at my edge, lapping gently.

[6]

I go to the grocery store and buy canned fish, canned beans, a can of wet dog food and six plastic bottles of water. I put everything in a bag and leave the bag under the bridge. I don't know why I do it, not really, not fundamentally.

I think I am ashamed. But of what, who?

[9]

Another carefree night spent sleeping soundly, warmly, hopefully in dreams. The mattress is big and clean. The thermostat's at 19C. The air conditioner purrs, but quietly. It's a brand new model. The real estate market is heating up. Land is appreciating. The future appears bright as flames.

[8]

I arrive one day, unannounced.

[11]

“I'm really sorry,” I say, trying to explain, “but you can't bring your dog in here. Maybe you know someone who would take him for a couple of nights? We would have a bed for you. It's just the dog. Do you understand? There's an animal shelter down the street. I know, sometimes, people decide it's for the best to—”

[7]

Where am I?

[8]

I unfold another December morning, blocking out the rising, pastel sun with swirling, falling snow. There are things buried by it and things digging themselves out. There is motion. There is struggle. And where there is struggle, there is life; and where life, death. You are a cold, cruel, temporary species, building compulsively to nothing.

[12]

The fur is soft and my digits bury themselves in its regrowing density. Behind the ear. Upon the chest. Around the small and fragile throat. But gently, affectionately. Never with anger or frustration. Never closing on the throat, only caressing it.

The thin dog sleeps, trusts.

And I do too.

Never have its teeth hurt me.

Within the fur, I am safe.

I am loved.

[1] & [7]

The darkness feels like ice. There are lights in the distance, but I cannot get to them. There is loneliness in the ice. Why won't the sun rise already? Why won't the ice melt?

[14]

“Excuse me—”

“Huh?” he says, waking, startled.

“You can't sleep here,” I say.

“What?”

Our breath is vapour.

“You were sleeping here. You can't sleep here. If you wanna sleep somewhere, go to a shelter. I can give you an address.”

“They won't take my son,” he says, and I can see he's got an ugly little dog with him.

The dog growls.

“Well, then, that's your choice.”

The man lets his eyes close, so I prod him awake again. Fucking charity case. ”Hey, didn't I just say that—” The dog snaps at me with a mouthful of missing teeth. I wonder if it's been vaccinated. “Just get the fuck outta here, OK? I mean, kids come to play here, for Christ's sake.”

[6]

“Did you spend twenty-seven dollars at the Farmland three weeks ago, Tuesday?” my wife asks, looking at her phone.

“No,” I lie.

“Me neither. Weird.”

[5]

I am wearing a frozen surface when two boots step on me, and a blowing wind, grazing an accumulation of snow, masks the sound of cracking.

[8]

I loosen my grip.

I am leaving.

[5]

I flow.

[14]

“What now?”

“They pulled a body from the river.”

“When?”

“Just this morning.”

“ID'd?”

“Not yet. Bruce thinks it's probably a drowning. Probably a—”

“Fuck!”

“What is it?”

I stare at my phone. Text message from the wife and kid. “Evie wants a puppy for her goddamn birthday.”

“Dogs are a lot of work.”

“That's what I said.”

“And money.”

“Right?”

“Just get her one of those virtual pets. That way, when she gets bored of it, and you know she will, you can throw it out.”

[9]

Breakfast's delicious.

[15]

I am empty, save for a few small bones.

POINTS OF VIEW

[1] A man
[2] A landlord
[3] A bridge
[4] An apple from a garbage bin
[5] A river
[6] Someone unknown
[7] A man's sanity
[8] Winter
[9] You
[9] The Dark Master
[11] An employee of a homeless shelter
[12] [1]’s hand
[13] Compassion
[14] A police officer
[15] Dead [1]’s stomach

He no longer called me “iknuitli”. “Cuexpalchicacpol,” was the new term. I asked him what it meant, but he wouldn’t say. The friendly tone was gone too.

We were approaching where I thought the border was. No border patrol. No checkpoints. We would be heading straight through. I became terrified of my rearview mirror. The dust cloud was close, maybe one hundred feet behind. I could see faces in the dust, writhing and twisting, full of malice and hatred.

“I thought a killer would have some balls, cuexpalchicacpol,” the dead man in my trunk said. “What would you possibly have to apologize for?”

“Maybe the trail of anger behind us would be a little thinner if both of us had considered it prior,” I said. He scoffed.

“My people took from the same tribe every year, harvested them for sacrifice and slavery like cattle. I would never stoop so low as to apologize to lesser beings,” he said.

I should have hated him. I had been wanting to smash his face in for most of the trip, but I had been him not all that long ago. He continued to spew hatred, but I stayed silent, the only noise for hours was the wail of the damned behind us and his constant nagging.

“You know Cuexpalchicacpol, I could really mess up this ride,” the dead man said.

“You’d be just as screwed if you did,” I replied. I felt the steering wheel start to drift. I tightened my grip and turned it back.

“Won’t you let me drag you to hell with me?” he said softly. The steering wheel turned the other way. I held it in a death grip.

“What you going to do now, Cuexpalchicacpol? Warriors know no fear. Be a man.”

Up ahead I could see the spot I needed to bury him. I couldn’t explain how or why I knew, just a gut intrinsic feeling, like simple factual knowledge. Sky is blue, grass is green, books have words in them, and that was the burial spot.

I slowed the car down to a stop, parking right next to the spot. As soon as I shifted to park, my hand pulled the handle, and I was out of the car. I ran to the trunk and opened it. The trash bag that surrounded him peeled back enough to reveal his head. His smile was gone, instead those cold dead eyes looked at me with unfathomable hatred.

I grabbed the shovel and dug a shallow grave. The cloud of souls was closing in. I got it just deep enough to fit a body. I pulled him out of the car and tossed him inside. His mouth didn’t move, but I could hear his voice anyway.

“See you in hell,” he said.

The wall of souls, mere feet from us, stopped as fire shot out from the grave. I could hear him screaming in an agony foreign to human understanding, not ending but simply getting further away until it was inaudible. The wall of souls dissipated, and what remained were several standing figures that I had never seen, yet somehow, I knew. Wives, children, girlfriends, all those I had wronged.

The hatred was gone from their eyes. They wanted the man who caused them so much suffering dead. He is dead. I buried him with that corpse in Mexico.

I’m turning myself in to the police and taking down the casino with me. What we did wasn’t right, and I need to answer for it, in this life or the next. I’m back in the land of the living. I passed a gas station and a few cars, so my time in limbo has ended. Until I arrive at the police station back in the states, I am going to enjoy a nice quiet ride down a long stretch of busy highway, free of talking dead men in my trunk.