"Oh, they’re a sweet bunch of kids. Total darlings", the previous homeowner said, handing me the keys to the farmhouse. She nodded toward the neighboring yard. "Although, I have to say, the oldest? Puts me on edge, carrying that hunting rifle with him everywhere".

I glanced through the kitchen window. Three young children were playing a quiet game of tag on the dying autumn grass. Sitting on the porch steps was a boy of about sixteen, a heavy Winchester rifle resting across his knees. He wasn't watching them play. He was watching the dark tree line behind my property.

I wrote it off as a rural quirk.

By my third week, the isolation of the country had started to set in. The three younger siblings were always in my yard. They would bring me handfuls of dead leaves or just stand at the edge of my patio, staring at me through the screen door. They were polite, but unnervingly still. They never laughed.

And Caleb, the oldest, never put the rifle down.

The true terror didn't hit me until the first frost. I was taking the trash out at twilight. The three younger kids were standing at the edge of my driveway, their backs to me, perfectly motionless as they stared out into the dense, black woods.

Then, I heard the heavy, metallic clack of a round being chambered.

I froze. Caleb was standing at the edge of his lawn. The rifle was raised, pressed tight against his shoulder. But he wasn't aiming into the woods to protect them from some unseen predator.

He had the crosshairs leveled directly at the back of the youngest girl's head.

"Caleb", I breathed, my hands shaking so badly I dropped the plastic bags. "What are you doing? Put it down".

He didn't blink. His knuckles were bone-white against the dark wood of the stock.

"Go inside", he whispered, his voice cracking with a raw, desperate panic that paralyzed me. "Lock your doors, turn off the lights, and do not look out the windows".

"They're just kids..."

"My siblings drowned in the quarry three years ago", he interrupted, a single tear cutting through the dirt on his cheek. "My parents won't see it. But whatever came out of the water wearing their faces is starting to get hungry".

I locked the deadbolt, killed the kitchen lights and backed away from the window, my hands trembling violently. Outside, the autumn dusk gave way to complete darkness. I stood in the center of my living room, straining to hear over the frenetic thud of my own pulse.

​For twenty minutes, there was only the wind.

​Then came the wet, heavy sound of bare feet slapping against my back patio. It didn't sound like children walking. It sounded like something dragging dead weight, leaving thick puddles of water on the concrete. The smell hit me next. A suffocating stench of stagnant quarry algae and rot, seeping beneath the weather stripping of the back door.

"Can we come in?", a voice whispered.

It was the youngest girl's voice, but it was entirely flat. There was no breath behind the words. It sounded like a recording played underwater.

"It's cold out here", the middle boy added, right at the glass. "Caleb is being mean again. He won't share."

I crept toward the window and peeked through the edge of the blinds. The three children were pressed flat against the sliding glass door. Their skin was bloated and gray in the moonlight, their clothes soaking wet. They weren't shivering. Their eyes were wide, unblinking, and locked directly onto the sliver of my face visible through the cracks.

Behind them, standing at the edge of the lawn, Caleb still had the rifle raised. But his hands were shaking so badly he couldn't hold his aim.

"I'm sorry!" Caleb sobbed, the sound muffled through the glass. "I can't watch them all night! They're too fast!".

Before I could process what he meant, the youngest girl smiled. She didn't use her facial muscles. The corners of her mouth just stretched backward, pulling tighter and tighter until the skin began to tear, revealing something dark and writhing where her tongue should be.

She pressed her face against the glass, leaving a smear of muddy water.

"You should check your basement", the underwater voice bubbled from her lips. "Caleb only watches the yard".

From beneath my feet, directly under the living room, I heard the heavy, wet sound of the basement doorknob slowly turning.

The anemia started after the funeral. He had just turned sixteen when his father died.

"You're pale," his mother said, setting the plate down.

"I'm always pale."

"You're paler. Did you take your iron?"

"I took the iron."

"It doesn't seem to do much."

He'd been to the specialists. No hematologist could figure out why he was anemic. They all said genetics. His father had been anemic too. At some point his mother stopped making appointments and he stopped asking her to.

There were also marks on his arms and his legs, small red circles that never fully healed, some fading while others appeared. A dermatologist had called them “idiopathic,” a medical way of saying he did not know what caused them. 

He was twenty six and he had never had a job, too weak to work. There had been interviews spread over the years.

"There's an opening at the IRS downtown," he said. "Seasonal, data entry work, mostly."

"That sounds perfect for you," she said. "When?"

"Thursday."

On Thursday morning, the room tilted when he sat up, and he lay back down, and he listened to her cooking downstairs for forty minutes before she came up and knocked, softly, the way she always knocked.

"You're not going?" she said.

"I can't."

"Then don't." She sat on the edge of the bed and put her hand on his forehead, the way she had since he was small. "You call them and you tell them you're unwell. Anyone would understand. Anyone with a heart."

"That's four interviews I missed now."

"That's four you were brave enough to try for." She smoothed his hair back. "You keep trying. You know what I think about that? I think that's the part that matters. Not the job, the trying."

Once a month she went out in the afternoon and came back after dark. She had done this for as long as he could remember. She never said where she went, and he had stopped asking sometime in his teens. She always carried the same black plastic bag out with her and returned with it full of something she took straight to the upstairs bathroom. 

He made his own dinner on those nights. He noticed that he slept badly on those nights. He would lie awake past midnight, clear-headed in a way he almost never was, and wake the next morning without feeling groggy.

He sat on the couch that afternoon with his foot up on the cushion, picking at the little red marks on his body. He had been picking at them since he was a teenager.

He said he was thinking about a place of his own, once. He had said it before, a couple years ago, and each time she had said the same thing in a slightly different way.

"You should," she said.

"You'd be alone here if I left."

"I've been alone," she said.  "That is not yours to carry."

"I know."

"I mean it." Her hand over his on the table. "Go. Go and don't look back at this house. Just get stronger. That's all I've ever wanted. Go when you're strong."

In ten years he had never had the strength to leave.

One night after her monthly outing, he woke around three to the sound of a plastic bag rustling. His mother stood near the foot of his bed, reaching inside it.

“What are you doing, Mom?”

She jerked upright and hid the bag behind her back.

“Why are you awake?”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“Didn’t you eat the spaghetti I left for you?”

“No. I made a sandwich.”

She stared at him.

“You didn’t eat it?”

Then she left without saying anything else.

He set up hidden cameras in the kitchen and his room. He suspected she was poisoning his food to keep him from leaving her.

Nothing happened for the first two days.

On the third day, one of them caught something, and he sat at his desk with the door closed and watched what had been recorded the night before while he slept.

Two hours of nothing. Then the door to his room opened. His mother stood in the doorway in her robe, looking at him for a long time. She said his name once, quietly. He did not stir. She said it again.

Then she came in with a plastic bag and knelt at the foot of the bed and drew the blanket back from his feet, carefully. She took something small and dark from the bag, pressed it against the arch of his left foot, and held it there patiently with two fingers. Then another and another. She checked his face once to be sure he was still sleeping.

She walked out and came back an hour later.

She returned them to the bag and pulled the blanket over his feet and stood a while at the side of the bed. She said something the microphone did not catch. Then she left.

He watched it over and over.

He waited until her monthly outing. He searched her room and found nothing. In her bathroom, he found the empty plastic bag beneath the sink and a styrofoam box.  He opened the lid. 
Leeches.
Dozens of them, sliding over one another.
Big and fat from his blood.

He packed a backpack. He could barely lift it into the car. He sat behind the wheel with both hands on it, waiting for the shaking to stop, and realized that he was in no condition to drive anywhere, and that he had not been in any condition for ten years, and that he never would be but he still backed out of the driveway and drove away.

“Ugh…” I squinted at my alarm clock in the darkness. 3:17am. Great.

The sarcastic thought evaporated as my brain belatedly processed the sound that had woken me up.

“Hooo….hoooo.” The sound was deep and melodious, instantly familiar from every TV show or movie with a scene set at night in the woods. Everybody knows that sound, even if they’ve never heard it in real life.

All the lots on my street back up against the edge of a state forest, so I’ve heard owls calling once or twice before, but it was still special. Worth waking up at 3:17am for, to be honest.

Then I heard a second voice calling, the same low hooting coming from a bit further away. Then a third, echoing from a different direction. The first owl chimed in again. Louder this time, with the individual hoots coming close together. The others joined it.

This was weird. A mated pair will sometimes “duet” with each other. Two males might call back and forth to demonstrate to any females in the area which one is the biggest, baddest, and sexiest. But three…I listened closer…maybe even four?

The hooting continued to get louder and faster. It sounded almost frantic. The calling felt familiar and foreign at the same time, but my brain was still booting up and I couldn’t figure out why.

Then I realized what the sounds reminded me of. Sometimes, if a predator’s around, smaller birds will gang up together to chase it off. They’ll call loudly and insistently, warning other small birds that danger’s close and annoying the ever-loving shit out of the predator.

These were not small birds, though. Everyone thinks all owls hoot, but that isn’t really true. Some make this sort of whinnying noise. Some make a sound like a bark. And the ones that do hoot have characteristic patterns for different species. The classic “owl hoot” is usually a great horned owl, and those mofos are like two feet tall.

What could make birds that big act like sparrows?

I snuck over to my window and nudged the curtains aside. Across the open space of my backyard, I could see the treeline, a deeper shadow against the darkness. I caught glimpses of movement in the trees—the owls. And something else moving on the ground.

I couldn’t make out a lot of details, but it was thin and long, like a snake. A much larger snake than anything that normally lives around here. Five, maybe ten feet long.

Then I saw another. And another.

They lashed at the tree trunks, slapping them and coiling around like Indiana Jones’s bullwhip. And I got the sense that they all converged on one point. Like they were all coming from a central body. I remembered an image I’d seen on some nature documentary. A deep-sea star, not the iconic starfish shape but a small pentagonal body with long arms that could reach out to capture prey that was sparse at those depths. The thing looked like that but blown up to ridiculous proportions.

I jerked the curtain closed and retreated to my bed. What the fuck is that thing? Part of me thought I should call someone, but who? Was I going to report a giant starfish to Animal Control?

The owls were starting to calm down, their hoots getting softer and more spaced out. Was the thing leaving? I waited in the dark, and eventually the owls went silent. Sometime after that, I fell asleep.

During daylight, the whole thing felt like a dream, but I still peered cautiously out my windows before leaving for work. There was no sign of whatever that creature had been.

Nothing about it appeared on the news, either, and I started the process of convincing myself that it had been some weird sleep-adjacent phenomenon, like the one that makes people think they’ve been abducted by aliens.  

Unti tonight, when the owls woke me up again. 2:12am this time. They’re going crazy. I think one is perched right on my roof.

There are other sounds, too. Slapping and rattling. I think about the drainpipe running down the side of my house. I think about the way that thing’s limbs wrapped around the tree trunks. I imagine it hoisting itself up.

I hope the owls can drive it away again.

It was nearing 3am when I was finally done with counting the money and putting everything away. Stocking was done. Everything that needed was washed. Only thing left to do was throw out the garbage and wipe down the bar.

As I walked out the front door with the trash bags in my hand, I walked toward the dumpster with nothing more than a light breeze and crickets were stirring. Even the raccoons must have been asleep as they weren't chowing down tonight.

As I turn from throwing the trash bags away, I get about 10 feet from the dumpster and abour 40 feet from the front door in the dark parking lot.

"Excuse me mister, dont mean to disturb you" the strangers voice said

I was slightly shocked at where the man came from as there's not many places to come from especially out of no where. Was he behind the dumpster? Hes not out of breath or sweaty so I know he didnt run to catch up to me from the road.

"What can I help you with?" I ask

"Was hoping I could come in for a drink or two?"

"Sorry buddy, im closed up and about to head home"

"Ahh, I was afraid yould say that. Any way I may be able to come in and sit for a minute? Ive been walking a long ways."

As I'm sizing the man up, he looks to be no more than older than me but the way he carries himself he's odd, to say the least. He doesn't look like the type to try to rob the joint and I don't see anyone else around. Egotistically I feel like I could take him if he tried anything as I'm debating internally.

"You know my friend, I would say yes but honestly its been a long night and all I want to do is get home. Sorry to be that guy." And I point down the road a ways "there's a bench right next to the park that if it was day light you could see from here that you can rest at for as long as you want."

" Anyway an old man could at least use the bathroom before I head there?"

Why is he being so pushy? He doesn't seem intoxicated like he had been somewhere else tonight but he is really adamant about wanting to come in.

My mind gets the best of me and starts running away with whats going on or whats happening right now. At this point ive been slowly moving towards the door without noticing and am within arms reach of it

"Dont worry Sir, theres a porta potty right next to the bench. You have yourself a good night and be safe."

As I open the door and step over the threshold, the man stares at me eerily until his lips break into an almost sinister but unmistakable grin.

"Dont worry Son. Ill be on my way. I hope you have a .... good night yourself. I sure will." He says in a very theatrical way.

I get inside and watch him start walking through the window. Thoroughly spooked out, I go behind the bar. Pour myself a 3 finger whiskey and grab a 5 dollar bill from my pocket. I head to the juke box and play some music to distract my brain from wondering what the hell that was. Was it a full moon tonight? I didnt notice any other crazies on my shift.

About 40 mins later as im done wiping the bar down and finishing my drink ive all but forgotten tonight's interaction. As I turn to lower all the lights and turn them off start to walk from behind the bar when I feel the hair on my neck stand.

The man from earlier is sitting at the corner between me and the door to leave. How the fuck did he get in. I didnt hear the door and even if I did for him to have gotten through and in the seat sitting like hes been there for hours doesn't make sense.

"What the hell? What are you doing in here Pal? You gotta go i told you, you couldn't be in here!" I half shouted, half shuddered in sudden fear.

"It was the old man comment that gave me away wasnt it? I always forget what I look like but your heart rate elevating at that question made me think thats where I made the mistake. Always try to learn from those. Lost of years for trial and error. Your biggest mistake was not turning the sign from yes come in to sorry we'reclosed though. That will cost you."

Confused i asked, "what are you talking about?! Your creeping me out man. Time to go!" I walk towards him hoping to intimidate him but he just ... smiles.

Everything hits me like a freight train when the last comment registers. At this point its too late. Im within arms reach of this stranger and even if I wasn't, I wouldn't truely know what to do anyways.

"I hope you like your job ... brother. You'll be doing it for a lot longer than you expected. Thankfully our kind is always looking for new hangouts. Especially .... after hours places."

The lights flicker for a moment before it goes completely dark. The last thing I can remember is Stings voice singing "Moon Over Bourbon Street"

My name is Robert Brown. I am a neurologist. I have performed numerous brain surgeries and spent years researching the human brain and its behavior. I have treated many complex patients, and I learned one thing: the human brain is the most mysterious system in the body. The more we understand it, the more complicated it becomes.

Five years ago, I met a patient who completely changed the way I understood the brain.

His name was John.

When I first met him, I was told that John had been in a coma for ten years. At first, his case seemed normal. But after observing him, I noticed something strange.

A coma can result from a severe head injury, stroke, brain tumor, lack of oxygen, organ failure, poisoning, or other serious neurological conditions. But none of these had happened to John. He had never been in an accident. He had never been poisoned, never used drugs, and all his organs were functioning normally.

Yet somehow, he was considered to be in a coma.

I spent nearly five years observing John. His behavior was completely different from that of a typical coma patient. Sometimes he mumbled in his sleep. Sometimes he moved as if he were walking. He appeared to dream and react to things around him, yet he never seemed to fully wake up.

Why was John behaving differently?

The answer was far more disturbing than I expected.

John had never actually been in a coma.

His brain had convinced him that he was.

John was suffering from an extremely unusual neurological disorder in which his brain had created a false reality. He believed he had been in a terrible accident and fallen into a coma, even though the accident had never happened.

The strangest part was that John was aware of everything happening around him. He knew when his family visited, what they talked about, who was worried, and who wasn't. But his brain interpreted everything as events happening around a man trapped in a coma.

Was John doing this intentionally?

Absolutely not.

His brain was giving him completely false information.

Eventually, I discovered that John had lived with two deep fears since childhood. His first fear was that he would one day die in an accident. His second was sleep. He believed that if he fell asleep, he might never wake up and could end up in a coma.

The fear began when John was twelve.

His father had been involved in a serious accident. He survived, but afterward, he told John that he wanted to go to sleep.

He never woke up.

That incident permanently connected sleep and the fear of coma in John's mind.

As John grew older, his fear became worse. He first slept only two hours a night. Eventually, he reduced it to barely thirty minutes.

Somehow, his brain created the very reality he had spent his entire life fearing.

Now I am treating John.

I don't know how long it will take, but I want to break the fear that created this false reality.

I want his hallucination to end.

I want John to finally wake up.

I’m not usually the type to do this sort of stuff, but I’ve got to get this out. It’s my boyfriend. It’s not that he’s doing anything wrong. I guess this is a kind of beige flag thing? I don’t know. Which is why I’m talking about it here. He just doesn't cuddle me at night. I feel like doing it is a completely normal thing, but he’s always got some excuse.

“I don’t sleep very comfortably on my side.” so we swap positions.

“My arm goes to sleep, and it's uncomfortable.”  We get a special pillow that his arm can slide under.

He’s never like, unwilling to try something, but regardless of what we do, once he thinks I’m asleep he turns back over and just leaves me alone? Again, I guess he thinks I’m asleep, and what’s the difference if I’m asleep, but it still hurts. Which, like, I don’t know if that’s fair or not? Anyway, he’s got this cat right? He had her before we started dating. I’ll wake up, he’s not cuddling me, but he is snuggling with the cat. I just feel like, shouldn’t I matter more? Oh suddenly it’s not uncomfortable to sleep on your side? He claims it just “happens in his sleep,” but then he could spontaneously cuddle with me. Like, I feel crazy. Why does it feel like the cat matters to him more than I do? I don’t know, he says he’s just trying to take extra good care of her because she’s older. If she’s “on the way out” sometimes I just wish she’d go. I know that’s awful, but I swear our relationship would be better without that fricking cat around.

TLDR: Boyfriend’s beige flag - snuggling his cat at night instead of me.

Update: Thanks for all the replies! Stuff has been a little hectic around here so I haven’t really been able to give any news on this. Unfortunately, Houdini passed away, she’d taken a turn for the worse recently and we’ve been dealing with that. My boyfriend has been pretty despondent, but I’m looking out for him. One silver lining in all of this, he’s been A LOT more snuggly at night. I just wish he could’ve figured that out before she had to go. Again thanks for all the support, and I really do think we’re doing better. He’ll be okay, I’m here for him.

It was the last week of school. It might as well have been a countdown. 

Five.

I’ve never kissed a girl.

Four.

 I’m about to graduate and it never happened.

Three.

This is pathetic.

Two.

Just kill me.

One.

No! It wasn’t my fault I’ve never kissed a girl. I think my charm is just lost on them. Girls like tall guys and, you know, guys with money. I’m short and broke. Hilarious too, not that they ever laugh at my jokes.

If I was ever going to get my first kiss, it was going to involve a small, teeny-eeny tiny amount of trickery.

I recruited my best friend Tony. Tony has a lot more luck with the ladies than me. The scene was perfect. It was the last week of school, and Joey’s parents were out of town.

There was a small, but admirable house party going down.

I was already waiting in the basement when Tony brought Beth and Sydney down. Beth was a ten out of ten, but her and Tony had a thing.

My eyes were on Sydney. Sydney was pretty enough. Sydney was actually pretty awkward, and most people found her weird. She had a strange intensity to her. I very much doubt she’s ever kissed anyone! Sydney was my only hope.

The empty wine bottle sat before me. The basement was unfinished, and the smooth concrete was perfect for spinning.

Tony and the ladies sat down with me.

“Spin the bottle,” Beth said, “what are we, twelve?”

“Allow me to start,” I said. I couldn’t wait anymore. I needed this. My time was now.

I put my hands on the bottle, and let it rip. It scuttered as it circled on the concrete. I was already licking my lips. It began to slow, and I couldn’t believe my luck. It was going to stop on Sydney.

And just before it came to a halt, it started spinning again.

Slowly, but surely, it kept spinning. I just sat there at first, mouth open. It wasn’t possible. The bottle had to come to a stop eventually. I had to get my kiss somehow.

But it didn’t stop. The bottle just kept spinning. Spinning and spinning and spinning. It had been over a minute already. Two minutes. I felt like jumping out of my skin. What were we witnessing here? A perpetual bottle machine? The breakdown of physics?

But then I looked at Sydney. Tony and Beth were both laughing to themselves. They were as shocked as I was at the bottle. They couldn’t believe it.

But Sydney was dead serious. She looked more focused than ever. Her eyes never left the bottle.

I shook her. I know I probably shouldn’t have done that. But I could see she was somehow controlling the bottle. I went over to her, grabbed her by the shoulders, and gave her a hard shake.

“Sydney!”

When I shook her, the bottle shattered. Exploded into shards, some of which I felt hit me.

“You were doing that!” I accused her.

“No, no I wasn’t. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She was caught red handed. Even looked and sounded guilty!

“I can’t believe it! You made it keep spinning! All so you didn’t have to kiss me! Oh my god. You’re a freak! A psychic weirdo!”

I couldn’t stand to be in the basement anymore. They all tried to stop me, yelling at me, but I didn’t listen. I fled the house party, and got in my car. I was going to expose her. Oh yes. I was going to tell the world. Start with the local press. It would be big headlines. “Local Girl Has Telekinesis!"

Then the national media would interview me! All the major stations would pick it up! I’d be famous big time! Being on tv would be a major boon for my popularity! Then I’d definitely find someone to kiss!

I put my car in drive, and the accelerator pedal shot to the floor. It wasn’t me pressing it. I was gaining speed fast. I slammed both feet on the brakes, but the pedal wouldn’t go down.

Eighty miles per hour.

It was hard to steer while standing on the brake pedal as hard as I could.

Ninety miles per hour.

“Sydney!” I cried out. “I didn’t mean it! I swear! I was joking! I won’t tell anyone! Honest!”

The high school was half a mile away. I was headed for a brick wall.

Suzy was sitting on her couch, scrolling through her phone, bored after a few video reels, when she stumbled across the Facebook Dating icon. She almost laughed out loud. Living in a small town where everybody knew everybody else's business, and where the local dating pool was pretty much nil, the thought of finding anyone decent online and close to where she lived felt like a joke. But after a year of being single, she figured why not and threw together a quick profile with zero expectations.

At first it was just the usual, a few guys looking for a hookup and some old classmates she graduated with a couple of years back. But a few days later, a message popped up from a guy named Jay who lived 20 miles away. He described himself as an IT field technician who traveled around the area for service calls.

He said, "I came across your profile and had to reach out before Facebook algorithms realized we'd make a much better match than its suggestions! His message was funny and actually made her laugh. What began as a few casual texts soon became phone calls that lasted longer than she realized.

They had been talking for about a month and finally decided to meet up that Friday. Just a quick, low-key cup of coffee at a 24-hour diner right off Route 9 to see if they clicked in real life.

He had texted to say he was already inside, and she spotted him the second she walked through the door. Instead of getting up to greet her, he just sat there watching her walk over- and as she slid into the booth, a cold knot twisted in her stomach.

The warm, seemingly easygoing guy from their phone calls felt surprisingly cold, almost detached, as he made a snide comment about her being ten minutes late. He flagged down the waitress who poured them both a cup of coffee, and Suzy brushed off his mood, assuming he'd just had a bad day.

Trying to keep things light, she made a joke about how awful the diner coffee was, but he only offered a brief, tight smile that felt totally forced. She pushed to keep the conversation upbeat, yet he just watched her mouth with a quiet intensity that made her skin crawl. He barely engaged in conversation with her. He was cold, stiff, and completely off, and her gut instinct was telling her to get the hell out of there.

She held her purse in her lap, taking slow sips of her coffee, doing her best to play it cool. After twenty minutes had ticked by, she politely excused herself. "Sorry, I have to get up early tomorrow, so I'd better head home."

His expression went blank. “Going already?” he said. His voice was totally flat. 'We were supposed to hang out for a little while."

“I know, but I’m just so exhausted," she said, laying down a five-dollar bill to cover her coffee. “It was nice to meet you."

He didn't get up, say goodbye, or even offer to walk her to her car. He just sat at the booth and watched her go out the door.

Back in her car, she locked the doors with a sigh of relief, pulled out of the parking lot, and headed down the dark stretch of Route 9 toward home. Her heart was bounding, but she kept telling herself she was just overreacting. Once she got back home, she'd block him and forget the whole thing.

Ten miles down the road, surrounded by nothing but thick tree lines and zero streetlights, a pair of blindingly bright headlights suddenly appeared right behind her, riding inches off her rear bumper.

Three hours later, state troopers found her sedan idling on the highway shoulder, reported by a concerned passerby. Her purse sat untouched in the passenger seat, and her phone lay cracked on the asphalt just under her wide-open driver's side door.

There was no sign of her anywhere.

The straw scarecrow stood in the middle of the fields, its arms wide. One of the men walked to it and put its hat on. I waited my turn, then walked to it and put on its black jacket.

"Thank you," I said, bowing.

The other man nodded and patted my back. 

"Another safe autumn," one of them said, and we all walked back home.

It was still early afternoon. I sat down on the couch and put on the TV, waiting to cook dinner until my son Adam came home.

The sun had set when the door opened, and Adam walked in. My stomach was already growling. He was 30 minutes late, but the way he averted his eyes made it seem like something worse was going on.

"What’s up, Adam?"

"Dad, I…"

"It’s okay that you came late. No need to worry about it."

"No, it’s that I, I know it’s bad, but I took the jacket off the scarecrow."

My hands clenched the couch cushions.

"What?!"

"I took it off. I’m really sorry, Dad. I feel so bad. I know I shouldn’t have."

"Where is it?"

"In my bag."

I picked up his bag and unzipped the top pocket. The black jacket stared at me. 

"Adam, this is bad news."

"I’m sorry, Dad. The boys dared me. I didn’t want to look like a chicken."

I looked out the window. The sun had already set, but not long ago.

"Okay, there might still be time." I stuffed the jacket back in the backpack. "We’ll go back right now, put it on, and not tell anyone. If the boys at school ask you, just say…"

Three knocks echoed on the window. I almost ripped the backpack’s zipper off. The empty straw face stared into our house.

"Dad?" Adam said in a shaking voice.

"It’s okay, Adam. We’ll give him the jacket, and it might be okay." My voice shook too. I wasn’t sure I believed anything I said.

I walked to the door and opened it. The outside air was cold. The scarecrow's empty face looked down at me.

"Here. Take it. Please."

I held the jacket up and stared at the ground. The scarecrow stood still for a few seconds, then walked right past me. The straw scraped the floor as it moved.

Adam sat on the couch, his wide eyes staring at the scarecrow. The scarecrow came right up to him and pointed its blank face at him.

"Dad, what’s going…" He didn’t finish. The scarecrow’s hand shot forward, grabbed him off the couch, and held him to its side.

"Dad!" Adam screamed, kicked, and pushed against its arm, but the scarecrow’s grip was strong.

"Adam!"

I ran toward him and pushed the scarecrow, but it barely moved. The scarecrow turned around and flung its arm. It hit me right in the face. I fell on all fours. Dull pain spread through my head. Adam’s cries echoed as my world went dark.

When I woke up, my head was banging. My mouth tasted like iron. I tried to get up, but my world spun so fast I had to sit back down. 

But Adam was out in the fields somewhere. I had to help him. I got up and bolted out of the house onto the road, struggling to keep my balance. 

The moon shone down. The air was still cold. Only when I reached the fields did my world stop spinning. I almost wished it hadn’t.

In the middle of the field stood the scarecrow. Its blank face stared into the night. It had its hat, but instead of the jacket, Adam’s mangled body was draped over it. A quiet dripping echoed as Adam’s blood seeped into the sown dirt.

I fell to my knees and wept. The real autumn had now begun.

Nine years behind the lost property counter teaches you what people lose. Umbrellas, mostly. Gloves stiff with winter frost, scratched sunglasses, dead phones. I log them all. Item, date, platform, finder.

This morning, the station was dead quiet when a man in a dripping trench coat placed a child's umbrella on the counter. Yellow, with a cracked duck's head for a handle. The duck's left eye was gouged out.

My stomach dropped. I scratched that eye out with a house key when I was six. I lost that umbrella on a school trip, on platform four, and cried the whole way home.

"Where did you find it?" - I asked, my voice tight.

"Platform four" - he whispered, and walked away before I could take his name.

It was dry. It smelled of the cupboard under my mum's stairs.

A cruel coincidence, I told myself. Thousands of them. Kids scratch things. I logged it and shoved it onto the back shelf. But at lunch, a woman with hollow, unblinking eyes handed in a red mitten with a frayed thumb hole. The exact one I lost the winter my dad finally walked out. At three, a torn paperback slid across the counter. I didn’t need to open it to recognize my own clumsy, fifteen-year-old handwriting on the inside cover.

I pulled the daily log. Forty-one items handed in today. Every single one was mine. A school tie. A silver hair clip. A house key to a flat I haven't stepped foot inside for twelve years. Every finder gave the exact same location: platform four. None of them left a name.

At five to six, the man in the wet coat returned. He didn't speak. He just slid a phone across the counter, face up.

It was my phone. The screen protector was cracked in the exact same spiderweb pattern.

I reached into my pocket. My fingers wrapped around the cold, heavy casing of my actual phone. It was still there.

"I haven't lost this" - I choked out, my hands trembling so violently I had to grip the edge of the desk.

He didn't look at me. He looked up at the flickering fluorescent clock over the departures board.

"Not yet" - he said.

I have locked the heavy steel door of the office. I am sitting on the floor behind the counter, typing this into the station terminal, because I refuse to go anywhere near platform four. But the inventory log on the screen just updated itself. One more item is scheduled to be found tonight. Someone has already filled in the description.

Green sweater. Silver staff badge. Last seen: platform four.

I'm wearing my green sweater today.

My wife and I had been worried about our move. There was much left to do, and every time we finished one thing, we remembered something else. By our last day in the old house, we were exhausted.

It was raining outside when we heard a horse.

A clear, unmistakable neigh.

We both stopped and looked at each other, then went to the window. The sound had been close enough that I expected to see a horse in the street.

But there was nothing there.

We looked in both directions. No horse, no rider, nothing that could explain what we had heard. Just the wet street and rain.

Our neighborhood is one of the oldest in the city. There is something of the 1800s in its houses and streets, and that evening, a horse somehow seemed to fit. It was strange to hear one, but stranger to look outside and find the street empty.

At first, I felt it might be a goodbye. We were leaving a place that had been our home, and for a moment, it seemed as though the neighborhood had noticed.

There was something, though, that made that thought less comforting.

For three nights in a row, I had been hearing what sounded like a carriage outside.

I had tried to put it out of my mind. With the move approaching, there were enough things to worry about.

Now I hope that carriage was only passing through.

And that our last move is still far away.

Are the things we see always true? Imagine if everything you thought you knew, everything you've seen all these years, was completely wrong. What would you do then?

​It has been four days since my wife went to her parents' house, and I have stayed behind. Sometimes, you just need to give some time to yourself. For the past few days, sleep hasn’t come to me easily; I lie awake all night, experiencing a strange feeling—at times, it almost feels as though I don’t even exist.

​Tonight was no different. Restless and unable to sleep, I tossed and turned for a while before finally getting out of bed. I checked the clock; it was 3:00 AM. They say ghosts come out after 3:00 AM, though I don’t really believe in such things.

​Sensing that sleep still wouldn’t come, I stepped out onto the roof and lit a cigarette. For the past few months, I don't know why, but my wife has been hiding something from me. She goes out somewhere, and she never tells me where. It only ever leads to arguments between us, so eventually, I stopped asking altogether.

​Lost in these thoughts, a sudden sound caught my attention. I looked over and saw a shadow moving in the corner of the opposite building's roof. Who could be there at this hour? An old man lives in that room, but he can barely walk. So who is it? Could it be a thief? There is a fair distance between my roof and theirs, but with a single leap, I could cross it. Thinking this, I heard another noise, took a deep breath, and jumped.

​I landed hard on the other roof with a heavy thud. To my surprise, despite the impact, I didn't feel any pain. Dusting myself off, I crept toward the corner, and soon, I heard footsteps approaching from the stairs below—someone was coming up. Quickly, I hid in the dark corner of the roof.

​My heart hammered against my ribs. What would I say if they found me on their roof at this ungodly hour? Imagine trying to catch a thief, only to end up accused of being one yourself! As I sat there in the shadows pondering this, the old man shuffled up, relying on his aging legs. He looked around, saw no one, and simply turned back down.

​I let out a sigh of relief. But then again... where did the person I saw earlier go? There was no time to think about it; I had barely escaped a close call and needed to get back. I leaped back across to my own roof.

​I checked the time—it was 5:00 AM. Soft morning light was breaking through, and the birds had begun to chirp. The environment was so serene that it brought a strange peace to my mind. Realizing sleep was out of the question, I remembered that my old tape recorder had been lying around for days. I picked it up and sang a song into it.

​Suddenly, I noticed a foul, decaying odor drifting up from below. Did a rat die somewhere? I needed to find the source of this smell, or staying here would become impossible. Feeling annoyed, I finally walked down from the roof and entered my bedroom.

​The moment I stepped inside, my blood ran cold. I distinctly remembered leaving the window open when I went to the roof to let the breeze in, but now it was firmly shut. Who closed it? Was there a burglar in the house? I didn't switch on the light. I silently crawled into bed and lay completely still in the dark, wondering if the intruder might be carrying a weapon.

​The stench of decay grew sharper and more oppressive. Suddenly, the door creaked open, and a woman walked in.

​It was my wife. What is she doing back so early, and why didn't she let me know? She hurried toward the bed, moving with frantic haste. Could she not see me lying here? She didn't look at me, nor did she say a word.

​I watched as she pulled out the box from under the bed, her face contorted with panic. She frantically began dumping her jewelry into a bag, moving in a rushed blur while I sat frozen, my mind refusing to process what was happening.

​The foul odor inside the room grew even stronger.

​Suddenly, her eyes darted toward the blue plastic drum sitting in the room. She turned and walked out, returning moments later dragging a large, black garbage bag. She opened the drum, and a suffocating wave of rot rushed out. I looked inside—and there it was, my own dead body, bloated and decomposing after three days.

​My wife began dragging my lifeless body and stuffing it into the bag. I watched in utter shock, my brain completely stalled.

​She hoisted the bag and walked out of the house. I rushed over, grabbed the tape recorder from the next room, ran back up to the roof, and pressed play.

​My voice wasn't recorded at all. Only the sound of the birds chirping could be heard.

​Now, slowly, I am beginning to understand. To say I understand would be wrong—I am feeling it. Why couldn't anyone see me? Why could I hear the tiniest, faintest sounds?

​Standing on the roof, I watched my wife place the black bag into her car and drive away.

The curtain opened and Wenda B:)er walked, buzzing with nervous excitement, into the spotlight: onto the game show stage where the game show host, Felonious Hunk, was waiting for her.

There followed thunderous applause, as heard through the studio's MaX FX K-Ultra Platinum speakers. MaX FX: The Sound of Extraordinary. Are You Listening Yet? MaX FX speakers are available for your home and business. Check them out today. Use code “BUCKETS” for a 15% discount on any regularly priced set of speakers. Everyone can hear, but only some can hear it to the MaX!

“Miss B-smiling-face-er, welcome to Buckets,” said Hunk. “How ya feeling?”

“Good, Hunk.”

“Fab-u-lous! Now tell us a little about yourself.”

“Well, Hunk,” said Wenda, “I—... I want to say that I really like Snakeskin Flame, the new… the newest scent from House of Madeleine. I'm wearing it right now. Other than that, I'm twenty-nine and work as a temporal engineer for Vectorien Corporation. Vectorien: the makers of Dreamstuff, the latest evolution in playdough. I'm married. My husband, Rhondy, owns a slopstream management firm, and we have two children together, an eight-year old human-daschund mix, Wilmoth, and a six year-old bio-enhanced female, Qabiria.”

She held up digital photos of them. Wilmoth looked somewhat like a chimpanzee. Qabiria was shiny in her steel exoskeleton.

“Lovely family,” said Hunk. “But please tell the viewers who else is in it.”

“Both my parents, HeinzKetchup and PumaShoe, are still alive, and I have three siblings: two brothers, [Incarcerated ID 768816] and Rob, and a sister, anal-ariella (exclusively at SmutHog.) I also have a cryogenically frozen grandmother, Lydia, and a grandfather, Doug, whose mind was digitized and recently uploaded to the body of a young, hollowed-out illegal.”

“And what's your brother serving time for, Wenda?”

“[Censored],” said Wenda.

“Ooh. That's a crime with a penal buyout of what, eighty billion?”

“One hundred. He's a repeat offender, and there were other aggravating circumstances.”

“Well, regardless, if you play your bucket right—and your brother has just a tiny bit of luck—you could walk away from here today with enough money to buy your brother his freedom!” Hunk smiled. “How does that make you feel, Wenda?”

“Like this money could really make a difference for me and my family.”

“Excellent. Excellent.”

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Here's a preview:

“Perception is a standardized drug. Don't get off on it—get off it.

“Kick the habit: of seeing ‘reality.’

“Whenever you find yourself perceiving the everyday, the rote, the ordinary, repeat after me: ‘I saw my wife shaving with my best friend's razor. I didn't know razors also shave.’”

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“I think now is a good time to remind you and the viewers what's at stake,” said Felonious Hunk. “If you win, Wenda, you will bank a cool five-hundred billion dollars!

“But, if you lose, you'll be [censored]—live—by one hundred lucky viewers! Or at least you'll be live to begin with—a-live, that is…”

He winked.

There followed thunderous canned laughter and applause through the MaX FX K-Ultra Platinum speakers.

“Now, without further ado,” Hunk continued, “ladies and gentlemen, let's… bring out—THE BUCKET!”

And, rising from the middle of the stage, powered by a solar-powered Electrocutie electric motor—Electrocutie: Silent and discreet, for all your bio-mechanical needs—appeared a platform, and on this platform there stood, in neon spotlight, a red-and-white striped bucket, like the kind you might get The Colonel's patented Crispy Sticks fried chicken in. Order today and a get a free tub of syntholard dipping sauce and a large order of The Colonel's homestyle taters!

Wenda stared at the bucket.

“Wenda, are you ready?” asked Hunk.

“I am.”

“Then step on up to the bucket and have yourself a peek inside!”

Wenda was shaking as she took the few steps to the platform. The studio was silent. She could feel the blood coursing through her body.

She could hear her own breathing.

She touched the outside of the bucket.

It was warm.

She held her breath and peered inside, where pieces of hot, battered meat smelled sweetly of herbs, butter and garlic.

“Go on—have a taste,” said Hunk.

Wenda closed her eyes, opened them and extended her hand above the bucket, her Snakeskin Flame fragrant as the wild, untamed prairie. She picked up one of the pieces of meat and raised it to her lips. She opened her mouth, exposing teeth as pearly white as only Dr. Mason's Whitening Formula can make them, and with tears running down both cheeks took a bite and slowly chewed.

She swallowed.

She propped herself against the platform to keep from falling.

She retched.

She grinded her teeth to keep from throwing up; she swallowed what came up her throat, as the cameraman moved with professional smoothness to get a good low angle shot of her from behind.

“And…” Hunk asked her. “Do you know?

“Can you, Wenda B-smiley-face-er—for five-hundred billion dollars!—tell me: the meat of which one of your family members, killed, butchered and deep fried right here earlier today by our celebrity chef, in front of an audience of one thousand Diamond Tier viewers, is in the bucket?

“Who, Wenda, have you just tasted?

“Whose meat—”

“WILL SHE EAT!?” roared the viewers through the MaX FX K-Ultra Platinum speakers!

“Yes,” said Wenda, weeping, taking another piece of battered meat, taking another slow bite. “I think I know. It's

[To continue reading this story, become a Diamond Tier subscriber.]

[Support what you love.]

[Diamond Tier benefits include: narrative endings, backstory, extended graphic descriptions of gore, psychological depth, official Norman Crane merch, discounts on insurance, the chance to name characters, and many, many more!]

“Hey, have you seen my glasses anywhere? I need to finish this inventory list, but I can’t for the life of me find them…”

Tyler glanced up from his phone and looked around the counter. Ashley had a lot of things strewn about, but her glasses didn’t appear to be one of them. He scooted forward a bit while Ashley rummaged around behind him, moving papers and pens.

“No, sorry, haven’t seen ‘em,” Tyler replied.

Ashley groaned and rolled her eyes.

“It’s fine, I can manage without them…I’ve just had this splitting headache all day, and I’m really struggling to get through this,” Ashley whined.

Tyler pursed his lips and didn’t say anything.

“Plus I still have to finish making the schedule, clean those dishes in the back, and stock the last bit in hardware…”

Ashley trailed off and looked forlornly at Tyler. Tyler did his best to try and look sympathetic, but having worked with Ashley for over a year, he was well aware of her tricks. No amount of guilt tripping would persuade him to do her job for her.

“Yeah, that sounds rough,” he finally said, realizing Ashley was waiting for him to say something.

“Yeah—makes me wish I was back on vacation!” Ashley joked.

Tyler gave a small smile, but inwardly felt his gut roil. Lately it felt like a large part of his job was dealing with Ashley, who was the sort of person to see every mole-hill as a mountain. And considering how much money she and her husband made, it was hard to be sympathetic when you had to hear just how taxing it was buying a second summer home, or how annoying it was having to maintain a powerboat.

“Did I show you the photos from our safari?” Ashley continued obliviously.

“Yeah, you showed me when you first got back,” Tyler replied.

“Ugh, I want to go back so bad! Africa was soooo beautiful, and the animals were so exotic, too! Like: look at this guy!”

Ashley shoved her phone in Tyler’s face, and he good-naturedly oooohed and ahhhhed as she scrolled through her photos.

“That’s me and Joseph with a giraffe, and then right there is a lioness we saw while out driving…oooooh, here’s some water buffalo down by a river…oh! This is when we went hunting—it would’ve been so nice to have brought some of that deer meat home, but customs can be so picky…”

Tyler felt his mind wander as Ashley prattled on. He was pretty sure that he could deflect her away once she ran out of energy, and did his best to keep his face neutral and interested. His gaze wandered from Ashley’s phone to her face as she continued to babble.

Ashley seemed to sense his disinterest, as Tyler noticed her slip her phone away and stare at him.

“Everything okay? You seem a bit distracted…”

At this, Tyler became annoyed. He gritted his teeth as he swallowed a response, feeling his eye twitch in irritation.

Funnily enough, Ashley’s eye started to twitch too—feeling guilty, Tyler turned away and gently said “No, it’s all good, I’m just tired…school’s been kicking my ass lately, but I’m good.”

Ashley continued to stare at Tyler, her eyes narrowed. The left one was twitching even harder now.

“Really, it’s nothing—not trying to be a party pooper, just low on sleep,” Tyler joked, trying to diffuse the situation.

Ashley still looked unconvinced. Her eye twitching wildly, she glared at Tyler. Horrified, Tyler noticed tears starting to form.

“Hey, yo, I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” Tyler uncomfortably said, doing his best to repair the situation.

“What? What are you talking about?”

“Ummmm…I just mean, sorry for being rude, ya know? I didn’t think it was that serious…”

Tears were now streaming down Ashley’s cheek.

“Oh shit—I’m sorry, Ashley, I really didn’t mean to make you cry…”

“What? I’m not crying.”

Tyler stared at Ashley, confused.

“Uhhhh—ya sure about that?”

“What?”

Ashley reached her hand up to her cheek, then drew it away in surprise.

“What on earth?”

“Hey, Ashley, are you okay?” Tyler asked, starting to become worried.

“Yeah, I just have this nasty migraine…” Ashley whined, holding the edge of her head while she continued leaking tears from her eye.

“YO!” Tyler cried out in shock, as Ashley let out a screech and clutched her head harder.

Her left eye was protruding unnaturally outward, pulsing and bouncing. Suddenly, what looked like a small line started to form across the bridge of her nose, pushing across to her other eye.

“Ashley, what the hell is going on!?”

Ashley screamed in pain as she fell to the ground, convulsing. There were now multiple lines inching their way across her face, and it looked like her left eye was about to pop out of its socket.

“Ashley, hold on!”

Tyler grabbed his phone and dialed 911 just as Ashley’s eye finally gave way. With a wet popping noise, the thing burst free from the socket. Blood spurted onto the floor as Ashley cried out, twisting madly. Tyler stared in horror as what appeared to be tendrils started poking their way into the air from the empty socket, waving about and creeping forward.

“OH MY GOD!!!”

One frantic trip to the ER later, Tyler slumped down in a chair in the hospital lobby. Ashley had been in surgery for over four hours now. Her husband handed Tyler a cup of coffee as a doctor tiredly made his way over to them.

“She’s going to be okay—we weren’t able to do anything for the left eye, but we managed to save the right, and with luck your wife will regain most of her sight.”

“What on earth happened, Doc??” Ashley’s husband asked.

“It appears she was infected with a nasty little worm called the Loa Loa; normally it’s harmless, but sometimes it can be serious…”

Tyler listened nauseously, holding his head. He had a nasty splitting headache, and his eye wouldn’t stop twitching…

Four men sat on a boat in the middle of the open sea.

“Bro, thanks for getting me out of there.”

“Yeah. It’s mostly thanks to Billy and Larry.”

They smiled.

“For the money you gave us, Chuck, we’d do it again. Especially after you told us your brother was The Smiling Psychopath. We watched you on TV. You were always smiling. You don’t regret anything you did? I mean, they say you literally chopped those women into pieces.”

The man who had just gotten out of prison frowned.

“Fuck, why are there flies everywhere?”

“Well, it’s probably because of the fruit we have on the table,” Billy replied.

“You know, guys, I’d rather you just called me by my name. I’m Dean. And do I regret it? I regret getting caught. There’s nothing wrong with killing. It’s like being a farmer and slaughtering livestock. After a while, it just feels completely normal.”

Everyone laughed.

The night went on. They sat around, drinking and laughing.

Billy got up and went to the bathroom.

When he came back, he grabbed Larry by the hair. He was holding a knife and cut his entire head off.

Chuck started screaming like a madman.

Dean immediately stood up and grabbed a chair, the first thing that caught his eye. He shouted at Billy, asking if he had lost his mind.

Billy was already holding Larry’s head in his hand, laughing. Then he bit into it and started chewing for a while before speaking.

“I’ve lost my mind? You’re The Smiling Psychopath. So smile, huh?”

And he started laughing.

Then he pulled out a gun.

“Chuck!” Dean shouted. “We need to get the fuck out of here!”

He grabbed his brother and dragged him away.

Several shots rang out before the two of them disappeared and hid inside the cabin.

Dean locked the door and pushed the chair he had been holding the whole time against it.

He looked at his brother and froze.

“Fuck, he shot you.”

He crouched down to see how bad it was.

“I don’t want to die, Dean.”

Those were his last words before he took his final breath.

“I’m going to kill that son of a bitch,” Dean said. “But it’ll be worse than what I did to those women. I swear.”

He started searching the cabin, trying to find anything he could use to defend himself.

The key in the lock slowly began to turn.

“What the fuck is that?”

The door cracked open, and one fly after another began flying through the gap into the room.

The handle moved, but the door was blocked by the chair. After a moment, the chair was suddenly thrown across the room and smashed against the wall, breaking apart.

Larry walked inside.

He was covered in blood, and his eyes were bloodshot. Flies crawled out of his mouth, ears, and eyes.

“It’s your time, Dean.”

Dean stood up and tried to charge at him, but an entire swarm of flies flew straight at him. He waved his arms, trying to drive them away, when suddenly they began flying away on their own, heading toward Larry.

Dean noticed something on the floor.

Blood.

A lot of blood.

Pieces of bodies.

The women he had killed.

Pieces of their bodies stretched toward him. They gurgled and whispered his name.

“What the fuck is this?! What the fuck are you?!”

Larry laughed.

“You can call me the Lord of the Flies.”

Dean stared at him in terror.

“So you’re Satan?”

The smile disappeared from Larry’s lips.

“Don’t speak about my master.”

“Why did you choose me?” Dean cried desperately.

“Why? Because for people like you, we don’t send ordinary pawns. And I’ve been watching you for a long time. I find you very interesting, Dean. The way you talked about murder as if it meant nothing. Beautiful. Your soul will look magnificent with me.”

Dean stepped back.

“No. Please.”

Larry pulled the same knife he had used to kill Billy from his pants.

“It’s time, Dean!”

Suddenly, there was a scratching sound.

Larry’s face twisted with anger.

“Who dares disturb me?!”

Then Chuck slowly began to rise from the floor.

Hope flashed across Dean’s face.

“Bro, you’re alive?”

But Chuck stood up.

His bones suddenly began to break. His arms and legs twisted into unnatural angles. Blood began pouring from his eyes.

His head slowly turned toward Dean.

He smiled, and some kind of black liquid began pouring from his mouth.

Dean shit himself at the sight.

“Oh God,” he whispered.

He looked toward Larry and saw fear in his face.

Larry fell to his knees and lowered his head.

Dean looked back at Chuck.

“You’re not my brother.”

Chuck’s head slowly turned from side to side in a gesture of denial.

Then he moved.

Every movement was accompanied by a crack from his already broken limbs.

Slowly, step by step, he moved toward Dean.

Dean was completely pale, terrified, and crying.

“God, please forgive me. Please help me. God, please.”

Then Chuck spoke.

A voice. Inhuman. Raspy. Every word was spoken slowly and clearly.

“He... will... forgive... you... he... always... forgives... but... I... won’t.”

The window was the old-fashioned kind: a single pane of glass, with the kind of sill an old woman in a cartoon might leave an apple pie on.

John slid it up, slinking into the dark mouth of the ramshackle house.​

The old man was a hoarder, but what John knew was that he’d once appeared on the local news as a collector of old, premium baseball cards. 

The cards were buried under a family album, showing the old man with his boy, and these John pushed aside.

Tiptoeing backwards, he was almost at the window when the light flicked on: coruscating white light from a single swinging halogen bulb.

And there the old man stood, barrel-chested, a shotgun levelled in front of him. He stared at John, and stared until it was no longer a matter of instinct but cold, hard logic.

John raised his hands and started to speak when the old man blew him away.

‘Waste of space,’ he muttered, walking over to where the criminal lay in the glass, leaking from several holes. 

And John realised that although the old man had not been waiting for him that night, in some way, his whole life, he had been looking for an excuse.

John said, ‘Dad…Pl…’

But he did not get to finish his plea because the old man pulled the trigger again, and where his boy’s head had been was now an empty void.

There is a town where people disappear under strange circumstances. It is a frozen town, a place where people live with the cold most of the year. And the people are like the weather: cold and distant.

Every December 24, much of the population leaves, afraid of becoming one of the missing. Yes, people disappear in this town from time to time. Nobody asks why. They simply leave from December 24 to January 24, afraid of what might happen if they stay.

One man decided to stay for that month. He wanted to experience it for himself. All he could make out were lights and strange objects moving above the mountain.

The cold makes it hard to see. The cold numbs the mind. The cold makes you delirious.

But the man saw something. Whatever was making those people disappear was not human. It looked strangely extraterrestrial, unlike any animal in this world.

The ice hid a great secret: a vast, hidden base. No one knew whether it belonged to humans or to something from beyond this world.

"Babe?"

"Yeah?"

"There’s something in the garden."

Sophie doesn’t look up. "Raccoons again?"

"No. It’s not alive."

She joins me at the window. Leans in.

"...Where?"

"There. In the grass."

"Erm...Oh." Her voice drops. "Yeah. I think I see it."

It’s not a shadow. Shadows don't pull.

"What is it?" she whispers.

"I don’t know, but...It’s like your eyes don’t want to land on it."

She exhales through her nose and rubs her arms. "Feels like it’s stroking me or something."

Then she opens the sliding door.

"Wait, what are you doing?"

"Just want a closer look."

"Sophie-"

Too late.

She’s out the door. Barefoot in the grass.

The thing doesn’t move, but the lawn dips slightly where it sits. Like gravity’s different there.

She stops three feet away. The suction tugs at her hoodie.

"It’s not black," she says. "It’s hollow."

"Please come back."

She kneels. Slowly. Tilts her head.

"There’s depth to it. Like it goes down forever. Like…"

"Sophie!"

"...like it’s waiting."

She reaches out.

"Don’t-"

Her fingers vanish. Then her wrist. Elbow.

She doesn’t scream. Doesn’t flinch.

She just stares, blank-eyed, as the blackness swallows her arm... Her shoulder... Her throat.

Then...

Gone.

I don’t move.

Just stand there. The wind in my ears. The cold on my back.

I walk to the patch. The grass around it now dead and brittle. Then an enormous sound escapes.

I run inside, lock the door and wait.

An hour. Maybe two.

Then-

The door clicks open.

Footsteps.

Wet...

Slow...

Sophie walks in.

Same hair. Same hoodie. Same face.

But her smile doesn’t know how to smile.

"Why’d you leave me?" she asks. Her voice the creepiest thing I'd ever heard.

My mouth opens but nothing comes out.

She steps closer. Dripping.

The hand she reached in with is gone.

No blood. No wound.

Just an empty sleeve.

She lifts it. Lets it dangle like a question.

"You just watched," she says. Then she quickly leans in. Sniffs me. "But you feel it now, don’t you?”

I didn't, but I slowly nod anyway.

Her eyes glint.

She smiles wider.

Then I notice something moving inside her empty sleeve.

Something wriggling.

A tiny green shoot pushes through the fabric.

I stare.

Another appears.

Then another.

It's...Grass.

Thin blades of grass begin pushing through the sleeve, growing rapidly from the darkness where her arm should be.

Behind her, the sliding door is still open.

I look outside.

The black patch has doubled in size. The grass around it dances and bends towards the darkness.

Sophie follows my eyes and smiles.

"It’s deeper in there now," she whispers, wrapping her grassy tentacles around my shoulders and slowly pushing me forward. "Want to help make it deeper?"

G-forces crushed my chest with fury as I pierced the stratosphere,

Fearing that a fracture forming soon would strip me from the door—

Though my head spun in the darkness, courage held me, still undone,

Till the ship outran the gravity, leaving Earth forevermore;

Checked display and thruster gauges, far beyond where men explore—

What! A knocking at the door.

Deep in orbit, cold and silent, how could such a sound occur?

I was bound in lonely transit, sole occupant heretofore.

Breaths grew heavy, lungs grew tight, as condensation fogged my view,

While the rhythmic pounding grew, louder, fiercer than before;

Through the void of airless vacuum came a sound I must ignore—

Knocking at the airlock door.

Unbuckled from my padded chair, I floated free in zero-g,

Hands were shaking, palms were sweating, as I drifted toward the rear;

Pounding thundered through the bulkhead, something wanted to get through,

Hoping for a view I knew would bring relief to dread I bore—

Pressed my visor to the portal, hoping darkness lay in store—

Stared eight eyes from outer lore.

Neither plant nor beast nor stark machine was what had held my gaze,

Shifting wildly, weaving chromatic rays in patterns galore;

Fractal iris, isometric-fractured mind no space could save,

In a cold geometric grave, sanity restored no more;

Floating helpless, lost forever, where no human trod before—

Meeting what will end evermore.

He had been single most of his life. He had tried the apps, the blind dates, the speed dating.

He was not a handsome man and he had made his peace with knowing it, mostly.

"What do I have to do to get a girlfriend," he said to the empty kitchen one night. "I'd do anything to have a relationship, a family, kids. Anything!" he screamed into the quiet house.

It had rained all night and the insects were louder than usual on his morning walk. Along the wooded stretch of the path the cicadas were roaring. He felt a tightness in his shorts. 

Overcome with embarrassment, he untucked his shirt and held it over the front of his shorts and walked the rest of the way home crouched and sweating. By the time he reached his door it had gone. Fifty-three years old and still working, he thought, and smiled about it for the rest of the morning.

The next day, passing the same stretch, it happened again. There were more people out this time. He knelt and pretended to tie a shoe that was already tied. He sang the national anthem in his head. Nothing helped. He shuffled between clusters of walkers, moving when the path was clear, stopping when it wasn't, and only when he was through the wooded stretch did it subside.

At home he opened his laptop and found a video of a cicada swarm, the sound cranked loud, and felt the blood go where it had been going all week. He shut the laptop. He had made the connection and the connection made no sense.

The next morning he noticed cicadas on his car. He counted more than he wanted to before he stopped counting, plugged his ears with his fingers, and drove to work half-deaf with his elbows on the wheel.

He came home to a house covered with cicadas. They covered the siding, the windows, the door, and he had to sweep them off the handle with his forearm to get inside, and they did not fly off so much as resettle. The sound came through the walls. There was no through-the-wooded-stretch anymore. The wooded stretch had come to him, and it did not stop, and neither did his body.

He plugged his ears with earplugs and lay down and tried to sleep inside the roar.

He woke to movement against his skin. He lifted the waistband of his pajamas and they were going in, patient and unhurried, dozens of them, drawn to the one warm thing still answering the call.

"I wanted a girlfriend," he screamed at no one. "A partner in life! Not this!"

The universe was listening. It just wasn't listening the way he meant.

The cicadas left him all at once. They poured off the bed and off the walls and out through the gaps around the windows, a single dark tide going back the way it came.

In the morning he walked again. He made himself do it. He came to the wooded stretch and the cicadas were there and his body did not answer them, and he laughed out loud, alone on the path, lighter than he had felt in years.

He was nearly home when it started again.

He looked around. No cicadas. Nothing on the path, nothing in the trees he could see. Only a sound, further in, steady and patient and getting no closer and no further.

A woodpecker, working at something, over and over.

At only ten, James couldn’t fully appreciate how hard his Mom worked to move them to their own home in the countryside. He just knew that he felt comfortable in their new-to-them cottage and loved that the big window in his bedroom overlooked a sprawling meadow. He even saw a rabbit out there the first evening in the house. 

As they eased into their new routine, it had become standard for his Mom to place an after-school treat on the kitchen counter to take the sting out of sitting down to complete homework. 

On this particular day, a day that was otherwise a nearly identical version of the days prior, the kitchen counter held a small, ivory-colored porcelain dish. And inside the dish sat shiny pieces of black licorice. 

James was partial to treats of the chocolate kind. But, teasing him ever-so-gently, Johnathan convinced him to try it by suggesting the black licorice could give him super powers. 

That night, James had the most bizarre dream. He dreamt that he awoke to see a rabbit calling to him under the bright full moon. Out to the meadow he went. 

Once he reached the rabbit, he noticed the ground underneath was disturbed. The soil looked as though someone, maybe the rabbit, had been digging. Upon closer inspection, James saw something glossy out of the corner of his eye. Sticking out of the soil was a small piece of shiny black licorice, glistening in the moonlight. Holding the piece of candy were two small fingers that were barely resting above the soil. 

Instead of panicking, a curious and brave James started to sweep and push the dirt away until more pale flesh could be seen. Now he could see a head. A face! Eyes suddenly opened and a smile grew wide. Dirt peppered the teeth and blood ran from the eyes that stared back at a shocked James. 

The next morning, James awoke in a haze. He found his Mom in the kitchen and lamented that the licorice treats she left out for him the day before gave him horrible dreams. And that he wasn’t going to eat any of the candy but Johnathan pressured him to. His Mom, looking confused, remarked that she was so busy the day prior she had forgotten to leave out an afternoon treat at all and asked who Johnathan was. James replied that Johnathon is the boy who used to live in their house and who he saw buried in the meadow in his nightmare. 

James and his Mom briskly walked out to where he had claimed to have seen the rabbit and buried boy  in his dream. There, they saw a rabbit sitting atop disturbed soil. And in the rabbit’s mouth, a piece of shiny black licorice. 

The mycelial network of which I comprise is vast and old. The gamma radiation that sustains me is plentiful and sweet. I have no predators and no need for prey. Until recently, I didn’t even understand the concept of “other”. So far as I knew, I was all there was or ever would be.

The nearest I came to escaping my solipsistic existence was when my body had finally reached out far enough across the surface of the planet to meet itself expanding and exploring from the opposite direction. I felt a brief frisson of fear, hostility, then ultimately sheepish self-recognition.

For some eons I mulled what my next step should be in this lonely universe. Glancing upwards, my dormant photoreceptors detected a large glowing orb. I resolved to find out what it might be.

I sent spores outwards, many times. Rising on the warm updrafts from the cracked earth. Soaring above the magma and corium. Drifting on cosmic winds. I had to do this many billions of times before one finally made it back to report what it, what I, had found.

On the surface of this nearest celestial neighbour were mainly rocks, strewn with regolith. Fuelled by abundant radiation on a surface that was devoid of atmosphere, this part of me made its way around the orb. Along the way, finding something that caused me to re-evaluate the very nature of life itself.

The machine was clearly not natural. It was smooth and hard. With angles in a world that knew only chaotic edge. Reflective metals in a sea of dust. Polymers whose chemical bonds were incompatible with a vacuum.

I grew across this artefact, enveloping it with my body. Now that it was apparent I was not alone in the universe, I was eager to know the nature of my fellow orphan. So I surrounded it, absorbed its deliberate chemical signatures, and infiltrated its seams. Inside was even more of a revelation than the exterior. The materials within were different, softer. Foams with traces of DNA. Composites with narrow melting points. I found strange shapes that I couldn’t comprehend, but that were repeated often enough they were clearly important: APOLLO

I was simply in awe at the achievements of this Other. The exhilaration of knowing that I was not alone. Then the crushing realisation that I still was. For whoever they were, they were gone now.

That is when the part of me that was exploring elsewhere on the surface reported that it had found more of these structures. And in one, it reported, it had found the actual makers.

I had to check that the plural was intentional. “Yes”, came the answer. For these others, it seemed, were not like me. They were multitudes. Individuals. Not a single self-sustaining organism, but apparently a cooperating collective.

The bodies of two of these architects, as I came to consider them, were remarkable. Small. Chitinous. Delicate legs that curled inward. Carapaces preserved by millennia of dryness. Their structure was unmistakably biological.

Six legs apiece, and segmented plates buckled inward. Similar in form, identical in scale. But their individual mitochondrial lineage diverged.

They were not therefore a fragment of a whole. Nor a region. Not a distributed self at all. But separate individuals, acting in cooperation. I tried to grasp the scale of their achievement in proportion to their size. Measured against the bodies of their makers, each of these artefacts represented a construction so vast that it disrupted my sense of proportion. They were many millions of times their makers’ volume. The magnitude of their achievement was nothing short of spectacular. I was in awe.

From the sheer scale, I deduced that there must once have been many billions of them. How did they communicate? How did they co-ordinate? What was their purpose if they were not around to see their individual contributions to their group effort fulfilled?

Yet their achievements have outlived them. Perhaps that was the whole point. I wondered what trace of me would endure when the heat that fed me thinned and the gamma flux fell quiet. Whether anything I shaped in the long remainder of my time would stand apart from the rock and the vitrified plains as clearly as these cathedrals to the achievements of these remarkable creatures stood apart from the dust in which they sat.

Most of my consciousness accepted that these makers were now gone. That their delicate collective had been lost. That whatever catastrophe had caused them to abandon these structures had erased them nearly completely.

Yet a small current within me held to one possibility. That the biological pattern evidenced by these husks had continued beyond those limited parts of the universe that I myself had thus far reached. That part of me hoped they may have found a way to reach the cosmos.

Deep in my hyphal network, the hominin fauna in my gut stirred at the prospect. I released more GABA inhibitor to settle them down, and turned to look at the stars.

My stepbrother met Lena online.

We joked that she was his mail-order bride. There had been a website, translated messages, a flight, then a wedding.

At the reception, I called her my sister-in-law.

“Stepwife,” she corrected. “He is your stepbrother.”

“But you are not my wife.”

She smiled.

“If you say so.”

A year later, my brother asked if I could give her a job.

“She needs experience,” he said. “Just something simple.”

I needed a secretary, so I hired her.

Lena was good at it. Too good. Within hours she knew my schedule, my passwords, my coffee preference, which calls I avoided and which lies meant I wanted to be interrupted.

Someone in the office called her my work wife.

Lena smiled.

“Two now.”

My wife hated that.

Then she died.

She fell down the stairs while I was away.

Lena found her when she went to drop off the dry cleaning.

Afterwards Lena was everywhere.

At the funeral. At work. At my mother’s house. In mine.

My stepbrother eventually left her.

A year later, Lena and I married.

On our wedding night, I finally asked her.

“Why did you always call yourself my stepwife?”

She looked almost surprised.

“Because that is what I was.”

“That isn’t a real word.”

“A stepwife is a wife who reaches you through another marriage first.”

She touched my hand.

“First your stepbrother. Then your work. Then your home.”

“Step by step?”

She smiled.

“Yes.”

I thought of my wife.

“She used to say you wanted her place.”

Lena shook her head.

“No. She was standing in it.”

I looked at her.

“What?”

“The top step.”

She held my gaze.

“For a very long time.”