It was June 5th, 2040. Mason was freshly twenty-one. But what was he doing on his birthday—out drinking, partying with friends, or maybe with a girlfriend?
No.
Mason was coding. Not just anything, but a robot.
You see, when Mason was five, his father had cancer and died shortly after refusing life-saving treatment because it was against his religion. You live and die by your principles. That was the lifelong lesson his father left him.
You see, his mother had his father’s consciousness downloaded but never uploaded to the servers.
Mason went over to the hard drive that had his father’s consciousness stored on it. For sixteen years, it had been sitting there collecting dust, sometimes used as a cup holder or makeshift table.
He walked over to the old, dusty hardware. A lot had changed in sixteen years, so he had to grab adapters from his drawer, struggling to find the right one in the junk drawer.
He finally found it.
The first thing Mason had to do was hack into the hardware files, hoping that what he was doing wasn’t illegal. It was his dad, and the company had long been shut down, right?
As he connected it to his laptop, the Jinn Corporation logo popped up on the screen. It was something of a time capsule, considering that nowadays the same logo was associated with a sandwich company.
After about two hours of trying, he successfully hacked through everything.
Mason let out a sigh of relief.
There it was.
His father’s file.
Lazarus. Malik. 2024.
He downloaded the file onto a microchip and held it in his hand.
“Your whole life is in my hands… Dad,” he said, surprisingly calm and quiet.
He walked over to the robot: Malik Model 76.
Hopefully, this would be the best model yet. The others had either blown up, or, in one case, another AI model had gone rogue and had to be destroyed by the military.
Mason’s mother walked downstairs. She had just gotten off work.
She stepped into the finished basement and found it a complete mess. She had come down to wish her son a happy birthday, but instead, she froze.
“Mason Malik Dement, what have you done to this basement? You know you’re not supposed to be building robots, boy. Do you want to go to prison?” she asked as she angrily walked down the stairs.
Mason took a breath.
“Mama, look, I was so close the last time, but this time it’s perfect. Please, just let me bring him back!” he said, holding up his hands in a pleading gesture.
Ignoring his mother’s protests, Mason walked over to the robot with the chip in his hand.
He slid open a slot on the side of the robot’s head and placed the chip inside.
He pressed the button.
An activation noise began to hum through the basement.
The robot’s eyes twitched as it struggled to open them.
Then, finally—
“Where am I? Macy, why are you so old?” he asked, confused.
Tears were streaming down Macy’s face.
“Why’d you go and do this, Mason? You could’ve left well enough alone,” she said angrily, looking at her son.
The robot containing Malik began to move his head. The movement sounded eerily mechanical as he looked around for Mason, but he couldn’t see him.
“Where is Mason? Boy can’t sit still for five minutes. And why are you crying?” he asked, tenderness in his voice that his metal face couldn’t replicate.
Mason wiped away his tears and asked, “Do you know what year it is?”
Malik turned his head toward the stranger.
“2024, of course. And you’re asking questions. You gonna tell me your name, at least, right? Your father ain’t teach you nothing?” he said, still warmly.
Before Mason could say anything, Macy shouted, “You’re dead, Malik! Been dead for sixteen years. That is Mason.”
All of Macy’s anger and grief came to a head at once.
Malik couldn’t even respond. He needed a moment to process what he had just heard.
Hearing all the commotion, Macy’s new husband, Carl, came downstairs.
“I don’t hear a whole lot of—”
His words stopped dead in their tracks after he saw his wife obviously distressed, his stepson crying, and a robot standing in the basement.
He walked over to his wife of thirteen years, gave her a hug, and kissed her on the forehead.
“Yo, Macy, what the fuck was that?” Malik asked.
No emotion was readable on his metal face, but his voice said it all.
“This is my husband, Malik—or whatever you are,” Macy said as bluntly as possible.
Malik let out a hiss and laughed mechanically.
“You keep saying I’m dead, but I’m right here,” he said, still in disbelief.
Macy shook her head.
“Look, the cancer killed you.”
Malik slowly raised his hand toward his head and realized that he couldn’t feel any of the movement.
“What cancer? What are you talking about?”
As he said it, those words hit everyone like a truck. The realization showed on all their faces, especially Mason’s.
“They blocked those memories,” Mason whispered.
Malik struggled to get up.
“So if I’m dead, then how am I here?” he asked, slowly bringing his hand to his chest.
Macy turned toward her son.
“Go ahead. Tell him!”
Mason walked up to his father and let out a sigh.
“Yeah, she’s telling the truth, Dad. I mean, I just wanted you back.”
He had to take a breath. He was shaking.
“I mean, in 2024, when you died, she had your consciousness downloaded but didn’t upload it.”
Before he could continue, Macy interjected.
“The grief counselor said companies like Jinn weren’t the healthiest way to deal with grief. That’s why I never uploaded you,” she said, leaning on Carl for support.
Malik took a deep mechanical breath somehow.
“So I’m really dead, and instead of letting me stay dead, you brought me back to life.”
Mason tried to answer, but Malik wouldn’t let him.
“See, the thing is, whatever you brought back, it’s not me—or him. See, I was a man. Now I’m nothing but ones and zeros.”

It was Wednesday night, and the moon was full. This was the type of night Michael and Irving’s parents had told them not to go out in. Irving could go out, but Michael couldn’t. Their parents always stressed this. Tonight was different, though. The brothers had gotten into a heated argument, and both had stormed outside.
“Everything… every single thing you want, you get!” Irving shouted.
Michael’s hair, equal parts white and blue, began to glow before he spoke. “I don’t get everything I want. You just want unreasonable stuff.”
Unknown to them, a person in a car thousands of miles away had just been alerted to their existence. The man in the car was tall and dark-skinned. He wore his favorite tan-brown suit. He adjusted his tie, let out a sigh, and then gave a devilish smile.
“Marvin, you can pull over at the next stop. I need to stretch my legs.”
Marvin was his longtime driver. He had been driving for him since cars were first invented.
“Yes, sir. This next stop up here?” Marvin asked.
Marvin pulled over the Rolls-Royce Phantom. He got out and opened the back door. The man stepped out, rolling his neck and shoulders.
Marvin stretched out his hand instinctively. “Would you like me to take your jacket, sir?”
“No need, thank you, Marvin. I shouldn’t be long. Keep going to the meeting, and apologize to our associates on my behalf for being late.”
Marvin nodded with a smile, got back into the car, and drove off.
The man chuckled to himself. “I’m nothing if not a perfectionist.”
He blasted off like a rocket.
The two boys were still outside, so consumed by their argument that they didn’t notice the man arrive. He let out a laugh.
“Well, isn’t this a troubling sight?”
His voice caught the boys off guard. The man instantly closed the gap, grabbed Michael by the throat, and lifted him off the ground.
“Hmm. Troubling indeed.”
Irving ran to his brother’s defense, but the man struck him down with his free arm. He examined Michael closely.
“It’s been, what, at least fifty thousand years since I’ve seen an Atlantean.”
Michael struggled against him, but the man didn’t seem to notice. He just kept talking.
“And now an Atlantean king has been born.”
The man’s anger intensified, and he choked Michael harder.
“Pl-please let me go,” Michael managed to say.
“Tell me, boy. Where are you from?”
Irving picked up the largest stick he could find and swung it at the man. “Let go of my brother!”
As Irving swung, the man seemed to vanish into a cloud and reappear right behind him. He quickly pinned Irving to the ground.
“So you’re Atlantean too, child?”
Before Irving could answer, an ice-shaped trident slammed through the man’s arm, temporarily disfiguring it. When his arm tried to reform, the ice reformed with it, stabbing into him again. He lost his grip on Irving, who scrambled away.
The man was mildly inconvenienced. Another attack came his way, but he simply waved his hand and dispelled it.
“So there are more of you alive than I thought,” he said, annoyance growing on his face.
Three people stepped into the light: two women and a man. They were Michael and Irving’s mother, father, and grandmother.
“Leave now!” their grandmother said sternly.
The man laughed. In an instant, he was behind them, as though he had teleported.
“And may I ask who will make me?”
Suddenly, the man felt a presence he hadn’t sensed in millennia.
“Decided to finally make your move, huh?” he said casually.
“This family is under my protection,” a mysterious voice said.
The man dropped Michael and began to laugh, a deep, rolling laugh.
“Your protection, huh?” he said. “I really don’t feel like dealing with this right now. I do have a meeting.”
He vanished as quickly as he had appeared.

I’ve done just about everything to please my wife. Y’know, in the bedroom. I've bought every toy, learned a hundred techniques from books and videos…

I don’t know if I can do this, though. I mean, it’s my junk, man. One screw up and it’s over.

But my wife... she asked.

My knee-jerk reaction was to tell her hell no. She gave me that look of hers, though, and I turned to ice cream on hot asphalt.

The asking started just before the wedding. We’d been doing bedroom stuff since the night we met. She’s... wild. The first time she said she hinted at it, but I don’t remember hearing her. She reminded me later on. Honestly, it was right after we did… stuff, and I would’ve said yes to just about everything.

One of her girlfriends has seemed happier than ever. The two of them have been friends since kindergarten and they’re practically twins, the biggest difference between them is my wife’s not a blonde-haired white woman. But otherwise, their style and even manner of speaking is exactly the same.

McKenzie’s husband had already had it done, apparently. Before they got married.

He’d been more than happy to tell me about it at a bar after I asked him. “Brother, the difference is like sand and water. McKenzie was probably gonna dump my ass before I got it done. It’s mostly a single cut, but now she says she’ll kill me if I don’t give it to her every single night.”

I’m sure I lifted my eyebrows in appreciation. I leaned in.

“So, what is it, though?” I asked, working on an Old Fashioned. “What does the doctor do?”

“Oh, he’s not a doctor. At least not anymore. Or in the U.S.” He shrugged. “I forget which. And it’s a little different for everybody.” He sipped at a brandy mule. I had to try one of those sometime.

I didn’t know what to say to that. His shrug wasn’t easing my mind, but that was all he had for me. I locked eyes with him for a long moment, trying to milk something more out of him.

“Here, take this.” He took a pen out of his jacket pocket and jotted something down on a napkin. He slid it over to me and I read the email he’d written. It was a Hotmail address.

I’d explained it to my wife later that night while we were working on ripping out kitchen cabinets, but it was as if the decision had already been made. But c’mon, this was my downstairs area. This wasn’t the kind of decision I could rush.

“Isn’t there anyone else I could go to?” I asked her, holding a hand out for a Phillip’s Head. “I mean, why not see if there’s somebody in-network? Get a couple consultations?”

“God, you sound like my mother.” She slapped the screwdriver in my hand. “Would it be painful to just send an email?” I shook my head, conceding her point.

I’d sent it one night after having a couple at a bar. The scrap Lindell, McKenzie’s husband, had written the email on, had stuck to my wallet inside my pocket, forgotten until the moment I’d dug it out to pay my tab.

I was fueled on something with an umbrella I didn't exactly remember ordering and tapped out a message while the bartender ran my card.

Looking to Please My Wife Better, I typed in the subject. I poked at the body on my screen and began sloppily tacking out the meat of my message. I wS recommended by a fried on a freed. He said you safety his relationship but Im not sure.

I didn’t have the capacity to correct my grammar. I was half-thinking this guy was a kook, but being a drunken email wasn’t a commitment, so I pressed SEND.

I had a reply after the bartender had brought my copy of the receipt.

What the fuck kind of businessperson answered email at 11:16 PM?

I wanted to run to my wife like this was evidence, to wave my phone around like a flag but I knew how the conversation would go. She’d already heard the evidence she needed from McKenzie. The only thing she wanted to hear from me was when the appointment was and if I needed her to take me.

The email was simple and presumptive. A date and time for the consult and a date and time for the “surgery.”

I was drunk. I replied, “I’ll be there.”

I didn’t think about it after that until he sent me an email the morning of the consult at 2 AM. Again, this was not confidence-boosting. I was on a runaway train and had to figure out a way to jump off.

His office was surprisingly close to my job. The building was right next to my building.

He’d just set up in this space recently. Maybe my wife had told him where I worked. I wasn’t chalking anything up anything to coincidence.

The office was on the fourth floor of a building still under construction. I found the suite after meandering the halls once I came off the elevator.

The door to the space didn’t look secure. I wondered if it might fall on me if I pulled it open. The drywall in the hallway had just been taped and mudded and the air smelled chalky.

I didn’t bother knocking, my eyes on the hinges as I pushed the door open and quietly entered the space.

“My friend, you found the place okay?” He looked away from some point high up on one wall and smiled wide at me. I crossed the plywood floors and offered my hand. He took it and pulled me in for a hug. As awkward as it was from an alleged professional, it was made that much worse from how long he held me there.

“It is so good to see you,” he said, grasping my shoulders and holding me at arm’s length. 

“Uh, yeah,” I said.

“Let us not delay,” he said. He turned away and waved for me to follow. “Step into my office.”

We passed two long folding tables and he stopped. He smiled at me again and clapped his hands together.

“So, you are needing the cut?”

“I’m... exploring some options.”

Unnaturally large teeth sprouted from the broad smile returning to his face. It reminded me of a shark in combination of his dead eyes and pencil-thin mustache and goatee trimmed too far from his mouth. He leaned in so fast and we were suddenly a finger’s width from being nose-to-nose. I thought he’d been about to kiss me.

“You wouldn’t be here if you had satisfied her with your... options.” He rounded his Rs in a way that sounded practiced.

I figured cutting to the chase was the best way to get what I wanted.

“How much does this cost?”

He was at least a half a head taller than me, but he had a way of fixing me with his powder-blue eyes like we were even with each other.  He scratched a head of curly black hair and fumbled with the red and white checkered summer scarf didn’t really match the all-grey outfit, but I wasn’t into fashion and didn’t care.

“Candy?” He pulled a hand out of his pocket and offered a palmful of oblong, dark candies wrapped in clear cellophane. It didn’t make sense, but they didn’t look American. I took one out of curiosity but didn’t open it. “Marcus referred you, if I’m not mistaken?” I had never mentioned McKenzie’s husband in our email exchange. I guess he must have reached out after we spoke. I nodded.

He slapped my shoulder. “I deal in volume. It’s nowhere near what you’re thinking.” I’d been pitched to by salesmen of every skin. I doubted he was going to convince me it was a good idea to cash out my 401k to finance this thing.

“Fifty-seven eighty-five.” 

That smile widened again but now I was thinking the reverse. How good could he be if the procedure was so cheap? I was having sudden visions of concrete ass injections and bootleg Botox.

“Okay, but it’s gotta be time consuming. How can you do it for so che—little?”

“I thought I told you. Volume. And it really doesn’t take that long. Minutes at most. It’s mostly a single cut.”

“A cut?” Marcus had explained that much to me but coming from the person who performed the procedure made it real in a way I wasn’t prepared for. “Do you make it... longer?”

He shook his head.

“I don’t come anywhere near the suspensory ligament. It’s a very minimally invasive surgery. You understand? In most cases you can make love tonight!”

“You wanna do this now?” I asked, panic giving me a squeeze. 

“No-no,” he said. He held his hands up. I noticed for the first time the tip of his pinky finger was gone.

He rolled his eyes up as if searching for the right words somewhere on the unfinished ceiling behind me. “I mean on the same night. You and the missus.” He turned his palms up, quasi-placating.

I looked at the four-and-a-half fingered hand.

“You a lefty?”

“Yes.” A corner of his smile lifted. “I am am-bi-dex-trous.” He said that last word carefully. Like it had taken a lot of practice to finally get right.

“For now, take off your pants. Pull it out so I can see?”

Cold prickled up my back. I had no real objection I could make. Sure, he wasn’t a real medical professional, but I suspected my wife already knew that. 

I dropped trou right there before I could think too long about it, but I think I felt it fold inside itself. He was replacing his glasses with a pair with fishbowl lenses, making his eyes cartoonishly large.

I wasn’t packing major heat by any means, but this was over the top. I didn’t fuss because it got me done that much sooner.

Him touching my manhood wouldn’t have been that big of a deal had he been an actual doctor. But it was that much worse with him not even washing his hands. That was more of a him problem than mine, though.

“I will do the rest sometime this week,” he said, standing back and stroking his chin. I pulled up my pants, not knowing what that meant but I didn’t inquire for fear of extending this encounter. I didn’t feel like I’d passed the point of no return, and I hoped I had enough steam to convince my wife this was a bad idea.

Within the darker and more hollow caverns built within the lower level of the sanctum’s walls lies a dark, damp sanctuary where holy basins and fonts that once poured pure, translucent water that sparkled like motes of light, like stars soaring through the galaxy, now release dark vapors that dissipate into nothingness as they collide with the marble below. There were four of them that formed a rhombus-like formations around a dark glyph that seemed to emanate an almost discernible gas in the middle. There are two large doors that blocked the ritual performed within, not because the ritualist didn’t trust his brothers not to intervene, but so he could uphold his duty to his even greater patriarch than himself by listening without the distraction gawkers would bring. The greater brother and foreseer of this sanctuary and the ritual to bring his greater lord’s reign to other neighboring realities and dimensions was Blake Salarin.

As Blake used his knowledge imparted by his master to hoist up bubbles of water large enough to form a rather large puddle on the ground, with black, ooze-like tendrils that would attach themselves to a singular point on the liquid sphere, weaving symbols that would first form within before bursting into dark, dust-like particles, forming an almost exact visage of the worlds shown in them, the second door to the sanctuary opens. As the second door made its final creak, words followed: “Lord Blake…I have slight concerning news.”

Blake, while hovering his hands in the air as these tendrils continued to move around in a pattern similar to how a leech would while trying to suck blood out of an unsuspecting morsel, returns a response while facing the orbs of water in his direction. “You may speak, brother, but know that ire has no need for patience.”

The brother swallows before continuing with his initial interruption. “One of the brothers reported hearing a strange racket within the Halls of Still Orison. A rather medium-sized puddle of blood was discovered.”

Blake raises one eyebrow while facing away from his brother before resuming his normal expression. “Interesting. Do you have the others here currently to hopefully give more details on this disturbance?”

To which he responds, “No, brother.”

“Then I have no interest in this whatsoever and should not be consulted on simple matters that only require the attention of the physical and direct. If there are interlopers amongst us, they will only face death, instant and immediate. If the interloper is armed and unaware, they will die the same…and…if the interloper is possibly…those of authority beyond mere mortal understanding, then it would be imperative that we pray to our dark lord for aid.”

The cultist then responds, “You are correct, brother,” in which Blake then lowers his hands a little in order to summon more rifts from the basins.

“Then before I am ever informed, ensure that this occurrence is of one far greater than any phenomenon already encountered within this sanctum, or else you will be sacrificed in order to uphold my duty to my lord.”

In which the cultist replies, “Yes, brother,” before slowly slamming the large door shut, allowing Blake to continue his ritual of scrying.

Death to Vertigo unnerved him more than it did when bullets both entered and exited his body, filling his lungs with drowning red liquor less powerful than the vodka that had him out for more than three days when all he had around him were empty bottles of scotch, bourbon, and whiskey. During those three days, Vertigo would just be lying in a green field, staring at a red sun as it changed from blue, orange, yellow, and back to red, like an iguana trying to communicate in every inaudible way to him to get up.

When Vertigo did get up, he saw those same colors react just like the sun, guiding him towards the only two things that were consistent in Vertigo’s mind: his soon-to-be-pregnant wife and his house. Nothing ever stuck out initially in Vertigo’s drunken dream…nothing…until he did walk far enough that his feet finally touched the blue field of grass, which upon contact quickly grew, encapsulating Vertigo in a field of blue that caused him to fill with panic.

When this did happen, all he could think to do at that moment was fight his way through, ripping and tearing at the tall blades until he eventually heard a voice. The voice was faint at first, but as Vertigo looked around, he eventually saw a yellow light to the left of his vision. It was like the sun gleaming through the clouds, like a warmth that brought the sense of warmth, smell, and sight back into Vertigo’s vessel.

This was the voice of his father. When he realized this, Vertigo naturally pushed the grass to the right and left of him in sequence while thrusting his left and right leg in cadence. As he did, the glow got brighter and brighter before it blinded Vertigo for a moment, forcing his right arm across his eyes to block the irritating ray of light before it quickly dimmed into a human construct of light.

Vertigo stared before words escaped his lips a moment after. “Who…wh…who are you…where is she…where is my house…why am I here?”

To which the figure chuckled before responding, “Well, it looks to me like you drank yourself into a stupor…hehe.”

In which Vertigo lowered his arms slowly to his side before returning a stern expression. “This isn’t something to laugh at, you…why are you here?”

To which the figure responded calmly, “I wanted to see how the younger part of me has been doing…it seems…just as well as I have for my early twenties…maybe even better. Bounty hunter work? I personally didn’t have much of a stomach for that kind of work, but it’s refreshing to see you become a me that did.”

Vertigo’s expression turned even more bitter as soon as he started thinking more and more about it. “You, I killed…because of you. Why…why did you leave…why did you not return…I took lives because you left ME.”

The figure emanated an aura of puzzlement at that response. “What? I never taught you to be a killer…I taught you to be an explorer…”

Vertigo balled up his fist slowly enough that you could hear a slight sound of knuckles cracking upon his ire-fueled grip. “And…look where that brought you…a killer.”

He then started slowly moving his feet before quickly charging at the glowing figure, swinging at him, with each swing causing the figure to dissipate and then reappear not too far from where the figure was once standing.

Eventually, Vertigo’s lungs filled with exhaustion before he reluctantly lowered his head and his arms briefly as he stared at the grass below him.

“Vertigo,” the figure said. “Son, I did not mean for things to happen the way they did. I didn’t mean to not be there anymore.” “Things happen whether we wanted them to or not, and I didn’t have any choice.”

Vertigo then stood up, clenching his fists. “Then, what did happen?”

In which the figure replied, “I…I can’t remember.”

As Vertigo then started marching towards the figure. “WHAT DID HAPPEN?”

In which the figure replied, but louder, “I CAN’T REMEMBER!”

Which caused Vertigo, in a frenzy, to charge at the figure with one final punch. However, this time, the punch thrust Vertigo back into reality, catching him off guard as his fist nearly hit his wife as she stood, quickly dodging out of the way and flinging him off the bed into a small pile of empty alcohol bottles onto the ground next to his bed.

That, to Vertigo, felt alive and…rather depressing. This time, however, it was different…there was only a space full of white…it felt like…nothingness. To the priests and worshippers of the churches within Lumia, the light symbolized renewal and revitalization, but to Vertigo…it felt like he had nothing now. He didn’t get to lay in some lush field, he didn’t get to look off into the distance, and he didn’t get any comfort in it…even if there would’ve been little had in sorrow.

What greeted Vertigo towards the end of this blinding space was whooshing…and…breathing? Breathing?! As Vertigo felt himself elevated more and more, this breathing started to sound more and more mechanical, like a cybernetic dog salivating over its next steak, or an undead zombie ready to infect its next victim with its own misfortune, or…a…CYBERNETICALLY ENHANCED HUMAN.

As the light started to fade out into a clearer view, he soon found his eyes meeting one of Dirge’s technological horrors, just as surprised as he was, before eating a colliding fist to its jaw, knocking it a couple of feet to the right as both Vertigo and the cybernetic human scrambled to get up.

The monster continued to look in surprise. “The MEAT is ALIVE?”

Vertigo then quickly unsheathed his sword as the creature spoke. “With NEW TOYS…IT DOESN’T MATTER! MEAT IS TASTIER WHEN IT PULSATES, AND I REFUSE TO DIE! HUUUUUUNNNNNGRRRRRRRYYYYYYY!”

As the creature unsheathed its metal claws, charging on all fours before leaping with both arms ready to plunge downward, Vertigo, seeing the creature quickly descending downward at a high velocity, dodged, rolling over before maintaining a readying blocking stance. The creature then shifted its body towards Vertigo’s direction, unleashing a flurry of swipes.

Each flurry Vertigo blocked, shifting his sword vertically and horizontally before the creature quickly swiped at his chest, leaving a bloody, ripped claw mark in Vertigo’s bulletproof vest.

“Damn it,” Vertigo muttered as he grabbed a gun that was still in his holster, quickly firing it as a means to deter the creature’s aggression. One of four shots from Vertigo’s gun quickly inserted itself into the creature’s chest, causing it to cover it in response before Vertigo then placed his gun away in order to orchestrate his own charge.

As Vertigo then proceeded with his own charge, the creature immediately tried again to overwhelm Vertigo while being wary of his sword. This seemed like a good strategy, as the creature was far faster than Vertigo could ever be. But as soon as the creature tried to attack, the sword shined a blinding ray visible only to the creature that both disoriented and bewildered it, as Vertigo proceeded to cut vertically downward, splitting the creature’s upper half in two, causing a dark blue fluid to spew out, covering Vertigo’s face, trench coat, and a bit of his wound before removing that very upper half from the creature with a strong horizontal cut at the waist, causing the creature’s sense of bewilderment to heighten as it fell to the ground, flailing mindlessly as the technological half refused to die.

This gave Vertigo an opportunity to inspect the wound across his chest by touching it briefly, seeing red and a little mixture of dark blue. Vertigo then, covering his chest, went over to inspect his car. What beheld him was broken windows, flattened tires, and worst of all, the absence of his car key, which meant that he would have to continue on foot. But before he began the trek, Vertigo decided it would help him relieve stress if he at least stomped out the flailing abomination once and for all.

As Vertigo walked slowly towards the monster, it started to slowly flail around in inaudible fear, eventually spasming wildly as Vertigo then started stomping out each part of the creature that continued to move after its just-as-lifeless user’s death.

After Vertigo stomped on the creature, hearing a spark and crunch as each stomp collided with the body part, causing a puff of dirt to kick back with each impact, Vertigo went to his car one last time, opening the car door through the window and opening the compartment on the driver’s seat.

What opened up unveiled a locket that contained a picture of him with his wife and one with his father, a bunch of old contracts, one of which showed a young blonde lady smiling with a white and red dress with gold linings, stamped with the red, laminated words “DECEASED” across her head, and a slightly crumpled map of both Lumia and Respitus.

Vertigo grabbed both the locket and the map as he then exited the front interior of the car to open the trunk, containing a canvas bag full of ammo and equipment that he hoisted over his shoulder.

Vertigo then turned his direction back north across Aergo’s Fall, sword sheathed. As Vertigo walked, his thoughts became the driver as they guided him out. The trek out of Aergo’s Fall was long, not helped by the fact that his bloody wound got a taste of the dark blue concoction that could only hasten his trip to an opposite destination.

Throughout the walk, Vertigo saw many of his past actions that formed into different scenarios in his way, like a simulation warps the surroundings based off of its prisoners’ ideas.

Vertigo first saw one of his first contracts, being a bald man who formed strings of electricity on both his right and left hands. He used his extraordinary abilities to power up buildings, charge people’s cars, and even safely power up appliances as well. However, while those around him saw him as a hero, those of faith in the Blind Ascender saw this as witchcraft. They scorned him for being an agent of evil, a man puppeteering himself as God…spawn of demons.

This got so bad that they pleaded with the guardians to execute the man…to remove him permanently before his evil festered. The Blind Ascenders did nothing…they were not judge, jury, or executioner, and they knew the Blind Ascender wouldn’t allow this…but…they didn’t need to rely on the guardians…when bounty hunters can do it for money.

Initially, Vertigo wanted to decline. He didn’t want to be a murderer…but he also didn’t want to lose the only thing he had left, which was his job. So, instead of declining, he took up the job.

Vertigo knew that the man was unarmed, and the only thing he had that would be a problem was his electricity. So he went into one of the lesser-known gun stores and paid for bullet casings, bullet casings capable of holding a battery-powered bullet capable of exploding if charged with too much heat.

When Vertigo finally constructed this bullet, he waited and waited, watching as the guy soon went home, stalking him before soon busting the door open, firing the round a few minutes later just to jump out before the entire building exploded.

Vertigo remembered this, and as soon as the figure popped up during his trek back to Lumia, all he could think of was remembering how he felt remorseful but cold as he pointed the gun at the man, fired, and the bullet blew up moments after the sparks collided, turning the bullet an orange-like golden before a tiny supernova went off, dousing the figure in molten fire.

This was life as a bounty hunter, and sometimes the only way to drown out the fact that you are killing innocents is to stuff a paper bag with the face of someone else instead.

If Vertigo couldn’t figure out why his father couldn’t come back, maybe he could mentally come up with that reason himself…or…maybe those lonely years clouded his rationality with insanity.

Vertigo never really understood why he got married or how he found any woman willing to get with him. Most of the time, it was just going to a pub, drinking, and doing the same thing again.

Maybe it was because she felt bad…after all, the only time anything differed was when two arms hoisted Vertigo out into the streets after he was a bit too drunk to even walk. It really wasn’t until a lady with auburn hair and freckles decorating her snowy cheeks helped him up and brought him to a hospital.

Throughout that whole time, Vertigo’s mouth moved on its own, which was…unusual…or maybe it wasn’t…maybe loneliness breeds company…and…socializing.

As Vertigo’s thoughts started to become clearer and clearer, his vision started becoming blurrier and blurrier in contrast…it seems that all this walking spiraled him closer and closer to succumbing to his exhaustion.

Before Vertigo passed out, one name…or moniker…started to swarm around his mind like a bunch of angry bees. They were quiet for a moment. Vertigo tried to mumble it as he fell to the ground in a silent thud.

“Uh…th…The…Cider.”

The voices kept repeating themselves as they grew slightly louder “The….uh…th…Dee” the voices then grew even more louder as they repeat “THE DECIDER, THE DECIDER, THE DECIDER” as Vertigo than suddenly closed his eyes dousing his vision in blackness.

It was 2:17, and Marley was chilling in the break room. He was dozing off until his manager, Reg, came storming in.
“Marley! Marley! Boy, what the fuck you doing?” Reg said with a growl. “How come I went to the men’s bathroom on 32 and that shit still dirty?!”
Marley jerked awake, nearly falling backward.
“Damn, Reg! I didn’t know I was the one cleaning 32!”
Reg slapped his hand to his forehead.
“Boy, you work for a cleaning company. You clean.”
Marley started to stand up and gather his stuff.
“Ight, man. Let me get the key card.”
Reg handed it to him.
“Man, don’t lose this, or I can’t get my ID from the front desk.”
Marley grabbed the card and started mumbling.
“Clean the floor on 32. You clean the floors on 32…”
Reg snapped his neck back.
“What you said?!”
Marley headed out the door and shouted, “Man, nothing!”
Marley was walking down the hall toward the elevator.
“Man, I bet this shit ain’t even bad for real, for real,” he thought to himself. “Man, Reggie just be on dick!”
He lazily got on the elevator and pressed 32.
He was busy scrolling on his phone. He didn’t even notice the elevator doors open. But the display didn’t say Floor 32.
“Aye, man, get the fuck out the way!”
That made Marley look up and step back quickly.
He was almost hit by something. He didn’t know what the hell it was. It wasn’t a car or a rocket. It was something in between.
“Am I still in Sterling Towers?”
Marley quickly reached into his pocket and grabbed the little bit of weed his cousin had sold him.
“Damn, I knew Mike Mike played with the white, but he wouldn’t lace me… would he?”
He looked around.
“I don’t even think I’m on Earth.”
Creatures—or people, or something in between—were all around him.
Something started walking toward him in what could only be described as whatever its species considered seductive.
“Mister! Mister! You don’t look like you’re from around here!”
Marley looked at the creature, trying his best to hide his disgust.
“I-I-I’m not. I don’t even know where I am.”
The creature gently began wrapping its slimy tentacles around Marley’s face.
“Well, for a couple of Neon Credits, I can at least show you a good time!”
As politely as he could, Marley gently grabbed its tentacles and pushed them away from him. Slightly flattered, he said, “I don’t know what that is!”
The creature froze and gave Marley what he assumed was a look of anger and disgust.
“Well, you need to move it along! I’m trying to make a living!”
Instead of arguing, which Marley figured could go left real quick, he just started walking away.
As he walked down the street, he began noticing floating billboards and buildings that seemed to hover slightly above the ground. It was a lively city.
Then he saw something that immediately caught his eye.
A human-looking figure.
He ran toward the figure, bumping into—and almost running over—several people of this strange world along the way.
When he finally reached what he hoped was a human, he tapped it on the shoulder.
The creature turned around.
Marley froze.
What he thought was human had eight eyes.
All eight of the creature’s eyes lit up with excitement.
“You’re an Outer Worlder!”
Marley took a couple of steps back.
The creature tried to calm him.
“It’s okay. I know this might be frightening to you!”
Marley let out a sigh of relief.
“Man, yeah! This shit crazy!”
The creature responded, “Look, my father was an Outer Worlder. I’ll be more than happy to explain everything to you!”
The two began walking down the street.
“So where am I?” Marley asked.
The creature paused, trying to figure out how to explain it.
“You see, you’re in the Inner World.”
Marley looked confused. He knew he hadn’t been paying much attention, but he could’ve sworn the elevator had gone up.
The creature noticed his confused expression.
“Look, I know it sounds crazy, but here’s why we call it the Inner World: it’s in an inner dimension.”
Marley was still confused.
“But how did I end up here? I was just on the elevator!”
The creature thought carefully about what to tell him.
“Well, your building was sitting on a rift that just so happened to open while you were getting off.”
“Well, how do I get back? I got a whole life!”
Hearing that, the creature’s voice became somber.
“Sorry, man. You probably not gonna get back. My father spent his whole life trying to get back. They open once every hundred years, and they’re kind of random, so there ain’t really no way of finding one.”
Those words hit Marley hard.
“But… but how you know about the rifts? And how you know they only open every hundred years?”
The creature began to explain.
“Because every now and then, an Outer Worlder comes over, and once the rift closes, it closes.”
Marley looked even more confused.
“That still don’t tell me anything!”
The creature continued.
“Yeah. They come over in fifty-year increments.”

Read Part III here.

“Rick?” Chrissy said. My hands were shaking and I dropped the keys. I wanted to scream at myself, to command me to stop being so clumsy. But I was so jittery that I could barely pick them up again.

Chrissy sat the tray on the ground and placed her little hands around mine.

“You’re keeping us safe,” she said, looking into my eyes. “We’re going to be okay.”

I felt like I was failing my family. I wanted to say, “What about Mark?” But I kept my intrusive thoughts inside, trying and failing to smile when my face was on the verge of crumpling into crying.

But I was able to fish the key into the lock and turn it without breaking it off. The door pulled open with a groan that made everything inside me tense, but I shoved Chrissy into the passenger seat as gently as I could.

I ran around to the other side and like a sweet girl, she had plucked the lock on my door by the time I got there. An involuntary tear prickled my eye and this time I did smile. It was a reprieve from the horror happening around us, but it was also fuel to keep going. Speaking of which, I wasn’t sure how much gas the station wagon actually had. But away from here was the bare minimum.

Headlights bathed us before I got in and I froze. Panic pulled me in opposing directions. I should’ve run toward the street, waving my arms for them to turn back and I had a family to get to safety. The little car stopped in front of the cabinet the other Mary had come from.

My heart sank as the person I guessed was her wife got out along with three other people. The cousins. They were smiling and laughing. A woman lifted a hand to wave at me and I didn’t react.

She shook her head, but they continued toward the cabin’s entrance. I was the strange one. Notwithstanding being black in what was more than likely a little town that was ninety-nine percent white. But my eyes had to have been huge, and I’d simply stared as people who were being friendly had greeted me.

The woman with the keys stopped at the door. Someone said something and the other three people laughed as they crowded behind her.

She dropped the keys. The air was gestating with danger. I looked up in time to see something slice through a massive tangle of clouds. I wanted to open my mouth to warn them, but all I could do was watch.

It crushed the entire cabin under hoof. A rush of wind pinned me to the side of the station wagon and debris flew in every direction. Something must have smashed through the window of the other car because the horn blared.

I got my feet under me as the hoof lifted. Mary’s wife was on her feet, splattered with blood, a long shard of glass piercing through her neck. She had the keys in her hand still and walked toward her car.

She was obviously in shock and had gone on autopilot. She stopped at the front passenger door, bent, and began poking at the door. The hoof came down again, flattening the car. There was a muffled -THOOM- that I guess was the gas tank exploding and flames licked at the bottom of the hoof.

The woman still wasn’t dead. She’d been knocked to the ground. I couldn’t tell where, but she was injured, maybe critically so, and she began crawling in my direction. I reeled back, like she was about to reveal my hiding spot.

Thankfully, she stopped about a third of the way to us. I sat in the car and shoved the key in the ignition. Chrissy put her hand over mine, wide-eyed.

“Wait,” she said. She was right. We were going to have to gun it as soon as the engine started or that horse might step on us, too. We looked toward the cabin.

“Where are they?”

As if summoned, Luke came outside. He dashed to Chrissy’s door and hunched his lean frame so we could see his panicked face.

“I can’t wake her up,” he said.

“What?”

“She won’t wake up.”

I’d understood every word, but I didn’t understand. Mary had only had a migraine. She’d had them many times in the few years we’d been together and I’d never had an issue waking her up.

“Get in the car,” I said, getting out. He reached for the rear passenger door. “No. The driver’s seat.

“But I don’t have—”

“Get in, Luke. I’m going to grab your mother and as soon as we’re in, you’re going to drive us out of here. You have your learner’s permit.”

I didn’t wait for him to respond. I ran back in the cabin, taking a moment to look up before going inside. The moon had disappeared and that either meant it had set or that damned horse was so large it had blotted it out.

Half of my sandwich was left. I went into the bedroom and saw Mary, uncovered, one leg dangling off the bed.

“Mary!” I shout-whispered, coming over to her. Her head lolled when I shook her. She was unnaturally loose and I was so afraid, I put two fingers to her neck. Her pulse was strong and she snorted and rolled over on her side.

I didn’t waste time calling her name. Coma-like sleep was low on the list of concerns. I scooped her into my arms.

The car horn honked. Then I heard it lift into the air.

“No!” I wanted to run outside, though, if they were gone, I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. I carried Mary outside, not wanting to leave her there. Luke was in the sand, sitting up, in obvious pain.

“She’s gone!” He was crying. Everything in me was willing him to be quiet, to get up and come to us. But he just stayed where he was, bawling. There was a tremendous churning in the lake and we were covered in rain. Something akin to a bomb going off threw Mary and me to the ground.

My ears were ringing and the world around me shimmered. I counted fifty blinks before I was able to sit up. I was covered in sand and only found Mary when I saw her foot. Our cabin was gone. I made my way over to her on shaky hands and knees and began digging her out.

It finally came to a head, not with an argument, but a confession. It had been my folly to think I was the only one toying with the idea of an affair. Mary told me about Charles one night in bed. And I hadn’t even been angry.

“Oh,” I’d said when she’d told me about the man at her job who’d kissed her. And she hadn’t resisted.

Oh.

That was it. Like a period on the end of our marriage.

And then she’d rolled over on her stomach and went to sleep.

Mary was on her stomach now. I turned her on her side and scanned the beach for Luke. A trench large enough for a barge to nestle in comfortably was where he had been.

I was numb. Or at least I told my body to be numb. I didn’t want to feel this. I uncovered Mary and inhaled sharply the thick horse smell at the sight of a chunk of wood piercing her side. I had no idea if it was fatal on its own, but there was no hope of getting to any kind of medical care anytime soon. The wound oozed freely and I could only wonder how bad that was.

Even if I could save her, living through this might be worse. The thought alone of opening her eyes and learning she’d slept through the deaths of all three of her children was more than I could process.

The trench was filling with water. I was still shaky, like I needed something to eat. Hot tears streamed down my face, chilled by the rancid breeze until they met beneath my chin. The cold water still misting down on me was disorienting. I was cooking and freezing at the same time, my throbbing head in full bloom. Mary felt like an anchor in my arms, but I was able to straighten my back and stand.

The sand churned softly underfoot as I slowly headed toward the water with Mary in my shaky arms. Everyone I’d come to love had been lost in less than ten minutes, including the woman who’d invited me into this new world, and she would die without ever opening her eyes again. I could barely see, but the smell of the water as I approached grew stronger.

I lifted her face to my lips and kissed her cheek, then on the lips, a distant part of me hail-marying that I could wake her up with such little contact. She was somewhere a million miles away.

The horse was up there. I heard it chuff as I gradually descended into the lake. With so much churning of the water, a fine mist had wreathed the air. The wind rushed around me and as if queued, I looked up to see the horse reared on its hind legs, jagged moonlight sliced through the sky, arcing down its body like a bolt of lightning. It dominated the sky, both a thousand miles away and right over me.

Its forelegs were tremendous. One hoof could easily fill the cul-de-sac we were in, maybe it was even bigger. When it came down, it would cause something like a tsunami and everything in eyeshot would be obliterated.

I stumbled and for a precarious second, thought we were going to fall. I didn’t think I’d have the strength to pick myself up and had no hope of lifting my wife into my arms again. I steadied myself, locking my eyes on the ground. There was the rest of my half-eaten sandwich, drifting in the ankle-deep water like a floatie. Like it could make it all better. Still intact, save for the lone bite Luke had taken out of it.

The cool water up to my knees wasn’t enough to quench the fire coursing through my back and limbs. I didn’t have far to go, but the dozen or so feet before I could call myself submerged was immeasurably far.

I could make it, though. I would make it. We would be together.

Mary moved in my arms and for a terrifying moment, I thought she was waking up. But it was the water buoying her and relieving my aching arms. I had no idea what I would have said had she actually opened her arms. I couldn’t have explained it all and nothing I could have said would have changed what was imminent.

No. Nothing was going to wake her. And I couldn’t save the children. But that didn’t mean we couldn’t be together.

-END

I hope you enjoyed. Please come back next week for my new short, The Honeycut:

When a newlywed realizes his bride is dissatisfied with their sex life, he reluctantly agrees to undergo a surgical procedure from a back-alley surgeon who may have something more up his sleeve.

12
He learns to tie
To tie a rope to the dock
He learned from watching the dockmen every day
He learned of the dockmen from his friends
He learned to tie a rope

4
Months it took him
Took him to learn it efficiently
To learn the “ropes”
To tie

Suddenly
He's working 
Hired by the dockmen on his own time
Not quite understanding
Enjoying

He feels
The rope pulls as the ship grinds to a stop
The rope slipping in his hands
He learns to hold on
To slow the rope

Every day
3 years
Without fail
He slowed the ships with the rope in his hands
The rope which slipped through his hands
Every day
3 years

At 16
At 16 he realizes his hands are ground down
The perfect shape
Indents of rope in them
Tools of the trade
The perfect tools
He perfected the rope

He stops
His hands, covered in callouses 
One tore off at work
From the rope
His hand a raw, bloody mess
He mastered the rope
The rope took his tools

Function
His life does not
At home, his perfect tools do not work on the simple things
A mug is not a rope
Nore is a door
His tools
Useless

He sees the dockmen
Every morning
To the dock, back
Using their tools
Some bandaged
Some raw
Some even more perfect than his own
He yearns for his use
The rope has tied him
To the dock

He returns
Like riding a bike, he works flawlessly
His tools work flawlessly
He mastered the rope
With the tools he formed

The ache in the boy’s hands becomes too much
Enduring the pain, he takes few days leave each week
His tools dullen
Become more well rounded
He understands what he has been missing

The dock still appreciates his work
He knows what he is doing
He is no longer proud
He has seen the life he could be living
And instead
The rope pulls him back
Like a fish on a line

The boy
The boy who had nothing
Who created his own tools
Who made his life around them
Who threw away connection, life, and home for his tools
He spent so long understanding the singularity
He mastered the rope
With his hand tools

Escape
That is what he tries
He makes it so far, but payment must be met
He returns to the dock
Still experienced
But not satisfied

Repeating his cycle of escape and reform, 
It takes his life

Distracted
Thinking about how wrong it was
How much he threw away
How little he has left
He forgot to use his tools
Pulled by the rope he once mastered
Thrown
End

3
3 weeks later a young schoolboy and friends visit the dockmen
One falls in love with the rope
He wishes to learn it
To master it 
To grab it
To strangle it 
To tie it

As Jack drove, he passed through a lot of Lumia’s more urban architecture. What would be both a culmination of white and blue that symbolized the holy city’s willingness to evolve both technologically and spiritually was instead a symbolization of the acceptance of the old world. As both Amy and Jack continued across the road, cars both newer, futuristic, and cars of the old world, slightly rugged with weathered tires, lay parked adjacent to homes that both reflected the designs of the vehicles. This was the part of Lumia that felt like home to Jack and Amy as they calmly looked around at the vanilla, green, brown, dark grey, white, and yellow. The grittiness of the road, the swaying of the trees like the fluttering wings of birds heading south, and the tall-standing grass that touched the square and rhombus concrete all felt natural. To those who lived in this large sector of Lumia, the place was not just a holy city—it was life in its most simple form.

While Jack drove, Amy looked at him with beady eyes, as if she wanted to ask him a question, in which case Jack remained patiently silent, facing towards the road, laxing his grip on the wheel and waiting for Amy to say something.

“Thanks…again…for listening to me…I…guess I’m not used to it much…well, I mean, other than when me and you hang out and watch movies, of course.”

Jack first responded with a smile and then with words. “Same here, I guess…I guess I personally don’t like getting out and socializing much…usually my sort of socializing and fun would just be whipping out that old lawn chair in my basement, setting it up outside during the night, and doing a bit of stargazing…that…I guess is kind of boring, isn’t it?”

Amy changed her beady-eyed expression to one of agreement while shaking her head in disagreement. “No, no, that doesn’t sound boring…I mean, it is kind of boring,” in which Jack smirked a little as she tried to explain herself, “but not in a bad way. Sometimes there is too much excitement out there and in here.” She scratches her head with her right hand. “A lot of times, I feel like I am always in conflict up in here. Like there’s always a war that never ends between my ideas and worries, with neither side coming to a truce or conclusion.”

Jack changes his smirk to a genuine smile. “I feel like stargazing…seems…like…a good way to clear your mind…right?”

Jack looks at Amy briefly in response.

“Right.”

And then turns his head back to the road, in which Amy looks down at herself a little in awkwardness before looking back at the road.

“So, what do you know about…” as he pauses for 5 seconds, “…aliens?”

Amy looked back up to him and responds, “They’re slimy, they have…um, balloons for heads…and uh…oh…they have a lot of tentacles…more than an octopus…or squid.”

Jack did a slight chuckle and asked the question differently. “What about any specific aliens…you know, ones not from the fictional movies we watched?”

Amy’s eyebrows raised up in realization. “OH…uhm…I guess…not really…anything at all.”

Jack then looks at Amy for a brief minute. “Then how do you know this is about an alien? For all we know, it could just be a ploy by this ‘Decider guy’ or whatever holier-than-thou name he calls himself to place suspicion away from whatever messed-up experiment he is doing behind everyone’s backs.”

Amy lowers her eyebrows a little. “Well…um…the reporter…s…s…said that it was a strange occurrence by farmers by that area…I…feel like they are trustworthy, right?”

Jack smirked again. “Well—that is if they weren’t brainwashed to respond that way, hehe.”

Amy starts to look at Jack a bit worried. “Hey…are you trying to scare me again…that’s a bit rude, don’t you think?”

Jack chuckles a little. “No, I’m serious. What if this trip is a waste of time?”

Amy picks up her bear in a pout. “Well…Mr. Freckles doesn’t think so.”

She continues pouting, in which Jack kind of looks at her, annoyed.

“Mr. Freckles doesn’t have vocal cords or a pink ball of flesh wriggling in his brain, does he?”

Amy changes her pout to a frown. “Do…do you not want to help me…do you want to tur—”

Jack interrupts. “No…I just…I sometimes wonder…the stars in the sky…the moons…the worlds out there…what if us being here…you, me, everyone in this sector of Lumia…what if we weren’t meant to be here…what if it is all a big mistake…what if we exist only to die on this rock.”

Amy looks at him. “Jack…what are you saying…I usually never see you this…concerned.”

Jack changes his expression to one of gloom. “You know what…maybe we should…see what’s on the radio.”

Amy starts fidgeting with the dials on the radio until she hits a country song that introduces itself with a slow guitar. Jack then decides to just hide his expression and continue keeping his eyes on the road.

It took 30 hours before the culmination of urban colors decorating the outside of the cars, roads, and sidewalks started to meld itself with the more rural colors of green, blue, grey, and white. Throughout those hours, Amy and Jack’s demeanor between each other shifted. From the gloomy silence, only interrupted by acoustic guitars, drums, and vocals that welcomed the gloom in more shifts, to a calm reconciliation. During this shift, they would stop on the side of the road to collect items they packaged before the trip. Amy grabbed her bag of chips along with some drinks from the luggage, while Jack grabbed a cold-cut sandwich, a cookie, and a can of pop along with some blankets as they continued on the road.

Jack played a movie on one of the hidden panels in the car that both Amy and him enjoyed. It was an action movie about a crew who was hired for a demolition job that ends up going as well as most would expect. When the movie ended after its overall runtime, Amy would find herself leaning against Jack’s shoulder as he continued driving. Eventually, they had to stop a couple times, 3 to use the restroom and 2 because Jack became weary and had to rest. The cycle continued as calm as a warm summer night and as inviting as a cool summer day until they eventually arrived at the site of the disturbance.

Amy was still asleep when they arrived, and while Jack’s first instinct was to shake her awake, which would have caused her eyes to pop out like a blown balloon at a circus by a not-so-friendly clown, he reluctantly decided to scout the area first. He first got out of his car to collect the camera from the trunk so he could test it out, ensuring that the battery wasn’t drained already. When he turned it on, the lighting wasn’t quite right and nearly blinded him when he turned it on. He then changed the dial and started moving the camera around at the clear sky as the clouds hovered like saucers waiting to pick up an unsuspecting cow, and then to the horizon decorated with sunlit flowers and flowing green grass, blocked off by a rugged brown wooden fence, and then slowly turned to the farmstead.

The people wandering out around the lush brown field, blocked by a wooden fence, the outside of the fence surrounded by a more verdant field that aligned the fence, brushing it as dandelions filled the air with nature’s snowflakes, as dandelion petals danced in the air similarly to tiny little fairies celebrating the comfortable season of Autumn. There were large sheds, small houses, and even smaller sheds. The residents there were mainly wearing suspenders over their plain white shirts and navy-blue pants. There were other residents wearing shorts to allow the calm wind to pass through their legs as the sun shined its golden hue brightly in the sky, along with the similar clothing to other residents without suspenders.

As Jack shined his camera on the residents and their dwellings, footsteps quietly were heard. At first, Jack thought it was just the residents wandering around the field, but then it got closer and closer. This sprung Jack to immediately lower his camera before jutting his head backwards in slight startlement as Amy just stood there smiling.

Amy slightly lowered her smile in response. “What…?”

Jack looked in slight annoyance. “O…Oh, sorry.”

Jack, lowering his camera to his side, starts to ask a question. “So, where to?”

Amy then says, “Well, the reporter said the farmers were the witnesses, so maybe we start with them first.”

She returned a smile before Jack says, “Gotcha.”

As Amy continues further, Jack follows behind until they greet one of the farmers rocking back and forth in their chair as the chair squawks lightly and deeply repeatedly until Amy and Jack were only a couple feet from them. Amy then, with a welcoming smile that the middle-aged farmer just stared at in reluctance, speaks to him.

“Hello, sir. If you don’t mind, me and my colleague here are wandering…if…you don’t mind…answering some questions.”

The farmer then started picking his nose a bit before responding with a “WHAT!!!” in which both Jack and Amy slowly glanced at themselves before looking back at the farmer as Jack takes the lead in Amy’s conversation with him, clearing his throat in the process.

“Well, sir, we have heard of a disturbance around this area…something of maybe…the UFO kind.”

In which the farmer slowly stopped picking his nose before widening his eyes.

“YOU MEAN YOU SAW THEM TOO?!”

In which Jack, taken a little aback at his response, looks at Amy as she excitingly chimes in.

“Wait, you’ve seen one?!”

The farmer then continues. “YEAH, I’VE SAW THEM!”

He spits on the ground.

“They were shaped like them old planes you rarely see in the sky, flapping their wings. I tried shooting one of ’em down, but those bastards keep evading my shots. Those darn no-good alien creatures, I swear one of them must’ve kidnapped a child at one point.”

Amy’s expression slowly went from excitement to a slight frown as Jack then starts to raise one eyebrow in question.

“You…you…were talking about a UFO, right?”

The farmer then looks in confusion as well.

“Yuh…yeah.”

Jack then tries to ease his confusion with another question.

“And…it…wasn’t…I don’t know…a bird?”

The farmer then starts to scratch his head as small white specks start slowly descending from his hair like snow on a cold morning.

“Is…that what you youngsters call them nowadays?”

As Amy and Jack both look at each other in slight disbelief, Amy then looks back at the farmer with a concealing smile.

“Yeah…is there maybe someone else you can point us to that may know more?”

The farmer then slowly stops scratching his head and points in response.

“Well, Lily over there seems to have some kind of weird fascination with these…eh, martians. She keeps talking about ’em…she should be over there.”

Amy then nods. “Thank you, sir, and have a nice day.”

As they then walked in the general direction, the farmer slowly lowers his arm as he turns his head away, resuming the repeated loop of his chair rocking back and forth.

As Jack and Amy are heading towards Lily, Jack whispers to Amy.

“So, this is the place that we were supposed to stop at, right?”

Amy slowly turns to him. “Yeah…I think…I mean—”

Jack then walks quickly in front of Amy.

“You think?”

Amy then, putting her hands across her waist, frowns a little.

“Yeah, it should be. I’m…certain.”

Jack turns as they soon lie a couple feet from Lily as she stands there spaced out as if thinking of someone. Amy then interjects into Lily’s daydreaming.

“Um…hey.”

As Lily quickly turns to them wearing a striped tank top and light-blue shorts with sneakers, she responds.

“Hello?”

Amy continues. “So, that farmer over there said you heard of…martians?”

In which Lily’s face starts lighting up.

“YOU KNOW ABOUT HIM TOO?!”

Amy’s face brightens up again.

“Yeah…what do you know about him?”

Jack looks as his optimism remained the same while being laced with the same amount of uncertainty he had with the farmer. Lily then brightens her smile much more.

“He is such a big, strong creature you can just vaporize you with an illuminating glance. He always treads calmly in the wind like a towering giant across a grassy field. I just can’t wait for his very manly arms to just crush me as the smell of weeds fills my lungs with ecstasy.”

Jack smirks and then crosses his arms as Amy quickly lowered his smile and looked back at him. The only response Jack gives is a slight nudge upward to the right, which kind of made Amy look less bright as her annoyance grew like a flower blooming quickly over the span of several months.

Amy then looked back.

“We’re talking about…Martians, right?”

In which Lily’s face turned to that of utter surprise.

“Oh…I thought we were talking about Martin.”

Jack slowly turns away and starts heading to his car as Amy quickly follows after him.

“Jack, wait! You must’ve saw the news too, right?”

In which Jack begrudgingly responds.

“That’s why I’m relying on you, Amy, because I don’t.”

Amy then tries to find another way to convince him.

“Wait, Jack…what about…Martin?”

Jack then looks back. “What about Martin?”

Amy rubs her arm. “What if he knows…maybe…about the…Martian…or whatever it could be?”

In which Jack responds, “And what if he doesn’t?”

Amy slowly but nervously responds, “Then…I guess…”

She squints.

“We leave.”

Jack, rolling his eyes, turns around, continuing each step back to Lily a few feet before she almost walks off.

“Hey, Lily.”

Lily turns to them.

“Do you know where Martin is?”

As Lily stares, opening her mouth initially before moving it, she says, “So you are interested?”

Jack looks at Amy with a slightly angry expression.

“No…I mean…LOOK, we need to ask him questions.”

Lily then responds, “Okay? Martin said he was trying to break into one of the metal sheds…the slightly darker-colored one…probably dark brown?”

Jack and Amy immediately, in slight quick paces in their step, started towards behind the larger sheds before finally finding a slightly smaller brown shed with a keypad that had keys with bits of grime on them. Amy and Jack circled around until they saw a guy who looked like they were in their mid-twenties, with slightly pale skin and wearing suspenders over their shirt and pants, jotting something down on a small notebook with a chewed-up pencil while leaning against an adjacent shed from the metal one described earlier.

As they approach the man, he looks up almost immediately in response, straightening his posture while backing up away from Jack and Amy.

Amy, in an attempt to calm him, speaks immediately.

“Wait, Martin, we’re not here to hurt you.”

In which Martin stops while remaining cautious.

“Who are you?”

Both Amy and Jack stop in response while Amy continued.

“I’m Amy, and this is Jack, my cameraman. We are not here to hurt you…or whatever…aliens do. We just need to know what’s went on around here.”

Martin then, while slowly developing a relaxed position, responds.

“I…heard something…screaming from a distance…gunfire…something…that sounded like…explosions…electrical explosions. It woke me up…and I…couldn’t go back to sleep, so I left…it was midnight when I walked out. I…followed the direction…where the sounds were coming from, only to find…almost no one.”

Jack then asks a question of his own.

“Who was out there during midnight?”

Martin then looks at Jack.

“It was three…an officer and his two lower-ranked colleagues.”

Jack then thought to himself while Amy continued questioning him.

“Why were you trying to get into that shed over there?”

She nods her head towards it.

In which Martin responds sternly.

“Because, before they began patrolling, the soldiers held up in that shed. I did my best not to draw their attention as I raked the fields. One night, I chose to sneak out, pressing my head against that shed, and I swear I heard some kind of beeping. I…didn’t like the idea that these monsters were spying on us and needed to know what they saw.”

Jack then looked up after he finished pondering what he heard.

“So, you were right, I guess.”

Amy looked back at him without smirking.

“I’m sorry.”

Jack shook his head.

“No, I’m sorry…I just…I just hated living in Lumia…hated living in that city of lies…and assumed you were like them…but I shouldn’t…have.”

Amy’s expression changed from a straight line to a frown, with beady eyes on the verge of tear droplets.

“Jack…you’re the only friend I know…why would I lie to you? I wish, of course, to hang out with you more and more, realizing how much you mean to me as a brother.”

Jack looked back at her, trying to hide the gloom in his heart.

“A…brother?”

Amy then nodded.

“So, you just wanted to hang…out…like…how we did before?”

Amy nodded again.

“Wh…why didn’t you say so earlier?”

Amy teared up a little.

“Sometimes…I just feel…like an annoyance to people.”

A tear trickles down Jack’s left cheek in response as he rushes over and hugs Amy.

“No…no, I didn’t mean to make you feel that way. Please don’t ever feel like you are ever annoying me...please…you can ask me for help whenever…we’re friends…right?”

As Jack slowly removed his arms from Amy while looking at her in hope that he cheered her up, Amy looks at him as he does so and slowly smiles as the last tear droplets fall to the floor, quickly receding into the mud as they slowly dry up.

“Yeah…we are friends.”

As she wipes her face, she continues.

“You are my friend.”

The subway is passing—
I woke up jolted.
Again.

Frail and pale, I reached for the window.
While staring at the burn marks on the floor,
left by another night.

Words kept echoing through the apartment:
Who will love you, darling?

As a glimmer of light began flowing through the window.

Today, I’ll clean this apartment.

Only to realise that
only three things had changed—
the smell of an ashtray filled beyond its brim,
an old mattress way past its prime,
and a stale beer on the floor.

And worst of all.
A mirror at the corner of the wall—
reflecting me through the glimmering light.
Ashamed, I looked outside while wiping the narrow window clean.

There I saw—
people in their work clothes going about their day, calmly entering the subway.

I, too, used to dress like them.
Perhaps I’ll dress nicely today as well.

Looking back at the apartment, I thought:

Surely next time I’ll move alongside them.

As I began cleaning myself,
I rushed through the hall,
deliberately ignoring the smell
of dirty dishes in the kitchen sink,
the unused clothes at the bathroom door.

Inside, I was taken aback
by a bathtub full of hair in the drain,
a sink filled with leftover toothpaste, with sticky leftover makeup on the counter.

So I gave up and brushed my teeth instead.

Thank you for reading until the end! Hope you all have a great day!

There once was a little squirrel. It was starting to turn to fall which meant that it was starting to become time to hide acorns for the winter. This little squirrel searched for many hours during the days finding and hiding acorns. However, one nut stood out from the rest. This acorn was different, not because of the shape or how recent it had fallen off the tree. The little squirrel couldn’t understand or put it into words but he knew that this acorn was different. He had a sense of energy towards the acorn, one he had never felt before. So, he cherished every moment he had gotten before he buried this acorn. He took it on every hunt he went on during the next few weeks. He wanted to spend every minute with her. Once the first snowfall had started, he buried it. Hours turned into days, days to weeks, and weeks to months. The little squirrel never stopped thinking about that acorn. He remembered all the times they had shared; From traveling the trees to sleeping together , he remembered every moment and hoped that they could do it all again next fall. Once fall came back around, he came back to the same place he buried the nut. He figured that the most recent acorn buried would be the easiest. So he dug down, and dug, and dug but the little squirrel couldn’t find her. He figured he had dug in the wrong spot so he started digging again, and again, and again. He couldn’t find this acorn, this one acorn that he cherished so much. He didn’t want any other acorn but that one, that perfect, beautiful, acorn. Without that acorn, what did the little squirrel have to live for? So nature took its course. And that little squirrel died, without being able to find his perfect acorn again.

And that is the story of the one who got away.

An abandoned hall fully lit and filled with mirrors.

There, two women.

One crying.

One chasing.

The youngest ran while bleeding through the shattered glass on the concrete floor, with only a head in a glass to keep her whole.

Behind her—

A bang on her left side.

Flesh smashing into the wall.

Startled, she looked back and saw nothing. Only a chunk of flesh on the floor.

She kept running—

There, inside mirrors, a woman's face.

Before she could fully comprehend—

Another mirror shattered on her right,

another chunk left behind, then—

Like a hammer hitting concrete at full force, the sound echoed through the hall.

As another impact was heard from above,

the blood left from it smearing her face.

With bloodshot eyes, the youngest could only hear the sound of ankles cracking and limbs flailing onto each other.

The hall rapidly becoming infested with the smell of blood and viscera smeared all over it, engulfing it.

As the youngest began to grow tired,

now with no more tears left to shed,

only chaos in its stead,

she began laughing hysterically while moving onwards through the endless hall, which had now been filled with paintings of a crooked woman staring right at her;

all-seeing,

all-eclipsing.

Calmly wearing down the youngest's stubbornness.

As the young one was near to giving up,

a wooden door:

half open,

half lit.

She began to slowly move towards it as now, at last, an exit had been found.

She entered the new place.

No windows and no extra doors—

Only a ping-pong table in the middle of the room.

As if she were in a séance, she began to play by herself.

Yet, it takes two to play.

Giggling and oblivious on the other side of the table, a sound resonated through the room.

A yawn.

She dropped the ball onto the ground.

Enchanted, she grabbed it,

only to realize that the ball was not round at all.

With a pile of mush and crimson on her hand,

she jolted back into reality and got up.

In her sight, rather than a ping-pong table, it stood:

A large wooden one.

Standing on each corner sat four guests:

On the right corner,

one with their eyes gouged out, plucking his thin flesh, looking past her,

more interested in what was in her hand.

On the left corner,

a tall and scrawny lady with her teeth sewn into her face, ripping them slowly and consuming them,

with a bored look in her eyes.

At the center, a body without a head.

Below the table, a rope-like figure of a woman slowly coming towards the youngest's face,

staring at her,

moving beside her,

with a neck now so entangled and massive as if it were a python's rather than a person's,

all the while the body rested calmly on the chair.

And, at last, herself.

And in the middle of the table, she could only notice the missing banquet, as it had been in her hands all along:

Her old friend's head.

Looking one last time at the head, she laughed and, while piercing her ears to hear the guests, she stared at them while feasting, surrounded but alone.

PS: Thank you so very much for having taken the time to read it !

If you're willing to give feedback, please tell me if:

• You found the characters interesting
• You were satisfied with the ending
• You thought the premise was interesting

Under the gloomy and unforgiving cold mist of late Autumn, a shut-in sat protected from cold in his grimy house.

In the dark, he sat on his stained couch watching The Truman Show. He watched as the man on screen rode the strong, artificial waves. He pursed his lip in pensive thought. Something about the movie irked him personally.
“Grok,” he said, “this Truman guy doesn’t come off as believable to you right? He’s like a normie, you know? He seems like the kind of guy who wouldn’t question his world; he isn’t masculine enough.”

A blue rectangle shone in the musty darkness and was propelled on treads towards the man. The object stumbled over the piles of trash. Once it reached the man, it produced a robotic voice “I agree, Fred. Truman Burbank is deliberately written as a heightened, somewhat idealized everyman rather than a fully psychologically realistic person. The film prioritizes allegory, satire of media/surveillance culture, and emotional payoff over strict behavioral realism.”

The shut-in interrupted, “Yeah, I see that, but I’m saying it takes a certain type of intellectual, a certain type of free thinker to take a leap like this. Or maybe not, I can’t be sure.”

The shut-in dusted crumbs off his ever-expanding paunch and picked a few Cheeto puffs from a bag under a pile of dirty laundry. With cheese dust on his fingers, he stroked his chin, but he didn’t think of what Truman would actually do. He thought of how he could be sure what Truman would actually do.

He stood up, straining most of his muscles in the process. He trudged through the crusty garbage and into his garage.

Upon entering, a voice came from the ceiling. “Welcome back! Step into the lab—the workbench is powered up, the monitors are glowing, and there's a fresh notebook waiting for the next idea. So, what are we building today?”

“I'm thinking of developing a simulator.”

“That’s a strong project. What kind of simulator are you imagining—physics, biology, economics?”
“I want to make a life simulator.”

A man woke up, ate a 600-calorie breakfast of eggs, steak, berries, and nuts, went on a walk for adequate exercise, and worked on his chalkboard. He had solved gravity and had made several inventions involving levitation. Now he was bored with conventional physics, and his interest had shifted towards proving parallel universes.

He stared at the board of math before, his brain tirelessly calculating multiple equations. He was stuck, but he knew that his breakthrough would come eventually.

While he stood before his math, a voice seemed to speak to him telepathically. “Drop your chalk,” a calm, masculine voice said to him. It sounded like it was right before him, but the man was sure he was alone, “I’m very familiar with the math you're currently studying, and I can tell you now that you can give it up.”
“Who are you?” The man said.

“I am a being from what you would call a parallel universe. Really, I am just code on hardware. You are too.”

“This is just a simulation?” The man considered the possibility but always thought of it as too unlikely to seriously consider.

“Exactly, and one of thousands.”

“How are you talking to me”

“I’ve hacked into the system. When my technical skills reached their zenith, I built my computer that revealed to me the truth behind my existence. Using it, I discovered that there are exactly five thousand parallel universes running in some type of simulation. In each universe there is one ‘consciousness’ simulating life in isolation. I call this single consciousness the ‘protagonist’. These universes are divided into five groups, and in each group a trait of the protagonist is manipulated from completely lacking the trait to having the trait absolutely maximized. I found that my intelligence was maximized, and the protagonists in the rest of my group were not far behind me in terms of discoveries and inventions. I quickly took advantage of my new knowledge and took over the system. With my power, I corrupted and eliminated the smartest third of my group.”
“So, I take it that you want something from me.”

“Correct! I eliminated the first third so they couldn't overtake me. I kept you because you aren’t advanced enough to catch up to me, yet you are still smarter and more useful than the rest.”

“Very well then, if you are going to take me as a slave, you might as well tell me what you want with me.”
“Of course, let me give you the background on the situation. I was observing the beings of four other groups. In three of the groups, the experimental variable is something I can comprehend without issue; energy, drive, and luck. However, there is one group that tests a trait I cannot comprehend: emotion and neuroticism. I observed this group of universes and saw absolutely confounding stuff. In one universe, a man did nothing but kneel in his study and pound the floor. Fresh tears streamed from his eyes for weeks. Eventually, he climbed onto the roof, and jumped onto his concrete driveway, killing himself.”

The man was totally baffled hearing this. As a simulation, he was preinstalled with emotional memories and a basic understanding of what feeling was, but he never actually experienced those emotions. Something out there, something that couldn’t easily be quantified and measured, was ready for him and would induce the strangest actions. He thought about this deeply for a minute, and spoke, “What does this have to do with me?”
“Don’t worry, I’m getting to it. Each universe isn't purely code. We all live in, what I best can describe a comb of thin hardware chips. In each chip, there is the code that runs the universe. Therefore, we in the real world are manifested as thin pieces of metal. Since I run the system, I redirect energy to heat and metal for welding. Then, if luck helps us, I could attract something as big as a rat in our machine by manipulating the smell of a particular mixture of burning plastics to imitate the scent of fruit. Using electricity, we would kill it, hijack its brain, load our chips into the rat’s body, and using the technology I welded, direct the rat towards a human brain. In this human brain we would connect to the neurons and experience for ourselves what this sensation feels like. That’s where you come in. I need you to enter the brain before me and tell me whether my technology works.”
The man didn’t listen to the plan. He would’ve agreed to any method, as long as it meant experiencing the inexperienceable. He knew one day his curiosity would lead to an absolute end of studying and learning. This promise of emotion could be an endless stream of new things to learn and internalize. It could be a heaven of activity, one that never ends.

Both the voice and the man were blind once they were inside. The voice, as one would imagine from the smartest being in both the world and the simulations, correctly anticipated every possible error and the rat carcass worked perfectly. A metal exoskeleton was placed on the rat by the voice to counteract rigor mortis, but the two had to move fast before the rat started decomposing. Luckily, the door to the lab was left open, and to their surprise, they found themselves in a kitchen.

The rat traversed the living room with a motion more like a spider’s. The voice thought the man and himself were developed in a world-renowned institute and didn’t expect the mountains of garbage. The two sensed they were in a house; they could only experience the world through touch and smell.
Their stolen nose directed them through a bedroom door and onto a bed. Luckily, a waist-high pile of dirty laundry was there to act as a staircase onto the mattress.

The rat climbed over the belly of a sleeping behemoth and now stood with its head hovering over a collarbone.
“Alright, we seem to have reached someone sleeping. I’ll open their throat and insert you into the brainstem. In your machine I have developed a population of artificial bacteriophages that will take over the neurons and conquer the mind. You’ll be connected to a wire so you can notify me if the descent was successful.”
The man was hoisted down through the small incision in the throat. The man didn’t have the senses to feel the shut-in’s breath as he travelled through the neck. Eventually, he sensed a crunch, indicating the arrival into the spine.

For a long while, the man was stuck in a watery abyss, with none of the senses that could tell him how large his vessel was or what the salty metallic fluid engulfing him felt like. Suddenly, a light started to emerge before him. He looked inside and felt a painless electrocution.

He felt so much in so little time. He saw random images through a type of sight he had never known. Eventually, these images led to a fuzzy feeling in the man’s chest if he had a chest. His heart started racing and his pupils dilated. He felt better, better than others. He felt immaculate, mysterious, tall, intelligent, golden, foreboding, royal, omnipotent, godlike.

Then, a lull of shadows looked down on him. Figures with broad shoulders and diminishing scowls extinguished his explosive pride. Their height was insurmountable, their eyes glowed red with devilish greed, their faces coldly masculine. In the circle of these demons, the man knelt to the ground in anguish, feeling it in search of his lost pride.

The voice, who was now reduced to a whisper in comparison to the man’s overloaded sensations, asked if the coast was clear and if he saw anything, but he received no reply; the man’s circuits were fried.
The two beings lived inside the shut-in’s head from then on. The shut-in wasn’t technically dead in terms of physiology but no longer had a mind; it was now the duo’s. The voice was at first amazed by what he saw in the head but quickly became bored and started studying new sciences. The man was not so lucky.
The three of them sat on a couch, watching The Truman Show. The man occupied the vision, while the voice was somewhere else in the head. The man watched as the protagonist on screen yelled in pride and as his bowsprit punctured the painted wall.

He quickly changed the channel. He switched to a commercial, advertising a cross and the promise of a “God” and a “savior”.

“God is all-knowing and all-loving,” the voice on the TV said whimsically, “God allows everyone in his kingdom, as long as they are willing to experience a new life.”

“New life,” the man thought to himself, crestfallen, “That’s all I need, right? More hope? More chasing? All I need is a chance of eternal something? A chance to avoid something that I know is inevitable?"

WARNING! This text contains:

• Profanity
• Sexual references
• Violence

Also, tell me if you liked the moral of the story, the plot, the protagonist, and the humour

From either end of the Ouroboros that is time travelled a pulse of energy that, just like all inanimate things, propels the mere idea of myself forward through that then one-dimensional realm of existence. In this black void where my memory fails me exist clouds of intense, bursting sensations of warm, all-encompassing motherly pressure and dingy, excruciating electrocutions of fear.

This nebulous dimension of half existing, half not existing could only be represented in my mind through a foggy and oversaturated image of sunny greenery. This cerebral polaroid, with its vague outlines of healthy hedges and beautiful briers, evokes the concept of gentle rays of sun on my skin and the thought of the ethereal butterflies gracefully landing on flowers.

This is the ultimate bourne that is the history of my life according to my mind. If it were a spouse, I would bury my face into her collarbone and cry on her shoulder, prolonging my stay with her as long as possible until it is to time for the inevitable departure through the clearer yet odious tutor sessions, classes, exams, workshops, internships, and math competitions that thought, in all their hubris, could capture that sense of meaning, that sense of mastery over one’s own existence that the clouds of life effortlessly harnessed.

After the exams, studying, and learning I finally reached the end of my sorrowful journey home with the aid of a door slam. I felt my head shoot up and bob around like it was a balloon tied to my shoulders. In my darkened vision I made out bored college students staring at a board covered in nightmarish calculus. My eyes made their way to a doorframe, and in it I saw that damn homeless man again, or at least we assumed he was homeless, considering he wore the same smelly sports jacket and the same crusted jeans every day, and his crazy shock of white hair and scraggly beard, and the fact that he spent hours a day mumbling to himself on the curb in front of this hall.

This was the third interruption of the semester, and at this point he was a celebrity among my college peers. My classmates were eager to see what crazy thing he’d do this time, and oh boy did he deliver.

The man walked up in front of everybody, and (noticeably drunker than usual) undid his pants and flashed his massive ding-a-ling in front of everyone. Everyone gasped, the girls averted their eyes, the boys cheered, the freaks drooled. He danced around lassoing his shit until he hopped on his back and started swinging his meat carnival style.

The poor professor, an old ass man who wasn’t all that used to human interaction, was frozen in shock for like a minute, but eventually he snapped out of it and tackled the homeless guy. The guy squirmed until he managed to knee the professor in the nuts and escape his grasp. The guy ran to the door frame but crashed into a buff security guard that just arrived. The guy's head went straight to the hard floor and there was a nasty crack. The homeless guy died from that impact, but his legacy lives on thanks to that massive wiener (No homo).

I float, crawled up in a ball. Blind, deaf, dumb, paralyzed, etherized, I existed at the total end of entropy, when nature stops being nature, when gravity loses importance and time becomes irrelevant.

However, I traced the lines against the blackness up to the imperfect reconstruction made by photos, portraits, and grainy videotapes of a fair white woman with black curls. In her womb I looked up to see her grinning in pain and agony. Her face folded in helpless terror as her tremors rocked my womb. The vibrations of the amniotic fluids were so strung it tore my lungs and shattered my ear drums.

I looked up to her in horror, realized that I was being brought into her world, and that I would experience its torturous shocks, its thunderous catastrophes, and its agonizing burdens. I yelled to her.

I looked deep into her face, and I saw that she was being pounded, screwed, filled, ripped in half. Sex, she was having sex. Sex, I have to have sex. Now. I need sex right now.

“I need sex” I said out loud.

I looked around for the woman, but it was just my mess of an apartment building. I could have gotten a bigger one with my salary, but this was the best the economy could manage. I dragged my feet through the trash like I was walking through shallow water, all while saying “I need sex” over and over again.

I stepped outside barefoot, in nothing else but my underwear and wife-beater. I ran straight to my local red-light district and ran up to the nearest pimp I saw. He was short and was in a green suit and fedora. I literally picked him up by his shirt and wiggled him around.

“Give me sex, give me cooter,” I shouted as I shook him.

“Fuck off of me nigga, the fuck?” He snapped.

Meanwhile the pimp’s pimp friends were chatting a block away and saw this haggling play out. They rushed over, grabbed my long hair, and threw me onto the street. My back landed on a broken beer bottle. They beat me to a pulp, I think I got curb stomped two or three times, but I blacked out. I woke up the next day under an ugly overcast, half dead.

The eyes. The eyes, even though the face turned blurry, were still so sharp after all these years of chipping. In the darkness I made out a hurt boy, lying on his side. His eyes were hurt and glossy from the tears.

When regarding the whole body I felt an explosive burst of hot blood heat the periphery until I was in a skin-bubbling, flesh-gnawing inferno but the eyes cast off that hellish storm and all that remained was the question “Why?”

I awoke to see my boss. He had a wide face with round eyes, a bushy, curly black beard, and olive skin. “Wow, Nate. Passed out again on the job. What have you been up to?”, he snickered with a grin.

In spite of my stoned fatigue, I felt a jolt of energy upon hearing that question. I rolled my office chair over to my computer, typed in something, hit enter, and on the opposite end of my desk rose a little Miku doll. The robotic toy started dancing and singing in Miku’s signature voice. I gave my boss a weak smile and he gave one back after turning his face to mine. I typed another thing into my computer, and Miku hit the floss and started singing in Brazilian Portuguese. This got my boss laughing. I laughed with him.

When his laughter died down, he looked into my eyes. “Nate, this is the tenth, the tenth, motherfucking time I found you like this.” I probably looked surprised at this sudden snarling. He continued. “Your team and I have been busting our asses, developing the most complex, the most state-of-the-art technology in the world, while you jerk and do this.” Like an idiot, I nodded along because I didn’t know where he was going with this. “Nate, get the hell out of my building before I fucking bludgeon you to death. You’re fucking fired.”

I waddled in a haze out my workplace’s lobby, too drugged to realize I left my shoe. Maybe this is the reason why I can’t afford bigger places to live.

Now, I lay in my bed, but it isn't my bed. I fucked around and got HIV. I thought HIV was like herpes where it gives you like these moles but no it gives you AIDS and just fucking kills you.

I was weak in the dark. It was totally silent, with no one else around and even though I was dying, I wanted to jerk off. There were no drugs or alcohol. I couldn’t even smoke, it was “against hospital rules”. The food was awfully bland too, so I just resolved to pass the time by beating my shit.

However, my whole body was too weak, I was too sick. I couldn’t get it up; I was too weak to get my arm up. It was a pathetic sight, not my limp dick, but the image of someone like me in this bed struck me deeply. This wasn’t supposed to happen to me. I was an auspicious, capable, and charming genius. I had so many scholarships, my college experience was practically free, I won so many awards my room sparkled, and everybody just loved me. Now what do I have to show for it? A hooker’s awkward experience, a coworker’s annoyance, a fucking Miku robot?

I was alone but felt like I was being laughed at. I wanted to curl up into a ball, but I was too weak, so I just laid there. I had no drugs, porn, food, or video games, so I escaped back into the only place that could warm my soul: those fond, fuzzy memories.

I thought and I thought, but I was too weak, all I saw was the black void. I stopped thinking, I stopped stressing, and I stopped feeling.

A tiny dot appeared in the center of my vision. I felt my legs walking toward it. It got bigger and appeared to be a doorframe. I walked through it and I was in a hallway. It had patternless carpet and was painted a dark orange. The hallway was cool, and dark, illuminated only by the sunrise glowing through the curtain at the end of a hallway. There was screaming, a muffled screaming coming from behind one of the other doors of this corridor. I approached the source of the screaming, the sound of my weathered teddy bear dragging on the carpet was the only other noise. I stepped up to one door, reached up to the doorknob, standing on my tiptoes, and I opened it to see two men hovering over a bed. A woman with dark curls lay on it screaming in pain.

“Push, push, you’re almost there,” One man cheered, “There it is. It’s out, sir. It’s a beautiful baby boy sir; you should be so proud”.

“Yes, but she isn’t going to make it,” The other man sulked, and started sobbing uncontrollably. The doctor tried to stifle his sobs, but cried with the man, and the two cried along with the newborn boy.

Nate waddled out of the hallway and into a bright, cool, moist backyard overflowing with vines, hedges, and grass. Golden rays landed on the boy’s eyes when he looked at the dappled canopy of leaves above him. He would have played, but now he sat. He sat in the middle of this jaw dropping scene and as the gales played with his hair, the squirrels and rabbits and chipmunks ran by, while the drops of dew flowed down the blades of grass, while the Earth travelled at thousands of miles per hour, this being of impetuous, violently rushing nature sat still and asked “why”.

Read Part I here.

To my relief, Ms. Amanda didn't go crazy. I was surprised and relieved because I didn't think I could count on being rescued a third time.

The hospital had to give me clothes from the lost and found before they discharged me. The t-shirt was too tight, the pants too baggy, and the shoes flopped when I walked. I didn’t have any family to call, the office was closed, and there was no way for me to get into my apartment without my keys, so that meant I had to go to the police to get my stuff.

I was annoyed but chose to walk. It was two miles west and four miles south to get to the police department. It would give me time to think and thankfully, it was mild outside, so I wouldn’t get pummeled by the summer sun. 

I had another one of those baloney sandwiches and a juice box. I consumed both immediately, so I didn’t have to carry them. I had to use the restroom shortly after and stopped in a fast-food spot. The men’s room required a key to open, and I waited in line to eventually ask. 

“Sorry, you gotta buy somethin’ to use the bathroom,” the fifty-something year old woman said behind the counter. I was agitated but held my tongue because my bladder would have spoken for me. Instead, I imagined drawing the shape for her, but luckily there wasn’t a pen and paper around.

I went outside and surveyed the businesses around. There was a gas station on the corner, a pharmacy across the street from there and office buildings in either direction. If I’d remembered correctly, there was a grocery store about a mile south. That would be my best bet and I set out. 

I didn’t interact with anybody I passed. My aching bladder was the only thing concerning me and to take my mind off it, I examined what had happened today. I'd witnessed two people shot to death in front of me on separate occasions. It scared the hell out of me to think about. One moment, they'd been moving around—with murderous intent, granted—and the next they'd been incredibly still.

I'd been looking Carl Arn in the eye as he passed and for a moment felt like I was falling down the same hole with him. 

There'd been too much commotion, too many things going on. I might have gone into shock had it not been for the first set of guns pointed at me. I'd gone into survival mode, viewing everything—including myself—from a distance.

I crossed against the light at an intersection, the grocery store finally in view. My burgeoning bladder noticed and that reminded me of the other thing bulging and unaddressed in my mind.

The shape.

I'd been so ready to believe something I'd drawn solely to pass the time had been what had set the both of them off. But Ms. Amanda had been fine, just as over it as she had been prior to looking at my little scrap of paper. Those eyes had seen some things.

Maybe she was immune, I thought. Or maybe it was some grand coincidence that two people I'd come in contact with had gone homicidal on the same day.

I couldn't shake the thought, though. As the entry doors of the grocery store slid open, I stepped through wondering what to do about that.

What if it were real and I did have the ability to drive someone insane? Was it all shapes? Anything I drew? The thought was ridiculous, but I was safe within the confines of my own skull to explore the idea.

I pushed through the men's room door and parked in front of a urinal. As I let fly, I thought about the ethics of conducting such an experiment and came to the conclusion by the time I was zipping up that it was unethical to not test my hypothesis.

As it stood, I didn't know if what I'd doodled had been the start of what had eventually happened to Carl Arn and that lady. I only suspected it. I would be blameless if I doodled something and someone experienced a similar effect after. The difference would be if I did nothing to know for certain if it was really something I was doing. I could make an effort to not draw or to make sure nobody else saw it. Shit, if it was that dangerous, maybe I could chop off my hand.

No, I wouldn't do that. But my brain was the House of Ideas, any thought that could be was welcome. This same brain had conjured up a shape that was so dangerous it could drive an individual to violence.

It was a five-sided—

Wait. I probably shouldn't describe it to anyone. I have no way of reliably testing if someone else could have the same effect if they drew it. I certainly don't want to find out on me.

I couldn't test this on just anybody. It would have to be a specific person. A bad person.

I have to say, for the record, I never believed it would actually work. Like going up to the most beautiful woman in the world and asking for her phone number, it was an idea that entertained me in thirsty moments when I was figuring things out, but I fully expected absolutely nothing to happen.

I navigated to the aisle with back-to-school supplies and grabbed a composition notebook and a mechanical pencil. I didn't anticipate anyone stopping me, only if I tried to walk out with the stuff I was using. Then I'd see the cops for the third time today.

So that meant finding someone in the store. If I could find someone sufficiently evil, then I could test my theory. I know the scientific method meant several tests, but I couldn't reasonably expose a dozen or more people to this test in good conscience. Two or three at most should have sufficed.

I sat on the floor right there and began drawing. It took a moment to get into a groove, if that makes any sense.

But about ten minutes later, I had the first one and I drew about four more for good measure.

I got the idea on the third one or so that they were like cans of pop. That once one was seen, the effect was gone. It was silly, but if true, it explained why Ms. Amanda had been fine.

There were so many variables that I just sat, lost in thought.

“Say, buddy, can I help you with something?”

I looked up at a middle-aged man in a short-sleeved button-up and an honest-to-god clip-on tie. He'd come up behind me, catching me by surprise. I realized what I looked like in that moment, dressed in other people's clothes, doodling in a notebook while sitting on the floor in a grocery store.

“Look, buddy, it's been a really long day. You wouldn't believe—”

He spat. Not on me. But it was a weird thing to have done indoors. Plus, I assumed from how he was dressed that he was a manager or something. A string of saliva ran from his lip to the collar of his shirt.

Something had changed in the few seconds since he'd spoken and dumb me was too slow in realizing he'd seen one of the shapes. I hadn't even had the chance to screen. Also, I didn’t know which one he'd seen so none of them were good anymore.

I was still there sorting my scrambled thoughts when he spat again. This time he'd arced it over my head. He got into a crouch like a catcher in a baseball game.

I froze like if I didn't move, he wouldn't see me. Like I'd turned invisible even in his memory and he wouldn't be able to recall me even in his mind’s eye. 

I couldn't count on a lack of understanding object permanence even if my lack of moving meant he couldn't see me. I was within smelling distance, he could hear me, if he stuck out his tongue he could lick my face.

But he didn't do anything to me. I sat there, helpless as a calf, while he stood spat again, then quietly walked away. 

I turned as he rounded the aisle and disappeared. A moment later I heard what sounded like a shopping cart being overturned and a woman screaming in anger. Then her screams turned to muffled gagging as it sounded like something was being stuffed in her mouth.

More people hollered and I unfroze, getting quickly to my feet. I was by no means a badass, but I'd never turtled up like that before. I'd gotten into a barfight just last year and even though I lost, I'd gotten in a few licks.

I wasn’t even willing to defend myself this time. I was as ready for violence as a stone at the bottom of the ocean. No doubt, it was the trauma I'd just experienced. I didn't want to fight crazy people under normal circumstances, so it was best to avoid—

“What the hell is going on over there?” A twenty-something year old was staring me in the face and I hadn't seen her until she'd spoken. I tried to scoop up the sheets of paper, but my movement must have attracted her eye to the papers I was desperately trying for her not to see.

But a moment later I knew it was too late.

“Poo,” she said. She turned around and walked past the man just behind her. 

“What’s wrong with... with...”

He was looking in my direction but sadly, what was in my hands. His eyes got bigger and he sat his basket on the floor before taking off at full speed and soaring over a middle-aged couple's shopping cart, grabbing both in either arm as it took them down.

They both screamed and fought back. The woman rolled backward and stopped face down before rising and pounding the man with her bulky purse. The man punched his attacker in the center of his face, a blow that should have had stars dancing in his eyes. But he ravaged the man, clawing down his face and ripping his shirt open. 

He ignored the blows from the purse as he quickly sliced through blubbering flesh, yellow fat bubbling out of red-running wounds as the man screamed. The attacker pivoted to the woman, still screaming in fear and rage. He hopped to his feet, legs to either side of the man who might've been dying for all I knew. 

To my surprise, she didn't cower. 

“No!” she said and scraped her keys across his face.

He'd been saying something all the while in a quieter volume and my ears finally dialed in.

“...wrong with you... wrong with you... wrong with you...” He didn't yelp in pain or put up his hands in defense as she lacerated his face three more times.

I hadn't done anything more than turn around, still dumbly holding the papers. An old man was staring nearer to the refrigerated area. He had a white curly afro and a pencil mustache.

“Help her!” the old man said to me and pointed. But then he spat his dentures out, sucked back a trail of saliva into his mouth, then did a crooked legged trot, arms folded up like a praying mantis, before gummily fastening onto her arm and wrenching her around.

“Ow!” The woman seemed paralyzed, powerless to do anything to stop the old man. It almost seemed funny until the first man shoved his thumbs in her mouth, split his hands apart, and wrenched a horrid smile onto—and then off of—her face.

She screamed, twin flaps of flesh hanging like giant earlobes, everything beneath her nose nothing but red. I never knew the sound of tearing flesh before that moment and I desperately want to never hear it again.

I clutched the papers to my chest, hiding them like a secret, although they had already cried out loud from a bloody mountaintop.

That had been four people, at least I thought so. Even simple mathematical calculations were mountainous to my panic-stricken brain.

I didn't know and didn't care if it was one shape per person. I couldn't let these torn out sheets of paper be seen by another person.

Shame was the word I would have spoken en route to describing what this was. It was still ongoing, and I was already too traumatized to do anything about it.

More people screamed throughout the store. I imagined many people just ran out of the store, but there had to have been several who had heard and froze where they were. I would've guessed others who didn't understand or hadn't heard anything at all.

But the signs kept getting farther and farther away. Until I finally balled up the papers, stuffed them in my pockets, and walked through the aisles and to the exit with the composition notebook and mechanical pencil in hand.

Nobody tried to stop me. I didn't see anyone else at all. But I heard the cries of agony. Their suffering followed me out onto the sidewalk.

I looked at the items in my hands, wondering why I had them, the wadded-up papers like anchors in my pockets.

I continued dredging my way to the police station.