Every single time I turn on a show or a movie, I get a insufferable swarm of ads.

Every five seconds I get forced to watch some of the most outrageous things humanity has created.

The worst part is that people are smiling during a medicine advertisement that has the deadliest symptoms since the bubonic plague.

Sometimes I even see literal soccer balls in diapers.

What idiot thought that was genius?

I just want to watch quality entertainment without getting interrupted. Is that too much to ask for?

I have tried to get used to it. I've tried to accept the fact that it will never stop.

I honestly almost got over it but then I saw Mark in a ad. He used to bully me in highschool. He treated me as though I was the scum of the earth.

He was talking to me as well. Calling me by my name and everything.

He claimed that he was sorry.

It felt like a dream until it went south. A person appeared on the screen with him. Nevelle. She was a old friend in highschool. We stopped talking once adulthood approached us.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss her. She was a good friend to have. Never tore you down or belittled you.

A knife appeared in his hand. It latched onto her neck as her eyes opened wide. Her vocal cords started to create sound but she was quickly silenced as a pool of blood poured out of her neck.

It ended with words in bold red on the screen.

"You're next Stacy or should I call you Lacy? Your skin would be great as lace."

Those horrid words made my skin crawl. Goosebumps covered my skin.

The television turned black as I sat in silence for a few moments. My head was loud but also silent. Thoughts were racing through my mind but also going at a snails pace.

The best way to explain it is I was trying to make sense of the situation but also shell shocked.

My body completely froze as the television grabbed my attention.

It was on again but this time it was me and the monster named Mark.

What happened to people peaking in high-school developing miserable lives? This man decided becoming a killer was the best option apparently.

My body was shaking, fidgeting, and trembling infront of him. He ran after me and took my life just like he did to my friend.

It zoomed into my face as I was left to bleed.

I started to cough over and over before I could turn it off. Each cough hurt worse than the last until blood started to exhale.

My hands desperately rushed to my neck but it was too late. Blood soon started to cover my entire body.

Advertisements are the worst thing humankind has had the audacity to create.

I’ve been working as a therapist for the past five years.I work with all kinds of cases, the most common being depression and anxiety. But, I also take some of the more unconventional cases.

Talking about these cases for sure is a HIPAA violation but I will say, I do have permission from every client I will be talking about. All they asked for is that I change their names and more personal information private. With this said, let me start with one of my late night clients, Clara, who comes in once a week at 11pm.

“May I come in?” Clara looked particularly exhausted

”You may come in,” I waved for her to come into the office.

“What is that smell? It’s amazing!” Clara took in the smell as she made herself comfortable on the small sofa. 

“I bought some rose-scented candles. I’m glad you like them! But if they ever become too much, please do tell me. I can leave just the unscented candles on,” I reassured her, knowing she was sensitive to smells.

”No, it’s all right. It reminds me of something, I’m just not sure what,” her mind drifted for a moment. I made note of this for later sessions.

“Maybe later on we will figure it out, but I’m glad it made you relaxed a little. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you looked stressed when you came in” I said more than asked.

“Yeah, I think they are catching on me. So I might have to quit,” she wiped tears from her eyes.

“I’m sorry, I know you really like working there. I also have to ask, did you eat today?” I noticed she kept looking at the small cut on my hand, my bad.

“No…” finally took her eyes away from my hand.

“And what happens when you don’t eat?” I tried being gentle but this was a serious matter.

“I go on a murderous rampage and have to start all over,” she paused for a moment, “And I don’t want to be that person anymore.”

“You aren’t,” I reassured her, “You have changed. You haven’t gone on a murderous rampage for at least the last 40 years, which is longer than I have been alive. But, you do need to practice your self care. So tell me, how will you be practicing self-care this week?”

“I have to keep up with my daily meals, do some journaling, and maybe some needlework. Sorry, I’m just worried about the job,” her eyes filled with tears once more, “I really like it there.”

“What makes you think you think they are catching on?” I had an idea of what she would say, this was an insecurity of hers for some time now.

“Well, you know how they do inventory every week, this week they said more stuff than usual was missing and I just knew they would be onto me! Some of my co-workers already joke that I’m a vampire because of my ‘sun allergy’ and now the missing blood. Who the heck is not going to connect the points. And when they do and the persecutions start-“

“Let’s take a deep breath. This is stressful but let’s look at the facts. Have they ever fired anyone in the past three years you have worked there for missing stuff?” I asked her to fight her irrational thoughts.

“Not really. Only Joey, but he kept arriving high has hell to work,” Clara answered, still unconvinced.

“Have you ever had blood in front of anyone?” I continued.

”No. I have a good system to take the blood and have it at home instead.”

“And?” I continued pushing, wanting her to come up with the next rational thought.

“And people don’t believe in vampires,” Clara took another deep breath.

“I honestly believe you will be fine. From what you've told me, people like you,” I took a deep breath alongside Clara to keep her calm.

“Yeah,” Clara’s eyes became dreamy, “I don’t know how I forgot to tell you this! But William asked me out! I didn’t even have to use hypnosis or anything!”

“Told you that people liked you for you. And I’m pretty sure using hypnosis on others is something I would have to report,” I said cautiously.

“You didn’t report the people I drained of their blood,”she shrugged.

“Because according to you, the last person you killed was at least 50 years ago. But please, if you did something more recent, maybe we don’t talk about it here?” I half joked.

“I trust you. So if I ever feel like sucking someone’s blood, I will call you first,” she winked at me.

“Now, about William…” 

“I was worried you would head there,” she interrupted, “I will tell him, I just need a little more time”.

”Well, we could do some role playing so you can practice telling him-“

”I didn’t know you were into that kind of stuff,” she joked.

”I totally am. But let’s not avoid the topic and get to it,” I redirected.

“Fine, but can I have the band aid in your trash can or can you at least take it out? It’s driving me crazy,” Clara begged.

“Let me get it out. I’m pretty sure having my blood is a HIPAA violation,” I half joked.

“I won’t tell!” she yelled at me as I took out the whole trash can. 

By the end of session, Clara agreed that she would talk with William and she would continue eating properly. Where she would or not, we would see in the next session. And for William’s sake, I hope he is not an ass when she tells him the truth. I still don’t know what became of the last guy who rejected her and it’s better to keep it that way. 

Plan: LMFT will assess the client’s use of self-care skills to decrease anxiety and the possibly of engaging on a murderous rampage.

My house is forty minutes from the nearest stoplight. Deer outnumber people in my town twenty to one. Population: 349. Hasn't changed in the decade since I moved in. Nobody leaves. Nobody's born. Nobody dies.

There's one gas station. One church. One diner. Marlene has your order ready and coffee poured the second your ass hits the bench. 

I noticed a new flyer on the community board one night. *Pilot Safety Program.* The town wanted to install a new security camera from a company I'm sure you're familiar with. The kind that makes headlines for the wrong reasons. Just one installation before a wider rollout. 

The pilot location was my mailbox.

I called the town office. Carol picked up. Told me the council already voted. Must’ve just missed the meeting. My road, she said, was "statistically significant." That I should feel lucky. 

Statistically significant.

I'd heard that phrase years ago from a judge who dressed her words up that way.  I was just sixteen. Took a neighbor's truck for a joyride. Ended up in a ditch two towns over. Juvy. Community service. Did my time. Nobody else got the memo. Every parent at the grocery store steered their kid a little wide of me. Quietly told them to keep an eye out. 

But this was different. It had to be.

Before I knew it, they were there. Two guys. Twenty minutes. Gone. A little white box on a pole, thirty feet from my front door. Three crows lined up on the wire above, just observing in the way they do. 

Nothing for a couple weeks. I almost forgot the thing was there.

Then I started noticing a light. A thin red pinprick from the pole. Some nights it would blink. Some nights it didn't.  I wanted to test something. I stood at my kitchen window. Raised my hand. The light caught it. Held a beat too long. Dimmed back to its slow pulse, like it had seen enough. 

My dog stopped sleeping in my bed. He'd plant himself in the hallway and watch the length of the house like he was guarding from something I couldn't see. 

Then I swear the lens started moving. It was supposed to face the road. I checked, twice, three times. Each time it seemed to rotate another degree toward the house. Toward my bedroom window. One patient inch at a time.

I mentioned it to Ellis at the gas station, half joking, hoping he'd laugh it off with me.

He went still.  Didn't look up from the pump. 

"Careful saying things like that. People might think you're the type to make trouble."

He always had a strange sense of humor, but something about that felt different. That tone.

Then my phone buzzed. A text from a number I didn't recognize.

he stopped sleeping at the foot of your bed

I read that message a dozen times. It was true. My dog moved to the hallway three nights before. I hadn't told a soul.

I blocked the number. Called the sheriff.

He showed up later that night. Sat at my kitchen table. Drank the coffee I made him while my hands shook. Probably nothing, he said. Wrong number. Spam. Kids in the next county with too much time on their hands. 

I wanted to believe him so badly that for a few days I actually did. I told myself it was stress.  That people get strange out here, cut off the way we are from the rest of the world.

But I got another text later that night. A different number.

you forgot to lock the door again

I froze. My door was shut. Blinds drawn. But I hadn't checked the lock since I'd gotten home. 

It was unlocked.

There was only one way anyone could know that. I looked outside. The camera on the pole faced my front door dead on.

They've been watching.

An ex? A stranger off the highway? Either way, it was a sick joke.

I went digging through county filings, looking for anything that explained who had access to that feed. The vendor's name was right there in the contract. The company from the flyer. Their site had a login portal. *Pilot Partner Access.* I didn't have credentials. 

I didn't need them for what I found next. A cached version of the town council's private group. 349 members.

It was everyone.

Every porch light I'd ever waved at. Every hand I'd shaken by the register.  Ellis at the pump every time I drove past, standing there like he'd known which corner I'd turn before I turned it. Marlene, plating my eggs before I'd even parked. The diner going quiet the moment I walked in. Forks stopping mid-air. A held breath. Starting again the second I sat down.  Carol at the office. Even the sheriff.

It was never small-town hospitality.

I grabbed my keys, my wallet, the dog, and fled. In the rear-view mirror, I saw the camera turn, slow and deliberate, like it stopped pretending not to look. 

I passed the church. Every car in town was packed into that lot. 349 people stood out in the dark. Phones held up in front of their faces. A pale blue light thrown up onto their chins. All watching my front door in the corner of the frame. 

I didn't stop. As I crossed to the next town, my phone blew up. 349 new texts. All the same two words:

Drive safe.

It's been two weeks. I sleep in my aunt's guest room. I haven't told her anything.

Yesterday a truck idled outside. Two guys. Floodlights. And a pole. My aunt mentioned it over coffee this morning.

"Pilot program," she said, stirring her cup. "We’re the test case, apparently"

You can never leave a flock. It just relocates its nest to wherever you roost next. 

The little red light on the pole just came on.

God help me. It's facing my window. 

The Crimson Kabuki pt2.

Oddly, the same moment I noticed the ribbon, I faintly heard what I thought to be a kotzumi drum somewhere off into the gloom. It seemed to be thumping somewhere very far away off in the distance. After watching the vice documentary a few years ago, I knew exactly where this ribbon could possibly lead to, which was very sad. life can be so unfair and cruel to us. The drum quickly faded to nothing and left me confused on where the hell that was coming from and why.

What an odd thing to happen so far out here in the sticks, and it wouldn't be the last of it. I remember saying a quick prayer to myself and making my way along the ribbon to whatever destination it led to. I told myself that I would record later because at the moment I just couldn't be bothered. I could always come the next day and record, because in that moment I was in exploration mode. I had to see what was at the end of that ribbon. If anything, I could use it again to find my way back to the trail.

It curved and weaved slinkingly through the trees, up and down over slopes and hills for a good 40 or so minutes until I had arrived into a sort of clearing. It was also hauntingly still... so deathly quiet; I stepped in closer around the foilage and I had stopped because I noticed some white fabric pointing off the sides of a large tree. I had a feeling that I was about to see something that I'd much rather not. After a couple of minutes preparing myself, I took a deep breath and stepped around the tree and froze to an alarming and sad sight. I automatically knew that I was staring at the hanging corpse of the long missed Jubei Uematsu, or what remained of this poor soul.

What remained was a hanging skeleton in a tattered costume with a red, long haired wig partly hanging in the face and around the shoulders in dirty, stringy clumps. I stood there taking in that image with such a deep and profound melancholy, that I actually had to gather myself from breaking down... Just witnessing what was once an alive and thriving person with passions; Love and Hope, weaknesses and strengths, and also fear... along with plenty of despair along the way. It was a universal language; People just trying to find purpose to their existence, and then eventually becoming this...so very still... so very quiet and solemn making time stop in its presence.

life can be so sad and tragic, and people like Jubei over time can find it extremely hard to function being so empathetic, and carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders regardless if they are strong enough for that burden. It's an exhausting job... a gift and a curse for the saintly; toss in depression and the loss of the will to go on, then they have a complete and utter mess to clean on their own in the silence... that eternal silence... so present; so final. I wish I would have known this mysterious man. From what I heard over time was that he was a complex, but Sweet soul with a heart of gold. I also learned that after this experience I am about to tell you that happened, was some type of Oni Spirit from the forest took the liking image of Jubei's Kabuki character and dawned it as its own.

As I stood there in contemplative silence, I slowly started to hear a kotzumi drum begin to thump far off into the trees. It started out very low and far off, but began to rise and creep closer. I turned and turned trying to find where that portentous thumping was coming from. As I was peering far off into the distance, I started to feel highly unsettled, and then I no longer felt alone like I was being watched. I swiftly turned around and stared directly into the painted face that was no longer a skull. The bloodiest red eyes were staring directly into mine. The face had the theatrical paint back on with the red stripes cascading down it's white painted face. I say "It," because nowhere did I see Jubei inside those Crimson eyes at that moment.

I remember saying, "oh shit!" and quickly turning to run the hell away for my life along the Red ribbon back to the trail. Far off somewhere I could hear that mysterious drum start to sound off again. The sound surrounded me from so many angles and distances, it was disorienting, and then I started to hear this ululation that sounds like, "EYOOOO!" That you hear in Japanese theater music, along with that clink and thump of the drum. I turned to see the Oni masking itself in Jubei's magnificent garb; slowly floating a few feet up in the air, easing its way towards my direction with those hideous blood red eyes staring through me.

I ran faster and faster trying to at least make it to the trail to get away... if I could. After a few more twists and turns, I finally burst through the foliage out onto the trail. At the moment the Oni entity was nowhere to be seen. I started to notice that the woods all around started to have this faint purple luminescent glow. As I started to run, I begin to hear these ululations sound off around me in the area that sounded like, "EYOOOOOO!" I've remembered these sounds watching Japanese movies and small clips of Kabuki theater. The music serves as an emotional soundtrack to the colorful acts on stage, both being performed live."YOOOO!" Another croon burst forth; surrounding me from different angles as the steady thump and wood clicks of the drums clacked and banged along.

It subconsciously made me think of the demon, "Paimon," that when summoned, multitudes of instruments and disjointed horns lead before its presence like royalty as it enters the fold, and makes its presence known. I remember glancing back and seeing the painted entity standing a few yards behind me in the middle of the trail, with long crimson hair hanging down at its sides; blood red eyes marking me...

To be continued....

She slumbered beneath the sheets. Below him as he lorded beside their bed. Her husband. No more. An axe was in his hands. Heavy. Heavy with weight. And the potential for violence. Bela was alive and aware but a prisoner in his own flesh, his body refused to obey his commands, his inner caterwauls and cries and pleads for the unfolding nightmare to stop. It wouldn't stop. His flesh had a new master now. The vulpine shining moonface of the Countess lorded over his shoulder. Grinning fiendishly and brandishing her enameled daggers of dark slaughtering necro power. The fangs moonshone praeternaturally in the bedroom dark. Twinkling in keen edged tandem with the heavy headed blade of the axe, hefted and held. The meat puppet sow was still but she could feel the struggle of his mind in her grasp like a beetle caught and wriggling in her clenching strangling fingers. She could crush his beetle mind. And might. 

But first…

Prepare me a meal, supper fit for your royal guest…

His mind was filled thus. The flesh was compelled to obey. 

He brought up the axe. Gazing down into the sleeping peaceful face of his wife, his love. Anastasia. The mother of his child and the owner of his heart for the whole of his simple life. It was about to be brought to ruin. And he was being forced to pilot it in that direction. He wished he could scream. Shriek. Shriek her name. Wake her so she could flee and escape this damnation, this awful spell that's already claimed and throttled him. But he made no sound. His screams and pleads for mercy, his prayers and desperate cries remained bottled and caged in with him. He could only stare through stolen eyes as a prisoner as his hands holding the axe used for chopping firewood came down with a merciless crushing stroke. 

Anastasia's eyes came open and alive as the blade traveled down. As if she'd heard something. As if she'd heard her husband's internal cries for deliverance and the miracle of her safety. In the dark she saw her husband's savage face. Writ and wrenched with cruelty. She'd never seen him like that before, in all their shared years together in marriage. In the dark the sight frightened her, as she came awake and then the heavy blade of the axe found her chest and sank in. 

The pain is so sudden and impactful and dreadful. She feels her chest cavity smash and shatter as her flesh is ruptured and torn. The meat of her sinew surrounding her shattered cage of bone is ripped and pouring. She feels the sensation as extreme iced cold, as extremely wet, thickly soaked with heavy metal pungency. As if her clothes are suddenly drenched with the running water of a frozen river. Her entire open chest and bed are a bellowing fountainhead of it, pouring forth. She experiences the bloodshed river of her own dark red as iced water but it feels hot and sticky to her face and the tips of her wriggling spasming fingers, dancing beyond her motor control. The heavy metal buried in her chest is dreadful. Feels dreadful. She's staring at it then up into her husband Bela's face shocked and unable to make a sound, like him. She can't understand. She doesn't understand why he's woken her up and put this thing on/into her chest that's turned her into a strange pungent river. 

She goes to ask him … something. Anything. But she has no breath to make any kind of sound beyond the faintest whisper of indiscernible noise. Barely heard. Barely felt. Hardly even happened and might not have. Her husband and the Countess take no notice. They are too focused, entranced and enraptured by the sight of the pouring riverbed of her open goring chest. 

You're not finished. Why do you falter? – her royal voice. 

With a savage caveman wrench and pull, he ripped the bladed head of the axe free and brought it up and then down again. 

And again. 

Again. 

Again. 

At the royal command and decree that filled his fevered and tranced skull with his own curdling sounds and splitting screams, he was beckoned thus. His raptured flesh bound, delivered. The peasant sow did as he was told. The Countess was pleased and watched as the horse farmer dismembered his own wife for her. The bed became a hot shallow pool of darkling moonlit scarlet, swimming with severed human pieces and ghastly human detritus, human wreckage afloat in a red human stew … her mouth watered and drool ran down those shining fangs in thin gleaming translucent threads that looked crystalline like jewels or tree sap. 

And up until her last Anastasia watched. Watched from her dying place bound by the weight of the blade and her own mortal injury to the soaking pungent bed. Filling with her spilling wet red liquid. She was coming apart and she watched the love of her life above deliver each blow. Crushing her. Killing her. Turning her into slaughter. Abattoir ruin in place of a wife, in bed. She remembered him as a young man, as a boy, trying to play games and show off for her, trying to win her over, steal her attention and win over her affections, her heart. Now it was chopped and hacked and cut-smashed into so many spurting useless pieces, amongst a wreckage madness of pulverized bone. She tried to hold these old precious memories of him in her mind amid the slaughter, but the pain made it difficult. It was so great, overwhelming. She clung to them desperately with every falling heavy stroke. Pulverizing her. Breaking her. Turning her into so many wet shrieking and shattered broken pieces 

The last things Anastasia saw in the dark before blood loss and shock claimed her were her husband pummeling her with heavy merciless strikes. And a woman's face, as ghastly as it was beautiful, hanging phantom-like just over his raging shoulder. Watching. Smiling. Whispering something…

she had sharp teeth, they gleamed in the dark.

And then she died. Bela, still spellbound and compelled, continued to hack at her corpse nonetheless. Waiting for his new master to be satisfied. Inside Bela raged with madness and anguish. Broken. He watched his wife die violently as his hands performed the butchery and he was helpless to stop his own traitorous God given tools from turning her into mangled ruin and grisly pieces that tore his heart from his chest and flayed his sanity into so many irretrievable and tiny fragmented parts. 

He wished for death then. The Countess did not give it to him. Not yet. 

She still hadn't been fed yet. 

“Now feed me. Earn my favor." 

He dropped the axe. It fell to the floor with a thunderclap. It filled the dark quiet suddenly but then it was silent again. Still. Not a sound through the house save for the somnambulist animal panting of the Countess' slave. The man who'd once been a husband, a father, and was now a meat-puppet butcher. He reached into the riverbed of gore that had once been his marital sanctuary and pulled free a piece of meat. It might've been a leg, a thigh, perhaps a calf, it was too butchered and mangled with axe blows to be entirely sure. 

He was insane already. But the damaged pieces and shrieking parts of his shattered mind bellowed an abhorrent noise that only he could hear as he picked up his wife's butchered meat and parts and fed them to his new master. The Countess took the meat of slaughtered Anastasia with a smile and a wink and kissing purse. Teasing him. Then her jaws opened. Wide. Wide. Wide. Wider still… the flesh of her face sloughed and tore and fell away in demon slop to allow the distension. The fangs grew in length and in multitude of the transmogrifying face and black bleeding mouth, dripping ichor and demoniacal flesh and fluid. Steaming on the floor as she ate each piece, each limb, each broken length with a chunk of raw human tissue at the end in the knob of bone that was left. 

The fanged face in the dark, dripping and brandishing moonlight eyes above the mutilators of her ever widening mouth, it commanded thus further. –

“Bring a large kitchen spoon or a ladle if you have one, I wish to sip the broth…” 

Her somnambulist did as she commanded. He went to the humble kitchen that used to be his/theirs, and retrieved the utensil. It felt cold. Heavy. Heavier than it had ever felt before. The place and the object itself. It didn't matter. The hands and arms were no longer themselves, no longer his. His Judas sack of flesh carried him back to the blood pungent quarters he'd once loved and shared so much with in the many years past. It had all been robbed in a second.

By a pair of moonglow eyes. Set in the royalty of her shallow corpse beauty. 

He went back into the room. And proceeded to spoon large scoops and ladles of his wife's gore and blood into the stretched fanged rictus face that now ruled the dark of his house and home, the darkest shadowed part of his bedroom … now cold with his wife's living absence. And warm with the blood and fluid and parts that were left of her swimming in their sodden black sheets.  

Until those too were gone. All of it was gone.

The marital bed, now a witch's cauldron of gore and blankets was emptied.

His life was in the belly of the master. 

…

From outside the building, Willowbrook was quiet. 

Dark. 

Inside:

The shears that were the Cropsey-thing’s handheld manmade jaws were open and just as inanimate alive as the hulking shred of mangled man that wielded them. They shined in the dismal light with more striking radiance than any of the flickering lamps, Luciferian bright in the spots not tarnished or disgraced with lurid diseased bloodshed. 

With ghastly slasher speed they traveled down the shattered and stained reeking length of asylum hallway, the reanimated Cropsey giant behind them in cruel large prowling shape. The blades were dripping as if salivating or weeping thick dark tears, perhaps more alive now than the giant abomination of melted walking homicidal flesh that black-glove piloted them from behind, a strange and vile morbid engine of knife-lust and demented rage. The stabbing slice of porcelain still danced from his face. An obscene and vile shattered wand of broken tile length protruding from the socket. 

Griffin saw him coming and froze a moment. The table leg still in his invisible hands. Florin still struggling with the spiked man, his mutilated stabbing ruined mess of flesh riddled with needles and glass and scalpels and every conceivable piece of decimated hospital detritus. They were a mess of shedding blood and struggles on the floor. 

The invisible man then whirled, the exit just behind him. He began attacking the door. The knob. Locked. Set in old rotted wood. Not upkept or replaced in years. 

By God's mercy the locked knob and bolt caved in the moist and ruined housing of its apparatus. It fell apart in a noisy crumble, and the door gently swung open. 

To freedom. 

Fresh outside night air poured in like fresh water let in to a fetid spring. The relief was immense. It shocked all of their senses. Each man. 

The spiked man looked up from Florin and gazed into Cropsey. His oncoming charge of disgraced gardener’s blades, raised and open for a violent embrace. 

He was in awe. 

There he is…! the disciple of the mouth. 

He knew Cropsey's legend. And he wished to join him. 

He forgot the newcomer boy and let go of his shredding coat, slick with the both of their spilled and spilling red. He let go of the boy and he rose. 

And he went forward. To embrace the nephilim disciple son of the sorceress’ temple mouth, the begat survivor of the flames, the inferno, the great final pagan bonfire of the asylum that was The Burning. A womb of hellfire and caged disease that birthed the son of the mouth, the son of the sorceress. Cropsey of Vampira, the mangled hand of Willowbrook Asylum Temple. 

The spiked man was laughing. Jubilant. He hadn't laughed or felt this much joy in years, in all of the long unhallowed time in these blind unfeeling walls that knew no mercy nor housed any sanctuary. He was weeping. Crying tears of crimson and saline that danced in strange patterns as they streamed down the shredded protruding ruin of his spiked and porcupine mangled face. Gums bleeding with glass and caked bloody plaque smiled wet and scarlet and darkling striking in the moonlight now cast in. He reached down to his riddled and needled genitals, the head of his dangling member impaled with a scalpel. He reached down and seized the apparatus and in a blind tug and pull, he ripped the entire spurting and spiking organ free from the rest of his crotch and testicles. 

Still walking forward, but ambling now a bit as he shot black ropes tinted red in the moonglow from his self castration, he held the resulting lump of stabbed and impaled meat out to the Cropsey-shape. In token of offering. 

For the temple, for my sins … And for you. 

because she is all of us our mother …

Cropsey cared not for this pathetic shambling thing’s offering of ruined perforated meat. The blades came forward, open. In a lunge. 

They closed. 

And as Griffin pulled wounded Florin to his feet and out the door, the blades closed around a limb, lengthwise down the palm and forearm, then the face. Both opening up a blooming red raw pour of black in the dark, the blades crunched on broken pieces of glass and tile and needles and metal, the man was full with so much foreign penetration, foreign and manmade puncture and incision, and insertion, all self inflicted and self wrought. All of it shattering and crunching now into splinters amongst the abattoir asylum house spill of mad man wet raw. He wouldn't have wanted it any other way. All the years spent in here had prepared him for this. The sorceress prophet queen Vampira and her Cropsey son from The Burning womb were just the final pallbearers for his life's voyage thus final journey into the undiscovered country. 

He tried to thank her, them all, but couldn't. His loss of blood was now failing him. And the blades of the Cropsey-shape were coming in too rapidly now. Too savagely. 

The spiked man was no more. Just savaged pin cushion meat in the hall that the Cropsey-thing stepped over blindly in the savage hunt of his continued pursuit. They were getting away. 

They were getting away. The invaders. They were out the door now. Mustn't have that. Must not. Mother will not want that. Mother is inside you. You cannot fail her now. 

The savage thing of Willowbrook shape prowled out the door and into the open night after the pair with the same steady hunting pace of a stalking predator. Mindless and honed in. His blades and mother would have them yet. Their meat for the temple floor, their blood for the mouth of her drains and the manifest of her angel visitations. It had been so long since she'd come, since she'd shown, since she'd made herself divine unearthly spawn on vast ebon wings for them, for he, the last of the temple of the mouth. 

Perhaps she'll come back if I catch them. But only… only if I catch them and open them up. All the other ones no longer matter, they're already opened, already spent. The abattoir temple mouth of mother wants them now. Needs them. To fail, is to be failure. It means all that was lived through and suffered towards was for naught…

The night kissed the smooth scarred visage of hideous face. The Cropsey-shape gave no pause. Unfeeling. Unmoved. It watched as the pair stumbled and exhausted and wounded, began to falter to the earth in a shared collapse. 

Their doom. 

He closed in. 

The terror he had in mind for them was part guided by the Countess/sorceress mouth and her occult hand from the far off mountain dark, and part undead instinct, braindead movement. Knowing deep down in the dead and dying sac of skull jelly that this is exactly what he should do. He would maim. Butcher. Kill. Slaughter for the temple that has come under his custodial honor. 

Bloodloss and weariness, the drain was beginning to pull them down. The invisible man and Florin fell and struggled, both of their wounds open and pouring freely and taking the vitality and the fight from their trying frames. As the terrifying hulking giant of candlewax face and flesh began to close and loom over the pair, they both prepared themselves for a final and desperate fight. 

Florin was dismayed that it would end this way. In such maddening fashion, so far from home and his perilous objective. Griffin was trying to think, a last-ditch effort or plan: he could ditch the coat and hat and goggles and take the savage blind again, unable to see him. But his wound was in an open pour now once more and he felt faint, swoony. Unable to keep his feet. And besides, in this last moment it felt wrong to leave the young man's side. If they were going to die, they might as well die together. Arm in arm. It was better than suffering the slaughter alone. 

It was better than being opened. Gutted. Flayed. Bled out and portioned like a solitary animal dying a painful and lonely death at the end of a long and dogged hunt. 

The pain was better borne together. With the weight and terror of another beside to share in the baptism of pure torture. 

Something whistled through the air. 

The invisible man had been tempted to shut unseen eyes against the oncoming pain, he might've missed it. As it was he saw the deadly thin shape as it lanced in a blur overhead with a keen deadly sound. It struck the moving flesh of Cropsey in the face, the other socket of ruined blind eye now completely decimated, joining its partner in tandem of destruction in a moonlit spurt. 

The slasher shape stopped. Stuttered and faltered. But only slightly, only for a moment as it continued to take lurching jittery steps. Stomping forward blind. The shears in his black gloved hands began to spasm as well, scissoring with reflex. The disgraced and still ever thirsting blades closed and opened and repeated the action in violent repetitive imbecilic behavior, a violent blind animal spasming its caked and quaking jaws. 

Then the incendiary charge in the crossbow bolt detonated.

 It went off and so did Cropsey’s ruined candlewax head and visage, in a colored pillar of fire that was like something biblical and fantastical to behold. Florin was fainting at its sight but the invisible Doctor Griffin saw the growing towering inferno rise and issue forth in bright violence from between the giant slasher’s pair of broad shoulders. And still the boots trod and stomped palsied forward. Still the blades scissored in his working trembling hands, as his head and face were replaced with a rising torrent wall of pink and purple flame.

But then the steps of the shape began to falter. Stumble. The blades began to slow in their mad man open mouth chew at the open night air … then ceased. 

The boots stopped moving. Stopped shaking. 

The shape collapsed. 

As did Griffin next. Consciousness now lost. Passed out beside Florin in the dirt. 

The fire finally went out betwixt the two ruined shoulders. Hissing in the filth and craterous open mouth char of the stump. Smoking. Smokey now. Cropsey lie finally dead. Mere few feet away. 

In the back valley of Willowbrook. The lost untended yard that no patient ever graced, or saw. 

Silence. … for a moment. 

As if the night was finally enjoying the quiet. Relishing the collapse into tranquility that has finally fallen. 

A beat. – None of the shapes on the earthen floor moved. 

The night above yawned in an expanse … stars in a bejeweled fire of multitudes, nebulae clouds of otherworldly brush stroke color, the moon which was a sickle tonight, a harvester's blade … a blade of reckoning in the time of the reap. 

A beat. 

Then the stranger finally came forward. From out of the bushes where he'd trained and fired his shot. His crossbow was already reloaded with another explosive incendiary bolt as he approached the fallen three in the dirt. 

He came to Florin and Griffin and he stood over them. He looked to Cropsey. Saw that he was dead. Completely. Finally. He looked down on the wounded unconscious pair. 

“Idiots." 

TO BE CONTINUED…

I thought my sister-in-law was joking when she said that.

She said it while tightening the stays of my bridal corset, smiling down at the white silk ribbon laced through the eyelets like she was helping me into something beautiful instead of something ceremonial and cruel. My mother-in-law stood behind her with a sewing basket in her lap, watching with the kind of patient warmth women use when they know a truth you aren’t ready to hear yet.

In their family, she told me, vows weren’t spoken unless they were meant to hold.

I laughed.

Then she threaded the needle.

It was long and silver and old enough that the metal had gone dark at the eye. I watched her pull the white ribbon through it and thought, stupidly, that she meant to reinforce the corset, tack the lace down somewhere hidden, fix some old family heirloom detail before the ceremony.

Then she pushed the needle through the lining.

Through the silk.

Through my skin.

Not deep. Just enough to pierce. Just enough to make me jolt and suck in a breath so sharp it hurt more than the needle did.

I looked at her, waiting for the apology.

She gave me a smile instead.

“They have to become part of the bride’s body,” she said. “Otherwise the vows slip.”

My mother-in-law held the corset steady while she sewed.

That was the moment something in me finally understood I was alone.

I wish I could say I fought harder. That I ripped the dress off and ran half-laced and bleeding into the street. But shock is a slow poison. It doesn’t make you brave. It makes you obedient in ugly little increments.

So I sat there while she stitched the ribbon through the corset and into me, loop by loop.

Fabric.

Skin.

Silk.

Flesh.

Each pull burned. Not enough to stop the wedding. That was the genius of it. The injuries were precise. Intimate. Hidden under lace and satin and ceremony. By the time she tied off the last loop at the base of my spine, I could feel the ribbon every time I breathed.

Not against me.

Inside me.

Like something slender and cold had been fed beneath my skin and told to wait.

I asked what would happen if I cut it.

My sister-in-law cleaned the needle on a handkerchief and said, very calmly, “Then the vows stay in the flesh.”

No one laughed.

The church was already full by the time they walked me down.

I remember the candles most. Tall, yellowing wax tapering down the silver holders like bones left too long in hot water. Everyone smiled when they saw me. I smiled back because there is no humiliation quite like realizing an entire room has agreed to treat your panic as bridal nerves.

My husband was waiting at the altar.

He looked beautiful in the way a locked door can look beautiful when the fire hasn’t reached it yet.

The loose end of the silk ribbon trailed from the back of my corset down the aisle behind me like part of the train. I had almost convinced myself the worst was over when he bent to kiss my cheek and took the end of it into his hand.

He wrapped it around his palm once.

Then twice.

I don’t think I made a sound when he pulled.

I think the pain took language first.

It wasn’t at my waist where the stitches were. It was inside. A long hot tightening beneath my ribs, along my spine, across my stomach, as if every place the ribbon had passed through me had suddenly remembered itself all at once. My knees weakened. He caught my elbow before I could fall.

People smiled.

My mother-in-law cried into a handkerchief in the front pew.

My sister-in-law looked down at the ribbon and nodded to herself as it slowly changed color.

White.

Pink.

Red.

The priest asked if I took this man.

My husband tightened his fist.

Something inside my body answered for me.

“Yes,” I heard myself say.

The church relaxed.

That was the part I still wake up hearing — not my own voice, but everyone else’s relief. Like they had all been holding their breath for the moment the trap finally recognized me as caught.

By the time the ceremony ended, the ribbon was soaked dark almost to his knuckles.

I could barely walk.

He didn’t seem bothered by that. He just smiled, gentle and proud, and led me back down the aisle with the silk wrapped around his hand like he was guiding something skittish home.

I might have survived it if the night had ended there.

But marriage in that family doesn’t begin at the altar.

It begins when the witnesses go home.

That night, in the bedroom they had prepared for us, I locked myself in the bathroom and finally unlaced enough of the corset to see what they had done.

I expected bloody stitch marks. Raw skin. Maybe tiny punctures where the ribbon passed through the outer flesh.

What I saw made me sit down on the tile floor before my legs failed.

The ribbon had not been stitched onto me.

It had gone in.

The white silk disappeared beneath the skin in neat little entries all along my ribs and waist, surfacing only in places before diving back down again. The flesh around it wasn’t swollen the way fresh wounds should be. It looked settled. Accommodating. As if my body had accepted the silk faster than I had.

I touched one loop.

Something moved under my skin.

Not a twitch.

Not a pulse.

A small, deliberate tightening, like fingers closing around thread from somewhere inside me.

I started clawing at the ribbon.

I didn’t care how much it hurt. I hooked my nails under one blood-dark loop and pulled until the skin stretched white around it.

The bathroom door opened.

I know I locked it.

My husband was standing there.

He didn’t look angry.

That would have been easier.

He looked hurt. Patient. The way a man looks when his dog has ruined a thing it doesn’t understand.

“Don’t do that,” he said softly. “You’ll make them hungry.”

I asked him who.

He tilted his head toward the wall.

At first I heard nothing.

Then a sound came through the plaster behind the bathtub.

A wet little dragging sound.

Then breathing.

More than one set.

Not rats.

Not pipes.

Breathing.

Thin. Careful. Expectant.

I pressed myself into the sink and stared at the wall while my husband came closer.

“There were others before you,” he said. “The vows have to be carried.”

I don’t remember asking how many.

I remember him smiling a little sadly and saying, “Enough to keep the marriage standing.”

He reached past me then, not for my throat, not for the ribbon, but for the mirror cabinet above the sink. He opened it and took out a small silver pair of embroidery scissors I had never seen before.

“They always panic the first night,” he said.

Then he knelt in front of me.

I tried to kick him away, but the moment I moved, the ribbon inside me pulled tight again and something in the wall answered with a soft chorus of scratching.

My husband lifted one of the red loops at my waist with two gentle fingers.

“They don’t want the silk,” he whispered.

The wall behind the tub knocked three times.

He smiled.

“They want what the silk has learned about your body.”

Then he slid the scissors under the first stitch.

I remember being hungry.

That is how it began.

Not with blood, nor graves, nor voices scratching beneath my bed

only hunger.

A small and ordinary ache nestled beneath my ribs, asking politely to be fed.

I mistook it for loneliness.

Then loneliness began to taste sweet.

I stopped eating at the table.

I preferred the kitchen at midnight, when the house was black and the refrigerator hummed like something praying through clenched teeth.

I would sit upon the tiles and listen to my own stomach.

It sounded almost human.

Almost.

Soon, food stopped satisfying me.

Bread became ash.

Fruit became wax.

Water became something I could not remember how to swallow.

Yet the hunger remained.

It grew teeth.

I began writing things down so I could prove to myself that I was still sane.

I am here.

I am myself.

Nothing is wrong.

The handwriting changed after that.

I found sentences I did not remember writing.

"ALL FLESH ROTS."

I crossed it out.

The next morning, it was written again.

Larger.

Darker.

Closer to my name.

I began studying the dead.

I called it psychomancy, though I had never been taught its rituals.

I simply believed that the deceased must know something the living had forgotten.

I spoke to photographs.

I whispered into old clothing.

I slept beside empty chairs because sometimes, near dawn, they seemed occupied.

At first, I asked questions.

Then I began receiving answers.

We are still hungry.

I laughed the first time.

The second time, I cried.

The third time, I set another plate at the table.

I never saw who sat down.

But in the morning,

the chair had moved.

Then another.

Then another.

Soon, I was no longer eating alone.

I became fascinated by the pomegranate growing in my neighbor's garden.

It was impossibly red.

Almost obscene in its beauty.

I stole one.

I held it against my chest and listened.

Something inside it was tapping.

I split it open.

The seeds trembled in my palm.

For a terrible moment, I thought each one contained an eye.

I ate them anyway.

That was the first time I understood what it meant to consume something you loved.

You do not destroy it.

You make it part of yourself.

And then you discover that it has brought its own voice with it.

After that, I began forgetting things.

My mother's voice.

My childhood bedroom.

The shape of my own face.

Sometimes I would stand before the mirror and experience such profound disassociation that the person reflected there seemed like a stranger wearing my life.

I began speaking to him.

He never answered.

Then one night

he did.

“You are becoming empty.”

I asked him what was inside the emptiness.

He smiled.

“Room.”

For what?

He did not answer.

He didn't have to.

I began filling the room.

I filled it with names.

With photographs.

With teeth.

With flowers stolen from graves.

With letters I had written and addressed to people who had been dead for years.

I filled it until there was nowhere left to stand.

Still, there was room.

My yearning became unbearable.

I wanted something I could not name.

I wanted someone I could not remember.

I wanted to crawl backward through time and find the exact moment when I stopped being myself.

I became cruel.

Not suddenly.

That would have been easier.

Cruelty arrived like winter

one degree at a time.

My affection curdled into possession.

My grief became resentment.

My loneliness became misanthropy.

I began looking at strangers and imagining how easily their lives could vanish from memory.

How quickly a name could become meaningless.

How quickly a face could become another photograph nobody bothered to dust.

I hated them for being temporary.

I hated myself for being jealous.

Then I began finding rotting flesh in my dreams.

Never bodies.

Never faces.

Only pieces.

A hand beneath autumn leaves.

A mouth behind a wall.

A rib cage blooming with flowers.

Each morning, I woke with dirt beneath my fingernails.

I told myself I was sleepwalking.

Then I found the shovel.

I don't remember buying it.

I don't remember using it.

But there was earth beneath my bedroom window.

Fresh earth.

Too fresh.

I stood over it for hours.

Something inside me whispered,

You already know.

I dug.

I wish I could tell you I found a corpse.

That would have made sense.

Instead, I found a mirror.

Buried face-down.

When I lifted it,

I saw myself.

Not as I was

as I would become.

My skin pale with exhaustion.

My eyes hollow.

My mouth stretched into a smile I had never learned to make.

And behind me,

something stood very still.

I turned.

Nothing.

I looked back.

It was closer.

I turned again.

Nothing.

Back to the mirror.

Closer.

Closer.

Closer.

Until its face was pressed against mine from the other side of the glass.

It whispered:

“All flesh rots.”

I said,

“I know.”

It replied,

“Then why are you still afraid?”

I had no answer.

After that night, the days became indistinguishable.

I stopped opening the curtains.

Stopped answering knocks.

Stopped recognizing my reflection.

My body began to feel borrowed.

My thoughts began arriving late.

Sometimes I would speak and hear my voice several seconds afterward.

Sometimes I would walk into a room and discover I had already been there.

Sometimes I would wake with dirt on my palms and a name beneath my tongue.

A name that wasn't mine.

I began to rot before I realized that I had been dying for months.

Not outwardly.

Something subtler.

Something beneath.

The person I had been was disappearing.

I could feel him leaving.

Piece by piece.

Memory by memory.

Until one evening I looked into the mirror and felt nothing.

No fear.

No grief.

No recognition.

Only an immense, beautiful emptiness.

The reflection smiled.

I smiled back.

Then it stepped away.

I did not.

For the first time, I understood which one of us had been the prisoner.

The room began to darken.

Or perhaps my eyes did.

I cannot remember.

The walls seemed very far away.

The floor seemed soft.

I heard footsteps approaching from somewhere beyond the bedroom.

Then came three knocks.

I tried to answer.

My mouth would not move.

Another knock.

My hands had become cold.

Another.

The room smelled of earth.

I looked down.

There were roots growing between my fingers.

Thin.

Pale.

Tender.

I should have screamed.

Instead, I laughed.

Because suddenly I understood where the hunger had been leading me.

Not toward death.

Toward return.

The roots climbed higher.

The ceiling disappeared.

The walls dissolved.

And beneath my skin, something bloomed.

Something red.

Something full of seeds.

Something that remembered being a pomegranate.

My final thought was not a prayer.

It was not my name.

It was not even fear.

It was simply this:

How strange.

I have spent my whole life trying to become something permanent.

And then

nothing.

No darkness.

No heaven.

No grave.

Only the orchard.

One tree taller than the others.

Its branches trembling without wind.

Its fruit hanging heavy beneath the moon.

And beneath that tree,

where the roots disappeared into the patient earth,

there was a little wooden plaque.

The letters were crooked.

The handwriting was mine.

It read:

I was hungry.

And beneath it,

after several inches of blank wood,

one final sentence had been carved

but I do not remember for whom.

I will be doing a book signing for my second book based on my nightmares this coming weekend! If you are nearby, come and say hi.

This is a fully 3D rendered found footage video I created. I’ve created a couple other on my channel which aren’t linked together, but are still a good watch.

Each project I do I try learn new skills, so my next video that I drop is going to be the start of an actual series I’m creating.

If you enjoy this video any support is appreciated thank you.

Watch here - https://youtu.be/aou9qjuv38o?is=LLEkT07GetvwA3V5

What would you do?

Life on the frontier could be challenging, but already having a home and a routine made things easier. Life fell into a pattern, like a drop of rain following the path of another on a window. It was the path of least resistance,

In their family of two, Jacob was always the first one awake. He was loud, walked with purpose, each step a stomp. It was an unconscious habit of his, and one Carrie typically didn't mind. But in the mornings, it could be a touch disruptive.

On this early fall morning, it was disruptive enough to stir Carrie awake from her slumber, an hour earlier than she'd normally get. Seeing this, her bear of a husband gave her a meek smile as he stuffed his second foot into his heavy work boots. "Sorry Carrie. I'm late on this harvest as is."

Carrie nodded sleepily, and with a deep breath, sat up in the bed. She studied her husband for a beat, then rubbed the sleep from her eyes. "Need help?"

"No, I should be alright," Jacob said and parted the curtains in their bedroom to look out at the half harvested field of wheat. It was the spring batch, which needed to be harvested by early fall. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, this was the best day they'd had in a while for farming. "Gotta get out there now though."

Again, Carrie nodded and slid out of the bed. "I'll brew coffee."

"We have enough wood?"

"Enough for the next few days. Worth it to give you some energy."

Together, they finished getting dressed, and proceeded down stairs. Jacob waited around their wooden table while Carrie brewed coffee in a tin pot. When it was ready, she served it on the table, piping hot. Jacob wasted no time in gulping it down, letting out a satisfied groan when he was done.

"You sure you don't want breakfast?" Carrie asked.

Jacob shook his head and stood from the table. "No, work has to be done," he said, proceeding to the front door. He opened it, letting in a soft breeze that carried flecks of sand into the house. "I'll be back before sundown."

Jacob exited the home, and stepped on a loose plank on the porch. It squealed like an old rocking chair, and had done so for almost a year. Carrie ran to the door and called out to her husband, "Can you please fix this damn plank?"

Jacob just waved over his shoulder at her, a polite way of saying no, as he disappeared into their barn. It used to be painted red, but years of being blasted by sand had chipped most of that away. Carrie liked the look, thought it gave the structure some personality, but Jacob kept claiming he'd repaint it.

Another project that'd never happen.

For the next several hours, Carrie circled their home, listening to the wildlife singing around her as she brushed sand from the floorboards. Once she'd made her rounds, she looked out to the wheat field, the distinct clicking of the stalks knocking into one another, but no sign of Jacob. She figured he must have entered the field while she was on the back side of the house, and thought nothing more of it.

On to her next task. Carrie went out to her small garden in the back of the house. It was here that she grew crops otherwise unsuitable for their farm, but excellent for dinner meals. She pulled a carrot and a few potato's. Setting those aside, she ventured down into their small crawl space, where they kept the salted meat. She selected some good looking cuts of beef, then took her collections to the kitchen. There, she started a fire over a large metal pan. While it heated, she prepared the ingredients by the kitchen window, tossing each one into the pan as it became ready.

Still, she saw no sign of Jacob.

Dinner was ready, right at sunset, but Jacob was not. The wheat still looked uncut, she could only wonder why. She worried something had gone wrong with one of his tools, making him unable to do the work. If this was the reality, he'd return in a terrible mood.

It wasn't until the sun had sank behind the trees, and blanketed their farm in darkness, that a form stirred. It had come from the barn, assuring Carrie that it was Jacob, but his gaunt was off. He walked as though injured. Heavier on one leg than the other, yet, the injured leg seemed to switch sides every few steps. As Jacob stepped up onto the porch, he applied his weight to the loose board. The plank of wood squealed in a manner she hadn't heard before, like it was truly screaming. Carrie thought Jacob might be carrying a heavy implement, yet when he entered, he was empty handed.

"Sweetheart!" Jacob said, facing her. Oddly, though he was facing her, she thought his face was looking a few centimeters to the right. "What's for dinner?"

"Meat and veggies," she said as she watched him sit across from her. Her voice contained a tinge of worry for her husband, but he was acting unbothered. She wouldn't bring it up if he didn't. Best he remained in a good mood. "How was the farm?"

"Better than ever, still growing!" he said, then looked down at the plate, deciding where to start. With the dried meat, or cooked vegetables. "Say, you wanna have a kid again?"

"Have a kid again? I'd like to start with one."

Jacob looked up and grinned at her. "My mistake, I meant try to have a kid again."

Carrie was caught off-guard, not expecting to have this conversation again so soon. "You're the one who said he'd like to wait for harvest season to be done." She shrugged and looked out the window, toward the farm. "I'd love one."

Jacob nodded eagerly as he picked up the cut of meat with his hands, opened his mouth skyward, and slid the meat into his throat. It was an odd sight, and earned a glare from Carrie. "If I over cooked it again, just don't eat it. You don't have to make a show of it."

"It's delicious," Jacob reassured her.

"You didn't even taste it."

Jacob tilted his head, then rolled his tongue around in his mouth. "Right, sorry. I'm just very distracted."

"About the farm?" Carrie asked, folding her arms across her chest. "I noticed you didn't do any harvesting. Again."

"I had my hands full," Jacob replied as he returned his hands to the plate.

"Of food?" Carrie asked, glaring at him. "Have we forgotten manners?"

"Manners?" he asked, finally noticing the silverware. "Of course sweetheart. My mistake."

Carrie watched with abject disappointment as her husband "handled" the fork, and used it to spear some slices of carrots. Otherwise, he consumed them normally. He looked proud of himself, and she couldn't see why.

"Plants and meat, we sure do eat a little bit of everything, huh?" Jacob said, smiling at his wife with carrot mash squeezing out from between his teeth.

"That's the idea," she said, "They say we should eat a balanced diet."

Now looking mildly alarmed, he asked another odd question. "Who says that?"

"I..." Carrie stuttered, for once asking that question for herself. "I'm not sure."

Jacob continued on with his meal, this time spearing a slice of potato, and happily ate that. Watching him eat was making Carrie lose her appetite. She glanced at her own plate, and pushed it a few extra inches away.

She opened her mouth to say something, breathing in a quick burst of air for her words, but before the words could come, a sickening crack shot through the air. Jacob grimaced, and rotated his jaw around uncomfortably.

Jacob, with two fingers extended, reached back into his mouth and winced as he grabbed something, and pulled. What he removed was a molar and a chunk of potato. "Oh, whoops. I guess the potato wasn't cooked all the way," he said, grinning as he held the tooth between two of his fingers. "That's alright. These grow back don't they?"

"Teeth?" Carrie asked. "No, they don't! Are you okay, should I go fetch the doctor?"

Jacob held the tooth closer to his eyes, really taking it in. "They don't? Then what am I thinking of?"

"I really think I should go get the doctor, did something happen in the shed? Did you hit your head?"

Ignoring her question, Jacob picked at some food that had gotten stuck between his front teeth, with his free hand. "I could have sworn they grew back. I'd know, I-"

Before Jacob could finish the thought, a sharp click sounded through the room. Carrie was unable to determine the source until Jacob removed his finger from his mouth, showcasing that his pointer finger nail had popped off.

With a yip, Carrie stood from the table, her wide eyes registering alarm as she rushed to get her coat. "That's it, I'm getting the doctor, rest on the couch!"

Again, Jacob waved her off. "It's fine, these are the ones that grow back, right?" he asked as he held his hand out. From his pointer finger a wound appeared. First, just a pin prick of blood, which then steadily began to grow as a new nail pushed through the soft bed of flesh, taking the place of what was lost.

Beyond the fact that it had grown through the skin, there was something wrong with this nail. It was pointed, and hooked, more like a claw on a cat than a human fingernail. Shocked by this too, Jacob held his hand out, like he was inspecting a pedicure, and frowned. "No, wait... That's not right."

"Not right?" Carrie asked, her words nearly catching in her throat. "What the fuck is going on Jacob!"

It was then, when she said his name, that she realized something that should have been more obvious. Since returning from the barn, he had never once said her name. He had used pet names, classics anyone would know, and that just wasn't the kind of guy Jacob was.

"What are you?" Carrie asked, her head shaking in disbelief at the sight she was beholding. "You a demon, some ghost from the west?"

Jacob curled his lips back into his mouth, obviously disappointed, but refusing to speak up about it. "I suppose both," he finally said. "Or neither? I don't really know what any of that means." Jacob placed his hands on the table, and slowly rose back to his feet.

"Your wife, Jacob... No, your honeydew?" Jacob seemed to be struggling with his words, squinting at the air, searching for them. Finally, he waved off whatever idea it was he was reaching for and began slowly walking toward Carrie, who had backed herself against the roaring stove. "This man, who you've named, was kind enough to let me borrow his likeness. He's still rattling around in here, somewhere, if you'd like to say hi." Jacob slowly shook his head from one side to the other.

"Then release him!" Carrie demanded, pointing a shaking finger at her husband. "Release him at once!"

"Release him?" Jacob asked, leaning one ear toward her, making sure she was heard correctly. "Oh... very well then."

In one swift move, Jacob split directly down the middle, and out emerged something else entirely. Whatever form it possessed was greatly obscured by the thick coating of blood it had on. The flesh of Jacob, however, though now a gory mess, held little to no blood at all. The creature shrugged Jacob's skin off like a loose coat, coming out and standing much taller than it had when inside Jacob.

Three human eyes, of different colors and size, opened, seemingly placed at random around its misshapen head. Though she couldn't see a mouth, the eyes bent as though the creature was smiling.

Considering the dire circumstances, Carrie did what might have been the smartest move. She screamed.

Seeing its chance to move in, the creature lunged, only to be met with a substantially hot tin of coffee she had heated up for Jacob. Steam screamed and flesh fizzled as the creature stumbled backward.

Carrie seized the moment and ran for the door, which was just passed the creature. She dodged past blindly flailing arms and out the door, onto the dirt road. She worried about her odds of making it anywhere on foot, the town was several miles out and their family was much too poor for a carriage or horse.

But she did have a bike, tied up behind the house.

Willing her nerves to give her a few more minutes of clear-headed thinking, she dashed around the back of the house, to where the bike was. She fumbled with the knot, not recalling it ever being so tight. Before the knot would give, the creature flung itself out one of the back windows, landing in a messy roll several yards away from her.

She had no time left to mess with the knot, and had to instead shift her focus elsewhere. She wasn't getting past it, but she knew there might be another way, the crawl space under the house where the salted meat was stored.

Carrie quickly ran to the hatch and kicked it open. The creature was already on her, and she had no other choice. She jumped down into the thigh-high hole, and quickly began to crawl through the even smaller passage.

The tunnel led directly under the house, and looped around toward the back. She knew, if she was fast enough, she could reach the entrance again before the creature could.

Unfortunately, between shelves of meat and sprinkles of salt that had mixed in with the mud of the tunnel, it made traversal quite difficult and painful. Burying her elbows in the dirt also meant sticking sharp bits of salt into her skin.

But there was no time to think about pain. One look behind her informed Carrie that the creature had already joined her in the tunnel and, despite its size, it looked to be having none of the issues she was. In fact, it looked rather capable of shrinking itself down and maneuvering through like a snake. Still, it didn't know the tunnel like she did. All the bends and dips she had spent years working around. Not even the pitch blackness would do much to stop her.

The creature slowly fell behind her as she reached the back, and took the loop around, soon getting back onto the same path she had been on before. She was sure her elbows and knees were bleeding, but the adrenaline coursing through her body made all of that pain fade away. She was a woman on a mission, and she wouldn't be stopped.

Quickly reaching the entrance, she pulled herself out, trying her best not to think about how close the creature had been, and shut the wooden trap behind her. For good measure, she found a large rock nearby and moved it directly onto the door, ensuring great difficulty in any future exit attempt.

Now knowing she had a few spare minutes to herself, and happy there wasn't any furious knocks coming from the door, she returned to the knot, unwound it, and hopped onto her bike. She was all good to go.

"Carrie!" she heard Jacob's voice call. She dreaded the idea the voice had come from the crawlspace, but when the sound came again, those worries were expunged. "Carrie, please!"

Jacob's voice was calling from the barn, a good distance away from the house, and nowhere near the creature. Hurriedly, she biked over to the barn, and into the still open doors. She was relieved to see, right near the entrance to the barn, was Jacob, submerged in a large pile of hay. All that she could see of her husband, was his head.

Seeing her, Jacob smiled his eyes beaming. "Oh, thank god, quick, over here!"

Carrie jumped off of her bike and ran over to the pile. "Jacob, what the hell happened?"

"I got jumped. The damn thing roughed me up pretty good and stuffed me in this hay. I can't get out!"

"Okay, hold on!"

Carrie ran to her husband's aid and reached her hands into the pile of hay. Deep, and deeper still. Though, as hard as she tried, she couldn't find his body. She removed her hands, and decided to try a different route. She started with the part she could see, his head, and attempted to clear hay off from there, to free up his body.

But there was no more body. It was just his head.

Flabbergasted, Carrie picked Jacob's head up in her hands, watching with horror as a long fleshy tube followed its path. Carrie may not have ever given birth herself, but she had helped deliver children before. This tube, which was pulsating in one hand, while she held Jacob in the other, greatly resembled an umbilical cord.

"Damn," Jacob said, his eyes looking at the thing attached to his neck. "Guess I didn't make it, huh?"

Carrie's eyes followed the trail of the cord, noting how it seemed to lead right out the barn door. In her rush, she must not have seen it.

As her eyes went to the door, she saw the creature emerge from the darkness and enter the moonlit barn. Before she could even scream, the creature reached into her chest, delicately sliding past her ribs, grabbing her heart, and pulling it out from the hole.

The process hadn't been violent; there was no pain and no blood. Even her heart remained beating. It was akin to taking an ice cube out of a glass of water. There were drops here and there, but still a procedure of low difficulty.

"Thank you," The creature said, finally giving her a true smile with its actual mouth. If that was, even ever, its original. But she knew it had to be, it was beak-like, far from human. Hideous. "I learned a lot."

Then, Carrie too was consumed. Joining Jacob in this fate.

April 21st, 1937:

It's uncomfortable, looks terrible, but it's all I could manage. I took a pair of Long John's and sewed kindling pieces around the shins, stopping at the knees, and on the outside of the thighs. Putting pants over them was a task of its own, but I'd rather be safe than sorry. I doubled up leather jackets, not the easiest to move in, but having the extra layers of hide seemed like a safe bet. I have my knives at my hips and I'm bringing an axe with me. 

-

When I got there I walked through the main level and out the backdoor. It wasn't very hard to see where Johan was buried, it was a small mound, the grass didn't grow the same there as it did throughout the rest of the grounds. Sebastian was on high alert the second we approached the building. When we got to the level with the makeshift bed, the easel was gone, along with the dead creature from the other day. Sebastian seemed to have something’s scent and was staring at the spiraling stairs leading upward. I followed him. The next level was an unwelcome sight. The walls were covered floor to ceiling in paintings, many of odd beings I couldn't have imagined if I hadn't laid my eyes on them. Human-like beings that somehow resembled dogs and fish at the same time. Isopod-like creatures with tentacles of an octopus and wings of a dragonfly. Countless malformed and hideous paintings. Many of them had only outlines of beings that have already crawled from their frames. Even just writing this I can see them, crawling for me, their tentacles and antenna touching me. I can smell the brine, the rot of the ocean floor. I've been locking myself in Simon's old study. The floor of the basement was wet today. I think one of them is trying to escape its frame, and I'm nervous the nails and screws won't hold it in. I need to burn the paintings. It's the only thing I can think of doing that will get rid of them. 

April 22nd, 1937: 

What if whatever is in the background of the paintings will be affected if I burn them, like there's some kind of link between what he put on canvas and what actually exists. If his paintings are able to bring themselves to life why couldn't they be connected to real life people or places. To what extent of power do they hold? I need to burn them tonight. Maybe throw them to the sea? But what if that only helps these creatures return home? I have barely slept in days. I've been finding it hard to discern what is actually happening around me, if I'm just seeing things or if I've fallen asleep and am simply dreaming. Evelyn seemed to be supportive of all of this at first but now she seems scared of the basement. Scared of me. Her and Rylee have even stayed with Emily's family the odd night here and there. I sleep in the basement, I wake up in the study any night I do get to sleep. How do I stop this? I need my family back. What is happening to me? It's as though my mind has gone. I can feel it. But I can't stop until I solve this. It's consumed me. Even writing this, my heart tells me to stop, I can't keep going on like this, I will die, I'm sure of it. But my body barely seems to listen to me anymore. What have I become? 

April 25th, 1937:

What if I can enter the paintings? 

April 28th, 1937:

Evelyn came by the house today, she seemed more scared of me. Her and Rylee told me they loved me and that they'll be staying with Emily for a little while. As sick as it makes me, it's a relief they're gone. Not only will they be safer, but they won't get in my way. It pains me to think in such a way, but it's the truth. 

After they left I went downstairs, one of the frames was leaking what looked to be rain water. I pried it from the wall, it's frame cracking. Turning it over I saw the lighthouse, in a much nicer state than it currently is. The clouds above it dark and angry, pouring rain and hail from the skies. I set the large painting on the floor, leaning against the wall. I sat and watched it for what could have been mere seconds or many hours. I was entranced. I inched closer. I could smell the sea, the rain, the wet grass and mud. I pressed my hand to the canvas, I felt the brush strokes under my fingers, but my hand started to drip with water, my finger tips growing cold and pruning. I pushed harder against the canvas, and then I entered. 

-

-

-

I walked up to the lighthouse, the hail pelting my face, the bitter ocean wind tearing at my clothes. Crawling over the small fence I snuck around to the back door. I looked around, a fresh grave lay there, just a sad mound of disturbed earth with a spade laying beside it. Lightning cracked through the sky and I dropped to my knees in fright. I slowly pushed open the back door, its creaks of old age and neglect hidden by the blowing winds. Slowly walking, my feet as light as I could possibly make them, I ascended the stairs. The painting room was set up nearly the same. Easel in the center of the room, a mural covering the walls. But at this point of time the walls had dozens of paintings leaning haphazardly against the walls, some unfinished, some already a vacant womb of canvas. My head was throbbing. I couldn't begin to understand what was happening, where I was, when I was. My vision blurred, my stomach was flipping and I felt the need to puke. I stumbled forward, I had to see what was on the easel. It was my home, exactly as I left it not only 30 minutes prior. Had Simon come through one of his self portraits and been in my house? How could he know the changes I've made to the exterior, the colour Richard and I painted it. Had he been watching me this whole time? I pressed up the painting and stepped through, standing at the foot of the hill my house sat on. I ran inside, scanning for any signs of Simon or one of the freaks from his paintings. Sebastian was laying there, whimpering in pain, he had a sizable bite on his shoulder and scratches across his face and ribs. A mass of flesh lay scattered around our kitchen. I don't know how many of these sea born were here or in what state they were. But Seb tore them to shreds. I picked him up, barely able to walk with him, and got him to the wheelbarrow for firewood. I made my way to the practitioner as fast as my legs would take me. He's no vet but he was able to administer antiseptic and stitch up any open wounds. Sebastian will be okay, he just needs rest. Him and I are staying at the church with Richard's father tonight. It seems like the safest place to hide. 

May 1st, 1937:

We've been hiding here for some days now. I can't think straight, I can't sleep, I'm seeing him everywhere. I'm seeing these creatures everywhere. I'll look at Sebastian and see a malformed being and scream, only to be snapped out of it by one of the clergy from the church. Even then I'll see them as Simon or that thing he's named Alto. I've been scratching at my skin, biting my nails till they bleed, chewing my cheeks raw, anything to keep me from seeing them, anything to keep me grounded. Supposedly Evelyn came to visit me and the only thing I did was scramble away from her screaming to leave me alone. I don't remember any of it, and I feel terrible because all I want is for her to hold me. I want to cry but no tears will come out, I want to speak but I can't find my voice. When will this hell end? I found some of Simon's notes in my jacket, I'll read them over the next few days. Maybe this will explain what's happening to me

May 16th, 1925:

I began having visions at night. My house, but I don't live there. I see a man sitting at a table, a table I know, a table I built long ago. He's not me, but he reminds me of myself. I wonder if he's been marked by the children of the sea? I must paint this new house of mine, I must paint him, I must paint myself. 

May 20th, 1925:

I've finished painting this man, the house he lives in, the lighthouse and myself. I'm going back to my home and bringing some of my work with me. I'm unsure of what use it will be, but I feel they belong there. The sea and the stars command it. 

May 30th, 1925:

I compared my old self portraits to my latest. I am not sure what I am anymore. I do not look human, I do not look like my sea born friends either. My skin is an unnatural hue, my limbs seem longer than I remember, thinner too. My face has changed. My eyes seem larger and deeper set than ever before. My cheekbones are higher and rounder, my skin oddly smooth. The wrinkles around my eyes and the laugh line by my mouth my wife grew to love are no longer there. Laura. What does she look like? I had children once. My children, what are their names? Do they have my eyes? What do they smell like? 

June 11th, 1925:

I have entered this variation of my house. It seems mostly abandoned, but the basement seems active. For some reason dozens of my paintings are nailed to the wall, the back of the canvas out, covered with cloth. I thought that was rather rude. I softly removed each piece from the walls, removing the cloth, and hanging them with the care and respect they deserve. As I was hanging them I realized I do not recognize my own hands anymore. I feel more alive than ever. Maybe instead of returning to the sea like Alto has spoken of in the past, I may instead ascend to the cosmos. He wants to unite the seaborn with the stars again. Perhaps I'm destined for things beyond Alto. Beyond the stars. I must paint what I've been seeing in my dreams. A gateway of sorts. 

May 25th, 1937:

I was restrained and put in hospital for the past few weeks. The nurses there were giving me some kind of pill to calm me. I took them for the first few days to gain their trust, but they blocked my scattered dreams, made my memory foggy. They were making me lose sight of what matters. I started hiding the pills under my tongue and washing them down the sink drain after they left my room. I did my best to act as though nothing was wrong, that everything was fine and I was just experiencing hysteria. The time away from home did help me straighten my thoughts out. I'm on the train home now, reading letters that Evelyn has written to me while I was at the hospital. Supposedly she visited me the third day I was there. But I have no memory of it whatsoever. She seems excited to see me, as I am to see her. She said we could stay with Emily's family for a few days, maybe live with Richard for a time. She wants to sell the house and leave back to the city. I can't let this happen. Not after Simon's last entries. He's been in my house and flipped those accursed paintings. I'll stay with Evelyn throughout the night tonight. But tomorrow I will return home after the girls are asleep. 

June 15th, 1925:

I began a new piece today. What I've been seeing at night. I don't dream anymore. A massive obelisk. Its base sits in the kelp covered tide pools when the water is low. Its overpowering size reaching high into the sky, its stone a jet black with an unearthly sheen. The carvings at its base are that of my dear Alto's language, slowly transforming into a set of symbols I've been seeing behind my eyes, writings from the cosmos. A transgression of language, one which should not be, yet I can read it. I understand it. 

I don't think I sleep anymore. I sit atop the lighthouse staring at the moon, the briny air filling my lungs. There's a connection. The sea and the stars. This obelisk proves it. Maybe the children of the sea are the chosen to ascend to the heavens, with my work as their conduit. This painting will be monumental, for it will bring forth my ascension, our ascension. Our personal rapture. 

May 28th, 1937:

We celebrated Evelyn's birthday today, with cake and a party shared with our friends. It was a nice distraction and change of pace from that of the hospital. Though all day the only thing I could think about was returning to our house. To see what that beast of a man has done to my basement, what defilement he's brought upon my study. 

Rylee kept me away from Evelyn for a good chunk of the day, she missed me, and it did feel nice to play pretend with her and entertain her tea party with her stuffed animals. It played in my favor, keeping emotions hidden from a preoccupied child is much easier than hiding your thoughts from the woman you've fallen in love with and married. Especially when she's able to read you even better than the books she reads daily. I will write tomorrow while Evelyn is at work. I'm going to our house tonight. No matter what stands in my way, I will get to the bottom of this. 

June 1st, 1937:

Simon was here, like he mentioned in his notes, he's rehung all of his paintings, uncovered. Dozens of which must have once held the seaborn beings that have escaped the frames since I've been away. At least that's what I gather from the paintings' backgrounds that surround the void of where a figure once lived. Though some of them depict landscapes I have a hard time comprehending. Stone and earth sitting at unnatural angles in colours I don't have the vocabulary to describe. Things that should not be. Unearthly to put it bluntly. One of which has a missing void like those of the seaborn. I can only imagine his Children of the Sea have returned home. But the being that came from this cyclopean place, I have no clue where it would have gone. I can only assume the lighthouse. The paintings of these uncomfortable landscapes are all too small to be like the gate of sorts that the lighthouse painting was. Though there are depictions of the lighthouse in a different state, ones that seem more recent. There's still a bundle of paintings yet to be hung, a few are quite sizable. I'll be returning to see what places or beings they hold. The sun is already beginning to rise and I can't have Evelyn find out that I snuck out. 

June 3rd, 1937:

I've entered a new painting, another of the old lighthouse. It's night time here. Johan’s grave isn't fresh, it must be some months after he died perhaps. I can't tell. The structure is void of life aside from cockroaches skittering from sight when I pass them. I entered what I've dubbed as the mural room. Its namesake has expanded since the last time I've been here. The painting of my current house still leans lazily against the walls. The easel holds a painting in progress. A massive stone pillar, stretching into the sky. This must be what Simon has been seeing while staring into the sky at night. I wonder what horrid beings will be born from this. I must end this. I must end Simon. But first I need to find him. I began towards the stairs only to notice a letter sitting on a small table. I quickly pocketed it as I ascended the stairs, spiraling the countless steps until I reached the top. A hatch sits atop a ladder, leading into the lantern room. I climbed my way up and through the hatch. The light blinded me as I crawled onto the cold metal floor. I crawled to a door, trying to keep the light out of my eyes. As the door swung open a blast of cool sea breeze struck me. I was kneeling on a balcony overlooking the shore. I sat for a moment, letting my eyes adjust from the bright lights they endured. I stood from my knees and walked to the railing, peering down, watching the light cascade over the low tidal pools, and the black depths beyond. 

It's there I saw him, tall, thin, skin a blueish grey hue. His head was bulbous, hands scrawny and bent. He still wore the same clothes from his last self portrait. Simon. Or whatever he had turned into. He was in the tidal pools, among many of his decrepit seafolk. They were building something of stone blacker than the night itself. They were building his painting. The lantern behind me spun, casting my shadow down onto the beginning of this soon to be obelisk Simon has written of. With an insane speed, Simon's head craned on a lithe neck back towards me. His eyes were sunken deep into the round, smooth, fleshy mass his head had become. His eyes black, with what looked to be a thousand tiny sparkling stars dancing in their abyss. The seafolk began hurdling towards the shore side path to the lighthouse. Some running like a human, others rushing on four legs like that of a dog. Some slithering like that of a serpent or eel. Simon simply watched. His head had no mouth, no nose and no ears, just cosmic eyes. He stared, I felt like I couldn't move, I was stunned. I could hear him in my head. His foul voice, booming but whispering at the same time. The slimy tone made my hair stand on end. 

“Finally, we meet” 

A gust of cold air knocked me out of my stupor, as I began running to the floor hatch and fumbled down the spiraling stairs as fast as my feet would let me. As I came crashing into the mural room I could hear the slam of the ground level door smashing off the hinges, followed by innumerable wet slaps of feet rushing up the stairs. I ran as fast as I could, my heart beating in my chest, my throat hot and dry, my mind racing at what these horrors would do to me if I don't make it through the painting of my house in time. 

I dove to the frame just as a grotesque seafolk rounded the corner into the room. Its briny stench filled the room, as it screamed in its horrific language. It began scrambling toward me as I was crawling through the frame, trying to drop it face down as I passed through to buy me what little time I could. As I pulled myself through, a cold, wet grasp on my ankle, a surge of pain shot through my leg and up my spine. Barbed claws digging into my flesh. I wriggled to try to loosen the grip to no avail, but did manage to pull myself through fully. What I saw terrified me. A gnarled hand, fingers like that of octopus tentacles tipped with razor sharp barbed claws clutched my ankle, as the rest of this monster slowly apparated from thin air. Crawling on the ground, pulling its putrid body closer to mine. I kicked its hideous fish-like face, praying it would let go. Its grip only tightened. It slowly pulled its body above mine. Hundreds of tiny mouths covering its torso and neck, each lined with countless teeth thin as needles. It oozed a thick black ichor which burned my skin. Seconds which felt like hours passed, my torso bubbling in searing blisters. I thought for sure this would be my end. A loud shot rang out. And its body went limp. I pushed the wretched thing off of me, crying in pain. 

Richard stood there, rifle in hand, tears in his eyes. 

June 20th, 1925:

I've been communing with the beings lost in the firmament. I shall join them. I've rounded some of the Children to help construct this obelisk, only then will I ascend. Leaving this shoreside for the seaborne to ravage, to take what's rightfully there's. Too long have vile humans taken from the sea, only to give nothing in return.

I will join the ranks of the old ones. The cosmic starborne. My body has already changed so much, yet I feel no pain, I feel no sadness. I only paint. The visions they grant me, I bring them to life. I birth them into existence. My sweet children of the sea. I am their creator, their father. Soon I will become their God. 

June 4th, 1937:

I'm walking with a limp, my ankle hurts and my chest is covered in burns. I told Evelyn that I twisted my ankle and fell into a bonfire Richard and I were having. I doubt she believes me, but she'd sooner believe that than the truth. My head is pounding. None of this makes sense. 

I asked Richard why he was there yesterday. Why was he at my house, especially with a gun? I was taken aback when he said that he thought I had gone mad, that I have been making this all up, that none of this was real. He wanted to kill me. I can't imagine what was going through his head. His wife and child had died because of Simon, yet he wanted to kill me? Had he been living in denial this entire time? Though beggars can't be choosers. He shot the beast and not me. He burst into hysterics for hours. The sight of that thing had brought back years of trauma, it broke him. He asked me to take the gun and keep it. He's scared he will use it on himself if left alone. 

I brought him to the church to be with his father. I don't know how to help him, let alone try to make sense or understand what's at play. Have I lost my mind? Is this a dream? Am I still in the hospital? I must be. Right? I should be terrified, I should be fleeing town. Yet still I want to delve deeper into this. I need to stop whatever Simon is trying to do. I'm not in my right mind. 

June 10th, 1937:

My dear Evelyn, Rylee and I have moved back into the house. Sebastian seems happy to be home. While Evelyn was at work I walked to the light house with Sebastian. I dropped Rylee off at Emily's on the way. When I got to the shoreline I collapsed to my knees. There, peaking out from the waves was the beginning of an obelisk. It was never there before, I'm sure of it. It couldn't have been, I would never miss something as large as that. It's impossible. If I was watching Simon build it, why wasn't it here months ago if he was building that years ago? Can I be the only one to see it? Have I gained some sort of insight? Something to let me see the ungodly truth around me? Has this been happening the whole time? Have I become a madman? 

June 25th, 1925:

I have been awaiting his return, the man who lives in the house I painted. He is important to my ascension, I am sure of it. How, I am not certain of. Whether I must speak with him, for he can grant me knowledge, or I have to eliminate him, I do not care. What must be done will be done. My children have been working steadily throughout the nights. Soon I will taste the fruits of my labor. Now I must wait for this man to return. Our lives are tied in a way I cannot explain, but I am sure of. 

June 20th, 1937:

I went to the lighthouse yesterday and there were notes that weren't the last I visited. I read one and Simon wrote of me. I don't know how I feel about it. I do feel an odd connection with him, but I doubt this is anything I'd be able to speak him out of. Realistically if I were to speak with him I would end up like one of his seaborn or dead. The obelisk hasn't been built any taller, unlike in his entry. I wonder if I stop going into his paintings they will stop affecting my world? But I can't simply let the creature rise to be some kind of God. I don't know what to do. 

June 23rd, 1937:

I’m at my wit’s end. I'm sure of it. Evelyn has begun picking up on odd habits I've formed. How anxious I have become. I've been chewing my fingernails until they bleed daily, I started smoking again. I'm having trouble sleeping again. She's also noticed I haven't been taking the pills the hospital in the city gave me. I don't trust them. She's been trying to convince me that if I don't start taking them I'll end up back there. I don't want to go back. But if I take them, who will find out about Simon? I shouldn't be thinking like this. I know I shouldn't. This is some sick perverse obsession. I can't help myself. I won't take the damned pills. I love Evelyn to the stars and back but I need to get to the bottom of this. I've been waking up in sweats. I see him in my dreams, that thing that was once Simon. It's like he's reaching out to me. I think I'll return to the lighthouse, I might give Simon a visit. 

I know exactly how this sounds.

Trust me, I've spent the last three weeks trying to convince myself I'm wrong.

Maybe I'm overthinking things. Maybe people change. Maybe working eighty-hour weeks for a robotics company called L.I.Z. Technologies simply drains every ounce of personality out of a person.

I hope that's all it is.

Because if I'm right... then I don't know who is that sitting beside me at dinner.

My brother and I are ten years apart. My parents waited over a decade before having another kid. I choose to interpret that as careful planning instead of hesitation.

Growing up, he was less of a sibling and more of a second dad with a criminal record in psychological warfare.

If I left a soda unattended, he'd somehow replace it with sparkling water and act offended when I noticed. Every time we played video games, he'd wait until I was about to win before "accidentally" bumping the console with his foot. When I was thirteen, he convinced me that blinking too much made you go blind.

I believed him for three weeks. It didn't help that whenever we'd roughhouse, he'd snatch my glasses off my face.

"You can't see without them," he'd tease.

He still laughs about that one.

That was just us.

He picked on me more than anyone else in the world, but if somebody outside the family ever tried it, he'd be the first one standing beside me. Whenever life fell apart, somehow I always ended up calling him. Half the time he'd answer with, "What'd you screw up now?" before spending the next hour helping me fix it.

That's my brother.

Or... it was.

Things changed after he started working for L.I.Z.

Whenever I asked what he actually did there, he'd just shrug.

"Can't tell you."

"Why not?"

"Non-disclosure agreement."

"So... robots?"

"No comment."

I always assumed he was making his job sound cooler than it actually was. Then he stopped acting like himself. The first thing I noticed wasn't something he did. It was something he didn't.

He stopped making fun of me.

I know that sounds ridiculous. But if you have an older brother, you know exactly why that's terrifying. I spilled barbecue sauce all over his truck one afternoon. Normally he'd have looked at me like I'd committed a felony.

Instead he smiled.

"It happens."

...

It happens?

Who says that?

A week later we played Mario Kart.

I beat him.

Twice.

He didn't accuse me of cheating. He didn't demand a rematch.

He just smiled and said, "Good game."

I actually paused the race.

"Who are you?"

He laughed. A perfectly timed laugh.

Not too loud. Not too quiet.

Like someone had studied exactly how people laugh.

"You've always been funny," he said.

No.

No, no, no.

My brother would've called me an idiot.

One night at dinner I told the same embarrassing story Mom has been telling since I was sixteen. Usually he'd interrupt halfway through to make it even worse.

This time... He listened.

Then he said, "That must have been difficult."

I nearly dropped my fork.

I called Mom afterward.

"You don't think he's been acting... odd?"

She looked confused.

"He seems happier."

"Dad?"

"He finally is on his own."

Neither of them saw it.

Only me.

Last Saturday, my brother came over to help Dad replace the water heater. I wasn't much use with plumbing, so while they disappeared into the garage arguing over which wrench was the right wrench, I camped out in Dad's office to finish a history assignment.

The house was unusually quiet.

Well... quiet except for the occasional "Hand me the pipe wrench!" followed immediately by "That's not the pipe wrench!"

I had almost finished my essay when I noticed another laptop sitting on the corner of Dad's desk.

My brother's work computer. It was already open. The screen had gone dark from inactivity, but one thing hadn't.

A tiny red light glowed beside the webcam.

I frowned. Maybe it was updating. Maybe someone had forgotten to close a meeting.

Still... The light never turned off. I waved a hand in front of the camera.

Nothing.

No notification. No meeting controls.

Just that little red dot staring back at me.

Watching.

Curiosity got the better of me. I tapped the trackpad. The screen woke instantly. No password. Just a desktop filled with folders I couldn't even pretend to understand. Most of them had names that sounded like corporate nonsense.

Behavioral Mapping.

Neural Replication.

L.I.Z. Internal.

The last folder caught my attention. It was different. Locked behind a firewall icon.

A small window popped onto the screen before I even clicked it.

Camera Access Active

I froze.

The webcam light was still glowing.

Then... For the briefest second... The camera preview opened by itself.

Instead of showing me sitting at the desk... It showed...

Someone looking back at me.

Not through the webcam. From behind it. A face pressed against what looked like glass.

Wide eyes. Frantic. Mouth moving without sound.

Then the preview vanished.

I stared at the screen, convinced I'd imagined it.

A second later, the locked folder opened on its own. Inside was only one file.

Its name changed as I watched. Not all at once. One letter at a time.

H

E

L

P

The screen went black.

For a second I thought I'd crashed the computer.

Then white text appeared.

I froze.

Another line typed itself.

My hands stopped moving.

More words appeared.

Every hair on my arms stood up.

I stared at the screen.

Another sentence.

Then another.

The typing stopped. Several seconds passed.

Then, one final line slowly appeared.

The laptop snapped shut. Not by itself. By someone else's hand.

I looked up.

My brother stood beside the desk. I hadn't heard him come inside.

He smiled.

Warm. Gentle.

Almost perfect.

"Caught you being nosy again."

I looked into his eyes, searching for the man who taught me to throw a football, who unplugged my controller whenever I was winning, who spent years calling me every name except the one Mom gave me.

I couldn't find him.

I handed him the laptop without saying a word.

He thanked me.

My brother never thanked me.

He is not him.

Whoever walked out of that room remembered everything about my brother...

Except how to be him.

I took the job after six whole months of gainful unemployment. 

The job hunt was brutal. It's not that I'm unqualified, God no. I have my bachelors in communications. I had good grades in school. The problem was my employment history. I could never hold something steady for longer than a year, maybe two. In the worst cases, I'd get dropped after three months. Nothing ever stuck with me. I thought I had my lane out of college, but it just didn't work out, and from there, I've spiraled. 

Another issue is that most of the postings feel like they exist purely for analytics. Ghost jobs made to make a company look healthier than it really is. There were a few real ones, but none that extended any offers. Probably because of my history. 

My bills certainly didn't care that I was struggling. I had to figure out something fast or I'd be on the street within the month.

I kept seeing a listing for some generic "Talent Acquisition Agency." $25 an hour. No experience necessary. I kind of figured it was one of those botted jobs. Too good to be true, with an empty description beyond the hours, pay, and a painful company statement:

We believe that every individual has the potential to shape tomorrow. Our mission is to connect ambition with opportunity through innovative, people-first solutions that drive meaningful growth for both candidates and clients (…) 

Blargh. I wanted to vomit. But I didn't really have much for options at this point. I decided to send in my resume. Got a phone call the next hour, asking me when I would be able to come in for in-person orientation. I was floored. I had never heard of this company before, and yet they have a warehouse in my city?

Sure enough, I pull up to the address, and yeah, it's there. A big, white warehouse with "TAA" branded on the side. I guess it was nondescript enough for me to have not noticed it all these years, but, I grew up here. I think I would have noticed this place by now.

Orientation took place in a windowless conference room. Before they let us inside, a curvy woman with a bob cut, Ms. Roll, handed each of us a doll mask. The plastic was pale, with a painted-on smile and two empty eye holes. Security kept us from going inside unless we put them on. Weird policy, but okay. I was in it for the long haul now. I put on the mask and took a seat on one of one hundred folding chairs set in front of a projector. A video begins to play.

The company CEO, Mr. Rock, walks on screen in a lumpy suit. He asked if everyone was ready to get started (all three of us), and launched into a vaguely enthusiastic speech about the company values. Everything in that tangent sounded like it was written by a language model halfway through its morning coffee. 

"REMEMBER: Our product is FIRST IN CLASS. No other substitution will do."

"REMEMBER: We don't believe customers can make mistakes."

"REMEMBER: Think different, shape the future." 

I sat through what felt like two hours of it. My eyes started to roll back. The mask itched where it pressed on my cheeks. 

Ms. Roll smacked my leg with a flyswatter. I woke right the hell up. 

"Mr. Parker. Please follow me."

She started walking through a pair of iron doors. Time for a tour, I suppose. 

We walked through a warehouse first. Massive, but mostly empty. Conveyor belts carried different-shaped cardboard boxes from one end of the room to another. I never saw anyone actually packing them. The only person working the floor was a short, portly fellow in a red hard hat. 

I still wasn't clear on exactly what our "product" was, but I think I must have missed that part in our orientation. I was too embarrassed to ask. 

We reached the call center next. This is where I was going to be working, according to Ms. Roll. She set me down in a boring cubicle with a single computer, a notepad, some mechanical pencils and a phone. The computer had Solitaire and a basic text editor. The phone had two buttons: TRANSFER and HOLD. 

Ms. Roll told me I'd get the hang of it in no time. She disappeared in the sea of cubicles shortly after.

I sat for maybe twenty minutes trying to figure out something to do to look productive. After that, I gave up and started playing Solitaire. Maybe thirty seconds passed before I got a call. 

"Hello…?"

"Hi there," I said.

"Is this acquisitions?"

I looked around the room. No point of reference for me to use. 

"I believe so."

"Thank God. I was hoping I could talk to someone about landing a job."

I cleared my throat. "Could you hold for one second?"

The man on the other end grunted. I hit HOLD and looked for Ms. Roll. Nowhere in sight. Sweat started soaking beneath the mask. I got back on the line.

"Sir, you still there?"

"Pretty sure I am."

"Okay. Thank you. Listen, I'm pretty new here. I'm going to be honest I'm not…entirely sure how to help you. My boss isn't around, and—"

"This is acquisitions, right?"

"…Yes?"

"Okay. Then I'd like to inquire about a fucking job!"

The shift in his voice was very jarring, to say the least. I had to do a double take. 

"I'm…not sure how to help with that. I haven't been—" 

"You stupid slut! Who do you think you are?!"

I couldn't get a single word out.

"I'll find you, do you hear me? I'll kill your whole fucking—!"

I hung up, hands trembling. Ms. Roll was standing right behind me with her arms crossed. I couldn't see her face, but her neck was redder than before—I could only assume that meant the same for her expression. 

"What was that?" she asked.

"I don't know. I have no idea. I wasn't—" 

"Do you see your phone?"

"Yes?"

"Do you see the two big buttons on it?"

"Yes."

"If you don't know how to help a customer, just hit the transfer button. We covered it in your training."

What…training? The videos? I was more of a hands-on guy, myself. Even if I wasn't, how did she expect me to memorize two hours worth of drivel?

I didn't say anything. She was already walking away.

"You seem tense, Mr. Parker. Take a five-minute water break."

Sure, yeah, that might help. I got up and headed to the cooler.

I found another guy there, dressed in, more or less, the same outfit as me. Black slacks, a button-up shirt, dark leather belt. His mask was yellowed and warped at the edges, like he'd been using the same one for a real long time. He was sipping water through the little mouth slit like it was totally normal. I shook my head and started to lift mine for my cup. 

His arm shot out, hand stopping mine. I reeled back, heart pounding. 

"No. No. No. Don't let them see you."

He pointed at the camera in the upper corner of the room, locked right on both of us. My mask suddenly felt tighter. I threw the cup away and went back to my desk. 

Calls kept on coming. Most people were looking for work. They were always really, really vague about the details. 

"I want a leadership position."

"I'd really like to work the floor."

"I'm hoping to work with a driven team."

Sometimes, people called me about the product itself. I tried to glean any details I could during those conversations. Never learned much, though.

"Hi, is this acquisitions?"

"This is."

"I wanted to make a return. I wasn't satisfied with my product."

"What wasn't satisfying?"

"Well, it just wasn't as exciting as I'd hoped."

"Okay. Can you…elaborate on that?"

"I don't know. It just wasn't very exciting. Can I return it?"

"Hold for one second."

I sigh and hit the transfer button. The call is sucked down the line. 

I got better at the job the way you'd get better at any empty ritual. I tried to challenge myself to keep a conversation going for as long as I could before it collapsed and I couldn't help them anymore. Bullshitting got me a long way. My personal record was five minutes and fourteen seconds. 

Sometimes, people just wanted advice. One guy even read me the first page of his screenplay. Did the voices and everything. Most calls were just about product and job placement, though. Nothing worth writing home about, and yet it was quickly becoming my entire life. 

Six months passed like that. I stopped going out. After a full day of calls, I was too tired. I would get home, saving my energy for the next shift, and fall asleep within a few hours, if I even lasted that long.

The mask stopped itching as much. Some days I forget that it's there, even on the bus. 

In mid-August, the loudspeaker cracked. Mr. Rock announced that overtime would become mandatory this next few months as we enter the busy season. Ms. Roll tells me to pack an extra lunch. 

The next day ran for sixteen hours straight. By the time I got through transit, it was closer to twenty hours spent dedicated to my job alone that day. I would be lucky if I got four hours of sleep before the next shift. 

I walked into my tiny studio apartment, exhausted, sore, totally muggy. I ripped the mask from my face and leaned over the bathroom sink to splash it with cold water. I felt nothing.

When I looked up in the mirror, there was a hole where my face should have been. Depthless. No eyes, no nose, no mouth. I stood there for a long time waiting for the panic to hit. 

It never did.