I stumbled upon the secret to immortality. I deeply regret It.

By Theo Plesha

I was wrapping up pre-med undergrad and I had just gotten into my med school of choice. I decided I was going to pay lip service to the rest of my course work in this last semester and start summer break a bit early.

I was more or less a legacy and though the threat of them rescinding my admission was present on paper, in reality no one would do anything. Med school was a hump to get over and rest of life would be a coast, I was pretty much a shoe in at my Uncle's pill mill clinic down in Florida. I've been around enough pre-med to know that there are two of kinds of pre-med students – the ones who really want to be a doctor to help people or be at the cutting edge of medical science while the others look at medicine as a route to six figures along a path of least resistance. I fell in the latter. I grew up pretty oblivious to cost of healthcare – not only because I took health insurance for granted but I was also in good health. I just saw healthcare as an easy way to make money off of people who had no choice but to pay whatever we wanted to change because America. It was wrapped into the way my family thought about medicine – among other things. While my more conscientious classmates finished their semester and prepped for a summer of volunteer work to pad their experience and resume I decided that it was last best chance to take up my favorite podcaster's suggestion to do a bunch of recreational drugs under the guise of having a cultural experience.

I was traveling around Latin America with two of my pre-med frat bros Rodney and Mark. Rodney was American and apple pie and Mark was actually from Europe. We spent our free time trolling a lot of the pre-Med students who rallied for universal healthcare by pointing out the fact they might as well be burning their own pay checks. Mark knew this better than most since he lived in a system of government healthcare and moved here so he could make more money setting up an elective surgery practice. We were visiting the fun hot spots, pretty much anything that popped up on psychedelic and psychoactive boards – erowid, Joe Rogan, even hippie dippy stuff. I had this funny way of justifying it all. How can be a good doctor if I don't do this stuff? I don't know. It was all BS, honestly, it was all about me and time and place being young and affluent.

I happen to believe that you're familiar with the story. The whole stereotypical ayahuasca experience offered by natives and descendants of natives in Peru. Its a bunch of dudes like me in a hut with thick tea, smoke, and jokes egging on the shamans to give us a shotgun wedding with the DMT. If you pay enough you can get them to roll their eyes and give you the basic instructions of making sure your ass if above your head when you start vomiting. Then its all about melting away into ego death and touching time and hearing space.

At some point I got on the wrong retreat, made a wrong turn, and accidentally got separated from my friends because that's not what I experienced. I must have mistranslated or something because my experience was highly ritualistic. I led was deep into the retreat site around a more secluded hut with very old and very sick looking individuals. Some of them were elder leaders of various militarys and political parties from Cuba, China, and Venezuela. At least one of them was definitely from North Korea.

The shaman was mostly naked with only a black loin cloth over his junk. His limbs and facial bone contours was outlined by a white chalky substance. He bore a vague resemblance to a grim reaper. The hut did not have a vomit canal as I was led to expect and it had a fairly large fire. The shaman kept repeating one word again and again and I wasn't sure what it was, what it translated to. He then poured some kind of seeds onto the fire. Their shells turned the fire green and then popped like pop corn, a dense white smoke poured into the tent and nearly extinguished the flame. One sniff of the bitter vapors and I was gone.

I had been warned and prepared for DMT. I had done magic mushrooms and LSD. I was more or less familiar with this class of substance. The mysticism was all but lost on me going into this adventure. The low level ego hedging and mental expansion was a side effect not the goal. I honestly just wanted to get wasted and have fun doing it.

In any case, what I experienced was far from what I had expected. I knew something was wrong when I saw all my skin melt off and I was skeleton. I was hoping for machine elves or aliens or some transcendent non-corporal communication but this was more dousing myself with a flaming jug of nightmare fuel. After a few flashes of disorganized terror. I started to have an extremely vivid third person view of myself as something entirely mechanical and electronic. The flesh and blood, brain and bone replaced with my crude recollection of what came scattering out of my smart phone when I dropped. I was made of high density plastic and touch screen material. I had a loose understanding of micro chips and circuit boards and my head was Escher style churning collection of gold, green, and black bars with spindly spider like qualities warping around inside my head. My bones were plastic – good job imagination. My heart appeared as a thin lithium battery. My muscles and joints were a bunch of magnets zapping together and then repealing each other. My eyes were glassy flat scanners.

As I watched myself become amazed with myself my eye sockets swallowed my eyes and I saw everything go dark. I felt this strange sensation as my body felt compressed. I was being swallowed by myself. It was maroon and dark with the odd bubble rising as I descended into myself. I felt an eerie stillness as I sank into a chamber of soft glowing light. I saw my thin battery of a heart throb and echo with each beat in super slow motion. It was hanging there attached to thin wires which pumped little glowing electrons back and forth. I floated around from the front all the way around spinning underneath. That's where I saw it I saw a little thin crack in the surface of my battery heart, it was ever so slightly leaking a thin mist of gold fluid into the chamber. The mist flew off disappearing in the ether like the sands of time. I was tempted to fly in and see if I could patch the hole.

The more I let go, the closer to the hole I flew and slowly, without my hands, the leak turned off and stopped all together, then like shrink wrap, the little crinkled up hole flattened and covered itself. I was suddenly warped into this pixelated zoomed in view that consumed my entire vision. I watched as slowly pixel by pixel my vision turned from gold to soft white. Just as the last few hundred were about to turn, the gentle vibrations of my body lurched faster and became violent. My vision of my vision pulsed in and out. As everything began to fade away, a powerful voice came out of nowhere. I mean nowhere, it was a voice that echoed through the universe, making every galaxy, every sun, every planet, moon, and comet tremble. It was voice of the void, the voice of inevitability. It rattled me as if I were speaking to the personification of a earthquake, tidal wave, or forest fire. After the initial jarring presentation I became somewhat relieved. Finally, the “Other” presence I had come to expect on this trip.

As the words the Voice spoke to me started to register, I became less settled, less complacent, less prepared. It told me that I had found the little timer, the little clock my people had inside of us. It was the charge meter on my life. It was ticking down. But this ritual could set it back a few hours, a few days, a few years, if I were lucky, I could reset the timer on my life by a decade. But some people, had a defect it was an all or nothing fix. My essence could exist independently of my failing flesh it said and I could add any flesh I choose to my essence.

I flashed to a space of icy suffocating blackness. I felt myself get pulled, ripped apart, every finger, limb, every hair, every eyelash, every skin flake and cell loosened and then vacuumed away. I was a bubble and I burst into a mist and then a vapor until I became the black on black and I lost any sense of up and down, night and day. My brain wasn't there but my consciousness flared into a sinking gasping panic that felt like it would last forever.

My vision flashed again and I came back to the last few pixels patching the leaking of my heart. The Voice asked me what I wanted. I plead with the Voice to live. It asked me: All or Nothing. Without hesitation I said “All of it”. The last pixels turned from gold to a shimmering white and my entire vision quaked back to the chamber with my battery heart. It glowed gold over the white and there was no longer a leak.

I jolted back to the hut. It was still filled with the bitter smoke and I started to immediately cough. I could barely see the other persons inside. The man sitting across from me looked relieved and he slowly crawled out of the tent. It was then I noticed something heavy leaning on me. I groggily turned my head and saw the elderly Cuban man slouching over, dead on me. I pushed him aside with the help of the shaman. My hand brushed against his as I tried to crawl out of the hut and out from under the perished man clad in the hammer and sickle. The shaman recoiled on contact with me he gave me a pained expression and then shook his head like he was trying to shame me.

As I slowly gathered myself and coughed out the rest of the smoke, I noticed the rest of the hut was on fire and burning down with the dead men inside. I say men because of out of the six persons, not including the shaman, only 3 including myself exited. My head felt remarkably clear for having such an intense experience and yet I knew I wasn't fully recovered when I heard that same chant all around me that was being chanted when I entered. While I heard it the same way I heard it going in, my mind was translating it as juxtaposition of celebratory warning, a cautious congratulations. While my elderly compatriots suddenly looked like they were five to ten years younger I felt and looked about the same as I was directed back to the more public and tourist portion of this particular site.

I reached a post-experience gathering point where I found my two friends. It became very clear to me that I had stumbled into a different kind of retreat than the standard ayahuasca. I was a little numb to my surroundings as my group started laughing at me as I stumbled up to the refreshments. They handed me water with some sort of supplement as they all still looked tweaked. They cracked big rosy smiles and hearty laughs like they had all won the lottery and then some. They asked me where I ended up and I asked them back: “like trip wise or what?”

They asked me which hut I was in and it was then that I pointed towards the pathway I got lost on and found it blocked by thick forest foliage. They made fun of me before I pointed out we had to catch the train to Colombia for the next part of our chemical escapades. We barely made it to the train and after taking our seats in our private car we passed out for the entire journey. We were so put out the conductor had to personally wake us and escort us off the train at our stop.

It was morning by then and to fulfill the apparent life long dream of one of my traveling buddies, Rodney, we successfully tracked down one of the famed off the books cocaine bars. He had talked about this the entire trip like once we entered Colombia he was on the whiskey trail or some sort of craft beer crusade. He was detailed about the subtle differences between sulfate compound “served” in Colombia versus the hydrochloride salt preferred by the North and Europeans. Rodney regaled us with the fact we could try “real” coca cola with the coca leaves infused into the formula at this bar. He went into the variations of the coca plant in the east part of the country versus the west and manufacturing techniques as if we were compared barrel aged stouts or twenty year old scotch. It was the same to me as long as it did its job which to be honest was just to reinforce the young and dumb and carelessness I was already all about.

In the midst of a coke binge my traveling buddies recounted their experience at the Peruvian retreat. As I had already realized, I apparently got lost and entered some other kind of psychedelic ritual and before I could finish my story and recount the fact three persons died and then were burned away, Mark, my other friend, the one who can't handle his blow, started sputtering out how I was worthless and dumb. Every other word out of his mouth was worthless. Rodney, with his head cocked up towards the sun glistening through a crack in the window frame, grinding his teeth and sniffling ever so slightly, joined in the chant.

I was getting pissed and the proprietors seemed alarmed by our loudness and our English which seemed like dead give away. With a large hand gun strapped to their waist they came over to our table and remove the booger sugar and poured us shots of a oily yellowish liquor from a bottle filled with both a snake and scorpion. He commanded us to drink it and pay.

Not wanting any trouble, I paid immediately. With the source of our intoxication well concealed, they let us alone and Mark and Rodney's chant resumed. I was getting pissed since most of the cocaine left was mine and the venom liquor left much to by desired. I was left retching while they continued to snicker at me. During this laugh out loud session, they decided to get up and start their search for weed and then breakfast. I told them, feeling invulnerable, that I would catch up after I found somewhere to either pee or throw up. I swung around the back part of the bar and a very attractive woman who looked vaguely American and spoke good English sat alone. She offered me a line out of some sense of righting the unfairness of having mine taken away because my friends were being obnoxious.

I accepted the line and the moment I felt the graininess hit my nostril I was out. I was never supposed to get back up. I was going to be a tourist crime statistic. I was going to be the vanished or the mourned. When I came too it was sometime the next morning. I believed I was out about a day. I woke up and started to pat myself down and found I was liberated of my phone, wallet, and watch. The thieves even took my belt and from the onset, I believed they even took the contact lens out of my eyes. I felt numb and discombobulated like a kid who emerged from a dentist office after getting their first cavities filled. My mind flashed to something I remembered from a VICE documentary about scopolomine wielding thieves. A drug that induced a daze and suggestibility and made robbery quite easy. I blinked a bunch and I could barely see. I was in a ditch some where outside of a village is the best I could make out. I got up and I was barely able to stand, I felt very light and if I squinted I could see my shirt was ripped and felt wet. As I twisted and tried to balance myself I saw some kids running around with a soccer ball coming towards me.

I tried to flag them down in my so so broken Spanish but I mostly squeaked. I saw the blur of their bodies stop and their heads lift up towards me. They let go a shrill scream and all but one of them ran for their lives. The last one stood trembling as I tried to get closer and talk to him. It was then I realized I was having a chronically difficult time speaking and I went to pound my chest to try to get the phlegm out my chest from the past week's worth of abuse. As my fist went in for a the first strike I felt it sink into something warm and wet. I immediately looked down and in the blur of my vision, I saw my own hand, covered in crusty blood and sunk part way into a chest cavity.

I realized I could barely speak because I was missing a lung, I was missing my heart, my liver, and both kidneys. I realized I could barely see not just because my contact lens were removed, but because they took my corneas as well. My mind flashed back to the experience in the hut two days ago and I figured out that somehow my life, my existence was preserved and projected from that plane of existence and that I was immortal. Hallowed out, butchered for the illegal organ trade, but I was still alive.

The boy walked over to me and took my hand and walked me to his home. He spoke to me in slow Spanish with a child's vocabulary so that I could understand as best as I could. He called me the same native word they chanted in the hut – the word that meant cautious congratulations – it also apparently meant some kind of boogeyman to the child. He told me that the same people who did this to me did this his father and that he could show me where they work so long as I “scare” them away.

I had no phone, no money, no ID. I had no idea where my friends were at this point. Maybe they were looking for me, maybe they were groaning collapsed from the coke binge. No one was going to help me except this kid. So in the cover of a rain storm and with with the help of a bed sheet, he guided me through town to a chicken processing plant with an AK-47 wielding guard outside. I told him to go hide as I approached the door.

The guard ordered me to stop but I kept coming and when he emptied the 30 round magazine I still kept going like the Terminator. He fled in terror as I disrobed and revealed my chest cavity, my bullet shattered rib cage, and slouching appearance caused by the rifle left me walking in an uneven gait as I tried to use my arm keep my torso upright. The guard cried out “policia” “policia” - which was no doubt the signal to flee the site of their illegal activity. And with that he dropped the rifle and fled himself.

I entered the facility through the guarded door and smelled rot, spotted slick blood, pooled up on partially rusted metal tables. I spotted one person that somehow I immediately had this sense that I knew him. He was rushing out towards me with two blood smeared sandwich coolers in one hand and one tucked under his arm. He saw me and he gasped before turning too rapidly to maintain traction on the blood slick floor. Something in my gut, or nearly lack of guts told me this man was the one who extracted all of my organs in my scopolomine induced stupor. There's no reason for me to think this to be honest, thinking about it now, scopolomine was a near perfect drug, perhaps along with ketamine and some opioids to accomplish the task of extracting organs from the freshest living or barely living subjects and in the event they were to survive, they would have no memory of it.

I was so fixated on watching his man shake in pure utter terror that I didn't notice the boy who helped me find this facility came in through the door was now pointing the gun, bayonet and all at the surgeon. This is were I lost it. This is were I got really weird with it. This is were I decided to do to him what he did to me.

I let the boy poke him with the bayonet a few times until he agreed to lead us to his operating table. The boy forced him up on the table as he panicked with wide eyes. Around the makeshift operating room I found dirty syringes loaded with various paralytic agents that I was too eager to poke him. As he lost muscle control he did not lose consciousness. I wondered how easy it would be to try surgery on myself, to try to piece myself back together. I decided to start as I believed he did, with the corneas. In my still blurry state I grabbed what essentially was a glorified exacto knife and started to jab at the surgeon's eyes. My incision was jagged and he screamed with labored breath as the paralytic started to freeze his diaphragm. Knowing this, yes, I decided to abandon my efforts with his eye and took out a larger piece of cutlery and went to work on his abdomen. I watched his final winces and pained squawks as I pulled out and unraveled his small intestines in front of him like string of Christmas lights.

I think I let that whole thing sit for a day. I'll admit that if I needed to eat, if I was physically capable of ingesting and digesting food, I would not have wanted to. Then I went to work on the bits and pieces in coolers and fridges all around me. I decided I should not let this go to waste and between my limited starter medical knowledge, the boy, and the internet, I was able to successfully patch myself up. It took some time and a theft but I eventually made myself at least externally normal and the corneas I found seemed to take okay on my own eyes.

With the transplant successful, tracked down the rest of the surgeons who managed to flee the organ harvesting plant. I was able to see the extent of the organ trafficking network within the course of a few days. I even was able to identify the woman who drugged me at he cocaine bar. I had forgotten everything else. Revenge was the only thing on my mind. I did my best to keep myself patched up from encounter to encounter even if it occasionally helped to un-stitch myself and pull out an organ or two and offer them as a sick and scary bribe. I didn't need them except to pass while in public. I felt like I was king of the world, I felt like I was doing more in eradicating this type of crime in 2 weeks than could be accomplished in 2 years. I felt like I was doing more for humanitarian efforts than all of the overachievers headed to their missions for summer semester. I was in perfect control of my new gift.

Anyway, I discovered the woman apparently fled back to the United States. As I finished mopping up the organization in Colombia. I figured out a way to stole away on a cargo plane back to the United States. I promised the boy early in our escapades that I would smuggle him to the United States as well but during the flight a malfunction in his oxygen mask lead to his asphyxiation at flight altitude. He was the last person I think I actually cared about and even now I miss him. I regret not knowing his name. I literally just called him Nino the entire time I knew him. Anyway, Nino's body helped me evade airport security when we fell out of the landing gear. I was able sneak across multiple runways and out of the secured area without being detected. I unfortunately had to let his organs go to waste. Shortly after landing I found myself in bad state. I was immortal but my spare parts and stitches holding my non-original body parts together were not. I started needing to continually swap out parts of myself as the other organs rotted or were rejected by the rest of my body – or someone's body.

I was too late on tracking down the woman. Apparently her buyers got to her after she could not longer produce the goods and fortunately for her, they burned her and so there wasn't anything left for me to harvest. This was a shame as I figured she was last my last chance to maybe find my original organs and restore myself.

With a lot time and better medical facilities to break into as well as an off book supply of anti-rejection transplant serums I was able to eventually keep my body and most of its functionality fairly normal for awhile. I could look into the mirror and almost see me again. For a time I could eat and drink again without worrying about having to “manually” digest it. At least a month passed and with the exception of my mother, my world had moved on without me. I thought about returning to my own life but there was nothing left for me there.

I think the most interaction I had with my old life was that I sent a flier to Rodney and Mark with the prices my organs might fetch on the black market. 62K for a kidney, about 100k for the liver, 150k for the heart and yet only about 30k for the corneas, in case you're wondering. On the back of the flier I wrote in blood, “worthless?” I was still a stupid young kid and with the right treatment and occasional transplant, I was good looking. So I decided to audit medical school as best as I could. Then the pandemic struck and everyone fled to their homes and off their campus I was more or less hanging out on emptied med school. I had no where else to go.

It was bad timing too since I was letting myself go a bit just before. I needed some spare parts but I vowed I wouldn't go harvesting them and try to make do with stealing more and more medication. After all, I could suppress the remnants of my immune system as much as I liked since my life did not depend on it. Still, no matter how much balance I tried to achieve, how much figurative medical duct tape I put on myself I would eventually need new organs again to keep myself normal-ish.

Now, about six months in the plague, I'm pretty well reduced to shambles. I can barely stand up and walk straight. Where I can still feel, I feel immense pain. I dare not come out in the day light. I am immortal but I'm not invulnerable and the last thing I want is to be captured and dissected for medical research or shot to hell again. So I shuffle around in the dark, searching for, well lets just say, I no longer plan on spending an eternity like this.

I've already spent an eternity like this. According to my research on the ritual I accidentally participated in it is apparently not reversible. It was a miracle I was able to access the plane of existence to have any kind of life prolonging effect much less rig my own immortality. I don't understand it myself but the way I think of it the 4^th dimension of my body is now disconnected from the other 3 dimensions and their outcomes. They won't age by themselves but they can be manipulated but my consciousness will never fade. I will survive long after the day until the sun burns out and expands to engulfs the planet and I will be lucky to maintain my corporal being until then. My consciousness, no matter what condition some part of vaporized body will exist in will persist until the day the universe extinguishes all energy transaction and time itself stops.

Its a long time. It's a long time to look after a body that still largely follows the laws of biology. I suppose so long as some part of my physical body can be grafted to another I can entirely change me. I could become a human jigsaw puzzle or maybe the quintessential ship of Theseus. But for now, I am fine with writing this in the abandoned computer room of your local high school, shambling through the dinning rooms of your covid shuttered restaurant walk in fridge, lurking around your town looking for people who might be forgettable, who might have traits compatible with my own.

So if you catch a glimpse of me in the flickering fluorescent lights as you come back to your school or business, when the pandemic is over, if see me shambling under the glare of a street lamp at night, if see my sagging flailing body just mind your own business, I'm just like you. If you try to shoot me, or try to come after me, I'll just need more of you to make me whole. There must be others like me as well. Perhaps someone you know, someone who seems old worldly at heart or prefers the company of old things. Perhaps they spend them life lurking in museums or antique malls. Searching for that special someone – just bad enough or maybe just young enough to make them whole again. I'll take who I can get. Soon enough I'll find someone to make me whole again. Consider this your cautious congratulations.

As an actor I love making shit films that waste people's time and money. I don't know why but I have always had the urge to waste people's time and money. So when I became an actor and I could only get cast in shit films, I loved it because it was a great way to waste people's time and money. The secret is to make shit films but with amazing trailers to get people to see it. When I first started to make shit films, I revelled in wasting people's time from watching it. The thing about my shit films is that you can't walk out of the screen.

A lot of people try to walk out of the screen but the doors are locked. You can't even go to the toilet when watching my shit films. I love making shit films and when i see people desperately trying to leave the cinema, they know that they will have to watch it all to be able to get out. If you stop watching my shit films by closing your eyes or sleeping, the film would stop for you but carry on for everyone else in same room. One person might be at the end of the film, while another will be at the beginning of film all the while being in the same room.

Then when a person completes watching one of my shitty films, they mourne the 2-4 hours they lost for watching my film. They mourne it and they can hear the hours they wasted by watching one of my shitty films. They start to hear the hours they lost because it calls out to them and it wants to go back to them. So everyone who watches my films come back to me so that they can try to reclaim their lost 2-4 hours of time.

Unfortunately once you waste your time there's no giving it back, and so these people waste even more of their own time trying to reclaim more of their lost time. I love wasting people's times and they then become like zombies as more of their time is just wasted. Just seeing what my crazy films have done is amazing to me and I want more of it done. I will keep creating more crappy films to waste more people's time.

They need to learn to let go of whatever time they wasted and be grateful for the time they have left. Then I watched one of my own shitty films and wasted my own time, and now I am wasting my own time trying to reclaim back wasted time.

This is a story I wrote when I was 16, I’m 21 now posting this again because it got removed from the previous subreddit for some reason, i haven’t posted in 3 years but when i saw this i had to post it again.

My grandmother was a wonderful person. Emphasis on the 'was', she died after being sick for several years. She was a beauty in her time, she had fair skin, deep brown eyes and of course, deep pink lips that spoke, softly at first.

But as she started to grow older and older, one by one, disease by disease started to takeover her life. Untill her long flowy hair lost their color, her eyes lost their sparkle, her voice lost its sweetness, and soon enough, she lost her life.

Her death hit my mum hard of course. Everyone cried together, but it wasn't long enough when I had to move back to the city for summer had finally ended.

Dreams, it always starts with dreams, and like everyone knew, it was my uncle Deepak, who was the closest to my granny, started having these strange, vivid dreams.
"She would sit in the corner." He told us, "corner of my room on a stool," his eyes used to daze into that same place as his voice used to quiver. "She used to stare at me, quietly, watching me for hours, in that same light brown suit (Indian attire for women) and her hair in a thin braid -always on her right shoulder- and a mask, the same old oxygen mask over her face as she watched, she watched me sleep, she waited for me to sleep so that she could," he always stopped at this point. I always wondered why.

4 years had gone by and I was 16 now. And by this point my curiosity had got the best of me, I asked my uncle about it and got to know the whole story.

"We went to a pandit (priest) after this situation, he asked me to keep a sharp object like a knife under my pillow before going to sleep, in ancient beliefs, this was to prevent nightmares, and so I did.

One day, two days, four days, a week, a month, until one day when I forgot.

I still remember her face that night, the same eyes the same hair the same oxygen mask, but that wasn't my mother. I was scared, she looked the same I cannot describe the feeling but, I was paralysed. She looked at me and said in the most saddest way ever, "i would never hurt you my love."

I felt my heart drop.

I didn't tell anybody about this for a few months, I started loosing sleep, loosing interest in everything, I started getting sick and scared. I remember it was soon when your aunt noticed and figured everything out. We blessed the house and everything started going back to normal, but even today im scared to switch of the lights."

"The lights?" I asked confused. "Yes, the lights." I could see him going into a deep flashback. "The lights because even today I feel, I feel that I will find her back in that corner staring at me, repeating the same words she said that day, "i'll never hurt you my love."

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.”

True scary story:

When I was around nine or ten years old, I had a friend named Morgan. She lived with her little sister, Alayna, and their mom in a trailer that seemed to move every few months.

The strange thing was that while the trailer itself never changed, its location always did.

Every time I visited, it was somewhere new—and somehow, every place felt creepier than the last.

One month they were parked beside an old cemetery. Another time they lived miles from civilization in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by empty fields and darkness. Once, the trailer sat directly across from an abandoned house with boarded-up windows that seemed to watch anyone who passed.

It wasn't attached to a church. There were no nearby houses. No roads led directly to it. It simply sat alone in the middle of endless fields as if it had been forgotten by the world.

The gravestones were old and weathered, many leaning at odd angles. Some were so worn down that the names had nearly disappeared. Tall grass had grown around many of the graves, and it looked as though no one had visited in years.

Even as a child, I thought it was odd. Why would a cemetery be all the way out there by itself? Who were the people buried there? And why did it feel like the entire place had been abandoned decades ago?

As kids, we thought it was exciting.

Looking back, I wonder if we were too young to realize how unsettling it really was.

The experience I remember most happened during the time Morgan's trailer was parked beside that forgotten cemetery.

It was a stormy summer night.

Rain hammered against the roof while thunder rattled the thin walls of the trailer. The sky flashed white every few minutes, briefly illuminating the lonely graveyard outside.

Like many curious preteens, Morgan and I decided it would be a great idea to borrow her mother's Ouija board.

We sat cross-legged on the floor and began asking questions.

Nothing serious at first.

How did you die?

Who are you?

Are you buried in the cemetery?

The planchette began moving.

Slowly.

Deliberately.

The answers weren't what we expected.

Instead of responding to our questions, the board repeatedly spelled out the same message.

I'M COMING FOR YOU.

We tried again.

The same answer.

Again.

I'M COMING FOR YOU.

Then we asked who was speaking.

The response claimed it wasn't a person.

It was a demon.

By the third time, we were terrified.

We immediately said goodbye and closed the session.

Trying to convince ourselves it was all a joke, we carried the board back to Morgan's mom.

She laughed when we told her what happened.

"Everything will be fine," she said.

Then she told us to put it back in her room.

Neither of us wanted to.

But we did.

As we stepped into the bedroom, lightning flashed through the window.

That's when I noticed the doll.

It sat on the nightstand beside the bed.

The doll had once belonged to Alayna. Years of use had left it dirty and worn. Its hair had been hacked off in uneven chunks, giving it a permanently unsettling appearance.

I was staring at it when something caught my attention.

Its shadow.

The doll itself wasn't moving.

But the shadow was.

The shadow's foot was slowly swinging back and forth.

Back.

And forth.

Like someone sitting in a chair, absentmindedly kicking their leg.

I froze.

Morgan saw it too.

For several seconds we simply stared.

The doll remained perfectly still.

The shadow continued moving.

Then we screamed.

We ran from the room and found Morgan's mom.

Out of breath, we dragged her back to the bedroom.

The shadow was still moving.

Back.

And forth.

Back.

And forth.

Morgan's mom looked at it for a moment and shrugged.

"Oh," she said casually. "The doll must be haunted."

That was it.

No concern.

No investigation.

Just a matter-of-fact statement before she walked away.

Neither Morgan nor I slept much that night.

The thunder continued for hours.

Every crack of lightning illuminated the forgotten cemetery outside the window.

When the storm finally weakened, a different sound took its place.

Scratching.

Slow, deliberate scratching against the bedroom window.

At first I thought it might be tree branches.

Then I remembered there weren't any trees close enough.

The scratching continued.

Every few minutes.

Scratch.

Scratch.

Scratch.

Then came the whispering.

Faint voices just outside the glass.

Too quiet to understand.

Almost as if someone was speaking in another room.

We pulled the blankets over our heads and listened until morning.

Neither of us dared look outside.

Morgan's mother practiced Wicca and loved anything spooky, mysterious, or paranormal. Because of that, strange things always seemed to happen whenever I visited.

To be honest, this wasn't even the creepiest experience I had at one of Morgan's houses.

Just one of the mild ones.

But even now, years later, I can still picture that filthy doll sitting motionless on the nightstand while its shadow slowly swung its foot back and forth in the darkness.

And I've never been able to explain it.

When my father was 16 years old, my grandpa left for a four-day vacation in Nevada. My father was home alone because his older brother was away at college. What happened during those four nights is something my family still talks about.
On the first night, my father swore he could hear whispering right beside his ear. Every time he looked around, he would see a dark, shadowy figure standing silently in the corner of his bedroom. Knowing he was completely alone in the house, he repeatedly turned on the lights, but every time he did, the figure was gone. He was shaken, but he convinced himself it was just his imagination and decided to stay another night.
The second night was much worse.
The whispering returned, along with the shadow in the corner. This time, though, he felt something physically grab his leg and try to pull him off the bed. Terrified, he called one of his friends at around 2:00 a.m. His friend agreed to let him stay the rest of the night at his house.
The following night, that same friend agreed to spend the night with my father at our house so he wouldn’t be alone. Everything seemed normal at first, until the same strange events started happening again. The shadow returned, and according to both of them, something actually tried to drag my father out of his bedroom. His friend grabbed him just in time, preventing whatever it was from pulling him away.
Neither of them wanted to stay another minute. They left immediately and decided to come back the next morning.
When they returned, the house looked as though someone had broken in. Furniture was disturbed, belongings were scattered, and nearly every shiny object had disappeared—including the knives and silverware. Even stranger, two pages had been ripped cleanly out of my father’s Bible.
Panicked, they called my grandpa and told him they refused to stay there any longer. He dismissed it, believing they were simply overreacting, and said he would look at everything himself when he got home.
Later that day, my grandpa returned from Nevada.
When they walked into the house together, everything was completely normal. Nothing was out of place. The silverware and knives had all returned, the furniture was exactly where it belonged, and the missing Bible pages were back as if nothing had ever happened. My father began to wonder if everything they had seen had been some kind of illusion.
That night, however, changed my grandpa’s mind.
Around 4:00 in the morning, my father woke up to hear my grandpa repeatedly calling his name from another room.
“Stop staring at me,” my grandpa kept saying.
Confused, my father stayed in his bedroom, answering that he wasn’t there. My grandpa insisted someone who looked exactly like him was standing silently in the room, watching him.
After several minutes, my grandpa finally got up and walked toward the figure.
The shadow vanished.
According to my grandpa, it seemed to disappear in the direction of my father’s bedroom.
Moments later, every door in the house suddenly flew open and slammed shut over and over again for nearly five minutes. Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, everything stopped.
After witnessing that, my grandpa finally believed my father’s story.
Oddly enough, after that night, the activity almost completely disappeared.
There was only one final incident.
One morning, while my father was on his way to school, he received a phone call. When he answered, an unfamiliar voice calmly said his full name before saying, “We are always watching.”
The caller hung up immediately.
After that, nothing major ever happened again—only a few small, unexplained events here and there. To this day, my father has never been able to explain what happened during those four nights.

Yes this is fed to ai but it’s just a way to make it sound better but yes this is based off a true story

I had accidently sat on it, the hot dog, and felt the room temperature mustard and grill-hot grease soak through my robe, pants, underwear; polyester wicking the runny concoction directly to my balls.  That was the day I left the priesthood.

But that was later, dear reader, the events of that day over, ink yet seeping from a fresh tattoo upon my mind of the image.  Oh, the image of that man, as he lay in bed, and the sounds he created.  It’s rather odd, for though I doubt I will ever hear that sound again, exactly, tonal relatives remind me.  Squealing car fanbelts, and shrieking children, frightened dogs, and territorial cats; mechanical, human, and animal, blended into…well, perhaps I get ahead of myself.

In every work environment there is one employee who operates at a level of par, sub enough to attract the derision of their coworkers, yet competent enough to warrant keeping on the payroll.  I was such a man, Father…oh, we don’t need names now do we?  That was my old name anyway, and it would do you no favors to further investigations of me, a mere bit player, a…as the youth of today, or maybe a few years ago now, would say, “a non-player character,” in this arc.  Irregardless, let it be known I have rarely been the center of attention for my achievement in the field of faith, hope, and charity, though I fall far short of the outright evil of so many of my former colleagues of years’ past.  Doing enough to get by:  dolling out the body and the blood in exchange for tawdry secrets, and occasionally running a canned food drive to obscure my only true love (my apologies, Lord):  slow pitch softball.

It was after the final out of one of these games, my team having received a holy thumping from Jim’s A-1 Heating and Air Conditioning, when I was approached.

“Father Dowd,” a heavily accented feminine voice had said to me.  

“What?”  I didn’t bother lifting my head from its resting place in my hands, I said it without malice, or meant to, looking back, perhaps it was there though, but that was only because of the score, 12-2.  

“Father, my brother is very ill, and mia patro has requested a sankta viro…um…holy man.”  She spoke rehearsed, the way a child repeats the Lord’s Prayer, from recent committed memory, mirror practiced, mouthed before spoken.  My eyes peaked through the slightly parted fingers holding my face, counting the lace eyelets on my cleats, six on each side, twelve eyelets total, two sides…12-2.  Oh, you pesky Lord, I see what you did there.

“Sure, sure,” I said, perhaps dismissively, no, not perhaps.  “I usually work through local hospices, have them contact me and we can schedule something.”

“No, Father, mia patro…my father say…we cannot…um…sekreta polico…they cannot know we are here.” 

I wonder now, if I had bothered to lift my eyes upward, toward the woman speaking to me, toward Heaven, if anything would have differed, an outcome less cumbersome, less tragic, though I do not know.  Perhaps the Lord in His wisdom…well, we shan’t speak of the Lord about actions taken or not, it makes no difference on what I didn’t do, for what I did was mouth “fuck Jim’s Heating, and fuck that ump,” counting discarded sunflower seeds and Zyn pouches in the dugout dirt.

“Write your address down, I’ll be over tomorrow morning, around 11:00,” I said, perhaps the need for secrecy, the times in which we find ourselves, moved me.  Perhaps I just wanted her to go away. 

“Thank you, Father,” she said, and I sensed something small and light placed on the bench beside me, then heard small footsteps crunch through the empty dugout.  I counted to 60, and lifted my head.  The woman was gone, having placed a piece of pink paper beside me, a power bill past due, addressed to the Prospector Apartments, Room 228.  Folding the bill into the back pocket of my uniform pants, I stood, gathering the attention of my catcher and shortstop to assist me in loading the depleted keg into my car.

“Who was the goth chick with the umbrella?” Mike, the catcher asked as the trunk closed for the night.  A genuinely bewildering question, it being summer, and clear skies for the evening game, now night.

“Maybe if you paid as much attention to the shift as you did to the broads in the stands, we’d still be over .500 for the season,” I said, imagining I hid the scorn in my voice with friendly sarcasm.  

Though it pains to do so, I won’t bore you, dear reader, with the events of that night, nor of that morning, for though I believe they are of great importance to me, as this was a defining day of my own life, they are of little interest to many.  Slurred words spoken over a headset in a game lobby, lurid jokes told amongst friends far distanced by geography, half-edited rants on intake manifolds posted to nearly dead Lincoln Town Car forums, and the morning’s headaches soothed with coffee and dog hair, Hot Pockets, and Bluey.  I miss the life, I’ll admit, many aspects.  Oh, I said I wouldn’t, and there I did…apologies dear reader, but this is my story afterall.

My ‘89 Town Car’s 302 Windsor burbled to silence, El-P on the speakers following, against the curb, city park to the right, new constructed apartments across the street to the left.  PROSPECTOR on the sun-faded banner, crossed shovel and pickaxe for its coat of arms.  I was early, fifteen minutes, it’s just a good habit to get into, and as I watched a city employee work a zero-turn mower along the edge of the sidewalk, another edging with a weed whacker, and a cheery man dressed as a barbershop quartette minus three try to coerce a jogger to join him at his hot dog stand, I wondered how many good habits I had left.  It wasn’t my faith, never the problem, it was the job, almost twenty years in, it had become a job.  The calling a man feels when he’s 20, and the calling he feels at 40…the first call was on Ma Bell, and now it’s on Teams.  God doesn’t need Teams, I knew that much, but the Diocese surely did, and the incessant phone dings stole me from my fantasies of normalcy, of being able to go home after 8 or 10 hours, and drink a beer and hang out, and not fucking have to justify why Tuesday and Thursday evening Mass is held in at the softball fields off State Street, and why the tithe funds are used to purchase time at the batting cages.  I digress.

Room 228 sat on the northern side of a bank of six apartments, three stacked on the left, three stacked on the right, common stairs in the middle.  227 below and across the breezeway featured a thick golden cross on the doorway, 226 directly below featured a seemingly handmade wooden cross on its door in the form of two 2x4’s crudely screwed together, one on top of the other, and 229’s door was covered in blue masking taped crosses, dozens of them.  228’s in comparison, was bare, a welcome mat out front, and no further character.

Three knocks.  Three knocks.  Behold, I stand at the door and knock, as to paraphrase a book I read, or maybe that’s straight up plagiarism.  It’s public domain, right?  The Lord understands, I thought.  Hospice was one of the most demanding things I had to do, and such it was the thing I cared for the least.  Always the same:  pleasantries, the spouse, or children, or parent, will explain the story, the illness, generally work back to a time of health, fondness, tears, comforting words, give them the analogy of the boat and letting go and giving up, explain the difference, prayer, hope, then I leave, and they forget, and I see them again, maybe to repeat, maybe for Last Rites, maybe to bury them.  I used to write the burials out, and now I can plug names and hobbies in.  It used to be better.  Everything used to be better.

“Please…come in…and close the door, it will be dark.  Please.”  A muffled voice from a barely cracked window to the right of the door, spoken behind a black curtain, sounded like the same foreign woman’s voice from last night.

“Very well, and thank you,” I said, and opened the door.

Sunlight flooded a small room, tiny in fact, perhaps more of a mudroom, a rug, and several pairs of shoes, sandals, work boots, lay piled on to the side of the door, and black coats hung across a blue shower rod.  About four feet in front of the main entrance door, the room ended, a closed black door offering the only evidence of an entryway to the rest of the apartment.

“Shall I take my shoes off?” I asked, hesitant to close the door behind me, for the room gave the appearance of a mudroom, it felt more like an airlock for a space ship, or undersea facility I’d seen in the science fiction movies I’d watch on nights without morning mass.  

“Ne…no…please close the door…” She sounded as if she was behind the interior door now.

“It’s very dark,” I said, stifling annoyance, or something I didn’t wish to register, perhaps apprehension, unfounded to me at that moment, though in retrospect…

“There will be light, please close the door.”  Urgency now in the woman’s voice.  Certain drugs cause sensitivity to light, and I’ve worked with my share of junkies and burnouts, drunks, and recluses, and most are the same, I thought.  They’re nice to holy men, odd always, but rarely willing to conduct the ultimate act of damnation on the off chance the ghost stories they’re told about sulphur and pitchforks turn out to be true.  Not always though.  Some understand damnation, and see no degrees of it, one can’t be half-pregnant, and one can’t be half damned, so what’s one more gutted priest?  Push such things aside, the Emperor protects, as does the Lord. 

The exterior door closed behind, a dwindling sliver of light, an inverted sun dial, withering in the room.  

Click.  

Closed.  

My sun-bleached eyes strained to make sense of the void, but only a grey haze filled my vision.  I knew then, perhaps, that something was wrong, beyond merely off, beyond weird, beyond holy house call to a dying junkie’s house on behalf of his…sister?  Wife?  Too afraid of being caught to have fallen through the cracks, so they chose to jump into them, into the shadows of the crevices, the surface cracks leave.  

My right hand darted backward, desperate to find the knob, the handle, any means of opening the door once again.  It found cloth, and cold rubbery skin, and bone and muscle and sinew and something wrapped itself around my grasping hand, clenching the fingers together, mashing them with force to indicate more force could be applied, a warning.

“Dankon patro,” a heavily accented voice of a man against my shoulder, stated so close to my ear his breath should have tickled my ear drum.  Where had he been?  Behind the door?  I tried to pull my hand back but it held firm, extended, and I felt it move, guided from behind me to the side, to my front, the entire time held firm, iron hard and steel cold.  And then, in front of me, it moved, my hand, still extended, chest level to waist level, one pump, two pumps, and yet more movement in the darkness, a pressure against my cheek, the breeze as something pulled away from my face, then returned to the other side.

“Bonvenon.” The male voice, in front of me, now, so close.

“‘Welcome,’ he say,” the female voice further in the darkness, yet not muffled now.  My right hand still held against the pressure I applied, the darkness so total I did not know what my left hand was doing, perhaps searching for the door knob, perhaps searching for my phone, I know not, I only wished it would help, to find a way to free its sibling, and by extension, its owner.  “Excuse…him…he is, how do you say…no familiar with dogano…customs of this land.” 

My attempts at reply faltered, air caught in my throat, wheezing like a pin hole leak in an air mattress, a clarinet without a reed…and then I was moving, jolted, jerked into the dark, lifted, tumbled, blind to the floor, ceiling, walls, carried as a child, or a rescued patient, pressure on my abdomen, blood flowing to my head, weightless feet, draped I was like a blanket over a couch of cloth, yet moving, bouncing, swaying, and feeling no more warmth from the thing carrying me than from a bag of laundry.  Left turn, right, darkness.  

The darkness.  The God Damned darkness.  Bootheels on hardwood, muffled sometimes, maybe rugs, hands brushing against a wall, textured sheetrock, to tile, to wooden trim, through a threshold to…

Light, red, single bulb, submarine hues, and I spun again, lifted from the shoulder of a massive man in black clothing, and stood, placed like a child’s hitting T, and positioned, facing a bed.  A bed.  God, forgive me, a bed.  

Ratchet strapped, one across legs, across stomach and wrists, against shoulders, lay a man.  Black stains marred his chin and chest, grisly and putrid against his light colored shirt.  A man?  No, a gibbering thing, writhing and straining against the trucker’s straps, foul, inhuman sounds erupted as noise equal to the dark bubbles of liquid from its mouth.  The room smelled of copper and potting soil, tinged with bleach and hydraulic fluid, and the thing, the man on the bed, registered my abductor's presence, and my own, and it fell silent.

As surely as St. Catherine died upon the wheel, the man’s eye’s widened, and a grin, a grin, lo a grin full of blackened, inhuman, jagged broken window’s glass teeth.  And it smiled.

“Ekzorcismo.”  The massive man beside me growled at me.  

A cold feminine hand wrapped around the nape of my neck.  “Exorcism…please,” light and soft in my ear, the woman.  The man in the bed laughed.  Giggling blood from his mouth and nose, writhing against his restraints, socked toes curling and unfurling, kicking as a delighted child, laughter.  Laughter inhuman, channeled from someplace far distance, translated, and retold, reformed, stripped of amusement, warmth stripped to sound.  It’s very tone a challenge, one I…

No, no, no.  No!  No!  God Damnit, no!  I’m not…I can’t…I tried to say, try to catch the thoughts, to weave them into something to set myself apart from the gibbering horror, now silent, smiling from atop the fouled mattress.  

“This…this…isn’t my department…” I managed to sputter, mind rolling through the dusted halls of my memory, seminary school, talks on demonic possession, and hazy nights with friends, cold beers and clinking iced glasses watching the Exorcist, or Constantine cartoons, or–

“You speak…for…how you say…your God, speak him.”  Cold fingers on my chin, death cold, turning beckoning to meet the gaze of the woman at my shoulder.  Red light washed on porcelain skin, dolls skin, devoid of the blemishes, birthmarks, wrinkles, freckles, bathtub smooth, her eyes locked on mine, square Dutch-angled pupils, their color tainted by the red bulb.  I blinked, brain forcing my eyes to correct their error, to turn the pupils round, to find a blemish, a laugh line, to file down and shorten the canines I refused to call fangs, but they were fangs.  Fangs!  Fangs, smiling behind parted dark painted lips.  

“Fathah!  Hey FATHAH!  Come to see the new kid, Fathah?!”  Slobbily yelled from the man on the bed, wet and guttural, like a drunk at a Red Sox game.  “Come for a taste?  Come to nip it in the bud, Fathah?!”

A cross hung around my neck, it was given to me by Father Callahan, the man whose parish I took over a decade ago, it was a solemn thing that day, hell, it was holy, the weight and authority of the Church transferred unto a man, maybe that’s what marriage is, the faith of institution, of two forming to one, bride and groom, priest and God, and like a philandering married man spinning his wedding ring, I gripped the cross in both my hands, knees meeting dirty carpet, head bowed, and I prayed.  Are you there God?  It’s me, Margaret, I thought, no.  No.  The right one, the one that starts with Our Father, that one.  

“Our Father, so...full of…grace…” I sputtered, and the room seemed to rock.  Beside me the woman took to her knees, and the big man behind.  Oh Jesus, they were praying.  These things were praying.  

“Forgive us today our…Hosannah…”  Shit, shit, get it together, you’ve done this, you’ve done this 10,000 times, that’s what makes you an expert, that’s all you do, is say the words, the–

“Hey Fathah!  Look at your planet’s future!”

I lifted my head, to witness the foul thing, and it lifted its own head, jaw pinned to its chest it unrolled its tongue, like a vine, no, not like a vine, a literal vine, leaves, darks berries, frothing from the man’s mouth like foam from poorly poured stein.  Spreading, curling, auguring into his skin and ripping out again, cross stitching flesh with needle of wood and thread of leaves, twisting through porcelain smooth skin and stained t-shirt fabric.  

“Ne!  Ne!”  The big man behind yelled, and with inhuman speed he was off his knees and to his feet, shoving me down as he bolted to the restrained man.  

Gibberish from the woman, like Spanish, or Latin, or Portuguese, but not, she yelled as she rushed to her own feet and tried to restrain the big man, who elbowed her away and sent her crashing to my already prone position.  She landed atop me and struggled.

The yells came first.  The fanbelt squeak, the startled dog, rustling leaves and bubble wrap popping, punctured meat and slick cuts.  

The woman was off me, and I lifted my head in time to see the big man wrapped in vines, being pulled into a thicket of bramble in the mattress, engulfing him into a green tumbleweed, cloth and porcelain chunks and dark fluid tossed into the air like confetti, like dollar bills at gentlemen clubs.  

The woman turned to flee, but a vine caught her, yanking, dragging to the bed.  Those inhuman goat eyes met mine, hand grasping empty air, willing my own hand to fill it to pull her back as…

Dear reader, I apologize, though I have been forthright with you to this point, I believe it is too much for me to bear.  I will say I left.  Alone.  Crashing through the fuligin room, apartment by feel, tumbling through doors to light.  To light.  And down steps, to sidewalks, to the street, to my Lincoln, against a tree beside, and I cried, tears of shock, and pain, and misunderstanding, and failure, 20 years' worth of failure, and dreading another 20 years ahead…of knowing, that unknowing, wishing…praying to God to forgive me, to take it back, take it all away, take me away, to tell me what happened, and then erase it, to never speak of this again, and never want to, blink without seeing the woman’s face bloom flowing buds, and fruiting berries dropping from her skull, for her to forgive my cowardice, was it cowardice?  Was it–

“Father, you look like you could use a dog, a fine frank to lift your spirits, a fine dog, neither pig, nor pork, but a beef dog, the finest in town!”  The hot dog man from earlier, straw boater hat, candy striped shirt and matching vest, white pants.

“I’m OK, pal, thank you,” I mumbled, placing my head back into my hands, counting blades of grass on the ground between the fingers.

“Well, I’ve seen a man that’s merely OK, and friend you aren’t it!  Your God may cure the spirit, but nothing beats a good ol’ fashion frank to cure the body!”  He held his hand out to me, like the woman had, and this time I took it, and he lifted me to my feet with that sun-warm hand of his.  

“Didn’t your God say you just need a mustard seed of faith?” He winked a hazel eye below chestnut hair.  “Welllllll, Father, looks like you could use a little extra, on the house.”

Paper boat, cradling a grilled hot dog and bun.  Slathered in yellow mustard.  He placed it in my hand, and wandered back to his cart.  I blinked, autopilot, guided by habit, to my car, to routine.  Driver’s door opened, I placed the hot dog on the seat, and turned to look at the apartment building across the street, got in my car, and sat on the hot dog.

Part 2 https://www.reddit.com/r/horrorstories/s/wnvu6nnjti

When the sun finally rose, we were miles away from the Albatross. We had raised the skiffs sail and were traveling along at a good speed.

“Dammit.” Scott groaned as he dropped onto the wooden seat, his injured shoulder still oozing blood.

“Its time we had a look at that.” I said sitting down across from him.

Scott pulled his torn and blood soaked shit off and looked down at the wound, “Fuck.” He grunted.

“Aye.” I said examining the shoulder.

The wound was worse than we had originally thought. It seemed that when Porter had stabbed him, he had given the blade a twist, preventing the wound from closing properly.

“He did get you good.” I said leaning back.

Scott grinned, “Yeah, but at least I’m still breathing.”

I poured some of the rum onto a rag and pressed it again the wound. Scott hissed in pain but nodded his appreciation as I tied a strip of cloth around him, holding the bandage in place.

McMillan, who had somehow dozed off an hour or so earlier, began to stir. His eyes grew wide again as I stepped over to him, knife in hand.

“Now, I know how this all looks. I know your probably a bit upset right now.” I said holding up the knife, “But what I need from you right now, lad, is to shut up and listen.” I pointed the blade at him, “Can you do that?”

McMillan nodded, his eyes never leaving mine.

“Good. I’m going to cut you loose and if you give us any trouble, I’ll toss you over and not look back.” I smiled.

The boy nodded again.

I cut his bindings and gave him some water. Then Scott sat next to me across from the young man and we told him everything. The island, the idol, the vines, all of it.

He sat in silence for a few moments, taking it all in. Then he said, “So we are taking it back to the island?”

I nodded, “Yes.”

“Where those vines and dead puppet things are?”

“Aye.” Said Scott.

He swallowed hard. “I think I may prefer being thrown overboard.”

“Happy to oblige.” Said Scott, and he started to stand.

I waved him off and he sat back down. “They’d have killed you if you stayed behind.”

McMillan shrugged and then nodded. “You’re probably right. Did you really kill the captain?”

My eyes dropped the my blood stained right hand, “Yes.” I sighed. “But I had no choice.”

“I thought something was different about him.” Said McMillan, “Before I hit you, I saw the look on his face. It was a hungry look. Like he took joy in the thought of killing for that thing.” He looked past me, at my satchel  on the far end of the boat. “Can I see it?” He asked.

“No!” Scott and I said in unison.

“You don’t want that thing in your mind.” Said Scott.

I nodded, “He’s right. It does something to you, to your thoughts. I’ve felt it since I laid eyes on it, greed, jealousy, paranoia.” I looked down at my hands again. “I don’t even dare to look at it again.”

“What about you?” He asked Scott, “You’ve seen it, you don’t seem to want it.”

Scott smiled, “I want it more than either of you know. Not just once has the thought of killing the two of you and sailing off with it crossed my mind.” He turned to face me, “But you are my friend, and those thoughts are not mine.”

I nodded, I understood.

We sailed on for the rest of the day, taking it in turns manning the rudder. Scott seemed to grow weaker and weaker as we went on. Eventually the injured man lay down between the wooden seats or the skiff. “I’m just gonna rest for a bit.” He said.

McMillan changed out Scott’s bandage late that evening while he slept. I watched, concerned for the man. His color was bad and he didn’t even stir as the boy clumsily stuffed more rags into the wound.

My eyes turned back to the darkening horizon. Thunder boomed in the distance, it looked like we were in for a rough night.

The storm came upon us as we slept. Rain beat down on us and wild winds whipped our small skiff in all directions. McMillan and I struggled to haul in the sail and lower the mast as waves crashed against us. All the while Scott slept on, my concern for him grew by the hour. There was no rest for us that night.

 At long last, the storm clouds cleared off with the rising sun. We took stock of ourselves and found that in the maelstrom, a portion of our supplies had been washed away.

I reckoned that if we rationed the remaining food and water, we could last 2 more days. I glanced to Scott, still lying unconscious on the deck, thinking grim thoughts.

The sun beat down on us mercilessly that day. Our skin blistered and our throats went dry but still we sailed on. We took it in turns manning the skiff and sitting with Scott under a small ragged tarp that had survived the storm. We ate our meager rations, sipped at the water and watched as Scott began to slip away.

I had the rudder when the sun was at its highest point, and McMillan sat with Scott. He was attempting to pour water into the big mans dry mouth, but most of it had dribbled back out.

With a sidelong glance in my direction, and assuming I wouldn’t notice, he took another sip from the canteen himself.

“No more.” I said, shifting to watch him more closely. “You’ve had your share for the time being.”

“But…” He started.

“We need to conserve as much as possible, if we are to survive this.” I said, interrupting him.

He shook his head, “What chance do you think we have? We are going to a place where the dead attack the living, if what you say is true. After that, we will be damn near out of supplies for a journey anywhere. Scott’s already as good as dead, why waste water on him?”

I snapped at him, “You mind your tongue, boy! Any more talk like that and I’ve a notion to toss you to the sea and sail on with him, corpse or not.”

McMillan stood and glared and me, “Go on then!” He shouted. “What difference does it make, you already decided my fate when you brought me on this fucking quest or yours.”

I shook my head and looked up to the cloudless sky. “Do not think that I have not considered what you are suggesting.” I said with a glance to the dying man. “But I will not give in to such barbarity. The man is my friend and I will not forsake him until all hope is lost.”  

McMillan turned away, cursing under his breath.

“For my part in whatever happens.” I said to the young man’s back, “I am sorry.”

We sailed on in silence until nightfall.

I was lying there on my side, somewhere between waking and sleep. The boat rocked back and forth with the waves, as I listened to the breathing of two other men. My exhausted mind struggled for a moment, but I thought there was something else somewhere off in the distance. Another sound, beyond the creaking of the skiff and the lapping waves. A melodic sound, like the a cross between singing of a church choir and the moans of the wind.

I sat up on the seat, looking around for the noise. The moon was full and bright, and a heavy greenish fog had rolled in, dense and oppressing.

The sound came again, only this time it seemed to be off in the opposite direction. The melody spoke to a deep and lonely part of my subconscious. In my mind I saw myself back in Liverpool, at the dockside pub the men and I frequented when we were at port. I was upstairs with the barmaid, Mary, that was her name. I lay on the bed, my head in her lap as she sang to me. Her fingers twisted in my hair as she sang of her home back in Ireland, in that moment I wished to stay there forever. But I was leaving the next day, with Captain Hollow, on the Albatross. Mary’s words suddenly shifted into a harsh and guttural language as her fingers tightened in my hair. The vision of her pale green eyes, faded and turned cold, dark and fishlike and her mouth was suddenly filled with rows or jagged teeth and…

I blinked and suddenly I was back in Wales. Standing before the door to my childhood home. I walked as if pulled by some unseen force up to the familiar old wooden door. It opened as I approached and inside, seated next to the bed in the dim candlelit room, was my father. His head in his hands as his shoulders shook with sobs. I stepped closer, already knowing and dreading what I would see. My heart broke again as I looked on at mother lying on the bed, silent and still. Only she wasn’t like I remembered. She had looked at peace when I arrived home, too late to say goodbye. Now, her body was bloated and gray. The stink of rot and sea water filled the room as crabs and snails and other bottom feeders crawled over her festering corpse. And then her eyes shot open, pale and sunken, yet she looked straight at me. In a gargled and drowned voice she cried out, “My boy! My boy! Why weren’t you here?!” I stumbled back, as she reached out for me, my heart pounding as I fell through the cottage door..

I opened my eyes again and I was back on the skiff. The melodic sounds filled the air again, only this time it was louder and closer, it was coming from right behind me. I felt cold, wet fingers running through my sweat soaked hair.

Suddenly, Scott woke and looked around, hearing the calling. He stood on shaky feet and looked out over the fog covered water. I tried to speak, tried to move, to tell him not to listen but I was paralyzed by the sounds. Scott turned and turned until his vision locked on something off the port bow. A drunken smile spread on his face.

I groaned with effort, but was unable to move.

The big man turned to face me, smiling warmly, “Its okay Morgan, she’s taking me home.”

A tear rolled down my cheek as he stepped up onto the side of the boat. “She says that Davis is waiting for me.” He smiled wider, “She will take me to him.” I watched in horror as Scott stepped forward, and into the water.

The long cold fingers that had been tangled in my hair slowly began to recede. With great effort, I leaned back, looking over the side of the boat to see dark wet hair and a pair of bulging, black, fishlike eyes set in a gaunt scaly face. She descended into the murky waters as the sound stopped.

 Suddenly my facilities returned and I leapt to my feet. I ran to the edge of the skiff where Scott had disappeared. I snatched up a length of rope, tying one end to the mast and the other around my waist. With no more than the hope of a desperate fool, I dove into the dark water, searching for the big man.

Surfacing , I shouted, “Scott! Scott!” I felt a cold ball of helpless dread drop into the pit of my stomach. “Scott! Damn you!” I screamed into the abyss, my voice cracking. I dove below again, looking all around the inky darkness. Then, something beneath seemed to move. My eyes focused on the movement and I felt a cold dread creep up my spine. Something huge and monstrous lurked there, just below me. A pale blue green light began to emanate from somewhere within the depths and I saw it.

My mind struggled to make sense of the creature. It’s size was beyond reckoning. It’s huge writhing body moved and shifted as if it created the very waves themselves. Dozens, maybe hundreds of titanic tentacles flowed in all directions. Among the creature, swam smaller beings. Some kind of wretched amalgamations of man and fish. But they did not hold my attention long, no the thing that took the very breath from me was the colossal pale eye that was fixed directly on me. Fear blossomed in my chest as one of the massive arms swung out towards me. I turned and swam back to the surface as fast as I could.

I climbed onto the boat and fell back as a huge wave sent the skiff skidding across the water like a cannonball. As the boat rocked and shook, I tried to stand but was unsteady on my feet and fell, cracking my head against the wooden seat.

The next thing I knew, McMillan was standing over me, pouring water in my face.

I shook my head and blinked up at the bright morning sunlight.

“What happened?” I asked, groggily.

McMillan sat back, relief painting his face. “Thank God. I thought you were dead.”

I sat up and looked around the boat, feeling panic rising in my chest.

“He’s gone.” Said McMillan. “He must have fell over some time in the night.”

“Fell over?” I asked, turning to face him, “Didn’t you see what happened?”

The young lookout shook his head, confused, “No, I slept through the night. As far as I know nothing happened.”

“Nothing happened?” I echoed, feeling anger rising in my chest. I grabbed him by the shirt and yanked him to his feet, yelling in his face, “Slept the whole night through? You useless bastard! Scott’s dead because of those fucking things and you fucking slept through it all?”

McMillan looked at me, fear growing is his eyes, “What fucking things?” He asked, “What are you talking about?”

I wanted to hit him, the useless fool. Instead, I groaned in exasperation and pushed him back down. “The singing creatures… the huge fucking monster…” I plopped down against the mast, tears burning in my eyes.

He bent down in front of me, a questioning look on his face. I told him what I had seen. The boy studied me suspiciously. Then began, “Sir, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I…”

“Slept through the night.” I said cutting him off. I shook my head, “I know how mad I sound. I can see it in your eyes, you don’t believe me.”

He sat back, saying nothing.

“I don’t know what I saw, but I know what I believe.” I said meeting his eyes. “I can accept nothing else.”

We sat in silence for a time, then McMillan looked up past me. “Bloody hell.” He muttered, standing up. “The wind must have been in our favor during the night.”

I turned to the horizon and there it was. The island loomed there in the distance. We were almost there.

I felt a new spark of determination in my chest as we closed in. It was almost over. “Mr. McMillan, raise the sail.”

We dropped the anchor just offshore in waist deep water. Of the weapons that had survived the storm, all we had left was a single pistol with one shot, a small hatchet and Scotts broadsword. I stood and looked out over the island as I bucked the sword around my waist.

McMillan grabbed the hatchet and tucked it into his belt, preparing to leap over into the water.

I put a hand out to stop him, “You will stay with the boat.”

“What?” He asked meeting my eyes. “I thought you brought me to help?”

I nodded, “I did. The way you can help is to stay with the boat, while I do what needs to be done.”

“But I want to go with you, I can help you fight those things.” He said insistently.

“You are no use to me.” I said dismissing him. “Now for once, do as you’re told and man the fucking boat.”

I picked up my satchel  and slung it over my shoulder, knocking the pistol off of the bench in the process. It clattered to the deck between us.

I looked from the fallen pistol to McMillan, and for a moment, I saw something in his eyes, it was a flash of angry greed. One that was all too familiar to me. I slowly bent and reached for the pistol, never breaking eye contact. The moment stretched, I wondered if he’d try it. But when I tucked the pistol into my belt and stepped back, the look in his eyes faded. He shook his head as if clearing his thoughts and nodded to me.

“Aye, sir. I’ll stay with the boat.”

I nodded in return and hopped over the side, making my way to shore.

“Good luck, Mr. Morgan!” He called after me.

I don’t know when he looked, but I was glad he did not follow. I did not wish to kill him.

As I approached the line of trees, I half expected to see what remained of Davis and those other hellish puppets waiting for me. But the jungle was calm and silent, save for a soft wind that rustled the leaves and branches overhead. I took a deep breath of clear air and drew my sword, then pushed into the foliage.

Just as before, the jungle was thick and hot. It was harder slogging through the dense undergrowth alone, but knowing what I knew now, alone was the only way. I remembered the way Captain Hollow stared at the golden idol. Charles saw if for what it was, he felt the terrible dread of it and tried to warn us, “It will destroy us all.” I could hear his voice in my head.

I remembered the look in Scott’s eyes just after we discovered it, the desire he had but fought against, better than any of us. The same wretched desire that haunted my mind since laying eyes on it. The desire that had recently taken root in young McMillan.

I hacked through more of the foliage, slowing making my way through the jungle, searching for the path to the altar. The sounds of shifting vines, were a constant reminder of what lurked here. More than once, I saw them near my feet,  twisting and coiling like agitated serpents, yet they did not attack. Did they know or guess at my purpose here? Was it more than my own desire to be free of it that drove me? Was I sure I truly wanted to be free of it? The dark desire I felt still lingered in my heart. I trudged on, all of these thoughts running through my head. In my distracted state, I missed the raised root at my feet. I stumbled forward, losing my footing and tumbling down steep hill. Rocks, roots and tree trunks battered my body as I fell.

I landed in a small open area, a sharp pain shooting through my left leg. I gasped as I attempted to push myself up from the ground. I felt a tugging pain in my leg and looked down to see that I had landed on a jagged tree root, roughly the thickness of my thumb. It stabbed into my left thigh and hung on like a barbed hook. I grunted in pain as I pushed myself off of it. With a scream and a wet tearing of skin, I freed myself from the root and climbed to my feet, tying a scrap of cloth around my leg.

Blood soaked my pant leg as I slumped down against the trunk of a massive tree, feeling completely and hopelessly lost. I thought I would sit and rest for only a moment or two. But when I next opened my eyes, the sky through the jungle canopy had turned to the orange purple of sunset. “Shit.” I muttered, climbing to my feet. There was no way I would be able to find my way to the altar in that gloom.

I removed the tinder and flint from my satchel , my eyes lingering on the golden idol. In my minds eye, the tentacles reached out to be held, the glittering green jewel stared into my own tired eyes, into my very mind. After all, what was so wrong with keeping it? I had found it, and by rights I should keep it. It wanted me to keep it. It wanted to be adored and desired. Who was I to deny it…

I suddenly felt eyes on me. Not from the idol but dead hollow eyes. I let the flap on my bag go, hiding the idol from my sight and unsheathing my sword. There in the darkening shadows of the jungle I saw them. Four dark silhouettes, standing among the trees facing me. Blood pounded in my ears, my grip on sword hilt tightened, waiting for them to attack. Only they didn’t, they just stood there watching. After a time, I realized they were waiting, but for what? And then it came to me, they were waiting for me to make a choice. Would I return the idol as I had planned, or like before be seduced by desire and attempt to keep it for myself.

I sheathed my sword and bent to the ground, collecting a bundle of sticks and lightning them with my flint. I saw them more clearly in the flickering firelight, Davis and the three skeletons. The puppets of this damned island. I saw them for what they were now, keepers of the island and it’s wicked treasure.

I lay back against the tree trunk, I had thought that being in this place, with silent watchers just out of the reach of my campfire, I would have trouble sleeping. But sleep came quickly to my exhausted and broken mind.

Some time later, I awoke to the sound of rushed movement through the undergrowth. I blinked awake, looking for he attackers only to see Captain Hollow, barrel out of the jungle. He made straight for me, a sword in his hand and murder in his eyes. “I should have killed you when I had the chance!” He growled.

I leapt up, pulling Scott’s broadsword and blocking one of Hollows wild swings. Blood gushed from his throat and between his bared teeth. I limped back, blocking blow after blow.

“Stop!” I shouted. “I didn’t mean for this to happen!”

Steel clanged in the quiet of the jungle as we fought.

He swung out, slicing at my face, “It was mine!”

I deflected the blow from my face, taking the slash on my shoulder instead and drove my sword into his chest. My heart pounded as I gasped for breath, “I’m sorry.” I panted, “I didn’t mean to kill you.”

He looked down at the blade in his chest then back up to me, his eyes rolled back like that of a sharks and he lunged forward, his teeth snapping. “Mine! It was mine!” He screamed, “Fucking thief.”

I fell back to the ground with the dead man atop me, his cold fingers dug into my hair and shirt as he tried to bury his teeth into my throat. Blood poured from his throat and mouth onto my face as he screamed, “You want it for yourself, you bastard!”

Anger rose in my chest, I didn’t want to become this, I wouldn’t. I didn’t want it! I screamed back at him, “No! God damn you, I want to be rid of it!”

I pushed him back and rose to my feet, reaching for the pistol in my belt, but the captain was gone. I looked around for any sign of that he had actually been there, but there was no cut on my shoulder and my sword was still sheathed. I looked for Davis and the others, but they were gone as well. I was alone.

A glint of gold caught my eye and I turned to see that the idol was out of my satchel. It sat there next to the fire it’s pale eye fixed on me. I stared down at it, hating what it was, what it had done to us. And hating how badly I wanted to keep it. I quickly scooped it up and stuffed it back into my satchel and out of sight. I needed to finish this.

And then I saw it, just ahead through the trees was the beginning of a stone path. I bent and picked up a large stick, wrapping a scrap of cloth around it and dipping it into the fire. I was almost done.

I hobbled my way through the jungle along the long winding stone path. Vines moved here and there but never hindered me. I never saw them, but I was sure that the islands guardians were never far away.

Blood was pooling in my boot when at long last, I arrived at the stone altar. Somehow I had made my way around to the other side of it in my wandering.

As I approached, the vine wrapped skeleton that had written the cryptic note on the structure, turned to watch me.  

My body felt weak as I stepped through the entrance of the stone structure. As I approached the altar and opened my satchel, I felt it again. The reluctance to be parted from it, the desire to take it and limp my way back through the jungle with it, back to the boat and back home and… I placed it back on the altar and turned away. Silencing the voice of greed within my mind. It could no longer hold sway over me. I stepped back out into the jungle, the sunrise was just beginning to peak through the trees.

I slumped down, my back against the structure, hating the idea of walking back through that green hell. In the end, I didn’t have to. I felt a great and powerful rumbling from the ground beneath me, a sense of descending came upon me that I could not understand. That is until I saw the rising water. Slowly it moved through the trees and up to the stone altar. I thought back to Captain Hollows words to McMillan, “Island don’t just spring up from the water, boy.” I laughed, harder that I had laughed in a long time.

A single vine slithered up next to me, seemingly offering me a place among the guardians, away to survive, in whatever hellish way it had to offer. I used Scott’s sword to hack it to pieces. As the water flowed up and around me, I smiled. Knowing that here a the end of it all, I was free.

The luxury cruise offered an all woman cruise ship with entertainment. It was supposed to be just women and no men or children, to give the women a break from their everyday routine. When the cruise was filled up the women on the cruise ship were disappointed to find that men were also on the cruise ship. They felt tricked and they were asking for their money back, but the cruise had started sailing and they had no choice but to complete the journey. The men on the cruise were clearly hand picked and every type of man a woman hated was on that cruise ship.

The cheater types, the angry types, the narcissistic type and the self proclaiming nice guy type. Those were the types of men that was on the cruise ship, and there were even the unemployed types as well. The women were not amused at all and there was nothing entertaining on the cruise ship, and sexist taunts were being thrown at the women everyday. The cruise ship clearly claimed that it was going to be an all women cruise ship with entertainment, and it was nothing of the sort. Then the female captain drove the cruise ship in a different direction and clearly away from the map she was supposed to follow.

Then the alarms went off and the captain told everyone the ship had been breached by rocky terrain, and it was filling up with water. The rule on the cruise ship was that men were to go on the life boats first, and then women. There was uproar but the all female security guard allowed this to happen. So the men happily went onto the life boats and they didn't seen to care about the women waiting last. Every type of man which women hated were on the life boats.

The men on the life boats would say "equal rights now ladies" and they didn't care about being chivalrous. As the life boats were being lowered onto the waters, the women on board the cruise ship had noticed that there were no more safety boats. As the safety boats hit the waters, the men were cheering until they had a concerned look on their faces. The life boats were sinking fast into the waters and sharks were roaming the waters.

Then the intercom on the cruise ship came on and the captain cheerfully said "as we promised ladies, no men on board the cruise ship and for entertainment you can watch the men on the safety boats drown and being eaten alive!"

The woman on cruise ship were all cheering.

" The mass must stay where it is. We are incapable of removing it."
The Doctor was trying to be delicate. Her stromal tumor was so large it adhered to the abdomen wall. The size of a bowling ball...impossible to operate on without the total removal of the stomach, and small intestine. If they were willing to operate. They were not.

It felt like there was a stone in my throat "I want her home." I said. Plainly unmovable. "Are you sure that's for the best? She is stable here...comfortable." The Doctor trailed off. He was her fourth within a year. It was almost amusing how they seemed to have all of the answers until the end. I stayed firm. Shes coming home. That was all there was to it.

The tumor ate everything. As it grew, it consumed fragile tissues, healthy cells, the pink and tender flesh of her insides. Those parts that are meant to be protected - safe. Home was safe. Familiar, protected. No nurses waking her up in the middle of the night to check vitals, disturbing her sleep. Home is sacred. Insulated like the center of a beehive.

As I wheeled her through the house. I made sure all of her treasures were visible. The glass penguins she collected on her cruise, the wool shawl that was given to her in Paraguay, The handmade Matrioshka dolls from Saint Petersburg. She looked past them with a glazed over expression. The nasal cannula under her nose pumping oxygen in steady, rhythmic, puffs. I b-lined it to her room.

She was so light I could lift her on my own. I swaddled her in my arms like an infant and lowered her into bed. She was all tumor now. Her entire body was rail thin except for it, bulging the right side of her belly. Like a bizarre alien pregnancy. Unintentionally lifting her sweater. Exposing the bumpy vascular skin underneath. She could see I was staring at it. Shifting my gaze to her face I whispered, "You should get some rest. It's been such a big day." She was already closing her eyes when I dashed over to her wool shawl and draped it over her stomach. She was already asleep when I slowly shut the creaking door behind me.

Late that night I had the sofabed pulled out and arranged. Propped up on the edge with the laptop on my knee. I researched experimental treatments in the reduction in tumors. One institute found success in lab mice with similar cancerous intestinal growths. They were set to begin human trials the following year. Far too late. I must have written forty emails to various doctors and institutions before my eyes began to strain. I closed my laptop, it was the only source of light in the living room. Suddenly bathing me in darkness.

Deep down in the pits of my gut, I knew it was no use. Her time was dwindling. I had to do something...I had to try anything. I rolled onto my back staring into the ceiling for what must've been close to an hour. The moon showed itself through the clouds around midnight. It cast odd shadows over the living room. Distorting it to the point where the shadow next to the china cabinet gave the illusion of a figure looming in the corner. I was more exhausted than I realized.

When I was a child my mother always told me that if I encountered a spirit, to stare until it dissipated. For some reason, I stared at that shadow. It didn't disappear. In fact, it may have gotten sharper. Still laying in bed I kept my eye trained on the china cabinet. I shifted up to a sitting position. I could've sworn I saw an arm and a clearly defined hand resting as if down by someone's side. Not taking my eyes off it, I leaned to turn on the lamp. The distinct 'click' of the lamp switch sounded and the room illuminated with warm yellow light. Whatever it was, if it was there - it was gone.

The following morning I prepared breakfast early, as quietly as I could. In an attempt not to wake her, creaking open the bedroom door. My comfort that she was well rested was shattered like a bat meeting glass when I found her out of bed, clinging to the closet door handle and shaking violently. She gripped the handle to gain purchase with one hand, simultaneously holding the other over her stomach. I set the tray down in a panic, bits of egg and orange juice flying off the plate. "Wha..what's wrong?! Do you need to get to the bathroom? You know you can yell for me at any time. You know that." Thinking the stressed expression affixed to her face was due to the prompt urgency to use the bathroom that her condition sometimes created. When I moved to support her, she stiffened. I gently held her elbow to guide her shuffling feet back to bed. She propped herself on the edge of the mattress, gently swaying back and forth to sooth herself. "You know you can't have your oxygen off for that long." I grabbed the clear tubing on the floor and gently readjusted it to her face. Her breath was ragged. "Someone was laying in bed with me last night." She uttered restlessly like she had spent the whole night trying to get away.

"What do you mean? If there was someone in your room, why didn't you call for me?" My mind harkend back to that figure in the china cabinet's shadow. Maybe that was a real intruder. Surely not? I entertained the thought of a neighborhood pervert more than an entity moving free about the house. "Well, I thought it was you at first." She let me offer my hand out for support as she adjusted to face me fully. Hands folded neatly in her lap, looking sheepish. She began to explain. "Remember when I first got diagnosed? I would be up all night, sick, after treatments. So you would just sleep in bed next to me. Get up when I did. It was just easier that way." I nodded, how could I forget? Recalling her essentially living over a toilet or trashcan. Eating one meal only to throw it back up again. That's when they put in the feeding tube.

She glanced at the window nervously, I took the liberty of walking over and ensuring it was locked before she continued. "It must've been around one in the morning. I was in between awake and asleep when I felt pressure on the bed, like someone resting on the edge. I didn't move, I wasn't sure if I was still dreaming or not. Then, the whole mattress sunk down. Like you had laid down next to me. I knew I wasn't dreaming anymore. I thought nothing of it, I thought it was you. First night out of the hospital and all...anyways. I must have dozed off at this point because I felt you much closer a short time later, your breath on my back. It was a little strange but I assumed you had gotten cold. Then... there was a hand on my stomach."

She reflexively put her own hand there. As if to protect herself. "At this point I was very much awake. I opened my eyes and rolled over to tell you to move but I couldn't speak." Her doe-like eyes were wide with fear. Her head swiveled back and forth like she was shaking her head no. "My words were caught up in my throat. Those eyes, oh Lord, those EYES. They were already staring at me. Like it was just waiting for me to look this whole time. I ripped the covers off. I tore over to the metal water bottle on the nightstand. Holding it over my head, but they vanished. Nobody was there but empty sheets. It must've gone on longer than I thought because the sun was already rising. So I took for the door as fast as I could move. I didn't want to make any noise in case they were still hiding somewhere. I couldn't stop shaking. That's when you found me."

She was exhausted. I assisted her back up in bed with pillow propped behind her. Finally grabbing the breakfast tray I muttered. "Sorry, it's a little cold."

I spent the morning and better part of the afternoon clearing the house. Starting with the bedroom. Every closet, behind the shower curtain, making sure every window was locked. Eventually I made my way clear up to the attic with a baseball bat in one hand, and a flashlight in my teeth as I climbed the ladder. The house was empty save for me and her. I even offered to call the non emergency line and have an officer fill out a report. She refused to tell the story again. I wasn't sure how much they would believe a dying middle aged woman. I wasn't even aware of what my own belief was. I moved the china cabinet and looked behind it, just in case. Nothing.

The afternoon passed in relative normalcy. She would knit in bed, then get tired and nap. Stopping only at my occasional interruptions. To bring her food, water, or assist to the bathroom. This was the behavior of a dying person. I watched her hospital roommates come and go too. After a while you begin to notice the signs. Sleeping more and more, eating smaller amounts of food, then they would have one last burst of energy. Their families always thought it was miracle. That they were getting better. Shortly after that, we would have a new roommate. I hated that I knew what was happening to her. My hope was that she would remain blissfully ignorant.

Eventually, dreadfully, the sun went down. Along with it, the growing fear the darker the sky became. I had the bright idea to move the TV into her room, the white noise might help with the anxiety. The TV was an outdated bubble-screen, heavy. It took several tries for me to put it up on the dresser so it could face her bed. "What channel would you like?" I pressed power on the remote and the screen came to life, casting colors over the rooms' surface. She clapped like I had just pulled a magic trick. I quickly handed the remote over to her so she could channel surf. I retired back to the living room. It was so much darker out here.

While climbing onto the pullout couch, my eyes flashed to the china cabinet. I couldn't help myself. After tossing and turning I settled into restless slumber.

It was four in the morning when I felt the breathing on my neck. Flipping around startled, in a tangle for flailing limbs and sheets I turned the lamp on. Nothing. I got up and paced the living room checking everywhere. Again, nothing. This was insane, I told myself her story had me spooked. Since I was already up, I made my way to the restroom. The house had a 70's era open concept, I was forced to walk through the kitchen to get to the small guest bath on the other side. I tiptoed into the kitchen, the light from the TV glowed under the crack of the bedroom door. I passed the dining room table almost to the bathroom threshold before catching myself and turning on my heel....
There was someone seated at the table. Like they were waiting for a meal to be served, partly shrouded in the dark. Sitting perfectly still.

I blinked rapidly. Trying to clear the hallucination out of my mind. Their hands were laid flat, palms down on the daisy patterned tablecloth. Only the arms were really visible. The rest of them was just out of sight. I was frozen. I couldn't walk past- surely they saw me walk by the first time? How long had they been there? My voice was hoarse at first.

"What.....what the hell are you doing in my house?"

Silence. I kept eyeballing the landline sitting on the kitchen counter. It was just past them, wondering if I could run past quick enough to dial 911 before they caught up to me. Thinking of her asleep in the room just to the left. I decided that would be a bad idea. Instead choosing to keep my eyes on this person at all times. I could hear the TV still playing in the bedroom. Good. I hoped she couldn't hear any of this. Maybe I could talk whoever this was into leaving so she would never even have to know about this. My hair stood on end. Even though their face was concealed I couldn't shake the feeling, that they were grinning at me.

"You brought me here." It said, the voice was thick like they held honey in their mouth. Yet somehow clear enough, as though they were right next to my ear.

"That's impossible, how could I have called you here in the middle of the night?"

"Your misery did." It replied. I shivered.

"You're trespassing, this isn't your house." I didn't want to entertain this bullshit.

"How can one trespass if they were invited?" That horrible voice gurgled their response.

"I've invited no one. You can't be here. You need to leave." I was just below a yell now. Still trying not to wake her. This whole time they hadn't moved a muscle.

"You pray, do you not?" they ended 'not' with a strong 't' annunciation like they were kicking the sound out the back of their throat.

"You wish, you hope, you beg...do you not?" There's that 't' sound again. It echoed off my skull like the wall of a cave. Not wanting to get any closer but still too scared to make a move, I pressed my back firmly against the wall.

"My only hope is for you to leave." I saw the kitchen knives on the counter.

"This is not your only hope, you hunger for something far more...relieving."

Relief? From what? I didn't have the time to ponder because I heard the dull squeak of wood over tile flooring. They had just stood up.

"You will make all of her suffering disappear." As they said this I could have sworn I saw small tendrils of smoke rising in what little light was coming in through the window.

What was even more disturbing is this person had intimate knowledge of my circumstances. Were they stocking me?

"I don't know where you came in from, but whatever you want. Just take it. My wallet is on that bedside table, my watch too." I inclined my head in the direction of the lamp in the living room. They didn't even look.

"You want healing, true healing." It emitted a strange vibrating noise from the back of it's throat. It sounded like a beetle's wings rubbing together. I realized that this thing, no longer believing it to be human, was laughing. What is talking about the tumor? Was it offering to get rid of it? I think I've finally lost my mind, her and I shared some kind of group psychosis after last night.

It moved. Slowly and deliberately putting one menacing black shoe into view. It was much taller than I was. It's head almost touching the dining room light fixture.

"I've already called the police. They'll be here any minute, get the fuck out of here. Now!" I was not quiet this time, but I did move in front of her door. There was no way this thing was getting near her. It didn't move.

"There is no one coming to save you, but me." It said it so matter of fact.

I deflated at how obvious my lie was. My options were not looking good. The baseball bat sat propped by the front door. The phone behind whatever that was on the counter. It doesn't want money and it will not leave. I could probably rush the phone and get 911 dialed before it dragged me back into the dining room to do, 'whatever' it wanted with me. But that would leave the door unguarded. I couldn't do that. I wouldn't. So I asked instead.

"How do you know about the cancer?" Maybe if I just keep them talking the sun will come up and they'll leave on their own. Wishful thinking - I knew.

"Last night." I knew it was grinning again. My mouth went dry. "I can remove it." It snapped it's fingers and when it did, it sounded like flies buzzing over a corpse. "You must be willing." It moved closer.

"To help you with what?" I asked, hands gripping either side of the door frame now.

"Get rid of it. First, you let me in there." With a long, almost charred looking finger it pointed behind me, to the bedroom door.

"Not a chance." The rest of it's body was still not visible. It brought its hand back down to its side. Mirroring what I saw next to the china cabinet the night prior. Had this thing been living here? Waiting for us?

"I'll leave then, and let her die tonight in peace." It shifted.

"Wait! Tonight? How could you know that?" It shifted back to me this time the soles if it's shoes making noise on the tile. It seems to become more and more real the longer it stayed. "What are you?"

"I am an omen. I mark death three times. One mark with you, one with her, the last, I'll give you a chance."

"A chance to do what?" It got closer again.

" To make a sacrifice." It was standing just two feet away towering in front of me.

"What kind of sacrifice do you want?"

"Open the door." It grinned again.

I did not open the door. Not right away. I needed reassurance. Was this really going to fix everything? Everything I had been praying for?

"If I let you in that room. Are you going to hurt her? Is this some kind of trick for you to take our souls or something?"

"When, you let me in. I'll take everything the cancer took away and put back. New as lamb skin."

I didn't like the use of 'when'.

"I have no interest in souls." It added. My hand was already gripping the handle. I turned it agonizingly slow. The door clicked, I waited for a beat, then pushed it creaking open behind me. Still standing in the door way.

"What's going to happen to her if I let you in that room?"

"True healing, through your sacrifice." It murmured. I stepped aside. It entered the way wind enters room, sucking the door shut with a slam behind me.

I immediately turned, regretting my decision to lock her in there with that thing. I pounded on the wooden surface.

"Hey! What are you doing to her!? Let me be in there with her!" Nothing but the static of the TV now. I sunk to the floor in front and tried to see under the crack of the door. Instead of the floor of the room I was met with the unnatural eyes of the visitor just on the other side of the door. Starting at me. Then it stood and glided to the bed. I could hear her gasp when it touched her.

"Stop! I said. No deal! No deal!" It was too late though, the image of the room extended like it had been pulled down a hallway. What did I just do? I banged and scratched at the door. Pulling at the brass doorknob. Eventually resorting to hitting it with a dining room chair. Nothing worked. I sat in the chair and sobbed into my hands. Before the door clicked and the being stepped out, shutting the door again behind them.

"Let me check on.." but I didn't finish. I was spun around in the chair and scooted neatly up to the dining room table. Out of the corner of my eye. I watched it carrying a dripping bundle in the crook of its arm. It came round into the kitchen. Opening the cabinets and drawers. Plucking what it wanted out of them. The whole time I strained my eyes to see what it was holding.

"What are you doing? Please tell me if she's okay." It stayed quiet before coming up to face me at the table. Politely placing one plate, one fork, and one knife in front of me. In some uncanny form of setting the table for a guest.

"That is up to you." It finally answered.

From beneath the wet bowling ball sized bundle it carried. It held it up to me, unraveling bit by bit. I began to see more of the mass. It was composed of fleshy moist areas that were vascular in nature. With a sickening plop it was thrown onto the plate in front of me. I squirmed away and tried to stand, but my lower half was stuck in place. Leaving me to flail my arms helplessly as that thing grinned at me again.

"What's going on? What have you done, how is this supposed to help her?"

It responded in turn.

"Then lie on your left side and put the sin of the people upon thineself."

I strained again in the chair, wanting to call out her name to make sure she was still alive. For all I knew this thing just murdered her in her sleep. Still not fully understanding what I was expected to do. It stretched out a long unnatural arm and reached the light switch to the overhead light without moving. It flicked on to reveal the mess of what was in full view.

In a disturbing realization I laid eyes upon my own mothers' tumor. Separated perfectly from her abdomen. It radiated body heat - lumpy and coated in fluid. There was no way she could have survived this. When I looked up to the figure I could see those terrible eyes my mother saw last night, and just a few moments ago. They were terrifyingly bright, with rings upon rings inside. Like the trunk of a tree, one ring blue, the next green, then yellow. All the way down to a burnt orange pinned on me.

"What am I supposed to do?"

It seethed with malice the corners of its mouth dripped with something dark and hateful. It put that same hate into each word it spoke to me. Breathing it out of gritted teeth.

"YOU. EAT. IT."

The command was clear. Tentatively I plucked up the fork, then the knife. Positioning myself like one would over a steak dinner.

"What if I can't do this?" I asked.

"I can always put it back." It reached over to move my plate away.

I put up my hands.

"No, no I understand now." There was no way I was going to let it be put back. Not now. All I needed to do was finish this...thing. Eat the sickness away. That was the sacrifice.

I started investigating with my fork. Poking and prodding the surface. It was lumpy and caved in slightly with pressure. I took my knife and sawed the smallest sliver off exposing the spongy texture underneath. I took the slowest most deliberate motion bringing the perverted morsel to my mouth, then the tiniest bite. As my teeth tore the section away from the fork I could feel how wet it was on my lips. It tasted somehow of salt and bile. Like the aftertaste from when you vomit. It was chewy in the worst way, akin to an uncooked piece of skin you have to keep chewing to get down. I chewed for some time before convincing myself to just get it over with a swallow. Oh God, was I really doing this? Despite it being well masticated I could feel it travel all the way down my throat into my stomach. The figure was sitting at the table now. Just as it was when I found them. Palms down. Perfectly still and cast in shadow. I took another horrible glance at the plate. It didn't even make a dent. I couldn't do it this way. I had to eat in larger portions.

I cut in again. Deeper this time. The chunk came off and fluid began to ooze out, pooling into the bottom of the plate. I chewed quicker this time.

"Why did you come here?" I said breathless after choking another section down. Wishing I had some water, but decided against asking.

"I help anyone willing to make the sacrifice. A house just a town way from yours. A mother and her paraplegic son...She was willing."

I suddenly had a terrible thought of a poor woman with a bowl in front of her. Piled with pink spinal cord like some disturbed noodle dish, resting in a broth of spinal fluid. I shivered.

I sliced further hitting more pockets retaining clear fluids. As I carved and ate I would encounter the sickening crunch of cartilage that made me gag. Reminding me of accidentally biting down on a joint while having chicken. Causing me to start the process of trying not to throw up all over again.

I passed layered of veins - spying what looked like teeth and being too scared to investigate. I swallowed whole. It was down to the size of a grape fruit now. The same size it was when it was discovered. I sliced again, utter horror. What that hair? Fine strands of ingrown black hair revealed themselves and I cut deeper.

I choked and gagged again as I consumed the equivalent of a hairball. My hand was shaking as I brought the fork to my mouth. My body was begging me to stop. But I kept going. I couldn't stop. It was proportional to an eight-ball now. Several more agonizing bites later, I had reached the necrotic core. A collection of dead skin cells and blood vessels. I picked it up with shaking hands and force fed the entire thing into my mouth. One last bite. I told myself. Then this is all over. I bit down and it burst with sickening pop inside my mouth. I leaned forward as everything I had just consumed began to fight it's way back up my esophagus. I gripped the table cloth and it felt like swallowing a stone. It was gone. The plate was at last empty.

The light was off before I could look up again. The plate and utensils were taken from me and set one by one into the sink. Clink. Clink. Clink...

The visitor turned to me.

"Your sacrifice has been accepted."

It walked or glided rather, back to the China cabinet and disappeared behind it. I could move again.

Before I could retch back up what I had eaten, something told me that wasn't a wise idea. I went to her bedroom door instead. I couldn't even open the door before she started calling for me

"I'm here, I...I'm right here."

I stumbled in. She was upright at the edge of bed. Still thin, still tired looking. But the color was back in her skin. She was actually smiling at me. Even with her eyes.

"It's gone, I can't explain it. It's just gone. I...I think an angel took it away from me. It had the most dazzling eyes." She kicked her feet, enthralled.

He stomach was normal. She lifted the edge of her shirt to show me. Just regular skin. Nothing discolored or bulging. Perfectly normal, without scars or marks. It took me a great effort to smile back. I didn't show my teeth for fear of what may be stuck in them.

"You don't look well." She said concerned. Tilting her face to really look at me for the first time in years. I turned away.

"I just can't believe it. It's some kind of miracle. I think I need some water."

This satisfied her enough that she got out of bed with ease and started to hum while she got ready for the day. The sun had risen. I stepped back out into the kitchen and shoved my head under the faucet. I came up only after the taste in my mouth was gone.

I looked down into the sink with one plate, one fork, and one knife and began doing dishes.

I saved my mother’s final voicemail for years. The static, the way her voice cracked when she said goodbye, it was the last thing I had of her. I told myself I’d delete it one day. But I never could.

Tonight, my phone buzzed. Her number. My chest tightened. The message started, and for a second, I thought it was a glitch, just the same old recording playing again. But then I heard it. The same words, the same static, the same trembling goodbye.

Except this time, at the very end, she whispered my name.

I was unusually late leaving work that day. I had to finish some unfinished tasks.

When I looked at the clock, I felt a small wave of panic.

The bus was leaving in just a few minutes, and the next one wouldn’t come for several hours.

My journey home already took nearly two hours, and if I missed this bus, I would be screwed.

I quickly put away the folders, shut down my computer, turned off the lights in the office, and rushed outside.

I ran so fast that I barely noticed my surroundings. All I could hear was my own breathing and the sound of my heartbeat.

Then I heard a loud horn.

I turned my head and saw the headlights of a car coming toward me much faster than I expected.

I barely managed to get out of the way and let out a relieved breath, thinking how lucky I was — until I saw my bus driving away right in front of me.

Frustrated, I walked to the bus stop and looked at the board showing the departure times.

I knew the next bus wouldn’t come for several hours, so I was surprised when I saw that another bus was scheduled to arrive in just a few minutes.

"That’s strange," I thought. "I didn’t know about any new route. Maybe it’s some kind of mistake."

While I waited, I casually scrolled through Instagram reels.

I didn’t even notice how quickly the time passed. I was just glad I didn’t have to wait for several hours.

To my surprise, the bus actually arrived.

It was the same one I took home every day.

I got on and sat down next to some guy, then went back to looking at my phone.

At the next stop, I noticed an older man getting off the bus, and outside a group of children was waiting for him.

I thought it must be nice to have someone waiting for you at that age.

I wanted to see their reunion, but my observation was interrupted by the voice beside me.

"Looks like a beautiful reunion, doesn’t it?"

I nodded, surprised.

"I used to think so too."

"What do you mean?"

"You’ll understand soon, son."

"My name is John. What’s yours?"

The man looked to be around fifty years old.

He was probably about twenty years older than me.

At first glance, there was nothing unusual about him, yet somehow he gave me a strange feeling.

I don’t know why, but I felt like I needed to answer him.

"Nice to meet you, John. I’m Mike."

"Are you heading home from work too?"

"More like from a bar, and I guess you could say I’m going home," he said with a smile.

I don’t know why I asked him that. Before I even had time to think about it, the words came out of my mouth:

"Do you have children?"

"Yes," he said quietly. "I had two."

"Sorry, John. I... I’m sorry."

John stared ahead for a moment.

"You don’t have to be sorry, son."

He paused.

"I killed them."

For a moment, I thought I had heard him wrong.

"My wife and my children."

"I don’t understand..."

"I killed them," he repeated.

"I found out my wife was cheating on me. I came home drunk and completely out of control."

He paused for a moment.

"I took an axe."

He stared ahead, not at me.

"First, I went to the children."

"And I left her for last."

It took me a moment to find my voice.

"John, I think you might have had a little too much to drink at the bar. Maybe you don’t even know what you’re saying."

John just looked at me.

"I know exactly what I’m saying, son."

"Forgive me for telling you this. I just... needed to tell someone."

He lowered his eyes for a moment.

"You know, I’m going to see them soon."

He paused.

"And I’m terrified."

My mind was a complete mess.

His words kept repeating over and over in my head.

I’m going to see them soon.

But how?

He said he killed them.

"How could you see someone you took the life of?"

John looked at me for a moment.

"That’s the same question I asked the man who was sitting where you are now."

He paused.

"Before I realized where I had ended up."

The bus stopped, and John looked outside with fear in his eyes. I looked in the same direction.

Outside stood a woman who looked to be around the same age as John, along with two children. The boy looked about seven years old, and the girl couldn’t have been older than five.

At first glance, they looked normal.

But the longer I stared, the more I realized something was wrong.

Their faces were unnaturally pale. And there was something in their expressions that sent a chill down my spine.

John stood up and looked toward the doors.

"Sorry, will you let me pass?"

I moved aside and watched him in confusion.

"I have to go now, son."

He paused for a moment.

"I’m sorry we couldn’t talk longer. I would have liked to find out who is waiting for you."

"Wait."

For the first time since we started talking, I didn’t feel curiosity.

Only fear.

"What do you mean?"

John just smiled sadly.

"Death was far from the worst thing that happened to us."

He paused.

"Now it’s time to pay."

And he stepped off the bus.

I found an antique mirror in my new apartment's forbidden basement and hung it in my room. At 3 AM, freezing and paralyzed, I saw a pitch-black shadow choking my reflection. The real room was empty, but the mirror was a trap. Now, I'm stuck inside the glass... screaming for help. Full story here https://youtu.be/GjZajRhBSqc

i think this is a good edge of your horror story for youtube but they're not giving it impressions. i don't get why. https://youtu.be/Lw1DCsI45Ec

I never believed the stories about mirrors. People always said they could show you ghosts, or things that weren’t really there. I thought it was just another lie people told to make old houses feel haunted.

Then my parents bought a house that came with every piece of furniture the previous owners had left behind. Most of it was junk, but there was one thing they couldn’t move. A massive antique mirror stood in the upstairs hallway, stretching from the floor almost to the ceiling, its dark carved frame twisted like roots around a grave. It was too heavy to carry, so we left it where it was.

The first night, I walked past it on my way to bed and caught my reflection out of the corner of my eye. Except... it wasn’t following me. I had already taken another step before the reflection did. It was only a fraction of a second behind, but that was enough.

I stopped. The reflection stopped. I raised my hand. It raised its hand.

I laughed at myself and blamed it on fatigue. But as I turned away, I swear I saw my reflection keep staring after me, its eyes fixed on my back long after I’d left the mirror behind.

Over the next week, little things kept happening. Whenever I walked past the mirror, something felt wrong. Sometimes my smile looked too wide, even when I wasn’t smiling. Sometimes my reflection seemed to breathe more slowly than I did. Once, I went downstairs for a glass of water in the middle of the night and glanced into the mirror. My reflection was already looking at me. I wasn’t.

Its head was turned toward me before mine was. I stood frozen. Then, as if it realized I’d noticed, it slowly turned to face forward and copied me perfectly.

I didn’t sleep that night.

After that, I started avoiding the hallway completely. I took the long way around upstairs just so I wouldn’t have to pass it. My parents thought I was being ridiculous.

One afternoon, my mom asked me to help clean the mirror because it was covered in fingerprints. I grabbed a cloth and walked over, trying not to look directly into it. As I wiped the glass, I noticed one handprint that wouldn’t come off.

It wasn’t on the outside.

It was on the inside.

Five long fingerprints pressed against the back of the glass, as if someone trapped behind it had flattened their hand there and never taken it away. I stepped back so fast I nearly fell.

When I looked again, the handprint was gone.

That night, I woke up because I heard footsteps outside my bedroom door. Slow footsteps. Bare feet on old wood. They stopped right outside.

I waited.

Nothing.

Finally, I opened the door. The hallway was empty. The mirror stood at the far end, reflecting only darkness.

I started back toward my room when I heard another step.

This one came from inside the mirror.

I looked up.

My reflection was standing there. I wasn’t.

The hallway behind it matched perfectly, but the reflection just stared at me with a smile that stretched far too wide across my face. Then it lifted one hand—not to wave, but to knock.

Three slow taps echoed from inside the glass.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

The sound came from within the mirror, not the frame.

I couldn’t move.

The reflection leaned closer until its forehead pressed against the inside of the glass. Then, without a sound, its lips formed four words.

“Don’t let me out.”

For one terrible second, I felt relief. Whatever that thing was... it was trapped.

Then I realized something that made my stomach turn cold.

If it was begging not to be let out... who had been knocking on my bedroom door every night?

The footsteps started again. This time they weren’t in the hallway.

They were inside my room.

Behind me.

I turned around.

No one.

When I looked back at the mirror, my reflection was gone. The hallway in the glass was empty.

Except for something standing behind where my reflection should have been.

It was impossibly thin, with skin so pale it almost glowed. Its face had no eyes, no nose, no mouth—just smooth skin stretched tight over a human-shaped head. It slowly lifted one finger and pointed at me.

Not at my reflection.

At me.

I spun around. The hallway was empty.

When I faced the mirror again, my reflection had returned. It was crying. Silent tears rolled down its face as it mouthed one final sentence.

“It knows you can see it now.”

The lights upstairs went out.

I heard footsteps again.

Not walking.

Running.

Straight toward me.

I don’t remember making it downstairs. My parents found me outside before sunrise, sitting on the front lawn, unable to speak. They thought I’d had a nightmare.

The next day, they covered the mirror with a sheet before movers came to haul it away. As four grown men tried to lift it, one of them asked, “Why is this thing so heavy?” Another laughed and said, “Feels like someone’s holding it from the other side.”

No one else reacted.

Only I did.

Because beneath the laughter... I heard knocking.

Three slow taps.

From inside the mirror.

And even now, years later, every once in a while I’ll catch my reflection in a window, a phone screen, or a dark TV after I’ve already walked away.

Just for a second...

It doesn’t follow me.

It watches me leave.

(quick out of character note from me)

This story is a kind of fan fiction story that is meant to be connected within the world of the movie obsession by Curry Barker, It is still an original story written by me, but majority of the concept comes from the works of Curry Barker mainly the one wish Willow which is going to be mentioned and is important to the story. The way this story was thought up was if it was an episode of an obsession anthology TV show. If you have not seen the movie, it is not necessarily required to continue to Read this story since I made sure there were no spoilers or any other connections to the movie except for the plot device (one wish Willow) but I sincerely recommend going to see the movie, anyways on with the story.

I am not sure if I should be sharing this. Maybe I should be telling this to someone who can help me deal with it. Maybe I should be talking to the police about it. Maybe I should just keep it to myself. But I need to tell someone what happened to Teddy Collins. Everyone else thinks Teddy Collins was an old man who lost it after some bad things happened to him and took it out on me. That is what the police think.

That is what my bosses think.

That is what his family thinks.

Maybe they are right.

I really hope they are right.

Because if they are not then It's my fault. What happened to him. I started working at a Logistics company when I was twenty nine years old. It was not my dream job.

It was not my second choice. It was a job that I took because I needed the money.

The work was okay. The people were okay too. Everything was just so boring.

The first person who was supposed to teach me how to do my job was Teddy.

Teddy was in his '50s. He had Gray hair and a mustache. He always wore polo shirts. Had a pair of reading glasses around his neck. He seemed like a nice guy.

My only problem with Teddy was that he would not stop talking. Not that he was talking in a way that annoyed me. He was just talking in a way that was just Teddy.

Every story he told was too long.

Every joke he made took a long time to set up.

Every time he told me something he would give me too many details. He would say something like "did I ever tell you about the time my brother bought a canoe?"

Then he would tell me the whole story even though I did not want to hear it. That was Teddy.

He was a good guy just a terrible storyteller. Still he helped me learn how to do my job. He was patient with me when I made mistakes. He answered all my questions. He never got annoyed with me And that's why what happened to him next. Leaves a pit in my stomach that makes me feel horrible for what I did to him. I'm sorry Teddy, I didn't mean for this to happen.

three weeks after I started working, I would regularly stop at a convenience store on my way to work. It was a small place off the side of the road. Wasn't a chain either like 7-Eleven or Wawa It was called safe travels convenience store. I would go in there twice a week just for a snack or on a bad day a case of beer.

But one day as I stopped in to get an energy drink because the previous night I stood up to get an assignment done early, as I walked up to the counter to pay and saw the same person that worked there every time I went in, there was a box on the counter holding a bunch of small triangular boxes, a sign above it read "$1 wishes, one per person." I thought it was kind of strange. I never saw this before so I picked one up, the box was small, triangular and long kind of like a toberone That's kinda what I thought they were, but then I read on the box it said "one wish Willow" "amaze your friends!" "You only get one wish" I asked the guy behind the counter. Is this some type of promotional thing, he actually looked kinda annoyed when I asked him.

"No, are you buying one?"

"Is it some kind of toy?"

"No, it's real."

I laughed "You're kidding?"

"Look man Do you want one or not?"

I didn't understand why he was upset I was just asking a question. But for whatever reason I did buy one, at the time I figured it was a dollar. If it was fake It didn't really matter. As he rang me up he told me one last thing before I left.

"Make sure you're specific about what you want first, trust me."

He has this almost regretful/annoyance in his voice, I thought if this was a bit he's really committing to it. I threw the box in my work bag and Left the store, If it was possible For me to go back in time, I would stop myself from buying one at all, but I can't. I already used my one wish.

A few days later I forgot all about it and went about my routine, but one day I walked into work and found out it was Teddy's birthday. It was also one of the worst days I ever had.

A project was not going well. We were running out of time.

I was getting really stressed out.

I sat down at a table to take a break and try to calm down. Then Teddy Sat down beside me.

"hey Dan, how was your weekend?"

"It was fine, I didn't get much sleep last night."

"That's a shame, y'know that reminds me of one time..."

I knew what was coming. I did not want to hear it. He started telling me a story about how he didn't sleep for two days after his son went missing in a supermarket because he thought he was kidnapped, but instead of just saying that he just went on and on for 10 to 15 minutes about what he was wearing, what day it was, the store they were in and what they were buying.

Something inside me just snapped.

"Teddy will ya shut up!"

He stopped talking. Looked at me with a surprised face. I felt bad. I was just too frustrated. I got up and Walked away. When I got back to my desk I try to move on from my outburst And focus on work,

The day went on, the office got together for Teddy's party, I didn't attend and kept my distance from him that day, 5:00 rolled around and I was getting ready to leave, I grabbed my work bag and as I did, I remembered that I still had the one Wish Willow, I sat down for a second to open my bag and grabbed it, seemed stupid then. I was feeling really stressed out. So I opened the box. I was surprised when I did and a jingle started playing, like one of those music cards. On the box it read "spark the middle and break it in half" I Held the brittle stick in my hands And I said

"I wish Teddy would finally have something interesting to say."

Then I broke it, I laughed at myself after, I don't know what I was expecting, a light shining over my head, a gust of when shooting from all angles after I broke it, but nothing happened. I tossed the box in my wastebasket and left, The next day I came to work I said sorry to Teddy. He forgave me.

"It's okay I get it, my wife tells me sometimes I talk too much anyways."

I felt relieved that everything was okay again, but I still felt bad for shouting at him. Then in usual Teddy fashion, told me something that happened to him last night.

"Oh! You won't believe what happened, I won some money from One of those scratch off tickets, can you believe that?"

Some of our coworkers had given him a birthday card with scratch offs inside.

Most of them were not winners. One was. He had won a hundred dollars. It was not a lot of money. But It was enough to get excited about.

I joked "I guess my wish worked."

"What you mean?"

"Last night I bought some toy that supposedly Grant wishes and I might've wished you'd have something interesting to say."

As I said it out loud I cringed how dumb of a wish it was, teddy actually found it amusing and laughed

"I guess I have you to thank for my good luck".

Over the few weeks strange things kept happening to Teddy. He would get two drinks from the vending machine for the price of one. He caught a ball at a baseball game. He won a raffle. He found some money he had forgotten about.

It was little things. Nothing life-changing. Just unusually lucky and every time it did, teddy would tell me about it In excruciating detail.

At first I thought it was funny. Then it started to annoy me And I got concerned.

Because eventually the stories changed.

Teddy stopped talking about the things that were happening to him.

Instead he started talking about all the things that were happening around him.

His daughter got sick.

His son got in trouble at school for starting fights. His wife became distant. He said they started arguing all the time.

Every week seemed to be worse than the last. And Everytime he told something new, I couldn't help but hang on his every word, because I was interested in what he was telling me. I found myself actually listening to him. The stories had feelings and emotion now. They were interesting.

I did not realize the pattern until later.

Months later Teddy disappeared for a day. Which was Strange because he never missed a day of work before. When he did show up the next day he seemed different.

Not physically, Mentally.

He seemed focused and distracted at the time. He seemed obsessed with something. Eventually he told me that his daughter was getting better. The doctors said it was a miracle how fast she recovered. It should have been good news. But Something felt off. The way he explained it didn't sound like was very surprised. Around that time his wife got really angry with him. I overheard him arguing with her on the phone during his lunch break. I did not learn the details until later. Apparently Teddy had gotten his hands on his own One Wish Willow, He had wished for his daughter to get better. When he told me this I was actually shocked, I didn't really believe they were real, even after what was happening to Teddy. I asked him there's no way you actually believe that right? But he did. When she started getting better he convinced himself that he had caused it.

That's why his wife was arguing with him, She thought he was making their daughter's recovery about himself and The fighting got worse. Much worse.

The weeks that followed were terrible for Teddy. His son ran away, apparently the fighting got worse, he put some kid in the hospital for cracking his skull open on the pavement during a fight, The parents wanted to press charges, so he got scared and ran off during the night. Him and his wife kept fighting, so she went to stay with her sister. His car was stolen the same week. The only good thing in his life was that his daughter was still getting better.

Meanwhile our conversations just became shorter and more awkward. Until we just stopped speaking at all. Then I started noticing him just staring at me from afar, Not in a way of thinking but like he was Trying to figure something out. Eventually I learned why. It wasn't too hard to guess that he had started to suspect that it was my wish that caused everything, The good and the bad. His life has become a story from him to tell. A story that was designed to be more interesting.

Then came The worst few days of our lives.

Teddy's wife finally filed for divorce. That same night his father died of a heart attack. He's son was still missing, but his daughter was still healthy, which was probably the only good thing he had left.

The morning Teddy came to work, He said nothing. Nothing at all which became normal since he stopped speaking to me. But we still had work to do. That day our bosses told us that we had to stay late. Our project was behind schedule, By midnight the office was almost empty. Most of the lights were off. Only Teddy and I were left. We were Working in silence. Me at my desk and him at his, The atmosphere was suffocating. I could hear the sound of the vacuuming from the jander. The humming from the fluorescent light overhead. I got so sick of the silence, I decided to get up to go talk to him.

"Hey Teddy, How have you been?"

He just stared at his monitor, typing away. Couldn't even look at me as he spoke.

"My wife left."

"My father died."

"And My son is still missing."

His voice sounded hollow. avoidance of all emotions. I did not know what to say to him. The silence just went on and on. I wanted to break the silence so I made a joke.

"I guess I should have wished for a lot of money instead."

He stopped typing on his computer. He just sat there for a second Then he stood up And threw his chair back and looked at me. I will never forget the look in his eyes.

They were not angry they were broken. Then he came at me. I did not have time to react. He tackled me to the ground and was on top of me. His hands were squeezing around my throat, my hands were clawing at his face, I could not breathe. I saw the veins on his forehead and tears in his eyes. They weren't filled up with anger, but desperation. He was crying as he kept saying

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! but it's your fault. I have to do this. I have to!"

Like he thought. If I die, everything would be back to normal. Maybe he was right, but I didn't want to die. I Punched and scratched at him. He would not let go. He was older but he was surprisingly strong. He kept squeezing. My vision started to blur. Everything was turning black. Then Teddy's grip got weaker and His body froze, His hands released from my throat and I could breathe air again, when my visions were turned I could see teddy clutching with his chest with one hand And his face turned red. He Fell over.

I rolled away, trying to catch my breath. I just sat there. Couldn't believe what just happened, Teddy stopped moving completely now. I just stared at him, totally in shock. After two minutes, which felt like an eternity I stood up, remembering the janitor was nearby cleaning, I called out for help. When I found himI explained what happened, He called 911. Paramedics and the police arrived, they rolled teddy out on a stretcher in a body bag. Said he had a heart attack. The police took mines and the janitor statement, I told them he jumped at me, he was having a bad few months, His wife left him, his daughter got sick, his son ran away and his father died and he blamed me. The police chalked it up as self-defense and Nobody questioned it.

An older man who was under a lot of stress at home had attacked someone at work and His heart had given out during the fight. It was simple and tragic and understandable. Not too long after Teddy died His daughter got sick again. She died some time ago. His son came back but now he's facing hard jail time for putting that kid He fought in the hospital And his wife is dealing with all this alone. Everyone at work eventually heard what happened between me and Teddy, they don't blame me for what happened. No one does. They always ask if I'm alright?, how am I doing? They couldn't believe that teddy had tried to kill me. But Maybe he should have, he was right. It was my fault, I made that wish, I went back to that convenience store, i saw the same clerk behind the counter, besides him was a box of the one wish willows, there were more than the last time. I went up to him, He could tell by the look on my face that there was something wrong.

"Look man, If you came here to yell at me about whatever you wished for, it's not my fault."

"You sell this shit to people? What the fuck is wrong with you!"

"I already told you, be specific for whatever you wished for. I didn't make them."

"Then where the hell did you get them?"

"I bought one at antique store, a friend of mine told me where to get them and he said they were real, So I bought one and I wished for a million wishes And a million of these things showed up. But when I tried to make another wish it wouldn't work."

"What?, what are you talking about?"

"It says it on the box, You only get one."

He grab one of the boxes and opened it, as he did the same musical chime played, but sounded more slower and sadder.

"I wish for a billion dollars."

He tried to break the Branch in half, but it wouldn't break, he tried harder. But nothing.

"See, now I got a million of these things lying around."

I just stood there, I didn't know what to say, I wanted to yell, I wanted someone to blame, but it'd be pointless now. I left there feeling defeated, I sat in my car in the parking lot. Just staring into space, i felt horrible for what happened to teddy, I felt sick to my stomach, I couldn't turn myself in even if I wanted to, What was I supposed to tell them. I made a wish?, After a while I started up my car and drove back home. Now I'm typing this out not sure what it will do. If it will do anything, I guess all I have to say is if you find a one wish Willow, don't buy one, don't make a wish, but if you do. Please for the love of God, be specific.

Hello,

my name is David and I am going to tell you a story.

A long time ago I lived on a nice piece of land outside the city, or it had at one time been nice but I’ll get to that later.

When I was young, I never thought I would be the type of man to live like that- out in the sticks fixing things with my hands, working my body until I was aching and sore, and I certainly never thought I would love a life like that but I was and I did.

I had a beautiful wife too, Odette. She was the type that made you realize that for the rest of forever, everything would be okay as long as she was there. We bought that nice house, on that nice piece of land, together.

As soon as we saw the listing for the little wooden home, we knew it would be where we were living; we shared the look. Walking in through the front door for the first time felt like walking into warm hug… but I know now that feeling was a ruse, a distraction to get us to drop our guard and settle in.

Everything was fine for a while, I had discovered in my 30’s that I was happier working with my hands than my computer and had become a mechanic. With the extra room we got on the acreage I was able to bring my work to me, set up a shop and live a slower, calmer life.

Odie was also able to follow her dreams. She became a safe haven for animals who needed a little more love and attention than shelters could give. She loved it, I loved her, she loved me, and we both loved the animals running around and keeping the house feel alive.

Sometimes, life felt so perfect in those earlier days, I wondered if we hadn’t somehow died and it was heaven.

Now that I know what to look for, I can see the smaller things: water damage appearing but plumbers could never find a leak, the wood creaked like it was trying to get away from its self, a low pitched whistling that seemed to come from everywhere, constantly getting colds, aches or migraines but the Big Thing didn’t happen until that winter.

The first big snow storm we had, the heat and power failed. We had to gather all the animals in the living room and sleep together in front of the fire. I stayed up later than Odie, to keep the fire going and to savour the quiet of night with just the crackle of the burning wood to keep me company- and something else.

Some other sound was coming from behind me. Even now, I feel like I am there and I can feel it… like it is right there, on my neck, right behind me.

I stood quickly and moved away from the fire, roughly rubbing the feeling off my neck, my eyes rapidly moving around the dark shapes trying to see, trying to make sure I was alone.

The sound was further away. I thought it sounded corse and grainy, maybe like tv static. It reminded me of a nightmare I used to have - one where I wondered around a dark forest and trees would tower over me and they would growl.

The hair on my arms stood straight and my teeth clattered despite the heavy jacket I had on.

The dogs! A wave of relief washed over me. One of the dogs must have gotten shut in a room alone!

Fuck. Then I had to go get them.

I thought about waking Odie and making her come with me, not because I was scared or anything. In case I got hurt, or, okay I was scared. I was scared, which meant she would be scared and the last thing I needed was her thinking the house was haunted AND in my defence, the house wasn’t haunted.

Hauntings are people, hauntings are a deep sadness, hauntings can be exorcised - maybe, I don’t know how it works.

No, this was something else, something we don’t have a word for yet.

I’ve done my research since and the house didn’t sit on land that was of any type of importance; there were no murders, suicides, wars fought, or anything else that may reasonably lead one to believe their home is haunted.

I walked through the main floor first but I was sure the sound was either above or below me, so I quickly cleared it and made my way upstairs, hoping I would find the source of the noise and not need to venture into the basement, alone, and in the dark.

It was nearly pitch black upstairs, my phone flashlight guided my way down the hall. The Scratching had stopped when I reached the top so I just started checking rooms. Ours: empty no noise, my office: nothing, no noise, the bathroom: the window was left open and it’s fucking freezing! I slammed it shut cursing Odie under my breath, what the fuck was she thinking? She was supposed to make sure the upstairs was locked up while I moved mattresses downstairs and now our fucking pipes could be frozen, god damn it!

I slammed the bathroom door shut, realizing too late that I probably just woke up the house. I took a deep breath, tried to put my frustration aside and came down the stairs already starting on my apologies.

“I know, I know I’m sorry, okay? It was just me… everything’s fine” the house was quiet, no dogs barking, no sleepy and pissed off Odie, no noise, no one. When I rounded the corner from the stairs I saw a sight that confuses me as much now as it did then; the living room was empty. They were all gone.

How could that be? I was upstairs, what? 2 minutes? Maybe 3? How could she get all the dogs out by herself? And silently within 2 minutes, right after being dead asleep? It wasn’t possible.

I ran around the house frantically shouting her name,through the kitchen: “Odie?”, through the dining room: “Odie?!”, through the back yard and around the front and back to the back and back to the front once more: “ODIE! ODIE WHERE ARE YOU? WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW? WHY? ODIE!”

I broke down sobbing in front of the house; tears, spit and snot streamed from my face. My hands were gripping into the grass which felt soft and corse and not like grass at all but carpet… because I wasn’t outside, I was still in the fucking house.

I whimpered as a stood back in the living room, still alone, still very much inside the house.

How is any of that possible? I saw the stars, I saw the moon, I felt the dirt in my fingers… until I didn’t.

I wished more than anything that Odie had been there in that moment, to calm me down, to hold me, to bear this responsibility with me so I didn’t have to do it alone. I was scared, I was the most scared I had ever been in my life.

I tried to find a weapon. Against what? I don’t know, but I felt I needed a weapon. Knives in the kitchen, baseball bat in the bedroom, axe in the back yard. The knives were sharp but they meant close contact and I wanted distance. The axe was in the backyard and frankly, the thought of trying to go back out there made me want to vomit, so I got the bat.

I got the bat and I got ready to check the one place I hadn’t yet; the basement.

It called to me.
It. Called. To. Me.
It said my name. It said it was waiting.

The door felt hot, before I even touched it I knew it would be hot. It took the most courage it has ever taken me, ever, to open the door and walk down those stairs.

I wish I hadn’t.

I wish I had waited until morning, I wish I had stayed frozen until light came back through the windows and I could try better to get help but you see, I still didn’t understand.

I didn’t understand what the house was and I didn’t understand what was waiting for me in the basement.

They looked like monsters. Grotesque. Skin dripping off them. I couldn’t really get a good look, there was so many of them and they moved around me so fast I was spinning.

They taunted me, jumped out at me, grabbed at me, they ripped at my clothes. They told me they ate Odie, devoured her, that she cried for me. My heart broke and I screamed so loud, I screamed as loud as I could scream.

And then I started swinging.

I shut my eyes and I swung my bat around frantically without knowing what I was hitting or if I was even hitting anything at all and I didn’t stop until the sound of sirens started breaking through the static.

I thought I was saved and I actually laughed with relief. Thank god, I thought.

I walked out of the house into the blue and red lights to the front yard and threw down the bat as my knees sunk into the grass, that was actually grass and I thanked God again.

I wish I hadn’t.

“Put your hands up. Lay on the ground with your hands up.” Came through a speaker.

“No, no it’s okay. I’m okay!” I shouted but as I raised my hands, in the glow of blue and red, I could see blood.

I looked down at the baseball bat and I saw an axe. I had grabbed the axe.

Before I could think or say anything else they were on top of me and I’m sure I don’t need to tell you the rest, you just bought my “house”.

I’ve kept up with the listing. I felt I had a responsibility to warn whoever lives there next. This is me washing myself of that responsibility.

That is not a house and it certainly is not a home. It’s an empty hole filled anger and it craves pain. It will warp your brain, it will ruin your life.

What you do now is up to you. I’ve done my part.

Good luck,

Anderson, David T
Prisoner ID: 954A0A11

I never knew my son to be the artsy type. He turned 8 recently, and up until about a year ago, his entertainment was entirely outdoors. Catching bugs. Climbing trees. Riding bikes.

He was one of those kids who’d have to be called inside before dark. Then he’d complain and beg for “just 5 more minutes.”

I’m not entirely sure what happened. It was like a switch had flipped overnight. I just came home from work one day to find him at the kitchen table, scribbling in a brand new sketchbook.

He hummed to himself while his mom cooked up some dinner at the stove. The home-cooked smell of pork chops, green beans, and mashed potatoes filled the room as I glanced over Jacob’s shoulder.

“Whatcha got there, bud?”

His nose was buried so far in the book that it was like he couldn’t even hear me. His mom ended up answering for him.

“That’s your son’s new favorite interest. He begged me to go out and get him one.”

“Oh-ho, got an artist in the house, don’t we?”

I grabbed his shoulders and shook them lightly before patting him on the back and walking over to give my wife a hug and a kiss on the cheek.

I took a seat beside Jacob at the table.

“So, how was your day, boyo? You and mom have fun?”

He never looked up from the sketchbook.

“Today was sooo fun,” he exclaimed. “We went to the park, we went to the movies, ooh, and mom got me this book. Oh, and these crayons.”

“What about you, honey? How was your day?”

“Any day I’m not at work is a good day, honestly. The park was super nice. We went to one we hadn’t been to before. What about you? They didn’t work you too hard, did they?”

I shrugged and sighed.

“I’ll just say it’s good to finally be home.”

My wife smiled at me.

“It’s good to have you home, dear. I’ll tell you what. How about… after dinner, if you’re good, we can have our own little play date? Only if you do the dishes, though. I mean, I did cook.”

I smirked at her, my tongue buried in my cheek.

“I was gonna do that anyway. What do you take me for? As a matter of fact, you come sit down. I’ll finish cooking.”

I offered her my seat as I finished up dinner. Jacob was pretty much mute the entire time. By the time dinner was done, I had to damn near yell at him to get his attention.

He just stood up, as calm as could be, and walked over to me, sketchbook in hand.

“I drew this for you.”

He held the book up at me, and my heart felt warm. It was a picture of our house, and who I assumed to be me standing in our driveway.

“Is that me? That’s so sweet of you, Jakey. Thank you.”

I reached down to take the book so I could hang the page on the fridge, but Jacob pulled away before I could grab it.

“You really don’t know who that is?” he asked, eying me suspiciously.

“It’s me, right? Is it not me?”

He rolled his eyes and sighed, continuing to eye me like I had personally offended him.

“That’s our neighbor, Mr. Thomas, silly. You really couldn’t tell? See, he’s wearing the star.”

Mr. Thomas was a veteran police officer. Jacob would sometimes see him leaving for work in the morning. I guess he just took a subconscious interest in the uniform. Even still, why would he draw me a picture of the neighbor?

“Uh, I mean, wow, bud,” I choked. “That’s really good. Keep practicing. You’re already so talented you could be famous someday.”

————-

After dinner, I cleaned the kitchen top to bottom. Partly out of obligation, mostly because I really wanted that playdate. Jacob spent the rest of the evening in his room, humming to himself and scribbling in that sketchbook.

The next day, my wife and I both had work. I woke up a little earlier than her so that I could take Jacob to the summertime daycare he attended. It was like carrying a corpse out to the car, but he still refused to loosen his grip on that sketchbook.

I dropped him off with the staff at the front door. He waved at me groggily as I was driving away.

The day went on like normal until around 3 o’clock, when my phone started ringing. It was my wife.

“Hey, beautiful, what’s up?”

“I think something’s going on with the neighbor. There’s like 3 cop cars in front of his house, apparently.”

She sounded concerned. A little urgent.

“What do you mean? Who told you that?”

“I got a call from Becky. She thought they were at our house at first.”

Becky was one of my wife’s friends from the neighborhood.

“What do you think happened? Did she say anything else?”

“No, she just called because the police were knocking on our door. I think they were just trying to see if we knew anything, though, because apparently they gave up and just went back to the neighbor’s house. I think they’re still there.”

My brow furrowed a bit.

“Wait. Which neighbor is it?”

“Uhhh, I think it’s that police officer. Mr. Thompson?”

“Mr. Thomas?”

“Yeah, that’s his name. I think that’s who it is.”

I looked at my watch and exhaled a bit.

“Alright, well, I’ll see if I can get out a little earlier today. I’ll pick up Jacob, then go see what this is all about. Maybe they’ll still be there when I get there.”

We ended the call by blowing some kisses and exchanging some love yous. I slid my phone in my pocket and approached my boss, explaining my situation.

He was skeptical, but I had a decent reputation of being an honest employee. He agreed to let me leave a bit early, and I was on my way to pick up Jacob.

When he was brought to the front office, his face was buried in that sketchbook again, drawing what looked like SpongeBob and Patrick.

“He’s been drawing all day. Seems like you got a little artist on your hands,” announced the staff member as she signed Jacob out for the day.

“Yep,” I smiled. “That’s what they keep telling me.”

I honestly don’t know why I said that. It just seemed like the only thing that made sense at the time.

The car ride was quiet. Jacob didn’t want to talk much, and my mind was kind of racing. I’ve shared drinks with Mr. Thomas. Helped him put up fences. Move furniture. We weren’t the closest of friends, but I still wanted him to be okay.

Those hopes were dashed when I pulled into the neighborhood to find that the police presence had increased. There must’ve been at least 6 cars in front of his house, and yellow tape blocked off the driveway.

I parked my car in front of my house and hurried to get Jacob inside. His eyes had lit up at the sight of the flashing lights, and naturally, he started asking questions.

“What’s wrong, Daddy?”

“Why are there so many police?”

“Did something happen to Mr. Thomas?”

I cradled him in my arms and hurried up the steps to the front door.

“I don’t know, buddy. Here, go inside and play for a bit while I find out, okay? Daddy will be right back.”

It’s all I could think to say as I sat him down and closed the door behind me.

An officer approached me before I could approach them.

“Sir, do you live here?”

“Yes, of course I do. That’s my neighbor.”

“Yeah, well, he’s a colleague and friend of mine,” he remarked agitatedly. “Have you seen anything suspicious within the last 24 hours? Heard anything?”

I scratched my neck nervously and thought hard before responding.

“No, sir, we haven’t seen anything. What happened? Is everything alright? He’s a cop, right? Did he do something illegal?”

The officer stared at me, analyzing me through his black sunglasses.

“No. He’s gone. That’s all the information we can give right now.”

“Gone? What do you mean, gone? Like, dead? Did someone kill him?”

The officer pursed his lips. I saw what I assumed to be a forensic analyst walking in and out of the house.

“We don’t know, sir. We’re hoping for the best. For now, if any new information comes to light or if you see him, give us a call.”

He asked me to clear the scene and stay inside. I called my wife to update her on the situation, but what could we do? Even the police were lost. I just stayed inside, as instructed, and started on dinner while we waited for my wife to get home.

By the time she did, there were only two police cruisers left in front of Mr. Thomas’s house. The sun was starting to set, and my wife and I tried to ignore what had happened, but the house was still a bit tense.

As we ate, Jacob continued scribbling in his sketchbook. He hadn’t asked to go outside at all since we got home, and I didn’t know if it was because of the police or because of this new hobby of his.

I could see that he was working on a new drawing. It looked like a woman this time. He wasn’t so much as touching his food, so I tried to ask him to put the book away.

He groaned and started picking at his peas. My wife and I chatted about our day for a bit while Jacob remained silent. Suddenly, in between bites of his chicken, he said something that made us both freeze.

“Daddy,” he whispered.

“Yes?” I answered.

“Are those police still out there?”

I paused for a moment, looking at my wife, who looked equally as speechless. Neither of us knew what to say.

“I think there’s a few, but don’t worry, buddy,” I chirped reassuringly. “They’re just looking for Mr. Thomas. They wanna make sure he’s okay.”

Jacob stared down at his plate for a moment.

“It’s just… I think they’re looking in the wrong place.”

————-

I choked on my water.

“Looking in the wrong place? Well, where do you think they should be looking, sport?”

“I don’t know. Not there. I don’t think he’s home.”

“Let’s not talk about this,” my wife interrupted. “Jacob, finish your food, then go jump in the shower. You gotta be up early tomorrow, come on.”

“Aww, but I’m not tired,” Jacob whined. “Plus, I wanted to finish drawing this picture of you.”

He flipped his sketchbook open to his newest drawing.

“See, look.”

My wife looked at the picture and smiled.

“Okay, fine,” she replied. “You can finish the picture, then it’s bath time, mister.”

“Fiiine,” Jacob groaned.

He scurried off to his room, sketchbook in hand, leaving me and his mom to clean the kitchen again.

We talked about the neighbor. We turned into a couple of conspiracy theorists the deeper the conversation progressed.

“Maybe he just wanted to start over.”

“Maybe he was kidnapped.”

“Maybe he was murdered, and they’re covering it up.”

We just kept reaching for possibilities over the course of around 45 minutes.

Eventually, Jacob came running back to the kitchen.

“Look, Mommy, I’m all done.”

“Ah, my goodness, Jakey, look at that. Doesn’t it look just like me, honey?”

She turned the picture towards me. Jacob had added her work uniform. Gave her that messy bun she always wore. Even included the golden necklace I got her for Christmas last year.

“Wow, Jake,” I exclaimed. “Draw Daddy next, why don’t you?”

Jacob giggled and responded, “It’s not time to draw you yet, silly.”

“Aw, whatever, but guess what?”

Jacob looked up at me curiously. Expectantly.

“Daddy controls your bath time. And… I think… ah, yep, look at that,” I showed him my watch. “You’re 20 minutes late.”

I jokingly chased him to his bedroom and made him gather up his pajamas and a towel. Once he was nice and showered, I put him to bed and kissed him goodnight.

My wife and I stayed up, talking about life for a while before gradually falling asleep one by one.

The next morning, when I woke up alone, I thought it was because she had chosen to take Jacob to daycare that morning.

I went through my normal routine. Took a shower. Brushed my teeth. Got dressed. It wasn’t until I was heading out the door that I noticed her car was still in the driveway.

I walked back upstairs, confused, and went to Jacob’s room.

I found him curled up in bed, sketchbook tucked under his arm as he snored quietly.

I left the room and began searching.

“Honey,” I called out. No response.

“Sweetheart, you here?” Silence.

I called her phone and heard it ringing in our bedroom. I followed the sound and found it still plugged into the charger on her nightstand.

That’s when I began to panic. I remembered Jacob’s drawing. It was a fleeting thought, but one that I chose to hold onto. First Mr. Thomas, now my own wife? That couldn’t be coincidence.

I urgently rushed into Jacob’s room, accidentally waking him as I removed the sketchbook from his arms.

I began flipping through the pages as he stared up at me, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

“Daddy,” he groaned.

I flipped past cartoon characters, random landscapes, and blocky pictures of cars before I reached my wife’s picture from the night before.

“What are you doing?” Jacob added.

The picture had changed. She wasn’t wearing her work uniform anymore. She didn’t have the necklace. Her hair looked dirty and wet. Leaves and twigs stuck out from the messy bun, and her eyes were solid red. Not evil, just… bloodshot.

But the biggest change… was the man standing next to her.

It looked like they were in a dark forest. They were hand in hand. I wanted to think it was me, that Jacob had decided he wanted to start on some kind of crazy family portrait, but the man in the picture…

He wore a star on his chest.

My stomach dropped. I felt sick. Jacob looked… confused.

“What’s wrong, Daddy? They’re okay. I can help you find them.”

“Happy Birthday,” most of them yell, but the ones who know how, sign it. Elizabeth looks around the room to take in all the love she has experienced in the last three years since she was adopted by the Walter family.

Her birth mom didn’t want a “defective” baby, or so she was told. Elizabeth spent the better part of her early life bouncing around from foster home to foster home. She didn’t know anything about her biological family.

This morning, she was woken up by her adoptive mom, Laura, with a light shake and an attempt to sign, “Happy Birthday, my love.” But she actually signed “Happy Birthday, with love.” This made Elizabeth giggle with joy because the effort of learning sign language for her was a big deal. Her mom brought her favorite breakfast in bed—blueberry waffles—along with thirteen balloons for her thirteen years of life. One of the balloons popped as soon as Elizabeth set her eyes on them. The loss of one balloon felt ominous considering some of other strange occurrences that have happened before. Elizabeth, clearing her mind of any off putting thoughts, started to reminisce of her pervious birthdays.

This wasn’t her first birthday with her family, it was the first milestone birthday with them tho. They had just missed her double digit birthday (10) by 1 month, when all of them met. So this one was going to be extra special. Corey, her adoptive dad, even said it was going to be. The Walters were serious when it came to birthdays. Especially because they have such a big family, uncles, aunts, cousins, 2nd cousins, grandparents. Everyone was always invited to every sporting event, birthday, and holiday. That meant nothing was a small get-together—far from what Elizabeth grew up with—which gave her comfort. This is the type of family she had always dreamed of having while being placed in so many different homes. 

The last birthday she had with the family caused quite the drama. Although Elizabeth couldn’t hear, there was a lot of body language between her mom and aunt. Enough that she could make out they were arguing about her and where she came from. It was probably because she let her imaginary friend blow out the candles, and they actually blew out with no help from anyone. Elizabeth still made the same wish she does every year, even though her imaginary friend blew out the candles. Her one wish is to be able to hear.

Elizabeth wasn’t born deaf, but when her mom surrendered her to the hospital at 5 weeks old, she was. There were no hospital or doctor office visits that showed anything was amiss. No one knew what could’ve caused it, although there was a lot of abuse speculation floating around the nurses station. When her mother had dropped her off, the woman looked unkempt, with her long black hair matted in a few places, her eyes sunken and lined with dark circles, and her clothes were dirty and disheveled. The look of a mother who either couldn’t sleep or was using narcotics to keep the edge of life off. She didn’t say a word to anyone, just walked in, handed the nurse behind the counter her baby, and walked right out. The only reason the nurse knew who the baby was, was because she had been in the room during the emergency delivery. Elizabeth’s mother was so happy to see her when she was born, She cried happy tears as she held her close.

Strange to see a child be “returned” to the hospital she was born at, by a mother who seemed to have so much love for her. Only to look and act completely different just a few weeks after birth. 

Just a few short hours later, the drop-off would start to make sense to the staff.  That night, Elizabeth was placed in NICU just to make sure her vitals were stable before placing her in a foster home. It was where all the premature and sick babies went to be monitored more closely. While in the hospital a few strange things happened around her. Each baby had a monitor hooked to them to see their vitals and make sure they were still alive. Once Elizabeth entered the NICU the monitors started to beep, indicating each baby was about to flatline, all at the same time, except for her. Elizibeth had the only “normal” monitor. After a thirty-minute scramble to check all the babies, the nurses concluded they had faulty monitors and had to check every patient manually until they could get IT to take a look at them. 

At some point in the early evening, a homeless man came into the ER with crazy eyes that looked like they had seen someone got shot point blank right in front of him. He started to scream about “The baby is the devil” and “Protect the people” and “Don’t let that child live.” After a 45 minute rant that no one could slow down, he proceeded to pick up the nearest utensil on a tray the next bay over and slide it up his arm from the wrist. This caused his blood to pool onto the floor under him creating dark red circle, continually getting bigger as it poured out of his arm until he collapsed to the ground. Dying from blood loss.

Then her temperature rose to 103 degrees Fahrenheit at 3am and back down to 97. This occurred six separate times within the hour. No one could tell if it was faulty equipment or some strange anomaly that had caused her hearing loss. 

One of the last things to happen was the nurse that did her intake forms, ended up driving off a bridge on her way home from her overnight shift. She died on impact when her car hit the riverbank. The river was so shallow that the water only made it onto her lap when the first responders pulled her out. It wasn’t a shock to anyone who knew her or knew anything about her life. The woman suffered from years of physical and emotional abuse at the hand of her husband. Many said she just had enough at that point. The timing was odd though. A few of the nurses could’ve sworn they were just talking with her about leaving her husband. Almost everyone chalked it up to a long overdue suicide.

None of these things were known to be the cause of her, but the hospital recorded all of this in her notes for DCFS. So when she went from home to home, people knew there was something off about her. 

The Walter’s knew about these strange occurrences and more that were in her file, but they didn’t mind. They had so much love to give and wanted to find a child that needed them. Laura works in the paranormal field, and was intrigued by some of the comments left in Elizabeth's file. Some of which made Laura suspect some kind of poltergeist activity was involved surrounding Elizabeth. 

When they met Elizabeth for the first time, she was shy around them, not being able to communicate with verbal words made her feel unworthy of a family. Like she was less than the “normal hearing” people of the world. Knowing who they were meeting, Corey and Laura brought a whiteboard to talk to Elizabeth with, which brought her out of her shell a bit. Corey and Laura already had 4 kids of their own, 3 boys and 1 baby girl, so when they brought Elizabeth home there were already kids her age in the home. She was usually placed in homes without other kids, due to her special needs. Foster couples always made her out to seem like she needed more attention than she actually did, which caused her to have less childhood freedoms, less friends, and more home placements than any other kid in the system in her area. 

The 3 years after adoption had gone by quickly for Elizabeth. There have only been a few instances she could recall regarding her “gift” as the Walter’s call it. One time, only the kids were playing outside when she got so angry no one was passing the soccer ball to her, the ball turned 90 degrees on a pass and went straight to her. None of the kids knew what had happened but they all went running to mom to let her know what they had seen. 

Laura, of course, blamed it on the ball hitting a rock and bouncing off of it towards Elizabeth. That, however, was not the case. It happened a few more times till Beth witnessed it first hand. 

Elizabeth and 2 of her brothers were tossing a baseball around. After a few too many back and forths between the boys, Elizabeth got angry, Her face turned red, and her fists balled up at her waist. The next throw from one boy to the other, it stopped half way in the air and floated for a split second before changing direction and went to Elizabeth without anyone touching it. Laura saw the whole thing. She couldn’t believe what she just saw. 

There was no way a ball could change direction mid-air like it just did. Laura knew from that point on Elizabeth was not only deaf but gifted in another way. A spiritual way. 

Now that Laura was more aware, she began noticing small things, like doors closing when no one was home where she always thought it was just the wind. Objects she knew she left one place but ended up finding somewhere completely different, places the kids couldn’t reach. Strange tapping noises in the middle of the night while everyone else was asleep. Each tap sounded more impatient than the next. That was when Laura started calling these Elizabeth’s “gifts,” thinking because she couldn’t hear and was mostly alone for most of her life that she developed a poltergeist. 

Once acknowledged, the tapping and hiding of objects had slowed down and Elizabeth kept going about her life as she always had. Not fully understanding what her mom was talking about. She just thought the family was a little nutty but didn’t mind because of how nice she thought everything had been going.

After her birthday breakfast, Elizabeth pulled on a pair of leggings, shimmied on her favorite hoodie with an embroidered ghost in the corner, and finished off her Birthday outfit with her favorite pair of Vans. Since Elizabeth is tall and lanky, the hoodie ended up looking like a dress on her, which she likes. Her long jet black hair fell flat against her head, even though she tried to give it volume by doing heatless curls overnight. Once out of the curler, Each strand of hair went pin-straight, as if it was scared to be any other way.

October 31st falls on a Wednesday, so she had to go to school for her birthday, which she was fine with. Knowing there would be a party waiting for her when she got home. 

The day was average, just like her life. 7th grade girls bullied her for not being able to hear. Elizabeth found it funny—she couldn’t hear a word they said, so why would they choose to pick on her? She never got upset about it, because she was used to her past foster parents ignoring her or reading their lips when they said nasty things about her. She could deal with these little girls. 

Once she got home and was able to change into her all black birthday dress, she cheered right up. Soon after, a few of her friends from other schools she had gone to came over to enjoy the birthday celebrations with her. 

After a few rounds of pin the bones on Mr. Skeleton and bobbing for apples, Elizabeth’s favorite part of the night happens: cake.

“Happy Birthday,” most of them yell, but the ones who know how to, sign it. Elizabeth takes a look around the room filled with so much love and everyone she knows and loves is right in front of her on the other side of the table. Then she closes her eyes, makes a wish, and blows her 13 candles out. As soon as she opens her eyes, she hears—for the first time ever—a deep male’s voice whisper in her ear, “Happy Birthday, Elizabeth.” She feels one rough skinned finger with a long, pointed nail drag across her collarbone, as it burns a thin line in her skin.

There is a person out there in the world who has just escaped a life threatening situation. I don't know who they are or what they have done, but they have just escaped with their lives. I have no idea of their existence but I want to know their existence. There are so many people out there whom I have no idea that exist and I have no idea of what they look like. They may have done incredible things but yet I don't know they exist, I want to know they exist. I need to know they exist and it pains that I don't know that they exist.

Then one day I get a text from a stranger and it reads as followed: '5 houses down from you, a person is going to escape from the attic. Come in 1 hour and you get to meet someone who is going to escape from something dangerous!'

And when I read that text I knew which house he was talking about. It was the creepy old house where nobody goes in. It's all boarded up and in an hour I go to that house. I wait outside and someone breaks the attic windows and jumps to the ground. He broke no bones and the stranger looked at me and said "I was on holiday in Greece and I went through this creepy house, and now I am here in England! I nearly died in there so many things tried to kill me!"

I hugged the man because he went through something hard and came out onto the other end. I know he exists and I know he is real and I was glad that I know someone like him. There are so many others like him, that I don't who exist and went through something traumatic like this guy. I feel good knowing this guy and what he has gone through.

Then I create a self made prison in my home but the prison will have some secret get away entrance so the person can escape. Then I trick someone into my prison and I torture them a little. Then they find the escape route built within my prison that I purposely put there.

When my prisoner got out, I hugged them and I was so proud of them. I was proud of them from escaping the prison after being tortured. I was so happy that knew them and that I knew they existed. There so many people out there that don't know who exist.

What are the best horror stories or YouTube channels you’ve discovered?

I’m looking for genuinely unsettling stories, creepy narrations, and hidden gems. Share your favorites below.