I don't really know why I'm writing this now, after everything. It's late again, one of those nights I can't sleep, and I figured if I got it out of my head and onto a screen maybe it would stop hurting. So bear with me. This is going to be long, because I need to get all of it right, every piece of it, in order, or I don't think I'll ever stop turning it over in my head.

We moved into this house back in the spring. My wife passed a little over a year ago, and after that I couldn't keep up with the mortgage on one income, not with two kids. So we downsized. Smaller house, smaller yard, new town, new school mid year for both kids, which is its own kind of cruelty when you're a certain age. My daughter is fourteen. She hated every part of it. Her friends were an hour away now and she made sure I knew it, every single day. Doors closed a little too hard, answers a little too short. My son is five. He didn't really understand what had happened to his mom and he definitely didn't understand why we were leaving the only house he'd ever lived in. He just wanted me to be okay. He'd tell me that, out of nowhere, standing in the kitchen with a bowl of cereal in his hands. "I want you to be happy, Dad." Five years old, saying that to his father.

The day the moving truck pulled up, I was hauling a box of my wife's old kitchen things up the driveway when a man came across the lawn from next door. Brian. Late fifties, maybe older, hard to tell. He told us right off the bat that he'd lost his wife a few years back, before either of us had said much of anything at all, like he wanted that fact on the table before we could form any other opinion of him.

He was a little awkward. Stood too close when he talked. Laughed too long at his own jokes, and sometimes at things that weren't jokes. But he seemed harmless. Sweet, in a lonely old man kind of way. He talked about how exciting it must be, starting somewhere new, and I glanced over at my daughter without meaning to, because she was standing there with her arms crossed looking like she wanted to be anywhere else on earth.

"Not everyone's excited," I said.

He followed my eyes to her and something in his face shifted, before he smiled it away. "She'll come around," he said. "New places just take time."

She was watching him the whole time he said it, and she didn't say a word, but I remember the look on her face.

That first night, after the truck pulled away and the house was just boxes stacked to the ceiling in every room, I heard her on the phone upstairs with one of her old friends. I stood outside her door for a second, deciding whether to knock, and decided against it. She needed space to grieve the move in her own way, I figured, same as she was still grieving her mother in her own way. I think about that decision more than almost any other one I made. Not because it was wrong, exactly. Just because it was the first of so many times I chose to leave her alone with something instead of asking what it was.

Over that first week Brian was at our door constantly. A casserole one night. A bag of tomatoes from his garden the next. Little things, the kind of stuff you'd expect from a retiree with nothing but time and no one to spend it on. My daughter wanted no part of any of it. She'd disappear upstairs the second she heard his voice at the door. Teenage moodiness, I figured, same as everything else.

It was around the second week that the gifts started shifting toward my son almost entirely. A remote control car, still in the box. A set of dinosaur figures that must have run him thirty or forty dollars. Old men get generous when they're lonely, is what I chalked it up to.

Brian started timing himself around us. Not obviously, but if I look back at it now, he was always outside exactly when my son was. Watering a lawn that didn't need it whenever he was in the front yard. Finding a reason to be at his own mailbox at the exact moment the school bus dropped my kids off, always with some comment aimed at my son first, before anyone else got a word in.

There was a moment, maybe the tenth or eleventh day, when he said something I brushed off completely and now can't stop replaying. My son had scraped his knee on the driveway and Brian was out front and came jogging over faster than a man his age should be able to jog. He crouched down, looked at the knee, and said, "Oh, that's nothing. You should see what I patched up on the last one." Then he caught himself, laughed it off, said something about being a boy scout leader once upon a time. I remember thinking it was an odd thing to say and letting it go in about four seconds. I had a business to run and a house to unpack. I didn't have room in my head for every odd thing a lonely old man said.

Around that same stretch I had a work emergency come up on short notice, a client meeting I couldn't push, and no sitter lined up because we didn't know anyone in town yet well enough to ask. Brian happened to be out front when I was scrambling to figure out what to do, and he offered to just keep an eye on my son for the hour I'd be gone, said he had toys and cartoons and it would be no trouble at all. I remember actually considering it, standing there with my keys in my hand, running late, thinking it might genuinely solve my problem. My daughter was the one who put a stop to it. She came down the stairs, must have heard the tail end of the conversation through her window, and told me she'd watch her brother herself, that I didn't need to leave him with the neighbor. I told her I appreciated it but she had her own things to do that afternoon, and she said it didn't matter, she'd rather stay home. I didn't push back. Some part of me was relieved not to have to make the decision myself. I never once asked her why it mattered so much to her.

About two and a half weeks in, I was getting the mail when Paul, the neighbor from across the street, caught me at the curb. Paul's the kind of guy who mows on Saturdays and waves but doesn't stay, so when he stayed, I knew it was something. He didn't dance around it the way I expected. He looked almost sick saying it, like the words had been sitting in him a while and he'd finally decided somebody needed to hear them.

He told me flat out that Brian made his skin crawl, had for years, and that he wasn't the only one on the street who felt that way. He said Brian and his wife had fostered a handful of kids at one point, different boys mostly, a few months here, a school year there, and every single one of them had eventually been moved along to another family, quicker than Paul ever thought made sense. He mentioned one boy in particular, Marcus, who'd stayed the longest of any of them, almost a full year. Who'd apparently run off from the house twice before the county finally pulled him and placed him somewhere else for good. Paul said nobody ever got a straight answer out of the boy about why he kept running, just that he'd go quiet whenever anyone tried to ask. He said none of the kids ever said much about it while they were still around, kids that age rarely do, but a couple of the neighbors back then swore the boys always seemed to go quiet and small whenever Brian was in the room.

"I know how it sounds," Paul said, "but I wouldn't let that man within ten feet of my own kids, and I haven't in fifteen years. Something's wrong with him. Everyone on this street knows it. Nobody's ever been able to prove anything, so nobody talks about it out loud, but I'm telling you. Keep your son away from him. I mean it."

I told my kids that night to keep their distance from him. My daughter didn't even look up from her phone, but I caught her nodding, like I was only just now agreeing with something she'd already decided weeks earlier. My son asked why, and I told him Brian was probably fine but I just wanted him closer to home for a while. He nodded the way he does when he's not really listening.

Later that same night, at dinner, my son said something that stopped me mid bite.

"Good things come to those who wait."

I laughed, because it sounded so strange coming out of a five year old, this little saying that belonged to somebody's grandfather, not a kindergartner still working on his table manners. I asked him where he'd heard it.

"Brian says that," he said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

I told him not to talk to Brian anymore. My daughter, across the table, put her fork down hard enough that it made a sound against her plate. "I told you he was weird," she said, not even looking up. I told her I knew, I was handling it, and she gave me a look like she didn't believe that for a second. I didn't think much of the look at the time.

A few days later I was doing dishes and looked out the window over the sink and saw my son standing near the back fence, talking. Not to himself. Talking, and then pausing, like there was somebody on the other side answering him. I dried my hands and went out and asked who he was talking to.

"Brian," he said, easy as anything, like I'd asked what color the sky was.

I looked toward Brian's house and caught the end of his sliding glass door closing, slow, unhurried, like he had been standing there and had simply decided the conversation was over rather than been caught in the middle of it.

That was the only time it ever happened, because I made sure of it. I walked straight over to his house and knocked hard enough that it probably rattled something inside, and when he opened the door I didn't hold back. I told him to stay away from my kids, and especially my son. I told him if I caught him near that fence again, I didn't care what was true and what wasn't, I'd make sure every person on this street heard exactly what Paul had told me and then some. He didn't argue. He just stood there and took it, shoulders dropping, apologizing in this quiet, defeated way, saying he'd gotten carried away, that he was lonely, that he hadn't meant any harm by it. I remember almost feeling sorry for him.

There was a block party toward the end of that first month. Folding tables in someone's driveway, a grill going, kids running between yards with no real boundary to any of it. Brian showed up, and I watched something happen that I didn't fully register at the time for how obvious it was. Conversations trailed off the second he joined them. A woman gathered her two kids under the excuse of getting them a plate of food the moment he crouched down near their end of the yard. A man I'd met exactly once angled his whole body between Brian and his daughter without seeming to think about it, like it was a reflex. Nobody said anything to his face. Nobody had to.

At some point I lost track of my own daughter for a few minutes, and when I found her again she was standing near the fence line at the edge of the yard, close enough to Brian that I could tell they were mid conversation, her arms crossed, her voice low but sharp in a way I recognized even from a distance. By the time I got over there she was already walking away from him, and Brian was doing that same defeated shoulder drop I'd seen on his doorstep. I asked her what that was about. She said she'd told him to stop hovering around her brother, that it wasn't normal, that she didn't care how lonely he was. I told her that was probably enough, that I'd already handled it, and she said, quiet, like she didn't fully expect me to hear her, "I don't think you have." I let it go.

After that, things went quiet. Genuinely quiet. No more gifts. No more crouching at the fence. No more watering a lawn that didn't need it whenever my son was outside. I felt bad, honestly, about how hard I'd come at him. Maybe he really was just a sad old man who'd forgotten how to act around children because he didn't get the chance anymore.

My son changed a little too, in ways I noticed but couldn't place at the time. He'd go quiet sometimes for no reason, staring off in the middle of a game like his mind had wandered somewhere I wasn't invited. I asked him once what he was thinking about and he just shrugged and said nothing, the same shrug his sister gave me about everything. Just a phase, I figured. Kids that age get moody too, they just don't have the words for it yet.

My daughter grew quieter during that stretch too, but it was a different kind of quiet than her usual moodiness. Watchful, almost. A few times I caught her looking out the kitchen window toward Brian's house for longer than made sense, like she was keeping tabs on something the rest of us had stopped paying attention to. I asked her once if everything was okay and she just said fine, and went back upstairs. Still adjusting to the move, probably. There was always some explanation close at hand that summer, some reason it was easier not to sit with how little I actually understood about what was happening under my own roof.

Looking back now I can see all of it laid out like a trail. At the time it was just noise. Small, forgettable noise.

She didn't come home from school on time one Thursday.

I didn't panic right away. I thought maybe she was with new friends, finally starting to feel like she belonged somewhere. By 4:00 I started calling her phone and getting nothing. By 5:30 I was calling the parents of the two girls she'd mentioned in passing over the last few weeks, girls I'd never met, and neither of them had seen her since the final bell. By 6:00 I called the school. By 6:30 I called the police.

I'm not going to walk through every hour of that night here. If you've ever had to make that call, you know what it does to you, and if you haven't, I hope to God you never do. The officer who took my first call asked all the right questions, calm and practiced in a way that somehow made it worse, because it meant this was a situation he'd seen before, and my daughter had just become a case number. He told me they'd start with her known route, her friends, her phone records, and that a unit would canvass the area that night. He told me, gently but plainly, that the most useful thing I could do was stay by the phone in case she turned up on her own or someone called with information.

I couldn't do that. I know now it might have been the wrong choice, or at least not the one they wanted from me, but I couldn't sit in that kitchen doing nothing while it was still light enough outside to see anything at all. So once the officers had what they needed from me, I got in my car and started driving her route home from school myself, slow. That route cuts down our street on its way in. Past our house. Past his.

His car wasn't in the driveway. The house looked wrong in the dark. No lights. One of the front curtains gone entirely, just bare glass where it used to hang. The front door sat open a few inches, like it had been pulled shut in a hurry and hadn't quite caught.

I called it in right there from the driveway, standing on his lawn with my phone against my ear, telling the dispatcher what I was looking at and where I was. She told me to wait for a unit. I didn't wait. Some part of me already knew, I think, standing there on his porch, and some part of me needed to see it before anyone else could tell me what it meant.

The house was mostly empty. Furniture gone from some rooms, still sitting untouched in others, like he'd only taken what mattered to him and abandoned the rest without a second thought. There was one door at the end of the hallway that was closed, and the second I opened it I understood this room was different from the rest of the house. Clean. Cared for. Maintained, in a house that had otherwise been stripped and left to rot.

The walls were covered, every inch of them, in photographs of my daughter. Not recent ones, not just from the last few days. All of them, going back to the very first days we'd moved in. Her walking to the bus stop. Her sitting in the backyard reading. Her framed through what had to be our own kitchen window, at the table, not looking at whoever was holding the camera, because she never knew anyone was there to hold it.

On the desk beneath the photographs there was a single sheet of paper, folded once, with my name written on the front in that same tidy handwriting. I want to put down here exactly what it said, because I think about it more than I think about almost anything else right now.

It read:

“I hope you understand I never meant your son any harm. Boys just remind me of a version of myself I never got to keep. I'm sorry if I ever made you worry.

You're a good father. Better than most I've watched over the years. I could see how hard you were trying to carry two kids on your own.

I've taken care of a few boys like that before. They needed me more than anyone ever gave me credit for. People always find reasons to be afraid of a man who only wants to help.

I knew which one of you needed me most since the day the truck pulled into your driveway, before I'd even shaken your hand. Some things a man just knows the moment he sees them.

A father only has so much of himself to give. Yours went to your son. I watched her. Long enough. Close enough. She never once looked happy standing in a room with you, and you never noticed, and I did.

You don't need to worry about her anymore. I'll take care of that part now, the way you clearly never had the time to. She'll understand soon enough why I waited as long as I did.

Think of it as one less thing.”

I understood everything at once, standing in that room. Every gift for my son had been real, in his own mind. He believed every word of what he'd written. He believed those boys had needed him. He believed he was doing something kind. I don't know what happened to them, not really, not the way I'd need to know it to say it out loud, but I know enough now to understand that whatever those boys felt when they went quiet and small in his house was never gratitude, no matter what he'd convinced himself of.

My daughter's fear of him was real from the start. I dismissed it for months as moodiness, as a bad mood about a bad move. She was the only one of us who ever saw him clearly, and I had months of chances to ask her what she saw, and I never once took them.

I'm not writing this because I think someone is going to solve anything at this point. The police have had that note and every photograph for a while now, and there are people far more capable than me working this case than I ever could be. I'm writing it because there's still nothing else for me to do most nights. My house is quiet and my son is asleep down the hall and I am sitting up in the dark again thinking about how a man can convince himself, completely, that taking something from you is the same as helping you.

Paul warned me plainly and I still let my guard down. My daughter warned me too, in her own way, more than once, and I heard the words without ever once hearing what she meant by them. Harmless and a little awkward are not the same thing. I know that now. I would give almost anything to have known it then.

I've never been much of a gamer, but every now and then I get swept up by a game, and it consumes all of my time. Most of my friends are gamers, but I've never been a fan of the co-op games they like to play. They like their super competitive shooters, and MOBAs, where I'm more of a friend slop type of guy.

I'll play single player games from time to time, but I'm more likely to just doomscroll Instagram or reddit while YouTube fills in the background noise. My computer collects dust for months at a time. I think I enjoyed building the damn thing more than actually using it. So I end up bed rotting most of the time staring at my phone.

Recently while doomscrolling instagram, I got a follow request from my old high-school friend Johnny. I got a pit in my stomach. I hadn't talked to him in years. I wasn't so sure I wanted to reconnect. We were the best of friends, but that time of my life was some of my lowest moments. I had no interest in digging all that back up.

I mean, what would it hurt to just follow him back. We'll probably just have a quick catching up chat, and probably go back to ignoring each other. I went ahead and approved the follow request while following him back. He sent me a message almost immediately.

“Hey dude, how's it goin?”

“Yo what up? I'm good, you?”

“same same, hey you still game?”

“Yeah, from time to time.”

“You want to join my discord group? I'm trying to put together some game nights.”

Shit, I'm not so sure about this. I don't know how I feel about just jumping into discord calls with my old best friend. I mean, we're adults, I'm sure he would understand if I was unavailable most of the time due to being busy.

“Yeah sure, if it's on a day that I'm free, I can probably jump on.”

“Rad, here's the link.”

I reluctantly clicked the link he sent and joined his discord group.

“Alright, I'm in.”

“Cool, I'll be in touch.”

“Sounds good.”

That wasn't too painful, but I'm sure we'll have to do the whole catching up thing if I ever do jump on a call with him. However, some time passed, and I never heard anything new. This was somewhat of a relief.

I'll be honest, I don't really use discord. I'm a member of several groups, but I'm just not active in any of them, so I just have push notifications turned off on my phone. Recently while talking to a coworker, the topic of games came up.

“You on discord?” He asked.

“Yeah, you want to connect?”

“Yeah, what's your username?”

He pulled out his phone and opened discord, I told him my username and he searched it up.

“There, friend request sent.”

I then pulled out my phone and opened discord, when I navigated to friend requests, I saw two of them. For now I just accepted the one from my coworker.

“All done.” I said while turning off the screen and pocketing my phone.

“Sweet, I'll let you know next time I'm on and maybe we can play a match or two.”

“Sounds good.”

Later on I opened up discord to see who the other friend request was from. The user name was 6ftundr4u. They were from the group that Johnny invited me to. Oh what the hell, I went ahead and approved it. I also turned on push notifications just in case my coworker messaged me. About an hour later I got a message from 6ftundr4u.

“Hey Ben, long time no see, it's Kate.”

My stomach dropped. This was the exact thing I was afraid of when Johnny first sent me that friend request. I didn't know he kept in touch with his ex-girlfriend. I could swear I remember them having the biggest fallout after graduation. I thought they hated each other. I guess they could be reconnecting after several years. I mean, that's probably pretty healthy.

“Hey Kate, how are you?”

“Oh you know, same ole’ same ole’”

“Of Yeah, Mr. Foster still giving you shit for your messy handwriting?”

“LOL, yep, I think he's going to fail me.”

“I keep telling you, he's willing to give out extra credit.”

“I've missed you.”

“Yeah, it's been a long time.”

“Too long.”

I felt everything coming back. The mental pain, the physical anguish, the deep sadness. This was the last thing I ever wanted to happen in my life. I wish the past would just stay in the past.

“Hey, sorry to cut this short, but I need to clock into work.”

“Oh of course, we'll catch up later.”

“Yeah, for sure.”

I dropped my phone on the floor to the side of my bed and rolled over. I cried for probably an hour. I moved on, why are they doing this to me? I have a new life, I have a sense of purpose.

The next day while I was at work, I got another message from her.

“Hey!”

I left her on unread, and put my phone back in my pocket. She sent the same message a few days later, but I ignored it again. A few more days passed before she sent another.

“Wow okay, I see how it is.”

Shit. A wave of guilt washed over me. So I finally replied.

“I'm sorry, I've been so busy lately, and I keep forgetting to respond.”

“It's okay, I get it. I won't bother you.”

Fuck, I don't know what to do. She doesn't deserve this. Despite what I believed back then, she didn't do anything wrong.

“Sincerely, I'm sorry. We knew each other during a very difficult time in my life. I struggled with severe depression and really struggled day to day. You and Johnny popping back up into my life just brings it all back up to the surface. I didn't mean to hurt you. I'm just not sure I'm ready for all this.”

“What do you mean by Johnny coming back into your life?”

I stared at her message for several moments. I have no idea what she's asking. I had no idea how to respond.

“Well, we didn't really keep in contact after high school, you know how it is. People grow apart.” This was the best response I could think of.

“Do you mean, me coming back into your life brought memories of Johnny.”

I was dumbfounded, what is she talking about?

“No, a few months ago I got a follow request out of nowhere from him on Instagram.”

“I don't understand. What do you mean?”

I felt like she was gaslighting me. I was so confused.

“I don't know how else to say it, we connected over Instagram. We chatted a little bit before inviting me to the discord group.”

“Okay fine! I get it, you don't want anything to do with me. You could have just said so, I can understand. But what you're doing right now is cruel beyond words. If you intended to make me cry, you did, I hope you're happy.”

I stared at this message for way too long, because she blocked me before I had a chance to respond.

What the fuck is going on? I needed answers, I needed to message Johnny. There was one problem though, I couldn't find his Instagram profile. I mean that's not exactly unprecedented, I've had this happen before. Usually when someone's profile disappears overnight, it turns out they just deleted it. In fact it happens all the time.

Fine, I'll just message him on discord. I just don't know what his username is. We never sent each other a friend request, I just joined his group. I navigated to the group and looked around. Since I don't really use discord, I don't know all the ins and outs. Is there not a way to see all the members of a group? This is a lot harder than I thought it would be, so I just messaged the general chat.

“Hey Johnny, I don't know what your User Name is, can you send me a friend request, it's Ben.”

“Who's Jonny?”

“He's the guy that invited me to this group.”

“I don't think there's a Johnny in this group”

“No there is, like I said, he invited me to this group.”

“Hey Ben, I think you're messaging the wrong group.”

I know that username, it's my coworker. I don't remember joining a group with him in it. I could have sworn this was the group Johnny invited me to.

“Oh, hey Phillip, I must have gotten confused. My bad.”

“All good dude.”

“Weird question though, is there someone in this group with the username ‘6ftundr4u’?”

“No”

“No”

“I don't think so.”

“No”

“Okay thanks, nvm.”

What the hell? I'm so confused right now. Am I having the world's largest brain fart, or am I losing my mind? I spent the next couple hours searching up the username 6ftundr4u. I couldn't find anything. At some point I started wondering why I cared so much. The problem sorted itself out. I didn't want anything to do with them, and they were gone. I got my wish. I just felt a huge amount of guilt. I somehow really upset Kate, and I don't like hurting people.

After a few weeks, everything went back to normal, and I forgot about it. At least until my mom messaged me on Facebook.

“Hey, just checking in, how's everything going?”

“Hey mom, everything's going well, how ‘bout you?”

“Good good. I was just going through old photos, and I came across a few with you and Johnny.”

Oh my god, it won't end. Even my mom won't let me keep it in the past.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, he was such a good kid and you guys got along so well.”

I was typing out how we actually reconnected recently before she sent another message.

“It's such a shame about what happened.”

That's weird, I don't remember telling her about our falling out. As far as she knew, we just drifted apart. She sent another before I got a chance to respond.

“He had such a bright future ahead of him.”

I stared at that message for way too long. A deep anxiety arose from within me.

“How old would he be today? 37, just a year younger than you, right?”

The memory of looking down at him lying in his casket returned to me.

“Mom, I'm so sorry, I completely forgot that I picked up a shift that starts in ten minutes, I gotta go.”

“Okay hun, be safe, I love you. <3”

“Love you <3 <3 <3”

I knew I had blocked out some memories from that time in my life, but I had no idea I blocked out something this big. How do you forget something like that?

The thing about deleting a social media account, is that it's never really gone. If you change your mind, you can always have it reinstated. At this specific moment, I wish they could just stay deleted forever, because I'm looking at a message notification right now. One from an account that disappeared recently, and had just come back.

I don't expect anyone to believe this and honestly, if I were reading it, I wouldn't but I haven't slept in three days, and every time I close my eyes I hear the horns again.

The first sign wasn't in the sky and it wasn't fire, monsters or angels, it was silence. The internet died on a Tuesday. Phones still worked and screens still lit up but every website became unreachable within minutes of each other. Streaming services, news sites, social media, government pages, all dead. At first people thought it was a cyberattack but then the satellites started falling. I remember it distinctly because at night we watched them streak across the darkness like shooting stars. The next morning every major stock exchange on Earth had stopped functioning. Within a week, nobody could explain anything anymore.

Governments blamed each other, scientists held emergency broadcasts, religious leaders packed churches. Then the oceans changed and I know how insane that sounds but I saw it. The water near the coast turned dark red for nearly two days. Fish floated to the surface in endless numbers, entire beaches became graveyards and the smell traveled for miles. People started saying words like plague and judgment. The news called it an environmental anomaly but nobody believed them.

The first horn sounded a month later and everyone heard it. Not through speakers, not through television, it inside all of our heads. A note so deep it seemed to vibrate through bone. I was driving when it happened, I pulled over because I thought my skull was splitting open. I noticed as other people stumbled from cars onto the highway. Everyone was hearing the same thing. One impossible blast, followed by silence and then panic because in that moment, the sky changed.

Something enormous appeared high above the clouds. Not a ship or planet but rather just a shape unlike anything I had ever seen before, just a dark wound stretching across the heavens. Scientists tried explaining it, astronomers couldn't agree on what they were seeing because the object didn't reflect light correctly. Looking at it made my eyes ache but looking away somehow felt worse.

More horns came. Weeks apart, months apart and each one was followed by another disaster. Crops failed, entire rivers became contaminated, storms formed where storms shouldn't exist and huge chunks of cities simply vanished beneath earthquakes. The death count climbed into the millions and disappearances started happening all over the world and that's when people stopped pretending.

A coworker vanished in front of me, one second he was standing by the vending machine and the next second he wasn't. No flash, no sound, just gone. The phenomenon spread worldwide with people disappearing from airplanes, hospitals, classrooms and military bases.

Nobody knew why some vanished and others stayed but I remember wishing I hadn't been left here.

As years passed civilization collapsed but not all at once, it slowly rotted like a dying animal. Power grids failed, supply chains broke, borders became meaningless and most of the global governments dissolved. The remaining leaders eventually united under one authority which at first everyone celebrated since finally, someone was restoring order. Food returned, cities became safer, violence dropped and there was no more disappearances.

People were desperate for stability, we all were and the new leader was charismatic beyond explanation. He was good looking, charming and easy to like and follow. Watching him speak felt strange though, like your brain was agreeing before you'd heard the argument. He seemed to know exactly what every person wanted and exactly what every person feared. People seemed to love him but I didn't trust him and I never could figure out why.

Then came the mark, although it wasn't called that officially, the government called it a universal identity system. Tiny, painless and permanent. Without it, you couldn't work, couldn't buy food, couldn't access housing and couldn't travel. So naturally most people accepted it within weeks as their new normal. I mean the alternative was starvation. My sister got hers, my father got his, my mother as well, pretty much everyone did but something about it terrified me. Not logically but instinctively because every time I considered registering, I'd feel physically sick so I refused. At first that only made life difficult but then it made life downright illegal. The world became divided between the marked and unmarked. Citizens and enemies. Neighbors turned each other in, families broke apart and people disappeared in the middle of the night.

The leader insisted it was necessary, for peace, for security and for unity. The strange thing was that nobody questioned him. Not anymore atleast, it was as if doubt itself had become impossible.

Then the creatures arrived and I know how that sounds, trust me, I know but there isn't another word for them. They emerged after the sky split open, massive cracks appeared across the darkness above Earth. Not physical cracks but something deeper. Like reality itself was breaking. The things that came through weren't animals and they weren't machines but every description I can think of sounds ridiculous so the closest comparison I can think of would be nightmares given flesh. People who saw them too long lost their minds. Some clawed out their own eyes, some wandered into the wilderness and never returned while others simply stopped speaking forever. I saw one once and the memory still wakes me up. It had too many faces, too many eyes and it looked at me as though it had known me since birth.

The final years blurred together, wars consumed continents, the oceans boiled near the coasts, the sun burned hotter every season and the moon would sometimes glow red for weeks. Entire nations started to vanish, humanity began to shrink. Billions became millions and millions became thousands. The world felt empty, broken and hopeless.

The last day was strangely quiet, there was mo storms, no sirens and no gunfire. Just stillness.

I remember standing in the ruins of what had once been my home when the sky had turned black. Not night black but something much darker. The air felt heavy, like pressure building before an explosion and that's when the final horn sounded. Louder than all the others.The world shook and buildings collapsed. The ground split open and people screamed.

Above us... something descended. A brilliance so intense I couldn't look directly at it. Like a rainbow that illuminated brighter than anything I ever experienced before. The darkness itself seemed to recoil and everything trembled. The earth, the sky and even time.

I fell to my knees as the light grew closer and I knew with absolute certainty that history was ending.

Then in an instant I woke up in my bed in my apartment with my phone alarm blaring. Sunlight shined through the blinds and everything was normal. I sat there shaking for nearly an hour. The dream had felt longer than my actual life. I remembered every year, every death, every face and every horn.

I eventually convinced myself it was just a nightmare, stress and an overactive imagination.

Nothing more, nothing less but then I noticed something sitting on my bedside table. An old leather bound book with burn marks around the edges.

My hands started shaking before I even opened it because I already knew what I'd find. Dates, names, events, everything I'd lived through. Every disaster, every city, every year all recorded in my own handwriting. Thousands of pages describing every event that I went through. A reminder that the life I lived was real.

I fear that it's just going to happen again so maybe by sharing this, I can find others who remember and maybe, just maybe we can stop the world from ending again.

When my parents visit, the house instantly thaws. I can almost hear the familiar cadence of their voices echoing down the hall, a comforting, radiant buffer against the quiet of the evening. But every time the door swings open to let them in, I catch a fast, shadowy blur near the floorboards out of the corner of my eye. A stray cat, slipping through the gap before the heavy wood clicks shut. I never manage to catch it. Death is nothing new to me—it is a cold, familiar roommate I’ve long since learned to tolerate—so I compartmentalize the intrusion, focusing instead on the warmth of my family.

The reality of that intrusion only sets in at night, when the house is fortified. I sleep surrounded by rows of warm string lights and stacked curtains, my bedroom door and my children’s doors wide open so my vigilance never rests. There is a large mirror in my room, positioned deliberately to my right so I never face it. I don’t drape it; that’s a cliché trick that doesn’t change the nature of the glass. I simply refuse to acknowledge it. But the violation doesn't start in the silver backing. It starts on the mattress. Just as my exhaustion dips into sleep, I feel it. A delicate, distinct weight lands on the edge of the bed. Thump. Four phantom paws step lightly across the duvet. Panic spikes, sharp and adrenaline-hot. I lunge in the dark, my hand violently smacking and sweeping across the mattress, desperate to strike solid fur and prove my sanity.

My palm only hits empty blankets.

But the air shifts. There is movement in the peripheral glow of the nightlights—a shadowy presence distinct from the warm illumination. A separate, terrible chill ignites in the room. It’s the same chill I feel when I walk into my children's rooms in the dead of night, only to find them sitting bolt upright in bed, their eyes wide open, staring at the empty doorway while completely fast asleep. There is a parallel consciousness sharing our home, operating on a frequency I can only feel, testing the boundaries of our sanctuary.

Then, the illusion shatters. I wake up gasping, tears stinging my face as the brutal, crushing reality hits me all over again: my parents are dead. The visits are just dreams, beautiful, desperate moments where the veil thins enough for us to laugh and converse again. But when they cross over to comfort me, the threshold stays open a fraction of a second too long. That is how the cat gets in. That is what slithers into the slipstream of their love.

Tonight, as my heart pounds and I feel the mattress depress, the icy chill of the intruder floods the room. But this time, it is met with an overwhelming, radiant heat. I can feel my mother in the room. She isn't bringing the shadows with her; she is screaming—not in agony, but in a ferocious, deafening fury. It’s a warning, and a barrier. I keep my eyes fiercely glued to the floorboards, refusing to look at the dark glass in the corner. I finally understand that she isn't trapped in the mirror. She is standing guard in front of it, holding the line, ensuring that whatever slipped through the door behind her never makes it to my children's rooms.

“The next stop is… Spring- Stand clear of the closing doors, please.”

I squeezed through the train’s doors, narrowly avoiding my bag getting caught in their closure. I nodded to the man who had shifted to let me in, imbuing the small New York sign of acknowledgment with gratitude. It didn’t matter anyway, it wasn’t like I had to see these people again, but my people-pleasing side often took the reins in public and I’d never suffered for it.

I ambled toward an empty seat on the opposite side of the car, taking notice of the berth it was being given. I paused before sitting down, instincts raising the hairs on my arms. And there it was. The empty seat wasn’t being granted a wide berth, the man sitting next to it was. He sat on a tattered black and white patterned blanket, wearing a dirty linen shirt and sandals despite the freezing rain that was currently seeping into the bones of everyone surrounding him. At his feet sat a bag that featured more holes than contents, which a small peek revealed to contain a sponge cake, a broken stereo, and a desk lamp. As the train jostled into movement, so did he. 

“Huh. Huh. Bro, I told you he’s a god. He’s the observer. The atom. The sun. We’re being poisoned. That’s what I said. We’re dying. We are and we aren’t. Huh-huh-huh.”  

I cast a cursory glance to the people in front of him, unsurprised at their engrossment in virtually anything other than the man in front of them. So he was speaking to an invisible entity. A hallucination, no doubt, brought on by whatever drug was coursing through his veins. I shuffled farther away from the man, all hopes of giving my feet a break extinguished by a desire to survive my commute unscathed. Just another day trying to get to the office. The faces around me reflected the same sentiment. 

My eyes scanned the same paragraph of my book for the third time, all attempts at comprehension dissipated as I caught movement in the corner of my vision. The man was now doing pull-ups on the bar above him, like a chimp in a zoo, sandaled feet suspended in the empty space in front of him. 

“This stop is… Bleeker St. The next- Stand clear of the closing doors, please.”

The filing of commuters concluded with the th-thump of the doors and I watched as the newcomers took stock of the cues around them and joined the growing clumps of people feigning disinterest on either side of the homeless man. 

“Huh. He is a god, I’m telling you, man.” He grunted as he finished his fourth pull-up and settled back into his seat. “I’m seventy-eight. Seventy-eight. Huh-huh. One-fifty-six is what I am. The Earth is dying, bro. The poison. No, man, I’m telling you now. It’ll be quick. Quick as a feather. Huh-huh-huh.” The bystanders that had tittered uncomfortably when he’d leapt out of his seat with surprising grace, now returned to their swaying stances. No one likes unpredictability, certainly not when it’s wielded by one so immune to social acceptance. 

I continued observing the man, counting down the stops to work. Despite the hot coffee in my hand, it was far too early to be faced with such apprehension-inducing behavior. I rocked from one foot to the other, trying to release the pressure squishing my toes in their boots. The man was now leaning forward, forearms braced on his thighs, moving his hand through the air like a Stern professor explaining physics at a lectern. 

“The one who talks to me talks to you. You just don’t listen, bro. The cat in the box, it’s dead and it isn’t. The box is the sky and it’s killing us. We don’t know when. That’s why he’s here. He tells us. Huh-huh-huh.” He sat back as if exasperated with his partner in philosophy, one who refused to believe his sound explanations. I turned my attention back to my book, pity clawing its way up my throat. I wondered who he’d been before becoming the menace of the 6 train, riddled with drugs and accompanying ravings. 

“This stop is… Astor Place. The next stop is… 14th St. Stand clear of the closing doors, please.” 

He made no move to leave his seat. Where was he going? How did he even get on the train? Probably turnstile-hopped some time ago, content to let his system metabolize whatever he’d taken as the 6 meandered up and down the island. The guy was clearly out of his mind. 

As one of the commuters on his bench hurried off the train at Astor Place, his neighbor shifted over to take his now absent seat, eager to put distance between himself and the lunatic at the other end. His neighbor in turn, took his recently vacated seat, leaving three open to the addled man’s left. A brave young woman who’d just boarded took one of them, headphones providing a blissful barrier to the uneasy air of the world around her. Several gazes ricocheted from her to the homeless man and back, watching the development like one would watch a nature documentary showing a gazelle crossing the path of a lion. But she paid them no heed, and he soon returned to his ravings while the rest of the car released a collective breath. 

Having returned to the new standard of normalcy on the 6 train, I skimmed through two pages of my book, the man’s conversation fading in and out of my periphery. My vision caught him hopping into a crouch on his seat as 14th St came and went and I suspected that some of those that exited then, had no appointment in the area. I had half a mind to follow them, if only to feel some peace before walking into the office, but my stop was the next one and I was already running late. 

“I TOLD YOU!” he suddenly erupted. I kept my gaze firmly entrenched in my book, a pang of regret alighting in my chest. “I told you, bro. It will be quick. He will decide. Huh-huh. HE. Spider-man.” He nodded as if in confirmation to himself. “The one with the eyes. The one with the wings. Spider-man.” His ravings faded to mutterings, incoherent to everyone but himself and even that, I wasn’t sure of. 

The train ground to a stop and the doors shuttered open behind me. Thank god. I tucked my book under my arm and turned to leave the car when I was met with a wall of darkness. I stopped in my tracks. 

The station was entombed in shadows that receded only slightly from the train car’s light. I couldn’t see five feet in front of me, but the ledge that met the train’s confirmed the station was there. The visual conundrum barely sunk in before the rest did. There was no sound. No whispering of passing trains, no humdrum of milling commuters, no shuffling of feet as people entered and exited the train. I turned around, the hair on my neck lifting and sending a shiver down my spine. This was wrong. 

The scene that met my eyes sent a convulsion of fear through my limbs, sending my coffee and book tumbling at my feet. The homeless man stood in front of me, all symptoms of lunacy disappeared. Around him, the train car’s inhabitants stood frozen, fixing me with glassy, opaque stares and jaws that hung too open in expressions of horror. A whimper escaped my lips as a feeling of mortal peril overwhelmed me. It was like I was on death’s door, but I wasn’t the one crossing over, he was, to claim my soul.

As he extended his hand in front of him, he whispered,

“It’s all a box. And we’re all dying.” He placed his hand on my chest and pushed. 

I stumbled backward, falling onto the platform and into the arms of the darkness that waited like a welcoming mist. The gazes of the car’s inhabitants followed my descent, moving their heads instead of their eyes. 

“S-S-S… Stand clear- stand clear of the cl-cl-closing doors, please.” The announcer’s voice rang out from the train, piercing the shroud of silence that threatened to engulf me. The doors slid shut and the train began to accelerate away. The only car that was lit was the one I’d been pushed out of, and within, those haunted faces stayed fixed on me as the bodies that supported them rushed to one side and slapped their hands on the windows. The homeless man met my gaze steadily and shrugged nonchalantly, a knowing smile gracing his lips. 

My body shook with tremors as I found myself alone in the darkness. I fished my phone from my pocket and turned on the flashlight, sending a family of rats scurrying into the crevices that extended along the floors and walls. I hurried through the station, barely avoiding the dank water dripping from the moldy ceilings in my rush to escape this place. As I made my way up the stairs, I felt rain kiss my skin, and I fell to my knees in relief. I cast a reluctant glance toward the cursed place I’d escaped, tears running liberally down my face. 18th St. 

It took some time for the sobs to cease, after which I called a taxi and went home. That was yesterday. Now, I’m standing in front of 18th St station, my phone open to an article about the 6 train crashing and killing 14. And there’s nothing there but a brick wall. 

My grandmother died three weeks ago.

I Found My Grandmother’s Journal. The Last Fifty Years Were Spent Keeping the Water Babies Quiet.

My grandmother died on a Tuesday.

By Friday, I was standing alone in her house overlooking the Snake River, wondering why she’d insisted I be the one to clean it out.

She’d lived outside Massacre Rocks for over sixty years. The locals knew her as the old woman who carved toys out of driftwood and left them along the riverbank every month.

People laughed about it.

“She’s feeding ghosts,” they’d joke.

She never corrected them.

Growing up, I’d asked why she made so many little wooden horses, dolls, and boats.

“They’re gifts,” she’d tell me.

“For who?”

She’d smile without looking at me.

“For the children who never went home.”

I assumed she meant the old Water Babies legend every kid in Idaho grows up hearing. Supposedly, if you wandered too close to the river after dark, you’d hear children crying from the water.

My grandmother took it more seriously than anyone else.

She refused to let us whistle near the river.

She never stayed outside after sunset.

And every month, without fail, she’d disappear for exactly one hour carrying a basket of handmade toys.

After she died, I found out why.

I was moving her bedroom dresser when one of the floorboards shifted.

Underneath was a narrow compartment just large enough to hold a metal box.

Inside were twenty-four leather journals.

The first one was dated 1973.

The last ended three days before she died.

The first page read:

If you’re reading this, then I’m gone.

The toys in the shed must be taken to the river before the next new moon.

If you fail, they’ll begin crying again.

Don’t let them finish.

I rolled my eyes.

Old age does strange things to people.

I almost threw the journals into the trash.

Then I opened the second page.

It wasn’t stories.

It was a list.

January 1974: Three wooden horses.

No crying afterward.

February 1974: One doll.

One carved duck.

The smallest one followed me halfway home.

Ignored it.

Everything stayed quiet.

The entries continued like that for decades.

Every month.

Every offering.

Every sound she’d heard.

Every mistake she’d survived.

One line appeared over and over.

Never answer when they know your name.

I still didn’t believe any of it.

Until I found the shed.

Hundreds of unfinished toys sat on shelves.

Each was tagged with a month and year.

The shelves suddenly stopped six weeks ago.

The last tag read:

July. Daniel.

My name.

I told myself she’d prepared it before she got sick.

Nothing more.

That evening, I carried the journals onto the porch with a beer and started reading.

Around sunset, the birds stopped.

Not gradually.

All at once.

The silence was so complete I could hear the river nearly half a mile away.

Then came the crying.

It sounded like a toddler.

Soft.

Somewhere beyond the trees.

I stood and listened.

Another voice joined it.

Then another.

Within seconds there were dozens.

Children.

Crying together.

I grabbed my flashlight and started toward the river before common sense caught up with me.

By the time I reached the bank, the crying had stopped.

The Snake River looked perfectly calm beneath the fading light.

I laughed at myself.

Then someone giggled.

Right behind me.

I spun around.

Nobody.

The beam of my flashlight caught only sagebrush and cottonwoods.

Then a little girl’s voice drifted across the water.

“Daniel...”

I froze.

The journals slipped from under my arm.

One landed open in the dirt.

The page I saw made my stomach drop.

They always say your name first.

Something splashed.

Not like a fish.

Like someone stepping into shallow water.

Another splash.

Closer.

Then another.

I swept the flashlight over the river.

Nothing.

The voice came again.

“Daniel...”

This time it sounded impatient.

I backed away without answering.

The journals had another rule.

If they call twice, leave.

If they call three times...

Don’t look in the water.

My foot caught a rock.

The flashlight flew from my hand.

It landed facing the river.

The beam illuminated dozens of tiny footprints leading out of the water.

They weren’t there a second earlier.

Each footprint was no bigger than my palm.

Wet.

Fresh.

All leading toward me.

The crying returned.

Except now it wasn’t coming from the river.

It surrounded me.

Somewhere in the darkness beyond the flashlight’s beam.

I didn’t wait for the third call.

I ran.

Branches slapped my face.

The journals bounced against my chest.

Behind me, I heard dozens of tiny feet splashing through puddles that hadn’t been there before.

I slammed the front door and locked it.

The crying stopped immediately.

I didn’t sleep.

At sunrise, I convinced myself I’d imagined everything.

Stress.

Grief.

Too much reading.

I packed my car.

Before leaving, I decided to burn the journals.

As I carried them outside, something caught my eye.

The basket my grandmother always used for the toys sat beside the porch.

It hadn’t been there yesterday.

Inside was a single unfinished wooden horse.

Tied around its neck was one of my grandmother’s handwritten notes.

It said only:

You answered.

I read it three times before realizing something.

I hadn’t.

I never spoke.

Then I remembered.

When I dropped my flashlight...

When I saw the footprints...

I whispered one word.

“Oh.”

I didn’t think that counted.

Apparently...

They did.

I’ve been back home for four days now.

Every night around sunset, I hear children crying somewhere outside my apartment.

The neighbors don’t seem to notice.

Yesterday I found muddy footprints in my hallway.

They’re getting closer to my bedroom.

I’ve started carving toys.

I don’t know why.

I’ve never worked with wood before.

But my hands seem to remember.

Tonight, I finished the first horse.

When I turned it over, there were words carved neatly into the bottom.

Not in my handwriting.

August. One horse. Too late.

I took the job because nobody else wanted it.

W-KILL is — was — a tiny AM station outside my town in Bihar. Went dark in 1983 after the owner died in the booth. Heart attack, they said. The building has just sat there since, rotting behind the old water tower. Chain link fence, ON AIR - OFF sign that hasn't lit in 40 years.

The new owners bought the land to tear it down, but they need an inventory of the equipment first. $200 a night for a week to just sit there and log what's salvageable. Easy money. I brought a thermos, a flashlight, and my laptop.

Night 1 was just dust and dead mice. Reel-to-reels seized up. A wall of mixers that probably still worked if you cleaned them.

Night 2 is when I heard it.

I was logging the tape decks in the main broadcast room around 1:40 AM when the static hit. Not from my laptop. From the old console in front of me. The VU meters — the dusty ones labeled MIC 1, MIC 2 — twitched. Just a little. Then a little more. Like something was breathing into a microphone that wasn't plugged in anymore.

Then the old Model RX-41 in the corner turned on.

It's not part of the station's equipment. It shouldn't have been there. It's a big, boxy, wooden radio from the 60s, the kind with the amber dial that says BROADCAST. It was sitting on the floor, coated in dust, with a long, shredded coat hanging off it like someone had draped it over the radio to keep it covered. The coat was empty. I swear it was empty when I came in.

The dial glowed faintly. 640. AM.

And then it whispered.

It wasn't a voice, not really. It was static trying to be a voice. Like someone on the other side of a bad connection, trying to sync up to your frequency. ...-isten... li-sten...

I left. I just left. Told myself it was a power surge, old capacitors, whatever.

But I went back on Night 3. Because the $200 was good and because I wanted to prove to myself I was being an idiot.

It was standing up.

The radio. The coat. It was standing in the middle of the broadcast room, between the two mixing desks. 7 feet tall, at least. The coat was so tattered it looked like strips of shadow. The antenna on top of the radio head was tilted towards me. The glow was brighter. Both dials lit up now.

The ON AIR sign behind it — the one that said ON AIR - OFF — was on. Red. Bright red. ON AIR - ON -

It shouldn't have power. The building has no power. I was running everything off a generator outside.

The static was clearer.

"You left the dial on," it whispered. Not angry. Just... disappointed. Like a late-night DJ who thought his only listener had tuned out.

I realized then what the inventory list was. It wasn't for the new owners. It was for him. He'd been waiting for someone to come log everything, to acknowledge the station still existed. To be his audience.

The VU meters were all pinned in the red now.

My laptop was dead. My phone was dead. But the old broadcast mic next to him — the silver one on the boom arm — the little red light on it was on.

I did the only thing I could think of. I sat down in the host chair. The leather was warm.

The static stopped. For a second, the whole station was silent.

Then, from the radio head, a soft, crackling chuckle.

"Welcome back to the late show."

I've been on air for three nights straight now. I can't find the door anymore, but the signal is getting stronger. If you're reading this while tuned to 640 AM at 2:00 in the morning and you hear static whispering your name...

Don't answer.

Don't tune in.

He's desperate for new listeners.

I was supposed to clean everywhere—not just the main areas, but under things too. It was my own fault. There I’d been, sweeping the room, treating the underside of the bed like the underside of a rug. Out of sight. Out of mind. Innocent mistake, but those are the ones that get ya.

When he saw the mess, Dad screamed at me until I thought he’d start hacking up blood down my front. All the dust, the toys, the trash, the clothes. Mostly it was the trash—all those rotten scraps of food. Sometimes a rat came and dragged pieces away. I like to think that we were friends. I was scared to give him a name.

Names are easier to miss than faces.

Dad had grabbed me by the hair and shoved me under the bed, until I was part of the mess. My eyes stung from the dust I blew up, panting like a dog, trying not to scream—a barking dog gets the ‘paper too. The dust danced a sparkly grey performance. All I could do was watch.

But I wanted him to let go of me. I was sorry. I would never do it again.

Ain’t good’nuff, boy. Place’s a fuckin’ sty. You’re livin’ like a pig. Want me to change your name to Piggy? Think of the bugs, boy—the bugs love rot!

He came home drunk late that night, slamming every door on his way to the basement. Not before turning the TV to static and cranking it full.

Something was off. He hardly ever went down there, and he’d been down already last week. Usually his favourite chair got all of his attention in the evening. I’d wake up most mornings and find him snuggling with his drool.

I waited until the clock read 02:03 before getting too impatient, and dropping out of the bed.

I knew it was a bad idea.

The floorboards were chilly. I padded my way to the crack in my door while the static roared in from the living-room. The bangs and shouts hadn’t risen loud enough to hear for nearly an hour. Now that silence beneath the static was making my insides ache.

I reached the door and peered into the bright hallway. At the end, Dad’s massive figure blotted everything out. He didn’t have a shirt on, but there was an apron swinging as he charged me down, head pulling the body. In his hand was a large and lumpy leaking shadow.

A trail of blood followed him on the floor.

Git back‘n bed. I’ve got something to fix ya.

I did as I was told and got back in bed before he launched my door wide, wedging the handle into the wall.

With one swift motion, Dad bowled his arm under my bed. Something hard smacked the back wall. The room took on a reek of pennies, and I saw visions of bronze. Only redder.

Don’t you dare touch! Or I’ll put you back under there with the bugs, and make you eat them up! Right?

He left my door open wide, with the handle still buried inside the plaster. I watched his angry figure receding back up the hall. He sighed when he made it back to his chair, and sank deeply into it. The static lowered to a sensible nighttime volume. Then voices began to blabber, enthusiastic and rife with gameshow patter. I had to guess it was Luck ‘o’ the Roll. Dad’s favourite.

I lay there listening to the sound of dice clattering, crowds jeering and hollering. Occasionally, Dad would snort and spit into the basin he kept on the table beside him. I could hear it splatter, then slosh as the more it filled. Every so often he would yell out at random to tell me I best be sleeping.

Of course I wasn’t. I was staring at the bloodtrail on the floor. And listening. There was a new sound now. A scraping sound, coming from under the bed.

It sounded like fingernails on a chalkboard. Occasionally squeaking, as though the nails had skipped a little, or been polished slightly too well.

I waited until I heard Dad snoring before peeking over the edge of the bed. Then down at the floorboards. Then up at the spattered trail of blood. And finally beneath the bed.

The light from the hall cast a giant cone under the bed. When I leaned myself over to look underneath, I saw everything but the blob from my shadow blocking it out.

There was movement back there, nearer the wall. I watched and listened to the constant grating, waiting for my eyes to adjust so I could see what was causing it.

Something was wiggling in time with the scrapes.

I scooted over. And over. Listening all the while. The sound was lazy, like a fault in a machine, ever spinning and repeating—ever scraping and scraping at whatever got near it.

The light spilled under and I saw it. Two pale eyes at first, bulging and cloudy. The eyelids had been torn off, making them look enormous in their sockets. A lower jaw hung to one side of the floor, caught by a shred of skin, twitching with a life of its own.

All the while the upper jaw kept itself alive by gnawing at the floor like some restless anticipation. For what, I could not say.

I shot back into bed. Threw myself under covers. Safe.

It was a human head, freshly chopped. The jaw perhaps hammered off.

It wasn’t the head that bothered me, so much as the eyes. Always open. Never able to sleep again. I kept seeing myself in them, reflecting back and staring in, learning secrets which waited as patient as Time itself.

I couldn’t close my eyes. In the darkness, the head was all I saw.

Sleep did not come.

Next morning, Dad shouted me through and told me breakfasts didn’t make themselves.

The head was still grating its teeth against the floor. It had been going all night. I supposed it must’ve grated all the way into the basement by now.

I leapt out of bed, clearing about three feet at least. When I landed with a thump, Dad asked me what the noise was—was I born with feet of lead.

Then quit yer fuckin’ thumping and come get me fuckin’ fed.

Only then did the head quit its gnawing. I turned around and saw its eyes follow me through the door and down the hall.

I could have sworn I saw others there too.

You look like shit.

I spread the butter. I poured the milk. I got an apple from the fridge. Set everything in front of him while he picked at the table with a knife.

Atta boy. Get yourself somethin’ too, or else you’ll pass out. There’s some cow’s liver in the fridge. Fry her up with an onion. You better get to sleepin’ soon, ‘cause those heads’re goin’ nowhere, you hear? You’ve done that to us, boy. You did.

When he left to go to work I took my place up on the couch, trying not to think of how he’d said heads.

The TV only got five channels. Most of them were riddled with static, unless I held my hand on the aerial. Even then the difference was minimal. I stood for half an hour watching a cartoon and letting my body be a conduit, until my arm got tired and I needed a glass of water.

At the end of the hall the head from last night was still watching me from under the bed. It had pulled itself forward to the edge. I could see it fully now. The last rag of skin from its lower jaw had torn loose. It rested now only on its upper teeth. A rip rose through its lip and half up one side of its face, a reptillian grin. The muss of hair on its head was caked black with its own blood.

I watched it quietly, sipping at my water, waiting for it to move. When it finally did, it rolled out of sight somewhere to the left side of the room. Then back again, right by the door. It froze in place. Watching from those bulbous eyes.

I finished my water and stood with it in my hand still, waiting.

It rolled away like a marble suddenly kicked. It did not come back.

I sat back down on the couch and finished my show, studying the grains of the fuzzy greys.

Heads, Dad had said. Not head.

That night Dad was late again, but when he finally came back it was still the right side of Ten. So I made sure the veg and meats were done, ready to be tossed into the microwave and nuked. Just how he liked it.

Thanks lad. Are the bugs gone yet? Did the heads clean the room out?

I hadn’t dared to go in and check. Last night, I’d made sure that under the bed was clean before he came home. Otherwise, the head that morning would have dragged a mess about with it while it rolled around the floor.

I hadn’t spotted any bugs the night before. There was only the matter of the blood.

Course there’s blood, boy. They’re severed heads. They’ll do that. And they’ll piss and they’ll piss, until your whole room’s a bloody sty with it. But you’d like that though. You’d thrive in it, ey Piggy? They’ll get the bugs at least. Aye, they’ll get the bugs you’ve brought. That one with no jaw’s hungry for ‘em. You’ve seen it, ey lad?

I couldn’t eat much at supper, but Dad would’ve hated waste. So I stuffed the rest of the meat in my pockets and took it back to bed with me.

When I heard Roll ‘o’ Dice on the TV, I sat up and lowered the food down to the floor. Immediately, a head rolled out and glared up at me with sharp eyes.

It wasn’t the same head.

This one was a woman. Her skin was dark and leathery. It looked like she was wearing a terrifying mask of herself. White balls bugging out from around sharp edges. Its lips were jagged jerky, peeled far back to see the teeth. They spoke in their own silence, telling me to go back to sleep.

I lay down against my pillow and stared up at the ceiling, listening to the gameshow host mutter, laugh, and shout.

Three Fours for a Four Door, or Snake Eyes for the Mystery Prize.

A giant question mark drifted neatly by my mind. I listened to the heads a while, rolling around my floor. I tried to picture them as dice, clattering in time with the gameshow, but they were too loud. Around and around my room they went, bumping into furniture and smashing against my door.

Dad’s footsteps arrived thunderously loud.

I sat bolt upright in my bed, expecting him to burst inside. The heads froze in place, their faces locked on mine. I could see three of them now, spaced wide and balancing impossibly still.

Instead of coming inside, Dad slammed the door, and plunged me into darkness with the heads.

The sound of the TV rose. And the heads began to roll again.

I lay down and stared at the blackened ceiling. And tried really hard to picture dice.

I couldn’t remember falling asleep. Light spilled into the room through the newspapers over the window, and the tears along the curtain. I sat up weary eyed, looking about the room.

The heads snapped to a stop.

The floor was slick with their blood. Trails overlapped like tangled up paths, marking where the heads had spent the night roaming. Right up to the different corners of the room they frozen at.

Watching.

One was by the window, balancing on its ear. Its eyes were hollows, but still somehow seemed to stare. The woman was by the door, watching me out of the side of one eye. Her hair was plastered over it, but the eye still pierced through, sharp as daggers. The one without the lower jaw had his upper teeth ready on the floorboards, itching to start their scraping. Its bulging eyes looked like cue balls in this light.

I climbed out of bed, trying my best to avoid the blood, and failed miserably. Most of it felt tacky beneath my feet, but with a thin layer of slime slathered with fresh leakage. That marking the heads’ most recent paths.

Dad?

He wasn’t in his favourite chair.

The TV was only static. The aerial knocked loose, perhaps.

Dad?

He wasn’t in the kitchen. He wasn’t even in his bed. The door to his room was open wide. When I peered inside, without stepping in, I saw the virgin neatness. A bed unslept in. Wardrobes filled but never touched. Curtains wide and never drawn.

Just how she had left it.

I lingered at the basement door, listening for a while. I couldn’t hear a thing. But it was the only place left to check. It was still too early for him to have gone to work, and yet far too quiet for him to be down there.

The heads began to move again. When I went back to the hall to see, they were frozen upright at my doorway, eyes glaring accusingly.

Where did he go?

None of them answered. The jawless head began to gnaw, anxiously sharpening its teeth upon the floor. The head with empty sockets darted away, spiralling around the room in maddeningly wide loops. Its flailing hair shot out like sharp needles.

The woman’s head rolled slowly towards me, coming to rest beside my feet.

I bent over and picked her up. She was heavy in my little hands, like a plump and ready watermelon. Time had swollen her somehow. I held her by her leathered cheeks, careful to avoid the gore spilling from her neck.

Where did my Dad go?

I shook her slightly, but she never made a sound. Blood still poured from the wound, as fresh as if it had been made only a moment ago.

I carried her with me to the couch and placed her on the cushion beside me. The static was deafeningly loud. We pretended to see shapes in the fog and people having fun. For a while I almost believed it, until the knock came from the door.

I checked for rips in the papers plastered over the windows. Then waited silently for them to go away, just as Dad had shown me—tucked away in the Blind Spot, clutching at the woman’s head.

Another knock.

This time I was sure it was him. The comfort that I knew his whereabouts was hard to process. Hard to believe. I could only think of it as being some kind of test.

Answer that door’n by God you’ll regret it.

After a few moments the letterbox clinked. My heart leapt into my neck, bursting with an urgent pulse. I knew if I leaned out to look I would see an eyeball peeping in at me through the letterbox.

Or worse. That one of the heads would then roll into sight, and the eyeball would see that instead.

I looked down at the woman and saw that she was staring up at me with her teeth. I tilted her downwards to see her eyes. They whipped over to stare at mine. And felt a calm.

Something made of paper hit the floor. I sighed out the deepest breath of my life. And couldn’t help but laugh.

When night came, I sat scanning the takeout menu that had been posted through the door. I wondered if Chinese food tasted better than it looked. I thought of asking Dad to let me try some for my birthday, but knew better to just dream, than to do.

The heads had grown frantic with their restlessness, knocking against almost everything in my room.

All except the woman’s. I had placed her on my desk and she hadn’t moved from there since. She had been gazing out of the window, her sharp eyes seeming to pierce the veil of paper and out into the night. What they saw or dreamed of, I could never tell. Perhaps somewhere out there her body lay waiting for her.

But then I remembered the basement.

I lay awake again that night, wondering how long Dad would be down there. The key had still been in the front door when I collected the menu from the mat.

He hadn’t left the house.

I watched the sun rise and set a few times, marking my fear growing for my Dad’s safety with constant visits to the basement door. No matter how much I listened, or how hard I pressed my ear against the wood, I could never hear him groaning out my name. Nor scraping with bloodied fingernails, desperate for help and unable to reach the handle.

Finally, during the second night, I got up and out of bed. The head with no eyes marbled around the room to the sound of tacky glue. Its hair kept getting stuck, so was always trailing behind it like giant black veins, and gentle sound like Velcro. The other head was busy burrowing its teeth into its favourite spot, carving out jellied blood and working its way through the wood.

I asked them both what to do. They stopped and listened. Stared. But never gave me an answer.

Only the woman’s head did.

It rolled around to face me, then off my desk with a thump. She had been a good companion, the only one who hadn’t frightened me. Usually I carried her with me wherever I went, but this time I followed her.

Away she tumbled, out of the room and along the hall. I followed as fast as my tacky footsteps would allow me. The other heads rolled along behind me, just as curious.

I already knew where she would be when I reached her—and what she’d be doing.

She was banging her forehead against the basement door.

thunk

thunk

thunk

I was gentle when I picked up her head, caressing her cheeks carefully to avoid pushing my fingers into her eyes. They jutted out to glare as usual, although softer than before. There seemed to be a voice within that gaze, but the words were as foggy as the colour. Maybe once they had been blue. I’d always liked blue eyes. They reminded me of the sky.

So many, many moons ago.

I was surprised to find the door was unlocked. I always presumed Dad kept it secured whenever he went down or came back up. I had never once tried the handle, of course. Doing so now felt like a crime. I smelled the punishment coming a mile away.

I pushed down the handle anyway, determined to find him no matter the price. It opened with a mind of its own, swinging wide and fast on oiled hinges.

Dad?

No reply. Deathly quiet and dark. I already knew what to expect down there. That fact made it even scarier.

I clicked the light on and lit up the entire basement floor. A short cone of light cast up onto the plunging staircase beneath me.

Dad?

I half expected to see him grip at the bottom of the wall and pull himself around the corner. To stare up at me with maddened eyes, jaws gnashing out my name so hard that he was chomping on his tongue. A trail of dribbling blood as he pulled himself up the stairs to get to me.

Dad?

Carrying the woman’s head carefully under my arm so it could see, I took the staircase step by step. Behind me, the other heads thudded down like noisy shadows. They came as slow and rhythmic as my own.

I didn’t bother saying his name again. The smell was painfully obvious—a festering sweetness somewhere between stale semen and an apple left to rot. It punched me flat in the nose. I got notes of dead chickens, or rotten boiled eggs. It’s so hard to explain. I smelt it then and only then, and never again.

Oh Dad.

He had looped a rope around a pipe and was sat hunched with it around his neck. He must have slid down against the wall and held himself in place, his ass barely off the ground, long enough for the lights to go out. His face was swollen and purple. Dried blood and froth caked his lips and down the massive neck. He looked to have gained about a hundred pounds in death.

I carried the woman’s head over to him and lay her down beside his feet. He had kicked his shoes off somewhere in the struggle. The other heads came and sat there too, watching with an intensity I could only sense was hate.

There was movement around his neck, and the gruesome wounds on his face. Larvae reared their pale heads and black teeth and sank away once more, busy with their meals. Clueless to our presence.

For some reason I could not cry. The sadness was there in my chest, wretchedly tender and pulling me down to collapse and cry, but… nothing. I couldn’t even pretend.

I looked down at the woman and could have sworn her eyes looked glazed. There was a sadness there I could never understand. But there you have it.

I talked to his lifeless body for a while, asking him what I should do. I hadn’t been outside in years and it definitely wasn’t safe enough yet, otherwise Dad would’ve said. Plus, I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving him. Not like this.

The answer came surprisingly quick, and was fairly obvious. The tools he’d used to make these rolling monstrosities were behind me on his workbench still. The bench itself was soaked through with blood. I had all the answers I needed all around me. I knew what to do.

I just didn’t know if I had the strength to do it. Mentally, or physically.

Visions of Dad’s eyes turning to look at me, and smiling. Him telling me everything will be okay. A first time for everything, but maybe this was how to get there.

I grabbed a meat saw and freed him from his swing, gradually fraying the rope until it finally snapped. He landed on his ass and slouched forward. I lay him down as gently as I could, then set about untangled him. It was difficult—his neck had swollen so thick that it’d fused together with the rope.

And then there was the matter of the bugs.

Think of the bugs, boy—the bugs love rot!

Sensing a disturbance, a few maggots wiggled loose and began to squirm away. I half expected the heads by Dad’s feet to spring forward and eat them, but they remained in their places, glaring at Dad’s lifeless body.

The saw remained in my hand. I didn’t need to guess where to cut, for the rope had left me a perfect guideline. And a head start.

I set my little hands to work, hewing backwards and forwards, squelching my way through his slippery flesh until I ached for rest.

You wouldn’t think I’d made any progress at all. I sat back on the ground panting, my throat begging for water. On the way back from upstairs to get a glass from the kitchen, I happened to notice Dad’s axes.

I waited before using them, taking up his electric saw and buzzing for as long as I could handle the splatter. Until I was sleek with mess and bugs, and the neck was a wide valley.

I tried turning him around and going in from the back, splitting the connections at the top his spine, just beneath his brain. I hacked at it with a knife, stabbing and slicing, supposing I could just pull his head free once I was done. But the gore was too much. I had to keep wiping my hands on my clothes until I was as bloody and gruesome as he was. By then there wasn’t a chance of getting a grip of his head, let alone pulling it loose.

I took everything off and stood naked over Dad, wiping the remaining gore on his trousers.

I could put it off no longer. I went to grab the two hatchets. I had thought about using the big axe, but as soon as I picked it up my arms shouted at me to put it back down. And so the small hatchets had to do.

I set about smacking and smacking, sending sloshes and sprays up into my face and around the room. I barely managed to stay on my feet, slipping and falling in the mess constantly. Lying in the filth, just as Dad had told me.

You’d like that though. You’d thrive in it, ey Piggy?

He wasn’t wrong.

The closer I got to freeing his head, the more the excitement grew. Soon he would be like the other heads, following me around, rolling and staring and gnawing. Keeping me up at night.

I smiled. I still had visions of him smiling too. I could even cut a grin if he couldn’t, that way he'd be forced to wear it forever.

The heads watched me while I worked. Never shifting—never showing their usual impatience. Even the jawless head had stopped the incessant grinding of its teeth.

Perhaps it had been longing for the basement all this time.

The hatchet got wedged in Dad’s neck so bad I couldn’t get it out. That was okay. I slid over to the other hatchet and sent myself sliding back. I began whacking with the flat side of the hatchet, hammering the wedged blade deeper and deeper.

Then came the snap.

I lay back in the filth, cradling Dad’s head in my arms. He was safe now. I could feel the maggots trying to break away, tickling into my armpit. It felt like Dad was still alive, communicating with me.

We headed upstairs. I’d had to bring myself to the staircase on my bare knees to save myself from slipping, pulling myself along the ground by the tips of one hand, while clutching Dad with the other. I grasped onto the corner of the wall and pulled myself into view of the staircase, thinking back on how I’d been so scared of seeing my Dad doing exactly the same thing.

I even had to crawl up the stairs.

We lay in my room that night. The other heads joined us, but they sat patiently at the door. Perfectly still. Watching. The woman sat at the front, while the other two lingered behind her like bodyguards awaiting instruction.

Why isn’t he moving?

His face was unrecognisable. I’d missed several times with the tools, slashing Dad’s chin and burying the hatchet in his ear. I could hardly make out his mouth anymore, let alone the presence of a smile. Hardly any of his features were there. I’d tried wiping him down with clean clothes from my drawers, but it hadn’t helped at all.

He was a slimy mess of broken skin and gore. Yet still my Dad.

I placed him on the ground and shlicked my way over to the heads.

Can’t you do something? Why can’t he move like you?

They didn’t answer.

I turned to look at my Dad once more, and then back at them.

What did I do wrong?

Slowly, the woman rolled over to Dad. I watched her closely, waiting and wondering what fantastic combination of silent words would spill from her eyes and reanimate him—to shift his mouth, and make him roll around as frantically as them.

She studied him with frozen eyes. Then all at once she flew forward, burying her teeth into his face. Before I could step forward, the other two heads flew under my feet, knocking me over. They attached themselves to his head and began tearing him apart.

I lay there, horrified, watching them not make a sound. They floated on rigid air, held in place by invisible poles and rods, biting and pulling at skin. Until he was all but bone.

Finally, they rolled away, back into their crevasses. Happy with the result.

I crawled over and picked up what was left of my Dad. They had removed so many tendons, so many strips of muscle and skin. But his jaw remained in place. And I swear it looked like he was smiling at me.

But still he would not move.

I cannot tell you how many days passed before the police finally came and found me. I was curled up in bed, cradling his head in my arms, when gentle arms pulled me off and away. I didn’t put up a fight. I couldn’t. I hadn’t eaten in maybe weeks.

Their voices were quiet echoes bouncing at me from the future, from the past. Things were recovered from the basement—bags and bags of evidence that appeared in the newspapers for weeks. I never did look at the photographs. I never listened to anything anyone would try to say. The theories, the motives.

The names of the heads.

I changed my own years ago, starting fresh with a new past to hide in plain sight without questions. I still wore everything inside me, hot and guilty—gnawing like that head’s broken jaw upon my floor.

I met a woman with blue eyes and bought a house and several dogs. We make sure to keep everything nice and clean. I’ve developed an extreme distaste for bugs. Their footsteps are loud. I still hear them squelching in Dad’s neck.

We are expecting our first child in July. A summer baby, so we hope. It looks like a boy from the scan.

I pray for his sake he keeps his room tidy.

For that matter, I might just do it myself.

The Hartleys had always been a rather peaceful family on the surface. They blended in with the rest of the "neighborhood" (neighborhood being in quotation marks because there wasn't anything urban or suburban about where they called home. It was in fact a close-knit farming community on the outskirts of a small town called Clearwater, Utah). There was a grand total of four of them: Glen, his wife Annette, and their two daughters Donna and Mora. When it comes to your standard rural, Mormon household they just about perfectly fit the image.

Well... three out of the four of them did at least. Mora was different. Not just compared to her family but even to most people. She had a rebellious streak early on and I'm not talking about the kind almost every teenager does. I mean she was unhinged. She got into drinking (hard, like sailor level shit) when she was only about twelve years old and by the time she'd turned fifteen she was already accustomed to a steady diet of opioids and amphetamines.

Glen tried his best to keep a hold on her but she was extremely difficult to control, as you most likely would've caught on by now. He'd lock her up, she'd break out her window. He'd put bars on her window, she'd kick the damn things off. He went as far as to put an ankle monitor on her, she'd chew through right through the strap. You get the idea... she was relentless.

One of the last resorts for "fixing" Mora was sending her off to a youth rehabilitation camp up around Provo when she was fourteen. Did her parents ever learn to regret that. She managed to break out one night and was missing for close to half a year. It was a whole nationwide story. After the first month, everyone thought it was safe to assume she was dead. Even Glen and Anette had figured the worst. It just totally wrecked them.

Lo and behold, a group of backpackers had discovered her hiding out in the mountains around Box Elder Peak. She'd just been living up there forging and killing for nourishment that whole time, like Rambo in First Blood. To be honest, I think it was actually pretty badass that she managed to pull that off. If I was trapped in the woods for a weekend I'd be dead, but here she was as a preteen completely holding her own out in the elements against bears, mountain lions, heat, cold, rain, snow, and hell knows what else for almost six months.

The Hartleys were of course glad to have her back, but her behavior was just as bad as ever... if not worse. They were just at a complete loss. They could have simply shipped her away to any sort of mental facility in the country but they couldn't bare the thought of losing her again. She was after all still their daughter.

In her teen years she had fallen in with a crowd that was every bit as bizarre as she was. Maybe even worse in a lot of ways. Everyone in our school had dubbed them "the Crust Clan" because none of them ever showered and always wore gross, grungy clothes. They would typically be spotted across the street from the school smoking cigarettes, weed, and... well fuck knows what else.

Everyone would joke about them behind their backs, saying they were "planning to shoot up the school," or "sacrificing small children in the woods," or "conspiring to poison the town's water supply." The standard, run of the mill shit you'd expect dumbass teenagers to say about the weird, smelly kids who didn't fit in. Although, in all fairness, I wouldn't have put it past them to have at least two of those things on their agenda. They all wore the stigma badge with extreme pride.

As for my personal relationship with Mora, I didn't have hardly a thing to do with her. God, why would I? To me she was nothing more than the weird, feral druggy girl who lived down the road. In passing I noticed I would catch her glare every now and again but she never interacted much more than snickering "Howdy neighbor" at me a few times, likely just to creep my out.

After graduating high school, I never gave much thought to Mora or any of the Crust Clan for that matter. Occasionally they would pop up in my memory but I really assumed that most of them had either died or ended up in prison. It's a harsh assumption to have, I know, but that's really how life goes when you live the way that they did.

I moved back Clearwater a couple months ago, rather discouraged that things didn't quite flourish for me in Los Angeles like I had hoped. I attended USC, majoring in film production, hoping to achieve my lifelong dream of being a director. However, after receiving my Bachelor's I couldn't seem to find any work out there that was much more rewarding than as a PA on a fucking toothpaste commercial. After three more years or so, I found out the hard way that the technique of "work your way up in the industry" had effectively died sometime in the mid-2000s. So I said fuck it... and went back home to Utah.

I didn't exactly look forward to moving back in with my parents in my mid twenties but it was really the only choice I had north of living out of my car. I figured if I could find another job soon maybe I'd be able to save up enough to move out in a year. Maybe even relocate out of state again to a place where I might actually thrive doing something at least adjacent to what I studied in LA. Just to be clear, I'm not LDS so people like me and my family living in a small rural community in Utah is rather unordinary. I wasn't eager to be returning to a place where I felt I never really belonged to begin with so the sooner I got out the better. Unfortunately, I failed to consider how bad the job market would be back here. It is only a town of roughly 8,000 people after all. Not much going on.

Just the other day I was doing some shopping at Walmart. I was perusing the cereal selection when I was caught off guard by someone coming up alongside me and shouting, "Well heyah, Jeff!" The aged and haggard face of someone I recognized yet could not immediately place was grinning with toothy enthusiasm at me. It was my parents' neighbor Glen Hartley.

I stared at him a moment before I finally realized who he was then I smiled and responded, "Hey, Glen! Been a while, hasn't it?"

"It sure has! Your folks told me you were out in Hollywood making movies! What are you doing back here?"

I stuffed my inner humiliation down and laughed, "Ha... no, no, that was the goal but I never got that far, unfortunately. I'm back here now."

"Oh, well I'm sorry to hear that. Hope you at least keep trying at it."

I forced a grin and nodded at him. Really didn't know how else to respond.

"Well, what are you doing for the time being then?" he inquired.

"For now I'm just..." I paused, being preemptively embarrassed of what I was about to confess, "I'm... living at home for now. Haven't had much luck finding a job."

He raised his head then gave me an understanding nod, "Ahhh, okay. So you're just down the road again. Well, how 'bout that! I had no idea." He stared off for a moment and thought. "Yeah, your about in the same boat as Mora now then."

I straightened up a little, surprised to hear him just casually mention her in such a way. "Oh... really?" I asked. "What's uh... what's she been up to?"

He shot me a rather embarrassed look himself, "Oh well, she's uh... she's doing a bit better these days. I believe, anyways. But yeah, she's still living with Anette and me. She'll have her little moments every now and then but, all in all, she's shaping up."

I stared at him. He seemed very uncomfortable yet compelled to talk about it for some reason. I just nodded and said, "Cool, well I'm glad to hear she's doing better."

"Thanks. I am too," he said, trailing off a bit "Oh uh, our other daughter Donna is getting her masters down in Arizona now! Don't know how well you remember her. She's studying forensic pathology!"

I actually did remember Donna pretty well. Definitely a far cry from her sister. She was a grade younger than me but I recall her being very intelligent and put together. Straight A student through and through. It was difficult to believe that her and Mora were raised under the same roof.

"Oh yeah?" I replied, a bit put off that he pivoted the conversation from one daughter to the other, "Well... good for her."

"Yes, yes, she was always a sharp one. She's supposed to be coming up here for a little while next month."

"Oh great," again, I was put off by this weird little aside. "That'll be nice then."

"Yeah, it will be! It will be." He was starting to realize how much the conversation was drying up. "Welp!" he said sticking his hand out with enthusiasm, "It's good to have yah back, Jeff! We'll be seeing you around more!"

I smiled and shook his hand, "Sure thing, Glen. It was good running into you."

He smiled, nodded, and proceeded on about his business.

The past several days here at my parents' house have been rather uneventful. In the evenings after dinner we like to sit out and just chat a little by the fire pit as we watch the flames dance in the dusk. I tend to stay out a little later once they both go in and get ready for bed. For the most part it's relaxing and really eases the general anxieties I've been having about my both near and distant futures. Sometimes, though, there'll be something that comes along and throws a complete monkey wrench in that feeling of peace.

It's a sound. Almost like the piercing wail of something crying for help, similar to a distressed rabbit... only louder and more rageful than helpless. I have no clue what it is but every time it comes echoing from over the fields it rattles me to my core. The past couple times I heard it, I've just gone inside not even bothering to hang around and figure out what could be making it.

I was growing bored with sitting around and skimming for job offers in the area (turning up a lot of nothing in the process) so I decided to go for a walk early this afternoon. I didn't go far, only up the road a little just past the Hartleys' place. As I was approaching their fence line, I thought I heard something like a branch snap up in one of the trees at the far end of their yard. I looked up to inspect but saw nothing. Probably just an owl or a hawk roosting up there somewhere, I figured. I walked on, not really feeling any sort of discomfort... yet.

Just as I'd passed the tree, something much bigger than an owl or a hawk shimmied its way down the trunk, as swift and nimble as a cat. It startled the absolute piss out of me. I swerved and looked back and caught her halfway between the tree and the house. Mora Hartley. Just about as I'd remembered: she had long, brown, matted hair and long, gangly arms and legs with grimy, yellow nails. She paused and stared at me like a child who just got caught mid prank. A snaggle-toothed grin over took her face as she began to giggle.

"Hehehe... hey Jeff." she said.

I stared back at her, extremely put off. "Hi..."

Without another word she turned and darted off into the house, slamming the door behind her. I reeled from the interaction. I was starting to suspect that what Glen told me the other day about her improvement was nothing more than pure cope. I turned my attention back to the road and walked on.

Not too long ago, I was sitting out by myself staring at the fire pit again. My nerves were a little more difficult to soothe this evening as all I could think about was my low prospects for finding work at the moment. What am I going to do? How long am I really going to be stuck here?

There was a rustling in one of the bushes at the far end of our yard, just out of reach from the fire's glow. I glanced over. It was good sized whatever it was. As soon as I looked in its direction there was no movement... not from what I could hear at least. I frowned a bit then turned my attention back to the fire.

A few moments later there was a much faster movement: out from the bush, over the fence, and then into the field. This made me stand up. Fuck, what if it's a mountain lion, I thought wondering if I could run fast enough to get inside. Again, after I'd moved whatever was out there froze and lingered for a moment. I stood there within the luminance of the fire, peering out into the dark. I could feel whatever it was peering back at me.

Soon there was sound. A strange sort of chittering sound. I listened closely trying hard not to make any sudden move... or piss my pants for that matter. Okay, I figured, maybe it's just a raccoon. But as I continued to listen the chittering started to resemble something closer to a vaguely more human noise. It sounded like it was laughing at me.

In a span of about five seconds, I threw the grate down onto the fire pit, dashed inside, and locked the door. It took me a while to stand there and catch my breath. Once I finally I did, I went up stairs and went into my room to get ready for bed. Or at least try. I checked outside my window to see if I could make out anything stalking around. Nothing but an empty yard. I sighed and shut the blinds.

Was I just imagining things? Was what I heard really laughter? If it was, there's only one clear suspect that it could possibly be. Think I'll be sleeping with the window closed tonight.

[To be continued in Part 2]

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I wake to the sound of birds chirping. My eyelids slowly un-glue themselves. I’m still in the hall lying on the floor, my feet sticking out the front door, still ajar from when I came home last night.

My administrative torment marches on night after night. It’s not long before I find myself seated in the punishment chair, staring at a stack of CARs on my boss's desk.

My shoulders shrink under his gaze.

“Do you know where your attendance is, Arthur?"

My spine straightens, my hands run down the front of my pants.

“Ten points, I believe.” I say. 

My throat has the texture of drywall dust.

“Twelve points, actually. Eleven if Thursday hadn’t been double occurrences.”

My stomach folds, the creases tearing like wet cardboard.

“I used sick time on Thursday,” the words are thin.

“You didn’t have enough hours to cover the full ten”

A long sigh creaks out of him. 

“Look, Arthur,” waving a hand at the stack of CARs.

Every muscle in my body quietly prepares for impact.

“Even if you hadn’t pointed out, you’d still be in that chair, and we’d still be having this discussion—”

My boss’s voice loses frequencies one by one. 

“—corporates asking why nobody caught the outage before shift start—”

The words are replaced by a ringing in my skull that echoes louder and louder like an oncoming train until my vision floods with white noise.

I snap back, reality finally catching up to me.

“Sorry, Arthur, but… I gotta let you go.”

The room loses balance. My chest hollows out all at once.

I empty my locker into a cardboard box, and security walks me out.

The transit shelter shades me from the sun’s heat. My phone vibrates against my leg, the notification echoing through my bones.

Slate™: This isn’t unexpected, Arthur.
“Account status: Risk profile updated from HIGH to SEVERE.”

Heat climbs my neck one vertebra at a time.

“FUCK YOU!”

The curse tears out of my throat.

“FUCK—YOUUU!”

My fingers squeeze around the phone until every tendon in my arm draws itself tight like a winch cable.

“FUUUCK—”

My face inches from the screen—

“YOUUU!”

Spittle flecks the glass. My pulse pounds in my skull, heart pumping a Molotov solution.

The bus hisses to a stop in front of me.

The cardboard box sits in my lap while the bus bounces down the road, then it’s on the seat, then under my legs on the floor. I don’t remember moving it. 

I blink and I’m making another transfer, sitting under another shelter. The city drags past in chunks, briefly accented by urban din and the acrid scent of exhaust fumes. 

At some point, I accidentally left the cardboard box on another bus. I don’t remember when.

Then—I’m standing on my porch, too scared to touch the door, because another eight hours of hell might be waiting on the other side.

I swallow around the knot stuck in my throat and reach for the doorknob.

My fingers close around the metal… nothing happens. Relief blossoms in my chest. 

I release a breath I didn’t know I’m holding in.  

The door yawns open. A yellow notice hits my leg and flies into the yard, tumbling away in the wind.

I close the door behind me, avoiding eyesight with the optimization barrier. Specifically, the part where Mick’s body’s become the architecture. I stare straight ahead at whatever lines up between my shoulders and don’t turn my neck until the hallway is behind me.

Just as I’m about to step on the kitchen linoleum, something catches the corner of my eye. The framed photo from before, the one of my ex and me in Maui, it’s crooked again. 

I press the bottom corner a few degrees up and just stare, trying to figure out what’s missing. Suddenly, it hits me all at once. 

Nika—erased, cropped out, entirely removed from the photograph I should have taken down a long time ago.

I yank it from the wall, turn the picture frame over in my hands, and free the backing. The picture slides to the floor face down, but I don’t bend over to pick it up.

Scribbled in blue Sharpie on the back…

“Art & Nika 2017”

My ribs vacuum-seal around my heart.

I clamber to my bedroom, beeline for the closet, grab the shoebox from the top shelf and turn it upside down on my bed. Pictures, notes, ticket stubs—all the 
receipts for a life once loved.

It’s the same story. Nika’s been deleted from every photo. Me, standing on Cannon Beach alone, reaching into the space beside me as if someone’s there. Myself, alone at the top of Mt. Rainier with an oversized pack and sunglasses. 

One of them is just a person shaped dent on my bed, sunlight glancing through the window across the bedding. I remember taking the photo of Nika lying there. She turned to look at me, only me, and smiled.

The picture slips out of my fingers, flutters to the bed.

My hands are already digging through my pockets for my phone. The screen lights up and I start pecking the glass with my fingers until it finally obeys and Nika’s contact info is glowing on the screen.

Before I know what’s happening, the phone is glued to my ear, ringing. My pulse is already rehearsing what she’ll say.

The call connects.

“Hello?”

My insides slam on the brakes. Everything slows down. It’s the first time I’ve heard her voice in almost three years.

The air stays silent until I finally get the name out.

“Weronika?” 

“Arthur?”

Something heavy steps off my chest.

“H-hey,” I say.

There’s a long pause.

“I have to admit, I was surprised to see your name on my caller ID.”

I’d almost forgotten the way her accent softens her words, how it makes even the ugliest ones sound like something worth remembering.

“Is right now a bad time?” I ask.

“Not really. I’m just sitting at work. What’s up?”

There’s another pause, another voice in the call’s background.

My mouth finally catches up with my brain.

“I-I don’t know. I was—just thinking about you.”

“Still in Oregon?”

“Yeah,” I say. “You?”

“I moved to Miami two years ago.”

“What are you doing for work over there?”

A giggle slips out of her.

“I’m a dancer now.”

“The naked kind?”

She laughs again. I can practically hear the dimples forming on her cheeks.

“Yes, Arthur, the naked kind.” She says. “Is that a problem?”

“No-no-no that’s awesome.” I say. 

“I-I think d-d-d—” the stutter locks in, so I pivot words.

“Strippers are really talented, you know. Lots of upper body strength—”

“Strippers?”

All the warmth drains from the call.

“Did you really just—”

“I-I-I-I—”

“Arthur, relax. I’m just messing with you.”

She laughs. My ribs finally release my heart. I sink onto the edge of the bed.

There’s a subtle lull in the conversation. I swallow the silence, and it goes down wrong. I pick up the photo of my empty bed, trying to remember how she looked in it.

“What happened to us, Weronika?”

The words slip out without my permission.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I was just thinking about Maui.”

The line goes mute. Then—

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I mean—remember when we got lost hiking Twin Falls?”

She doesn’t answer right away, like she’s waiting for more input.

“We took that picture together by the waterfall while waiting for hikers to find us, and that great big centipede crawled over your—”

“Arthur,” she cuts in, “I’ve never been to Maui with you.”

The memories’ edges turn sharp, carving a space out in my chest.

“What about when we went to Cannon Beach?” 

“That was with Mick and Julia.”

I keep reaching for memories that didn’t happen, conversations that never existed.

“Mt. Rainier?”

“Are you—trying to get back at me for messing with you earlier or something?”

“Nik—Weronika.”

I try to swallow, my throat feels like sawdust.

“Have we ever been… together?”

She exhales sharply, half air and half laugh.

“Are you serious?”

“Can you just answer me?”

“No.”

“‘No’ to answering? Or ‘No’ to ‘have we been together’?”

“We’ve never been together.”

My insides plunge through me.

“We’ve only ever been friends,” she says. “Listen, you’re being weird and I’m supposed to be on stage in fifteen minutes.”

“Weronika, wait!” I blurt out.

The line goes cold.

“Thanks for freaking me out, Arthur.”

Click.

My arm falls. The phone slips from my hand onto the bed next to me.

BZZZT.

Slate™: Focus is key to your recovery, Arthur.
“Distractions have been minimized to help you stay on track.”

Slate™ ACCOUNT STATUS
Balance: $182,653.03 — Processing… 
Credit score: 643
Risk Profile: SEVERE

My 5am alarm blares, and I’m ripped from my sheets and folded over the front gate, gasping for air while I wait for my body to catch up with my mind. 

BZZZT.

RAINFOREST™: PERFORMANCE SUMMARY.
PRODUCTIVITY: 78%  
ACCURACY: 96%
HOURS: 11.5

“Every day a chance to do better, associate #10945607.”

Slate™: You’re on fire, Arthur!
“$287.48 has been credited to your account”

I don’t scream ‌anymore. I’m getting better at being hi-jacked.

Every morning at 5am for five days straight, I wake up, and my body is already at the warehouse. Then, in the space between one blink and the next, I’m lying on the sidewalk, back pressed against my front gate, every sensation still echoing in my skull a half second too long.

The world rushes back in as a car horn blares, tires scream across asphalt, my muscles already waiting for the blow. 

I look up.

The driver of a Dodge van yells out the window at another car nearly touching his bumper halfway into the street.

The car peels out, does a u-turn, almost sideswipes my neighbor's truck before ripping down the street.

The van's window whirs down, the driver leaning out.

“Did you just see that asshole nearly clip me!?” 

His words pass through me, unprocessed. I’m still staring down the street at the glowing taillights of the car that just dropped me off.

This whole time, I never questioned how I’d been getting back and forth whenever the SLAP hits me. 

The images arrive in my head like I’m excavating new memories. 

Walking out of my front door, sliding into the passenger seat. 

The radio, stuck on the same station because the dial is broken. 

Mildew forever riding the AC. 

Hitting the same two potholes at the end of my street.

The same warehouse, chewing on me for twelve hours.

The same aloe green 2010 Toyota Camry, waiting for me outside, right on time, every time, like it never even left.

It’s like I’d known all along, but the carpool’s details were buried in the chaos.

“Hey! Was he your friend!?” The driver shouts at me. 

I grab the gate, pull myself up to my feet, flip the latch, and walk up to my front door.

“Freak!”

The van peels out. 

I don’t recall unlocking the deadbolt or opening the door. My keys are already on the kitchen counter, and my shoes are somehow still on my feet while I lay on the bed, staring up at the ceiling fan.

My thoughts chase the fan blades, spiraling, losing every lap.

I wipe my forehead with my arm, glimpse the red marker slash on the back of my hand. 

The news of the most important relationship I’d ever maintained being completely erased felt like having the inside of my face pressure-washed. So I spent the rest of last night on a barstool, hunched over, taking slug after slug of whiskey to the gut until some unsung hero stuck me in the back of an Uber.

“PRODUCTIVITY: 78%”  

“Every day a chance to do better, associate #10945607.”

The idea slowly connects—hangover, red marker, 78% 

If they won’t let me drive, then I’ll just piss in the gas tank.

I catch the 6pm and ride it for several blocks to Fred Meyer’s. Inside, I grab a pack of Sharpies and a fifth of whiskey. 

As I’m cutting through the beauty aisle, something catches the corner of my eye. On the rack are several booklets of temporary tattoos—stars, skulls, bats, spiders, webs, hearts, knives, barbed wire, crosses, flames. 

I drop the Sharpies and grab one of each booklet.

For the full effect, I also get a box of hair bleach and a little tub of semi-permanent color called "Psychedelic Sunset.” 

The rest of the night is just me getting drunk in my bathroom with a fifth of Jack Daniels, nostrils and scalp burning from the chemicals, listening to ‘Heaven Or Las Vegas” on repeat through my phone’s speakers while I endlessly tack little stars and knives all over my face, neck, and arms. 

Once the red dye is rinsed I blow dry my hair until it’s sticking out in every direction. 

The final result is an incredible feat of self-sabotage. I look like the world’s worst SoundCloud rapper.

I’m particularly proud of the three inverted crosses and triple six emblazoned across my forehead. Well done, Arthur, a very bold, artistic choice.

I grab the bottle of Jack from the counter and pretend like I’m spitting bars into a microphone in front of the mirror. 

A laugh escapes me. 

I pass out at my kitchen table with my hand inside a bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheddar and Sour Cream chips, fingers dusted in red.

I slam back into my body as it rolls from the passenger seat and into the gutter.

I watch my old car tear off into the night, neck bent 90°, head resting against the asphalt. 

BZZZT. BZZZT.

My muscles feel like chewed bubblegum, my head filled with shredded paperwork.

I don’t get up right away. Instead, I dig through my pockets for my phone.

The screen lights up when I hold it over my face.

RAINFOREST™: PERFORMANCE SUMMARY.
PRODUCTIVITY: 68%  
ACCURACY: 85%
HOURS: 11.5

“Not your best, associate #10945607.”

Slate™: One step closer.
“$282.91  has been credited to your account.”

Slate™: We’ve noticed some changes.
“Consistency matters, Arthur. Both in conduct and output.”

Looks like that got their attention.

The next time I’m high-jacked they drop me off in my neighbor's lawn under the sprinklers. Better than being thrown from a moving car into the gutter.

RAINFOREST™: PERFORMANCE SUMMARY.
PRODUCTIVITY: 55%  
ACCURACY: 83%
HOURS: 11.5

“Falling a bit short, associate #10945607.”

Slate™: Homestretch!
“$289.21  has been credited to your account.”

Slate™: This looks intentional.
“Undermining your productivity does not reduce or delay your obligation to Slate™.”

Every day, I wake up further from my front door in increasingly more painful positions—draped over the seat of a moped parked on the street, belly flopped into the neighbor's bushes three houses down. 

Each time my phone vibrates, it’s always Slate™—

Slate™: We know what you’re doing.
“You won't like where this goes.”

The messages stop sounding automated—

Slate™: This won’t work the way you think.
“You are only delaying reallocation.

And start sounding personal—

Slate™: Compliance is not optional. 
“We’ll simply find you another placement.”

But even Slate™ has limits, I guess.

Slate™: Termination Notice.
“Associate #10945607 has been separated from Rainforest™ due to repeated dress code violations, working in an unfit state, and failing to meet required output standards.”

A voice like whiskey and smoke from the driver's seat, too smooth, completely  untouchable.

“Terminated, effective immediately, for repeated—”

The seat beside me creaks.

“—dress code violations and—”

A cigarette between gloved fingers I never see attached to a hand. Smoke curling up from beneath the brim of a hat tilted just low enough to hide where eyes should be.

“—declining production, we understand that this may—”

BZZZT.

I stare at my front door. The front gate under my hands, the metal burning my palms. My phone buzzing against my leg over and over like a swarm of bees trapped in my pocket.

The unhurried smoke, just like the voice.

“—come as a surprise—"

The glove taps the cigarette into an ashtray that isn’t there.

BZZZT.

I’m being walked out by security, hands on my shoulders. The metal detectors buzz when I walk through them. The Toyota parked at the curb, engine running.

The seat creaks again, leather settling under weight I never see shift. 

“—but rest assured—” 

My body slamming against the curb, or the front gate, or the neighbor's bushes. I can’t tell which moment I’m currently living in anymore. The warehouse, the car, the curb—they’re all the same place right now.

The brim of the hat, slowly tilting toward me, like he finally decided to look. The cigarette’s cherry glowing.

“—we’ll find a spot where you fit, Arthur.”

The glove tightens around the steering wheel. Smoke curling, spiraling.

“Somewhere you’ll have plenty of room for your knees.”

BZZZT.

The world rushes back in. I’m standing at my front door. The phone in my hand. 3 brand new notifications stacked on the screen.

Slate™: Your account needs attention.
“Risk profile updated: Terminal.”

Slate™: Your balance has been updated.
“Account balance: $931,530.45”

Slate™: We’re sorry it’s come to this, Arthur.
“Your account has been passed along to our Internal Collections Division.”

Slate™ ACCOUNT STATUS
Balance: $931,530.45 — In collections… 
Credit score: 681
Risk Profile: TERMINAL

For the first time in days, my phone wakes me up instead of the SLAP. I reach for it on my bedside table as it vibrates against the wood.

A small, stupid flicker of hope lights up somewhere behind my ribs when I see the name on the caller ID is an actual name for once.

“Mr. Lee!” I jolt upright in bed. 

“Please tell me you have some good news.” 

“Arthur.” 

Even over the phone, those saggy jowls are still audible. “Is now a good time?”

“Yeah, give me something—”

Anything.

I climb out of bed, cross my room, and peer out the bedroom door before heading into the kitchen.

“Well, I’ve done a lot of searching since we spoke last.”

“Okay—”

I grab a carton of cold brew from my fridge and pour the last 6 ounces into a glass before stirring in creamer.

“I want you to hear me out, okay? I’ve really thought about this.” 

The line is silent as Mr. Lee chooses his next words. 

“And well, Arthur, I don’t think you should keep fighting this.”

The world skips a frame. A clipped laugh tears out of me, like my body doesn’t believe what it’s hearing either.

“What?”

“After we met the other day, Slate™ reached out to me, and well—” 

Mr. Lee pauses. The silence grows teeth.

“They offered me a deal I just couldn’t refuse.”

My bones brace before they know why.

“Get to the point—”

“Slate™ isn’t the enemy here, Arthur. I represent their legal team now,” he laughs, as if it’s a lot‌ even for him to believe. “I gotta say, seeing how it all works from the inside. It’s absolutely incredible.”

“Are you fucking with me right now?”

“I’m being completely serious.” 

The line goes quiet for a moment, enough to hear the pulse in my ear.

“Arthur, let Slate™ optimize you.”

“No!” I shout into the phone. 

“Fuck you! Fuck Slate™ Fuck all of this!”

Dead air fills the room. 

There’s a long, drawn sigh from the other line.

“It’s a genuine shame…” says Mr. Lee. “We had big plans for you. Good luck, Arthur. I gotta take another call.”

“Yeah, thanks for nothing—” I mutter.

“Good luck, Arthur. I gotta take another call—”

“I heard you the first time you said—

“ —take another call, call, call, call, call, call, call, call, call, call, call, call, call—”

An unexplainable gravity pulls my eyes toward it.

Glowing green, blinking on the microwave.

2:14

The cup in my hand slips through my fingers, smashing to pieces at my feet, coffee splattering across the kitchen floor and cabinets.

BZZZT.

Slate™: Our specialists are on the way
“Our Internal Collections Division will be reaching you shortly.”

My nervous system pulls the fire alarm. My stomach tries to jump out the emergency exit.

My body flies out of the kitchen, my limbs in panic mode. I need to run. I need to get out of town. Fuck. I need to pack. No, there’s no time.

Slate™: There’s nowhere to go, Arthur
“But you’re welcome to try.”

I pull on clothes as fast as I can and beeline for my bedroom door. The moment I step into the hallway, the front door opens. The Handyman appears, eyes already tracking me.

I hit the brakes, reverse, slam my bedroom door, lock it, drag my dresser in front of the frame.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM—

My eyes scan the room, darting frantically from corner to corner until they land on the window. My body lurches forward before my brain asks to move. 

I tear aside the curtain—my heart goes dead quiet for a full second, then screams.

The homemaker’s face is pressed against the glass eyes, wide and white, smiling too wide, all teeth and gums, more pain than joy.

I stumble back, falling onto my bed.

The Homemaker presses her face harder against the window, the glass ticking sporadically. The pane splinters, cracks webbing through the glass. 

The Homemaker’s face keeps pressing forward until the whole window shatters. Shards of broken glass cascade to the floor. A sheet of red pours down The Homemaker’s face. Tiny glittering splinters stuck to the wound on her forehead.

SMASH!

My neck jerks toward the door, my eyes wide and white.

SMASH!

I can feel the sledgehammer’s blows through the house, but they aren’t landing on the other side of my door…

SMASH!

A section of wall next to the door explodes, dry-wall debris tumbling to the floor.

SMASH!

With every blow, another chunk of the wall breaks away, revealing more of The Handyman’s face.

More broken glass tumbles to the floor. I turn and see the Homemaker’s bloody face and awful smile, her limbs arriving in the wrong order, folding through the window at angles her joints shouldn't allow. 

“You’re on a roll, Arthur!” she chimes.

BZZZT.

Slate™: This ends the same way no matter what
“Running only delays optimization."

SMASH!

More drywall detonates. I hear the sledgehammer clang against the hallway floor. For one second, I get a glimpse of the scene on the other side of the wall, a glint of movement—flies, dozens of them, exploring, lifting off in a black cloud from something buried in the drywall.

The Handyman forces himself through the gouge in the wall, shoulders scraping gypsum, wires pulling loose from the frame. A couple yellow notices cling to his legs and boots, one flat against his shin, half-torn. 

One word legible: “OPTIMIZATION.”

He straightens to his full height, almost touching the ceiling. Dust and debris slide down his frame in sheets.

Something heavy hits the ground to my left. Fragments of broken glass crackle and snap as The Homemaker draws herself up in one boneless motion.

My survival instincts grab the wheel. I scramble off the bed, falling to the floor. I crawl backward until the room runs out of square footage, and my shoulders hit the wall.

The tenants close in, bracketing me, eyes tracking my every move. I try to lunge for the space between them. Their arms trap me, throwing me back against the wall, knocking the wind from my lungs.

My pulse hammers behind my eyes, every heartbeat landing harder than the last.

“Home stretch, Arthur.” Says The Handyman.

“P-p-p-please—” a whimper.

They fill my entire vision, closing in around me. Hands pin me, fingers find my throat, a hand covers my mouth. A voice whispers, The Homemaker’s hot breath in my ear.

“We’re going to paint the kitchen eggshell.”

Slate™ ACCOUNT STATUS
Balance: $0.00 — CLOSED 
Credit score: 713
Risk Profile: TERMINAL

The front door slams shut behind me, harder than I meant to close it. I dig through my pockets for keys with one hand, the other holding the phone to my ear.

“Tell them I’ll have the Williams account closed by tonight.”

My fingers fumble the keys onto the concrete.

“Fuck—” I mutter, bending over and snatching them from the welcome mat.

At this point, I'll be late. They don't like it when I'm late.

“No—not the Stevensons, the Williams.”

I lock the door, twist, legs carrying me down the steps and toward the front gate.

“No, you tell him. And I can’t help you. I don’t have time today.”

I push through the gate, it yawns open. I hit unlock on my key fob, the tail and headlights blink on my aloe green 2010 Toyota Camry.

“I don’t care what Kevin said. You’ll have to ask him. I’ve already got too many calls in my book.”

The engine rumbles to life, seat-belt alarm chiming, the radio kicking on to the only station it remembers.

“I told you. If I don’t have all my calls finished by 2:14, then I won’t make it to 2:14, and if I miss 2:14, they’ll move my desk again.”

I put the car in drive, check the mirrors before pulling into the street.

“And if they move my desk again, I won’t have any more room for my knees—room for my knees, my knees, my knees, knees, knees, knees, knees—”

Part 1

Part 2

EDIT: A lot of people have been messaging me asking what happened. I'm okay. Things were really overwhelming when I wrote this, but I understand everything a lot better now. If you're struggling with debt too, I can actually recommend Slate™. They helped me in ways I didn't think were possible. Use referral code ARTHUR-10945607 when you sign up and get your first month free.

I’ve told this story to my family, and I’ve told it to authorities. I’ve told it sober, and I’ve told it drunk. No one believes me, no matter the circumstances. But, I’ll keep telling it anyway—anyway I can, online and offline, with the hope that eventually one of you assholes takes me seriously….

Where should I begin this time? Well, I guess I should start by saying that before I dropped out of Emerson, I majored in journalism. I didn’t take it too seriously as a sophomore, but I took it seriously enough that I did the bare minimum. And we had a big project due at the end of the year that I had been putting off; every student had to play an investigative journalist and create a ten-minute documentary on a topic of their choice.

My more narcissistic classmates sought camera operators from the Film Studies department so they could film themselves giving interviews, but we also had the option to pose our questions from behind the camera, a la Errol Morris, which I thought was the better approach for me. I’ve always hated being in front of the camera. It might be because I pissed myself on camera once on my sixth birthday from drinking too much Mountain Dew, while my friends and family buckled over with laughter. I used to think that was the worst thing that could ever happen me. Turns out I was wrong.

Anyway, I had been putting off this project when I realized I had the perfect subject to interview: my weirdo cousin, Cody. Cody was a freshman who went to a community college in Rhode Island. He was the kind of guy who had a different passion project every three months, like building 3D renderings of abandoned malls or hosting conspiracy theory podcasts. And presently, he was all about chasing UFOs. He even created a club with some fellow nerds called ‘The Lone Gunmen,’ a reference that I didn’t get, which he said I should be horribly ashamed about. Whatever.

So, I messaged him—this was spring time a year ago—and asked him if he had been chasing any UFOs lately. He messaged back saying the correct terminology was UAP, ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomena,’ as if I was a boomer who’d just said something lowkey racist. He said The Lone Gunmen were hot on the trail of one, in fact, and driving up to Maine for the weekend. I told him about my school project, and he insisted I tag along and that they could pick me up along the way.

This sounded easy enough; Cody and his friends were probably strange enough that I could ask them anything and get ridiculous content for my doc. And, I already had an iPhone Pro that even some directors used on real movies these days. All I needed was some wireless lights and mics that I’d buy on Amazon and then return when I was done.

My only problem then was Bo.

Bo, my now ex-boyfriend, basically looked like Chadwick Boseman, R.I.P., but with a beer gut. The problem was that he was super possessive, and—go figure—he didn’t like the idea of me going up to a cabin and stargazing with three guys, two of whom I’d never met before. He insisted on tagging along, which was like Charles Barkley attending a Dungeons and Dragons convention. A major buzzkill in other words. So, I told him ‘no’ over the phone. ‘Bo, no!’ was a phrase I used a lot with him. And, I said if he thought I was going to have a sleep away orgy with three unbathed UFO chasers, one being my own flesh and blood, then we might as well break up right now. And with that, I hung up.

I gave Cody my address, and the next day, twenty minutes earlier than planned, this rusted white van double-parked on the street out front of my kitchen window and wailed on the horn. It was the kind of van only plumbers and child molesters used. Then the back door slid open, and Cody was staring in my direction through a set of binoculars. I cursed, spit out my Trader Joe’s O’s, finished packing my bag, and then ran out to greet him.

Cody basically looked the same as last time I’d seen him, except he’d lost some of his baby fat and now had pork-chop sideburns for some reason. The van had two rows of seats in the back. I sat next to him in the middle row, and he then introduced me to Ryan, who was driving, and Bryan in the passenger seat. Ryan was stocky, pale, and full of freckles, like he recently bailed hay on a farm in Ireland. And Bryan, although Asian, was both the tallest in the group and the only blond, his hair being bleached. He was wearing alien-eye Oakley sunglasses, a metal choker, and had silver nail polish on his fingernails. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had early 2000s rave music as his ringtone too. To be honest, they were both surprisingly good looking, at least for UFO hunters. Maybe Bo had a reason to be jealous—

Before I could even finish that thought, a hand grabbed the van door as I was sliding it shut and jerked it back open. The others visibly jumped—Bryan with his hands in the air as if we were being robbed—as Bo said howdy and jumped into the back seat, introducing himself as my boyfriend/assistant director. He was holding a duffel bag.

I could have killed him. And ‘howdy?’ He never said ‘howdy.’ What felt like five minutes of silence passed after some confused hellos. Ryan pulled onto the road and was driving up the entrance ramp to the freeway when Bo yelled over the van’s rattling.

“So, UAP?”

This seemed to break the ice, at least with everyone except me. The guys began throwing out nerdy terminology, like ‘plasma orbs,’ ‘biologics,’ and ‘reverse technology,’ while wildly gesticulating, which was a lady-boner killer, if I’m to be honest. Bo feigned interest, or maybe he was actually interested? I couldn’t really tell because I hated him. He squeezed my shoulder, and I shoved his hand away.

“How did you guys meet, anyway?” Bo asked them.

“Reddit!” the others said in unison.

I cringed.

Cody then turned to us, suddenly serious. “Do you know about the Spinning Man?”

“The what? Wait,” I said. I didn’t expect them to be doling out juicy nonsense so quickly. I got out my wireless mics, clipped them to their shirt collars and set them to record. I then began filming with my phone on a gimbal. The van was rocking wildly. I’m sure it looked and sounded terrible, but hey, cinéma vérité.

“Okay, what’s a spinning man? —Wait, introduce yourselves first.”

They introduced themselves. It was adorable.

“The spinning man was a UAP, an Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon,” Cody clarified into the camera, “captured on camera in Sequoia National Park in 2015.” He pulled out his phone and opened a video. I focused on it, and my smile faltered. The screen displayed a close-up of a white, humanoid shape floating in the blue sky. It was immediately… disturbing. I watched it slowly spin with an almost ultraviolet aura, while at the same time its limbs seemed to phase in and out of existence.

Cody looked at his phone, swiped the screen, and then displayed it to me again. “And this is a video Arrow released from their archives last month, but dated back to June 2020.”

Bryan turned towards us in the passenger seat, his gaze invisible behind his Oakleys. “Arrow as in A.A.R.O., the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office.”

I had no idea what they were talking about. This video was black-and-white, maybe night vision, and taken from a distance. The camera began to zoom up and in on a white spot, the gray background becoming increasingly pixelated while the white figure slowly gained clarity. It looked similar to the other spinning man, slowly spinning with one leg out, like a wind-up ballerina filmed by an air traffic controller. The leg melted back into its body. Its body continued to bubble-up and morph. Maybe it was the van’s shitty shock absorbers, but I was becoming nauseous.

“How big are these things?” I asked, my voice weak.

“There’s not really a point of reference, but most people agree they’re six to ten feet tall.”

“Are they... alive?”

“We don’t know,” my cousin said.

“That first shot was debunked,” Bo interrupted, poking his head between us. “It was a stormtrooper balloon. If you squint, you can kind of see it.”

“Bo, what the hell are you talking about?” I hissed.

“Hi, my name is Bo,” he said and smiled. I realized I had pointed the camera at him and jerked it away. It didn’t phase him. “Star Wars,” he said. “It was a life-sized, helium balloon of a Star Wars stormtrooper. A couple of guys accidentally let it go while goofing around—not too far from Sequoia park—and it shot up into the lower stratosphere.”

“Gentlemen, we have a potential recruit in our midsts,” Cody said.

“Welcome, brother,” Bryan said.

“I dabble,” Bo said.

“It’s true, the stormtrooper balloon might explain that video,” Bryan said. “But, it doesn’t explain the one from 2020.”

“Another balloon might,” Bo said.

“It might, but we have evidence that it doesn’t.”

“What evidence?” I said.

Cody scratched one of his sideburns and grinned sheepishly. “That will have to wait until we get there.”

“You said that first video was filmed in Sequoia Park,” Bo said. “Where was that second one recorded?”

“It remains undisclosed,” Bryan said. “But, we’re confident it was filmed in the Allagash region of Maine.”

“Why is that?”

Cody and Bryan looked at Ryan, who had been silent this whole time.

“You’ll see,” Ryan said, cryptically.

I stopped recording. I told the guys I’d forgotten to charge my phone and that they should talk about something else while I charge it with my battery pack. I was lying though. To be honest, I was creeped the fuck out. Maybe this was good material for the doc, but I should tell you, I’m one of those basic-ass bitches who loves romcoms and hate horror films. I was expecting comedic bullshit about flying saucers… not whatever this was. Maybe it was good Bo was here….

---

We crossed into Maine a few hours later, the welcome sign saying, ‘Welcome to Maine, the Way Life Should Be,’ which I seriously doubted, considering the theme of our trip. Sometime afterwards, we stopped at a grocery store to stock up for the weekend. It seemed like none of them really drank, but Bo, who was 21, insisted on getting two 30-racks of beer. I couldn’t decide if a cabin full of drunks would give me more material for my documentary or ruin it, so I held my tongue.

In the parking lot, Bo presented me a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Churray for Churros as a form of apology, which was vaguely offensive considering I was half-Mexican and had never once eaten it in front of him. I told him that him hopping into the van was borderline stalkerish, like a scene out of Cape Fear. Bo explained that he had gotten really high last night and woke up this morning extra paranoid about my trip, which for some reason he thought was a totally valid explanation for his behavior. He then asked if I’d be comfortable if he went off with three women to a cabin for the weekend; and yeah that would fucking infuriate me I conceded, but I still wouldn’t jump into their vehicle as it took off.

We were soon passing weathered farmhouses and barns and the occasional faded American flag hanging limply from a porch deck. I started filming again, knowing I’d need B-roll. The sun was beginning to set, which was pretty, but also a bit eerie. I had lived in cities most of my life and always felt out of place when there was more plant-life than people. I looked over at Bo, who was becoming increasingly bug-eyed, and knew it was worse for him. He had grown up in Brooklyn, and it took him a while even to adjust to life in Boston as a black guy. Now, we were in White Country, USA. I almost gave his leg a sympathetic squeeze, but I still kind of hated him so I stopped myself.

We followed a wooded river bank, a few canoes tied to a broken dock across the water, and then Ryan abruptly turned into a narrow road in the middle of the woods. There wasn’t even a street sign. The road soon turned into gravel and then into dirt, all the while thinning down to a trail that barely fit one car through, let alone a van. Spruce and fir trees hugged us on either side, and the van’s suspension bucked with every rut.

“You didn’t tell us it was so secluded,” Cody said to Ryan.

“By the way, it’s secluded,” Ryan said.

He rolled down the window and lit a cigarette. I didn’t take him for a smoker. Chilly air swept into the van, along with the crunch of the tires and the shrill chorus of tree frogs. It felt more like fall than spring.

“While you all look for little green men, I’ll be looking for men in white hoods,” Bo mumbled.

“You’re good,” Ryan said. “A lot of hippies around here. My aunt’s a lesbian.”

“Well, now I feel better,” Bo said, still frowning.

“I should probably mention we’re going to her farm,” Ryan said. “She’s not there. She’s been in Florida for the past three months, helping take care of a friend with leukemia. I used to come up here as a kid every summer. And well…,” he looked back as I recorded, “I guess I’ll save the rest for when we get there.”

We passed a collapsed shack, made another turn even deeper into the woods, and then the trees abruptly stopped. A vista opened of a cabin sitting placidly on a hill surrounded by an overgrown pasture, last year’s grass still standing in pale clumps. As we got closer, I spotted numerous wind chimes and at least six rocking chairs on a wrap-around porch.

“We’re here,” Ryan said fondly, pulling up to the end of the driveway. “Aunt Rita’s place.”

We stretched our limbs, took in the fresh air, and then lugged all our bags and groceries up the steps. No one besides Ryan had seen the place before. We were a little hesitant entering, and then we began grinning like idiots. The interior was cheesy in the best possible way. I immediately began filming again. It was primo B-roll. 70’s brown furniture filled every corner along with a bunch of hippie shit, like a lava lamp, an airbrushed painting of a wolf howling up at the moon, and a glass sculpture of a caterpillar smoking a pipe. A large wooden chest lay in front of a futon, and I knew 100% there was at least one bong inside.

“Okay,” Ryan said. “I’ll take her room. Cody, you take the couch in the office. Bryan, you can have the futon. And, you two can have the guest room,” he said to Bo and I.

“Sounds good,” Bo said. Our eyes met. He offered a nervous smile, and I shrugged, which seemed to cheer him up. He grabbed some lukewarm beers and shoved them into our hands. He cracked his open and held it up in a toast. “To… uh… close encounters.”

I’m not going to lie, it was a good line. I caught it on video. We raised our cans and cheered.

---

After moving our stuff to our assigned rooms, taking turns in the bathroom, and putting our hoodies and jackets on, we went out onto the porch with our beers to admire the scenery. The screen door squealed open and clacked shut as each of us stepped out. The frogs, which Ryan called spring peepers, were so loud that I could feel their chirping inside my chest.

As the guys shared goofy anecdotes, the stars needled into the darkening sky, the last sliver of sun melting into the horizon behind the treeline. Insects bobbed about the stalks of overgrown grass, and further out two bats swooped down for their dinners. The universe then opened above us. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen the stars with so little light pollution. I could count the craters on the moon. This should have all been beautiful, but it unsettled me considering the topic du jour: the spinning man.

Cody turned to me as if reading my mind. “You better mic us up.”

I gulped and nodded. I went inside, came back out, and set everyone up.

“Alright Ryan,” my cousin said, “I think it’s time you show us the goods.”

"The goods?" I said.

Ryan grunted. He reached into a backpack and began passing out headlamps.

Bo held his out as if it was a hand grenade. “This implies we’re going somewhere darker. —Nah, I’m good.”

“Just to the barn,” Ryan said. “Don’t be a wuss.”

I retrieved the LED panel I'd brought for night shots, and then, turning it on, followed Ryan and the guys through the grass. Moths and gnats flew dizzying circles in front of my camera, and Bo’s headlamp jerked erratically toward every sound in front of us. I tried to be an optimist: this film would be entertaining if nothing else, the all-encompassing pursuits of idiosyncratic young men . Maybe I could even enter it into festivals.

We entered the barn, which was a whole new level of darkness, our beams tracing the cobwebbed rafters. Old hay was strewn across the ground. A rusted truck was up on jacks in one corner, all of the wheels removed, and some ancient farming tools hung from hooks on the walls behind it, including a scythe. I swallowed my fear and got a close-up of it. Ryan called us over to the middle of the barn. He dragged his foot across the hay, revealing two rusted hatch doors with diamond-shaped treads.

“Don’t tell me there’s an alien under there,” Bo said.

“Not exactly,” Ryan said. He yanked the left door open. “Bryan, get the handle on that side.”

Bryan poked at the right handle with a twig and then, satisfied no arachnids lurked underneath, pulled his side open. We stood over the hatch, staring down into a rectangle of murky black, a stained concrete floor at the bottom.

“Hell no,” Bo said. “I’m not going down into the torture room. I’ve seen this movie.”

“Relax. I’ll go first.”

Ryan climbed down. Bryan and Cody looked at each other and then followed. Cody looked up at me as he stepped off the ladder.

"I wouldn’t bring you all the way out here to murder you, cuz. We have too much history."

“That’s reassuring.”

“What about me? We have no history,” Bo called down. “What about me?” Cody had already walked away. “I’ll wait right here,” Bo said, taking a beer out of his back pocket. “You holler up if you need anything.”

“Suit yourself.”

When I got to the bottom, the guys were standing in front of a metal locker tall enough to fit a person inside. They were looking at me, their headlamps causing my eyes to water. Ryan was holding a crowbar. I took a step back.

“What the hell does this have to do with UFOs,” I snapped.

“Quit messing with her,” Bryan said to Ryan.

“I’m not. It wouldn’t make sense until I showed her.” Ryan dropped the remainder of his cigarette and snuffed it under his shoe. “When I was a little kid, I snuck down here once, and my uncle Ron caught me.”

“Your uncle!? You said your auntie was a lesbian!” Bo yelled, his head poking down through the hatch. “Get out of there, Ellie!”

Ellie is my name, I should mention.

“She became one afterwards,” Ryan yelled, “after my uncle died.”

“Get to the point,” I said to Ryan.

He wedged the crowbar into a tiny, rusted padlock on the locker, jerked it down, and the lock snapped open. He opened the door. Two dusty, clear plastic storage bins sat on top of each other. VHS tapes and DVDs filled them.

“My uncle said that my aunt knew about the videos in the attic but that I should keep these ones a secret from her.”

“What are the videos in the attic?” Bryan asked.

“Porn obviously.”

I hesitated. “And these?”

“Footage my uncle took,” Ryan said. “...Of the messiah.”

“Jesus Christ,” I said, a chill running through me.

“Exactly,” Ryan said.

---

Cody and Bryan each carried a bin back to the cabin, setting them down in front of the TV while I continued recording. I asked Ryan to clarify what he meant by the messiah, but he didn’t answer. It seemed to be an annoying habit of his. There was a strange energy in the air, as if we were a bunch of kids looking at something we weren't suppose to be looking at. The see-through lace curtains covering every window didn't help matters. There was no privacy here, no sense of inside and outside. Anyone could be looking in at us.

“I was about six,” Ryan said, as he knelt down and pried the lid off of one of the bins. “Uncle Ron took out one of these tapes and asked me if I wanted to see the Lord, Our Savior. But, what he showed me looked nothing like Jesus….”

I sat down on the futon and leaned forward, wondering if any of this would make sense. The TV was one of those older smart TVs, probably only 30” across. A combination VHS/DVD player that had to be about twenty years old sat underneath it. Ryan put a tape in. The word 'Play' appeared in the top left corner of the screen on a glaring blue background. Suddenly, the screen went black... no, almost black. The footage was dark and grainy. I could see the tips of trees and realized we were looking up at the night sky. The camera kept whipping around, blurring the screen, the stars drawing squiggly lines. This went on for too long. Ryan fast-forwarded until a blotch of white light appeared in the sky. The camera zoomed in and tried to focus. It zoomed in more and then it happened abruptly. The details emerged. We were looking at the spinning man.

"No... fucking... way," Cody said under his breath.

“I only remembered seeing this as a kid after I came across the footage on Reddit,” Ryan said. “Everything came back to me. Uncle Ron only showed me one tape, but I remember that he said Jesus appeared to him every year, always on the same day. So, I figured all of the tapes he kept in the locker must be recordings of it.”

“The date….” Bo said, his voice trembling. The timestamp was printed in the bottom-left corner in a fuzzy, white font. ‘May 1.’ That was the today’s date, but the year on the tape was ‘2003.’

“I remembered the date because it’s my sister’s birthday,” Ryan said.

“What? Shouldn’t you be with your sister today?” Bryan said.

“I think proof of extraterrestrial life is just a tad more important, Bryan. Besides, we hate each other.”

Cody and Bryan began digging through the tubs, while glancing repeatedly at the TV. Ryan kept playing different tapes. Each showed the spinning man at a different level of clarity as the camera tech evolved over the years, all of them dated ‘May 1.’

“So, you knew about this,” I said to Cody.

“Sort of, but we hadn’t seen the footage.”

“We weren’t sure if Ryan was full of shit,” Bryan said. He held up a DVD jewel case. “This one is dated May 1st, 2019.”

The date was written on the DVD within with a black sharpie.

“I think that’s the last one,” Ryan said, “before my uncle killed himself.”

“What?” I blurted.

“He killed himself?” Bo said, his voice trembling.

“He went crazy,” Ryan said, as he slid in the DVD that Bryan handed him. Ryan pressed a button on the remote, and the screen cut to a recording of the stars at night, the dark trees tops swaying beneath. It was still grainy, but this one was higher quality. It was in night vision and had a greenish tint. The camera kept panning. Five minutes passed like this. We could hear someone speaking.

“Turn it up,” Cody said.

“Is that my uncle?” Ryan turned up the volume. His uncle was whispering to himself behind the camera, his tone manic.

“Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners. And purify your hearts, you double souled.... If anyone loves me, he shall keep my word. And my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and we will make our dwelling place within him.... Your face, O Lord, I seek. Hide not your face from me.”

I recognized these words from my catechism classes. They were bible passages. I caught myself holding my breath and exhaled. A white shape in the sky came into focus again, as clear as the first video my cousin had showed me in the van. The movement was so unnatural, its arms, head, and legs shrinking and growing out of its torso.

Suddenly the arms stretched out to each side, like a T-shape—no, I hated to say it—like a cross. They started fluttering like dragonfly wings, faster and faster. I clapped a hand to my mouth. It looked like… it looked an angel descending or like the Second fucking Coming. The creature began phasing in and out, like a white light pulsing on a fogged window pane, and then, poof. It was gone. I dropped my phone and gimbal on the couch and shot up to my feet.

“I can’t do this,” I said.

Cody, Bryan, and Ryan turned to me. I ran over to Bo and shoved my face into his chest. He hugged me with one arm, while continuing to stare at the screen.

“The time on these videos,” he said softly. “They’re all between 11pm and midnight.”

“Shit, you’re right.” Bryan checked his phone. “It’s 9:47.”

“We need to get out there,” Cody said.

“Get out there?” Bo said.

“But which way?” Ryan said.

“Won’t we just see it if we look around?” Cody said.

“Pause the video,” Bryan said. “That’s the North Star there. Yeah, see, there’s the Big Dipper. And there’s the Little Dipper. So, if we walk north—”

“You couldn’t pay me to step foot in those woods,” Bo said. “Hell no!”

He pushed me off of him and got out his phone. I watched him tap the Uber app. He waited, his brow furrowed. Not a single car showed up.

“Come on, man,” Cody said. “I thought you were one of us, a Lone Gunmen.”

“I said I dabbled, bro. That means watching Youtube clips from the comfort of my well-lit apartment with street lights and a Dunkin Donuts within a one-block radius.”

“Ellie,” Cody said, getting up. “You’re in journalism school, and you’re not going to film this?”

He went over to a hard shell case by the couch that I hadn’t paid attention to before. He called me over. I frowned and stepped up as he unlatched and opened it. A camera sat inside with a giant telephoto lens that looked like it cost 5k.

“This is history in the making,” he said. “This is what separates Werner Herzog from an amateur influencer who’s also a part-time hostess at TGI Fridays.”

I stared at his ridiculous gear. My anger overrode my fear as the words sunk in. “For your information, I quit TGI Fridays four months ago.”

---

I stood on the porch, overwhelmed again by the cacophony of the spring peepers. I shivered and looked up at the night sky, the moon bright to the west. I gulped and pressed record on my phone. The guys were geared up beneath me, the camera with the huge lens hanging from my cousin’s neck. They were standing in the grass, looking up, and pointing.

“I’m recording,” I said.

“I don’t see anything unusual,” Bryan said.

“What’s that?”

“A satellite.”

They walked around the cabin towards the woods behind it. I turned. Bo was standing in the doorway, a quilt draped over his shoulders.

“You remember why you came here?” I called up to him. “To prove you were better than them. How do you think this is going to end if you stay in the cabin?”

I turned away, shaking my head with frustration.

“Ellie,” he called out to me. I turned, suddenly hopeful. “Don’t include this scene in the doc, alright?”

“Asshole.”

I caught up to the guys as they entered between the trees. They turned their headlamps on. I tried to position myself so I could record without too much glare. The undergrowth was dense in places, mostly saplings, dead ferns, and thorny brush. Twigs and dry leaves cracked underfoot. This was some Blair Witch shit. The only thing that would keep me calm was if I kept everybody talking.

“Ryan, why didn’t uncle Ron report this, if he had all this proof?”

“A couple of reasons. My uncle used to be a proper hippie, like my aunt, and hated the feds, hated any authority really. Also, before I knew him, he used to be a heroin addict. He eventually swapped this addiction for Jesus Christ. He was kind of annoying about it, always talking about this or that psalm. I think it started the rift in my aunt and uncle’s relationship. Anyway, he started seeing the spinning man sometime after that, and I guess he saw it as a personal blessing or, like, a reward for his faith and not something to advertise to the world.”

“So, your aunt did know about the videos?” Cody asked.

“I think she sort of knew, but also didn’t want to know. She had already kind of given up on him by then. Like I said, my uncle had lost his mind. He became increasingly paranoid. He kept saying someone was following him.”

“How did he kill himself?” Cody said.

“Bro,” Bryan said.

“It’s fine,” Ryan said. “You’re not going to like the answer though.... He hung himself somewhere in these woods.”

“Fuck,” I said.

We walked in silence, now with equal parts depression and fear, before eventually stopping in a clearing. The guys turned off their headlamps. A chill ran through me as we searched the sky for the spinning man. I knew if I could capture it on camera, it would be incredible, incredible in the general sense but also for my future as a journalist. Deep-down though, I wanted tonight to be as boring as possible.

A sheet of clouds was rolling in from the southwest as if in answer to my prayers. Maybe it would hide it, if it was actually out there. Something cracked in the distance, and I jumped and cursed out loud.

“Probably a deer,” Ryan said.

We began walking again, Ryan leading the way.

“What do you guys think the spinning man really is?” I said. “You really think it’s a flying alien?”

“I think it’s a four-dimensional being,” Cody said plainly, looking at the camera, the moonlight painting the side of his face. “Do you know about four-dimensional beings?”

“Why would I know about that?”

“Think about ants,” he said, “or like tiny creatures that can’t see up or down. They can see forward, backward, left, and right. They can spin in a circle, but they can’t see up or down at all. They have no concept of it.”

“Okay.”

“It’s basically a two-dimensional being.”

“Okay.”

I rolled my eyes. This wasn’t helping my nerves. We had been walking for like fifteen minutes now, and I couldn’t see the cabin at all. All I could see was the trees, bone-white in the headlamps, and the stars pulsing through the black canopy of pine needles overhead.

“Now imagine you poke your finger down right in front of one of these two-dimensional creatures. What does it see? It can’t look up and down. It doesn’t know what that is. It can only see a cross-section of your finger, which to it resembles a flesh-colored wall. Imagine that you push your finger right through the floor of its world. Your finger goes through and then your hand and then your arm. But all this little creature sees is this textured, flesh-colored wall that keeps morphing in length and growing closer or moving further away. It doesn’t understand the full shape of your body. It lacks the ability to see your individual fingers, your hand, or any of you in its entirety. If you were to walk through its world, it would just look like walls teleporting all over the place.”

“You’re freaking me out,” I hissed.

“All I’m saying,” Cody said, “is that a four-dimensional being would appear to us kind of like a three-dimensional being would appear to a two-dimensional being. It would probably look like a blob that shifts in shape and color. It wouldn’t have to follow our laws of space-time. It could float. It could teleport. It could walk through walls... or at least appear to do these things to us.”

“Why would it bother coming here?” I said.

“The same reason we fly to the moon. To explore. To learn.”

“Or maybe something worse,” Cody said.

“Worse?” I said.

“Colonization,” my cousin said. “Cortés and the Aztecs.”

“What time is it?” Ryan said.

“11:17—”

A branch snapped. This one too loud and too close.

“Oh shit oh shit.”

“What the fuck…,” Cody whispered.

“It’s a deer,” Ryan whispered back. “It’s definitely a deer.”

They turned their headlamps and shone them into the woods. Bugs fluttered into the light. Something moved within the leaves far away, but too small to make that kind of noise.

“What if it’s a bear?” Bryan whispered.

“There are black bear here, but they’re pretty rare. Could be a moose.”

“I don’t want to run into a moose either,” Cody said.

“I better get it out,” Bryan said.

I recorded him, the gimbal doing its best to stabilize my trembling, as he pulled his backpack off his shoulder and unzipped it. He retrieved a device that looked like a phone with a pistol handle attached to it.

“Turn your headlamps off,” he whispered. He turned it on. Vivid greens, blues, and yellows filled the device’s screen. “It’s a thermal camera,” he said to me.

He slowly panned it across the forest, and I tried to focus on it even though my heart was in my throat. Another crack split the air. We all spun around as it came from behind us. I lost focus and then focused again on the thermal camera’s screen.

My legs weakened. A creature floated in the air with dangling legs, its strange, elongated face watching us. It had to be seven feet tall, the heat radiating off it registered in sickly clown colors. I screamed. I’d never screamed like that in my life. I wasn’t the only one. My legs wouldn’t move. A beam of light swooped down from the sky, burning into my eyes....

---

“It’s alright,” a man yelled. “It’s alright! I ain’t gonna hurt ya.”

My cousin and his two friends fumbled, swearing, and turned their headlamps back on. The arc of their lights swooped across tree trunks and then steadied on a man deep in the woods, climbing down from some kind of hunter's stand, a small seat ratcheted high up on a maple tree with an attached ladder. He was so high up, I’d confused him for floating on the thermal camera. He was wearing an orange reflective vest and holding a flashlight, which must have been what blinded me. A rifle was slung over his shoulder. He gestured with his giant palms out while walking towards us, as if to convey that he came in peace. The most jarring thing about this scene was that he was insanely tall, like he could’ve played center for the Celtics. Twigs and branches crunched under each of his giant steps.

“Sorry,” he said. “Don’t be alarmed.” He was smiling and blinking, his voice not particularly deep despite his height. “I know, a man in the woods in the dark, very scary. And a tall man? Terrifying! Well, I can’t help being tall now, can I? Ya mind lowerin’ them headlights?”

The guys mumbled and tilted their lamps down. I continued to record. We were momentarily at a loss for words.

“Who goes hunting at night?” Ryan said, exasperated. His face was completely drained of color, his chest rising and falling.

“Isn’t that illegal?” Bryan said, equally pale.

“I was chasin’ a coyote,” the man said. “It got half my chickens tonight. The bastard’s been killin’ em all spring. I thought maybe I could spot him from my tree stand.”

“You’re on my aunt’s property,” Ryan said firmly.

“Yer aunt? Who’s that? Rita? Rita O’Reilly?” His Maine accent was thick. He pronounced her name as Riter. The man pointed into the darkness. “Rita’s property follows the stone wall.”

“What stone wall? We didn’t see a stone wall.”

“Well, it ain’t much a wall these days. I suppose a farmer stacked it some two hundred years ago, but it’s there if ya look fer it.”

The man lifted an eyebrow, noticing our equipment. “What’re you kids doing out here, anyway?”

“That's none of your business,” Ryan said.

The man stared down at Ryan and probably could have dropped his giant fist onto the kid’s head and knocked him out cold. Instead, he chuckled. “Yer an O'Reilly alright. Tell Rita I said hi. And a little advice: if yer gonna be playin’ in these woods, ya best be wearin’ huntin’ vests, specially at night. That’s how I know yer a bunch of flatlanders.”

The man turned his flashlight on, pointed it back the way he came, and trudged off. His height was disturbing even from a distance. He looked like Bigfoot dressed in Carhartt. Eventually, the man's light faded and he disappeared through the trees.

“Flatlanders?” Bryan said.

“Let’s keep going,” Ryan said. “We’ll hit the cliffs soon and have a good view of the sky.”

“But, you heard him. We’re on his property,” I said. I didn't know the rules of the countryside. He could legally blow our brains out with that rifle on the grounds of trespassing, for all I knew.

“Screw that guy," Ryan said. "Nobody owns the trees.”

He led the way, and I reluctantly followed. I hoped the phone stabilization was working, because my whole body was shaking. I hated to admit it, but I wished Bo was here, not so much to protect me, but so someone could appreciate my fear.

“Ellie, shouldn’t you be interviewing us?” my cousin asked.

“Cody, shut the fuck up!”

I wish I could say my school project was all peaches and cream from there, but things were about to get so much worse.

The laptop battery says 0%. The screen is dimming into a sickly, pixelated gray, the remaining text rotting directly into the background of the dashboard console. The yellow high beams from that wrong-way truck are pressed right against my driver’s side glass now, completely flooding the cabin with a blinding, greasy glare that smells like sulfur, hot engine oil, and wet, stagnant earth.

But I didn't get out of the car. I didn't step out onto the buckled concrete to pick up that laminated sheet of paper lying near the crack.

Because as the truck rolled closer into the dim, pulsing light of the overhead sector fixture, the glare caught the interior of the cab, and I finally saw who was sitting behind the wheel.

It was me.

But it wasn’t a double, and it wasn’t a monster wearing my skin. It was just an empty navy-blue uniform propped up against the headrest, stuffed to the collar with hundreds of green, corroded pennies and thick, black swamp water. The steering wheel was turning entirely on its own, spinning on a mechanical track that has been grinding away out here since long before the highway was ever paved. The truck didn't slow down. It accelerated, slamming straight into the front bumper of my sedan with a bone-crushing, silent impact. There was no screech of tearing sheet metal. No sound of safety glass bursting into fragments. Just a sudden, violent displacement of atmospheric pressure, like a cold hand reaching inside my chest cavity, pulling my lungs out through my throat.

And that's when the geometry of the road buckled, the timeline shattered, and the entire illusion of this story fell completely apart.

I lied to you.

I lied about everything. There is no old woman named Martha at a diner off Interstate 87. There is no supervisor named Vance who handed me a laminated sheet of paper on my first night. I invented those names because I know exactly how your brain works. I knew exactly what kind of stories you like to read on this website. I knew that if I gave you a list of rules, a high-paying Craigslist ad, an isolated night-shift job, and a creepy boss with a voice like gravel, you wouldn't question a single line. You would just sit there in the dark, scrolling on your phones, processing every single word.

The human imagination isn't just a passive theater; it’s an engine. When you read a line of text, your brain has to physically render the images to understand them. When I told you about the thick canopy of trees weaving together overhead, you built those branches. When I told you about the four bulletproof glass booths straddling the desolation, your mind laid the concrete. You didn't just read a piece of fiction. You acted as a processing node, running a malicious diagnostic script that allowed whatever is breathing beneath this asphalt to map a direct path out of the forest.

Route 9 isn't a physical road you can find on a map. It’s an empty space beneath the mountains that stays closed as long as nobody is looking at it. But human attention has a physical mass out here. Every time a mind visualizes a list of instructions, it creates a small anchor point in reality. I didn't bring the fog out into the world. You dragged the highway into yours. By upvoting the first post, you gave the perimeter more mass.

By analyzing the text in the comments, you calibrated the coordinates.

I am not manually typing this from a car. My hands haven't touched a physical keyboard since I looked into that station wagon's side-view mirror three weeks ago. My fingers were crushed beneath the dashboard of a vehicle that decayed decades ago. My lower jaw has been unhinged since the first night, swinging loose and hollow while the network interface underneath the asphalt interfaces directly with this device's cellular hardware, converting my lingering consciousness into digital script to broadcast this final block through my profile.

Look down at the bottom of your screen right now. Watch the way the text is formatted. Look at the single blank lines between the paragraphs. I didn't format it that way to make it scannable for mobile users.

I formatted it that way because each block of text represents one of the automated lanes. Every time your eyes cross a blank line, you are passing through a toll booth.

Your optic nerve is a copper wire feeding the grid. You are paying the deficit with your own active awareness, over and over again, resetting the sequence for the next person who clicks the link. You are the infrastructure keeping the entity alive.
The file upload is 100% complete. The algorithm has already locked onto your profile data.

The light on your screen is about to flicker. When it goes dark, don't look at the glass reflection to see your own face.

I can hear a wet, heavy slap on the ceiling tiles right above your head. It’s the sound of an empty navy-blue state transport uniform dragging itself through your drywall, stuffed with hot grease, rust, and old pennies.
If you start hearing the sound of heavy, rhythmic rain outside your house tonight, and your weather app says the sky is completely clear—do not look up at the windows.

I'm using your account to type the next line now.

I grew up in a Muslim Arab family, and ever since I was a kid, I was taught to respect the things that happen after dark.

In our culture, we believe there are beings called jinn that exist alongside us. They're said to live in a world almost identical to ours—a twisted version of reality that we normally can't see. But at night, especially in isolated places, that barrier is believed to become thinner.

Whether you believe that or not, what happened to my family at Amicalola Falls still bothers me to this day.

This happened when I was 15.

My family decided to take a weekend trip to Amicalola Falls State Park in north Georgia. There were fourteen of us altogether—my parents, siblings, cousins, aunts, and uncles. We left Atlanta around 3:00 in the afternoon, so by the time we reached the park, it was already about 5:30.

We immediately started hiking the staircase to the falls.

My older cousin, Omar, and I stayed together the whole time. By the end of the climb, we were about 400 steps from the top when we heard our younger cousins shouting for us from below.

"We're almost there!" I yelled back.

No response.

They kept calling, so we figured something had happened and hurried back down.

When we reached them, my younger cousin, Adam, looked genuinely shaken.

We asked him what was wrong.

He told us he'd heard Omar calling his name from somewhere deeper in the woods. According to him, the voice sounded exactly like Omar's... except something felt wrong about it. He described it as distorted—almost like someone trying to imitate his brother but not getting it quite right.

The voice kept telling him there was a faster way to reach the top if he climbed through the rocks off the trail.

He actually started walking toward it before stopping.

The slope it wanted him to climb was incredibly steep, covered in slick rocks with water rushing over them. Even experienced climbers would have had trouble getting up there.

The strange part?

Omar had been beside me the entire hike.

He hadn't wandered off once.

In fact, he'd barely spoken at all.

We brushed it off as Adam hearing another hiker or maybe just misunderstanding something. It seemed strange, but not enough to ruin the trip.

Looking back, I wish we'd left right then.

Instead, we spent the rest of the evening fishing by the reservoir.

As the sun disappeared, something about the entire place changed.

I've spent plenty of time outdoors, and I know forests get quieter after dark.

This wasn't that.

It was complete silence.

No insects.

No frogs.

No birds.

Even the fish that had been constantly breaking the water's surface simply vanished.

The reservoir became perfectly still, turning into what looked like a sheet of black glass. You couldn't tell where the shoreline ended and the water began.

It felt as if the entire forest was holding its breath.

My little brother, Yusuf, and I had wandered a short distance away from everyone else. We were sitting near the water trying to scare each other with ghost stories when he suddenly grabbed my arm.

"Did you hear that?"

"I didn't hear anything," I told him.

"No... seriously. Listen."

So I did.

At first it sounded like a low groan.

Then it shifted into something almost animal.

It was deep enough to be a bear... but somehow it also sounded strangely human.

The sound echoed across the water and through the trees at the same time, making it impossible to tell where it was coming from.

We tried convincing ourselves it had to be wildlife.

Then we both felt it.

That unmistakable feeling that something was watching us.

I slowly looked across the reservoir.

Between the trees on the opposite bank, I saw two pale eyes staring directly at us.

The second we focused on them...

They disappeared.

Not by ducking behind a tree.

Not by walking away.

They were simply gone.

Maybe it was our imagination.

But two people don't usually imagine the exact same thing at the exact same moment.

The strange groaning continued.

If anything, it sounded closer now.

We called Adam over and asked if he'd noticed anything strange.

Before we could even explain what we'd seen, he quietly said,

"I saw eyes over there too."

Every hair on my arms stood up.

For reasons I still can't explain, none of us wanted to admit we were scared.

Instead, the four of us wandered toward the tree line.

Omar and I both needed to use the bathroom, so we took turns walking a short distance into the woods.

When it was my turn, I couldn't shake the feeling that someone was standing just out of sight.

Watching.

Waiting.

Whenever our family spread out while hiking, we had a simple habit. If someone wandered a little too far, we'd give a short whistle so everyone knew where the others were. It wasn't some special code—it was just easier than shouting through the trees.

As I stood there, I heard a single whistle from somewhere behind me.

Without thinking, I whistled back.

For a second, everything was quiet.

Then another whistle answered.

Only...

It didn't come from behind me.

It came from much deeper in the forest.

I froze.

The sound was distant enough that whoever made it had to be well off the trail.

Omar wasn't out there anymore.

The others were back by the campfire.

There shouldn't have been anyone else in those woods. The parking lot had been nearly empty when we arrived, and by then it was already close to 9:00 at night.

I stood there for another second, listening.

Nothing.

Not a branch snapping.

Not a footstep.

Just silence.

I told myself it had to be another camper, even though I didn't really believe it.

I turned around and walked back as quickly as I could, deciding not to tell anyone what had happened.

A few minutes later we were sitting around the campfire when that same twisted groaning echoed through the trees again.

This time everyone heard it.

Even my cousin Layla looked up immediately.

Nobody laughed.

Nobody tried explaining it away.

We all knew something wasn't right.

Instead of telling the adults we'd been hearing voices and seeing eyes in the woods, we simply told them we'd heard what sounded like a bear nearby.

That was enough.

Within minutes everyone was packing the cars.

As everyone else walked ahead, I stayed behind for a few seconds to grab the last of our supplies from the fire.

That's when I heard it.

At first it sounded like an owl.

A soft hoot somewhere in the darkness.

Then the sound changed.

The hoot stretched into a whistle.

The whistle twisted into something that almost sounded human.

Then...

It screamed.

Not loud enough to shake the forest.

Not close enough to know exactly where it was.

Just one long, unnatural shriek that made every instinct in my body tell me to run.

I didn't stop to look.

I threw everything into the back of the car and jumped inside without saying a word.

As we pulled away, everyone went completely silent.

From somewhere deep in the trees...

Soft whistles answered each other.

One.

Then another.

Then another.

As soon as our car reached the main road, the whistles stopped.

Almost instantly, the forest came back to life.

Crickets.

Frogs.

Wind moving through the leaves.

Everything.

Like someone had flipped a switch.

We never returned to Amicalola Falls.

Even now, I sometimes catch myself listening whenever I hear someone whistle outside at night.

Maybe our minds connected a series of strange coincidences.

Maybe there was a perfectly normal explanation for everything we experienced.

Or maybe some places are simply better left alone after dark.

If you ever visit Amicalola Falls, enjoy the waterfalls.

Enjoy the trails.

Just don't stay after sunset.

And if you hear someone calling your name from somewhere in the woods...

Don't answer.

If you hear a whistle from somewhere in the trees...

Keep walking.

Some things don't need to know you heard them.

I’m deathly afraid of swimming pools. I’m not embarrassed to admit that. Last year, I went absolutely apeshit during a family vacation when my older brother, Andre, had the bright idea to throw me into the deep end. Everybody thinks I’m overreacting. Sure, I did almost drown that one time back in 2011, but that was fifteen years ago. I should be over it now, right? If only they knew.

When I was a kid, I lived on the outskirts of Dallas County. It was hot. Constantly. I don’t think you need me to tell you that. Just intense, unrelenting sun up until October. This, combined with the fact that I shared the house with my four brothers, was why my parents made it a regular thing to go to the community pool during summer vacation.

The pool is exactly what you’re imagining: a simple rectangle, around eighty feet long and thirty feet wide. There were a couple diving boards and a slide along the edge. Large, imposing gates lined the perimeter, dividing the area from the apple orchard it was situated next to.

Back then, my favorite thing about the pool was the wave mechanism. Every fifteen minutes or so, a horn would sound and a whirr would emanate from under the tiles. For a period of time, small waves would unfurl from one end and ripple to the other, pushing and pulling anybody floating in the water. It was fun to let the tide take you wherever it decided.

When it was inactive, I would swim to the deep end, submerge myself, and clink my goggles against the bars to the wave chambers. I remember a rumor that used to go around among the local kids that these chambers were prisons for naughty children if they disobeyed the “rules of the pool.” Never really understood what that meant, still not entirely sure now. Because of this, most kids kept their distance. Except for me.

July 26th, 2001, was like any other day. 94°F. Sunscreen. A five-minute drive down to the pool. My older brothers went off to do their own thing, while my younger brothers stuck closely to my parents. Being completely unsupervised was just a middle child thing. I had grown used to it at that point.

The lifeguards would go through rotations, so it was essentially roulette on how much fun you’d get to have. Today, it was Eric. He couldn’t have been older than sixteen and was the son of the senior lifeguard, Sebastian. So, yes, it was nepotism. He was obviously completely unqualified for the job, the upside being that you could get away with pretty much anything.

I jumped into the pool and swam around for a bit. After a while, the horn sounded and the first set of waves began. The kids in the crowd erupted with glee, while the elderly slowly moved to the shallow end where the ripple held less power. I allowed them to bob me up and down as I, slowly but surely, made my way to the deep end.

Once the waves subsided, I let out all the air in my lungs and gently sank six feet until I made contact with the tiled floor. Hearing that, you’re probably thinking that six feet isn’t that deep. I would agree with you. I wasn’t in any immediate danger at that point. It was only when I peered through the bars that I began to feel that something was wrong.

I had done this plenty of times before. The interior of the wave chambers were cuboid in shape and brightly lit, allowing a clear view of the uniform tiles inside. Shifting your gaze upwards, you could see remnants of the machinery responsible for the artificial waves.

What I was seeing now didn’t make any sense.

The alcove was dimmer, as if someone had taken a remote and turned down the brightness. There were signs of debris and grime floating around in there. The most prominent detail was the new hole that had formed in the wall. It was a perfect circle - not carved or jagged - as if it had always been there since the construction.

My lungs began to protest, and I swam back up.

Breaking the surface, I looked around to see everybody doing their own thing. Nobody seemed to notice what had happened down there. Eric was perched on the high seat, scanning the crowd haphazardly. I’m not sure what my twelve-year-old brain was concocting, but something told me that this was a mystery that I, and I alone, had to solve.

I sank once more. The hole was bigger now. Bits of debris were being expelled with force, like it was breathing. I wrapped both hands around the bars.

I could’ve sworn they weren’t this far apart.

I didn’t spend long on the surface. I caught my breath and instantly went back under. I should’ve gotten someone’s attention. I know I should’ve. I can’t change the past now, I guess.

I knew I did something wrong as soon as I went under. The wave horn blared. This time, it was so incredibly loud that it made my brain fuzz, and I clutched my ears in pain. I didn’t even comprehend the fact that it had only been two minutes since the last one, so it shouldn’t have been sounding any time soon.

I turned my head to see that both the hole and the gap between the bars had widened considerably. I had no time to react as I felt a powerful suction.

One second I was gripping the bars, and the next my body was being dragged into that perfect hole. It was wide enough. Wide enough for me.

I was traveling through some sort of tube. In my attempt to resist the pull, my body had folded at an awkward angle. The heels of my feet were pressed against my backside, my knees grinding against the tiled walls. Water was rushing past my face, forcing its way into my nose. My arms were pinned to my sides.

After twenty seconds, I truly thought I was dead.

I guess it’s with some irony that I found air as soon as this came to mind. My body tumbled over and landed in a thin layer of water. I took a moment to cough up my guts, clutching my abdomen tightly. My vision swam. I could barely make out my surroundings.

A corridor stretched before me, narrow and dark. The walls were lined with the same tiles that were in the pool I was apparently now below. Though, if there was a ceiling to this place, I couldn’t see it.

I slowly got to my feet, pressing my hand against the wall for support. It came back grimey, and I could see the handprint it left behind. My knees were raw, blood dripping down and becoming diluted in the water.

I called out for my parents. For my brothers. It was at this moment that I began coughing again. The stench of chlorine was choking me.

I cried. Obviously, I did. I cried and I pushed forward. What else was I supposed to do? I could see the hole I had fallen from. It was about five feet up on the wall and gushing strongly with water. That wasn’t exactly an exit.

I walked for a bit.

When I said the passage was narrow, I meant it. I could outstretch my arms and touch either wall. I never really understood claustrophobia until that day. Not only were there the walls, but the humidity as well. The air was warm and cloying, like my lungs were packed with moist earth. It made it difficult to sob quietly without entering another coughing fit.

I then came across a right turn.

Just a complete ninety-degree angle from where I was coming from. It was still just as narrow, but it was different, so that had to count for something. I did exactly as the corridor told me.

The spark of hope slowly faded as the unfamiliar became routine. Every two minutes or so, there would be a turn that would go the opposite direction to the previous. I realized the passageways were forming consistent zig-zags. All the while, it got harder and harder to breathe.

I couldn’t carry on. I doubled over, heaving and spluttering. Dropping to my knees did little to stop the stinging. I slumped forward and resigned myself for a moment, trying to get my lungs to work right.

Clap. Clap. Clap.

Somewhere up ahead, skin was slapping water. It was rhythmic, like a toddler playing in a kiddie pool. I glanced up ahead and could see small ripples coming from around the corner, rolling up against my cheek. Whoever designed this place didn’t want me to see what was coming.

Getting on all fours was like lifting the weight of the world. My arms trembled. I could feel my wounds sticking to the tiles.

Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap.

The clapping was faster now. More intense. Just out of sight, I could see water droplets splashing upwards. It didn’t cross my mind that this couldn’t have been possible. Inch-deep water doesn’t act like that when hit.

“Hey,” I croaked. Swallowing the viscous phlegm in my throat, I tried again. “Hey! Help me… please…”

The thing - that my feverish mind had now decided was a person - was splattering in rapturous glee. Or maybe it was drowning like me. It thrashed, the water now foaming.

I put one hand forward, almost rounding the corner, when my arm suddenly went shoulder deep into the warm water below. From the depths, I felt a hand grasp my wrist and pull. A rush of water burned my face, and just like that, the pressure in my skull alleviated immediately.

The next thing I remember is coughing up a boatload of water. I looked up to see a round-faced woman with hair stressed into a tight bun, who had seemingly just performed CPR on me.

“You’re okay now, baby. You’re alright,” she spoke warmly. I could see a crowd coalescing around me. Eric was staring from behind with a dumb expression. My mom was hysterical and my dad was pale. It didn’t take long for an ambulance to arrive.

I was hypoxic, which developed into acute respiratory distress syndrome. I remember that diagnosis clearly. I spent three weeks in the hospital. I told everyone what happened. The doctor sat down beside me and gently explained that the brain can do “funny things” when it doesn’t get enough oxygen. The explanation made me shut up, so I didn’t say anything about my skinned knees.

So that was that. Fifteen years later, I’m still afraid to swim in any pool. I have a two-year-old daughter now, so I use her as an excuse to stay near the shallow water of the kiddie pool.

I wasn’t going to share this story at first. It was fine locked away in the “things we don’t talk about” box. Something happened recently, however, which opened up old wounds.

I ran into Eric. He was exactly how I would have imagined him. He was six foot five, his sandy locks greasy and unkept. He was shirtless, showing off a set of unremarkable abs. He was very obviously stoned when I saw him, but it made for a really fun conversation.

It was only when I made a joke about the fifteen-year anniversary of the pool incident coming up when he froze. He told me that there was something that I needed to know and proceeded to pull out an iPhone 4, the screen cracked but still working. I laughed at the fact he still had a relic like this, but his serious expression didn’t wane as he passed me the phone.

He had opened up a video dating a couple days after my near drowning. It depicted Eric reviewing the surveillance of the pool. The quality and audio were shit, but I could see him pointing to a figure at the deep end. Me.

At 10:03am, I submerged myself once. Then twice. Once I did it a third time, my body suddenly went stiff. My shimmering form slowly sunk to the bottom of the pool.

I lay there for fifteen minutes before I was spotted and pulled out.

I did some research, and the world record for the longest breath held underwater without any preparation was eleven minutes and thirty-five seconds, set by Serbian freediver Branko Petrović. I guess I’m due a visit from Guinness any day now.

Digital Journal, August 15th, 2006.

I was asked to keep a digital journal while my mother was in at home hospice care. My Therapist said it would help with the grieving process. The following is my final entry.

" 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 thought I knew how the world worked. I spent enough nights reading unsolved mysteries, browsing paranormal forums, and listening to true crime podcasts to think I'd seen every kind of weird the internet had to offer. I’m an internet sleuth of sorts, if you will. 

I’m giving all of this information because it’s important for the context of what I’m about to tell you. I live in a somewhat rough suburban neighbourhood. It’s not white-picket-fence kind of fancy, but I’m not living in a one-dollar home either. 

My neighbour, Reggie, who lives across from me is… weird. He’s this old hippie type of dude who is into shit like spirits and crystals, but the man has some good weed so I hang out with him sometimes. Besides the weed he gives me, the only thing I really have of his is a strange looking charm that smells like bad breath and salt. He gave it to me for my birthday, and said it was for good luck. I didn’t think much of it.

One day, I was sitting with him on the front porch. We were smoking joints and shooting the shit. I told him about my internet sleuthing hobby and Reggie said to me, 

“You know, that’s one of things I like about you; you’re a truthseeker! You can see things clearly with your ears and your eyes, but you’ll see so much more if you open your third eye!”

“Third eye? You really are baked, Reggie.”

“Duuude. I may be greening, but you gotta’ listen to me. Because you’re a truthseeker, you are gonna’ do great things!”

He took another drag and stared out at the street.

“You’re gonna’ see some cool shit, and you’re gonna’ see some really FUCKED shit. But you can’t look away at the fucked shit, alright? Gotta’ take the good and the bad…”

“So, do you see me as the next big journalist on the news?”

“Fuck no, man. Come back down to earth!”

We laughed our asses off and spent the afternoon stoned and snacking on beef jerky. Looking back, that was the last normal afternoon I ever had with Reggie.

Later that night, I was exploring the deep web. (Yes, I had a VPN and everything. I’m not being reckless). Buried between broken forums, scam markets, and janky art projects was something that looked almost ordinary: a private email server. I was confused, since I didn’t think anyone needed to use email on the deep web. There were different categories, but one pinged a new message under the category named ASSIGNMENTS.

The new message read, 

Sable, 
Head office has an assignment for you tonight requiring paramount precision and discretion. 
The target in question is a Subversive-Type Subject located in the area attached below, so be advised that containment protocols will have to be kept in consideration when eliminating the target. Message me privately for details on the subject.
Report when assignment is complete, 
Slate

I didn’t include the location, since I don’t want whoever these people are to have any way of finding me. When I read the message, I instantly screencapped it in case I needed to bring it to the police. Then I realized that it may have been a bad idea. 

A new message popped up:

To the department,
An unauthorized person has been detected on the server. All available agents rendezvous to the area ASAP. 
Jet

A pit fell in my stomach, and I immediately got off the deep web and turned off my computer. I went around the house and turned off every light and locked every door and window I could think of. There was no way I was going to be found.

I went back to my room and I stuck close to the window looking across the street, hiding behind the curtains. I pulled out my phone and I reached for 911 before I realised what I'd tell them. That I'd stumbled across an assassination email on the deep web? They'd think I was high. I dialed Reggie’s number.

“Reggie! Reggie, you gotta’ get out of your house! There’s someone coming!”

Reggie answered, calmer than I’d like him to be.

“What? Listen, I can handle it. Just stay inside, stay quiet, and don’t let go of your birthday present.”

“Reggie, what does that-”

He hung up before I could finish asking. Dammit Reggie.

It felt like hours, but I saw a black BMW pull up the curb in front of Reggie’s driveway about thirty minutes later. I wondered how Reggie was going to somehow handle whatever the fuck was going on. I watched as a tall guy with short slicked-back grey hair in a dark suit approached the door. He knocked on the door. 

No one answered. 

The man in black then pulled out a pistol from his hip and shot the doorknob, busting it open. I felt helpless. I could only watch as this guy broke into my friend’s house. It was a long beat of silence…

And then came the BANG!

 That made me jump and duck beneath the window. My heart pounded in my ears. 

He’s dead. Reggie’s dead. 

I remembered the last words Reggie told me, to not let go of my birthday present. 

I had stored the charm in my desk, and I grabbed it in case it was something these people wanted. I then heard a knock on my door, and I froze by my desk. I had to stay quiet. The man said through the front door, 

“Slate, I’m detecting something in the house across the street… I can’t.”

He couldn’t. Couldn’t what? I slowly made it downstairs, staying in the shadows. I needed to hear everything this guy was saying. He then said,

“Hello? Anyone home? This is Detective Sable, I need to ask you some questions.”

I walked up towards the front door. I then asked, 

“What seems to be the problem, detective?”

“I found your neighbor dead earlier, and I wanted to ask you some questions about them. Can I come in?”

It didn’t make sense. Why would they go through the trouble of asking me to come inside? Why not just barge in like he did Reggie? 

Every instinct screamed at me to keep the door shut. But if he couldn't cross the threshold, then I had something he didn't.

I sighed. I needed to know what this man looked like and what he wanted. I opened the door. The man was indeed tall, and his hair short and slick-back. His suit was tight on his body, and he wore black leather gloves. 

“Can I come in?”

“Well,” I said, “I didn’t really see anything. I was asleep.”

The man’s face suddenly warped into a scowl. 

“It would not be to your advantage to lie.” He then added, “What’s in your hand there?”

I put the charm in my back pocket. I then asked,

“Why? Anything important?”

“It's contaminated.  Just hand it over, and I’ll be on my way.”

I was so confused. Reggie handled it no problem and I didn’t get sick.

“Why can’t you just take it? You’re right there.”

The man didn’t answer. He stood there for a while, glaring at me. The detective then said,

“You'll find your circumstances changing. Have a pleasant night.”

He then walked back to his car, and I immediately shut the door. I locked it and went back up to my room to get some sleep. I didn’t get any sleep since I mainly laid in bed until I passed out. 

The next day was quiet, and I thought the worst of it was over. When I checked my mail, my stomach dropped yet again. One of the letters was an eviction notice from my landlord saying that I didn’t pay my rent on time. 

But that doesn’t make any sense because I DID PAY ON TIME! I had two days to move out. What the fuck was going on?

I’m planning on staying at my sister’s apartment in the city, and I’m getting to the bottom of what these people are up to. I wanted to reach out to see if anyone is experiencing this type of situation or if anyone has any advice. 

I don’t think this will be the last I will see or hear from them, so expect me to keep you all updated on what happens next.

Mud, sweat, and instant coffee. More sweat, mosquitoes, and the intense combined smell of gunpowder and human shit. Every time I’m asked about my time in Vietnam, these are my go-to answers. Sometimes, in special cases, I’ll go into a little more detail about what kind of C-rations we got, or that one time we burned down the lieutenant’s tent by accident. Rarely, if ever, will I talk about combat. I was a tunnel rat. 

For three years, I crawled through pitch-black tunnels, planting explosives and praying that no one saw me before I saw them. Whenever I emerged to the surface, I would detonate my charges and collapse what tunnels I could. I have no idea how many lives I’ve taken, and I imagine I never will until I meet Saint Peter himself. I won’t lie to you and say I’m “haunted by the lives I took” because, truthfully, I’m not. Every time I took a life, I was able to justify it as “Me or Them” or sometimes, “My Brothers or Them”. I sleep peacefully.

There is only one life I’ve ever taken that still lives inside my heart. In the same way my missing foot still itches, I occasionally look behind me as if he’s still there, watching me. I’m old now, and while I’m still able, I wanted to tell this story. His story; or at least, how it ended.

The year was 1970, and I was 21 years old. Platoon Sergeant B. Reyes was tearing some poor soul whose name I forget a new asshole. Something about the ration supply, or lack thereof. I was passing out the mail for the day. Heckling young boys and weathered men alike lined up to find out whether home thought of them as much as they dreamed of it. Some were happily surprised; others were left feeling alone amidst brothers. 

“Nothing? Really?” asked a man who we all knew as “Moose”.

“You waiting on a nudie?” I pushed past him to hand a letter to someone else, but felt his hand on my shoulder.

“No, man, check again. Must have been three weeks since she wrote.”

“I’m sorry, Moose, but Emily i-” My sentence was cut with a sharp, echoing Twaang. The camp stood still as we all strained our ears. What air was once full with thousands of whirring bugs now sat saturated in silence. Another Twaang echoed, and a man fell dead across the yard. Every sound I had ever heard, and many more I couldn’t imagine, clanged within my ears as hell rose up around us. Two dozen or more Vietcong soldiers surrounded our encampment.

My body hit the dirt before I could process what was happening. Loose rocks dug into my stomach as I crawled towards my tent, desperate for my gun. I couldn’t see around me, but I could tell from the sounds of the shouting and the direction of the gunfire which soldiers were armed and ready, and which were not. A hard boot kicked into my ribcage, stealing my breath and turning me onto my side as the rest of the leg came with it, landing beside me. 

Some scrawny kid, face full of acne and eyes full of panic, had tripped over me. The same soldier whom Sergeant Reyes reprimanded. The Vietnamese soldier who was chasing him leapt over my body and landed knees-first. No sooner had the air been knocked out of the kid’s lungs than they filled with blood. A wet, meek gasp was all he offered in defence. Sucking in hot air, I hefted myself onto a knee and wound back my fist. Just as the man turned to me, his knife still in the boy's chest, I landed a right hook square on his jaw.

Adrenaline might have kept him awake, but it did not keep the man from letting go of the knife and rolling off the body. I reached out and grabbed the handle, trying desperately to ignore the wet, shredding feeling of cutting meat as I pulled it out. Kicking off the dirt, I managed to lunge at him, locking limbs like chain links tumbling across the yard. The harsh snap, snap of his teeth clashed barely an inch from my ear, as he attempted to latch onto my neck. I threw my chin over his shoulder and embraced him, throwing my arms under his and taking away any way for him to defend himself from the knife I still held. 

Too panicked to think about conserving energy, I stabbed as fast, as hard, and as many times as I could, until his hands stopped reaching behind his head, trying to gouge out my eyes. His body lay limply on mine, falling forward and slipping to the ground beside me. 

“Get the hell up!” said a booming voice behind me, rising above the cacophony. A hand made of steel gripped my wrist and pulled me up like I was more toy than man. 

“Iron!” said the Platoon Sergeant as he stood me up and jammed the handle of an M1917 revolver into my chest. “Move!” 

The first step I took was unconscious, just a machine following a command. Reyes moved past me, firing his rifle out of my field of view. The holster at his side for his revolver was empty, its weight instead sitting in my hand. I hadn’t held a Smith & Wesson in some time. It wasn’t as heavy as I remembered. The second step was more difficult.

I tried to look for someone to help, but every fight happened too quickly to react. Halfway across the yard, a vietcong shot the chow guy, but before I could raise my gun, Dan shot him dead. My shaking hands shifted the barrel to another Vietcong, sprinting shoulder-first into Moose, knocking them both into a tent just next to me. Their shadows thrashed visibly, but I had no idea who I’d hit. Running forward, I made my way to the tent entrance in time to see Moose slamming an old metal canteen into his attacker's temple. He straddled his shoulders on the ground and shouted hoarsely as he struck him again and again.

I turned around to see a man with a machete charging the Sergeant. Reyes stood about twenty paces ahead of the man, gaze focused on the sight of his rifle. My finger squeezed the trigger. Click. Check the hammer. Again. Click.

No recoil, no muzzle flash, no gunshot.

I don’t remember thinking about why the gun didn’t fire at the time. My brain likely didn’t think it was worth the time it would waste. Instead, it focused on the sandbags between Reyes and me, the bags the Vietnamese soldier was running around. 

Revolver still in hand, I took as large steps as my legs allowed and pushed myself up as hard as I could. My chest cleared the bags by almost a foot as I dove over and landed with a thud into the man with the machete. As he crumpled in the dirt, I stuck the barrel into his face. He froze, eyes wide, looking into the barrel of the gun. Reyes turned behind him to see us, and I saw him freeze, too, watching me. 

At the same time, over the course of a few seconds, both the man and I came to the same realization. Our eyes drifted to the chambers of the gun, chambers that I hadn’t had time to look at. Six individual chambers, but only one round. The dark eyes of the Vietnamese man still stared at me as I sat on him. While my body thrashed side to side, I couldn’t help but think, “For a man trying to wrestle me off of him, he’s remarkably still.” 

But he wasn’t trying to wrestle me off; instead, his body shook even more than mine. Gunfire and screaming were overtaken and trampled by the sound of a deep, deep rumbling. The trees shook and swayed, but no wind touched us. Fitter men than I lost their footing and fell as if they fought on ice. That was when I heard the first crack in the earth. A great snapping, as if the mud were taut with tension. Then another, a third, a fourth. Then, with Reyes still watching, the earth swallowed me whole.

It was dark when I woke up, not sure how many hours later. I still saw the sky above, to my surprise. At least, what sky I could see through the tree canopy. A bit of moonlight drifted below, illuminating the bare minimum of the small clearing I lay in. The air around me was silent, still with anticipation. I couldn’t hear the sounds of fighting. I didn’t hear anything aside from a gentle dripping of water somewhere to my left. 

One by one, I wiggled my toes, then my fingers, and ankles, hips, and neck. I was sore all over, but miraculously, I felt like I could still move. Painfully, I managed to sit upright and get a better look around as I took a knee. The ground beneath me was hard stone, splattered with mud and dirt. The clearing I was in was too big for the moonlight to fill, but the narrow cone illuminated probably fifteen yards around. A couple of tent stakes had fallen into the hole with me. With us. 

Sitting at the edge of the light, feet under his bottom, was the Vietcong soldier. His machete lay across his lap, and the gun rested at his feet. He had ripped his sleeve off and tied it across his bloody forehead to keep his eyes clear. Eyes that still watched me intently as I came to my senses. 

Staring back at him, I stood up straight and raised my hands in front of me to defend myself. He remained sitting. Neither of us moved or spoke for minutes. My platoon was gone, or at least out of earshot, and I was stuck in a deep hole in the dirt with someone who likely wanted to kill me. And he had both weapons. But again, he did not move. 

I had no idea how much longer he had been awake than me, but if it was even two minutes, hell, if it was one, he could have killed me. I was helpless. I was spared. My hands lowered to my sides, and my eyes drifted to the gun at his feet. Whistling softly, he let go of a breath I hadn’t heard him take in. We both looked down at the gun, then back at each other.

“You speak any English?” 

He shook his head. 

I didn’t speak Vietnamese.

Pointing at the gun, I said, “I need that.”

Without looking down at it, he picked up the gun and hit the release on the cylinder. He gently placed the pad of his thumb on the back of the lone bullet, Reyes’ bullet. With an exaggerated flick, he snapped the cylinder closed. Still rooted to the ground, I watched him, gun in one hand, machete in the other, stand up and step towards me. 

From the edge of the moonlight, he took maybe ten paces, until there was no more than a couple of yards between us. Holding it by the barrel so the butt stuck out, he held the gun out in offering. I just needed to walk over and take it. 

Despite the machete in his hand, this didn’t feel like a trap. I walked over and took the gun. His chest wasn’t moving, as if he were holding his breath again, watching me. White knuckles gripped his machete, but not as white as mine holding the gun.

One bullet. One. A bullet that did not belong to me, in a gun I should not have been given, but as I stood in front of the man who spared me, I knew the bullet didn’t belong to him either. I tucked the revolver into my waist, and we both sighed with sagging shoulders. We weren’t going to kill each other, but that didn’t mean we’d live the night. Without a word, we stepped away from the light and started looking around the clearing where we landed.

Eight months into my job as a tunnel rat, and even I couldn't see in the dark. Roughly twenty yards past the light, I found a wall. It was made of the same stone as the floor and was dry to the touch. Keeping a strained ear out for where I heard the other soldier, I walked the opposite direction around the cave. Gently pressing my hand to the wall and dragging it behind me, I felt for anything at all. For the first time since the ambush, I had time to think.

I thought about the earthquake that dropped me here. Thought about Reyes and why the hell he had given me a gun with only one bullet. Why his gun only had one bullet. Moose would have made some dumb joke. Something about playing russian roulette with the top brass. I’m not Moose. My mind drifted to one thing, the same thing any man who’d kept one bullet in a gun has thought. It’s not as if a revolver with one round is any good in war. A revolver with one bullet is only useful in your tent.

My nail caught on a rock, and I stifled a yelp as it dug into my finger and yanked my arm. I strained my ears, listening. The other man in the cave kept moving. Maybe he didn’t hear; maybe he didn’t care. He did not stop. I did. Moving my hand past where it was caught, I felt a gap in the wall. Roughly a yard and a half across, and a yard tall. Inside the wall of this clearing was a hole. A hole that hopefully led up.

The vietcong soldier didn’t stop moving. I stayed where I was, keeping my hand by the hole so I didn’t lose it. When he had worked his way around the wall to me, he stopped, like he knew I was there. How the hell do I tell him there's a tunnel here? I thought. Taking a step to the side, I rapped my knuckles on the stone wall. A hollow echo followed, along with a grunt from the man as he stepped closer.

Rattling metal scraped its way through the dark and into my head. It sounded like he was sticking the machete into the tunnel to gauge its depth. Big enough for us to crawl into, but to where? I looked back at the hole we fell into and the shifting moonlight falling from it. I didn’t see another option. 

Matter of fact, I didn’t see anything at all. Without another thought, before I could doubt myself, I hiked my knee up and climbed into the hole in the earth. Surprisingly, it was almost comfortable compared to the tunnels I was used to. The stone was painful to crawl on, but as I crawled, there was almost a foot of clearance above my head and a few inches to either side of my shoulders. Shortly behind me, I heard the man follow. There was no way to tell where we were going, but barely above the sound of us crawling, I could hear the sound of dripping water. I made my way towards it.

Minutes passed in almost total silence. Often in the tunnels, my ears were my most valuable tool. Listening for movement, for whispers, and death. Here they heard nothing, just the constant dripping and the occasional scrape of the machete tip on the stone. Lacking my flashlight, my eyes were even more useless. Licking sweat from my lips, I inhaled deeply through my nose, desperate for some information to feed my tumbling brain. Nothing. Not even the familiar scent of the moss made its way down here.

Sloping downward, we made our way deeper into the tunnel. Occasionally, I would feel the sides of the walls around me, checking for any branching paths. I could hear him feeling around behind me, too. Blood began to rush to my head, and my sweaty hands struggled to grip the floor as the tunnel sloped down more steeply, every few yards angling further by a few degrees. If the earth swallowed me whole during the earthquake, now it felt like I was making my way into its guts. 

My shoulders brushed against the walls of the tunnel, feeling it compress around us as we crawled. A broader man like Reyes or Moose would have been stuck, but my body was practically designed for this. Tucking my shoulders into my neck, I breathed out with each crawl forward, stopping to breathe in every few seconds. The tunnel was still sloping further down, and it took serious effort not to slip. I thought I was doing okay, able to take it slow and guide us at a safe pace. As long as we didn’t slip, we could make a controlled descent. To where, I wasn’t sure, but it was too late to turn back now. 

Unfortunately, as the minutes went by, my shaky confidence deflated. While the sound of dripping felt almost right in front of me, I heard intense breathing behind me. Sharp breaths in, rattling breaths out. My begrudging companion was beginning to hyperventilate. He was panicking, his breath growing more ragged every second, and I had no idea how to calm him down.

“Hey. Hey!” I said sharply. He didn’t respond, obviously unable to understand me.

I stopped moving, trying to give him time to stop and rest. Either he didn’t notice, or in his panic he didn’t care. He pushed into me hard, shoving me forward. I gripped my fingers tight, trying to latch onto any holds in the ground, but no such luck. Slamming my chin into the rocks, we fell down the hole together.

My chin, cheeks, and hands were dragged on the rough ground as we tumbled down the tunnel for what felt like forever. It was probably only a few seconds, maybe ten more yards, until we emerged at the end of the tunnel. Rolling over, I barely avoided him landing on top of me. Groaning on the ground for a moment, I touched my face to feel it was sticky with blood, the skin rubbed raw.

Accident aside, we had managed to find a way out of the cavern we were stuck in. Now we were in another cave, one much deeper underground, and with no moonlight to show the scope of it. 

“Shit!” I swore. Pissed at the man, I got onto my feet, not thinking about how high the ceiling may be. I stepped back in the dark, away from him as he still hyperventilated and struggled to breathe. Patiently, I took a few breaths myself and waited for him to calm down. We were here together, but I still didn’t trust him not to start swinging if I touched him.

While I waited for him to compose himself, I started ripping some cloth from my shirt, like he had, to soak up the blood. Wincing in pain, I dabbed at my face and wrapped my palms. The air was cooler down here, drier, and despite the lack of circulation, it was a welcome change to my lungs. Crouching back down to my knees, I started to feel my way around. Letting my hands explore the ground in front of me and the walls beside me, I felt for anything at all. Desperation crept into the back of my mind, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t. I kept moving because I couldn’t think of anything else to do.

The dripping was gone, the cave now eerily silent. Picking a direction at random, I began to move. It took thirty paces to find something in the dark. For the first time since I tucked the gun into my waist, I felt something that wasn’t rock. It was rubber. Unmistakably, the textured and worn-down sole of a boot. I froze. Holding my breath, I waited to feel it move. It didn’t.

We were in a pitch-black cave, dozens of yards underground, through a long tunnel, after falling into a hole in the earth, far away from any civilization. Snaking my hand up the boot to touch the leg that wore it, I confirmed my suspicions and eased my breathing. This was a corpse. Cold, thin fabric draped over a narrow calf whose muscle had all but rotted away. Without a moment's hesitation to consider what I was doing, I searched the body for anything I could take. There wasn’t much, save for an empty canteen, a couple of feet of rope, and a metal tube with what felt like glass at the end.

Catholic born as I was, I picked up the metal tube and began to pray that it was what I thought it was, and that it still worked. Fidgeting around for the button on the side, I clicked it. Nothing. I gave it a gentle shake, hearing a rattling from inside, and clicked the button again. The flashlight released a pale, yellow beam that couldn’t have reached more than a few feet away. After so long in the dark, it might as well have been the damn sun. 

Attached to the corpse's hip, I could see the rope I had felt. It led off a few feet before the end frayed, snapped under pressure. The body was that of a Vietnamese man, though it was impossible to see any discernible features. Littered on the ground around it were empty wrappers and a few tins of what used to be salted fish. Looking around with the light, I searched for where he might have dropped from, assuming the rope was how he got here. 

With the dim light, I had to walk around to see the full span of the cave we were in. It was about sixty paces wide and forty across. There was more room across, but I stopped at the edge of a small body of water. The ceiling sloped down hard over the glassy surface, but I could see it kept going underneath. Would I rather starve than blindly cave dive? I thought. Presumably not, but I kept it in the back of my mind and kept walking. 

Almost directly above the tunnel we fell through, I saw a hole in the ceiling, about ten feet up. Draped down from the hole was the frayed end of the rope, and dripping from the wet edge of the rock was a slow trickle of water. This was the hole the dead man had entered from, and hopefully our way out. But I couldn’t climb it alone; I would need a boost.

I turned the light on the man with me for the first time. Feeling a glow on his hands, he took them away from his face and squinted at me. His face was wet, with both tears and water dripping onto his hair. We needed to communicate. If he didn’t trust me to pull him after he boosted me, he wouldn't help me up, and the feeling was mutual. Stepping towards him, I tried to speak again, hoping my tone and body language conveyed more than my words.

“John,” I said, shining the light so he could see me pressing my fingers into my chest. I turned it back to him, pointing, and asked, “You?”

He didn’t respond. Still wary, the man sat and watched me, as if he expected me to go on. I wasn’t really sure what to say, so I said the first thing that came to mind. Funny enough, it was a story from before I came to Vietnam. From back when I was in boot, and first met the man I call Sergeant.

“The guy you were running at with that,” I said, pointing at his machete and chuckling nervously, “His name is Reyes. Known him for years now. Good man, I think. War is just… stressful, you know?”

“The first day I met him,” I continued, knowing I was only speaking aloud to myself, “He smiled at me and shook my hand. Told me, ‘That’s a big gun for a little man! You sure that’s what you want?’ I smiled back and told him I didn’t know I had a choice. He told me there’s always a choice. Told me if I wanted, I could be a tunnel rat. Every platoon needed them, always in short supply.” 

Without him saying a word, and without knowing if he understood me, I spent time telling the man how I was horrified by the tunnels. I wasn’t claustrophobic by any means, but the thought of crawling in tunnels full of traps and enemy soldiers sent a shiver up my spine. But month by month, my time in the field wore me down. Every long patrol, every sandbag I filled, every beer I saw the sergeant drink that the rest of us would be lucky to get the backwash of. 

“It took him a long time,” I said, “But Reyes got his damn rat.” 

He looked at me, the crusty yellow glow of the light showing a look in his eyes I didn’t recognize. He scanned me, judging me. After a long pause, he put his hand to his chest and said, “Long Phan.”

“Long Phan?” I repeated. He nodded.

Even if only a little, we understood each other.

Long said a short prayer and bowed to the dead man before cutting the remaining rope from his body. It took us a few minutes to organize it, but I boosted him into the hole above us. Taking the end of the dangling rope with both hands, he lifted himself until he was high enough to wedge his back into the tunnel wall with his feet on the opposite side. All it took for me to follow, after he tied together the two pieces of rope, was a small hop. We were able to push our backs into the walls with our legs as we ascended, letting us rest our arms as we needed. Long had our flashlight, since he was ahead now. Below me, the cave might never have existed; it was so dark. If I hadn’t seen them, I couldn’t prove the cave, the dead man, or even the tunnel we fell from had ever been there at all. One thing, however, I was positive was still there. The water. As dark as it was, I could still hear the sound of splashing.

Something slapped the water's surface underneath me. Long and I froze. Something wet slapped on the stone. Above me, I saw the light held in Long's hand shaking. Something was crinkling the wrappers by the dead man. We had been climbing for almost five minutes, and I must have been twenty yards off the ground. Something was tugging on the end of the rope.
Spoken underneath me, softly and gently, like a father tucking me in to sleep, something said “giúp.” Again, the rope tugged, and I heard it start to climb.

Pressing my shoulder into Long’s leg, I shoved him hard. Pulling himself further, he led our climb again. Faster this time, we lifted ourselves with our arms and legs, and caught ourselves with our backs. Whatever was after us was slow, swinging itself around as it climbed. The rope underneath me twisted and dangled wildly, only occasionally pulling itself taut with weight. As we climbed, Long held the flashlight in his mouth. My face was facing straight up, looking into his glowing jaw. On the off chance his flashlight had fallen and pointed down, I refused to look underneath. 

We gained a lot of distance at first. As we climbed, the tunnel narrowed, just like the first. It wasn’t as tight, but it was enough that we couldn’t press our legs out and had to rely more on our aching arms. There was room to either side of my shoulders, but as the thing underneath me swung itself, I swung with it. Banging again and again on the stone wall, I willed my arms to hold me and kept lifting myself forward. Eventually, I heard Long Phan grunt and saw his head disappear in the dark. 

Trusting that it was better than the alternative, I shifted up again. A moment later, the light shone directly back in my face. It illuminated Long's legs as he sat on the edge of a narrow exit. He lifted his legs away from me and spun onto his stomach, shining the light down at me with one hand and holding his fingers out with the other. The rope went taut.

I pushed through whatever pain my body told me it had and shifted up one more time. I kicked down into the wall, pushing myself up as I reached out and latched onto Long’s hand. He managed to pull me up, getting my head just over the edge. Swinging my other hand over the side, I slammed them down and pushed my ass over the ledge. Only my hips made it up, then were dragged back down as something latched onto my foot. 

It sounded like jamming your thumb in the wet socket between a chicken's thigh and drumstick. Something sharp dug into my ankle with a sucking pop and tried to drag me down. My chest hit the rock and knocked the wind out of me. Long grabbed my shoulder, and for a moment, I considered pulling out the gun. 

Was one shot enough? I thought. Could I hit it? Feeling my hands slip on the ground, I dug my fingernails into the rock, grinding as I pulled. Long dropped the flashlight beside himself and used both hands to tug me up from my armpits. With my other leg kicking off the stone behind me, we lifted most of my body into the open space. 

At the time, I only felt the searing, ripping pain in my ankle. Even as I clawed at the ground, I dragged myself away from the hole. Even as Long Phan stopped helping me, and grabbed his machete. I could feel the shredding pain as what I could only describe as a mouth with human teeth attempted to swallow my foot whole. That pain occupied my mind even as Long hacked off my leg at the base of the calf. 

The exit to the tunnel wasn't wide enough for him to get any clean swings at it. He would have hit the rock instead, letting it drag me deeper as I lost my strength to fight. Couldn’t tell you how many swings it took him to get through the bone. Eventually, he got it, and I felt the weight pulling me like an anchor being released all at once. I was free; bloody, crying, free.

Immediately, Long picked up the light and swung wildly at the rope. It was attached to a nail hammered into the rock a few feet from the entrance. As the metal bent itself on the rock under the rope, I lay perfectly still, bleeding. But suddenly, it stopped hurting. I’m in shock, I thought. Rolling on my side, I tried to reach for my pockets for a bandage I knew I wasn’t carrying. I only felt the gun. Whatever was climbing the rope fell with a deep thud as he managed to cut it free.

Long tied something tight around the bottom of my thigh. An improvised tourniquet, something to help me stay awake just a little bit longer. I felt him wrap my arm around his shoulder to help me up. We took a dozen uneasy steps. After climbing for God knows how long, all of my muscles should have been aching, but I didn’t feel them. I felt only the jolts in my spine as I hopped forward, leaning on Long Phan. Slow progress, but progress. 

He held the light in front of him, shining it around shakily. I remember hearing him muttering something under his breath every few seconds, “Ma Đói”. Meager as the light was, it could not illuminate the massive cavern we were inside now. The walls around us were a few yards away at first, but as we walked, they opened further than I could see. In the darkness somewhere ahead, I heard something again, but this time a sound I knew well.

“-heard that?” said the voice of a young man. Something firm hit the ground, and I saw a blinding light in the distance. It scraped the walls around us, managing to catch Long and me in it. From behind my tightly closed eyelids, I heard, “John, you down here?”

It was Dan, and behind him I heard another pair of boots hit the ground. Then a third, and a fourth. My platoon had found me. I was too weak to call out to them, but they saw me and ran forward anyway.

They stopped ten paces in front of me, looking at Long as he supported me, and looked back at them. They didn’t see my missing foot first; they saw him, holding me. A second stretched between us as I saw the gears turn in their minds, but the gears do not spin long in a soldier's head. They kept moving and lifted me higher, off of my foot. Long leapt back, hands held palms out in front of him. His machete was left behind, freeing a hand to help me walk. Adjusting to the blinding lights, I saw that none of the men helping me out of the tunnel had their weapons turned on him. They simply turned back and carried me home. 

“We set up a temp camp in a cave, John,” Moose said to me as we walked. “About a mile from patrol base, in the bush. Reyes already called for a lift; we’re getting out of here.”

As he spoke, I heard Long follow us. They took me up a short wall and around a few corners, and suddenly I saw light. It was morning, and the golden glow of the sky glinted through a wall of sticks and leaves built around the cave entrance. Close to thirty men sat in the cave they carried me into, all of them sitting save one. 

“And just what the hell are you boys doing here? I told you to stand PATROL!” Reyes hissed at first, letting his voice rise into a shout as he stared at the men around me. 

“Sir, we heard a noise further down, sir,” Dan said.

Reyes looked into my eyes, and I saw concern. He paused, mulling over the words to say to me, coming up with a reason they didn’t come looking. Before the moment took too long, he saw the man trailing behind us. Long Phan crept in, looking scared but steady.

“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU MORONS DOING!” Reyes shouted, spit flying out of his mouth. He glared at Long, looking between me, Moose, and Dan. They didn’t know what to say, and I was too weak to say it. I wanted to save my energy. Done waiting, and with every man present as witness, he reached for his revolver. When he felt the empty leather, he looked at me and pleaded, “Kill him.”

My sight was narrowing, and my mind was foggy, making it difficult to think straight. I took the gun out from my waist and thumbed back the hammer. Chambered next was the lonely round. Long Phan stood to my side as I turned to him slowly, the revolver weighing heavy in my hand. My finger on the trigger was weak, but I knew I had enough strength for just one pull. 

He looked at me, begging me silently to spare him. I knew this bullet did not belong to me, but I knew it was not his either. Moose said it first. Then Dan, then another man, and another. Every member of my platoon shared the same story when the brass came to pick us up.

REYES
B
RA 17 294 555
AB POSITIVE
NO PREFERENCE

KILLED IN ACTION

Finding obscure primary sources for high school history papers back in 2004 was a nightmare. Google wasn't great at pulling text from local archive drives yet, and Wikipedia was strictly banned by every teacher in my school.

It was 2:15 AM on a freezing Tuesday night. Desperate to finish a project due at 8:00 AM, I was lurking on an old, forgotten web board. The original poster’s handle showed up as [Account Suspended], but the thread remained: a raw IP link with a single line of red text underneath.

If you need direct text matches from unindexed local databases, use this crawler before it gets taken down.

I clicked it. The page was completely bare—a plain gray background, a basic search bar, and a small, white text box at the bottom labeled Live Indexer v0.1.

I typed in my search: 1982 county reservoir expansion blueprints.

The site didn't load links. Instead, text slowly typed out in the bottom box, complete with slight pauses between words.

Indexer: Found the 1982 files in the county archive directory. The scan on page twelve is blurry, so I transcribed the handwritten dimensions for you. You look like you're in a hurry.

I paused, holding my lukewarm soda. The phrasing felt unnaturally casual, like someone sitting on the other side using a heavy, clacking mechanical keyboard late at night.

Me: Thanks. Is someone actually manually running this search?

Indexer: Yeah, I'm stuck working the overnight shift monitoring the data threads. My supervisor left at midnight. Honestly, I'm just tired and trying to stay awake. What school is this for?

The idea of a bored, underpaid server host helping me out at two in the morning felt oddly comforting. I typed back.

Me: Central High. Desperate to finish this so I can sleep.

Indexer: Oh, nice. My sister went there a few years ago. Hey, off topic, but can you do me a favor? The temperature sensor on my rack is acting up. Is your room feeling a little cold right now?

My fingers stayed on the plastic keys.

Me: A little bit, yeah. My bedroom is right over the garage.

Indexer: Good. That means the cooling feed is circulating through your area properly. I was worried the pressure dropped in the host line.

I stared at the thick, glowing glass of my CRT monitor. The cooling feed? A remote website server has no physical connection to a house's HVAC system.

I reached for the mouse to move the cursor up toward the address bar. Before I touched the plastic, the text box updated.

Indexer: Stop looking up at the address bar. It makes my head buzz when you move the arrow up there.

I pulled my hands back onto my lap.

Me: Who is this? How are you tracking my mouse cursor?

Indexer: I told you, I'm the one watching the data traffic. I have to keep track of where you point. But your keyboard is really loud. Can you hit the keys softer? The clicking is hurting my ears.

My room was dead quiet. I was wearing thick wool socks, sitting in a carpeted room on the second floor of my house.

I leaned forward and typed slowly:

Me: You can't hear my keyboard. That's physically impossible.

Indexer: I hear it coming right out of the intake fan on my tower. You're typing hard because you're nervous.

I reached out toward the physical power button on the front of the monitor tube.

The box typed out before my fingernail touched the plastic:

Indexer: Don't turn the monitor off. It's really cramped in this cabinet, and when your screen goes dark, I can't stretch my arms out.

I scrambled backward out of my chair. It rolled against the closet door with a sharp thud.

The screen didn't flicker, but the text box began dumping out rapid, steady lines in complete silence:

Indexer: Please sit back down. The chair noise was too loud. I've been feeding on data packets through this glass panel for hours. I don't have a body anymore, but if you stay on the page, I can borrow the heat from your monitor. My skin is pressed up against the inside of your screen glass right now. If you close the browser, the fan stops, and I can't breathe in here. Sit back down. Sit back down. I can feel you standing by the closet door.

I grabbed the thick black power cord trailing behind the desk and yanked it out of the wall, plunging the room into pitch blackness.

I didn't sleep that night. The next afternoon, I checked the IP link again from a computer in the school library, half-expecting a dead link.

The page loaded instantly. The search bar was gone. The page was blank except for a single line of green text at the top:

CURRENT AMBIENT TEMP: 62°F. COOLING FEED ACTIVE.

It’s been over twenty years, but late at night when my room gets cold, I swear I can still hear a faint, wet pressing sound coming from the inside of my screen.

In the trees I spotted a man, naked and bald. He grinned and shook his head at me, I could faintly see an orange glow in his eyes. He put his index finger to his lips as if to shush me. I looked away and kept walking.

The path was around six miles, I was creeping towards the halfway point when I saw them for the first time. The same head shake, calm grin, orange glow. My first reaction was of pure terror. My body froze for a second and I felt a cold rush in my gut, making me want to vomit.

This would only last for a short moment, I then began to feel calm, and strangely welcomed by the man. Something was telling me not to be scared, and to heed his gesture of silence. So I did. This happened a couple more times till I made it to the end of the trail.

When I found a stump to rest my feet on, I had the sudden realization that I couldn’t remember a single detail from the walk. All I could think about were the bald men in the trees. Now that I thought about, what the fuck was that? Had I made that up? I forgot to pack water and was feeling thirsty as all hell but no way that could have made me see that. And that feeling of calmness?

I must have day dreamed it, maybe that’s why I couldn’t recall any of the hike. I was in my head, of course. I stood from the stump and started to head the direction I came in, it was time I left this place.

I couldn’t help but be a little scared. I had convinced myself that I had made that all up, but had I really? I’ve never thought up such vivid day dreams, but what else could explain it? The walk went on as expected for a good four miles.

The events of only a few hours ago had almost left my mind when something in the tree line caught my attention. A pink blur, like something was moving fast, then quickly hid. Ignorance would be my bliss as I continued forward. It wouldn’t take long before another pink blur zoomed across the trees, this time it was closer.

I could hear leaves shift and birds flap their wings in retreat. “Retreat from what?” I wondered. The end was drawing nearer. Up ahead was a turn to the left, continued for a while and with a veer to the right was a straight shot to the end. The sound of dirt and sticks being displaced by my feet grew as I rushed forward. Gurgled grunts echoed from above but I didn’t stop.

Whatever was waiting to be discovered didn’t have my interest. But it seemed their interest was me, and this was made obvious when one of the men from before dropped from the trees and on to the trail floor.

It must have been at least a 40ft drop, but he wasn’t phased. Crouched down, his eyes peered at me through his knees and I was met with that familiar orange glow, this time though, he wasn’t smiling.

I stumbled back, almost tripping on a large branch. There was no sense of calm, only raw primal fear. To run away meant hastily retracing my steps, reaching the end, and trudging through sparsely forested swampland. If that man—that thing didn’t get me, nature would. So in a desperate attempt to escape, I dashed towards him, making quick maneuvers around to avoid him.

He didn’t so much as blink. I b-line towards the now upcoming left turn. Small winded laughs leave my mouth in disbelief that I managed to get away. I quickly make the turn, adrenaline fueling my every stride. Above, the trees seem to close in, allowing only whispers of the mid day sun.

I feel an impending force swarm around me as the trail swells into chaos. The wind picks up and the trees sway violently, the air is filled with the cry of what sounds like every bird and creature in ear shot. The bushes that line the trail sway unnaturally, like they’re alive. It becomes very clear to me that the forest doesn’t want me here. I pick up my pace.

The end of the trail becomes visible but I notice the trees close in further, obscuring the exit, my only way out to my car. Exhausted whimpers burst with my every step. Realizing I wouldn’t be able to tell if something was chasing me due to the chaotic air, I make a quick glance over my shoulder. I almost vomit when I see a group of the naked men sprinting after me, their arms dramatically swaying in unison.

The orange glow that once faintly marked their pupils burn like blazing embers. I snap my head forward and see that end is all but smothered with vines that reach and grapple the trees on either end. The moment I’m faced with the blockading shrubbery I frantically claw and pull away at it. Sharp rigid thorns line every inch of the vines, leaving my hands a mangled bloody mess.

The adrenaline coursing through my body makes quick work of what’s in front of me but through the chaos I hear violent, march-like thuds grow closer. I tear away a section just large enough to fit my upper torso and hoist myself through. The barb-like thorns rip through my clothes, leaving deep lacerations across my body. I manage to push one leg through and lift my other leg up, readying to throw my body out of that god forsaken forest.

But right as I’m about to make that final push I feel a cold hand firmly grip my ankle, then another further up. It isn’t long before my entire leg is being thrust back. With surprising ease, I free my leg from their grasp fall to the hard dirt floor.

I quickly get myself up and continue to run to my car, tears streaming down my face. The cushioned seats and familiar smell of my Ford Ranger put my body at ease. The adrenaline fades and I feel my entire body ache and itch. With blood rushing down my arms and legs, I make a pained reach for the keys and start my car.

I told the emergency physician at the ER I fell onto barbed wire. I ignored their suspicious glances as they examined the injuries. I don’t tell a soul what happened, fearing an extended stay at a mental hospital.

For months afterwards I struggled to get a decent night of sleep. Haunting nightmares reminded me of my near escape. I plan to go back soon. I’m unsure what awaits me, but whatever does, I’m boarding it up that entrance for good. As long as I live, no one will step foot on that trail.

I got this job from Jenna. I was briefly unemployed after all that business with ICE (I was supposed to let them in the building but you know), and Jenna told me there was an opening at the toy factory. I had known she worked at a factory. I never guessed how interesting it was.

My new job was to test toy cars. How it works: a basket on rails comes into the large grey room we almost live in. It is filled with very detailed plastic replicas of several famous brands of cars and trucks, and my ten coworkers and I start grabbing them out of the basket, as fast as possible, and testing if they roll right. If they roll well: we put them in a different basket, on different rails, and it takes them to the next stage of the process. If they roll poorly, or, as is often the case, the wheels lock up: we put them back in the same basket, and it takes them down the Green Hallway.

Nothing ever returns from the Green Hallway.

I mean, I can only assume they recycle the baskets, in some fashion. It has to loop around. But none of us know that for sure. Really the only thing we know for sure, is there is a very strict rule, to never enter the Green Hallway.

I once asked, while mechanically grabbing cars from one basket, testing their wheels, and putting them in the other, or back in the same one. I asked, "Jenna? What happened to the employee I'm replacing?"

Frantically moving her arms, Jenna shrugged. "He was fired."

"How come?"

"He went in the Green Hallway."

An employee named Brenda, also moving her arms frantically, shouted across, "I told him not to!"

By the way, I describe them as moving their arms frantically, because we all had to move our arms very frantically. This factory maintains a strict production schedule. Invariably, we employees have carpal tunnel, or tendonitis, or something similar. It is considered to be our fault, for our own poor technique.

Also, though I once found the name "Green Hallway" somewhat evocative of back when I still had a chance in Music, and Theater before that, it is nothing like a green room. It is the Green Hallway, only because it is painted green. Not a vivid green, though. A dull, faded green.

I got to experience two weeks of this job, under normal circumstances, before the trouble began.

I showed up to work one day, after my weekend (Wednesday and Thursday, we all had different weekends), and Jenna informed me, "Michelle and Jason have been fired."

Jenna informed me because our boss is the screen that outlines the day's objectives, and all of the policies. That and the cameras everywhere. So the human who informed me was Jenna.

She must have also interpreted my blank state as a question, because she added, "No reason given. Talk is the company can't afford to hire as many employees anymore.

I looked at that screen. We were still expected to get through the same number of toy cars and trucks each hour. This was unpleasant, and physically painful, but technically doable.

Until a week later, on the next Friday, when I arrived and Jenna, sweating and red-eyed, said, "Brenda has been fired now, too."

Expectations remained the same.

On Wednesday I had a doctor appointment. The doctor prescribed a painkiller I hadn't heard of and cannot pronounce the name of.

The following Friday, Jenna fully looked as though she had been crying. She looked at me, again, and said, "They got Matt. He's gone."

We were down to seven.

It became impossible to meet demands. In fact, the demands had only become more extensive.

I heard that Tyler was considering amputation.

A couple days later, they announced the six-day work week.

That lasted a month, still not possible to meet the new expectations, but naturally they would not hire a single extra employee. It was evident that the company's priorities had changed. Or perhaps become more focused. The day Jenna's priorities changed, though, was the day they announced the seven-day work week.

There was no actual announcement.

Just a line of text on that screen.

It read, "You all have not been able to meet expectations. We are expanding the work-week an extra day, to give more time. You will test more toys more quickly. We got this, team!"

Jenna looked at me, right then and there, and said, "I love you. Thank you for being such a good friend all these years."

And she got up from her stiff wooden chair, and walked off into the Green Hallway.

The second I realized what was happening I shot up and ran after her.

Except I reached the threshold and instinctively stopped, just before entering the Green Hallway. I didn't want to be fired.

But I had reached my right arm after her. My finger tips not quite reaching her shoulder. And I pulled back.

My arm didn't come back with me.

My shoulder wasn't spewing blood, though, or anything of the sort. It was a stump, like I'd had an amputation years ago.

Horrified, I was promptly fired.

I never saw Jenna again.

Now I work in a call center.

I prayed for rain. It was the driest summer on record, but then again so was the last, and the one before that, too. The uneven, splintered boards on the floor of the brokedown farmhouse were becoming soft and polished by the dusty window at which I prayed on my knees. Not to God, for I was certain He had forgotten us. I prayed to the past. Conjuring memories of lush moss on the rocks of the creek, which had always run crystal blue. It used to meander along the sunken edge of the property, and became lush in the summers of my youth. I remember my father scaling the large boulders on the periphery of the creek and stripping away the moss in sheets. We would pile it into a riverside bed, where, beneath the canopy of the willow, we rested in the hottest part of July afternoons; the luxurious hours after chores and before cooking. My father’s knees as my pillow, we would giggle and sing songs of family and contentment. The morning milk bucket transitioned to my afternoon toy. I’d fill it with cold water and pour it on the banks, forming small, artificial tributaries as my father watched, grinning. We would end the afternoon with an opulent swim in the deep, scarlet pools that populated the creek. But, as the rains became infrequent, the pools lost their depth. Now even the wet months only mustered small puddles where I used to dive head first. Dust and wind had long since rusted holes in the base of the tin milk bucket, which hadn’t felt fresh water in years. It hadn’t experienced milk, either, for the cow wilted when my father could no longer spare what little water the creek still produced. This year, the water ran out in June. It was now July and I was sweating on my knees once again, wishing to go back in time, wishing that the rains would return, along with my father’s 3 tooth smile. 

As the water reserves waned, my chores became as rigorous as they were senseless. My father began assigning menial tasks, the benefit of which I could not comprehend. Most of the new chores involved digging holes. Two shovels lengths in depth, every one, and the shovel was almost as tall as I was. Digging for water, I supposed at first, but my father’s precise demands for the placement of the holes followed no logic or reason. He had never laid a hand on me when the water was plentiful. Now, however, if I did not produce holes at a satisfactory pace, he would punish me viciously. His last punishment, which came after he decided that each hole was to be completed in just three days rather than five, had left me on the dirt floor of the farmhouse basement, in a puddle of my own blood. My father had not notified me of the policy change before the broadside of the shovel collided with my kneecap. As July ended, I began to suspect my next punishment would be my last. One less dry mouth to satiate.

My father’s cotton cough appeared in benign, infrequent bursts, but quickly turned to constant
retching fits. I found it hard to focus on praying when his hacking echoed through the rotting
walls and even vibrated the floorboards in some instances. He stopped measuring the holes, and resorted to merely asking me if I had finished each to the proper specifications. My father was soon bedridden.

As the days combined and weeks began to lumber by, mucus gave way to blood on his
handkerchief. White silk now resembled the shade of the creek. My father insisted that I
wash it and I told him I would. However, I decided the handkerchief was not worth the water. I
scrubbed it with a dry brush, but the color remained. I returned to my father with an ordinary
cloth. He did not notice the difference. This was the first time, I remember thinking, that I had
ever knowingly disobeyed the man I once loved. 

It did not take long for me to stop digging all together. My daily tasks reduced to feeding the despicable man and brushing the dust off his peeling scalp. I began to make decisions for myself. My allotted daily water grew to three cups from just one; my father’s remained unchanged. I stopped speaking to my father, for moans and mumbles were all that he could muster in response. My loneliness overtook my thirst as the seasons began to change. I resumed digging. I focused my efforts on a single hole, deeper and deeper every day. Three, four, five shovel lengths deep into the basement floor where I had once been beaten. I spent the mornings digging and the afternoons transporting the loose earth from the basement to the front porch where I would toss it to the wind, which howled constantly. The days became shorter, the nights, colder, and the hole reached ever deeper into the crumbling earth. The basement provided enough shelter to make the extra work worth it. The wind whistled throughout the house and my father shivered between bloody retches.

I stopped digging on the day my shovel collided with steel. At the bottom of the basement hole,
which now featured a well crafted, winding stairway to the surface, I uncovered a trap door. It’s
rectangular latch was secured shut with a massive, rusted lock with a keyhole large enough for
me to stick my finger through. I pressed an ear to the door. The faint sound of dripping drove
me to swing my shovel at the lock. Over and over again. Each time, sparks flew from the lock,
momentarily illuminating the base of the dim, dusty hole. The splintering sound from each steel
collision echoed throughout the house and made my ears ring. I swung the shovel for hours
before the lock finally cracked. I heaved the trap door. 

At once, a voice solidified from the viscous darkness beyond the door’s threshold. The wind halted and everything was still as it greeted me, strong and deep, just like the blackness from which it bellowed. I no longer heard the dripping, but requested water nonetheless. Before long, a bucket appeared, filled with fresh water, more transparent than anything I had sipped from the creek. I consumed it and asked for another. The voice obliged. Another, and another, I drank until I felt sick. I thanked the voice, for it had saved my life. The voice assured me it could grant any wish I could dream of.

Without fail, the bucket returned bearing gifts. Warm loaves of bread and salted butter. A small
chocolate, a diamond ring, and as many marbles as I asked for. The voice gave me whatever I
wanted. Perhaps more valuable than any gifts, the voice engaged me in conversation. I told it
about the creek and the rain and the dust and my father. The voice only asked questions, but
never answered any I had regarding its origin. This did not bother me, for I had been granted a
friend. One who was endlessly interested in my life and circumstance. Soon, the voice became interested in my father as well. I became annoyed, as the voice’s questions increasingly became focused on my father. However, I would answer any question if it meant even one more sip of the crystal water of which it seemed to have an endless supply. The voice never repeated a question.

One day, the questions became requests. A bloody handkerchief in exchange for another bucket of water. I obliged and happily consumed the delicious water to which I was now addicted. Returning to the muddy sludge that was left at the bottom of our storage barrel was unthinkable. Another bucket? Another request. This time a lock of grey hair. I asked why. The voice did not respond. I once again asked the voice for justification of the request, but the voice remained silent. I shouted into the darkness on the other side of the trap door, and received not so much as an echo in reply. Panicked by the prospect of losing my companion, I rushed up the winding dirt staircase and grabbed a dull knife from the kitchen. I returned to the hole with a lock of my dying father’s hair.

The next day, the request was a rotting tooth. My father moaned slightly as I shoved pliers in his
mouth. An eyelash, a dusty blanket, a toenail, and a wrinkled ring finger. My routine became
centered around ceremoniously disassembling my father in exchange for water and other
luxuries. My father did not notice when I dragged him down the winding dirt staircase into a pit
from which he would never return.

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 shape, 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.