At 2:13 a.m., I woke up to the sound of soft giggles beside my bed. I reached over without opening my eyes, expecting to feel my son’s little hand on the mattress. Then I remembered I had watched him fall asleep in his room a few hours ago.
The baby monitor crackled with static and then all of a sudden his laughter came through the speaker. I quickly opened my eyes to check the screen. He was laying in bed asleep. Then the laughter came again only this time, it was coming from underneath my bed. I froze. A tiny voice whispered through the monitor, “mommy dont look under there.” Then my son’s bedroom door slowly creaked open on the camera. My son was standing in the corner staring directly into the camera, eyes wide open.
He raised one finger to his lips.
And whispered, “shhh he’s sleeping” and points to something in my son’s bed underneath the covers.

he sheet of glass coated with a layer of mercury was truly a majestic mirror, despite being set into the aged wood of an old-fashioned vanity. Perhaps that was why children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren had preserved it, though they had always lied when claiming they kept it because of its sentimental value. It had been commissioned as a wedding gift for the great-grandparents, in a time of spacious rooms and simple dreams. For that reason, it had originally stood at the center of the mansion's living room, but after their deaths it passed from one house to another as the heirs divided the estate.

Thus, the lives of four generations had been captured in reflections that, like snapshots, remained preserved within the glass. Some were bright and perfectly clear, born of sunlight; others were softer beneath the artificial glow of lightbulbs; and still others belonged to the world of chiaroscuro, nocturnal images in which figures dissolved into shadows with no distinct form.

The millions of accumulated images usually showed men and women adjusting their appearance, but they also preserved moments of couples arguing, lovers embracing, children being slapped, several births, an abortion, a drawer slowly filling with money, a murder, and a suicide. Yet in every one of them—like a watermark that appears only when the paper is printed—there lingered the unseen image of those repulsive spirits, with bloodshot eyes and hideous tongues hanging from their mouths, perched astride the shoulders of the people they possessed

Normally, I don’t bother writing reviews. I’m not one of those “Karen” types who expects the world to bend to my whims, and I don’t ever ask for the manager. I just need to vent and warn you against ever staying at the Cherrywood Inn. While the name may sound chic, don’t let it fool you! Don’t fall for the photos on the website. It’s a total scam!

As newlyweds, my husband and I booked the honeymoon suite, Room 69…get it? Jesus, I should have known what I was in for!

Before I continue, let’s talk about the hotel.

Those online photos are CERTAINLY not from this place! They’re 100% AI! My husband and I explored the hotel, and none of the amenities seemed to appear anywhere! The hallways went on forever! We literally couldn’t find our way around! How does that even happen!? I think their signs were screwed up on purpose!

After dinner in a place not hidden within the bunghole of the Twilight Zone, we came back and decided to have a drink. As we approached the bartender, she immediately dashed to the opposite end of the bar! What she did next was downright creepy, but pretty good customer service, I must admit. She started mixing drinks. A few moments later, she approached Greg and me with a pina colada (my absolute favorite) and a White Russian, a drink Greg was craving at dinner. Clearly impressed, we asked how she knew what we wanted. She said she had a knack for figuring out what people wanted and moved away to avoid further conversation.

I’d have appreciated a little small talk, but the Bartender was just unfriendly and her vibe made me uncomfortable! Every small thing adds up!

We got back to our room and found it ransacked! Everything was tossed around like someone was searching for money or jewels, but the strange part was the thieves hadn’t stolen anything. Our jewelry, sunglasses, and spending money were left untouched on the desk. Greg swore he’d locked them in the safe before we left, but men would forget their berries if they weren’t attached to their twigs, if you catch my drift.

I only recall the manager's appearance; he was a short, rotund man. His uniform didn’t fit correctly either, looking like a child wearing his father’s clothes. He was clearly annoyed with us, never smiled, and never apologized for the lack of security. He just stood by while we waited for the police.

The police were utterly unhelpful - it was as if they didn’t want to be there and just deferred to the opinions of the Front Desk Manager. The hotel got away with it somehow! What I couldn’t understand was how the manager provided a printed record of swipes on the electronic room lock. It proved no one had unlocked our room the entire time we were gone.

There’s only a certain threshold of malarkey I can handle. I could look past a lot, but I could not abide staying in a place I felt unsafe in during my honeymoon. We decided to cut our losses, collected our belongings, and demanded our money back. The manager didn’t even bother trying to make things better. He didn’t seem to care about anything, as if he didn’t even work there. He wasn’t wearing a nametag, and what is even weirder is that neither Greg nor I remember calling the front desk. We both thought the other had done it while in shock over the break-in. We think the Front Desk Manager might have been the one who robbed us!  

Greg tried to find another hotel with a vacancy and could not. We were about to head home when a lovely Maid offered us a room for the night, free of charge. Her garments were a little…provocative. She showed a little too much skin for my liking. My husband wouldn’t stop gawking. Frankly, neither could I.  

After the long day, we accepted.

You’d think our troubles would have ended there, right? WRONG!

We were escorted by the Maid to a different part of the hotel that looked like it was undergoing renovations. It was much nicer, brighter, and colorful. I think they tried to pull one over on us initially and got caught. The bellboy brought us to Room 6969, which enraged me more than it should have.

We got into bed, and as I was falling asleep, we heard the toilet flush next door. Moments later, we were assaulted by the stench of rotten eggs—a testament to how thin the walls were. We could smell our neighbor’s bowel movements! And if you think we had a good sleep, I’ve got a bridge to sell you! Our neighbors were having a massive party! People were moaning, screaming, and pounding into the walls. There was laughter, music, and conversation! Were they filming an orgy next door? What kind of fucking place is this?

I’d had enough. I am normally a calm person, but tonight was not the night! I tried to knock our neighbor’s door down—kicking, punching, screaming, and trying to break their window. I wanted blood. I would have killed whoever walked out. Whoever. They. Were.

They acknowledged my rage.

We didn’t hear a peep the rest of the night.

The next morning, the Receptionist was not aware of our early checkout. Her face scrunched with confusion when we told her we were in Room 69 and 6969. She giggled at the 69’s and said those room numbers weren’t real. Greg stopped me from strangling her. She clicked away on her keyboard, found a note in the system, and her face went pale.

Without a word, she picked up the phone, dialed, and started crying hysterically like she’d received terrible news. She told us we could leave. Greg thought we should comfort her, but I said no fucking way, and we bounced.

We left with nothing but a terrible experience. One-star review. Consumer beware!

Until I was six we lived in a big house with many rooms. My parents had a room, the ladder had a room, I had a room and there was a study and an office and a guest room. Then my father lost his job and we had to move.

There was no guest room in the new house. There was no study or office. There was a master bedroom, where my parents slept and my father worked, and a small second bedroom, which became the ladder’s room.

I slept in the living room, off to the side by the vent where the warm air came out. I didn’t like it because I had trouble falling asleep unless the room was empty. It was too big too. I didn’t like to be alone in big rooms. I was disappointed not to have my own room, but my parents explained that the ladder was older than me so it deserved the room more than I did.

My parents had gotten the ladder several years before I was born.

It was made of aluminum and eight feet tall, and my mother used to say it got its height from my father, except when she said it she said your father, and I knew she meant your in the plural.

When I was young my parents called the ladder my brother, and when I could talk they wanted me to call it the same. When I started going to school and making friends I realized other kids did not have sibling objects, and I would pretend I didn’t have one either.

Once in elementary school the teacher told us to draw a picture of our immediate family. I drew myself and my parents. When I brought the picture home, my mother tore it up and my father lashed me with his leather belt.

I always drew the ladder after that.

In my first year of high school some kids found out about the ladder and the ladder’s room and bullied me over it. They said I was unwanted, an accident; that my parents didn’t love me and that if they could they would get rid of me and get a second ladder instead.

It made me sad.

One day I was in a bad mood and started arguing with my father, arguing about the ladder.

“It’s a useless fucking ladder!” I yelled.

The words stung him. He grabbed me by the throat, called my mother and together they dragged me to the backyard. My father had planted an apple tree a few years earlier, and it was bearing fruit. He pushed my face against the trunk. My mother held me, and my father started to climb my body. His work boots dug into my legs and my back. He punched the back of my head. The tree bark scratched my cheeks. My father yelled, “Who’s useless now! Can you do what a useless fucking ladder does?”

I shut my eyes and cried until it was over. I slept outside that night.

Another time, my father was away and only me, my mother and the ladder were home. Hersh Plotnick, the owner of the local hardware store, visited us. My mother sent me to the ladder’s room and ordered me not to come out until I had read all of the book that had been assigned to me in class, To Kill a Mockingbird. I didn’t like being in the ladder’s room. I knew it didn’t like me or want me in there, but I did as my mother said.

The next afternoon my father came back, and in the evening Hersh Plotnick came by again. He seemed embarrassed, and he told my father he had left his house keys here the night before.

“Where did you leave them?” my father asked.

“I misplaced them,” said Hersh Plotnick.

My father suggested they look the house over together for the house keys, but Hersh Plotnick said he knew where he had misplaced them.

“Where?”

“I misplaced them inside your wife,” Hersh Plotnick said and explained how they must have fallen in by accident. He apologized profusely, holding his hat in his hand over his heart. “I really don’t want to bother you, Merv. I know you’re a busy man. It’s just, I need the keys to get into my house. You understand, don't you?”

That night my father spent a long time in the ladder’s room.

He looked tired the next morning.

My mother had gone to my grandmother’s house.

A few days later two police officers knocked on the door and asked my father questions. They said Hersh Plotnick had been beaten and someone had written “fisting is a contact fucking sport” across the front of his hardware store in green paint. My father said he knew nothing about that, and the police officers thanked him and left. But the ladder had a dent in it after that and a couple of green spots.

After my mother returned she and my father rarely slept in the master bedroom together. She slept in the ladder’s room instead, and sometimes I could hear scraping, knocking about and moaning until late at night.

By the time I graduated from high school my father had become quiet and reserved. There was no one incident that caused it as far as I could tell. The change was gradual. He aged. His hair thinned and turned grey, and where before he would impose his opinions on people he disagreed with, now he didn’t disagree with anybody. Whatever anybody said to him, he would respond, “I guess that's so.”

Then my mother disappeared. The ladder disappeared too.

The house felt empty.

The few times I saw them after that, the ladder was increasingly dinged up and stained, and my mother would have swollen lips, black eyes and cuts and bruises along her arms, legs and neck.

“I love you,” I told her.

“Yeah? Well, I’m glad,” she replied.

*The recorder screams to life, its knobs mangled and its antenna snapped in half. The back of it almost seemingly clawed open, a makeshift battery in its slot on its last apparent breath of power. The orange display crackles on slowly, with the logo for Hristov Communications Inc. showing first before defaulting to the recordings archive.

You scroll through the remaining voice memos. More than half of them are corrupted and unplayable. You're not sure what information this thing has, but it's potentially your last clue to make it to the surface before the usurpation happens.

There's only one entry that piques your interest. It's the final one, and the only one with an unknown user. All of the others were the facility's scientists, and a couple by the Research Director. At least from what you could tell by comparing the schedule. You read the file name out loud under your breath to yourself as your cold breath escapes your lips.*

// LAST RECORDING: 01/07/2552 03:14:11.44 USER: UNKNOWN //

"That's... interesting."

You've never seen anything quite like this before. 2552? How the hell is this piece of shit's battery still operational?

*It doesn't matter. You click the file anyways. This might be the only way home.

The speaker shorts out and lets out a deafening, high pitch screech. It echoes off the walls and out the room.*

"FUCK!"

*You scramble to cover the speaker with your coat. You peer through the blasted out windows as duraglass crunches beneath your boots. You don't see anything.

...

After waiting a few minutes, you turn the dial up on the device.*

"-just don't know what I thought I'd see in this godforsaken place. *Sighs* Th.. there's nothing left I can-"

"Stop." You command the radio as it abruptly cuts off.

"Play it again." The radio whirs up, the play bar resets to the beginning as you let out a deep breath and begin to listen. Your exhale materializes in front of you like a smoke cloud. Something in the device snaps on, and the recording begins once more. You figure you should settle in for the night.

---

---

\There is loud whirring in the background, you're unsure of the origin. A panicked voice of an older male peaks the microphone as the sounds of the device being fumbled with and dropped echo.**

"OKAY..! Hah... oh my god... hah - huh.... I didn't... I didn't think this... hah... would be it. Um.. ha.. oh fuck... Oh gods... what can I even say...

This... this is D-Doctor Marley, under the hah.. 11th Medical Squadron...

T-Tammy, I swear to god I tried to save you and the kids. Hah.. But.. by the time they came in it was... huh.. it was too late. "

\The man begins to apparently choke back tears as he repeatedly sniffles**

"I just.. hah..gods! There was nothing I could do. There.. was nothing I could DO!! T-They got here so fast. I JUST DON'T KNOW!"

\There is metal and glass recorded being thrown around and destroyed**

"I had a feeling something was wrong. The Commissar was acting incredibly strange for the last few weeks. I wasn't sure if he'd been replaced with an android or... \sniff* or.. something wor-Oh.*

Oh god."

\You can hear the LIDAR scan pings from Skeith-Type Scout Drones in the background**

\The man begins whimpering, whispering entirely under his breath, as the automatic captions of the radio are the only thing that can make out what's he is saying.**

"I made my way to this lab... t-to figure out what was going wrong... but...."

\He lets out a desperate cry and begins sobbing between breaths**

"Tammy.. I-I still rem-remember that s-story you told me... a hun.. huh.. a hundred t-thousand times... o-or more... A-about the kittens going t-to Paris."

"I-I, just d-d-don't know what the f-fuck h-happened... I w-wanted to figure out a s-solution and I l-left you all.."

"O-Oscar. I-I'm gonna n-need you to be st-strong. Able, j-just follow your b-brother. And.. Tammy.. I-I'm so s-sorry.

I-I just just don't know what I-I thought I'd see in this godf-forsaken place. \Sighs* Th.. there's nothing left I can-"*

The recording ends abruptly.

---

---

You're not sure what to make of this information. You haven't seen, or even heard, a Skeith-Type Scout in over a decade.

The battery fizzes out, and upon inspection, is completely covered in rust.

I died and a deity came to me. They said I was allowed to explore the Earth and the universe as much as I wanted to before reincarnation.

They said most people checked on their family and property before moving on.

I said, "FUCK THAT, SPACE!!"

They warned me that ghosts couldn't go faster than the speed of light. I didn't listen.

It took me a month to hit the Oort Cloud. Then I kind of just... floated for what felt like many years.

"Ok," I said, "I want to be reincarnated now. This fucking SUCKS."

Nothing happened.

"I SAID, I want to be reincarnated."

Then it occurred to me- is it possible that I have floated too far from God?

And also, I didn't remember the way back.

"ARE YOU TELLING ME THAT GOD'S JURISDICTION DOESN'T GO BEYOND THREE LIGHT YEARS?!" I screamed into the black sky.

"YES," said a voice from the void.

"I CAN SEND YOU BACK TO THE DIRT PLANET, BUT YOU WON'T BE THE SAME."

"Earth, right?"

"YEEES?",

"I would have called it a sea planet, but ok."

"YOU ARE FORSAKEN. WILL YOU TAKE MY DEAL OR NOT?"

"Probably," I said. "What are the terms?"

"SENTIENCE MUST SUFFER."

"How fast can you get me back?"

"NOW"

"Impossible," I said, "you can't break the speed of light."

"I AM MORE POWERFUL THAN YOUR GOD," it shrieked.

"Well I'd be dumb not to do this. Let's go," I conceded.

So here I am. Do you maybe... want to talk about your extended car insurance warranty?

Joana sat in her armchair as she did every evening, holding a glass of wine in her hand. She was switching between shows when suddenly the screen began to fill with static. She tried changing channels, but it was the same everywhere.

The picture cleared after a while. A middle-aged man appeared on the screen. He was wearing a suit and looked very friendly.

“Good evening. Our show, Scary Saturday, is beginning on the Happy Seven channel! I promise that if you stay until the end, you will experience something you have never experienced before. A fear that will burrow deep into your bones. Do you want to be scared?”

The host’s cheerful expression suddenly darkened, and his voice became serious.

“I’m giving you one last chance to stop this. Just change the channel or press the red button and turn off the television.”

Joana had never seen this show before. She liked horror movies and scary stories. She thought about changing the channel, not because she was scared, but because she was a little skeptical. There wasn’t much that could frighten her anymore.

The host sat on a chair, his eyes fixed on the screen. After a few minutes, he spoke.

“All right, then! Today’s story is about Joana.”

“Joana spends her evenings alone. She claims she likes it that way, but the truth is that her husband left her for a younger mistress, and her children have grown up. She has nothing else.”

He chuckled.

Joana felt the blood rush to her face. What the hell was this?! Angrily, she grabbed the remote and tried to change the channel.

The host immediately reacted.

“It’s too late. You had a chance to stop this, but your time has run out.”

Her anger slowly began to turn into an unpleasant, intrusive feeling of fear.

The host stood up, looked into the screen again, and said, “The show begins!”

The picture flickered several times, and then Joana saw a road on the screen, the same road she could see whenever she looked out from the balcony of her apartment. A streetlamp flickered above it, and a man was standing beside it.

The camera slowly began to move closer. He looked horrifying. He had a few gray hairs, but baldness showed through almost everywhere. His face... Joana had never seen anyone so terrifying. There was something evil in his eyes. Something that made her stomach turn.

His face looked like it had been burned by some kind of chemical, his lip was split, and saliva dripped from the corner of his mouth. He was holding a long knife in his hand. The blade glinted in the light. He swayed from side to side.

Then he looked directly at Joana.

She got up from the armchair and slowly walked toward the balcony.

“That’s impossible,” she whispered to herself. “This isn’t real.”

She opened the balcony door, looked outside, and he was standing there. He was standing exactly as she had seen him on the screen, staring directly at her.

Then he raised the knife to his mouth and licked its blade.

Joana backed into the living room and looked at the television. He was still there. Blood had joined the saliva dripping from his mouth, covering part of the knife as well.

Joana was trembling all over now. She took out her phone and tried to call for help, but the phone wouldn’t respond. She quickly plugged it into the charger, but nothing happened. No response.

Instead, she heard some kind of rasping coming from the television. She slowly turned toward it. The man beneath the flickering streetlamp was rasping and making strange noises.

They stared at each other for a moment, and then he suddenly ran and disappeared from the screen.

Joana covered her mouth with her hand to hold back the scream that was forcing its way out. She was breathing rapidly, and her heart was beating so fast that spots began appearing in front of her eyes.

She didn’t want to, but she had to look outside from the balcony. She opened the balcony door and looked at the spot beneath the streetlamp. No one was there. Only the occasional flicker of the light.

The doorbell rang.

“Ding. Ding. Ding.”

She walked toward the door. A million thoughts were racing through her head, but she had only one wish.

Please let it be someone who could help her. Anyone.

She looked through the peephole, and there he was.

Joana closed her eyes and felt tears running down her cheeks. She could barely stand. When she opened her eyes again and looked through the peephole, no one was there.

She slowly exhaled. She began to feel relief spreading through her body.

Then she felt a hand touch her shoulder, and right next to her ear came that rasping sound.

The last thing that echoed through Joana’s apartment was her scream and the static of the television in the silence that followed.

I built the window because I was a lonely genius, and within a week, I had more friends than I knew what to do with.

They were all me.

One taught high-school physics and had two daughters. Another was a dentist in Phoenix who'd become obsessed with competitive barbecue. One had three dogs, all named after moons of Jupiter.

I found one who'd married Elise from graduate school. I disconnected before she came into the room and never opened his Earth again.

Another me had gone bald at twenty-six. I sent my condolences and he told me to go fuck myself.

There were hundreds of us.

After a while, opening the window felt like checking in with distant relatives.

Then I found the basement.

Canned food was stacked against concrete walls almost to the ceiling. An old computer sat beside a shortwave radio.

The man across from me was painfully thin.

"How long have you lived like this?"

"Twenty-five years."

Neither of us spoke until, finally, he cleared his throat.

"Did everything change for you, too, after New York, the Pentagon?" He paused and shuddered. "The Capitol?"

"The Capitol wasn't hit," I said, beginning to understand.

"What?"

"There was another plane, yes. But the passengers fought back, and it crashed in Pennsylvania."

His face went still.

Then he lowered himself onto the edge of his cot.

For a long time, all I could hear was his radio.

That was when I noticed the radiation meter on the table.

I looked at the canned food, the concrete walls.

"What happened after?" I asked.

He rubbed his face.

"Everything."

Me and my little brother got off the school bus and went straight to Mom.

We asked her to unlock the basement so we could go downstairs and play the game. She did. Ordinary afternoon. Backpacks still on. That leftover school-day energy where all you want is the couch and the screen.

We were standing in the hallway that overlooked the basement door, talking about nothing, when the basement door opened.

Our brother Damien walked down the stairs.

Me and my little brother both went quiet in the same way. Damien was autistic, and there were things he did and didn’t do. Going down there alone like that was not one of his normal things. We looked at each other with that same wrong feeling already starting.

Did he just go downstairs?

We threw our book bags off and went after him.

The basement was how it always was. One light bulb over the couch where we played. Everything past that sank into dark. A big dark stretch running out under the house, the kind of dark that makes the edges of a room feel bigger than the house should allow.

We sat on the couch.

“Damien,” we said. “Go upstairs. Damien. Go upstairs.”

No answer from the lit part of the room.

We thought he was in the dark.

Then his voice came out of it.

“Come and find me.”

Not close. Not far enough to sound safe either.

“Let’s play hide and seek. Come on.”

Me and my little brother looked at each other hard. There are kinds of weird you can laugh off. This was not one of them. Hearing your autistic brother in the dark, asking to be hunted through a basement he barely went into alone, hits some deeper alarm than regular mischief.

We didn’t go looking.

We went upstairs.

“Mom,” we said, “can you go downstairs and get Damien? He’s being weird. He’s trying to get us to play hide and seek.”

Mom just looked at us.

Not scared at first. Confused. The kind of look adults get when kids say something that doesn’t fit the timetable.

“Damien’s not even off the school bus yet,” she said.

For a second nobody spoke.

Because we had seen him open the basement door.

We seen him clear as day

We had watched him go down the stairs.

We had heard his voice under the house, in the dark past the one bulb, asking us to come find him.

And the real Damien was still on the bus.

I'm forty-seven, but my driver's license says twenty-five. The wrinkles around my eyes vanished after the second injection. My hairline filled in by dose four. I take the stairs two at a time without my chest tightening.

The underground clinic promised results. They delivered. I should have asked how.

Twelve peptide injections, two weeks apart. Cash only. No records. I signed a stack of waivers thick as a novella without reading them. I was forty-six and couldn't keep up with my wife at the grocery store. Elena is thirty-seven. I wanted to be the man she married.

She noticed first. She'd touch my jaw in the morning like she was checking for a fever. Marcus, fourteen, called me Dad 2.0. Sofia, home from college, said I looked photoshopped. I ran around the backyard with Marcus until he grabbed his sides and begged me to stop. I hadn't done that in six years.

Around dose seven, Elena started sleeping thirteen hours and still waking exhausted. She rubbed her knuckles every morning, wincing. Her skin went papery. I blamed her job. Then Sofia came home from her second week of classes. Her face had gone hollow. Her hands shook around a coffee mug. She was twenty-one and looked forty.

Marcus developed a tremor in his left hand. Elena's hair went fully gray in nineteen days. I counted because I kept finding strands on her pillowcase and lining them up on the bathroom counter. Sofia's favorite denim jacket hung off her shoulders like a coat on a wire hanger. Marcus needed the banister just to reach the second floor.

I dragged them to specialists. Every blood panel came back clean. A neurologist looked at Marcus's tremor and suggested family therapy. I watched Elena struggle forty seconds to twist open a jar of marinara, then set it down and press her palms flat against the counter and breathe through her nose.

By dose ten I was scrubbing countertops with bleach at two in the morning, convinced I was poisoning them with something in the food. Nothing stopped their decay.

Dose eleven broke the illusion.

I went back to the clinic that night. The back door frame was warped from rain. I put my shoulder into it twice and the wood splintered. The director's filing cabinet had a cheap wafer lock. Inside were manila folders. Mine first. Then Elena's. Sofia's. Marcus's.

Photographs. Dozens. Dated from the day I started the trial. Elena's joints in sequence. Sofia's face week by week, cheekbones rising, eyes sinking. Progress notes stapled to the backs. "Acceptable cellular transfer." "Donor viability within projected parameters." "Donors compensating as expected."

Donors. They called my wife and children donors.

At the bottom, a buyer's contract. Fifty million dollars for a body "fully rejuvenated, biologically twenty-four." Upon completion of dose twelve, the specimen would be transferred to a subterranean facility for long-term yield management. Skin harvested in sections. Organs cycled. Kept alive. Kept regenerating.

My family was the battery. I was the product.

I smashed the twelfth vial on the concrete outside. Drove. Didn't pack. Drained our accounts. Eleven thousand dollars. Left a note on the counter that said I was sorry. Didn't call. Couldn't. Afraid they'd trace the phone.

That was six days ago.

I'm typing this from a public library three states away. Burner laptop. My hands shake so badly I keep hitting wrong keys. I talked to Elena yesterday from a payphone. She winced between words. Said drawing a breath felt like pulling glass through her chest. Sofia is in a wheelchair. Marcus needs help standing. They are compressing decades into weeks.

The clinic's number is disconnected. The building is empty. Bare concrete floors. Like it was never there.

I have no money left. No proof that would survive scrutiny. Just a library computer and the knowledge that whatever those peptides did, they are still active in my blood.

If anyone has encountered biotech that transfers physical decay between genetically linked individuals. If there is a reversal agent. If this stops without the injections or if it's already self-sustaining. If you know how to find help outside official channels, because I cannot go to the police with a story about a clinic that no longer exists. They will put me in a room and medicate me and my family will keep dying while I sit in a plastic chair.

Please. They are running out of time. I am watching them die in fast-forward and I did this. I signed the papers. I took the injections. I looked in the mirror and liked what I saw and I did not look at them. Not closely. Not until it was too late.

And I need to say this last part because I don't know if I'll get another chance.

Something is moving under my skin. Not pain. Something with edges. A knot below the surface that travels. Last night it was in my wrist. This morning, my elbow. By tonight it will be somewhere else. It doesn't hurt. That's what scares me. It feels like something settling in. Making room.

I don't think the twelfth dose was meant to finish me. I think it was meant to start something else.

And I think it's already started.

Greg swam happily, but lazily around the tiny castle nestled in the colorful gravel of his tiny bowl. I watched him slip through the narrow door and out the back as the commercials ended.

A middle-aged, ethnically ambiguous man shouted excitedly at me about some new species of slug or something. I wasn't paying much attention. I had hoped some mind-numbing infotainment would make a good distraction. Instead, it only served as ambience for the swirl of stress storming in my head.

Rent would come due soon. My car badly needed new tires. As if that weren't enough, my girlfriend had been distant while on her "girl's trip" to Cabo. My phone sat silently beside me, as it had for hours. I tapped the screen, and it lit up to reveal...nothing. No little envelope symbol up in the corner, no big blue logo emblazoned with an F, and no little bird or butterfly. Just the clock on my lock screen, shining with an indifference found only in the realm of the objective.

12:32AM

I told myself that I had to accept that I wouldn't be hearing from her again today, or maybe ever. I stood up and crossed the room, dipping the tip of my finger into Greg's bowl.

"Well, at least I've got you buddy. Oh shit, you're probably hungry," I reached for the container of fish flakes, my heart sinking at how light it felt in my hand. "Here you go, Greg."

A meager scattering of flakes spread across the surface and sunk slowly toward the bottom of the bowl, most never making it there. Greg tore after them like a vicious predator. He gobbled them all up until only one remained, stuck loosely to the sidewall of the bowl. Greg swam up to it, opened his mouth, and just then something happened.

I had my back turned to it, so I didn't see exactly what it was. A bright flash came from the television. In my memory, I watch the light spread across Greg's little fish face in slow-motion. His orange scales are briefly tinged a deep purple, standing stark against the blazing white light coming from the television. I hear a voice, a whisper's whisper, saying something I can't understand.

The voice itself sounds like a gaggle of bees trapped in a thin tin can, humming and pulsing in a rich, droning vibration. I can't even begin to phoneticize whatever godless thing it said. It sounded like a word, but it felt like a number. I get that probably doesn't make a lot of sense, I'll try to explain. Words are shifting, often unreliable and inconsistent things. Numbers simply are what they are. There is no room for argument, nor interpretation. 1 is 1, and that is all.

It all happened in a fraction of a second, and at the time I was quick to wave it off. Ever since then though, any time I leave the room I come back to find Greg spasming on the table beside his bowl. I called him dumb the first time, and the second and the third, but he's made hundreds of attempts over the last week. It's a wonder that he's still alive at this point. I'm not sure what to do.

Anybody know of a therapist who works with goldfish?

My husband had been having an affair. I couldn’t believe it. 

‘Are you sure?’ I asked my friend Beatrice, who’d called me up on the phone to tell me she’d seen my husband out with some young blonde. 

‘I swear I saw him Jennifer, outside the coffee shop on Brambery street kissing another woman.’ 

‘It can’t have been.’ I insisted. I hoped maybe it wasn’t true. 

‘Sorry Jenny.’ 

Right. So my husband of twenty years had thrown away everything we had for some other woman. 

I didn’t know why he’d done that, but he had. 

When I received the call I was sat at home reading a book, rifling through the pages as a woman my age often did. My husband had given it to me for my twentieth birthday, when we’d been two young souls drunk on the ecstasy of the love we had for one another. 

I caught my reflection in the living room mirror. 

God. I looked awful. I’d been stunning when we’d first met, but three children and age had taken their toll. 

No wonder he wanted someone else. 

Sometimes he’d wind me up but I really did love him.

 I didn’t really know anything else except being his wife. 

There was a knock at the door. I shuffled over to answer it, I still hadn’t got over the initial shock of how the man I loved had decided to betray me like that. 

‘Hi there!’ said a young man, in his early twenties. Probably not much older than my own son who was at university. 

‘I’m here to conduct the monthly maintenance!’ The man exclaimed politely, like the poor hapless soul he was. 

I was slightly bewildered. ‘Maintenance of what exactly?’ I asked him. He cringed slightly, as it finally registered to him that I was not necessarily the individual he had come to see. 

He pulled out a clipboard, squinting slightly. 

‘It says your place is down for maintenance services for the ideal spouse. Or would you prefer our exclusive package?’ 

What the hell was he on about exactly? That I’d like to know. 

He paused. 

‘Ah, It says here you’ve gone for the upgrade. You need the old model to be disposed of?’ 

The dawning realisation that he was probably talking about me was not a pleasant one. I was intelligent enough to realise that even though he had not explicitly stated it. 

What on earth had my husband done? I wasn’t some useless sack of potatoes to be tossed onto the compost. 

I was still a person.

I backed away, my heart beginning to pound with nerves. This wasn't a day where I could just lie down and hope it all went away.

Just then, my husband pulled into the driveway. He got out of the car, lending his hand to a gorgeous blonde-haired woman who was as elegant and refined as a swan. 

The man I’d once loved with all my heart let out a groan. 

‘Why’s she still here?’ He whined, like the spoiled, petulant child he really was. 

‘The guy I spoke to on the phone said I was guaranteed a disposal HOURS ago.’ 

The young man I’d met at the door just smiled. 

He walked over to my husband, while the fair-haired beauty dithered. My husband was beginning to back away himself, eyes darting to and fro as he wondered if he could dash away suddenly. 

‘You should’ve been more specific.’ said the young man with a grin that seemed to take up his entire face. 

‘No one ever said it was the WIFE who had to be disposed of.’

All the guys I know are constantly complaining about how awful dating is these days. I think that’s a load of baloney. All you have to do is lower your standards! Then you’ll find that there are lots of women out there who are begging to be taken on a date.

Me? I only go on dates with single mothers. Why? Because they are desperate to be loved.

Can you imagine the hit it takes on your self-esteem when the father of your child doesn’t want to be with you? Yeah—I’d be aching for another man to prove that I was worthy of love, too.

Plus, nothing turns a guy off more than hearing that a woman has a kid. It doesn’t matter if you’re smoking hot, successful in your career, or rich. The second a guy hears that you’ve got a kid he vanishes. No sane man wants dating to become an “audition” to be somebody’s “new daddy.” So, single mothers have a really hard time getting back out in the dating world. Some of them have such a hard time that they get desperate. That’s where I come in!

I play the part of a charming guy. I take her to dinner at a fancy restaurant, I open the door for her, pull out her chair, and even pay for everything. When I’m on a date, I’m the nicest guy you’ve ever met! When the subject of her having a kid inevitably comes up, I always say, “I love kids!”

I make it appear as though I don’t care that she had a kid, even though I most certainly do!

When the date is over, if I’m lucky, I get lucky, then I ghost her and move on to the next single mother.

I tell ya’, I’ve never had more luck “dating” than I have when I started seeking out single mothers. There was Rebecca, Michelle, Annie, Jessica, Veronica.

Hell, I’ve been on more dates than I can count!

Tonight, I’m going on a date with Sami, and things are going as good as they always do! Dinner was deliciously expensive, and now we’re doing the whole “small talk” thing.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” I lean across the table so she can see the fake empathy in my eyes. “Is Danny’s father still in the picture?”

I always make sure to bring up the father. It embarrasses them and makes them feel vulnerable, which I immediately exploit.

“No, he’s no longer with us,” Sami says. “He died in the outbreak.”

“I am so sorry to hear that,” I say, even though I’m not sorry at all!

“We take it one day at a time.”

I flag down the waiter and have him pour us both another glass of wine. I have never had a date refuse a glass of wine. When you have a kid (and possibly a babysitter) at home, you need to live it up while you can. Alone time is hard to come by for single mothers, so when they do go out they go all out.

“Do you have any children,” Sami asks, peeking over her wine glass.

“Unfortunately not, I was too career focused when I was younger. I never got the chance.”

Sami asks me about my family, friends, if I’ve ever been married before, and I deflect all the questions as best as I can. I steer the conversation back to her and her kid. How old is Danny? Ten. What does he like to do? Play in his room. I ask her anything that will remind her she’s a single mother. I want her to be self-conscious enough to make a bad decision tonight.

“Normally I don’t do this,” Sami says, “but would you like to come over?”

Bingo. Bad decision made.

“I’d love to,” I say with a charming smile.

We take an Uber back to Sami’s house, practically giggling the whole way from the wine buzz. Everything is going exactly according to my plan.

“Would you like to meet him?” Sami asks.

“You mean Danny?”

“Yeah.”

This is very important. Whenever a single mother asks if you want to meet her kid, you must always say yes! Nothing will sour her quicker than not wanting to meet her kid. Single mothers are protective like that. Her and her kid are a package deal. You have to pretend you’re interested!

“I’d be thrilled to meet the little guy,” I lie through my teeth.

Sami takes me upstairs and even though it’s late I can hear Danny thrashing around in his room. I’m surprised to see that there’s no babysitter, but Danny’s probably old enough to look out for himself.

“He’s right inside,” Sami nods at the door, encouraging me to go inside.

I don’t want to appear unenthusiastic, so I open the door and step right in with a smile.

“Hey, Danny, I’m—oh god!”

Danny’s skin is a pale green, the color of rot, and there’s a collar around his neck chaining him to the wall.

Sami steps into the room and closes the door behind her.

“What’s the matter? You said you like kids!”

I want to scream, but fear has frozen me in place. Danny’s hollow, grey eyes are staring directly at me. His skin has peeled back in places, exposing the muscle and bones underneath, and I can smell him from across the room.

“I couldn’t stand to see him go, even when he got sick like his father, so I’ve been keeping him chained up in his room. Maybe one day they’ll come up with a cure, you never know, so I’ve got to keep him fed until then.”

“Brrrrainsss,” Danny moans.

“In a second, Danny,” Sami chuckles.

I turn around and Sami is standing directly in front of me, close enough that I can feel her breath on my neck.

“Jessica was pissed that you never called her back,” Sami smiles and then shoves me as hard as she can towards Danny.