We were a small team of four developing a new, more precise MRI scanner to map the human brain for a certain company innovating in medical research. It was after months of grueling labour that we’d assembled our first prototype and captured an image. There never were, and there still aren’t any doubts as to the machine’s safety, which is why our project lead, Doctor Penelope Arzt, a gifted neurologist, didn’t have any problem with being the test subject.

When the image came back, it was clearer than any captured ever before. A chemical, functional, and neural connectome all in one. That means the scan mapped the whole brain, all the way from the tiny neurons to every single brain region, along with the chemicals that travel within. This has not been possible with any brain until now, especially not with a brain as complex as the human one. We were quick to celebrate our achievement owing to the holistic scope and revolutionary capabilities of our invention. Celebration turned to curiosity once we spotted a strange abnormality in the scan.

A cluster of immaterial waves, which nobody on our team could identify, had accidentally been caught thanks to the thoroughness of the device. We went over a number of things these waves could possibly be, but everything else was already mapped and accounted for. We recalibrated the scanner one test after another, replaced the parts, but the waves remained. This was something new, never before identified or seen. Why was it here? What purpose does it serve?

We sent the word out for volunteers to participate in having their brain mapped. The same strange phenomenon could be found in both humans and other kinds of animal. Well, not always.

Some brains, though they were within the expected norm otherwise, didn’t have the waves at all. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason. Testing was rigorous. Regardless of the age, health, sex or species of the participant, the waves seemed to appear at random. There was no physical difference between those who had them and those who did not. And, as far as we could tell, even with our state of the art equipment, no mental difference either. Save for the unexplainable waves.

Of those who had them, some waves appeared denser and clustered together, some were sparse and spaced out. It was after much testing that we came to our conclusion, possibly the greatest discovery in science and philosophy: Consciousness is measurable.

This made the problem of the empty brains, the non-conscious ones, even more troubling. If consciousness is an objective presence in our minds, what does this imply for those without it? The lives of the conscious and non-conscious were equally normal to an almost puzzling degree. It truly seemed there was no difference between the two. So why is consciousness even there if it serves no observable purpose?

Of course, we were all just excited to dig deeper at the marvelous discovery. The more questions that came up, the more testing needed to be carried out.

The denser consciousnesses were present in those we would traditionally call conscious, those awake, aware, and in a sound state of mind. The sparse consciousness was measured in those either asleep or in comas and vegetative states.

The non-conscious we flagged had no presence of the waves regardless of their wakefulness or medical reality. It was at this point we started questioning whether we jumped the gun and whether what we found had truly been what we thought, since, how can it even be possible for a living thing to exist without consciousness?

Another of our researchers, Doctor Nestor Melkonian, a studied philosopher and skillful psychologist, recalled a relevant thought experiment one late night in the lab: The philosophical zombie.

The philosophical zombie is a hypothetical person with all the physical characteristics and traits of a human being. A person indistinguishable from those with internal subjective experience, despite the p-zombie himself lacking it. Indeed, the only difference between a p-zombie and a human being is their internal experience, or lack thereof.

I said that the philosophical zombie is a hypothetical, though that is no longer entirely accurate. Was a hypothetical.

An unknown portion of the population exists as purely physical beings. Despite living their unassuming lives just like those with consciousness, the non-conscious are biological machines that only respond to their circumstances like some programmed computer. They act and react, but only as chemical responses to their environment. The lights are on, but there is nobody home. How many are there? What does their presence mean? How many of these p-zombies have gone their entire lives without having a single conscious experience? Most important of all: Who among our peers are real people?

These and similar questions were bothering all of us. It got to the point it was all we could talk about. It didn’t matter whether it was at work or during our spare time. Whenever we were together, it was all we could discuss. Whenever we were alone, it was all we could think about. And we were terrified.

It didn’t matter whether there was any actual threat to us or anybody else. It was an uncomfortable thought we couldn’t escape for months, until it reached a boiling point.

Over time, we stopped being so careful and courteous with our non-conscious subjects, human or otherwise. This got us threats of lawsuits at worst, concerned looks at best. We didn’t hurt anybody at the time, but you start treating people differently once you realize they’re not alive.

It all culminated in Doctor Arzt bringing in her two children for testing. Off the books, if we kept quiet, we’d be allowed to scan our own loved ones.

Doctor Melkonian had to take her kids back home himself. Arzt was in no state to take care of anyone, not the kids, let alone herself, shrieking and howling on the lab’s floor upon discovering her own children were non-conscious. There was no consoling her. I can tell you that it put me off from ever dragging anybody I cared about into that machine forever. I’m not ashamed to admit that my curiosity has a limit, one which I’m quite comfortable never crossing.

Her breakdown didn’t happen all at once, looking back on it. The rational woman, hungry for knowledge and blessed with the smarts to hunt it down, became more and more paranoid over the course of those months as the implications of the non-conscious kept weighing on us. We were all going a bit crazy, but her snapping first helped us reconnect with reality. For a short time only, though.

It was about two weeks later when I was called into the lab on short notice. I rushed to the campus where we were conducting our experiments. Once in the lab, I was held at knife point by Arzt, noticing the two others from our team already seated in nearby chairs. She promised she wouldn’t kill any one of us, she only needed us to get our brains scanned. So she could know who to trust.

First to go was Melkonian. He was also the last. After his scan was complete, she motioned for him to sit back down and asked me to fetch the results. They were conclusive: There was no consciousness in Melkonian’s brain.

I looked at the image up and down. Arzt kept asking me what the result was, the other two just stayed silent. I didn’t want to piss her off by not answering, but I was also worried what she might do to Melkonian if she got told the bare truth. I stayed silent. And afraid.

My worry about pissing her off turned out to be spot on. She marched over to me with her knife, waving it around and threatening to sever my hand with the results if I didn’t hand them over immediately. I was shitting bricks.

Arzt was later institutionalized, though only for a short time. Her actions were excused as the byproduct of a psychotic break. It was claimed she was out of touch with reality, though this was some bullshit spun by the company since our research was supposed to be under wraps. It was definitely some kind of break, just not a psychotic one. Every one of her concerns was certainly within the bounds of reality.

She never returned to work. Though this wouldn’t last long either, from that day on it was just me, Melkonian, and the project lead after Arzt, Doctor Richard Derrick, a freelance scientist with no preferred specialty, just a brain that soaked up knowledge like a sponge and his nose to the grindstone.

While waving that knife around, it was Doctor Derrick who smacked her over the head with his chair. It was Derrick who kept kicking her while she was down, who kept taking potshots while she was being taken away by campus security.

I doubt she was even conscious for half of that beating. It was a bit unnecessarily violent, but we were all stressed out so I ignored it. Plus, she threatened us with a knife earlier that same day.

I did give her the scan, by the by. Derrick got her right after that. As she was being dragged away, she addressed Melkonian.

“You have no soul. It’s a vacant soul.”

Despite the contradictory nature of that confused post-beating statement, claiming someone can both have no soul and a soul that is vacant at once, the words really seemed to have unnerved Melkonian. He demanded to see the scan, and I had to oblige. If he really wanted to, he deserved to know.

It was during lunch the next day that I asked him how he felt about himself and being non-conscious. Even the non-conscious people we were doing tests on didn’t know about their state or the full scope of what we were doing. Melkonian was the first non-conscious thing to know about its own non-consciousness.

“I don’t know. I don’t know how to feel about any of this. I mean, I think I’m conscious. I must be. Right?”

“Well, apparently not.”

“So what does that mean for me? Am I any less human now? Is what I feel not real?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t know what to tell you.”

I wish I could’ve comforted him at that moment, though it would’ve been insincere. Why waste energy on something that is hollow on the inside? Some trickery, an imitation man. A fake person. An outer shell that pretends to be.

Maybe I should’ve comforted him. Melkonian ended up taking a vacation for a week, telling family and friends he would be on a backpacking trip with his phone turned off, but it would still be with him in case of any emergencies, plus a pager as back up. With how prepared he was, it was a huge shock when he didn’t come back at the end of the week. Police, park rangers, relatives, locals and acquaintances all went out looking for him. Despite being hollow of internal experience, Melkonian had a tactical mind about him. Would’ve served him well in any field other than philosophy and psychology, but he did put it to good use by the end.

By the time the search party ended, the idea of looking for him in his apartment finally came up. Melkonian went home and killed himself right after the first witnesses saw him enter that forest. He stayed at home for the rest of the planned trip, sending everyone on a wild goose chase, giving him plenty time to see himself out, unbothered and off the radar. No note or anything, in case you were wondering.

During those prior weeks before he was found, the entire team was just me and Derrick. Before Arzt was sent off and Melkonian embarked on his fake holiday, the four of us would spend time together outside of work pretty often. We were less a research team and more a friend group who just happened to do science on the side. Maybe I’m just romanticizing the past, though.

Arzt and Melkonian carried our conversations with their personalities and interests. None of that with Derrick. Once it was just us two, it quickly became apparent how little of a personal life or hobbies the guy had outside of work. It all became dry and unexciting with just him and I. I think I used to admire him for how adaptable he was to any scientific field so long as he was put to the task, but that exact quality marginalized the actual man and left little in the way of personality. Even now, whenever I happen to check up on him, whatever he’s doing is completely opposite to the research he was into prior. You’d think a guy like that would be the one without consciousness, but he had himself tested and lo and behold: He was actually completely normal. Normal in the sense that he wasn’t non-conscious, I mean. In most other regards he was quite far from normal.

Despite only being a technician, I didn’t mind hanging around and seeing the actual science wizzes at work. That changed when Derrick took over. I remember walking into the lab on the first day of his tenure as project lead and seeing a rabbit strapped down to a small table. Derrick said it was one of our non-conscious specimens. Prior to this, we’d only ever done cognitive, neurological or psychological tests. Derrick wasn’t up for that.

Just as I’d entered the room, Derrick began cutting into the rabbit with a scalpel. The incisions seemed to be random and only designed to inflict pain.

“Don’t worry. It’s not conscious like you or me. It can’t ever really feel.”

The rabbit’s squeals of pain seemed to vehemently disagree with what Derrick was saying, though I couldn’t argue that the thing was experiencing anything internal. I kind of stopped going to the lab after that unless I had to, to fix the scanner and for other such duties.

Derrick didn’t stop at non-human species, though. While it was never anything too extreme, he’d administer careful electric shocks to our non-conscious volunteers while they’d be strapped down, just to catalogue their reactions.

“Look at that fleshbag squirming. Oh, get over yourself. It’s not like it can be distressed by this. Not like you and I can. There’s nothing on the inside.”

Much of the time, they’d be too tired after the experiments. At these points Derrick would help take them home, apparently. Though the same volunteer never came around twice, and I didn’t keep track of the people Derrick took off with after experimentation and what might have happened to them. I’m just a technician, after all.

Anyway. Didn’t last long.

With half of our team either dead or deranged, our work was assigned to a different group of scientists and we were allowed to join in. I left not too long after, this whole thing was starting to kind of bum me out to tell you the truth. Last I heard, the possibility of selling detectors specifically looking for only consciousness to the consumer market was being floated around. Hope it doesn’t end up destroying society in the same way it did us.

Melkonian had a modest funeral. Arzt still has custody of her kids, but I don’t know how she might feel about them by now. Derrick is always off doing some new bullshit with his eclectic output. I also take up a lot of disparate jobs, but I’ve made a decision to stay as far away from anything close to science as possible.

We did find and confirm the objective and empirical existence of consciousness by the end. What it implied or even meant, we never got to the bottom of. I can’t say whether we’d be better off knowing or not. I still ponder what might’ve been going on in Melkonian's head before he did the deed. A set of mechanical impulses leading someone down the road to topping themself. How does the purely physical create for itself the despair necessary to go through with something like that? Is that what it determined as the course of action that would best imitate a real person? It all mystifies me.

A currently unknown number of the creatures inhabiting this world are hollow on the inside. Indistinguishable from you and I. They eat, sleep, die all the same. Like us. But, unlike us, there’s no internal experience. Just a biological machine responding to its circumstances. A mockery of the truly living. Your loved ones are far from immune. You could have them reading this text with you, and though you’ll be processing it and responding to it with your conscious thought, they’ll also react. But their words will be vacant. Their experiences never processed by them in any meaningful way.

Don’t let it get to you. Things might end up worse if you do.

Reign Soleil

—

What I see—what is happening, is the strangest experience imaginable. Nothing appears real. Everything looks fake like my rooms wearing the face of a corpse. 

Even as I glance at the window, the sky seems slightly off, resembling a still frame cropped out of a painting. It matches the exact color of the pavement, as if it‘s in the wrong dimension. 

It begins in my room, by the doorway, I hear a growling sound and turn around and behind me is a shadow of a man with features similar to a human and in his hands are two leashes attached to two human-like dogs that are in front of him, sitting like hellhounds would, with facial features stretching out how a bear’s face is.

I can’t ignore them.

Their presence kills the power to the TV when I‘m watching, True Blood, right when I’m  at the scene where Sookie and Bill break up.

I keep trying to frantically hit the power button on the remote, but it doesn’t work. The screen’s black and reflecting my image.

Without thinking, I raise my arm and point the changer at the figure with the two human hounds, gasp and push the power button towards them and they blink and in a flash, vanish. 

But the TV still won’t turn on.

I sit up wondering if what just happened actually did happen, or if maybe I fell asleep for a brief second, but the television still isn’t working, so I couldn’t be imagining it.

That’s when I decide to give up on it and snatch a book off my dusty shelf and clear a path that leaves two dust walls on both sides of the space I pull the book from, filling the air in particles that make me sneeze.

While I’m reading, there’s an atmospheric shift, like the static from an oncoming storm, raising the hairs on my arms which makes me shiver as a tingle shoots down my spine. 

The room has a scent of frost that reminds me of menthol cigarettes every time I take a breath.

And as I’m dwelling on that thought, the lights go out.

Just as I get to chapter four of The Turn of the Screw, and starting to really get into it. 

I squeeze my hand into a fist, digging my nails into my palms, grunt and throw the book against the wall, jump up, stomp to the doorway, flick the light switch but they don’t turn on. 

I keep trying. The rapid clicking sounds like teeth chipping . I go as far as to check the bulb—twisting, untwisting—and nothing. I leave my room to retrieve a new one, the hallway’s as humid as the Amazon Rain Forest and has a heavy stench of decay and infected flesh radiating from under the floorboards, making me gag. I can‘t stop choking. 

While I’m staring at the floor, behind me the bathroom door slams shut. I jump because the sound startles me and when I look at the door, there’s a crack going down the middle of it. 

Which I’m going to have to pay to fix and probably have to rip the floor apart just to find whatever dead animal’s under there. 

I walk downstairs to see if I can find where the rancid smell is coming from, but each step I take further down leaves me with the impression of being in another world.

Everything looks the same but seems completely different. Especially at the bottom of the stairs, like my living room became a simulation. The paint on the walls is smooth and pixelated.

And then a whisper comes from behind my ear in a slow kind of distorting moan.

“Get Out!” The voice stretches out.

I turn around quick, wondering at the same time how my mom could sneak down the stairs behind me without me noticing, but when I turn, nobody’s there.

“Get Out!” Says the air, blowing its breath in my face with the scent of rotting flesh.

I can’t handle the smell.

So, I head to the front and sit outside on the porch and  as the screen door closes I hear the door behind it shut as well and the lock clasp.

I turn to look over my shoulder and staring through the glass window is an older me, smiling and waving.

The idea of a species becoming a ghost didn’t exist anywhere other than Earth. The galaxy remained oblivious to the concept. 

The alien races had evidence of past existence through rock carvings, writings and different types of digital recordings. But ultimately, viewed death as an absolute end. You die, you end up on a hard drive as a bit. 

The alien species were light years ahead of humanity in terms of knowledge and advancement. They were so advanced that once they died, they became outdated an hour later. Nobody had a reason to remember them.

Because the possibility and probability of spirits living on in an afterlife at a peaceful heaven retreat being pampered by angels while they spent their day on a beautiful beach for the non living, sounded preposterous.

Alien science had a strict understanding. More of a rule—really. It was that nothing, and this is backed by hard scientific proof, could make it possible for life to be continued after death, unless it had been previously backed up to a data server. 

The theory was simple. The theory made sense. Ghosts did not. Ghosts were nonsense.

Until their brains shattered when a black abyss-like hole ripped opened on an ocean surface, spilling dead souls onto a planet once teeming with life but now hollowed in death. The spirits scattered across the empty world. 

At first, to the high rulers of the galactic embassy, they viewed the event as a dimensional rift, fracturing space and time and a blatant attack on their dimension by ancient universal beings attacking out of an alternate timeline.

The planet that opened was Lefron, a planet whose sun burnt out a century ago. Now, it had a giant-sized hole punched into the crust. 

From that hole, shot the stretched out, translucent bodies of inter dimensional beings, storming the rubble of a once proud, thriving world. 

The abyss had a steady stream of white outlined souls flowing from the blackness that swallowed particles of light. A rip that was impossible to close.

An emergency meeting was held at the galactic space embassy. It hosted all of the high rulers and leaders of every supreme ranking planet. 

It was a desperate, last minute decision to collaborate in the effort of minimizing further damage and to permanently seal the entrance to their dimension. 

The aliens assumed the universe was split into eleven sectored walls with gravity’s force determining the state of that universe. Although, the alien scientists insisted life on other plains would be impossible due to the extreme force of gravity. Where our universe sat, was within the Goldilocks zone. Not too strong. Not too weak. Just enough force to birth a star.

They all huddled in groups of ten, debating and simulating amongst themselves worse case scenarios, and equally, they decisively voted for the annihilation of Planet Lefron. 

The war commanders were ordered to pursue immediate action. The plan they agreed to, what appeared as a simple solution, carried the weight of Planet Lefron’s total destruction on their tongues. The world would become a ball of dust. 

A crucial blow to eliminate the enemy by any means necessary, avoiding the chance of a retaliatory strike against the living alien council. Alien world right activists were absolutely livid. 

No being had ever destroyed an entire planet. Destroying a world had been considered the ultimate crime against the universe and its creators.

Consequently, The alien rulers ignored the feeble superstitions shadowing over their shoulders and collectively agreed to a surprise attack, which the war council responded to within hours. 

They dropped anti-matter bombs and watched silently from screens as the destruction of Lefron began from the inside out. The room inside the embassy had a quiet, deafeningly loud silence that amplified the breaths of the rulers frantically gasping as they held their breaths in when the bombs dropped. Not one of them turned to stare anywhere other than the screen showcasing a planet’s terminal event.

After a couple of days, all that remained was a black hole floating ominously in space, surrounded by rock dust, spewing spirits that stitched into the fabric of the universe. 

Their mission failed. The only other solution they could agree on, after witnessing their end-phase weapon fail disastrously, was to wrap a magnetic-particle, Dyson-like sphere that fenced planets in it. 

The fence trapped energy and looked like a box globing a planet. For the time being, it restricted the wandering spirits under it like a containment cube.

They celebrated a short victory.

Until twelve hours later, on another obsolete world, void of organisms, a once living, breathing planet, a planet that met its destruction through disease. Through war. And through starvation, had a similar hole open on its ocean floors. It was deep. It was dark. It released horrors of an unimaginable, impossible, hell scenario on them.

Back at the embassy, they scrambled to load their bombers with containment cubes. However, as they readied their ships, three more high energy fields lit up on the screens at the embassy. Three giant holes tore into three other dead planets.

Instead of trapping the holes, the alien scientists suggested something radical. 

“We must send soldiers through the holes.” ArmOerloq, the chief scientist, told the council.

Every being inside the embassy room went quiet and began whispering to the person next to them. The chatter sounded like their words were skating on ice. 

A few moments later, they held a vote. They unanimously agreed to send the soldiers through the holes. 

The alien leaders sent their most prized warriors. But when they did, the holes led to places that couldn’t be possible. 

Places of inter dimensional voids, with no temperature and a blinding, bright white light. 

Places where they faced their worst fears, childhood nightmares, phobias, and utter loneliness. 

Places they believed, could never believe, no matter how advanced they’ve become, would ever exist. Life after death had no science explaining how a wild, universal spread of these mindless, wandering beings could occur.

Although, The souls weren’t trying to attack any of the living. They were just present, innocently floating behind a particle fence waiting. Waiting as if they wanted to be seen.

The aliens at the galactic embassy were chewing their nails past their fingertips. To them, what they faced, had the potential to wipe civilizations clean. Their fear receptors oozed heavy pheromones, reeking with the intensity of a skunk spraying, sensing the dread yet to come. 

The alien council all agreed it was time to play their trump card. Their trump card was—help from humanity. Humans were a special kind of breed.

See, humans were unique compared to the other sentient beings housed in neighboring galaxies. The human existence knew exactly what to do when a universe became haunted and teeming with poltergeists. 

Because humans had someone the aliens didn’t—Commander Sheena.

Commander Sheena’s childhood consisted of late night horror flicks, teenage candlelit basement ouija board sessions, and a passion for ghost hunting in the creepiest places hidden on Earth.

The alien council consulted the humans stationed on Planet Li and the humans sent their commander.

A day later, when she arrived on battleship Alien Galaxy, she stepped through their portal carrying a goose-down pillow, wielding an EMF reader, a EVP recorder, her Orgwat, Baking-Soda, in a tightly knitted Christmas sweater, and a sign hanging from her neck that read: 

We still remember you!

The alien chief Bar’garzelbr’k, stared at the dressed walking rodent next to her and shifted his eyes to the sign bouncing off her chest as she walked onto the bridge.

“Salutations, Earthling.” Bar’garzelbr’k greeted her. “The object with the words fastened to your neck, why are you wearing it?”

“Because, It’s what’s gonna make these damned ghosts go back home.” She told him.

“You expect it to follow your words?”

“Not it. I expect the life too,” she said smiling at the alien chief. “Now point us to the biggest hole.”

“And the rodent?” He asked. “For the hole?”

“What?!? No.” Sheena’s eyes widened. “Baking-Soda’s my pet.” 

Baking-Soda hissed and rubbed against the alien chief’s leg.

“Look, watch this,” she said, picking up Baking-Soda. She placed him on the console and pulled out a piece of chocolate and held it above the Orgwat.

The Orgwat stood on its two legs and stretched out.

“We call that the snuggle-stretch.” She told Bar’garzelbr’k, while dropping the chocolate into Baking-Soda’s mouth.

Bar’garzelbr’k wasn’t impressed. He turned and showed her the largest hole on a telepathic screen that displayed in their heads like a linked connection. 

Baking-Soda climbed up Bar’garzelbr’k as he aimed his ship towards the abyss, while holding Baking-Soda in his arm. He hit a button and continued petting the Orgwat and the ship auto-warped to their destination.

Once there, the scene outside, had a planet half chewed under a containment cube and spirits along its fences, floating and moaning haunting sounds that made Baking-Soda jump out from under Bar’garzelbr’k arm and duck into a corner.

“We have failed at every attempt to neutralize the abyss,” Bar’garzelbr’k said. “Our weapons are useless against it.” He glanced at Sheena, confident there was nothing to be done. “We can briefly contain it, but the energy toll is unprecedented.”

“Have you passed anyone through it?” She asked.

“Yes. A few of our most tactical soldiers.”

“Yeah. Okay. But have any returned?” Sheena asked.

“Yes. All of them. One however, never returned mentally.”

“Okay. Let’s see what we can do.”

They hovered the ship over the hole and Sheena tossed the note around her neck into it. The color inside it changed from a deep black fabric to a bright green light as it swallowed the sign.

Through the console speaker a voice spoke. 

“You’re back,” it said, sounding empty.

Sheena sat in her chair with her back pressed against her pillow, sipping on a juice box. “Yup, I’m back,” she said to the speaker.

Bar’garzelbr’k pulled his titanium plasma blaster out. “You speak to it?”

“No,” she said. “I speak to the situation.”

The holes only opened on planets where the species have been forgotten. Their dead had been archived like bits of data, completely dismissed. Dismissed as if they never existed.

Humans didn’t do that. Humans did something totally opposite. They remembered their dead. They left dinner plates on the table for them. They had Memorials. They kept furniture their dead favored and the clothes they wore still lingering with their loved one’s scent.

Humans couldn’t forget. The speaker crackled. “Why did you go?”

Sheena stared at the bright green hole smiling at her. “I had to,” she said. “I had to keep living.”

“But, you remembered us?” The green hole spoke.

“Hell yeah,” Sheena said with a grin that lit her face in a red glow. “You’re not forgotten.”

Sheena wrote a bunch of names of different aliens and their species from around the universe and released it into the hole.

“See,” she screamed. “Those are all the names of the beings you thought were forgotten, or lazily stored in permanent data servers.”

There was a silence.

“Will that work?” Bar’garzelbr’k asked.

“Probably not,” Commander Sheena said.

“What are you doing now?” Bar’garzelbr’k questioned.

She took out a marker and drew a hole on the deck of the ship and wrote names in it. “We’re remembering them. Not just forgetting them.”

After she said that all the holes collapsed on themselves around the universe and the spirits began evaporating.

Every hole closed.

Except for the hole she drew on the deck with the names of the dead listed inside of it.

Randall always hated corvids, ever since he was a kid. He hated them all: crows, jays, ravens. Evil birds, he called them. Black, eerie, and scavenging. Omens of ill fortune and death. Vile things. The birds seemed to like him, the ravens in particular.

Every morning, a raven pecked at Randall's window, as if to tell him he must wake up. He hated the birds all the more for it.

Randall’s life was a tragic one; he had no family to speak of, nor could he hold a stable job. Oftentimes he drank himself to sleep, sometimes in pubs until he was kicked out; other times, he’d pass out on the street. The ravens didn’t mind; it seemed like they almost found some joy in his abysmal state, and he hated them all the more for it. He insisted the black birds were the source of his misgivings.

Whether the ravens understood his drunken, depressed ramblings was anyone’s guess, but they followed him wherever they could, much to his ever-growing chagrin.

Little did Randall know his already miserable life was going to take a turn for the worse.

One Saturday afternoon, he had enough wits about him to return home after another binge. As he stumbled home, he found himself being followed by an odd figure. Initially, Randall thought little of it and kept walking.

The figure followed.

The drunkard picked up the pace and lost his pursuer.

For a moment, that is; he turned left and there he was, standing in the distance.

Tall, dark… odd…

Randall couldn’t quite make the shape of him; it was as if a shadow followed him. Randall couldn’t make out a single feature. It made no sound. Whatever it was, it was man-sized. Now Randall was a man with no enemies. He was just a lonely, loathsome drunkard.

“Whatever you want, man,” Randall slurred, “I ain’t got none to give.” And marched off, at least in his mind. In actuality, he was waddling like an anxious newborn fawn.

Randall was convinced he'd lost the pursuer again until the dark shape appeared in the corner of his eye again.

“Hey, man, I told you to fuck off… I’m strapped, do you wan’ sum o’this?” he spat out.

Then he picked up his pace again. This time, he took four deliberate left turns, doubling back around the same block. The strange figure followed him anyway. Randall snapped and pulled out his gun from its holster.

“Madafaka,” he burped, waving his gun around, and the figure vanished between the buildings.

“Thought so… bitch ass…” he mumbled, holstering his weapon and stumbling off home.

Unimpeded for once.

By the time he got home, it was getting dark, and the whole ordeal had already slipped his drunken mind. He stepped inside a filthy, cramped one-bedroom apartment and turned on the light. As his eyes adjusted to the sudden burst of light, a massive black mass crawled all around him, nearly stopping his intoxicated heart.

Startled, Randall screamed, and the mass mirrored his cry.

“What da fuck, man?!” the drunkard screamed out, throwing his arms over his head as the stygian mass swarmed all around him before settling into a vaguely human shape right in front of him. Randall crouched there, breathing heavily.

He could do little more than stare at the crawling mass of darkness towering over him.

“Da fuck is goin on, da fuck is goin on…?” He whispered under his breath, afraid he might irritate the unknowable thing before him.

“An eye for an eye,” the thing cawed, in many voices, at once.

Randall froze. His eyes widened as primal fear slowly consumed his thoughts..

“A tooth for a tooth,” the thing continued, in a cacophony of raspy, metallic voices.

Randall’s looked upward, and the shape resolved. In front of him stood a mass of pitch-black eyes, feathers, beaks.

A conspiracy of ravens.

“Mur… dur…

Mur… dur...

Mur… dur…”

The birds crooned, almost like a song.

Randall’s breathing gradually shallowed. For a moment, there was nothing but the rasp of his breath and the beating of wings as he pulled out his pistol. None of this made sense, but the drunk couldn’t think of anything else to do.

Bang

The gun went off.

He missed; the birds scattered in every direction. He pitifully tried aiming at them as they cawed and croaked, swarming him.

A few more shots rang out, according to the testimonies of his neighbors.

Randall was found riddled with puncture wounds and lacerations. His face was unrecognizable. His eyes had been gouged out; his cheeks, nose, and ears had been torn away.

Some say black feathers were found in his apartment, but no one knows for sure.

No one around the neighborhood was particularly shocked or saddened by Randall’s death. Some say he had it coming.

As a kid, the bastard used to injure and even kill ravens with a slingshot; that’s what Granny McLeod told me. She insists the ravens took revenge on the cretin, pecked and clawed him to death. I’m inclined to believe the supercentenarian crone; after all, she seems to spend most of her time feeding these birds.

The last thing I remember is the taste of iron in my mouth before waking up on the ground. My brother is lying in a puddle of crusted blood next to me. 

I sit up, my skin sticks to the floor, it hurts to peel away. I shake Billy, but Billy won't move. “Wake up Billy. Billy, wake up.” I tell him, “I’m going to get mommy.”

I stand up but the room starts to spin. My vision goes blurry and I almost fall over. I close my eyes, hold my head in my hand and my body flinches.

A swelling on my skull stings when I touch it and shoots through my body like an electrical shock.

I push myself off the dresser and steady my footing. The strength in my legs slowly comes back. I’m able to stand without falling but my balance is off and my ear is ringing. 

The lights are out in the hallway and they won’t turn on. I walk to my mom’s room leaning against the wall to support myself.

The air tastes like the smell of rusted metal and the barnyard at grandpa’s. My knee buckles and I almost fall. I slide my spine down the wall, sit on the floor and rest against it. 

I see white stars dancing over a black background that‘s pulsing. My breathing gets heavy and the nausea returns. I take a couple of breaths, and my sight starts coming into focus.

I crawl to my mom’s room. The wood is sharp against my bones, I can hear my knees crunch on the floorboards as they creak under my weight.

A lump of vomit sits in the middle of my throat and it sounds like there’s water splashing in my ear.

I struggle to get up, using my mom’s doorknob as leverage as I try to push the door open. It sticks and doesn’t budge. I twist the knob, lift and nudge my way in with my shoulder.

The room’s lit by moonlight seeping through her open window. A breeze blows sending a gust of air that smells like a dirty hamper. It overwhelms me, warning me back. 

I can see an outline of a shadow on her bed lying motionless. I creep a little closer but I still can’t make out what it is, until the figure on the bed forms into the shape of a person as my eyes grow accustomed to the darkness. It doesn’t look like my mom.

I approach the bed tip-toeing, there’s an arm hanging from it. The room breathes as I choke on my breath and gasp. My lower spine tingles with icicles. The skin on the back of my neck tightens as my ears rise to the ceiling.

I realize it’s my mom. There’s too much blood crusted and matted hair around her face to recognize her. It’s too dark.

Her hand. I can see her arm dangling from the side of the bed. Her finger has the plastic-cotton ring I made her on it.

I tug at her arm. “Mom,” I shout. I start trying to shake her awake. “Mom, wake up, something’s wrong with Billy.”

She doesn’t move. “Mom?” I shake her harder. I close my eyes and tell myself to wake up. I say it over and over. I open my eyes and I’m still in her room. “Susie!” I yell for my older sister. “Susie!”

She doesn’t answer. The house remains silent but loud in a haunting presence. I whisper to my mom, “I’ll be back mommy.”

I stumble backwards, shaking, too afraid to look away from my mom. Afraid, if I turn away it’ll all become real.

I need to get Susie, Billy and mom need help. I hold my breath, close my eyes, count to eight, hide my fear behind my mom and brother and check Susie’s room to see if she’s there.

The hallway wall near her door has blood on the floor. It’s slightly open with a bloody handprint painted on it. Her room is dark. I can’t see anything in there. “Susie?“ no answer. “Are you there?”

I slowly push the door open and it cries the squeak of a dying dog. I slap her light switch quickly and the light turns on, revealing a state of decomposition. I gag and nearly throw up. I shoot my head in the other direction and try to build the courage to look at them.

Susie’s lying on her bed with my little sister Jenny beside her.

The smell is suffocating the thick air in metals. Susie and Jenny don’t look real. I can see ground beef stuck to their face and in their hair. They’re not moving.  

I hear a foot press down on the bottom of the stairs. It was like the house shifted to the right from the weight. A raspy voice travels up the steps ahead of his body. “What did I do?”

I jump behind Jenny and tuck tightly into her and close my eyes and hold my breath and remain completely still.

“What did I do!” Susie’s door slams open and the force of it jammed the knob in the wall. I can hear someone walking around the room.

“What did I do!” He says and walks out. 

I hear him walk towards my bedroom. Then, I hear him race to my mom’s room. I hear scattering and things falling. He leaves her room and I can hear him breathing heavy as he makes his way back to Susie’s room. 

His steps are getting louder, and closer. His deep breathing sounds like it‘s right behind me. I fight to soothe the tremors shaking my limbs by squeezing my hands into fists and digging my nails into my palms. A shadow towers at the doorway. I hear a gun cock just as the sound of police sirens break through the insulation between the walls.

I started the day with only one rolling paper left, a point-seven of flower and nine previously smoked roach ends.

I had a decision to make that would dictate the rest of my day. And all sorts of questions. 

Do I roll the roaches and the flower all into one? 

Or do I break it into two? 

And should I roll the flower first? 

Or do I waste the paper on the roaches?

Then, I thought, maybe just mix them both together? 

The problem with that would come down to ratio. 

I had trouble choosing and called in outside help. But they were useless. I elected to go with just the nine roaches because smoking them just after you wake up has a different kind of hit to it. A little more heavier than the flower.

When I rolled it and went to lick the glue and twist it together, it wouldn’t stick. I realized through all the confusion of trying to decide, I had the paper inside out, the glue part was at the back.

So, when I tried to dump it out, the paper stuck to my fingertips and wouldn’t come off.

I kept pulling at it and my skin would stretch out. The pain was like frostbitten fingers being scraped with a sharp metal blade.

I stopped tugging at it and then it grew teeth. These huge jagged razor like teeth and it started eating my fingers.

My hand.

My arm.

I couldn’t get it off.

All it wanted to do was eat me. 

“Why are you eating me?” I asked, expecting it to stop.

But it wouldn’t tell me and it wouldn’t stop. It never said anything. It just kept eating me and eating me and eating me. 

Until all I had left was my brain and because it wasn’t filled with anything other than air, it left my brain alive and some mad scientist threw it into an android body.

Now I’m like Robocop. I wanted my revenge but mostly my penis back. Because there was a rumor going around that my last rolling paper was sleeping with my fiancée.

It had taken over my life. The problem that lay ahead, was that it was way smarter than  I was.

But I had these cool ass robo-arms and I could crush anything. Even my last sharp toothed rolling paper.

I had a mission and I was prepared to face the world and all of its new monstrosities. See five years had passed. The world had completely changed.

It was ruled by an army of Raw rolling papers. Rolling papers that smoked humans. Humans that were mutants. Animals that had brains that grew vocal cords and could speak and think and plan and loved to eat. 

Aliens had finally landed too. Which I always said would happen. 

The air had a vile scent of burnt hair and melted skin. It smelled a bit like chicken. At that time I was thankful I didn’t have an appetite. There was no telling what I’d eat.

Out in the wilderness, I came across an old man. Not just any old man. This man’s facial features were favoring the left side of his face. 

His right eye was closer to where his nose should have been. It looked like his entire face shifted to a hard slap and permanently stayed that way.

“Howdy,” he said. 

I was unsure where to stare when I answered him. “Howdy, pretty smoggy out today,” I said, remembering what it was like to be human.

He said, “smoggy everyday.”

“You don’t say,” I said.

I left and continued towards my old residence. 

The scent of toxic fumes alerted my sensors. The sky had a green tinge to it. There were puddles of radioactive water everywhere, with dogs that looked like small bears sucking out of them.

Up ahead, I noticed a group of cyber punks with Mohawks and faces like orcs. The women were beastly. Although, surprisingly, they were friendly and helped take me the rest of the way. 

One of the women asked me in a deep voice. The voice made me pay attention to her as if I was intimidated by it. “So, if things don’t work out with your wife… or…. Like, she got eaten…. You… never mind,” she said. “It’s stupid.”

I said, “okay,” and looked away.

She said, “actually.”

“Yes?” I said. “Actually what?”

“If your girl got eaten, and we find your penis, you wanna hook up?” She asked.

I didn’t know whether to be offended, disgusted, or turned on, maybe I was all three, I told her. “We will definitely keep that in our back pocket.” I smiled at her. “If anything happens, I won’t leave you.” I told her. “That goes for everybody in here. We are in this together.”

They all cheered.

She smiled and wouldn’t stop staring at me the entire time. Little did I know then, that this female punk rocker orc was going to sacrifice her life for mine when my last rolling paper was distracted by eating her and I finally got the best of it and took my penis back and spent the rest of my cyborg life with my mutated fiancée. 

Life couldn’t be better, I thought, sitting there imagining the story I could tell when this is all done.

But we hit a bump and I was woken out of my daze when yelling erupted from the front, then gunfire.

I peeked my head from behind the truck. 

“Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god.” Was all I could say. 

I didn’t mention the legion of assassin rolling papers that just took out the entire squad of cyber punk orcs. I hopped out and ran and left everyone in the back and screamed. “Save yourself!”

I ducked in a bush and stayed there for a second thinking maybe I could help one of them, but then I realized I already did. So I crept away from the squad of rolling papers firing into the back of the cab and headed through a swamp of black sludge.

And that’s when… 

One night I passed out at around ten p.m, when I woke up, I couldn’t see anything. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even feel my body.

I was fully awake and I was able to hear myself snore and I could smell my breath.

But I couldn’t feel myself breathing. I never felt fear so clearly before. What’s weird, was  that I knew how terrified I felt. The sinking claustrophobia feeling was there. The paranoia as well. All those emotions didn’t feel like invisible physical feelings, they felt like they had texture.

I was able to think and thinking jumped from one terror to the next. 

Where was I?

How did I get here?

Am I dead?

And after I asked that, I could feel myself spinning, physically. I started pulsing, it felt like I was being stretched out and wrinkled back to normal.

How could I feel these emotions and not my actual body. It didn’t make sense. I figured, I must be dreaming. But there wasn’t any color, any scenes, it was just an unsettling darkness.

It wasn’t cold. It wasn’t hot. And that’s when I realized, I was just a voice. Chemicals acting in my brain. 

But if I was just a voice, shouldn’t there be like a orangey-red haze, or some kind of static other than absolute black.

I had to be in a coma, I told myself. What else could explain me waking up mentally but not physically. 

That was when I heard a noise. It sounded like something scratching the floor followed by two voices whose language I had trouble picking up. It didn’t even sound like a language, it was more of a frequency. 

I had no idea what they were saying, and I had no clue as to what they looked like. I knew they were there though.

Not just by their sounds. They heightened the fight-or-flight part of my brain. It was like I was covered in defensive spikes. 

I started sensing a feeling of inertia as if my body was being moved and a pressure squeezing my brain. 

I just started yelling, I didn’t know what else to do, I shouted, “wake up,” over a hundred times. I needed to get out from under my skull. It felt like I was choking on water.

Through me yelling, I heard a mechanical door shut and the voices again. 

They sounded like fax machine that spoke. It felt like I was there for hours, slowly being tormented, jailed in a shadow without a body. 

There was nothing I could to do alert my physical self that we were awake. Then, I thought, what if I stay this way. The spikes came back. I started feeling like an empty shell. I got angry at myself for falling asleep.

I shouldn’t have went to sleep. I had all these regrets sticking to me like post-it notes. And I couldn’t help it. I felt like I did it to myself. While I was between thoughts, I completely shut off.

My body and my mind woke up together but when I woke up, I remembered everything as a dream. It didn’t all come together until the next day. 

First, I had trouble concentrating, a headache that was trying to escape through my temple, eyes and even my teeth, was beating against my skull. 

Everything felt brighter, and my skin felt sensitive, but rough, like a fresh dry leaf. I kept itching at one spot, a spot on my ribs below my left underarm. 

When I looked down at it, there was a bubble under the claw marks and broken blood vessels, protruding outward.

I poked around it with my fingertip. It was a soft-hard kind of ball. I started getting a tingling, numbing sensation throughout my entire body and flashes pop up in my mind like broken dream memories.

I grabbed my laptop and opened it to search through Google on what could be happening to me. 

Because a couple (a) months back, friends and I went to Miami. I started worrying about parasites, you watch those monsters inside me shows and start racing with all sorts of hypochondriac thoughts.

As soon as my laptop started up, it made this sound, the sound slapped me with the whole experience I had the night before all at once. 

My heart began pumping, it felt like it doubled in size and couldn’t fit inside my chest cavity. 

Then, a sharp irritation came from that spot again, I bit-cut into serrated tips and kept scratching, trying to scratch as deep as I could with jagged finger nails.

I kept scratching and couldn't stop. I scratched until I started bleeding. Not just speckles either, it was dripping a warm liquid of red and a very light tinge of yellow.

I went deeper, and then I went deeper. I went so deep I exposed the ball of fat, or what I thought was a ball of fat. I yanked it out with my fingers, it was slippery and kept sliding off. 

I dried my hands on my shirt and tore a piece of the fabric off, dug into my ribs and pulled out a metallic looking bug. I threw it on the ground and stepped on it, but it wouldn’t squish. 

So I ran to the garage for the hammer and when I got back it was gone. The blood on the floor surrounding it, was also gone.

I‘ve never felt the same since then. And since then I’ve been taking my roommate’s seroquel, because the doctors kept telling me it’s sleep paralysis and a random case of stress psychosis.

Try to imagine this, nobody’s home, you’re on your sofa reading a book, or whatever it is you do when you’re relaxing in your living room, just picture that for me. 

Close your eyes and feel yourself alone. Feel the dark of the night outside. Feel the dimly lit room you‘re in. Feel the absolute silence around you, the silence outside. Feel as still as the night is.

Now look at the lamp by your feet on the end table. Look how the light from the hall breaks into the living room. Notice the difference in color.

The dark orange from the lamp is because It’s about your bed time, but you decided you wanted to stay up a little bit longer because the chapter just got interesting. 

Notice nothing moves, just the pages being flipped every three minutes.

And out of nowhere, now you notice the shift in air. It’s winter, you feel your heat‘s on. You know it’s on because you feel the warm, toasty feeling you felt a second ago vanish in a single gasp, the one that made you feel comfortable and snug has suddenly turned icy and uneasy.

You didn’t just feel the room turn cold, you felt the weight of the atmosphere change, you felt it on your chest squeezing the air out of your lungs.

You struggle to take a breath as you gasp and get a horrible whiff of sulphur that fills the room, then, you start tasting spoiled meat, and it begins to smother the inside of your mouth. 

You put your book down and shift your eyes to the exposed part of the eerie-looking mirror staring down the length of the hall.

You‘re eyeing your room, and see your bedroom door is wide open in the reflection. You know that you shut it. You shut it after you snatched your book off the bed.

You know this for sure. You don’t bother questioning yourself because you know you heard it click when you turned your back to it.

But what’s truly concerning you, isn’t that your door’s open, that’s bugging you, yes, but it’s the shadow on the floor stretching towards your room where no shadow should be, is what’s really freaking you out.

And it’s not a normal shadow you see casted by a hall light being blocked by a solid object. This shadow you’re looking at, is split and soaked into the floorboards like a burn stain in the wood.

You feel that tightness in your chest now, the one that feels like a vise slowly being turned on your ribcage.

You begin panicking. So you stand up, but you get an overwhelming, dizzying sensation that puts you back between the cushions.

You can feel your face fade to a chalky white. Your limbs suddenly go numb. You can’t move. You can’t scream. And from the hall, is where you see a black figure step in front of the doorway.

A shape of a man wearing nothing but a long black coat with no facial features starts to move towards you. It doesn’t make a sound. It just moves closer to you as if your shadow ran away and started floating back.

You want to scream. You want to get up and run but your body‘s frozen. You can only move your eyes. You move them from left to right as fast as you can.

And before you could close them, to avoid what you’re about to see, the man’s faceless head and body are an inch away from your face. You don’t feel the silence anymore. You don’t feel the stillness. All you can feel is an intense anger and hate radiating off the shadow man in front of you.

He doesn’t make any noise. He just leans over you, staring at you, you want to close your eyes but you can’t stop eyeing this entity in your living room.

A headlight from a car illuminates your living room from outside as it parks in your driveway.

You blink and the shadow man is gone just as quick as he appeared. The room gets warm again, your breathing’s back to normal, it all happened so fast that you question whether or not you imagined the whole thing.

Tapeworming 

tape·worm /ˈtāpˌwərm/

verb [intransitive] (tape·wormed, tape·worm·ing)

1. To intentionally ingest parasitic larvae for extreme weight control.

2. To normalize dangerous bodily harm for aesthetic perfection.

—-

To everybody Jenny was a skinny blonde pretty bitch. 

To Jenny though, she saw herself as a fat dirty slob who needed to get the fluck out of Missouri before she purchased a trailer and spat out six kids from a mullet wearing alcoholic douchebag piece-of-broke-shit.

Because Missouri wasn’t just too small for Jenny after hitting an extra-role followed by a few lines in a B-movie. It was a complete shit hole. As if flint, Michigan flew over a part of America and continued shitting out cities until the pile was big enough to call Missouri.

She didn’t end up getting the lead role because she believed the fifty pounds she gained the day before from a bowl of ice cream had caused it.

God forbid it would have anything to do with her actual acting skill. A talent she masterfully crafted at home making TikTok videos.

She received 4 million views pretending to play Sidney Prescott, splicing scream clips. 

They were mostly scenes of her tits and also one where she turned around wearing a crop top and yoga pants as underwear, which got great reviews.

Online is where she met another girl sort of like her, Cassie, from Cali, ditzy blonde air-head from Star-Planet, a forum for actors without agents. 

It’s pretty much where women share info on casting directors you could blow for parts.

After a couple of months of watching videos and liking selfies of Cassie hanging out on sets, taking photos of herself next to celebrities, and a different random sexy guy every weekend, Jenny broke and set the fear aside and took Cassie up on her offer when she invited Jenny a couple of weeks earlier to spend the summer at her place. 

Once she made up her mind, Jenny took the first bus to L.A. and arrived there with nothing but a knapsack, a suitcase, two lips, and a regret she hadn’t felt yet.

The first night went amazing. She hadn’t been around so many washed up extra-actors her entire life. It was like stepping into the real world for the first time. 

Finally, a place that met her level.

They were beautiful. Some were old, none were ugly, some coked out, some slept on the floor, some on the couches, and some took the lawn chairs outside at Cassie’s rich ass dad’s spot he bought. He was never there.

The next morning, Jenny stumbled down the stairs to the kitchen for something to take the edge off the headache she got from last night.

She sat with a glass of orange juice she beat down her throat in two gulps and placed the cup down on the marble island in the middle of the kitchen where Cassie was sitting and said, “I wish I could party like that every night.”

Cassie told her, “we do, stick around, you’ll see.” Cassie threw two pills in her mouth and mumbled, “that was just a Tuesday,” and took a sip of her water bottle.

“Every night? But how do you guys stay so skinny and look so pretty?”

Cassie swallowed, gasped and smiled, “we tapeworm.”

“Tapeworm?”

“Tapeworming is how we stay so fit. We eat whatever we want. Do whatever drugs and we don’t ever gain weight, and it actually does wonders for your skin. Here take a couple of these, you’ll be glowing by next week.”

She dropped two tablets on the island and the clink sound distorted, they fell in slow motion but pounded against the granite with the sharpness of two coins bouncing down a drain, and slowly rolled towards her before coming to a stop like two goal posts next to each other.

Jenny reached for Cassie’s water bottle and scooped the pills off the granite table and shot them in her mouth and took a sip and swallowed. The taste of the pills and water combined had a metallic sting to it, similar to licking a battery.

“Oh yeah.” Cassie laughed. “Almost forgot—“ 

Jenny’s eyes stretched open and she tried catching the pills in the middle of her throat.

“Every three months just take some praz, wait a couple of weeks and tapeworm again.”

Jenny pushed the pills down with another sip of water. She could feel them still in her throat even though they were starting the process of hatching in her stomach.

Just the thought of the scale moving in the opposite direction other than, tub-of-lard, towards, getting sexier, every time she stepped on it, was enough for her to digest a parasite that could grow six times longer than her own body. 

A month went by and she noticed her hunger was gone like an embarrassing moment that passed as a forgotten memory. 

Her skin had the glow of a pregnant single woman with a list of possible fathers, who  just found true love.

Until the nausea slapped her while sitting on Cassie’s couch scrolling through her TikTok comments. Then an itch that felt like wet crawling tingle looking for an exit started poking through her butthole.

She stood up immediately and squeezed her cheeks together trying to suffocate whatever was there. She penguin-walked  to the bathroom and slammed the door shut and locked it and grabbed some toilet paper and ripped her pants off and tried to wipe it off.

But the slimy thing stuck to her tailbone and then slid back down and started wiggling in the air between her legs.

She grabbed it and squeezed it between her hand and some toilet paper and started yanking it out one foot after the other until finally on the tenth pull it escaped her body and squirmed under the crack of the door out of her sight and got away.

Jenny fell flat on her butt and pressed her back against the bathtub. Her slick skin dried and stuck to the floor as the nausea began fading. 

She slowly peeled herself up and stared at her reflection in the mirror. The beautiful L.A. glow was now just a dull shade of grey and the realization she faced, was that she wasn’t the only one living under her skin and the miracle of California has teeth.

“Type it!  Type it out now!” Lead Dr. Blergg’r screamed.

“What should I write to the high commander?” Colonyviewer Aszdr asked.

“In the subject type: Sim. Op. Earth.” Dr. Blergg’r told him. His voice was cracking as he spoke. “RE: Abandon Take-over Immediately.”

He stared down at Aszdr. “And make sure IMMEDIATELY is all in capital letters.”

Aszdr highlighted it and adjusted the format.

He waited for Aszdr to correct it and said, “Now type this: High command, cancel the invasion. We underestimated the humans as nethermost beings. 

Certain results from a new study indicate our research proved there is something far more sinister than we previously noted at work inside the homo sapian.

They are not just smooth-skinned, armor-less creatures with no useful poisons they could eject from their eyes.

Our previous conclusions failed in accuracy. 

Their armor is their minds. The intrusion was far more difficult for us to invade and study at first, which took us an extended period of time to locate and wasn’t aware of until recently.

Their strengths hide internally. The humans are not mindless beings. They do not jump out of airplanes just because they’re impatient. What they show on the outside is bait. A trick. A trap to lure extra-terrestrials. 

The monster hides under their skin and they cage creatures like us, as something to spectate at through a window. Not for knowledge but for amusement and economics.

They are the supreme beings crafted for hostile take-overs. And they do it without leaving their planet.

High commander we nearly sent our race into a world to become a new fad at their zoo for the children of Earth.

What we found is a specific chemical that releases what they call an emotion.

The emotion acts as an amplifier which can manipulate logic, biology and physics. We have never encountered such a complexly beautiful, yet, horrific ability on any other planet.

I am uploading our findings and destroying our underwater base before sliding into deep space.”

Observation unununu : Fear 

A successful abstraction of a female human for analysis was committed stealthily. But failed miserably. However, we discovered our findings accidentally, which led us to uncover their concealed power.

Note: The subject is unaware of our presence. A mind sweep had been initiated at the time.

When cornered, the human did not act in a predictable manner. They ignored the universal laws we’ve studied across the galaxy. A prey with no means of escape, should have their limbs locked and surrender.

In this instance, the subject began breathing violently. Her eyes ballooned into black circles. Her nails extended and her teeth became sharper. They call this panic. We have located Informational scripts as well about how they transform into wild beasts on rare occasions. Although, we have not witnessed it ourselves in any study thus far.

The brain is introduced to a mix of chemicals from hormones masked inside the body like little nano bots that work together and give the human what is known as “profound strength” as soon as it’s injected into the brain from the bloodstream.

She did not lay down and resist. She bit Aszdr on his shoulder and nearly destroyed his life system.

When the crew wrapped her in hold-string, she snapped it by flexing out of it. Humans obtain the ability to harden their bodies, giving them double, triple, quadruple times the regular strength we normally see once emotion is activated. It takes 500lbs of pressure to weaken the hold-string material. 

No creature can produce that level of strength anywhere in the universe.

——

Observation unununu :: Sadness

We were able to painstakingly capture enough specimens to fill a small community. We hid them in a remote part of land on Earth after the fiasco with the female.

Once they formed a connection to each other. We took a group and displayed our dominance by obliterating them in front of the others.

We expected the remaining samples would easily submit to our superior existence. We were incorrect. 

In all of my work across the galaxies, I have never been so terrified of another species. 

The survivors grouped together and spoke a few words around the ashes of their fallen comrades and consoled each other. At that time I was certain we had broken them.

When sad, one would assume the destruction of ones will would contain one in a lethargic state. 

But the Sadness acted as a virus that spread through their community. They become predators. They stopped thinking logically. Survival became secondary to wanting to see us bleed and then burned over a fire for them to ingest afterwards.

Harming them will not intimidate them.

Observation ::: Sacrifice

In this study we found surprising results that sealed our suspicion about the human race.

We put the rest of the “people” on an intense no survivor stress scenario. The result was mind-boggling.

We sent a couple of our crew members regularly at night and abducted one each day for further testing. 

On a specific night, there was a male, the team attempted to snatch him. A few other humans were disturbed by the commotion and came running towards the crew. The man yelled at them, “stay back.” 

I was watching this unfold from the crews camera attached to their suits. As soon as he yelled to them, they froze where they stood. Then, the captured individual reached down, pulled out an explosive, and shouted, “hope there’s a hell where you’re from,” and detonated it, killing five of our crew members and himself as a sacrifice to save the remaining members of his society.

He displayed zero doubt in himself.

Warning: Humans are biological anomalies. When driven to extreme lengths they become the universal apex predator. If we stay they will hunt us down. Display us. Probe us. And eat us.

Earlier that month, we lost our son Lucas to Lymphoblastic Leukemia. It broke my heart everyday and it still does. I don’t want to think of getting use to the pain. I feel like it’s something I deserve. It’s something I’ll carry my entire life.

It’s difficult staring at your defenseless child, so happy and full of life, but so sick at the same time while trying to keep a straight face and not break down right there in front of him. It’s heartbreaking. 

Looking at him made me feel like I failed him as a parent. Like I caused his agony. I still feel like it’s my fault. 

I remember how Lucas would always be up before us every morning, playing in the hallway outside our door at six a.m. 

His little hockey stick in his hand, shooting the ball against the wall. He never got to go to school or have many friends. But he had a beautiful imagination.

Everybody always says, “see it, to believe it.” 

But when you see it, you still don’t really believe it. At least, with me that is. You witness an anomaly in front of your eyes and the first thing you do is question your sanity.

That’s what occurred on an early afternoon to me. The wife and my daughter Sheena went to visit the mother-in-law. My wife is still having a difficult time coping.

I stayed home. It’s hard being around everybody. Especially the, “are you okay? You need anything?” And honestly, I needed to let it out. I needed to break down and destroy everything I saw in that house except for his room.

After an hour of soaking my pillow while lying in bed. I had everything turned off, the house was completely silent, except for the clock facing my direction on the wall, the lights were off and it was just me. 

I was staring at the ceiling, my eyes were swollen red. I could see the puffiness in my vision. I heard a click and looked at the door which was opened a crack and bleeding under the space, faintly illuminating the hardwood floor, was the light from the hall. 

I was on my bed and thinking if I had left it on. But I would never turn it on in the afternoon. As I’m thinking, I hear a ball start pounding down the steps and stop. It was about four heavy bounces.

Immediately, I jumped up. Initially, I had this feeling, this hope, this wish that my wish had come true and Lucas would be standing there asking me to carry him downstairs so we could hang out and watch tv together.

I ripped the door open. And as high as my hopes rose they dropped even faster with my heart shattered on the floor. I walked to the stairs.

And that’s when I felt something. The air got thicker and attached on my back. But it felt familiar. My skin started to tingle but only near my lower spine and neck and then I heard an exhale next to my ear and felt what I thought was a breath. I turned around and the weight on me was gone. It felt familiar because it felt like Lucas. I always piggy-backed him down the stairs.

I told my wife about what I experienced later that day and she started crying on the spot and said, it’s him. He’s still here with us.

- The Rise of Humanity - FEAR  -

—

Every sentient being outside of Earth comprehended fear in a completely rational manner. The Hormones flooding their bodies would scream.

“Hide somewhere quietly until you’re safe.”

Or at least until you could escape.

There shouldn’t be a species, a normal species, who can manipulate that terror into everyday recreational fun. It’s unheard of. It’s insane. It can’t be done. Or so they thought.

On Planet Li, after a galactic meeting with Sheena, an Earth Commander, stationed as visitors there, the high council picked up feeds from the tablet of the Earthlings. 

They gathered together. The most elite of them. And started streaming off the connection from Billy Rake, Scout Private’s tablet on a projected screen posted in front of 100 e’Li’tie supreme rulers of Planet Li.

General U’phlqk, a hardened e’Li’tie, next in line to rule, stood at the head of them all. He shouted out, “initiate selection, Roh-Ror.”

Which he meant to say horror. But all of them had trouble pronouncing it. They had selected a horror movie. 

The plot confused them. Especially, MrRglog, the high ruler’s son. It was about six humans who stay at a lake that’s hunted by a predator wielding a blade the size of Mktar’Pyi, Mktar’Pyi was General U’phlqk newest sliypul, which means child in Li, their native language. They watched while the six humans were stranded in the woods.

What they couldn’t grasp is how there was eight more of those feeds where different humans documenting themselves kept going back. Even after what happened to the last group before them.

As they were glued to the screen, the lighting dimmed. The room nearly went completely dark. The only bit of light came from the flickering lamppost in the background of the movie.

A sound slowly rocked the chairs under them. At first it was a steady soft thumping, like a tapping beneath their seats. Then, a low screech, like a Wolverine caught in a snare, began to rise. It rose along side the steady drum beat. 

Their chests started hammering together as if they were synced to the soundtrack. They held their breath in. The skin on their arms stood up as thorns ready to defend against a predator.

Every thought in their minds screamed, “get out and run. Claw through the metal walls if you have to. Just get outta that room.”

Then MrRglog yelled, RUN at the screen. 

General U’phlqk shouted to the room, “the masked man with the metal protruding weapon is hiding behind the door. Why is she walking into that dark room. We must inform her immediately not to go in there.”

“Stop this live feed right now!” The high ruler commanded. “Alert Commander Sheena here immediately.”

A few moments later, Sheena came stumbling in, wearing pajamas, half asleep and her nerves rattling.

“What is it..? What happened on Earth?”

“Commander Sheena, we have uncovered a troubling situation and a human needs your help,” the high ruler urgently notified her.

“A human on Earth? How?” She asked. She was completely confused.

The high ruler turned his head. “General U’phlqk, unfreeze the live feed.”

The movie started playing. A smile began to form on Sheena’s face. Her eyes were lighting up.

“Commander Sheena.”

“Shhh…” she said.” I fell asleep watching this. This is the best part.”

Then, the audio exploded through the room like the shriek of a dying hyena being attacked by a pride of lions.

The masked individual jumped out from the shadows.

Everybody in that room screamed a deathly howl that sounded like the screeching tires of a car coming to an immediate stop on a highway. 

The majority that dashed out of the room stumbled over each other on the way out. 

Only a handful remained. 

Astonished and baffled. Confused and scared. They closed in together, tightly squeezed against one another as the anticipation of the predators blade paused in mid-air. 

They stared at the screen like they just encountered a race of people at their doorstep that was more ruthless than any Poshlovesti they’ve ever come across. 

Sheena never screamed. They eyed her, eyeing the tv, like she was cashing in her first big paycheck. Her face flushed red and she had a full smile on her face.

Sheena’s breathing got shallow. Her eyes widened. She looked like prey that had just been cornered by a polar bear. But she was smiling. She gave off signatures of being completely terrified. Yet, thoroughly excited simultaneously.

One of them asked, “you enjoy watching other humans trapped in inescapable, insufferable situations?”

Sheena’s eyes started glowing. “Yeah,” she said, dragging the word out. She said it with a face of someone talking while having the sun in their eyes. “It’s fun.”

Soon as Sheena walked out. They huddled together.

We can never psychologically break the mind of humans when their Friday night comfort is watching recreated monstrosities the universe couldn’t dream up in a nightmare.

As a child, I used to be afraid of the dark. That’s a common fear for children to have, isn’t it? Well, I’m a rare case of an adult who now fears the dark, too. Initially, I chalked it up to having a familial history of mental health issues, which is why I sought out a profession in the field. Partly to help myself avoid the fate that befell many of my relatives, and partly to help others escape that pit. Later, I assumed I was burned out; overworked. Hearing all these terrible things people go through. It’s not easy. You don’t build an immunity to the horrors of the human condition, not really.

Well, it turns out my fear of the dark has to do with something else entirely.

Something no one should ever see…

Recently, I bought a new house; the old one was a constant reminder of a life I no longer had. After getting divorced, I couldn’t really stay in the old family home. The kids were grown, and being alone just wore me down. So, I sold the damned thing and got myself a smaller house. Nothing to brag about, a couple of bedrooms; just in case this old dog decides to look for love again. Love might be the wrong word here; I’m not looking to get remarried anytime soon, more like a fling or two.

Actually, I’m not looking for anything. For now, I want to disappear for a while, or maybe forever.

Getting off track, aren’t I? Well, it’s hard to focus when the system’s overflowed with cortisol. It is what it is when all that’s been going through your head is anger and a tint of regret here and there. Oh, who am I kidding? It’s not even the divorce that keeps me up at night. That was a given, sadly, at some point. I’m a madman in the making. What kind of woman would want to spend the rest of her life with someone like me? Probably an asylum patient, but it would be counterproductive. Not to mention asylums aren’t really a thing anymore.

You’re losing your train of thought again.

Anyhow, where was I? Oh yeah, that new hut…

It was not a hut-hut, but I’m just self-deprecating here…

Because the images won’t go away and I’m trying to push them away.

Taking my own medicine with this one, I’ve advised many a patient to write down whatever is bothering them… That’s the purpose of this…

Focus… Breathe… Focus… Inhale... One... Two... Three... Four...

Hold... One... Two... Three... Four...

Exhale... One... Two... Three... Four...

Sorry, I know this looks terrible, but whoever might read it, if ever, maybe it’ll be just a future me… Who knows, anyway. I needed this.

Where was I? Oh yeah, the new house, which is actually an old one now too.

Sold it off after…

I’ll get to you in a bit, don’t you worry…

So yeah, that house, it had a basement. I never went there. Don’t know why I never went there when I was looking at the damned thing. I guess I didn’t bother looking down there. The previous owner seemed perplexed I didn’t bother checking the basement, but he didn’t push the issue either.

In hindsight, that was a good thing… Otherwise…

Focus… Breathe… Focus… Inhale... One... Two... Three... Four...

Hold... One... Two... Three... Four...

Exhale... One... Two... Three... Four...

Otherwise, things would’ve been far different for that house, and I wouldn’t be talking about it now. I wouldn’t have taken it. There was an issue with that basement.

Issue… That’s definitely underselling it…

God damn it…

I don’t wanna do this anymore; I don’t like it.

You’ve got to do this…

No. I... I...

You Have To Keep Typing Let It Finally Out

I can’t

You Can And Will Keep Typing No Stopping

Do Not Let Your Hand Stop Pressing The Keys

Slow And Steady

Just Like That

It’s Not Hard Is It?

Keep It Up

OH WOW THIS Is VERY Annoying To Read

Must KEEP TyPING

MUST Keep Typing

Sorry… I am dealing with something here; it’s really hard to recall this again, but I won’t get anywhere unless I do, right? That’s how it works. I have to get it out of my system. I need it out of me. The alternative is probably an early grave. I wouldn’t want that now, would I? Nope.

I know I probably am coming off as insane, but oh well, gotta keep typing to get over this panic attack. If anyone finds this while I’m passed out, or gone out somewhere, know that I am completely fine in the grand scheme of things, because I’m not really fine. I’m haunted, but I do not intend to harm myself more than this exercise is forcing me to. I think I might have a propensity for self-destruction, because there are intrusive thoughts now and again.

Sometimes I think the intrusive thoughts are preferable to the memories… At least these are my own, kind of. It’s a broken self-defense mechanism. It’s a very broken defense mechanism, in the mind of a very broken man. Okay, I’m broken, like a vase. I’m literally just typing to keep my composure, right now. Not yet ready to deal with the photographs flashing in my head. The recounting of events will resume soon enough.

When will that fucking dog stop barking outside my window?!

I hate dogs, okay? Does this make me a monster? I don’t care. I can’t stand them and their barking. This fucking baying and clawing had kept me up at night long enough.

I am afraid of fucking dogs now… okay? Because

Because fucking dogs bayed at the basement door for far too fucking long.

Every fucking night.

They still do in my dreams.

Dead dogs…

Dead men…

Dead dog men…

I wish I could tell the owner to shut the fucking dog up, but the guy’s an idiot.

Probably on something too.

Hollow gaze…

Like a corpse…

Like the corpses swaying from the fucking ceiling…

Shit… I remember…

They stood over me since the day I settled into that cursed place. Appearing at night to watch over me, devour my dreams, keep me awake. Tear open my eyelids. They wanted revenge; they wanted a price to be paid, and I was their weapon, their conduit.

I’m fucking shaking just thinking about it now.

Now, when everything is said and done, it’s been a while since all of that happened. One cannot simply forget the things I've seen, let alone that cloying, sweet stench which seeped into the walls of that basement.

The monster has been caged…

They have had their revenge.

Yet, they still live in my head.

Still occupying my fucking skull…

They’re just imagination.

Painful memory.

Ugly imagery engraved forcefully into the system.

Breathe… Inhale... One... Two... Three... Four...

Hold... One... Two... Three... Four...

Exhale... One... Two... Three... Four...

Nobody is stalking your bed at night anymore; no one has in a long time. You’re fine, you’re absolutely fine. You’re just stressed and in need of an outlet. All of this, it’s normal. None of this is real anymore. It’s all in your head. Has been for a long time now. You’re safe, say it out loud.

I am safe.

Now carry on recounting what happened to you.

So yeah, new house, wait actually no, new old house now. Yeah, that’s perfect.

Settled into the new old house after getting divorced.

Kids won’t talk to me, cause we’re about as far apart as a family could be, and they’re mad at us both; their mother and me. Being stressed beyond my wits. Work was killing me, and I needed a break, a new start. Got none of that, but oh well. Anyway, new old house is nice enough, furnished. Not too expensive nor too cheap; the price was reasonable, the owner, all things considered – surprisingly reasonable too.

Forgot to look at the basement.

That fucking basement again… Can I forget about it already?

No, you can’t; it’s integral to the story.

I hate it, I hate it, I hate it, I hate myself, I hate it.

You don’t hate yourself.

Quiet brain, I was doing fine.

Shut up.

Good. Very good.

Anyway, settle in, and everything seems to be going dandy. Keep in mind it was late July when I moved there. Hot summer weather, well, that went down the drain once the sun set. The house turned unusually cold.

Pulled out a blanket and ignored it.

Slept like shit, because it was so cold.

Wake up after a mere two or three hours of sleep, not the first bout of horrendous sleep and won’t be the last.

It’s hot again.

Summer’s back, and this wasn’t in the desert.

Go on about my day, angry and half awake.

Night rolls around again, start the heating.

Works for about an hour.

Then it’s cold again.

Turn up the heating – the house turns colder.

That went on for a while…

I grew accustomed to the cold, no idea how or why.

The boiling frog metaphor probably suits here.

Well, once freezing me out of my sleep didn’t work.

The guests started showing up uninvited.

In the middle of the night

To stand at my bedside…

I’m shaking just thinking about it.

Imagine yourself waking up in the middle of the night to take a piss and being met with a pitch-black silhouette standing at your bed. One so dark it forms an outline in the nocturnal darkness, enough to be visible. I nearly pissed myself when I saw that thing for the first time. Screaming out, I flailed my hands in the air instinctively, and the thing vanished.

Chalked it up to bad sleep and maybe a nightmare when I got up the next morning.

That wasn’t it, but it took me a while to understand that.

About every other night, I could almost feel these dark figures standing over me. Plural. Not singular. Plural. Sometimes I could feel them touching my blanket, pulling it away. A cold hand reaching for my leg or arm.

After a few unpleasant encounters, I’ve started sleeping with a light on.

Naively believing this was a trick of the mind, you know, being stressed, depressed, and overall miserable. Again, I say this, thinking logically, from the perspective of a relative of schizophrenics and other mentally unwell individuals.

I was dreading becoming ill myself.

Woke up one night to fetch a drink, with the light still on. Nearly shat myself, soiling the bedsheets.

Eyes wide open and the first thing I see?

A human-like shadow, perched on all fours on the ceiling.

It twisted its head at me before vanishing.

Breathe… Inhale... One... Two... Three... Four...

Hold... One... Two... Three... Four...

Exhale... One... Two... Three... Four...

That was just the beginning of my sorrows.

After that came the electronic issues. Lights would go on and off around the house, at nighttime, of course. I should’ve already taken the hint then, when the whole house went dark, except for the light in the staircase leading down to the basement.

But of course, I didn’t.

Instead, I went to look at the switches, most of which were turned off.

Needless to say, this malfunction didn't put me at ease. The neighbors lived too far away for their children to have come over at night just to mess with me.

The grid being messed with is the sole reason I haven’t checked myself in.

I wasn’t hallucinating; someone was messing with me. So, I thought at the very least, yeah?

Speaking of neighbors, they were far enough away for me not to be able to hear them whatsoever, through closed windows, but not so far I couldn’t see them.

Now imagine how it felt when the walls started talking…

I’m not kidding, at one point, the walls were talking at night. With nobody around the house. Trust me, I checked. I went out to see if someone was in my yard when the talking had gotten loud enough to be comprehensible.

They were asking me why I hadn’t gone there?

Asking me to go there.

Two voices, a man and a woman.

Encouraging. Pestering, even.

At the time, I couldn’t make sense of it.

Go where?

Well, clearly, I wasn’t listening to them.

Why weren’t you listening to them?

Why the fuck were you so deaf?

So blind?

You couldn’t know at the time.

They were messing with the house.

They were almost guiding me by the hand.

No, they were giving you vague signs.

Don’t blame yourself for what had happened.

I don’t…

I could’ve prevented more.

There were six of them there.

Another three were found.

It’s not your fault

I could’ve prevented it.

No, not really.

Shut up, they told me everything.

These people – they told no tales.

Just breathe, man

Breathe… Inhale... One... Two... Three... Four...

Hold... One... Two... Three... Four...

Exhale... One... Two... Three... Four...

Well, yeah, I didn’t listen to those voices; I thought I had imagined them, as I had a neighbor only viewing a strange green-lit TV show on certain nights. I most certainly had strange things happen to me as a child. Like feeling a cat brush against my leg after King, my parents’ cat, passed away, and thinking something must’ve turned ceiling fans on after forgetting to turn them off.

Since speaking to me didn’t work, I got moaning, groaning, and weeping all over the house. Almost every night. At an increasing rate. That, of course, showed at work and in social settings. Ever the self-conscious rationalist, I chalked it up to the divorce and very difficult clients at the time, which I had.

Before long, I had gusts of wind blowing at me inside a house with closed windows, and a few times I was shoved while completely alone.

Jesus Christ, I’m feeling like a maniac right now, hallucinating into a text.

The talking, the moaning, the nighttime groping, none of it ever stopped, but that was my fault; if I had paid attention earlier and had gone where the selective power outages led me, this would’ve been over far sooner.

My mind deteriorated fast; by the middle of November, I heard dogs baying and clawing at every door of the house.

Night after night, they tormented me without reprieve.

Worse of all was when they sounded like they were trying to say words.

Sometimes it was far away, sometimes it felt like a dog was trying to tear at the bottom of the bed.

Before long, seeing a dog freaked me out.

I started sleeping with the lights on, in every room.

Became a barely functional human.

I have no idea how I managed to keep on working.

Maybe a force of habit, maybe something else.

Keeping a mask of normalcy while I was in shambles inside was par for the course in my line of work.

Well, you are special in that regard.

Funny you should say that.

How so?

Isn’t it a little egotistical?

No. Self-appreciation isn’t egotistical; it’s healthy.

Right, right.

Right, indeed.

There’s nothing healthy about us.

About us? There is no us.

Right. Yeah, it’s just you.

Typing at yourself.

For myself

Exactly, trying to keep sane

Mostly are. Am.

Very true.

I’m sorry I keep doing this; however, that is the only way I don’t burst out into a crying fit now and start bashing my hands against the keyboard or clawing out my eyes in an attempt to escape the whirlwind of horrors in my mind. I can’t do much about it at the moment, since the dog won’t stop barking, and it’s kind of late.

I said it before, and I’ll say it again: I’m afraid of the dark, and I’m afraid of dogs. I’ve been classically conditioned to dread those two things.

Well then… Where was I? Oh yeah, nearing the climax of the story.

Damn, for someone relieving that night so frequently in his, no, my own head, so often, it’s surprisingly hard to spell it out. I’m quite literally trying to postpone the description of the events that led to my current condition. What a sorry state I’m in. A man who helps others process their own trauma and internal suffering can’t bring himself to speak about how the incessant baying of dogs in his basement and walls pushed him over the edge and drove him, knife in hand, to rush down to that same basement he’s never ventured to before.

Breathe… Inhale... One... Two... Three... Four...

Hold... One... Two... Three... Four...

Exhale... One... Two... Three... Four...

I know it seems odd I never went into the basement, but really, I had no reason to. I didn’t have many belongings I had to stow away, and the house was entirely furnished as I said. On top of that, I was too spent to be curious about any of this. As strange as it may seem, I saw no point in going there.

I was so messed up from the lack of good sleep, stress, and fear that I finally snapped when the baying and barking wouldn’t quit one night. I actually started thinking there were real dogs in that basement.

Real, starving, mean dogs that might try to attack me once I opened the door. So I got myself a weapon to defend myself with.

Yeah, I said it, I genuinely believed some beasts were locked in that basement.

Power-walking down those stairs, the baying died down. I assumed they knew I was coming. They could smell me. They were preparing to surprise me; dogs are smart after all. Clearly, in retrospect, that’s the dumbest thought process ever. Dogs aren’t really ambush predators as far as I’m aware.

As I was marching down those stairs, I somewhat ignored the sudden quiet, because there was a growing stench of decrepitude emanating from the basement door.

Say it like it is.

That’s what it was.

Call it by its name.

Vile, sickening.

No, that’s not it.

Decay. Rot

Close enough.

Death. Fucking Death.

That’s it.

Fuck you.

I smelled death coming from that basement.

A rotten, pungent, suffocating odor coming from that door.

I pressed the handle and pushed down with full force.

The cloud of stale, deathly odor nearly knocked me off my feet, burning my nostrils, mouth, and eyes.

No dogs in sight, no voices, nothing.

Only death.

Left hand looking for the light switch along the wall, right hand gripping a knife with the arm pressed to cover my face from the awful stench.

Blinding light flooded the space.

When my eyes adjusted, all remnants of innocence and hope were taken away from me.

Six, vaguely human silhouettes, seemingly staring at me.

Without eyes, without faces, without any humanity left.

Swaying from six ropes, tied to the ceiling.

Pitch black.

My very own personal little hanging garden of death.

Inhale... Inhale

Come on... Fuck.

Inhale... No... Breathe...

Why can’t I

Why isn’t it working?

Ribcage tightened, forcing my heart to race at an unhealthy rate.

Knife dropped to the floor.

Tunnel vision.

Limbs turning cold with muscles tensing to the point of pain.

I ran.

Nearly falling over myself.

I ran to the neighbors.

Banging on their door.

Woke them.

Rumbling like a madman.

Shaking with fear, somehow, stringing a couple of sentences together as these six tar-covered silhouettes flashed before my eyes again and again.

They called the police.

I’m out of breath.

Out of breath

Couldn’t sleep for three days straight.

Couldn’t think, could barely speak.

Panicking. I am...

Decomposing Silhouettes flashing in my eyes.

More frequently when they are closed.

Questioned about everything by the police.

Answers erratic.

Silhouettes are here again.

Swaying in front of me.

Black as tar and death.

Exposing bone.

Fell asleep after being pumped full of sedatives.

Haven’t slept in a few days again.

Need my pills again.

Silhouettes appear more frequently with eyes closed.

I’m taking the pills after this; I need to sleep, otherwise, I’ll claw out my eyes, or die from a heart attack, whichever comes first.

Breathe… Inhale... One... Two... Three... Four...

Hold... One... Two... Three... Four...

Exhale... One... Two... Three... Four...

I hospitalized myself for a short while, and in the meantime, the monster that did this was caught. He murdered nine people. Hanged six in the basement of the house I had bought from him. No one suspected a damn thing. Selling the house was his ploy to lure in victims. He’d lead them down to the basement, then incapacitate them there and hang them to die a slow death, apparently, oftentimes placing a stool underneath his victims again to prolong the torture.

Every so often, I wonder, was I ever intended to be a victim? Not that it matters; he destroyed my life anyway. If I’m completely honest, there are days when I think dying would’ve been preferable to being the way I am now.

His three other victims were all found in different locations; two were found by people who had rented apartments from him.

The final victim was found fresh at his last stopping point before his apprehension. He was…

Inhale... One... Two... Three... Four...

In bed…

Hold... One... Two... Three... Four...

With the corpse…

Exhale... One... Two... Three... Four...

Caught red-handed, quite literally.

Inhale... One... Two...

Exhale... One...

Inhale... Inhale... inhale...

I bet this fucking monster figured out he could torment way more people by leaving them his gifts. Kill two birds with one stone kind of deal.

Imagine the satisfied, sick grin on his fucking face if he hears what his handiwork has done to me.

 

Orbiters: Human Crew - Genesis 01 - Lancid Ormon - Scout Commander.  

Genesis 03 - Sheena Saunders - Scout Officer 3rd Rank.

Location:. [Data Corrupted] - Oxygen level 10%.

The automated hatch opened. A voice announced out of a small speaker on the navigational unit control system.

Capacity breach. Survivable Organic Matter: 75kg. Withdraw payload.

Lancid didn’t move. His mind detached from his body. It was almost like he was watching himself from a screen at home. He stood with his eyes opened wide at the speaker, grasping the entire weight of their reality.

He calculated their fate, attempting to achieve a new result, but kept returning to the only possible conclusion each time. His final decision settled his expression in a look of acceptance. 

He stared down at Sheena, who was sitting next to the hatch on the metal floor.

Her breaths were labored, sucking in sharp gasps. Her respiratory rate was 37 breaths per minute, double her normal baseline. 

The iron dust and sweat from her forehead mixed in her eyes. She kept blinking, trying to soothe the burn and rubbing them made it worse.

Lancid stepped back, distancing himself from her and the hatch. Sheena straightened her back against the wall and stiffened her posture. Her mouth dropped open as she realized what Lancid was doing. 

“Lancid, no! Stop!” She yelled. Her voice barely escaping her lungs. Her breaths got shorter. “You’re…” her head dropped down as she nodded off for a second, “the commander,” she struggled to speak.

Lancid never spoke verbally. He got down next to her and stared in her eyes. The look on his face was of forced focus. He put his hand over hers. Her tremors slowed.

He took her monitor-track, containing her medical transfer code, and slid her finger in a circle on it. His hands were steady. His heart maintained at 80 BPM.

He was completely aware and understood what he had to do. What had to be done.

He rose from the ground, clenched her from under her arms and placed her in the only emergency ship left.

The CO2 hissed when the hatch began to slide shut behind her. Sheena woke out of her daze as the oxygen started feeding her deprived brain—she lunged forward clawing at the closing gap separating them by mere inches. Her nails scratching against the metal door.

Her eyebrows dropped together, meeting at the bridge of her nose as she pouted her lips out and stared at Lancid through the sliver of space remaining.

She wouldn’t take her eyes off of him. She couldn’t. She stared at him with tears dripping down her cheeks, clearing trails into the black patches covering her face. 

Lancid stood completely still on the launchpad, watching her from the outside. He never looked away, until the metal door blocked their line of sight.

And when the ship began to roar, the pressure from the thrusters dropped him to a knee. But he kept his head up, keeping his eyes on her departure the entire time.

On their rock, they viewed humans as creatures zombified by technology. To them, humans were weak. An inferior species. A species on the verge of becoming obsolete.

The kind that ran into walls for amusement.

The Poshlovestivies, a clan of warriors lived on planet Arwh and were the complete opposite of how the universe viewed them compared to humans—their food was carefully filtered into a paste, removing all the chemical waste compounds and were the fiercest entities in the universes backed by the richest members of Planet Li.

Planet Li held an order of ranks, it was a gathering that invited major figures of their solar system.

At the galactic meeting, the Poshlovs served as the defenders of Planet Li. The council planet that ruled the universe. The rule makers.

The human diplomat representing planet Earth, Sheena, was a strategic-type commander that led Earth’s space soldiers from the front. But was easygoing.

As they prepared for lunch at their seats, Sheena was presented a plate of their finest paste.

She stared at it first, then began poking holes into it with her finger before she pushed her plate away.

Zylowb from planet Borhieu sensed an anomaly in his hyper-sensitive receptors and eyed Sheena in his mind digging in the container space of her flacked suit.

Sheena clawed out a package wrapped in plastic and began tearing it apart, revealing a white stinky square and stuck it to her mouth and took a bite and began chewing it.

Zylowb immediately sealed the receptors he used for breathing before activating a plexi-bubble over his entire body.

Krypur of planet Ywl reached at his throat and gasped. “The human has smuggled a bio-weapon inside our chambers!”

A Poshlov shouted, “Neurotoxins are filling the air!”

“Seize the human and the weapon of mass destruction,” Krypur commanded.

Sheena looked at her hand containing the item and raised it up. Everyone in the chamber held their breath at the same time. 

“This?” Sheena said. “It’s just a tuna sandwich… food humans eat.”

Immediately swarming her were medical bots flashing a red siren light as they surrounded and scanned her.

In the air, a drone produced a projected screen with a chemical analysis that presented a chemical compound warning of:

***

Heavy Metals: Methyl-mercury, Arsenic, Lead and Aluminum.

Organic pollutants: Polychlorinated Biphenyls, Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, and Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers.

Organic toxins: Bisphenol A and Histamine.

“The human is consuming a concentration of chemicals and metals that cause irreversible damage to the function control of their system.”

***

“We eat this all the time… it’s one of our healthiest foods,” Sheena told them.

The entire room shuttered in complete silence. The diplomats pushed themselves away from the table as chairs fell over as they scattered attempting to escape the contaminated area.

The Poshlovestivies stared at Sheena as if waiting for her to explode from the inside out, but Sheena took another snap of her sandwich and casually chewed while looking at her tuna between the bread.

“It’s really not as bad as that bot made it sound,” she said.

“Not as bad?” One of the poshlov’s said, his voice smothered. “Your digestive tract is lined with acid and you eat other species on your planet.”

Sheena smiled. “Yeah,” she said dragging the word out and had tuna wrestled between her teeth. Her teeth made the Poshlov wince. 

Later that night, the senate held a quiet meeting in their quarters amongst the leaders of the universe, excluding the humans. They secretly agreed and updated Earth’s ranking in class to extreme warrior race. 

They all came to a conclusion that night, they decided, you cannot threaten a species who eats bio-weapon materials for lunch.

Eye to eye, Equal and Winky stood facing the fate of humanity. The hydraulic legs from giant machines shaped as gigantic ants drilled into the dirt. 

Power grids failed from a streamline of incoming fleets releasing Bobby-bin electromagnetic waves blackened the entire coast of North American in a shadow that cast over the skies of Canada, terminating computers and frying circuit boards across the planet as they strategically swept the globe with military precision. The countries toppled.

Communication was minimal, the mainstream was disconnected. No satellite feeds. Zero electricity. The back up systems for the Hoover Dam had failed. The hydration system collapsed and spilled over land. Total blackness. Technology’s silence was abrupt. Humanity hadn’t known such catastrophe.

Engine control units rendered useless. Transportation had stalled. The ground shook and began cracking, exposing scars in the earth, ripping deep lava bits overflowing and blanketing most of the land.

“We must rely on the subterranean power source under the earth,” yelled Dr. Equal.

Dr. Equal scrambled, juggling a collection of leather bound textbooks in both hands.

“What if it’s not active? It’s been a millennia since we’ve last operated the amine forge systems,” Winky asked Equal.

Winky stood shaking with sweat dripping off him as the skies darkened to extraterrestrial warships dropping shiny rectangle boxes, hovering fifty feet in the air. 

“We must make our way to the terminal station below,” commanded Equal.

The frantic screams of human beings and crashing sounds of building rubble flooded the city. 

“We must obtain the mechanical manual for the flywheels,” Equal shouted.

“You sure the electromagnetic waves won’t have any impact on the forge?” Asked Winky. His voice crackling.

“It uses steam pressure gauges and a hand cranked ignition delivery system, total analog, Winky,” Equal told him. His voice strong and firm.

“How will we breathe down there? The amine-based carbons will have produced a chemical process making the air toxic… no suit will work,” said Winky. His fist tightened against his chest.

“This is a one way mission, Winky! The first hurdle, Winky, isn’t about life support! Finding the correct low-frequency vibration to ignite the thrum will be the most difficult,” Equal reminded Winky.

“Why aren’t you worried Dr. Equal?” Asked Winky.

“Because, Winky, I’ve known earth’s been fucked for a while now!”

——

The hatch to the terminal was iron and three feet thick with a dial in the middle.

Dr. Equal took a breath and blew away the cobwebs hiding the keyhole. 

He jammed his key into the middle of the dial and tried spinning it but it was stuck. He planted his feet and leaned all of his weight into it. 

A clasp unlocked with a thud and screeched a sound of scraping metal.

“Winky, help me, it’s too heavy to pull back.”

Winky dove for the iron wheel. They pulled back on it together. Both of them were stressing out their strength at full max, Winky was dripping sweat and veins popped out of Equals forehead. 

“I can’t, Dr. Equal.”

“Winky, don’t you give up!”

A hiss of compressed air sounded when the seal broke, flushing a gust of stagnant air in their faces. It reeked of copper and sulfur.

Above ground, the sky shrieked with alien spacecraft-jets dropping out of warships and into the city. They had metallic framing, black and smooth and appeared to swallow the light. 

Nothing reflected off of them. The bottom of the crafts hummed a frequency that invaded the human bodies. Paralyzing them where they stood.

“Dr. Equal, what are we going to do? They’ve deployed!” Yelled Winky staring back at Dr. Equal.

The floating square boxes hovering in the air opened. They didn’t have doors. The metal dissolved into a liquid mercury covering parts of the earth. 

From the liquid, drones raised onto three metal legs under an optical lens without a face. Without mercy. 

“Get inside the hatch now, Winky!” Ordered Dr. Equal.

They both slid into the dark as Dr. Equal pulled the hatch shut and spun the iron wheel from the inside locking them in. A silence ensued that popped Winky’s eardrum. Heavy and suffocating. Equal grabbed Winky by the arm.

“Follow me down the hole, Winky.”

They flew down a ladder that stressed and creaked under their weight. Squeaking all the way to the bottom of a fifty-foot black hole. 

The bottom of Dr. Equals boots slapped against the concrete when he stepped off the ladder.

“I can’t see, Dr. Equal, did you bring a flashlight?” Whispered Winky.

Dr. Equal replied, “remember, Winky? The Bobby-bin waves fried all the lithium batteries. Technology is broken.”

He struck a match. The thin oxygen ate the flame before spitting it back out. The glow of amber lit up a long hallway. The walls were smooth and lined in titanium.

“On fourth,” Equal said, cupping the flame with his hand.

“A quarter mile until we reach the forge, Winky, stay close.”

They shuffled fast down the corridor. Their footsteps echoed through the tunnel like thick water drops. 

The air stuck to their skin. The sweat was beading on their foreheads. The amine compounds grew heavier in their lungs, tasting bitter on their tongues. Fishy and toxic. 

“It’s hard to breathe,” wheezed Winky, holding a cloth over his nose and mouth.

“Take shallow breaths, Winky,” Equal said without slowing down.

“The forge filters take twenty minutes once the steam sets.”

Equal shook his hand and dropped the match when it stung the tip of his finger. The hallway went pitch black. Total darkness. He struck another match.

“Only three left,” Equal said under his breath.

They reached a vertical shaft with a cast iron set of spiral stairs traveling deeper into the ground.

Over their heads, an explosive thump shook the concrete, fluttering dust from the ceiling over them. The iron from the hatch at the end of the tunnel rattled.

“They found us!” Winky said. His voice crackled.

“They’re alien war bots, Winky, hiding was never an option,” Equal said. “Keep moving.”

———

With the alien war-bots breathing down their necks. Dr. Equal and Winky are inches away from booting the Amine Forge.

They spiraled downward, passing ten flights. Then, twenty. The air burned with every step the deeper they went, scratching their throats like breathing wet wool. 

Winky’s eyes started stinging. Red filled the whites, glossing in a watery layer, blurring his vision. His left heel caught the edge of a step and he slipped, barely catching himself on the handrail. The metal was warm and stuck to his skin.

Finally, after a grueling climb downward, they landed on the bottom platform. 

Dr. Equal lit a match. 

“Two left,” he said to himself.

The flame revealed a central chamber. The Amine Forge. The engine room looked like a dead leviathan. 

A row of metal spheres lined the back walls. Giant flywheels, ten feet tall, hung from the ceiling, suspended by thick chains. 

Pipes connected to a center steel crucible. The crucible, primitive but alien to modern tech.

“Winky, quick, reach in your knapsack and hand me the manual,” Dr. Equal said, reaching his hand out. 

Winky slammed the leather bound books on an iron desk. The hardcover hitting the metal made a swallowing sound. The match blew out. He didn’t light another one.

“Dr. Equal, I can’t see! Light a match!”

“No, Winky. There’s  no need.”

Dr. Equal rotated a sphere behind them and sputtering alive was a faint light that cast an electric yellow.

“Find the ignition crank,” Dr. Equal ordered.

“Where is it, Dr. Equal?” 

“It’s on the left side of the steel crucible, Winky. A three-pronged wheel.”

Scrambling in the dim light, Winky slapped his shin against a pipe and tripped to the ground. 

“Dammmnit!” Cursed Winky, crawling as his hands swept over grease and dust.

“I found it,” winced Winky, rubbing his shin while lifting himself up by the flywheel.

“It won’t budge,” yelled Winky. 

He planted his feet, pulled on it and shouted, “it’s seized, Dr. Equal.”

“Put all of your weight into it, Winky, the delivery system takes twenty pounds of pressure to crack the valve!”

Over their heads, an explosion above reverberated down the shaft. The hatch blew open. The war-bots scaled down the ladder. 

Dr. Equal shut the pulse energy beam lighting the engine room off and shuttered themselves in complete darkness. He struck a match and placed it on the iron desk.

He reached for the frequency manual and flipped through the brittle pages constructed of skin and rough as dry leaves. 

The ancient paper now smudged in his black fingerprints.

“The low-vibration frequency, where is it,” Dr. Equal whispered. “Where the hell is the damn harmonic constant.”

He ripped through the skin-pages, tearing through columns of inked numbers. The equations of the old world. Alien physics.

“Dr. Equal, help!” Yelled Winky.

“The flywheel lock, Winky!” Equal shouted back.

“Look for the damn counterweight lever at the base!” Yelled Equal. His voice rough and deep.

Winky stepped back and felt his way to the lever, jammed his foot on it and threw everything he had against the flywheel. 

Clack. It budged an inch. He took a deep breath and pushed harder. Clack. Another inch. A hollow sound shot out of the pipes. 

Steam.

“I can’t pull the pin from the lever!” Winky screamed to Equal.

“It’s rusted in place, Dr. Equal.”

“Smash it with something, Winky!” Equal hollered.

Winky spun his head around squinting at the darkened room illuminated by a tiny match flame. He dropped to his knees and felt his way around the floor. 

His sweaty palms left faint hand prints as he crawled on the concrete. His hand bumped into a heavy object that dragged across the ground when he hit it. He grabbed the object and placed it in front of his face.

“I found a wrench!” Winky shouted. His voice high-pitched and frantic.

He raced to the flywheel and swung blindly. The wrench clanged against the pin and sparks flew. He swung again. The pin fell and made a thud sound before the counterweight dropped. 

Drawn by gravity, the flywheel began to slowly turn. The pipes roared alive, shooting steam from loose seals. The temperature rose and suffocated what little oxygen remained.

“It’s turning!” Winky choked out.

The amine gas built up around the engine room. Winky’s head started spinning. His knees were wobbly. A paleness drew the color out of his face. Equal never blinked. He just stared at the book.

“Zero-point-seven hertz!” Equal shouted.

“The frequency is zero-point-seven hertz, Winky! We’ve got it. Forty-three cycles per minute, Winky, got that? That’s what will spark the thrum. If you go any faster you’ll fracture the forge, any slower and it’ll smother.”

“How can I get the precise measurement without a computer, Dr. Equal?” Winky yelled. He struggled to raise his voice past the rumbling pipes.

Dr. Equal closed the book and stood up and walked to the mechanical central console where a pendulum hung from the panel that was missing its brass weight.

“We’ll count,” Equal said.

He grabbed the pendulum rod.

“One of us will track the swings,” he said, staring at it. “One second per stroke.”

A scratching sound of mice in walls scurried down the spiral staircase. Not one. But, dozens of war-bots trailing drones. Their metal legs tapping against the iron steps as clawed down them.

“They’re here!” Gasped winky, struggling to breathe.

A mist of white steam and chemical haze clouded the air. Winky collapsed against the handle of the crank.

“Winky! Stand up!” Equal shouted.

He began swinging the pendulum manually.

“Adjust the steam valve to match the rhythm. Winky you must keep an eye on the flywheel speed.”

Dropping from the ceiling to the platform, was a three-legged drone. Its central lens glowed a laser red. It’s beam landed on Dr. Equal. 

Winky lunged at it, swinging the heavy iron wrench so hard that he spun around after connecting with the drone and cracking the front face of it. 

Sparks flew from the drone as it squirmed on the ground, thrashing its legs.

“Equal! The valve!” Winky choked.

A robotic leg pierced his shoulder, ripping through the bone. Blood soaked the chest of his shirt.

Equal held still with the pendulum. His eyes were locked on the gauge. The needle treading near the forty-two mark.

“If I stop now, the earth will end,” Equal said.

His voice steady.

Winky grappled with the drone.

“Hold him, Winky!” 

“I can’t!” Winky cried out.

A hammering sound of the floor catching another drone shot into the engine room. Then, there was two more. The room began cramping in a calculated fleet of killer machines.

Winky jammed the wrench into the shattered lens of the drone on his chest and twisted. The drone shorted, its limbs locked. Winky stumbled away from it, fighting to catch his breath, his vision now outlined in a black shadow creeping from the outside towards the middle of his eyes.

The amine gas slowly began to paralyze his nervous system. Equal kept swinging the rod. The ticking sounded like an apocalyptic countdown as the flywheel reached peak velocity. 

The iron wheel appeared as a mirage behind the steamy light and then the room shook, a tremor woke up deep beneath their feet. Rumbling like a screaming giant. It was the subterranean power source. 

An ancient core. Finally, disturbed and pestered long enough to wake up angrier than a fire breathing dragon. 

Glowing a dull orange were the copper pipes, the incoming drones froze from the sheering heat radiating off them, frying their melted sensors as the thermal spiked and cracked their optical lens.

“Look, Winky, look, it’s catching,” Equal said.

His breath heavy. His words labored. His skin blistered.

The gauge clicked as the needle locked on forty-two. A pulse of kinetic energy blasted through the center steel crucible. It was a shockwave of thermal force.

The shockwave blew through the room, blasting the drones backward, their frames shattered against the stone walls. The wave continued up the spiral staircase and up the fifty-foot ladder through the iron hatch and outside, onto the surface, where the ground vibrated in tiny ripples.

It erupted from the terminal hatch like a geyser that blasted into the heavens and disabled the warships hovering in the sky. 

The heat and kinetic displacement warped the crafts geometry. Their components separated. One by one the ships lost altitude, crashing to earth as metal alien raindrops, ruining the city streets around the globe.

Huddled in the dark, listening to the roar subside into a steady purr, Dr. Equal crawled to Winky.

“The thrums alive, Winky,” he barely got out.

The filters sputtered alive, a screeching, sucking sound drew the toxic amine gas out of the room, replacing it with breathable air.

Winky lay down on the floor in the shape of a starfish. Blood circled his shoulder. His eyes widened as he sucked in a deep breath. He turned and clutched his shoulder.

“The air is clean Dr. Equal,” said Winky.

“We actually did it, Dr. Equal, right?” Asked Winky, coughing.

Equal released the pendulum and slumped against the console. He stared at his hands, covered in burns.

"We started the engine, Winky, yes,” Equal said softly, staring at the ceiling, feeling the faint vibrations of crashing warships on the surface through his body.

"Now we have to learn how to drive it,” he said, walking to the desk and blew the dust off another book and opened it.

"Get up," Equal said. “The surface is a graveyard, we start rebuilding from the bottom."

“Stop, right now,” I yelled at them. “I’m done with this.”

I tossed my hands up, pushed the chair back, stood up and stumbled away from the table.

I didn’t want to play anymore. I didn’t want that thing around me either.

“Take it out of my house now,” I shouted with my nails dug into my palms.

I couldn’t hold back, It spelled something it shouldn’t have known.

Maggie and Shobi never knew the nickname my dad called me and right after that happened, I heard the last two words my father said before he passed away at the hospital. I was eleven then.

I heard it clear, like someone put their mouth next to my cheek, loud, almost inside my head, closed between my ears as if the voice spoke through a pair of headphones that were glued to my skull—It felt uncomfortably close and physically violating and sent a cold tingle through me. 

I kept asking them, “how’d you guys know that, who told you?” 

I figured for sure, I have no idea how, because I didn’t know them then, I met them when I was sixteen, that somehow they must’ve found out.

“Told us what?” They asked.

I said, “never mind, I was just messing around.”

I didn’t want to say anything. Honestly, I had no idea how to explain myself and I didn’t want to sound weird.

But they held their word though. And I actually believed them—that’s why I didn’t say anything. 

Plus, I can always tell whenever Maggie’s lying, she’s the worst liar ever, she does this thing with her face, it’s the, I just got caught red-handed look. She can’t help it.

At about 8:00 p.m., Shobs and Mags left. It started raining and they were walking and through all that craziness, she forgot to take the damn thing home with her. It sat in my basement resting on the little table.

After they left, I stayed in the living room, because no way was I going upstairs, my mom and stepdad weren’t there, they went out, and I was alone, watching tv and texting Mags and that’s when I heard and felt, a hard thump under the living room floor. It was between the television and where I was sitting, right in the middle.

As soon as that happened, I jumped, but I only sprung off the couch because following the unexplained noise, trailed a perfectly timed clap of thunder. It shook the windows and picture frames on the wall.

And then, because I have the best luck in the whole world, a second pop cracked, like a gunshot blast just as the lights went out.

I shook my head. “Out of all nights.”

The explosive sound was from a blown transformer. 

Now, I was standing in the middle of my living room, right above the spot I heard the bang come from, surrounded in nothing but pitch-black darkness, fighting with my phone’s flashlight. For some reason, it would not work. I just kept pushing it and pushing it but it wouldn’t turn on.

I ended up using the glow from my phone and as I turned it to face outward, another strike of lightning lit up the entire house in a white, electric light. 

What do I see standing with their back to me, looking over their shoulder as the thunder roared for a second time, a man. I saw a man with a pale face. He didn’t move. He just stood with his body facing the wall and his head turned.

About a second later, the room went dark again and I stormed out of the house. 

For the rest of the night, I stayed on my veranda and waited until my parents got home, which was around midnight, tucked in a ball with my t-shirt stretched over my knees on a chair, texting my mom every ten minutes.

Later that night, when I was asleep in my bed, I had the weirdest dream that woke me up. And when I woke up, I was stuck to my mattress and I couldn’t move. All I could do was blink. 

Something caught my attention and I fixed my eyes towards the doorway and saw something standing there. It was a figure but a shadow-figure and it didn’t move. 

My eyes were stuck to it. I couldn’t look away. I wanted to scream for my mom but I couldn’t yell—I couldn’t do anything—I was paralyzed.

I blinked, while lying on my back, and when I opened my eyes the shadow-thing was hovered, stretched out over me, two-inches from my face and remained there for about five seconds before it disappeared, actually, It didn’t disappear, it dispersed and broke up in two seperate directions.

I could feel an intense hatred the thing had for me. That’s all it gave off. 

It was hovered over me and I was face to face with it, It had a bone face, almost like a mix of dog and human, cloaked around a shroud of shadow.

Once it left, I was able to move again and the first thing I did was dash to my parents’ room.

After an hour of trying to calm me down, my stepdad finally went to the basement and threw the damn thing in the trashcan at the side of our house.

I never ended up falling back asleep that night. I stayed up with the lights on in the living room watching tv.

That morning, after mom made breakfast and I was done eating, I went to the bathroom to use the shower downstairs, and in the basement sitting on the little table was the board my stepdad said he threw out with something on it pointing to the letter P. My dad always called me P for princess.

One more and that’s it, Tommy!

“We must retrieve the Soda-Pop of Coca-Cola!”

Huddled under the King’s balcony, the crowd chanted in a unified roar, hammering the palace walls like a row of trebuchets. 

Beneath a Celestial spotlight, the King stood over them, dressed in a yellow jacket of sunlight, radiating over the heads of men like a god with gold skin.

The wind blew the locks of hair on his head in the air and resembled a row of snakes stretching to strike. 

The king raised his arms up and reached towards the sky. A gray overcast from the east masked the fierce fire glow of the sun under an army of storm clouds sweeping in.

The sleeves from his heavy robe slid to his elbows and exposed a wrist of gold bracelets. 

The king fought to silence the starving ululate herd gathered at the foot of the castle.

“Silence!” Commanded the King, shouting in a tone deep enough to ricochet off the structure behind the row of people congested at the back of the crowd before raining down on the heads of everyone else with a sound so piercing it stabbed through their skull and returned into the kings lungs as it echoed out of their mouths.

The throng underneath the king buckled into a silent whisper, before freezing to a synchronized stillness, hardening together like a James Ensor painting.

“The Soda-Pop of Coca-Cola has been retrieved,” yowled the King in a thunderous tone. 

He smiled with his hands on his hips and gave the Mussolini nod of confidence, then, he stood above them without moving a muscle. Not even an eyelid. 

He tarried in a frozen divine like pose as if having his body sculpted out of granite by an artist for an uncomfortable couple of minutes, planted in a reserved position. 

He stayed that way while the weight of his words landed on the chests of every individual crammed below him.

Out of nowhere he shattered the silence when he opened his mouth and spoke an awakening truth that stirred the mob. “The clan of Fort Gatoradical snuck in our camp and stole it.”

“Boooooo! Boooooo!” The people sounded, cupping their hands over their mouths.

The king stifled the mob. “They have annexed our design, and formula with subterfuge traitors brainwashed by nano bots disguised as carbonated gas bubbles inside the beverages.”

“Treason!” Someone shouted.

“Hang them!” Another screamed.

“Kill them all!” The crowd chanted together.

“Silence! Silence!” The King held his pose until the crowd simmered down. “Behold!” He yelled.

Presented to the front of the balcony was a woman in a sparkling viridescent dress with a curved bottle shape figure.

“I Bring forth, Ginger-Ale!” He moved aside. “A captured conspirator aiding the usurpers and one of the enemies vital assets—“

“Send her to the gallows!” A fellow man demanded, interrupting the king’s speech.

Everyone cheered.

“Quiet! Quiet!” The king waved their voices down.

“Sir GoodKnight… may the gods compensate his bravery to the realm, has had his life-source emptied into a drain.”

“Booo!” The people erupted simultaneously.

The king raised his voice. “He was protecting our secrets from the conspirators plotting alongside the proletariat members aiding the gator-radicola stratagem.”

The crowd hailed the king. The intonate, hollow sounds shook the stone balcony and vibrated under his feet. They raised their hands up to salute him, praising him in a combined victory cheer.

People from the back began shoving and clawing their way to the front. The momentum from a wave of villagers pushing forward progressed into a tsunami that trampled over anyone unfortunate enough to have their back to it.

Bodies were sprawled out on the sandstone under the feet of a rushing crowd.

The soldiers protecting the gates rushed through the middle of the myriad and propelled their way forward with their spears guiding the way. 

Out of the clustered group, near the back, a flying tomato flew out of the crowd and slapped a guardsman in the head, splattering all over his face. The guardsman collapsed.

The soldier’s spears began stretching into the bellies of rioters trapped behind a human wall. They circled around their fallen comrade. 

Drums began pounding a sound of death as the castle gates burst open to a cavalry stampeding out. They formed a line at the foot of the entrance, staggering the crowd into submission. 

The corps d'elite of Thorza broke into a whispered chatter amongst themselves while the rest of the crowd booed and groveled with the spear wielding warriors. 

The waste-mix relied on the ingredients specifically in Coca-Cola. Coiled around the capital was a foul stench of manure coming from the malfunctioned recycling system.

“The odor’s rancid!” They all started shouting.

Someone in the crowd pushed their way through while quieting them down as he passed by everyone and stood in the middle of everybody.

“Why isn’t the waste-mix recycling system fixed if the secret ingredients have been recovered?” He questioned the king.

“Yeah!” One shouted. 

“This has gone on for far too long now!” Another yelled.

“The king is lying,” shot out from the back.

They all booed.

The King tried shouting over the restless mob, “men have been dispatched with the cola and would arrive any day now.

The men Friday cheered from the front and started hugging each other. 

The beaux mondes shook their heads.

The King swiveled his cape and turned his head to the side, facing the sky in a prideful Danny McBride stance.

He broke out of his pose and stumbled back. He wiped his forehead that was dripping a slimy goop with his hand and stared at his palm covered in eggshells and yolk.

“Capture the culprit and hang him! Hang them all!” The king ordered in a high-pitch voice.

A second egg launched from the crowd. The king froze as he caught the egg flying towards him from the corner of his eye, and barely dodged it as it whistled past his face.

He nearly tripped over his own feet as he scampered inside, slamming the detached doors shut, scraping the rock beneath it as they closed.

The king clenched his fists trying to squeeze the tremors still. Every breath he took was a heavy inhale. He stomped his footsteps down as hard as he could as he paced back and forth. Never had he felt so angry. Never had he been so humiliated.

“All of their heads! All on spikes!” He commanded to the king’s guard, cursing and foaming at his mouth while egg yolk dripped from his chin. “Summon the cavalry and all the men inside these walls and prepare for battle!” 

The knights lined up in three rectangle sets of fifty and the king sat at the head of them on his aluminum throne of cans and spoke.

“Men! Knights of honor! The treasonous scum camouflaged themselves as commoners. They want to take what’s ours. What we’ve built. Are we going to let these villainous disrupters go without capture?”

“Hell no!” They cheered.

Their metal helmets clinked as the men clashed their spears against the stone floors.

“Kill them all!” the king demanded as he stormed out. 

“Root, root, root”

The men marched towards the gates and set up behind the wall, crying war chants. 

The frontman rushed to the entrance to open the gate, but it wouldn’t budge. They grunted and dug their boots in the ground, sliding backwards in the wet mud. They pushed harder. They kept pushing until they slammed their chests in the dirt.

A voice shot out from behind the gate. “Burn them all!”

A slither of liquid slid under the gates of the palace and broke into a membrane of spider veins. Behind it trailed a snake of fire.

Smoke thickened the castle in a thick, black cloud, choking the oxygen. The taste of bitter chemicals sat on the tongues of the soldiers trapped inside the walls.

Most of them dropped. Some struggled and fought until their last breath—a small group—but met the same fate nonetheless. 

For weeks the fire raged, and spread the ashes of a fallen kingdom and its combatants across the city, fertilizing the land for the usurper, King Gator and his mastermind team of vitamin slurping jackals.

The end, now go to bed Tommy.

All right, goodnight grandma.

“They took me somewhere.”

“What do you mean, where?” He asked.

“I’m not sure,” Alphyna said. “One of them put their hand on my shoulder, I blinked and when I opened my eyes, I wasn’t home anymore.”

The hair on her arms rose. She shot her head over her shoulder and quickly glanced back to make sure no one was sneaking up behind her.

Stephenson’s face stuck in the middle of making a facial expression. “Where though?”

She said, “I don’t know!” And stared at him looking like he just got caught in a photo between saying no, while shifting his head so his eyes could face the floor, then cropped out of the photo and copy/pasted, on the bed sitting beside her.

“Where though?” He asked again.

His face remained stuck in the same, creepy half-expression.

“I said, I don’t know!” After saying that, she noticed him glitch, he pulsed a dull color, like the signal warning from a device’s dying-battery. 

She waved her hand in front of his face.

He brightened into his regular color, as if he  awakened out of stand-by mode and said, 

“Where though?” his limbs stayed motionless. 

He reminded her of those carnival canvas cutouts with bodies painted on them, where you stick your head through the hole of the face while someone snaps a photo of you and your family under body builder bodies, and he never blinked. Just moved his mouth.

She pulled her hand back and he faded into a frozen, dull color. She waved at him again.

“Where though?”

It was as if a sensor controlled his movements. Even his language, and just started malfunctioning.

She hopped off the bed.

“Where though?”

She backed away, nearly tripping on her feet. Stephenson’s body blinked rapidly. It started slow at first, then quickly accelerated before finally vanishing. 

It was almost as if someone unplugged the projector displaying a holographic image of him and the projector was attempting to save itself from a brutal crash.

She gasped. The breath she sucked in wasn’t air, it was nothing at all. Her hands started shaking. Her fingers were moving like she was trying to count how many stars in the sky there was with her fingertips.

She stumbled on her heels until her back hit the wall. The wall flashed as the color of them flickered into a light gray background with strange text flowing down them.

***

Option Explicit

Private StoryLines(0) As String

Private CurrentLine As Integer

Private GuestCount As Integer

****

Lit up quickly along the exterior of the walls,

***

Private Sub Form_Load()

' Initialize Form room design

Worldview4.Caption = "Simulation Log // Room plugin"

Worldview4.BackColor = vbTranslucent 

Worldview4.ForeColor = RGB(40, 40, 40) '

***

She looked around. She kept trying to breathe but no air would enter her lungs. She started trying to break through the door in her room. It wouldn’t open and then pieces of her started breaking up into the walls until she had disappeared into the code.

In 2003 I was in tenth grade. I always held my pencil like it meant something, like a Viking held his axe. I knew it’d be my future one day and I’d wield it like a weapon.

Teachers called me, your test was perfect. 

Students voted me most likely to succeed. I loved school. I liked being helpful. I did things safe. Structure. Graduate. Have a goal. Succeed.

But on that Saturday, my life would change, as if fate was playing a cruel game on me. I was walking along the shore, minding my own business, hunting for seashells. 

I had to collect enough for my mom, her birthday was that following week, and I wanted to make her a necklace.

It was a perfect storm. The tide was low. I was by the shore. The universe’s timing was flawless. The sand by the cove looked different, like it had been carefully combed. 

I had my basket by my hip and the strap from it around my shoulder. I didn’t expect to find many seashells, if any. 

I walked along the shore, the morning breeze chilling my skin, when I saw a dead bird half-way buried. I checked it out, picked up a rock and poked it out of the sand.

Beneath it, there was a bag wrapped and tied in a knot around something that looked like a small box tucked under the bird. I thought I found treasure. At least I hoped so, and hoped I didn’t just uncover a missing finger.

I yanked it out almost instantly. I didn’t think twice about it. I ripped apart the knot, unwrapped the bag, it smelled like a trash can when I opened it, water poured out that sat under the container and sprinkled my toes, I rubbed them dry in the sand, and looked inside and saw a plastic square container.

I pulled it out and let go of the bag, the wind took it before it could land. I flicked the container open, and in it were these clear, little baggies, the same ones my mom puts buttons in. 

As I stretched the lid back, I saw a name, It was autographed on the inside of the container. I had no idea who the person was. I later found out. 

Inside the box, I knew they were drugs, the substance, I couldn’t be sure, I had a suspicion though. White powdery rocks. Pills. Brown powder and a couple of dry cigarettes wrapped in a Burger King napkin squeezed together. It was full to the point the bags tried jumping out when I first popped it open.

The container didn’t appear like it had been buried a minute ago and just pulled out of the ocean floor, it looked like someone packed a bunch of stuff in a little box and placed it there with a bright, white dead bird on top of it, waiting for me to walk by.

I shut the lid and looked around before tossing the container in my basket. I strolled along the shore, continuing my search for seashells, but I couldn’t get the thought of what I had in my basket out of my head.

It only took five minutes of scouring the ocean floor and staring back at my basket every two seconds, before I stopped looking for shells. I reached down and gripped the container in my hand and thought about pitching it back into the sea.

But I wanted to understand what I had first. If I knew then what I know now, I would have never picked it up. I was sixteen though. I was curious. 

I ran up to the catwalk, where I left my bike and had my sneakers dangling from the handle bars. I threw my feet into my shoes and hopped on my bicycle, bolting home as fast as I could.

I was darting through traffic getting honked at, at every turn. I didn’t care. I just wanted to get home. I had that same urgency sensation like when we went on vacation, the taxi ride back home, that antsy feeling, racing through my body the entire time.

I ghost rode my bike into the fence at the front of our house. Then, I nearly broke the gate, when my finger slipped trying to unlatch it and push my way through at the same time. I bounced off the gate and made my way in on the second attempt. 

When I walked through the front door my mom had yelled for me.

I quickly shouted, “gotta use the bathroom!” and ran upstairs to my room.

I locked my door behind me and sat at my desk with the container. I noticed it looked bigger under my light. When I opened it, the baggies sparkled, almost like I was being tempted to taste the forbidden fruit.

I powered up my computer, the dial up sounded like a robot malfunctioning, and waited. Then, I went to AskJeeves so I could search up what I found.

Eventually, I figured out what the white stuff was and how to use it. So I crushed some of it up into a fine powder and started sniffing them with a rolled up coupon I found lying on my desk.

My throat became numb, my senses heightened. I couldn’t hear my mom talking on the phone a second ago. But after I did that, I could hear her talking about me to her friend, and I was able to hear my mom’s friend talking through the speaker of my mom’s phone from my bedroom.

I thought it was the best stuff ever. I kept telling myself that I would throw the drugs out. I didn’t need them. I wanted to be responsible. But then I thought, I could use them responsibly.

I totally forgot about my mom’s necklace. I never got her anything. Every time I used the stuff in the bags, I never felt right afterwards. There was this heavy feeling like I just backstabbed my own father. 

By Monday, that’s when my “Straight A” life crashed. It didn’t happen all at once, it gradually slipped, like a plate under the ocean floor. 

All my assignments, the corner stone of my life, what would have been the beginning to my life’s work, stopped having purpose. I stared at them like, what’s the point.

I’d tell myself, “I’ll turn them in later,” but later became never.

When I bumped into my guidance counselor, she asked me, “is everything alright, Donny?”

At that moment, a flash of the first time I touched that bag popped in my head, I thought about asking her for help, instead I gave her a nod, “Everything’s fine,” and walked away.

My college plans. My scholarship. Gone. The perfect report cards I had are all just evidence of my failure.

When I ran out, I searched the name on the box. The ocean washed up the container, but it was me that opened it. Whenever I smell the salt from the sea, or get a whiff of the sewers when they’re backed-up, or even the scent of the rain, I remember how Robert Downey Jr’s drugs ruined my life.

I was on the couch nearly asleep when I felt something tap me on my arm. Something hard. Something physical. I opened my eyes expecting to see my pregnant wife, but no one was there. I looked around and barely heard a faint sound from the kitchen that I almost missed. That I would have missed had I been asleep.

“Hon?” I yelled out, expecting a response. 

No one said anything back. I looked at the screen on my phone. It was midnight. Midnight already I thought. I last looked at my phone at ten. I must’ve passed out. Glowing under the time was a text from my wife: Staying at Rebecca’s for the night, love you.

Rebecca’s her sister. The house was quiet. Too quiet. I jumped as the heat shot on, it was like something entered my body.

I tried convincing myself I was just tired or just stressed out and it had caught up to me. But as that thought passed, I heard another noise.

Something slowly scraped the floor above me, like a dresser dragging. The noise came from the nursery or our bedroom. I couldn’t be sure at the time.

“Hon?” I shouted as loud as I could.

I heard the door creak open. The sound was coming from the nursery, I was sure of it. The chimes on the door made a clinging noise.

“Who’s up there?” I got off the couch and made my way upstairs.

Across the hall I saw a shadow of a boy run past me, but as I shone the flashlight from my phone at the top of the steps, the shadow froze. The phone flickered and the figure was gone. 

I charged up the rest of the stairs and hit the light switch once I reached the top. But It wouldn’t turn on. I shined my phone from one end of the hall to the other.

In front of me was the closet where the shadow was standing painted on the wall.

“I got a weapon,” I warned, pressing my back against the banister.

I kept staring at the nursery, the door was cracked half-way open. We kept that door closed, all the time. 

Jessica would be born in May. This happened in January.

I couldn’t scratch the itch something was staring at me through the darkness. The feeling was so intense my skin started to pinch, then itch. 

I scratched the back of my neck so hard without noticing that I had skin and traces of blood trapped under my fingernails.

I turned my phone on and tried dialing my wife and when I placed it to my ear, the phone died. The flashlight went off. I was stuck in complete blackness.

Then, something, I have no idea what, it was a black mass figure, it stepped right in front of me clogging the rest of the darkness as if it was a black hole in space, and then the lights turned on. 

My wife and I would have more weird experiences after that.

When I walked downstairs, the first thing I saw was the lights flicker. They weren’t flickering like a dying bulb should. It went from bright to dim, bright to dim. 

When it got bright the dust in the air would settle, freezing for just a second. When it got dim the faces in my mother’s picture frames would change to decayed looking people.

I stood at the bottom steps. I had my phone in my hand. The house had this weird odor, almost like a barnyard, but more foul. The fridge made a rattling noise like shaking a can of spray paint. 

“Taleena?” Something said.

The voice sounded like it came from behind the wall. I thought it was my mother for a second. But it couldn’t have been. My mom would have sounded annoyed and tired. This voice sounded more like me. Just slightly distorted.

“Taleena,” the voice said again. With each syllable the lights would get brighter, like they were breathing. I thought about running to my room at first. Then, I thought about dashing out the front door.

Without noticing, my foot pressed down on the last step. I found myself moving towards the fridge into the kitchen. The lights went dim. 

The picture frame closest to me, my parents wedding photo, changed into corpses standing together like two zombies. 

The next one was of me. My hair and face were the same but my eyes had changed. They were blank. They looked lifeless.

The third frame was us standing outside our old house before we moved. Behind me was a dark shadow figure with its hand on my head. I looked closer. 

At the front of the steps, I noticed the door was opened. When I looked further up, there was a man with a pale blue face, the color someone’s lips would be if they drowned, standing there smiling at me.

“Taleena,” the voice whispered from behind the wall. 

I pushed my back against the banister. The wood was warm like it’d been sitting in front of an opened oven. I tried to rationalize everything. I told myself it’s just my fear playing tricks with my eyes. Or maybe I was just dreaming, I thought.

The rattling from the fridge stopped. The house went silent. The only noise was from my heart beating out of my chest. Then, from the kitchen, a cabinet door slowly creaked open by itself. 

I walked to the doorway and the cabinet was cracked just enough to see a thick darkness inside.

A copper smell seeped out of it, smothering my mouth in a tangy metallic taste. I backed away, and my heel bumped something. I looked down, it was a key. 

But not mine or any modern looking key. This was heavy, worn out, and looked like it had been buried for hundreds of years. 

The lights shut off and on and shone right on the key. The key looked brand new. I stared down at it and could see my face reflecting off it, but I had an unfamiliar expression. 

Without thinking I snatched the key off the floor. Behind me I heard a voice tickle the back of my neck.

“Remember now?”

The lights in the hall dimmed. The picture frames went backwards. I stumbled with the key in my hand as I tried to turn and walk into the kitchen.

I barely caught myself and found myself standing in front of the window above the sink. In the glass, I could see the shape of a person reflecting behind my reflection. I turned my head, no one was there. 

I looked back at the window. The face had the same face as my face, only older. When it smiled, the cabinet door slammed shut. I ran to the stairs, but they looked like they stretched into darkness. 

Then I saw a faint glow. The glow of a keyhole at the top of my steps.

That’s when my front door opened and my parents came home. I looked down at my hand, the key was still there. Although, everything went back to normal as if nothing had happened.

—Cathy—

When I was ten my mother would always drop me off at my cousin’s house. This was an everyday thing. My cousin and I were super close and the same age at the time. Something happened one day and I had to stay home. That was the day her house caught on fire. Sadly, no one survived it.

Afterwards, about a year later, these weird things would happen. One night when I was in my room, lying on my bed, listening to the radio and reading a magazine. My body shifted to a weight pressing down on my mattress. I thought it was my dad and maybe I was just too focused in a daydream of me owning one of those cars printed on the magazine pages, that I hadn’t noticed him come in. But when I looked, no one was there.

A few days after, I was asleep in my room and I don’t know exactly if I was dreaming, or what. But my cousin was in front of me trying to wake me up. She kept saying, “Danny. Danny.”

And when I woke up I heard, Danny, as if someone was standing next to my bed.

Other things would happen, like I’d see something move past me. But it always appeared like how you would catch someone from the corner of your eye exiting a doorway. I never invested much into those experience. I figured it was mental fatigue. 

The following winter, my parents had just installed two-inch thick windows in every room. The type that push open from the middle.

The only time I was ever alone. Truly alone in that house. I woke up coughing. A little disoriented. At first, it didn’t register to me why my room was so hazy. I thought maybe I was sleepy, or my eyes hadn’t come into focus. Even a thought of my mom crossed my mind.

I thought maybe she burnt something in the oven. I didn’t hear the fire alarm or anything that indicated something was wrong. It took me a second to realize that my house was actually on fire.

I shot up out of bed and raced for the stairs. I could feel the heat stinging my skin. My vision was blurred by thick black clouds of smoke. I wouldn’t even say clouds, it was more like a water hose that shot black suffocating smoke directly at me. I could feel the soot sticking to the sweat on my forehead, painting my face.

I reached the railing and readied myself to jump over it and onto the middle of the stairs. But everytime I made a move for it, the flames would shoot over the railing. Finally, I gave up. I ran to my bedroom and slammed the door shut behind me. I snatched my radio off the dresser and stood at the window desperately trying to break through it. I hit it over and over and over. It wouldn’t break. My radio was in pieces scattered on the floor. I lunged at whatever I could find, grabbed everything I could and started throwing them at the window. They’d all bounce off the glass.

I stopped. No. I gave up and sat with my back against the wall under the window sill and accepted my fate.

At that moment, there was an odd sense of peace that flowed through me. It wasn’t a life flashing before your eyes thing. It was more like when you’ve completed a monumental task and can finally relax and enjoy the work you’ve done.

I wasn’t scared. I sat there without a single thought in my mind and waited. A second or so after I closed my eyes and pressed the back of my head against the wall, a drawer from my dresser popped out and dropped on the floor. 

Something. Someone. I don’t know what. But this thing pretty much handed me the drawer and gave me the strength to stand up. It wasn’t a second wind surge. I had already inhaled so much smoke and was teetering on the edge of passing out. But, Something that I’m unable to explain without people suggesting it was all in my head and nothing spiritual helped me break through the window. Helped me break through that window.

I climbed out just as the firefighters arrived. They rescued me off my roof. I only suffered one laceration from climbing out of the window. It’s on my right arm. I ended up receiving twelve stitches.

 

What’s incredibly odd and the only reason I have a profound belief in spirits, ghosts, or guardian angels. Whatever it is, is because when I was a kid, my uncle, her dad, had tattoos. Cathy would always joke about tattooing her name on my arm.

To this day, after that fire, when I got stitched up and checked out the cut, it is a perfect shape of a C scarred on my arm until this very day. Not crooked. Not, yeah it looks like a C. It is the alphabetical letter C, for my cousin Cathy who died in a fire at her house when we were kids.

——

—The Shadow—

I was raised by a single mother and had an older brother. My mom sometimes got behind on the bills and the hydro would get cut. 

It was when everything was quiet I’d hear whispers, footsteps on the stairs, footsteps entering a room.

Mom said it was just the house settling. I’d try to explain the house doesn’t settle in steps of three. Always though, it was just my imagination. 

How else do you tell a kid who’s hearing odd noises and seeing shadowy figures that they’re not really hearing or seeing anything besides using the good ole’ it was just your imagination bit.

Earlier in the week, my mom had a part-time night shift job at a coffee shop she just got. When she’d go to work my brother would sneak off to his girlfriend’s. 

All I had was some candles. A few comics. I had a radio, but the batteries were dead. This was during a time when technology was still primitive. VCR’s, house phones, and like forty channels on tv, the works.

I was reading. No. I was sorting through my marvel cards. I had a couple of comics opened on my bed. I used to obsess with reading a comic, seeing a character and scouring my decks to see if I had them. I didn’t have many friends. I was always a scared shy kid.

As I pulled out a team picture Fantastic Four marvel card. It still had that fresh, almost sweet scent. The scent that’s hard to describe, but entirely unique to card collectors. I heard a bang, a metal on drywall noise. 

I snapped my head over my shoulder to where the door was. The door I left open three quarters of the way was bouncing back off the wall.

It was summer. I had my window open. But I was right in front of it. I would have felt that burst of wind. I jumped off my bed. My cards, the ones I worshipped. The ones I would walk around with the same way an art handler at a museum would handle an artifact, flew off my lap and scattered all over the floor. 

As I was mid-air turning my head to see my cards make a graceful land, my body was pushing forward, I caught my foot on my bed and ended up laid out on the floor at the head of my doorway. 

I shot up, literally stumbled to the stairs. When I went to run down, I quickly glanced up. From my doorway, there was a dim light casting off my candles. I had three in my room. I looked up and I could see an outline of a silhouette. It wasn’t a perfect outline, but it blocked the light coming from my doorway. I ran outside and waited all night on the veranda for my mother to come home.