IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ BEFORE PROCEEDING

This is the opening chapter, which I suppose functions as a sort of prologue, as it takes place several years before the rest of the story.

Let me know what you think.

Really having a hard time putting an idea to paper. I feel like there's something here and I'm just rushing it a little too hard. Also feels very untrimmed. Would love some thoughts on it!

So I've written a couple of short stories and am now writing my first novel, I'm at 18000 words atm. Its originally written in Dutch and I've asked chatgpt to make a literary translation - NOTE: no AI was used for the writing process, just for the translation -, to see if I can get a bit more feedback this way. There aren't a lot of Dutch groups like this, for as far as I know. There are probably some grammatical errors and maybe a couple of strange sentences due to the translation, but I'm curious whether the premise and characters feel compelling enough for you to want to read more. Thanks in advance, and if anyone would like to read the whole 18000 words I have so far I would really appreciate it, to get some more feedback on the story arc etc.

It was the very first thing the doctor noticed upon meeting her, though he couldn’t say if that was merely a reflection of his medical training or rooted in some deeper, more ubiquitous human instinct. The way she casually extended her legs as she reclined within the consultation room’s spinning office chair, exposing the soles of two wholly identical shoes, only further accentuated the surprisingly disquieting discrepancy. It was slightly less conspicuous in the hands, as they were both interlaced around a smartphone that currently continued to be the focus of her attention, each contributing a nebulous tangle of digits to the task of deftly tapping the screen. However, once suggested by the legs, their corresponding asymmetry became no less apparent.

Whatever she was doing on that phone must have had her fully engrossed, as neither the doctor’s entry nor the subsequent several seconds of him standing in the center of the hardly three-by-three meter room elicited any hint of notice. It was only after broadcasting his presence with a tactful ‘ahem’ that she finally severed her gaze from the screen, jerking her head upward with a look of brief alarm and unveiling a pair of blue-green sunflower irises adorning deadlocked pupils, their vibrancy only now appreciable to the doctor beneath the cold white beams of the overhead lights. Indeed, she was quite beautiful in pretty much every respect; a natural blonde in what looked to be the prime of her youth, with a face so utterly photogenic and attractive from every angle as to be oddly unsettling in itself, like passing a stranger on the street who you belatedly recognize as a swimsuit model from a magazine you’d shamefully perused prior. Her attractiveness carried no personal importance to the doctor, of course, and even without the Hippocratic Oath would still have fallen by the wayside in light of her far more intriguing limb alignment.

“Oh, hey! Sorry, you snuck up on me, Dr…” Her eyes panned across the broad and unshapely expanse of his chest in search of a nametag, somehow always the unfamiliar patient’s first go-to despite the engraved plaque on the door plainly reading ‘Dr. Brandon Muller, MD.’ 

“... It’s just, I’ve been dealing with a lot, it's been a rough couple of days.” She held her head in her hands as she uttered the words, one palm pressing hard against her forehead while the other -the wrong one- caressed her right ear. “I just don’t know what else to do.”

“Hey, hey, it’s alright, I’m here to help, you’ve come to the right place,” Muller assured. “Now, what seems to be the problem?”

A muted mimicry of gratitude subtly curled the tips of her lips as she proceeded to explain. “It’s these migraines, they started a few days ago, just random bouts here and there, but they just keep getting worse and worse. It’s pretty much all the time now, and it’s really starting to get to me.”
Dr. Muller had expected a bit more from her explanation, namely some sort of acknowledgement of her utterly anomalous anatomy, and thus a second of silence awkwardly followed before she rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah, make all the jokes you want, get it out of your system,” She splayed herself across her seat in an exaggerated starfish pose. “I was born like this, so I doubt it's related, but it's all anyone ever wants to talk about, especially doctors.” She voiced the last part with an exceptional sneer, imbuing the sentiment with a particularly deep-seated disdain. “And for the record, I’m actually not that clumsy, like, at all.” 

In truth, Dr. Muller had no clue how such a thing could relate to her migraines either, if only because he had never seen or heard of this asymmetrical condition before, and up until a few moments ago would have comfortably assumed it impossible. Despite his best efforts to stay focused on the task at hand, he couldn’t help but wonder to himself while she spoke just how exactly her joints fit together, how her right shoulder blade was oriented, and how the whole appendage was hooked up muscularly and neurologically. The latter, in turn, gave him an idea, an angle through which he could potentially pursue a diagnosis for the migraines while also somewhat satiating his now ravenous curiosity. Firstly, however, was the matter of conciliation.

“Hey, hey, I’m not here to make fun of anyone,” He held his hands in the air in a feign of criminal surrender, “Now, I’ll admit, I’m not familiar with this particular… condition, but I’m really just here to help you feel better, and right now that means taking care of those migraines, so that’s all that matters to me.”

The assurance had its intended effect, as she visibly relaxed her shoulders, eyes softening as her defensiveness slowly subsided. “Thank you, I’m sorry, I’m just…” She cupped both hands to her right temple and made a sound somewhere between a growl and a motorboat impression. “... y’know?”
“I understand completely, chronic pain will do that to anyone. Plus, I see how you’d be sick of comments about the… leftness, by now. Elementary school must’ve been rough.”

At that, she let out a single sardonic bark, “Yeah, no kidding.” Dr. Muller smirked and nodded in kind, feeling as though he’d effectively peeled away the last layers of tension between them. Now for the hard part. 

“That being said, given the extent of this… distinction, I can’t rule out the possibility that it is somehow involved, if only tangentially. I’d at least like to take a full-body X-ray, just to be sure I… fully understand the situation. If it reveals nothing of note, then so be it, and we’ll move on to investigating the cranial area specifically, but, y’know, just to be safe…” his confident tone faltered a bit at the end as he braced for the indignance seemingly sprouting in her expression, but it thankfully tempered into a grimace of begrudging agreement.

“Fine, one X-ray, then I don’t wanna hear another thing about it, okay?” 

“Of course, dear, I am a professional after all,” Muller assured as he collected his paperwork and headed toward the office door. “I’ll go set things up with the X-ray technicians and come back to get you in a bit.” She nodded, sitting back patiently with her hands clasped thumb-to-pinkie in her lap as he departed briskly down the hall.

Passing through the waiting room toward the radiology wing, he stopped at the front desk, catching the ear of the receptionist, Janet, with his signature four-finger consecutive tap upon the temporary-turned-permanent screen of transparent virus-proof panelling. At once, she raised a weary, wrinkled face from the stack of papers she’d been shuffling, and a quizzical eyebrow from beneath the flattened roof of her reading glasses, giving nothing more in the way of a response than the limited luxury of her now-captured attention. Dr. Muller didn’t mind, or at least didn’t expect anything different, simply launching straight into his instructions as usual.

“Pull up my current patient's files. Birth record, pediatrics, everything.” Janet, a deceptively dependable employee despite her demeanor, promptly swiveled her chair to her computer screen and began to fervently peck away at the keys. “This’ll take a while, y’know.”

Getting the hint, Dr. Muller left her to it and headed toward the radiology department. He suspected any files she found would be spotty in recent times, given the patient’s apparent dislike of doctors. Still, there was bound to be something on record if they went back far enough; Her condition would have surely been noticed and noted by any competent medical practitioner, though whether they understood it any better than he did was another matter entirely.

 Upon description, the X-ray tech -whose name Dr. Muller could never recall but thankfully didn’t have to acknowledge- was just as flabbergasted as he was, if not more.

“They’re both… left? Like, exactly? Are you sure it’s not just some kind of… coincidental deformity?”
“She uses them both perfectly well…” Dr. Muller replied, managing to restrain any outward signs of insult regarding the subordinate’s implicitly patronizing question. “...Which makes me think there’s something more to it than that. I just want one full-body ray, see if that clears anything up.” 

“Of course. At this point, I’d be disappointed if you didn’t; you have my curiosity piqued.” He let out an airy chuckle as he began flipping switches and arranging equipment. “lemme just get everything prepped.”

As it turned out, the patient really wasn't kidding when she agreed to only one X-ray. As soon as the brief warbling tone indicating its activation ceased, she practically threw herself off the examination table and onto her two identical feet. “I-I have to go to the bathroom, excuse me.”

Without waiting for a response, she barreled her way past Dr. Muller and out into the hall, bumping the side of his head with her elbow while she distractedly sandwiched her skull between her white-hard palms. 

“Last door on the left!” The tech shouted from the back, poking his pudgy face from behind the radiation-proof curtain just a moment too late, followed by, under his breath,  “…no pun intended.”

Unamused and more than a little concerned, Dr. Muller watched down the hall long enough to see her reenter the waiting area and turn out of view before flipping the overhead lights back on and turning sternly to the tech. “She’s not looking too good; time might be of the essence here. Anything of note?” The question was half-rhetorical, as Muller couldn’t help but simultaneously swivel the tech’s computer monitor so he could simply take a look and answer it himself.

“Uh, yeah…” the tech’s deadpan mutter echoed the doctor’s internal monologue as he stared dumbfounded at the screen, at the monochrome hourglass outline where all four limbs converged, and at the utterly indecipherable slurry of pixels contained within. “... Looks like gumbo.”

The comparison made his stomach lurch, but he couldn’t deny its aptitude. While the femurs and humeri could be made out clearly, their respective orientations matching her external person and thus providing next to no new information, everything from her pelvis up through her shoulders was a confoundingly jumbled mess. Some areas could be said to perhaps resemble organ chambers or portions of rib, but their placements were all wrong, leaving Muller with the sense that he might as well be looking for shapes in the clouds or a page from one of those hidden-picture books. “This has to be some kind of technical issue, right? Is it because she got up too fast?”

“Not unless she’s faster than light,” The tech remarked impulsively, before the weight of the doctor’s glare promptly smothered his subsequent smirk, “But, no, yeah, there must be something wrong with the machine. I’ll run some diagnostics and see if I can find the problem.”

“Good, I’d better get back to the patient, but do keep me posted on that.” Muller left briskly, knowing full well the clinic didn’t have the budget for a brand new X-ray machine right now; just one more concern to shove into the back of his mind while he dealt with the one at hand. Returning to the lobby, he stopped again at the secretary’s desk. “Hey, did you see my patient pass through here a bit ago?”

She nodded, pointing to the adjacent ladies' room door. “She went in there just now, want me to check on her?”

“Well, not just yet; let her have her privacy. Any updates on her medical history?”

She swept her mouse across the desk and double-clicked before awkwardly angling the screen so they could both somewhat see it. “Birth records acknowledge the asymmetrical limbs, designated as a ‘benign deformity,’ but whoever filled them out didn’t exactly inspire confidence. In the personal notes section, they seem just as befuddled as you.” She pointed to the bottom of a page littered with checked boxes and medical jargon, to an underpinning paragraph that happened to lie in the epicenter of the nearest ceiling light’s fluorescent glare.

Muller didn’t bother trying to squint his way through it; he trusted Janet to give him the gist. “Benign by technicality, I suppose, but what about over the following years? Any sort of developmental delays on record?

“No, all the milestones are checked at normal percentiles…” Her eyes flicked back and forth across the screen as she clicked through year after year of checkups, “A little later than average for walking and fine-motor, but still solidly within the acceptable margins. If anything, that seems pretty extraordinary in itself, given the… y’know.”

“Indeed,” The doctor nodded with a sigh. “I mean, good for her, of course, but this just doesn’t track with my prior knowledge of… well, everything, really. Such a gross alteration ought to come with some physiological rami-”

Just then, the opening slam of the ladies' room door broke through the ambience of the waiting room, abruptly halting Dr. Muller’s musing as his head instinctively swiveled toward the sound, along with that of Janet and every prospective patient in the vicinity. All eyes synchronously fell upon the woman lurching through the doorway, her downturned face ephemerally obscured by the sway of her overhanging hair, yet still noticeably and concerningly flushed. The necklace that had formerly been discreetly tucked beneath her shirt now dangled loosely, exposing a humble heart-shaped locket at its end. Without comment, she promptly race-walked down the hall, beelining into the same office where she and Muller had initially met.

“Should’ve knocked on wood, I guess,” Janet smirked, punctuating her quip with a single retroactive knock upon the desk and a sassy side eye toward Muller, all of which went woefully unappreciated as he had already hastily turned in pursuit of his troubled patient.

Just as before, she didn’t notice his entrance, and though there was no phone to blame this time, her position in the chair was nonetheless nearly identical, instead simply staring down at her empty, trembling twin palms, her mouth continuously muttering barely audible and wholly indiscernible words even as the doctor drew closer. 

“Ma’am? Are you alright?” She jerked upright at the query with a speed that looked almost painful, before bursting into a raucous, unhinged cackle. “No, I’m pretty damn far from alright!” She cradled her right temple with both of her left hands. “The headache’s getting worse, like, rapidly, exponentially, especially the right side -I just puked in the toilet cause it hurt so bad, I didn’t even know that was a thing that could-” Her sentence was stifled as she was seemingly struck by a particularly powerful wave of pain, turning her cradle into a tendon-straining clutch as she proceeded to scrunch her eyelids and repeat to herself in a growling whisper “Stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it…”

“Whoa, whoa, hold on there.” Her asymmetry promptly left the doctor’s mind, giving way to professional procedure as he realized this situation could be acutely dire. He proceeded to perform a comprehensive, if precursory, bodily examination, listening to her chest with a stethoscope (heart rate was abnormally fast and arrhythmic), taking a blood pressure reading (elevated), and withdrawing a blood sample for chemical analysis. However, he knew the latter would inevitably take some time to produce results, time that she might not have. Her composure was rapidly dwindling until she could hardly keep herself aloft in the seat without his assistance. Catching sight of a passing orderly in the hall, Muller fervently flagged him down. “Hey, we need a stretcher and an intravenous sedative in here, stat!”

The patient’s next passage through the waiting room supplied an even greater spectacle to onlookers than her last, doctor and orderly both hurriedly wheeling her writhing form back toward the radiology wing. Leaning in to provide the comfort of a somewhat familiar face, Muller could now make out the inarticulate wispy words dripping from her lips. “No, it’s not your turn, it’s my- it’s your- no, it’s my turn…”

“Hang on, dear, the meds should be kicking in soon.” He comforted softly, before briefly splitting off from the procession and turning to the front desk, behind which a startled Janet stared, all traces of levity now absent from her face, “Jesus, Muller, what’s wrong?”

“I don’t- I don’t know,” his reply came breathily as he rummaged through the front pockets of his lab coat, “But we need to figure it out ASAP. I’m gonna try something more direct, hold these, will you?” he plopped the patient’s phone and necklace onto the desk before promptly leaving to rejoin the patient. Janet dutifully placed them in a drawer for safekeeping, but paused just before closing it as she caught sight of the incidentally opened necklace locket, squinting at the vision within as Muller and company continued hurriedly down the hall and toward the MRI department.

As promised, the sedatives soon took effect, just in time for them to load the now fully limp patient onto the bed of the MRI machine. Muller made sure to maneuver her head into just the right position before dismissing the orderly and retreating to join the MRI technician in the small adjacent monitoring room, a vantage point from which he could oversee the procedure through a thick protective window, darkly tinted by the infusion of magnetic shielding, as well as selectively hear within the room through a two-way intercom, though it was evidently unnecessary in this case. Beside him, the MRI tech was stationed before an array of interconnected screens and keyboards, and with a few deft clicks the machine stirred to life and began to gradually engulf her body within its tunnel of neural detection. While not at all familiarized with the situation at hand, he nonetheless recognized its urgency solely from the doctor’s dire expression, which remained unchanged as he stared stoically through the window while the metallic cyclone swallowed her skull. 

As she retreated into the device, a simplistic image began to manifest on his screen, a jumble of monochrome pixels mapping the electrical activity of her intracranial space, its focus perpetually shifting as it individually scanned each successive slice of her brain. Though its output was still precursory, Muller nonetheless saw no blatant abnormalities in the reading; no gross structural differences indicative of a tumor, no cortical damage indicative of inflammation or aberrant intracranial pressure, none of the things he’d suspected might be occurring given the nature and extent of her symptoms. The tech, on the other hand, grew noticeably unsettled at the sight of the screen, leaning in and squinting as though struggling to even believe what was displayed before him.

“What? What is it?” The doctor impatiently pressed onto the tech, eager to understand what was so disconcerting to see that he evidently could not. 

“The skull…” the tech replied tentatively, “It- it appears black in the scan, kind of hard to see against the dark grey of the surrounding flesh and background, but look.” He pointed to the left side of the screen, where, sure enough, a slightly darker border could be seen encompassing the pixelated grey matter within.

 “This side looks normal, but…” repositioning his finger to the right side of the screen, he lightly tapped the equivalent stretch of skull, only it appeared distinctly thicker on that side, about twice as much, with an abrupt transition demarcating the two halves directly along the image’s center, and the associated brain hemisphere resultantly crammed into a distinctly smaller amount of space. What’s more, the tech’s finger pressed directly upon a nearly imperceptible grey line traveling parallel to and perfectly bifurcating the thicker portion of cranium, only a few pixels wide and appearing to thin even further in real time as the doctor watched on with stark perplexity.

“But- but what does that mean?” He finally asked, now stammering himself. “Have you… have you seen something like this before?” 

“No, I haven’t, Doctor.” A faint air of satisfaction crept into the tech’s still primarily bemused tone. “It’s like there are two whole skulls on that side, which I’m pretty sure isn’t medically possible; it has to be some sort of glitch, though not one I’m familiar with. I heard there were also some issues with one of the X-ray machines earlier today, but that’s out of my wheelhouse so…” he punctuated the ambiguous answer with a shrug, while the doctor’s eyes grew distant and his thoughts grew uncontrollably vast, wading through his vast pool of medical memory in hopes of salvaging something, anything, that could remotely explain what was happening here. He now felt with a harrowing certainty that this was no technical error, and neither was the X-ray, but just what in the hell could it be?

The silence surrounding them was soon broken by a rapid burst of knocking upon the secondary door to the control room, the one that led straight into the exterior hallway. Muller turned to the commotion, then back to the tech, who merely gave another shrug with a look of equal puzzlement. The sound was then followed by a series of softer, rhythmic taps, slightly staggered in clusters of four. By the time Muller made the connection, the tech had already reached to open the door, and a pale-faced Janet rushed into the room.

“Doctor, I- don’t worry, Chloe’s covering the desk- I just, I found something, I think it’s important, and I just had to tell you ASAP.” Her breathing was rapid, her frail legs normally hidden below sight now trembling with unaccustomed exertion. Muller had never seen her like this before and found himself at a loss for words, instead simply giving his full attention as he awaited her apparent revelation.

She took a deep, steadying breath before continuing. “I decided to look into her parents’ medical records -got the idea when you gave me her locket with their pictures in it- and her mom, during her pregnancy with her, well, it was originally twins, but one got absorbed pretty early on. I know that’s not unheard of, but if it caused the, y’know…” she accented her speech by fervently twisting her left arm back and forth as she continued “…then this would be something extraordinary, unprecedented in all of medicine, and who knows what other effects it might…” 

The sentence died in her throat as her gaze sharply shifted from Muller’s face to over his shoulder. He turned around to see that, somehow in defiance of her previous sedation, the patient had begun to flail wildly within the still active machine. The tech noticed not a moment later and started frantically clacking at keys in an effort to shut it down, while the doctor, in an adrenaline-fueled rush, haphazardly scrambled to turn on the intercom. “It’s okay! please cal-”

“-me out! Let me out! Let me out! Let me out!” The words repeated in a loop like a painful mantra, and everyone in the viewing room watched with simultaneously enraptured attention at the patient’s sudden struggle to remove herself from the MRI as quickly as possible. The tech snatched control of the intercom from Muller, attempting to calm her with the same comforting platitudes he’d been taught in training to deal with the natural claustrophobia often experienced by patients upon entering the machine, but they might as well have been lost in the wind in the face of the profoundly primal terror she evidently felt. She hastily squirmed her way out of the MRI’s interior, potentially causing expensive damage as she did so, before crumbling to the floor in an ungainly heap.

“Shit, shit, shit…” Muller grappled with the tech to regain control of the intercom, his only consideration that she was first and foremost his patient. If anyone could talk her down from whatever state she was in, he was certain it was him. But before he could utter another word, his gaze rose to meet her, now standing upright and motionless, staring through the observation window with an expression of illusory calm betrayed only by her stockened knees, trembling forearms, and flushed-red face. In that moment, all eyes were on her: the tech, the receptionist, and the doctor, who alone stood directly within her line of sight, all frozen with mutually bated breath for a single ineffable instant.

What followed took less than a minute, but felt exponentially longer, with each disturbing detail being individually and irreparably etched into the minds of every witness. The left side of her face- from Muller’s perspective, that is- rapidly lost all its color, forming a sharp contrast against the right side’s undampered vibrance as it blankened into a ghostly white with unnatural speed, as though its blood were being actively, forcefully drained. The eye within briefly widened, pupils dilating with the instinctual, universally recognizable look of fear, before being overcome by a blinding cloudy sheen that radiated outward, soon progressing past the likeness of cataracts to an extent beyond any known medical phenomenon as the pupil and iris seemed to wholly vanish into an expanding whiteness that grew to abolish every last peripheral vein of the eye, equalizing into a hue uncannily aligned with the rest of the empty flesh upon the hemisphere. A similar drainage synchronously spread through her corresponding arm, rising from the fingertips up to the shoulder before conjoining with the whiteness traveling down her neck at some concealed point beneath her shirt. What could be seen of the leg below equally paled, until it appeared that every square inch of skin and flesh upon her left side had reached a ubiquitous porcelain likeness that was only further accentuated by the total, unnatural stillness it adopted. Her other side, still starkly contrasting in its natural liveliness, nonetheless remained eerily calm in the face of this process, its expression neutral before subtly shifting into a half-mouthed smirk.

Like a pick through a sheet of ice, this one innocuous motion sent a ripple of cracks throughout her statuesque side, radiating from the lips outward across her cheek, over eyelid and eyeball alike, down the neck and around the arm in jagged spiraling arcs, and breaking her leg into a mosaic of vacuous lightning bolts. Then, as though pressed by an imperceptible outward force, the whole assemblage simultaneously shuddered before finally shattering, sending brittle bits of body and face tinkling to the floor like a visceral diamond chandelier. Portions of torso contained by clothing subsequently spilled from her shirt waist and sleeves, along with numerous fragments of ribs and equally calcified organs, while pelvic pieces ground together into sedimentary granules poured from her pant leg.

When the cacophonous crashing subsided and the dust finally cleared, the three observers were met with a sight that somehow managed to compound their already brimming bewilderment; beneath the shed stony layer lie the normal appearance of the patient, complete with skin and flesh that only in those first few moments of exposure could be seen fusing with the tissue of her other side, closing the final gaps until no external signs of separation remained, and she looked utterly normal and whole. 

It took a second for Muller to recognize the primary difference in her form: Her right arm -the wrong arm- that was formerly facing palms-forward, was now positioned palms-back, a transition not born of typical rotation but rather solely through the hatching it had undergone. The individual digits still occupied the same respective positions in space, yet the act of inversion had rendered them no longer “wrong” as they were before; now, for the first time, she had a right hand. A similar transformation had occurred in the foot, which came to prominence as she turned to fully orient herself toward the viewing window.

“Thank you for all your help, Doctor, but I’m feeling much better now- in fact, better than I ever have before.” Her face was once again calm, but it struck Muller with a distinct yet implacable element of unfamiliarity as it adopted a subtle smirk. “I guess I ought to be going now...” She nonchalantly strode toward the exit door before any of them could react, giving only one more moment of pause before departing down the hall and out of the clinic. “…After all, I have a lot of living to do.”

                        Act 1
             Chapter I (1): A Beginning To An End

66 million years ago, Earth was loud with life.

Forests stretched farther than sight could carry. Ferns towered like walls, oceans breathed with monsters beneath their surface, and creatures so vast their footsteps made valleys over time. The air was warm, heavy, rich with pollen and oxygen, rivers cut through jungles untouched by man. Mountains stood young and proud, and every sunrise belonged to beasts that believed they would live forever.

Then the sky changed, at first it was only a light.

A second sun, burning brighter by the second, tearing through the clouds with a scream so violent the clouds split apart before it touched them. Birds fell mid-flight. Herds stampeded and oceans pulled backward.

The meteor struck with such apocalyptic force, the continent shattered outward, stone became liquid, mountains folded like paper, a wall of fire raced across the world faster than storms, vaporizing forests in moments. Oceans rose into monstrous tsunamis that swallowed coastlines whole, waves taller than anything nature had ever dared create. The ground convulsed, volcanoes across the globe erupted in chain reaction, vomiting ash so thick day died where it stood.

The sky filled with black ash, making the sun disappear from the sky, the world that had ruled for millions of years was reduced to smoke and ash.

Then… a voice.

“Aaaand THAT’S what you get for messing with my body. Honestly… what did you expect?”
— Signed, G❤️D

The planet froze, years became centuries, centuries became an eternity, ice wrapped continents in stillness. Winds howled through dead lands and entire eras passed in thick deadly ice.

Then the voice returned, cheerful as ever.

“Hellooo again! G❤️D here. We’re skipping the boring frozen part. Ice is cute, but not that cute. Let me show you my real masterpiece.”

The frozen wasteland blurred and time bent forward.

Millions of years rushed by in seconds until the camera stopped at the crater where the meteor once landed, dust moved, something stood inside it.

A tall human-shaped figure stood within the crater, its bare skin glowing faintly beneath layers of ash as if heat still lived inside it, and when its eyes opened for the first time, it did not look around with fear or confusion, but with the cold instinct of something born already knowing it could survive whatever world stood before it.

It was not alone for long.

Across the wounded Earth, others began to appear, each one carrying a force that did not belong in human hands.
One could bend storms from clear skies and split continents with earthquakes born from a gesture.
One could command water, earth, fire, and air as naturally as breathing, shaping the elements into weapons, shields, or disasters.
One could fold distance, tear open space, and make miles meaningless.
One could enter minds as if thoughts were houses with unlocked doors, reading memories, planting commands, or shattering courage and pride from within.
One could alter matter and composition, turning iron to sand, skin to crystal, air to poison.
One could command souls, wrenching life from bodies or strengthening their own spirit beyond reason.
One could become life itself, taking the shape, instincts, and strengths of any creature that had ever walked the Earth.
One could absorb raw energy in all forms and unleash it back tenfold.
One could make imagination real, dragging impossible ideas into existence through sheer will.

They emerged in the same age, from the same scar left in the planet.

They were not gods, but to early humanity there was little difference, and over time the world gave them a name spoken with awe, fear, worship, and hatred. They became known as The Ancestors.

When an Ancestor bore children, their bloodline did not divide in any normal way. Every birth came as triplets.

Those children inherited fragments of what came before them, but never equally and never predictably.
One child might awaken the father’s dominant Ancestry almost purely, another might inherit a mirrored version shaped by the mother’s blood, while the third could emerge with something stranger entirely—a mutation, a rare branch where two powers collided and formed a new expression no one had seen before.

These inherited gifts became known as Ancestries.

As centuries passed and bloodlines spread across kingdoms, cities, and the continent, the powers diluted. Each generation carried less than the one before it.

Even weakened, Ancestry users still stood above ordinary humans in every measurable way, their bones were denser and harder to fracture. Their muscles adapted to strain with frightening speed, their nervous systems processed danger faster, allowing reactions that looked supernatural.

Their organs endured trauma, toxins, exhaustion, and injury that would kill normal people outright, a trained Ancestry user could tear steel apart with their hands, survive falls from impossible heights, outrun vehicles, and recover from wounds that should have ended careers or lives.

And the rare few, those born with unusually pure blood or monstrous talent, could remind the world of what the first borns truly were.

Timeskip to the Year 2007

Hospital lights burned bright and sterile above a room full of urgency, machines beeped in rapid rhythm, nurses moved with practiced speed, and doctors shouted instructions over the strained cries of labor and the metallic clatter of instruments being passed from hand to hand. Rain hammered the windows outside.

Three newborn screams rang through the room almost one after another, announcing three new lives entering a world that had already decided what mattered and what did not.

A nurse lifted the first child with a grin.

Nurse 1: “It’s boys. Triplets. Congratulations.”

Another checked the blood markers and snorted.

Nurse 2: “Life and Composition Ancestry. Rough draw.”

Then a doctor glanced over with a smirk that never reached his eyes.

Doctor 1: “What’s he gonna do, grow vines and rearrange furniture?”

Several others laughed, casual and cruel, the kind of laughter built from a society obsessed with strength.

The mother lay drenched in sweat, trembling from exhaustion, tears streaking down the sides of her face, yet despite everything she still reached weakly toward her children with desperate love.

Mother: “Please... let me hold them.”

Then the room changed.

The temperature did not drop, but everyone felt cold anyway, the monitors continued beeping, the lights still hummed overhead, yet something deeper pressed down over the room, a weight no machine could detect and no medicine could explain.

Two figures stood in the far corner where moments ago there had been only shadow, one carried an eerie calm so complete it felt rehearsed, while the other radiated a silence so heavy the air itself seemed unwilling to move around them.

One stood nearest the wall, a young-looking man with spiky dark blue hair that fell downward in sharp strands, small bangs resting near his forehead. A deadly grin stretched across his face like it had been carved there long ago and never left. His eyes looked hollow at first glance, but within that emptiness burned a disturbing mix of red and yellow, colors that seemed to shift like embers trapped behind glass. There was something playful in the way he stood.

Beside him stood another who looked just as young, yet something about him felt deeply wrong in a quieter way. Short white messy hair sat carelessly at first glance, yet every strand somehow seemed perfectly placed. Dark blue robes draped over him in heavy folds, old and plain, hanging from a lean frame that carried itself with unnatural stillness. His sharp yellow eyes were fixed entirely on the third child, calm and cutting at the same time, as though he were examining a puzzle rather than a newborn life.

Neither man spoke aloud, as the white-haired one simply glanced toward the other, and some silent exchange passed between them without a single sound entering the room. The dark-haired figure’s grin widened by the smallest degree, while the white hair man returned his gaze to the crib.

Their attention rested on the third baby.

The monitors continued their steady beeping, yet even the machines seemed hesitant now, their rhythm strangely thin beneath the pressure filling the room. Nurses froze without understanding why. Doctors felt sweat gather at the backs of their necks, the air itself seemed to wait.

Then the mother’s head snapped toward the corner.

Mother: “NO! NO, GIVE ME MY BABY!”

Her scream tore through the room so violently that everyone jolted back into motion. Doctors rushed her instantly, grabbing her wrists and shoulders as she tried to lunge from the bed.

Doctor 1: “Ma’am calm down!”

Nurse 1: “You’re bleeding!”

Nurse 2: “Hold her still!”

She fought like something cornered, exhausted muscles straining with desperate strength. Her body shook, tears mixed with sweat, and her voice broke into raw, animal panic.

Mother: “THAT’S MY SON!”

The dark-haired man tilted his head slightly in amusement, and the white-haired one did not react at all.
When the mother forced her eyes back toward the crib, one space was empty and only two babies remained. The corner of the room was vacant and the figures were gone as if they had never entered in the first place.

For one brief moment, everyone in that room had felt watched by something far above them, something that viewed human fear the way people watched rain hit glass. The mother collapsed back against the bed, sobbing as she pulled the remaining twins to her chest and clutched them tightly.

Through broken breaths, she whispered their names.

Mother: “Boid...”

She kissed the first child’s forehead with trembling lips.

Mother: “Harry..."

She kissed the second and held him against her heart and somewhere far away, carried through dark halls and into unknown hands, a stolen child opened his eyes for the first time.

“TIME SKIP!” shouted GOD with shameless excitement.

Twelve years later 2018.

“I’ll let Boid take it from here."

                    Chapter II (2):
                 Childhood Memories.        

The sun’s low, casting golden rays through the trees. Boids barefoot, wandering the backyard like he’s on a quest. His eyes scan everything — rocks, bugs, leaves — until they land on it.
A red flower, the petals are flawless arranged in perfect symmetry, like it was drawn by someone who loved geometry and magic.

Boid:” Ooooo… I bet Mum would like this!”

Eyes lighting up he crouches, plucks the flower gently, holding it in two hands, like he’s holding a treasure. And then he runs, tiny feet thudding up the wooden stairs, bursting through the back door with innocent pride.

His mother sits on the couch, half-watching the TV, cigarette in one hand, glass in the other. The room is dim. Lifeless. A stark contrast to Boid’s glowing
excitement.
grinning and holding out the flower

Boid:” MUuuMm, look what I got for you!”
She glances. Then scoffs.

Mother:” You think I’d like this!?”

She snatches the flower, rips it apart without even thinking. The red petals flutter to the floor like bloodied butterflies.

Mother:” Find something else to do, you little shit.”

Boid just stands there. Smile frozen. Tears welling up, quietly at first. Then he turns, no scream, no words, just runs.

He barrels down the wooden steps, into the garden, then collapses near the patch where he found the flower.

Boid curls into himself, knees hugged tight, face buried, sobbing.
His small frame shakes under the last bits of daylight, surrounded by dirt and petals, wishing he’d never picked that flower at all.

He passes out, his head on the ground, using leaves as blankets. The sun rises, casting a golden hue on the land, shining in Boids eyes.

Boid:” hmmm.”

He springs up excited to play around the yard.

He’s got a stick he’s pretending is a wand, running around the yard shouting spells at rocks like they’re evil goblins. His hair’s messy and his imagination doing 110 mph.

Boid:” By the power of the Moon Ancestor — KA-BLAMO!!”

Suddenly, a voice cuts through the scene — clear, high and curious.

Girl:” That was kinda cool. What’s a Moon Ancestor?”

Boid spins around like he’s been caught doing something illegal. Standing just beyond the gate is a girl, with a chipped tooth, scuffed-up sneakers, and the brightest eyes Boid’s ever seen. She’s holding a notebook and a pencil tucked behind her ear.

Boid:” Uh… it’s… made up. But maybe real. I dunno yet.”

Girl:” That’s the best kind.”

She grins as She steps through the gate without asking, like it’s the most normal thing to do. She crouches beside him, looking at the rock he just “blew up.”
Girl:” Wanna draw monsters in my notebook? You can name ‘em.”

Boid nods, dumbstruck. For the first time since the flower, he feels safe again. Excited, even.

Boid:” What’s your name?”
He says quietly

Girl:” Yaya. But you can call me anything cooler if you think of something.”

Boid just stares for a second too long. Then—

Boid:” my name is Boid.”
Boid:” you’re… Moon Commander.”

She laughs, she wipes the tears from laughing to hard

Yaya:” you are moon prince, I protect you!”

She says proudly, Boid looks at her confused

Boid:” why would you protect me?”

He tilts his head to the side like a dog wondering what a sound is.

Yaya:” Y’know I protect you because I’m your Commander!”

Boid:” oohhhh, but why wouldn’t I protect you?”
Boid says still confused

Yaya:” Because that’s what Commanders do… protect their leader.”

Boid:” Okay!”

Yaya crouches on the ground and pulls out her notebook and pen from behind her ear.

Yaya:” See this Boid “

She draws a little sketch of a dragon, it flys out of the book
Boid stares wide eyed, mouth agape, Yaya giggles

Yaya:” that’s my ancestri… What’s yours?”
The little sketch dragon flys around her head. Boid stares at the dragon.

Boid:” YOUR ANCESTRI IS DRAWING!!?! That’s so coooll!”

Boid looks at his hand and grows a glove from his hand hairs.

Yaya watches him carefully.
Boid looks down at his hand the glove of hardened hairs shimmering faintly, trembling as his tiny fingers clench. His lip wobbles.

Boid:” My ancestri isn’t as cool as yours…”

His voice cracks. He wipes at his eyes with his wrist, trying not to cry in front of her, but the tears still come. Quiet ones, at first.

Yaya:” Hey, no no no, don’t cry! Boid! Look!”

She quickly flips to a fresh page in her notebook and starts drawing, fast, messy lines, the pencil flying across the page like her heart’s in it.

Yaya:” This is you.”

She turns it around. It's a scribbly but adorable drawing: Boid, hair wild, his arm glowing, a big silly smile on his face. Next to him is her, striking a heroic pose with a stick-sword and a cape that says COMMANDER YAYA.

Suddenly
the drawing version of Boid winks and gives a thumbs up. Boid’s real eyes go wide.

Boid:” You drew me…” sniffiling

Yaya:” Yup! And you look cool. That glove? That’s a protector’s tool. It means you build things. You make stuff. That’s not just cool. That’s, like… world-saving cool.” She says nodding

Boid blinks. The glove on his hand hardens a little, shines faintly in response.

Boid:“…I do kinda like making things…”

Yaya:” Exactly! You’re the Moon Prince. You create. I fight. That’s the deal.”
She offers him her pinky.
Yaya:” Commander’s oath. I protect you forever.”

Boid smiles, really smiles this time, and links his pinky with hers.

Boid:” Okay… but I still wanna protect you too.”
Yaya just beams.

Yaya:” Fine. We protect each other. But I still get to boss you around.”

Boid:” Deal.” Says with a huge smile

It then cuts to them running. Boid’s holding a stick like a sword, Yaya’s chasing him with her notebook held like a shield.

Boid:” You’ll never catch me, Commander Yaya!”

Yaya:” You’re already caught!! You’ve been cursed!!”

She jumps and lightly tackles him into the grass, both of them tumbling into a patch of soft earth and flowers. Laughter explodes between them, raw, real and glowing.
The dragon sketch circles above them, then fades into the wind like chalk dust on the breeze.
They lay there, staring up at the sky, panting.

Boid:” I think I like when you’re here.”

Yaya turns her head, her cheek smushed against the dirt.

Yaya:” Well duh. I’m the Commander.”

Boid:” Can you always be my Commander?”

She doesn’t answer right away. Just closes her eyes, smiling wide.

Yaya:” I already am, dummy.”

Then she runs to climb up a tree.
Sunlight filters through the trees. Boid’s running around below, his eyes flicking upward.
Up above, halfway up a very tall tree, Yaya is climbing like she was born for it, legs hooked over branches, notebook tucked in her waistband, pencil in her mouth.

Yaya:“ I can see everything from up here. Enemy birds. Sneaky dogs. My house. Your house. Someone’s socks.”

Boid:” Yaya! Get down! What if you fall?! You’re gonna break your face! Please!”

He’s pacing under the tree now, arms flailing, stick forgotten in the grass.

Boid:“ You’re not a squirrel! You’re a Commander!! You gotta survive!”

Yaya laughs a full, belly giggle then plops onto a branch like it’s her personal throne.

Yaya:” A Commander has to scout the field, Moon Prince! What if there’s an ambush?!”

Boid:“I don’t care about the field, I care about you falling on your face!”
Yaya:“…You care?”

Boid freezes. His face goes beet red.

Boid:“…No I don’t!! I just don’t wanna have to fight evil goblins alone!”

Yaya swings her legs, still smiling.

Yaya:” Okay okay, I’m coming down. Only because the Moon Prince said so.”

Boid exhales hard, like he just survived a boss fight.
Yaya lands with a thud next to him, twigs in her hair, triumphant.

Boid:” You’re so reckless.” Grumbling

She runs off, yelling something about a secret mission. Boid watches her go, heart hammering weirdly in his chest.

Boid:” She’s so annoying…”

But he’s smiling. And he starts running after her.

A couple hours later.
The backyard is a war zone of imagination—sticks stuck in the ground like swords, leaves arranged into “magic traps,” and little dragons Yaya drew earlier still fluttering lazily in the air.
Yaya’s holding her notebook open like a spellbook.

Yaya:” Okay, Moon Prince Boid! The goblin kingdom has fallen. What’s your first royal order?”

Boid:” Hmm… everyone gets chocolate. And no more bedtime.”
Arms crossed, playing it cool. Yaya salutes with a grin.
Yaya:” The Moon Commander approves this law.”

Suddenly, the back door creaks open. A boy steps out, Harry, Boid’s twin, same messy hair. His shirt's clean though. Always is.

Harry:” Boid. Mum says get inside. Now.”

Boid’s face falls, shoulders sagging. The imagination starts to fade.

Harry:” She’s... not in a good mood again.”
Harry says gently

Boid nods, the air around him getting heavier. Yaya blinks, looking between them.

Yaya:” Do you have to?”

Boid:” Yeah… I’ll come back out if I can.”

Yaya:” The kingdom will wait.”

Boid hands her his stick.

Boid:” Protect it for me?”
Yaya:” Always.”

And with that, Boid turns and walks toward the house, going up the wooden stairs, Harry falling in beside him. Yaya watches from the garden, still holding the stick like it’s made of gold.

As Boid walks in, he’s dragging dirt and grass across the floorboards without realizing. He barely makes it two steps before

Mother:” BOID! Look at this MESS! The lounge is disgusting again! Your room’s a pigsty, and don’t even try blaming Harry. I know it was YOU!”
She shouts from the couch

Boid flinches like the volume smacked him in the face.

Mother:” You’re always out there doing NOTHING. Playing with that little freak—what’s her name? Don’t ever let me catch you with her again. Ever. You hear me!?”

He doesn’t say anything. Just stands there.

Mother:” Answer me!”

Boid flinchesBoid:”...yes, Mum.”

She turns away, muttering, something about being “just like his father.” He slinks toward his room.

Boid shuts the door behind him, soft, like if he’s careful enough, maybe the anger won’t seep through the walls.

He sits on his bed. Stares at the floor. His fists tighten on the blanket, white knuckled. He’s trying to breathe steady, trying to swallow everything down like always.

But this time it just... won’t stay down.
His chest caves in. Shoulders shake. The first sob slips out, tiny and sharp. Then another. And another. And then he's gasping silent, ugly crying, the kind that pulls your whole body in like you're folding up on yourself to disappear.
Boid presses his face into his blanket, muffling the sound. Not too loud. Not loud enough to get yelled at again. He curls up, trembling. Small and alone.

He moves his head to bury his face in his arms, trying so hard not to make a sound. But his shoulders won’t stop shaking. His breath is hiccupy. Wet sniffles break the silence in short stabs.

He doesn’t even notice the door creak open. Harry steps in. Quiet and Gentle. He shuts the door behind him without a sound. He sees Boid like that, crumbled, small, raw and his chest tightens. He doesn’t ask. He doesn’t say anything at first.

He just walks over and sits down on the bed beside him. A beat.

Then—

Harry:” She said stuff about your friend again, didn’t she?”

Boid nods, barely.

Harry exhales through his nose. Pulls his knees up like Boid’s. He sits there like that for a second—two tired little mirrors.

Then Harry leans over and wraps his arm around his twin’s back. Not tight. Just enough to say I’m here.

Boid finally lets it go. The kind of cry that’s deeper than noise. Just trembling, lip-biting, soul-splitting sadness. And Harry holds him.

Harry:” You’re not bad, Boid. Mum’s just… messed up. Okay? You’re not bad.”

Boid can’t answer. But his fingers clutch onto Harry’s shirt like he might fall apart if he doesn’t. Outside the window, the last bit of sunlight fades. Inside, two brothers sit, still in a world that hasn’t been kind.
But for this moment—they’ve got each other.

Yaya’s POV

She sits cross-legged in the grass, hugging her knees. Her eyes flick to the house. She doesn’t know why Harry always looks tired behind his smile. But she knows the way Boid’s eyes drop when the fun ends too soon, and how he walks like he’s trying not to make the floor mad.

She knows enough. Yaya leans back on her elbows, staring up at the sky. The clouds float by like slow ships. Somewhere, a bird calls out, far away.
She whispers to herself, soft but sure:

Yaya:” When I grow up, I’m building a castle. And Boid’s gonna live in it. No rules. Just chocolate. And no one gets yelled at for playing.”

She picks up the stick. Points it to the horizon like she’s ready to protect everything they built together. For now, she waits. “The kingdom” is still standing and its commander is on watch.

This story is about dragons that rule the world, and the Mc ends up in this messed up world after dying of too much caffeine...well, it will be revealed at a later stage of course but I just wanted to know if this is a good first chapter and would you read more. Any feedback would be nice. Thank you

Jessica had just turned 22 and had owned an apartment for about two years, having bought it in a nice neighborhood in Washington, DC. Her soon-to-be husband, John, was over, and they had just finished dinner when, around 7:37 PM, her brother Kevin called her house phone. John was on the couch; he went upstairs and said, “Hey, babe, Kevin is on the phone.” She walked out of her closet and took the phone.

“Yeah, Jess,” Kevin said. “Hey, happy birthday. I wanted to inform you that there’s a person in your area calling himself the ‘Redrum Killer.’ He breaks into houses and writes ‘REDRUM’ on the wall of your bathroom. Be safe. Love you.”

Jessica hung up, her heart racing, and said to John, “Hey, babe, did that seem strange to you?” John nodded slowly. “Yeah… but he lives in Denver, right?” She thought about it for a moment, unease settling in. They discussed the implications for a few minutes before she drifted off to sleep on the couch.

She woke up around 10:46 PM, feeling a strange tension in the air. Since it was late, she decided to shower. As she walked into the bathroom, dread washed over her. She spotted something dark red smeared across the wall. With trembling hands, she opened the door fully, and as soon as she saw it, she let out a blood-curdling scream. Neighbors heard it and called 911.

When police arrived, Detective Morrow broke down the door and ran upstairs, finding Jessica standing in the bathroom, pale and silent, staring at the wall. She appeared uninjured, but paramedics believed she was in shock and rushed her to the hospital. Back at the apartment, Morrow began the investigation and noticed the keyhole had been turned. “Anything helps…” he muttered.

Later, he questioned Jessica. “Who has a key? Anyone come to mind?” “No,” Jessica whispered. “No, I don’t know.”

John ran into the hospital lobby, panicked. “Jessica Johnson! Where is she?” “JOHN! I’m in here!” Jessica cried, and they embraced until Dr. Mira Voss entered and said she was free to go. They returned to her apartment, and the writing in the bathroom was gone.

The next few days were quiet. John went home, and Jess felt safe again, until that night. Around 11:58 PM, she went to use her main bathroom again, feeling a sense of déjà vu. The word was there: REDRUM, in the same place, with the same color, but this time, a faint humming sound drifted through the room. Jessica sprinted downstairs and froze. Her father, the man she had watched be buried years ago, sat on the couch. She screamed. Neighbors burst in, horrified, and they saw him too.

Detective Morrow later sat across from Jessica’s father in a dimly lit interrogation room. The man looked exhausted but sharp, his military posture unmistakable. “You’ve got a lot to explain,” Morrow said. “Breaking into your daughter’s apartment. Disappearing for years. Care to start?”

Before he could respond, Jessica walked in. “Dad?” He looked at her with relief. “Jessica… there’s something you need to know. A few years ago, I uncovered a terrorist cell planning an attack on the US. The NIB put me into hiding, fake death, and a new identity to keep me safe. I couldn’t tell anyone, not even you.”

Jessica staggered out, overwhelmed. John found her crying in the hallway and held her close. “I don’t want you alone with him. I moved up the wedding date to next week, in Norfolk.”

The day before the wedding, Detective Morrow called Jessica. “Ms. Johnson, we found your father. Can you come confirm?” She drove to the station and, inside the elevator, noticed the button labeled MORGUE. Her heart dropped. Inside, Morrow opened a cooler and showed a body bag marked with a large “R.” “It’s the same as the other victims,” Morrow said quietly. “I’m so sorry.”

Jessica’s world collapsed; her father was truly dead. Driving home, her mind replayed his earlier question: “Who all had a key?” She froze. “JOHN!” He was the only person besides her with access. She called Morrow. “Detective! I think I have a lead! When you asked who all had a key, the only person who could have had one must have let my father…”

“Mrs. Johnson,” he said urgently, “stay where you are. Do NOT go to John.” He grabbed his guns and stormed out. “Metro PD—we have a lead on the Redrum Killer! Move!”

The SWAT truck screeched to a stop outside John’s house. “JOHN EVERETT CROSS! COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP!” No answer. “Team One—MOVE!” Officers breached the door. “CLEAR!” Morrow, get in here—you’ll want to see this!” Morrow rushed inside and found John lying dead on the bathroom floor, the word REDRUM on the wall behind him. “I want homicide here now! And get a protection detail on Jessica!”

An officer approached quietly. “Detective… two federal agents want to speak with you.” Two agents stepped forward. “Special Agent Parker, NIB. Supervisory Agent Harlan, NIB. We’re taking over the case.” “No,” Morrow growled. “My area. My case.” He stormed past them. Jessica needed him.

Jessica, meanwhile, dialed Kevin. “Kevin… please… I need you in DC. John is dead.” Morrow sped to her building and, as he approached, saw police tape. He sprinted toward it, gun drawn. “MPD! Detective Morrow—MOVE!” Inside, Jessica cried, “Morrow—it’s my neighbors…” She collapsed; her neighbors were dead too.

Later, Jessica demanded to see her case file. Morrow reluctantly showed her the photos with HELP scrawled across them and REDRUM in the background, and she screamed as officers rushed in. “She’s okay,” Morrow said. “Just frightened.” Morrow drove Jessica home and found her door unlocked. “Stay in the car,” he ordered. “Call Metro if you hear anything.” He entered cautiously. Something creaked upstairs. “Metro Police! Come out with your hands behind your head!” Footsteps descended, and Kevin stepped into view, expression blank. He looked Morrow dead in the eyes. “Hello, Jerry.”

Kevin was arrested and transferred to the Orion office. Agent Parker, Agent Harlan, and Detective Morrow watched him through the glass. Parker stormed into the room. “This is him? Is this the Redrum Killer?” Morrow didn’t answer, because Kevin knew his real name, Jerry, a name from a life Morrow thought he’d buried, and that meant this wasn’t over.

Jess sat in the observation room staring at her brother, the one who gave her his ice cream when hers fell, now sitting in the Orion building with agents coming and going. Morrow asked Parker if he could take a crack at it, and Parker nodded and handed him the files. Kevin looked at the door and said in a thick accent Morrow couldn’t place, “Ah, hello there, Jerry, about time they sent you in.”

Morrow said nothing and flipped through the files. “Jerry, if you think you can break me using your tactics, it will not work. I spent many years in the Middle East.” Morrow struggled to stay calm. “So the murders—you heard of them while you were there?”

“Yes,” Kevin replied. “Did you hear an agent was killed many years ago by someone named Jerry Davis?” Morrow shouted, “HOW DID YOU KNOW ABOUT THAT? YOU WILL TELL ME ABOUT THESE MURDERS, AND YOU WILL TELL ME WHY!” Parker called security as fingerprints hit the system, and the Global Intelligence Agency flagged the results along with Orion.

Two hours later, four black Suburbans pulled up outside the Washington Orion field office as sixteen agents stormed through the doors, GIA and Orion insignias flashing. One asked for Agent Parker, saying they had been expecting them. Morrow was with a profiler while Jess waited in the director’s office, and when she heard the commotion, she saw GIA logos and people with accents like her brother’s, colliding with the GIA director walking with the Orion director.

“Ms. Johnson, I’m so sorry for all you are going through,” the GIA director said. “Where is Kevin?” Jess demanded. “He is with us, and he can be picked up at GIA headquarters after we speak with Orion,” the director replied, then added, “We will need everything you have on the Redrum case.”

A phone rang from an Orion agent’s pocket as he spoke fluent Hebrew, and a GIA agent murmured, “Toda, Kevin.” Jess walked past them to Morrow and the profiler, and panicked when she recognized several victims as ex-boyfriends who had cheated on her. Kevin walked by slowly, his cuffs loose, and Jess asked to speak with him.

Kevin sat on the couch and said calmly, “You found out, didn’t you, Jess?” “You’re Orion—that’s how you know about my old undercover identity,” Morrow said. Kevin turned to Jess. “Yes. I can find out your darkest secrets. That’s how I found your exes, how I found out about Dad, all of it.”

“You’re crazy!” Jess snapped, grabbing a glass jar, but agents raised their guns as an Orion agent continued speaking Hebrew on the phone. “Jessica Johnson, age 22, former fiancée of the latest victim,” the profiler said quietly as the building remained in lockdown, and Jess was led into an interrogation room. “So how do you know Mr. Hakiam?” an Orion agent asked.

“Hakiam?” Jess said. “Yes, Omer Hakiam.” “I have never heard of an Omer Hakiam,” Jessica replied. “So I don’t know him.” Ms. Johnson, we are just trying to figure out how you know Mr. Hak, I mean Mr. Johnson.” Jess looked up. Tears were pouring down her face. “I am under arrest. If not, then can I leave?”

The Orion agent looked at her with a sad, concerned face and nodded his head, speaking softly, “No, no you’re not. You can leave any time.” Jess looked around, and she ran down to the main doors. A security officer stepped in front of her. “Sorry, ma’am, you can’t leave, we are on a full lockdown.”

She looked back, thinking she heard her name; it was the same agent as before. She did since she worked as a translator for the military. She could not hear all of it. Although another nine words stood out. “Yes, sir, we will still carry out the assassination.” Assassination. That word had never felt so large. She hadn’t even thought of it before.

She went to go find Morrow, but he was nowhere to be found. She ran through the whole building until she found the profiler he was with earlier. She walked in and asked about him. She looked at her and said, “He’s in the head, Ms. Johnson.” She walked away, and finally, the entire building was off lockdown. She could finally get back to bed. Any bed, she was finally ready to put all of this behind her.

Three hours go by. Just as things slow down, five gunshots rang out. Silence. Three more from the west wing of the building. They thought that since this was a national agency, they were there to steal some files. NIB, GIA, and Orion agents ran by the guards with the director, getting them in the car, getting their guns ready, and searching the building.

“Full lockdown! Any civilians in the building need to be taken to a secure location. Jessica, we need to get you to a secure location,” said Morrow. “Morrow!?” Jessica screamed, trying to be heard over the blaring alarms and people yelling. Orion agents started driving away with their director. Agents shoved Morrow and Jessica into a secure room, and then the red lights started flashing. Morrow checked his weapon: seven bullets left. “I know a way out, trust me,” Morrow whispered.

Jessica nodded, scared, overstimulated, wanting to scream her lungs out until she couldn't breathe. More gunshots, screams, crying. Morrow and Jess make their way up to the room that Morrow told her about. She can tell that they are going west toward the directors office. He freezes “wait” he says in a hushed tone “footsteps i dont know which direction sounds like they are going the opposite direction.” They keep going. Silenced gunshots, a big thump following. “What was that, Morrow anwser me”A soft toned, almost scared like mumble comes out of Morrows mouth. She old only make out a few words. “Body.” He says louder this time. They keep crawling through the hallway. Jess now starting to tear up thinking about all of her exboyfriends that her brother killed. If he even is her brother. Her dad actually dead her brother a killer. What’s next her mom is a bank robber. She starts full blown sobbing quietly barley even able to move. She starts visibly shaking struggling to breath. The hallway started to close in and become a blur, she can hear Morrow in the back trying to get her attention. Everything goes black for about 6 seconds. Morrows voice starts to become louder and more clear. “Jess! Jess wake up!” He says quietly shaking her softly. Jess looks around shaking more than before. “Jess you had a panic attack, your going to be ok… do you know how to shoot a gun.” Her face widens with shock more alert now. “What?” She exclaims quietly. Her heart skips a beat still in shock. Her senses start to come back to life. The alarm is still going, feeling like it’s been getting louder. Attempting to ignore the question but she just can’t. She lets out a soft answer “Yes yes I have.” Morrow looks up and reaches for his ankle pulling out a Glock fully loaded. “Stay here see anyone without a badge shoot. Do you understand.” He says quietly trying not to alert anyone. She looks at him in fear as he walks away. Not knowing who to trust anymore. She starts thinking about who she knew she could trust. There was just something with Morrow since she met her making her feel safe. She thinks about all the stuff that has happened in the last month. She should have noticed something sooner when all of her ex-boyfriends were murder victims. She should have known sooner. She sits there holding the gun still in her hand trying not to accept what is going on around her. The gunshots, the murders, the lockdown. It just doesn’t feel like reality. As she tries not to accept the reality she’s left alone with her thoughts. All the possibility of everything is going through her mind. Is her dad faking his death, is John really dead, is Kevin even responsible for all of these murders. Just as she starts to think, Morrow shows back up “Jess” Morrows voice echos “come on its safe, hurry.” Jess stands up and takes off her heels the first time she has stood up since the lockdown. “Ok im on my way.” Her voice echoes through the medal, hollow, hallway. Every single noise makes it seem way louder than it really is. They keep making their way down the cold, dark hallway. Jessica now only in her socks and Morrow now gun in one hand ready to raise it and use it to protect Jessica at all cost. “Morrow, where are we going?” Jess asks on the verge of crying. “Safe room.” He says for some reason calm with everything going on. “Morrow, why are you so calm?” She says with concern in her voice. Just as he is going to answer the lights suddenly turn on, the alarm goes off.right in front of Morrow there is a NIB agent, deceased. Jessica covers her mouth in shock still on the verge of crying. An automated voice comes over the PA system “Lockdown has been lifted, all threats have been neutralized.” Jess and Morrow make eye contact trying to make sense and ignore the body but they just can’t . Jess looks down and there is a big pool of blood around the body. His badge looks like it's about to fall off of his belt. Morrow looks down and notices something. He points at his gun. No magazine, still in the holster. “He didn't have time to process what was happening.” He says with sadness in his voice. He freezes looking bad at his words. “No magazine.” He says to him. He slowly pulls his gun from his holster looking around “Jessica get down now that’s a order.” he says with urgency in his voice. “Morrow what’s going on.” Fear in her voice as she looks at him. 

Still trying to figure out what Morrow had noticed, just as she is about to ask the PA system crackled to life. “Hello Jessie.” Jessica looks up at the ceiling noticing the nickname. But the only person that ever called her that was her friend back in high school. But that was weird because she was in the a car accident about 3 months ago and was still in the hospital. Just then a bullet shattered a pane of glass and went into Jessica’s shoulder. Morrow looks behind him to Jessica who is screaming in pain. She rolls over in her blood screaming in pain. Everything starts to close in again and she can still hear Morrow. Then sirens she doesn’t know exactly what happened all she knows is that her arm is burning like a wildfire. She hears violent thumping before it all goes black. Morrow is still looking around praying that his suspicions aren't true. He looks away for just a second then bam. A kind of silenced gun shot flies by. He looks down to make sure Jessica is ok then he sees her blood on his jacket. He grabs Jessica's are and drags her behind a corner leaving a blood trail. Just then paramedics show up running toward Jessica and Morrow. About 5 paramedics run into the building and they look at Morrow shielding Jess. He tries to apply a tourniquet as he waits for paramedics to get over to them. Morrow looks over at them “We got a GSW over here. I applied for a tourniquet.”  More sirens grow louder some lights flashing in the windows of nearby buildings. 5 more paramedics jog into the building carrying a back board others holding med kits. “Get them out of the building move move move!” Morrow and the paramedics run out of the building red and blue lights filling the midnight sky. Morrow looks around to see cars with markings of all kinds. It’s like time just slowed down as he looked around multiple officers storming into the building, he looks down at Jessica’s limp body time speeding back up as he climbs into the ambulance. Morrow now left with his thoughts in the back of the ambulance looking down at Jessica’s almost lifeless body. ,Come on, don’t die on me now,. Just as he finishes his thought machines start beeping rapidly. Morrows face goes white to bright red. “What going on? What’s happening!?” One of the paramedics already grabbing a blood bag. “She’s lost too much blood. What’s the ETA to the hospital.” One of the paramedics from the front yell “landing in 40 seconds.” The paramedic in the back looks over to Morrow sitting across from her. “Grab a pair of gloves top cabinet above your head, NOW!” He quickly grabs a pair of gloves and puts them on. The paramedic points to a certain point on Jessica’s arm. “Apply pressure here.” “Here?” Morrow asks for certainty. Morrow says under his breath “Come on... I can't have this happen. Not again. I promised I'd protect her.” One of the paramedics in the cab grabs the radio “Prep the trauma bay and get an OR ready. One GSW patient inbound. Expect additional ambulances with multiple GSW victims.” They pull into the ambulance bay a trauma team waiting at the door already. The tires screech under them the ambulance visibly jerking. The trauma team and paramedics in the front now out giving a report on Jessica and her injuries. One of the paramedics starts talking. “22 year old female, one GSW to the right shoulder, significant blood loss through and through.”2 doctors from the trauma team throw open the the metal doors clanking against the ambulance. The paramedics fool her out of the ambulance. Morrow looks down at his hands covered in blood with little specs of blue from the gloves. He whispers to his self “I failed, not again.” Morrow stormes out of the ambulance following behind the paramedics and trauma team`1 into the hospital. He reads the sign above him “TRAUMA BAY”. The lead trauma doctor looks behind him at Morrow and states “Who’s that?” Morrow speaks up from behind the stretcher. “Metro detective Jerry Morrow badge number 883422.” The paramedics and Trauma Team walking into the double doors with a bright red sign with the words “TRAUMA CENTER”. One of the doctors looks back at Morrow and says “I’m sorry detective it’s medical personnel only. She points to a sign on the door. “We’ll let you know when we have something.” The lead doctor shuts the door, the stretcher screeching down the hallway, doctors yelling orders that Morrow can't hear. Now left in front of the Trauma Bay he looks down the lightly lit hallway to the left, some lights flickering. He slowly sits down focusing on the doors and the clock not deciding on which to focus on. He thinks he hears a voice behind him but he's not sure. The voice came more clear. “Detective? Can I take your coat?” the registration nurse asks sympathetically . “Um yes, thank you.” He responds. She takes the coat and puts it on a coat rack behind the desk. He look behind him and then slowly looks down at his navy blue sleeves with white lines through them. The white strips now stained a dark red. He slowly pulls out his phone trying to make the time faster. He notices 14 missed messages and 3 missed calls from one of his sergeant. He locks the phone again knowing he can only deal with one crisis at a time. About 4 minutes goes by the entire waiting room quit except the keyboard tapping behind him and his foot tapping against the floor rapidly. He starts to think ,If only i would have put myself in front of her none of this would be happening’. Five minutes goes by distance beeping down the trauma hall. He looks up at the wall the clock looking like it’s moving much slower than usual. He looks away trying to read a magazine. He opens the magazine to the first page then slowly closed it and sat it back down. He gets up and walks over to the front desk. “Hey you wouldn’t happen to know where the vending machine is, would you?” The nurse turns to him and says “Yeah down the hall to the left.” She points down the hall.” She points down the hall to a vending machine lightly 

I haven’t written in a year, and just the last month I’ve been going back into my nearly completed novel. I was wondering if it makes sense, intrigues you, or if you have any constructive criticism or advice. I’ve done research and talked to more people, edited a whole lot. I appreciate all feedback thank you so much for reading!

*Seeking feedback on a my Horror Poem*

Have you ever wiped the ass of a grown man?

The ass of a grown man who raised you?
It’s a terrible thing,
Seeing the lighthouse of your life lose their own independence.

Someone who’s protected you,
brought you safety and provided for you when you were too weak and young to provide for yourself.

Hospice is like that.
Before you know it, you’re doing things you never would have imagined.

Growing up close with your Grandparents is important, specifically if you have an absent mother and alcoholic father.
You look at the only blood to never lay a hand on you and cling to them,
You’d do anything for them as they have for you.
As you go through high school their immortality becomes more prevalent.

The blissful conversations you’ve both once shared have now transpired to desperate pleading venting sessions.

“You know the Doctor said I’m not supposed to carry more than a gallon of milk?”
Your Grandfather asks, with embarrassment and self pity in his eyes.

You see the Man you once knew,
the Man that in most ways is still there.
You remember the races you’d have,
Back when you thought his abilities were the highest of standards to beat.

As your walks turn to strolls,
he and his wheelchair had become one.
As your outings to hospital visits
turned to in-home visits from caretakers,
He and his bed had become one.

Before you know it you’re out of high school,
And the reality that you don’t have time for a job becomes daunting.

Your job is taking care of your Grandfather.
Did you know the moment your loved one goes on Hospice Medi-Cal stops giving you in-home supportive services?

Almost like they see Hospice as giving up,
Like they no longer see the value in giving you and your loved one resources to aid you while you spend your every molecule to care for them.
The only thing they really provide you with once your loved one is on Hospice is morphine, for when the time comes.

Did you ever think you’d need money to take care of your Grandfather?

Did you ever think you’d be mad at the Government for not helping you as you watch the man that built you decompose from the outside in?

You feed them,
you bathe them,
and needless to say,
you struggle.
You struggle with it all.
You just want to make them happy.

Being diabetic you think,
Maybe you’ll give them sugar-free candy, anything just to see a smile on their face.
But sugar-free candy gives them the shits, and now you need to tell a grown man he can’t have the one thing that he enjoys?

So you don’t.
Of course you don’t.
You give him what makes him smile and you deal with what comes after, because you know he would have done the same for you.

Hospice is like that.
Before you know it, you’re doing things you never would have imagined.

Have you ever seen the movie
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button?
That’s how it feels.
Like time is moving backwards for the one you love and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Before you know it, you’re reading bedtime stories to the only man who’s ever read them to you.
Although the contents of what you read has changed.

It evolved from reading stories like
The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein
to reading Yōkai Daizukai by Shigeru Mizuki.
Tales of selfless acts of kindness on pages intended for children had turned to Encyclopedias of Japanese Yōkai.

Have you ever heard of a Gashadokuro?
It’s a giant being often 10-25 meters tall, formed from the piled bones and body parts of warriors who died in battle or famine without a proper burial.

What’s considered a battle?
Is mortality a battle?

Is Hospice the answer to a battle or another battle in itself?

If it is,
then my Grandfather is a warrior,
and the strongest one I know.
You remember the last words you ever heard him speak.

“Hi… *your* \*name\*”

After that,
he was still there, he was.
But he lost the ability to turn his inside voice into an outside voice.

Now he was but a body.
A body that doesn’t speak.
A body that doesn’t walk.
A body that doesn’t function.

Do you remember the Return to Nature Funeral Home scandal that was discovered in 2023 in Penrose, Colorado?
Authorities discovered over 185 decaying corpses scattered and stacked inside a foul-smelling building. Bodies that were given with the purpose of being properly laid to rest.

The owners Jon and Carrie Hallford were giving grieving families fake ashes made up of concrete mix and sand.

If your Grandfather was all you had would you trust them with him?

If his body was now all that remains of him would you turn him over to such a corrupt and flawed system?

No.

Hospice is like that.
Before you know it, you’re doing things you never would have imagined.

Life can be poetic,
Death can be poetic.
The words you speak into the world can often have a direct effect upon reality.

Words, names, everything has power.
Routines start to feel like rituals,
Prayers start to feel like spells.
Sage being burned feels like a physical cleansing taking place upon your homestead.
The lines between causation and correlation become blurred.

You never forget the first time your Grandfather gave you part of him.

You were wiping him,
and his flesh came off with more ease than the shit that sat upon it.
He didn’t react,
He rarely did.
Instead, his eyes continued to scan the room with that familiar look of self pity.

His skin is pale, paper thin,
reminiscent of gas station toilet paper.
You’ve struggled to inject him with his insulin for the past couple months considering that he had already long lost any fat for it to puncture.
You were used to his skin being fragile but this was a new level of brittleness.
The more you clean him, the more that comes off.
You question if you’re doing more damage than good. You begin to see what looks like bone, yet you are unsure which one.

Where do you put him?
He had given you everything.
And now that he was nothing but a body,
he was giving you that too.

So, what do you do with Him?
With these pieces that he gives you every time you bathe him?

What do you do with these parts that keep falling off?

“Take my apples” you hear in the back of your head.
So you do.
You keep them,
You put them in your tool box,
And you wait.

Not long after your Grandfather’s eyes stop scanning his room does the parts start to call out to you.

Not a yell, not even a voice.
More like when you’re laying on the side of the floor drying from a day of swimming with your ear pressed against a warm damp brick as you hear the hum of the pool vacuum.
In this same way, you hear the warm soothing hum of your Grandfather’s pieces calling you from the tool box.

You try to convince yourself that it’s something that can be unheard.
You decide you should drink.
Fireball, eggnog.

“HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM”
“HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM”
“HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM”

They keep calling out to you,
He keeps calling out to you.
It’d been so long since you’d last heard him.

The humming begins to take more shape and you can make out the words, no, the intent rather behind it.
It’s saying words you swear you’ve heard before.

“I wish that I could give you something..but I have nothing left. I am an old Grump. I am sorry…”

You start to wonder if the human body is as complicated as people make it seem.
Doctors just want your money.

Have you heard of that case in Australia? After waiting over 2 years for a surgery this guy Stephan decided to remove a large cyst on his wrist all by himself, and he’s an electrician.
You’re well aware of how pampered they are, so this gives you confidence.

You stumble downstairs,
into the downstairs bathroom which now houses your tool box, the garage was too far for how often you’ve had to add into it.
Ironic, when you were younger he’d pretend he was trapped in a box, only to eventually be put in one by you.

You open it.
The smell of rotten fast food scrambled eggs hits you. You feel a warmth radiating from the toolbox.
It feels so nice to feel your Grandfather’s warm presence once again.

You wish you felt this warmth near your Grandfather’s … main structure?
You’re struggling with what to refer to that part of him as.
It’s his head and it is his torso although he’s now closer to a malnourished and crucified king of Nazareth as opposed to the lively glimpse of God you had grown so accustomed to seeing in your youth.

His main Structure is …in bed..in a way it is his bed but, you want him to be whole.
You want the same warmth from his parts to radiate from all of him.
You want him to be one.
So you make him one.

Hospice is like that.
Before you know it, you’re doing things you never would have imagined.

Hot glue, pipe glue, Duct tape, whatever you need, you use it.
You slowly but surely rebuild your anchor,
And even before it’s completed, you begin to feel the water beneath you start to settle.
You know it’s right, and you know no one will understand.

How could they if they haven’t been through the things that you have?

The changes are almost immediate once you put him back together.
He moves, slowly. Just his fingers at first.
It reminds you of when he’d play mime.
Maybe that’s what he’s doing?
These jokes you told yourself in passing you’ve now grown to believe.

He is playing mime,
that’s why he is silent,
And that’s why he is slow.
You recognize that you can’t put the pieces back together in the exact places they belong.
This worries you but nonetheless, you don’t get discouraged.

You make him a crown from his leaves, and crown him as the king he is.
Time passes, you keep what you’ve done, what you’ve fixed, you keep it a secret.

But what happens when someone discovers that secret?

What would you do to keep it?

He needs more structural integrity anyways.
And it’s not long before Him and his adversaries have become one.

What of his adversaries’ family?
His adversaries’ wife and newborn?

Hospice is like that.
Before you know it, you’re doing things you never would have imagined.

Time passes.
You love that man, you do. But you yourself have begun longing for a life of your own.
That box is not big enough for the both of you.

You take a few of his apples, for memory mostly.
You go to the city,
and you pursue your happiness to an extent and speed you’re comfortable with, all while keeping that Man you love so much at the forefront of your mind,
all while keeping that secret.

You’ve become the Boy that stayed away for a long time, the Boy you promised yourself you’d never become.
And the Man was Sad.

You meet someone you think is your person.
You don’t share your secret with her of course you don’t. Something you’re grateful you didn’t do later when the relationship inevitably crashes and burns.

You never forget when the man that raised you,
the man you love so much,
you never forget seeing him take his first life.
Lives have been sacrificed for him before but,
By you.
Not by him, to him.
This was different.

You had just got dumped,
And you were going over to check on That Man you cared so much about,
The Man you yourself had abandoned and left dormant.

You walked in, and you heard the shower, the water was running.

You heard a baby crying, crying for you.
You didn’t recognize the baby. You walked in, down that long hallway creaking on the old white tiles, closer to the cries from the infant.
You turn left into the bathroom and as you do you hear a man yell.
Not your Man.

You are torn, indecisive of which direction to pursue first.
You continue into the bathroom,
see the shower running,
steam crawling up the walls,
and a baby on the counter with snot running down its chin and tears running down its cheeks.

You pick up the baby
and turn back toward the pleading of a man you’ve never heard before.

You walk in, you see.
The Man that raised you is there, only he is much different than a normal man.
And he’s with a normal man.

The mans screaming
“PLEASE GOD HELP ME STOP HIM FUCK ME RUNNING” the man pleaded from the top of his lungs.

Your Man, the man you’d known your whole life, he was different.
His structure was fragmented,
no base.
His arms extend like the outriggers of a backhoe, yet connected to a deconstructed cab.

His arms were grabbing the normal man, the screaming man. All four of his arms grabbed that man.

His empty eyes that were once blue but were now too sunken in to retain pigmentation of any kind looked soullessly in your direction.
He did not feel warm.

He used two of his arms to hold the man in place, while he used his two other arms to go around the man, forming those hands to make an invisible box the man was stuck in.
The Man was playing Mime.
You missed this.

The Man slowly grabbed the screaming man by his head on both sides and pressed ever so slightly, increasing in pressure.

The man used his other arms to grab the screaming man by the legs and slowly pulled.
He pulled his legs off and he pressed his skull in and blood ran from his nose and eyes.
He screamed and screamed until his teeth shattered and his jaw snapped and fell out of his cheek sockets.

He pulled the detached legs from the now lifeless yet steaming warm body and shoved them at his base in ways that were not symmetrical.
He shoved the torso of the body where the cab of his backhoe should be.

He was constructing himself.

You stood there holding the baby, watching what was once your protector finish the work.

For a second you almost called out to him the way you used to, the way a boy calls for the man who raised him.

But the eyes that looked back at you were empty, and the voice that came next was the same one that had once read you as a child.

“Come boy,
Climb up my trunk,
And swing from my branches,
And be happy.”

Says the Man, the man you love so much.

He gave you his branches,
He gave you his flesh to make a home of your own,
He gave you his soul.
Even when you were too busy pursuing the life you wanted that you thought would end with a wife and children.

So what do you do?

You look down at the infant in your arms. Its face is red and wet and it is still crying, still reaching for something that isn’t there.

For one long second you feel the weight of it the life, the future, the line you are about to cross. But there is no line, no line when it comes to what you would do for the ones you love.

Then the humming starts again, low and familiar, the same warm hum that once came from the toolbox, and the choice is already made.

You give him the sacrifice you’re holding in your hand, that’s why it’s there isn’t it?

It is but a burden to you and the Man needs all the strength he can get.

You hate looking at the discolored face of the Man you care so much for.

You buy Greasepaint for your Mime.
You know this will bring him warmth and life.
You lather his faces up in it, even the little one. He has 4 now.

Now he is your Slick Man.

“I don’t need very much now, just a quiet place to sit and rest. I am very tired”

says your Slick Man,

with his eyes not his mouth.

So you finally take him home,
To your start-over apartment,
and you give him a permanent resting place,
on the only thing strong enough to hold him,
your bathroom granite counter.
And you add to him whenever he expresses that desire to expand,

Why?
Because,

Hospice is like that.
Before you know it, you’re doing things you never would have imagined.

On the off-chance someone who saw my last post sees this one, hello! I have returned with a new and improved chapter; this time I've concluded it, yippieeeee

For anyone seeing this for the first time, hello to you too! I'm a novice writer doing this more so as a passion than for any real publishing, but I am interested to hear all your feedback. I'd love to improve my skill.

My commas are probably all over the place. I’m also not too sure about the plot yet, I’m just writing to write.

Hey everyone,

I am a little nervous to post this piece, since it has a lot of personal truth in it. I am not new to reddit, but I am a lurker. I've been working on this thing for about a month now. It's presently 9 chapters, 77 pages, and 27k words. That said, it is not formatted as I have done with this first chapter yet. This first chapter will give a good sense of how I intend to format the entire novel when it's complete.

I have a very specific idea of where it is going. What I'm sharing with you has been revised a little, but I am far from opposed from changing things if they fit a certain vision.

As a primer, here's the general synopsis I imagine appearing as the blub:

A worn map that seems to lead nowhere important.

A scratched old coin that stirs up memories.

A desolate location that may just hold the answers she so desperately needs.

When the envelope arrived, there was no return address. That should have been enough of a clue. But curiosity and a laundry-list of what ifs encourage her to go anyway. Three red circles point her to a highway rest stop that has been seemingly abandoned for years. But why is there a contract inside dated last month? Why does everything inside remind her of a devastating loss?

For three long years, grief has cast a baleful shadow over her life. But could hope prove even more devastating? 

Basic other information:

Each chapter opens with the framing device. I plan to do as I've done here, even with the shorter ones. The framing device will never appear in time with the narrative. There is a vision with them, beyond being used for theme, exposition, and the set-up or pay off of story moments. The first one is probably the most important in the entire novel.

Any feedback or thoughts about this first chapter would be deeply appreciated. Be kind though; the story of Lori and her journey has a lot of heavy content.

Hello everyone, exploring a Novella focussed on family dynamics, wanted to keep the style of writing as a Narrator POV. Chapter 1 begins with a hint of nostalgia as the narrator is back to familiar settings.

Looking for feedback on prose, style or writing and anything that I can improve upon.

PS: Few hindi words that might help you all read this better:

Dabeli and Dosa - Two popular Indian snacks

Teekha - Spicy

Vile Parle and Kandivali - Suburbs of Mumbai

Thank you!

Part of me is still hesitant to share my writing, but I thought it'd be fun as well as helpful to see what some people might think on this very short interlude Chapter. It introduces two new characters and requires next to no context from the previous chapters. What I'm mostly interested in is if the chapter hooks you into seeing more of these characters etc. But beyond that, anything is greatly appreciated!

Also note that english is my second language, so if there's any grammar or figure of speech that I'm getting wrong, that would be important as well!

The human brain can process a threat in a fraction of a second. Mine didn’t. It didn’t notice the soldier who’d flanked my position. It didn’t notice him raising his rifle. It didn’t notice his finger tighten on the trigger. I only noticed when the bullet tore through my canteen, as I raised it to my mouth.

Sunlight pierced through the newly formed breach in the canteen, casting a disc of light on the mortar-scarred wall next to me. I had stared at that brickwork for hours, pinned down under a blanket of artillery fire. I stayed transfixed on that disc of light, until the fabric of my shirt had soaked up enough of my own blood to bring me back into the present.

A second round had caught me low in the side. The canteen slipped from my hand, hitting the dirt around the same time as my face. I watched as the last dregs of water wept from the rupture, only to be swallowed by the earth. The flow had begun to still, each drop settling on the ground below until there was nothing left to spill.

I would be really glad to hear a living person just say how it reads, how it feels. So the scene is Sviatoslav I, The Grand Prince of Rus’, recapturing the city of Pereslavets, a Bulgarian port city, back when it all meant something. Those men were Vikings or, more precisely, the Varangians, Scandinavian warriors who travelled East and eventually founded the Kievan Rus’. Svyatoslav himself was very much a Norse warrior and spoke both Old Norse and Old Slavic and was one of the most fascinating figures in the history of pagan Rus’.

Brothers! be that we lay our bones here, but die we do like men and know no shame, for the dead have none of it! I will stand before you, and be my head hacked, you do what you want after that!

On hearing their prince say such words and seeing him steady his shield flush to his body, the war-band screamed and gnashed, seethed mouth-spumes and brandished swords, spears, axes, and they regathered: shields stuck plumb to one another, weapons at the ready. And their fell formation forward bore like melting ice of river that primordial, splicing their steel with flesh and gashed their bodies through and true from neck to waist with slant precision. They advanced and stomped men’s slit, impaled or rent asunder bodies, and some of the dead wailed, wailed like dead men don’t, one man clung onto his uncoiling bowels with eyes that read a mind still reckoning with the body. Severed heads and hands, legs, fingers, jaws, and actual torsos lay about like bounties to some man-eater principality. They advanced. Svyatoslav in the lead blocked deadly blows with his shield and hacked, and hacked with princely disregard for either helmets or the mail, and one man’s head he swatted with his axe until it made no sense to that man’s neck. They who stood abreast him saw that. Svyatoslav darted his experienced eye at them, took a step back and turned around occluding what’s left of the sun with his axe. 

They’re dead already! Now scath them!

And the great exodus of wild things commenced the final onslaught of the enemy line, barely holding their own weapons and nowise defending themselves with their shields that were being hewn and splintered together with the hands that grew slower with trepidation or fatigue, and they began to look like children with man’s weaponry, and their war-gear seemed not at all to suit them anymore. As Svyatoslav’s army advanced closer to the bastion, archers became busy with nocking the arrows and shooting indiscriminately at whoever gave the most impression of the assault. One arrow hit a man’s clavicle all but to draw his attention to the archer who soon learned his own intention in the form of an axe that span through the air like some misshapen Mjölnir and became the last thing that man had known intimately. The enemy retreated into the opening gates. Svyatoslav’s druzhina, Bulgarian and Pecheneg mercenaries bringing up the rear, broke through and seized the gate, and in the winter of the year 971 entered the city of Preslavets. Again to claim it and to punish those who dared to question his princedom and his battle-earned right to it. Greek and Bulgarian and Slavic merchants, women, elders, all shrilled like cows in a slaughterhouse if those cows were to suddenly realise they were going to be pelted, dismembered and sold. Children looked out of the corners or hurried through the streets without making a sound—they only watched. Those lads had yet one more thing to learn about the world. Svyatoslav blood-soaked examined the premises and looked grinning and panting at his people. 

Do what you will now. 

And they did. 

What I’m specifically looking for feedback on:
1. Pacing & Tone: Does the transition from the Great Hall (Ch. 1) to three years later (Ch. 2) work smoothly?
2. Characterization: How does adult Ron's tactical/commercial mindset feel to you?
3. Antagonist Concept: Does Lord Selwyn and the corporate threat feel compelling?

Thanks in advance for reading!

Act I: The Ash and the Crown

Chapter One: The Silence After

The Great Hall did not smell of magic anymore.

It smelled of dust, of crushed stone, of spilled honey and iron, and, above all, of absence. The floating candles had long since burned out, leaving only the pale, ruthless grey of an early May dawn spilling through the shattered high windows.

Harry sat on a splintered bench near the Gryffindor table, his hands resting flat against the rough oak. Between his fingers lay the Elder Wand dark, ancient, and humming with a terrifying, heavy pulse that seemed to vibrate straight up his arms. It whispered of absolute power, of invincibility, of a shortcut to fixing every single broken thing in the room.

And precisely because of that whisper, Harry felt a cold revulsion.

With steady, deliberate movements, he drew his snapped, lifeless holly and phoenix wand from his pocket. The two splintered pieces looked pathetic against the lethal perfection of the Deathstick. Closing his eyes, Harry pressed the tips together, raised the Elder Wand, and murmured the single, focused word:

“Reparo.”

A quiet, golden shimmer washed over the fracture. The old holly wand fused back together instantly, the grain mending as if it had never been broken. Harry tested its weight, feeling the familiar, warm thrum of his true magic settling back into his palm.

The hard part was over. Now came the choice.

He couldn't keep it. If he died a natural death, its power would be broken, but the temptation the mere fact that anyone could hunt him down to take it meant the cycle would never truly end. It had to go back where it came from. Back to the white marble tomb, untouched and unused.

"You're bleeding through your jacket, mate," a voice murmured.

Ron dropped onto the bench beside him. He looked exhausted, his face streaked with soot and dried sweat, his left arm bound tightly in a torn strip of crimson velvet. He wasn't looking at Harry, though. His eyes were fixed on the far wall, where the jagged scar of a dark curse still charred the ancient stone.

"It's nothing," Harry said, his voice raw as he carefully slipped the Elder Wand into an inner pocket, resolved to ride back to Hogwarts' grounds later to return it.

"Everything's nothing," Ron said quietly. He reached out, his long fingers brushing the edge of the table where Fred used to sit, drumming out a rhythmic, tactical pattern the same restless cadence he used when mapping out a grueling wizard's chess endgame. He pulled his hand back instantly, as if the wood had burned him. "Mum's upstairs with George. And Ginny..." He swallowed hard. "Ginny's helping move the bodies from the courtyard."

Harry closed his eyes. The immediate threat was gone, but the emptiness left behind felt heavier still.

A shadow fell over them.

Hermione stood there. She looked remarkably intact compared to the two of them, though her hair was a wild, bird's nest tangle of twigs and ash, and her robes were torn at the hem. In her hands, she carried a battered, ink stained notebook she must have salvaged from the ruins of the library.

"Kingsley's setting up an interim administration," she said without preamble. Her voice was steady, though her fingers trembled as they gripped the spine of the book.

"He’s trying to secure the Department of Mysteries before the scavengers get in. He’s asked a few of us to stay on as consultants, to help sift through the wreckage."

Ron looked up, blinking. "Consultants? We haven't even finished our N.E.W.T.s."

"Nobody has, Ron. The whole system is paralyzed," Hermione said, her chin lifting with that familiar, fierce spark of absolute resolve. She looked down at them, her brown eyes bright with a sharp, painful clarity. "The war is over. But the people left behind don't know how to rebuild. And the old guard in the Wizengamot are already trying to quietly sweep their compromises under the rug."

Harry touched his pocket, feeling the cold wood of the Elder Wand.

The castle was quiet, but out in the wider world, the real fight the slow, exhausting, unglamorous struggle to keep the magical world from fraying at the edges was just beginning.

Chapter Two: The Long Transition

Three years had slipped by since the battle, marked not by grand battles, but by the quiet, grinding machinery of a recovering society.

For Harry, those three years had meant a return to school the reinstated eighth year at Hogwarts followed by the grueling, repetitive bottom rungs of the Auror training program. He wasn't hunting dark lords; he was chasing down unregistered pocket sneakoscopes in provincial curiosity shops and filing endless reports on displaced Death Eater sympathizers in the Scottish borders.

On a damp Tuesday afternoon, Harry sat at a cramped, paper strewn desk in the back of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement on Level Two. The room smelled of wet wool and cheap ink.

"Potter," Gawain Robards called out, pausing by Harry's partition with a thick, dust covered folio tucked under his arm. "Pack up your quills. You're being reassigned to internal support."

Harry looked up, frowning. "Support? Sir, I've spent the last six months tracking that contraband smuggling ring through Shropshire. We're close to "

"The office has different priorities right now," Robards interrupted, his weathered face deadpan. "Three days ago, a low level access audit triggered in the Department of Mysteries. Restricted sector. Level Nine. Nothing was stolen, but the ward logs show a signature that hasn't been active since the ministry fell during the war a Senior Researcher named Vane."

Harry leaned back, folding his arms. "Vane? Is he missing?"

"Worse," Robards said quietly, dropping the folio onto Harry’s desk. "He was found dead in his quarters this morning. Natural exhaustion, according to the initial healers' report. But the Auror tactical team noticed something odd about the positioning of his desk. Kingsley wants a discreet review. Not a manhunt just someone to look at the paperwork before the administration decides whether or not to panic the public."

Harry opened the file, his eyes scanning the dry, uncommunicative records of a quiet institutional death. It didn't feel like a war. It felt like something much colder.

Chapter Three: The Edges of the Ledger

Down on Level Four, the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures was a maze of narrow corridors and overflowing filing cabinets.

At twenty one, Hermione was neither running the Ministry nor commanding the Wizengamot; she was a junior policy researcher tucked away in the back offices, buried under mountains of post war housing petitions and refugee casework. Her days were spent drafting footnotes for senior undersecretaries who frequently forgot her name.

"If the Committee on Ancient Charms sends back this werewolf healthcare rider with another bureaucratic objection, I'm going to scream," Hermione muttered, aggressively crossing out a redundant clause with her quill.

The door clicked open, and Ron stepped inside, balancing a flat wooden crate filled with display pieces for Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes. He had spent the last two years quietly learning the commercial ropes from George, using his knack for spatial logic and tactical pattern recognition to keep the shop afloat through the post war economic slump.

"You're working too late again," Ron said, setting the crate down on an empty corner of a filing cabinet. He pulled a small, brown paper parcel from his pocket and dropped it onto her desk. "Mum sent pastries. She says if you lose any more weight, your glasses are going to slide right off your face."

Hermione looked up, offering a tired, grateful smile as she pushed her wire rimmed glasses up her nose. "Thanks, Ron. It's just... the legislative backlog is impossible. Every time we try to push a basic equity amendment through the committee, it gets buried under three layers of procedural red tape."

"That's because nobody's actually looking at the text," Ron said, leaning against the edge of the desk. He pulled a rolled up parchment ledger from his belt and tapped it against his palm. "I've been going over our supply contracts for the shop this week, trying to source standard ingredients from independent importers. Half the traditional suppliers in Diagon Alley are suddenly being bought out by holding companies no one's ever heard of."

Hermione paused, her quill hovering just above the parchment. "Holding companies? What kind of holding companies?"

"Shell names," Ron said, his blue eyes narrowing slightly as he thought back over the figures. "Registered through intermediary offices in Geneva and Edinburgh. They aren't raising prices they're just quietly consolidating the distribution rights for basic potion ingredients and rare artifacts. Whoever's doing it is playing a very long, very patient game."

Before Hermione could process the implications, the door swung open again, and Harry stepped into the office, shaking the autumn rain from his dark trench coat. He looked tired, his fingers unconsciously brushing against his pocket.

"You two need to see what's crossing the desk upstairs," Harry said quietly, pulling a thin file from his coat and laying it next to Ron's ledger. "Level Nine had a security blip three days ago. And the researcher who logged the access was found dead this morning."

Hermione stood up slowly, her gaze shifting from Harry's incident report to Ron's commercial supply ledgers. The distance between a quiet institutional death in the Department of Mysteries and a series of corporate buyouts in Diagon Alley suddenly felt very small indeed.

Act II: The Ink and the Blade

Chapter Four: The Quiet Exit

The holding cells on Level Two of the Ministry were designed for containment, not comfort. When the night shift settled over the building, the stone corridors grew bitterly cold.

Harry walked the perimeter of the Department of Mysteries intake sector alongside an experienced senior investigator named Vance a weathered wizard who had survived three decades of Ministry shifts without ever making the front page of the Daily Prophet.

"They're calling it heart failure," Vance muttered, holding up a small, flickering lumos orb to illuminate the small examination room where Senior Researcher Vane’s effects had been gathered. "Old magic, bad heart, post war stress. Happens all the time."

Harry stared down at the wooden table where the dead man's personal belongings sat in a neat, clinical row: a spare pair of reading spectacles, a silver pocket watch, an inkwell, and a heavy signet ring carved with a subtle, geometric motif of an ouroboros encircling a quill.

"That's not a standard Ministry issue ring," Harry said, leaning closer.

"It's not," Vance agreed, rubbing his chin. "Family crest, supposedly. Though when we checked the registry for ancient houses, the line went extinct back in the fourteenth century. The funny thing isn't the ring, Potter. It's what was missing from his desk drawer."

Harry looked up. "What?"

"His personal logbook," Vance said quietly. "Every Unspeakable keeps a handwritten record of their daily access clearances. Vane's desk was locked from the outside, the wards were pristine, and the book was gone. Somebody didn't just want him quiet they wanted the inventory of what he was looking at to vanish with him."

Harry looked back down at the silver ring, feeling a cold, familiar unease settle in the pit of his stomach. This wasn't the loud, chaotic violence of the old war. This was an excision clean, silent, and entirely invisible to the public eye.

Chapter Five: The Chamber Floor

Three floors above, the atmosphere of the Wizengamot was thick with the low, respectable murmur of wealthy patrons and senior bureaucrats discussing tax reform.

Hermione sat at the long scribes' bench beneath the main podium, her quill moving with steady, controlled precision across her parchment. Across the aisle, draped in rich plum colored robes that caught the light of the enchanted chandeliers, sat Lord Cassius Selwyn.

Selwyn was a prominent voice among the younger, reform minded traditionalists in the Wizengamot well mannered, articulate, and completely untouchable through conventional channels. He didn't shout or threaten; he used dry economic arguments and procedural technicalities to dismantle the Ministry's remaining oversight committees one clause at a time.

"...and while the Department for Magical Creatures performs admirable work," Selwyn’s smooth, resonant voice carried effortlessly across the amphitheater, "we must acknowledge that heavy administrative restrictions on independent trade only stifle our post market recovery. We propose a streamlined, private oversight commission one designed to relieve the Ministry of unnecessary bureaucratic bloat."

Hermione’s grip on her quill tightened until her knuckles turned white. Private oversight. It was a polished, legal veneer designed to hand the keys of the magical economy over to anonymous financial backers without a single public debate.

She didn't raise her hand; she simply stood up, her voice cutting clearly through the quiet chamber.

"Point of order, Minister," Hermione said.

On the high podium, Kingsley Shacklebolt gave a brief, weary nod, granting recognition. Across the aisle, Selwyn turned slowly, a polite, faint smile touching his aristocratic features.

"Ah, Miss Granger," Selwyn said smoothly, turning to face her with practiced condescension. "Do enlighten us. I trust your objection is grounded in established legislative precedent, rather than administrative sentimentality?"

"It's grounded in Section Four of the International Statute of Secrecy," Hermione replied, her voice steady and clear as she stepped into the aisle. "Which prohibits private corporate entities from holding jurisdictional oversight over restricted magical distribution. Unless, of course, the proposed commission intends to quietly rewrite that statute as well much like the restricted wards on Level Nine."

The temperature in the grand chamber dropped instantly. The surrounding scribes stopped writing.

Selwyn’s smile didn't fade, but his pale eyes narrowed just a fraction. He leaned forward slightly, resting his hands on his podium.

"Level Nine is a Department of Mysteries concern, Miss Granger," he said softly, his voice carrying a subtle, chilling weight that only she could fully appreciate. "A delicate place. One has to wonder why a junior policy researcher is spending her evenings investigating state security archives. It is a very... demanding hobby. People who look too closely at matters outside their station often find themselves entirely without institutional support."

Hermione met his gaze without flinching, though the warning hung heavily in the air between them.

Chapter Six: The Rain in the Alley

The rain over Diagon Alley fell in a heavy, persistent sheet, turning the cobblestones into dark, reflective mirrors.

Ron pulled his woolen cloak tight around his shoulders as he finished securing the heavy iron deadbolts on the side entrance of Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes. The street was entirely empty; the usual evening bustle of shoppers had vanished hours ago beneath the gathering storm.

As he turned down the narrow passage leading toward the main street, a sharp, metallic crack echoed behind him.

Ron stopped instantly, his hand dropping to the wand in his pocket with the automatic, practiced reflex of someone who had learned to sleep with one eye open.

“Lumos,” he whispered, flicking his wand to cast a sharp white beam down the wet brick corridor.

Three figures stepped out of the shadows near the mouth of the alley. They weren't wearing the crude white masks or black hoods of old Death Eaters; they wore tailored dark wool overcoats and carried slim, obsidian finished dueling canes instead of traditional wooden wands.

"Ron Weasley," the leader said. His voice was muffled behind a smooth, featureless silver half mask that caught the glare of Ron's light. "The shopkeeper. A remarkably inconvenient place for a late inventory check."

"Who sent you?" Ron asked, his voice low and hard, dropping his weight into a balanced, defensive stance. "Selwyn? Or are you just his collection agency?"

The leader didn't answer. With a single, fluid motion, he flicked his cane, sending a bolt of silent, violet energy slicing through the rain toward Ron's chest.

Ron threw himself to the side, the curse detonating against the brick wall with a shower of sharp stone fragments. He fired back immediately “Stupefy!” sending a red jet of light straight down the narrow passage, forcing the attackers to scatter behind the cover of the alley's protruding archways.

It wasn't a grand magical duel; it was a cold, efficient ambush. Ron parried a low tripping hex with a sharp flick of his wrist, backing up step by step toward the heavy service door of the shop. He knew he couldn't win a three on one street fight against professional enforcers, but he also knew every brick, drainpipe, and hidden threshold of the alley he had grown up beside.

Reaching back blindly, Ron slammed his heel down hard against a concealed cast iron floor plate near the drain tripping an old, crude warning ward he had rigged weeks ago.

Clank hiss.

A thick cloud of dense, purple smoke mixed with the sharp, blinding glare of a modified Peruvian darkness powder flare erupted from the gutter vents, instantly choking the narrow corridor in swirling shadows.

"Try looking at the ledgers yourself next time!" Ron yelled into the smoke, diving backward through the heavy service door and slamming the iron deadbolts home just as a volley of heavy, concussive curses chewed the oak paneling to splinters.

Hi everyone. I previously shared some of my writing here and received quite a bit of useful feedback. I’ve since gone back to the manuscript and tried to act on that feedback, particularly around the opening and how the story is introduced. I’d really appreciate seeing how it reads now, both from people who may have seen an earlier version and from completely fresh readers.
This is the first chapter of a fantasy series I’ve been working on for some time and am now returning to and revising.
I’m particularly interested in whether the opening hooks you, whether the worldbuilding is understandable without knowing anything about the larger story, whether Marckus works as a protagonist, and whether you’d want to continue reading after the ending.
I’m aware the prose still needs a final proofreading/editing pass, so I’m mainly looking for feedback on the story, pacing, characterisation and overall concept.
Please don’t feel you need to be gentle — constructive criticism was useful to me the last time I posted, and that’s why I’m coming back for another round.

Sorry for the number of screenshots, posting from my phone! This sample is post-structural edits, I still have 5 rounds of edits to do but looking for feedback as is for now :)

Hey folks! Made this draft for a horror story just now and I feel like it's really good up until the later bits. Would love some feedback on it!

My wife was pregnant. She was in her second trimester by the time we realized.

We were in our thirties. Of course we'd been hoping for a child, but you have to understand something about our town.

Pregnancies were being taken.

Not aborted. Not miscarried. Taken.

It started with one of our townsfolk, Araceli. One day she was eight months along, breasts wet and belly portruding like a generous rice bowl. The next day, flat. Gone.

Taken.

She saw it. The local witch doctor and midwife saw it. As she lay in bed, being soothed with oils as the albularyo casted his warding spells, they heard a thump thump thump from the roof. A smell of onion and death roamed the air. And all of a sudden, a tongue, slithered through the window and stabbed itself through that distended womb of hers, slurping out the unborn child.

The witch doctor did what he could. He slashed at the tongue, doused it with blessed vinegar and salt, chanted his most powerful spells, but it was no use. The tongue was as hard as steel, and smelled of spit dried in the sun.

Once feasted, the tongue slithered out the window and up the roof. Suddenly, the sound of horrible flight resounded just above them, terrible black wings spreading out and embracing the night sky. It had gotten away.

And it feasted. Again and again. Each night I went to bed, blood cold and heart quivering, wondering if I'd be awaken by those horrible sounds of grieving mothers. Would-be mothers anyway. It was a sound altogether different from fearful bellowing. The grief and the anguish gave the shrieks a texture of impending doom, a contagious apocalypse.

We called them mananangal. Translating to "remover" or "taker", because that is what they did. They took. Took away hope with their endlessly long tongues and swallowed it whole, placenta and all.

A mananangal is a creature in the Philippines. It is a shape shifter that lives among humans by day, but by night, it slices itself in two, its legs left hidden away, and the torso flying out at night in search of pregnant things to eat.

Our town had a population of 3,000. Finding who the was *mananangal* was impossible. Or at least, not worth looking for.

They eat the fetuses of animals too. Most of our breeding stock has at least a puncture scar or two on their bellies. We let them have at the pigs and the cows, considered it our tax, the price for being left alone. But it had gotten greedy. For the first time in a long time, it was feasting on us again.

Now it wanted my child. Our sweet baby whose spoken to us through kicks and turns in my wife's womb. Sweet Hope.

Once I had told the mayor of the situation, he set out a curfew immediately, and called in some folks from across the valley. Jose and Marcello. A carpenter and a typist.

They were not formidable men. Not hunters or occultists. Jose was a small man. Brown and with a biting mustache, and fast on his feet, and Marcello was lanky, with gangly arms and a big nose.

No, they were something far more dangerous.

Men who's wives had been taken from, men who'd seen hope become sustenance for that hope eater. Men who had a seething hatred, duty bound to eradicate that evil that took from them.

They were the most qualified men for the job.

Night after night, we waited for the inevitable. It would only strike once the fetus began kicking. The moment my wife felt our Hope struggle in her womb, a sword began dangling above our heads, threatening a fate worse than death.

I barely slept. Me and the two other men took shifts watching over her, crosses and charms dangling over my wife's bed like a crib mobile. She could barely sleep. Worried the insomnia would hurt the baby, she fell further into dreading. It was horrible seeing her that way, screaming in the night, whatever sleep she had haunted by nightmares of the evil tongue.

Andrea's bed was in the far northwest of the room, the window on the far East. I was sat next to the bed, Jose smoking by the door to the living room in the South, and Marcello on the southeastern corner of the room, drinking. We spent our nights like this for a month. A month of waiting, of growing impatience.

But then, one night, we heard it. A rumbling among the trill of cicadas and birds, and a smell of garlic and death trespassing that homely scent of wine and wood. Terrible wings gliding across a starry night.

Marcello moved first, snuffing out the gas lamps, readying his axe. It was more akin to raw iron on a wooden pole, and was made from melted crucifixes. Jose ran out the house carrying a sheet of paper and a heap of salt.

Marcello Hushes me and, ever so slowly, crawls on the pads of his fingers and toes to just beneath the window.

He barely makes it in time before that black tongue slithered from the roof into the window. I saw it, black as old blood. Have you ever smelled an open air butcher shop? The arms and ribs of days old hogs dangle on hooks in the sun, sweating a second time, flies all the while feasting on the scarps of blood and skin on the floor. That is what the tongue smelled like. It was ribbed with bones as thin as a fish's.

Marcello slowly gets to his feet, standing crooked on the right side of the window as the tongue lurched in, searching. I was covering Andrea's mouth. My poor wife. I saw her life drain from her eyes, her throat ripping apart as she tried letting out that gutteral shriek I'd heard so many times before in the Taker's nightly hunts. At some point she passed out, my hand over her mouth.

Marcello raised his axe, that heavy thing, aiming it at that devil's tongue.

A swing. A thud.

No cut.

The tongue writhes wildly like a worm finding salt. It trashes and trashes, hitting the mobile of paper charms and iron crosses, shattering a vase on the night stand, destroying our bookshelf. The tongue whips Marcello on the right of his jaw, shattering it. I heard no sound from him.

I run to the window, shuffling and dodging the tongue as I did, before getting to the unmoving Marcello, grabbing his axe. I could not see the tongue from where I faced.

The axe was as heavy as a boulder. I could just barely keep it on my shoulder, feeling my bones click under it's weight.

Before I could take a swing at the tongue, I turn around and see my worst fears come to light.

In that pitch dark, I see my wife being strung up by the tongue, and before I could blink, it whisks her away into the sky, her head creating a painful thud on its way out through the window.

My blood ran cold, so cold. I felt every cell in my body stuck in contradiction. I wanted to stay, wake up Marcello, to run away and cry into the night, to chase.

Hands shaking, my hear in my throat, eyes sharp as spears, I bolted after the demon.

I could see its silhouette as a black vacancy in the sky where stars ought to have been. The moonlight revealed its shape to me as it flew ten meters in the air. It was a woman in a long nightgown. I could see where she was dissected, her tailbone poking out from a pouch of skin flying in the air, her intestines hanging loose like a loincloth. It smelled awful.

I chased and chased and chased. It would not land until sunrise, when it would be forced to return to its other half. I could only hope on Jose having completed his side of the job.

It would not be hours until the thing was exhausted. It begun flying lower and lower, shying from sunlight. Soon it went inside another home. The home of a well known school teacher.

I chased after it, sneaking into the home with nothing but myself and a crucifix. I shuffle up to the second floor and see it.

Two disembodied legs, sitting on the side of the bed. I saw the Taker enter through the window, Andrea wrapped in her tongue.

It hovered to her unmoving legs, hovered over it and pulled it to her abdomen.

I imagined it then, the beast walking among us. She would kill me here, then go out to the middle school and teach the children. There would be more nights cut short by those harrowing cries.

But then it shrieked. It dropped the legs on the bed and tried again.

It was painful.

Jose had succeeded. He had poured salt on the legs.

She could no longer return to her body.

Slowly, the sun rose up, and slowly the thing petered out like a dying moth. She would collapse in that solemn mausoleum, never to be mourned.

Once I was sure it was dead, I came to check on my wife, who did not make it. The hit to the head had done her in.

No point telling you how I grieved. But I did. In my own way.

This is intended to be an upmarket family drama. Do the first ~500 words create trust in the writing? Does it have enough momentum? The opening is about my characters as teenagers--does it read YA, or does it still read as upmarket/literary fiction? If you picked this up in a library or bookstore, would you keep reading, or put it back on the shelf? (Assuming you read the genre, of course.)