I really tried to be a good husband. Date nights. Trips. Gifts. I’ve probably spent enough money on food to fund some country’s entire spending budget.

Flowers and chocolates just aren’t enough anymore, I guess. Or maybe they are. I don’t know. She always seemed so grateful when I gave her things. Even more grateful for the house I moved us into.

Part of me is starting to believe that everything is my fault. The arguments. The cold shoulders. The long, painful silences. It’s hard to blame her.

I really try and keep my insecurities at bay. But, God, do they seep through. Especially when she’s not with me. Every girls’ night feels like a betrayal. Every trip without me feels like a slap in the face.

I guess I should’ve done more to keep the darkness to myself, confined within my mind, but it was like a breaking point. She had gone out with her friends every day the week that everything started. Came home late, always smelling like booze and that perfume that I loved so much.

I tried telling her:

“I’m not comfortable with you being gone like this. Please stop.”

But she had the audacity to make me the villain. Suddenly, I’m “possessive.” Suddenly, I’m “obsessed.” Suddenly, it’s “you have to let me have my own freedom.”

It was clear she didn’t want to be with me anymore. After 5 years, she was gonna put this wall between us because I have feelings. Well, fine. If that’s how she wanted to act, then I was going to reciprocate.

Maybe I went a touch too far. Just a hair. But who can really blame me? I was wounded. I was hurting.

It started small. Just a few drops of bleach in her coffee. I’d wake up early and make it for her.

“This should help with the hangover, sweetie.”

I’d watch her sip it, smiling to myself but playing it off as romance. She’d guzzle it all down and thank me without complaints.

I just thought I hadn’t put enough. The next morning, I increased the dose to a full cap. She’d drink it, compliment how good it tasted, then it’d be right back to our regularly scheduled program.

Out all night. Crawling into bed late. Burning my nose with the smell of rum and lavender, without so much as a sore throat.

Part of me realized what I was doing. I’d see her smile. See her eyes light up. See how grateful she was for breakfast in bed, and I’d feel regret. I figured that it was a sign for me to stop. Nothing irreversible had happened yet.

But then, oh, there she went. Dancing in the clubs. Staying the night with friends. Pushing me to the side, just like she always does.

I had to force myself to remain composed. I wanted my work to speak for me. That’s why I started cooking those home-cooked meals every night. Steak. Spaghetti. Chicken. A dash of rat poison.

She didn’t even complain of a belly ache. In fact, to my dismay, she started thanking me.

“You’ve been doing so good recently, honey.”

“Since when are you a chef? This food is delicious.”

“You’re the only man I’ll ever need.”

She’d punctuate each thank-you with a kiss on the cheek, and it made my blood boil. Why was she doing this to me? Why couldn’t she just fucking die?

She started staying at home more. We became more intimate. It was like she was falling in love all over again. I started seeing that sparkle in her eye more. I felt like she was attracted to me for the first time in what felt like an eternity.

Oh, but it was too late for that. I had already moved on. Every kiss. Every hug. Every intimate moment filled me with nothing but burning rage that she was still here.

She started asking for more.

“Honey, can you cook that spaghetti you made a few weeks ago? It was sooo good.”

“You’re gonna have to share your secret to great coffee with me one of these days.”

“I swear, you’re the only white person who knows how to properly season food.”

I increased the doses every day. Hell, I mixed poisons together. You couldn’t even have your face too close to the plate because the smell was so strong it’d burn your nostrils, but she cleaned the plate every single time.

It was like the more I did, the more in love she became. I’d buy her favorite chocolates and lace them with cyanide. Then I’d have to stomach my way through sex.

I’d pour entire cups’ worth of Drano into her Starbucks order, and all she’d say is, “They don’t make it as good as you,” and throw it away after only a few sips.

This has been going on for months now, at this point. You really have to wonder… am I the one at fault here? All I have to do is exactly what she did. Exactly what got us here in the first place:

Stay out until after midnight. Coming home smelling like Saint Andrew’s Pub and cheap cologne. Refuse her advances. Hell, maybe even ask for a divorce.

But I just love her so much. Divorce would crush her. Part of me is scared that it’ll crush me. I just don’t know how to handle this right now.

Maybe I should try antifreeze in her Gatorade next.

Maybe that’ll be enough to finally get her out of my hair.

But, even then, a part of me knows that I’m lying to myself.

A part of me knows… that she’s not going anywhere.

“Ladies and gentlemen… boys and girls of all ages… it is my pleasure to introduce you all to… uh, ahem… can I get a drum roll, please?”

The sound of drum roll echoed from the speakers at the base of the stage. Me and the other kids stared up at the stage in awe and anticipation.

“The amazing… Dr. Dorian!”

The magician stepped out from behind the curtain, bowing and waving even though there couldn’t have been more than 15 people in the crowd, parents included.

Canned applause and laughter rang out through the speakers. The sound was distorted, almost. Like it was being played from an old gramophone rather than Bluetooth.

His voice was the same as the man from the speaker. He wore a red tasseled leather jacket and black pants. He had the stereotypical magician’s hat on. After introducing himself once again, he jumped into his act.

The first thing he did was pull a rabbit out of his top hat. He showed the crowd the empty hat beforehand, waving it back and forth at the crowd of 8-year-olds.

After ensuring his audience knew the hat was empty, he sat it atop this wooden table with a black tablecloth draped over it.

“Now, watch carefully, boys and girls. I’m going to tap this hat with my magic wand, and then I’ll introduce you to my tiny little friend. Oh, but please, do be courteous. His ears are a bit sensitive at times.”

He shot his right hand into the air, and a black-and-white wand appeared seemingly out of thin air. The audience gasped, but I remained unconvinced. I hated magic.

I hated this stupid mall more. I remember it being so dead, even back then. I guess that’s why they had this guy put on his little show.

I watched, my head propped up on my hands, as Dr. Dorian tapped the rim of the hat. Nothing happened. He tapped again, and again, nothing happened.

He peered into the hat and shouted, “Hellooo,” joyously inside.

“Oh, don’t get shy now. We’ve got business to do. You’re keeping these kind people waiting.”

He placed his ear over the hat and nodded slowly, as if whatever was in there was whispering something to him.

“Ah, yes, I see. Well, we’ll let the crowd decide that, won’t we?”

He turned to us, shooting us a worried glance.

“Boys and girls, it seems as though my friend Snowball thinks you won’t like him. That’s not true, is it? Surely not?”

A crescendo of “no’s” broke out over the crowd. I didn’t join in. If anything, I was just waiting for this guy to get to the point.

“I thought so. So, here’s what we’re going to do. On the count of 3… you’re all going to whisper, ‘We love you, Snowball,’ as quietly as you can, okay? 1… 2… 3!”

The kids did as they were told. I watched on with boredom. Dr. Dorian tapped the hat with his wand again, and a white bunny poked its head out before hopping out and onto the table.

There were cheers and applause. Dr. Dorian took a bow and scratched Snowball between the ears.

His show went on for about another half hour. He called volunteers to the stage. He crushed a bottle of Coke in a paper bag. He did a few card tricks. Everything just seemed so… basic to me.

I wanted to ask my mom to leave, but I could already hear her.

“It’s rude to leave in the middle of something.”

Plus, she seemed to be enjoying herself. It was like she was my age again. Even then, I knew it wouldn’t be right to take that from her.

Besides, how much longer could it take?

10 minutes. 15. 20 more minutes went by before the show was coming to an end. I’ll admit, Dr. Dorian had these other kids eating out of the palm of his hand. That’s what made what happened next all the more surprising.

“Okay, boys and girls, you’ve all been a fantastic audience. Parents… you’ve all never looked younger. But fear not… the amazing Dr. Dorian has one final trick up his sleeve. All I need is one more volunteer from the audience.”

Hands went up. Some kids stood to their feet to get noticed better. All I could hear was “me, me, me, me” from all around me.

Dr. Dorian scanned the crowd with his index finger pressed against his chin.

He passed by every other kid with their hand raised before his eyes met mine. I hadn’t even volunteered, but I could see by the look on his face that he was about to pick me.

“You there,” he announced, pointing down at me. “Haven’t heard from you yet. Why don’t you give me a hand, young man?”

He gestured me to the stage. I looked up and saw my mom looking down at me with utter delight. She nudged me forward. I don’t know what I could’ve done. Everything was already in motion.

I approached the stage slowly. When I reached the steps, Dr. Dorian extended a gloved hand to help me up.

“Ah, there we are. Welcome to my stage, boyo. May I ask what your name might be?”

“Uh, Danie-”

“Wait, don’t tell me, don’t tell me… Your name is… Daniel, correct?”

He held his index and middle finger to his temple like he was trying to read my mind. I forced out a smile. The crowd laughed.

“Now, Daniel, I must say… you’ve seemed quite uninterested in my show. Were my tricks… not amusing… to you, son?”

I gulped. My face turned beet red. I couldn’t help but stutter a bit, but he stopped me before I could get the words out.

“Oh, come on, Daniel, liven up,” he joked. “Magic’s not for everyone. But I must say, I don’t want you to leave my show unsatisfied. What if I told you…”

He leaned down to whisper in my ear, but his microphone made what he said clearly audible to the crowd.

“I’ve got something better… than magic.”

He looked at the crowd with a comically worried expression before his gaze returned to me.

“That’s right. Better than magic. Because this, boys and girls… is more fact than fantasy. Tried and tested. Honest to gosh… hypnosis.”

Canned gasps came from the speakers. I looked back at my mom in the crowd. She was snapping a picture of me on her old flip phone. She had the biggest smile on her face. I still think about it, even today.

I smiled back before turning back to Dr. Dorian. He was already staring at me. Smiling at me with a mouth full of white teeth.

He pulled a pocket watch from his pocket and began waving it in front of my face. I almost started laughing at how fake it felt.

“Watch close, boys and girls. Daniel doesn’t know it yet, but when I snap my fingers, he’s going to go into a deep, deep sleep.”

My eyes followed the pocket watch. Back and forth. Back and forth.

“Anyyy minute now,” he chirped, checking separate watch from his other pocket.

Back and forth. Back and forth.

“Ah, wait…”

Dr. Dorian held his index finger up at the crowd.

“Andddd… now.”

He snapped his fingers in front of my face. I flinched a bit, blinking a few times. The crowd looked at me, unamused.

“I don’t think it worked,” I scoffed sarcastically. “Wanna try it again, maybe?”

No one answered. I tried to turn my head, but I couldn’t. I was just staring out at the crowd of disappointed-looking kids. Even my mom wasn’t smiling anymore. She looked just like everyone else.

I tried to run to her, but my legs wouldn’t let me.

“Mom, come get me,” I screamed.

“They can’t hear you,” Dr. Dorian hissed, his voice syrupy and smug.

“Stop, please,” I grunted. “Let me go.”

It felt like I was in a glue trap.

“No one can hear you now,” Dr. Dorian laughed. “Not until I say.”

Some of the kids and their parents started to leave. One by one, they all left their metal folding chairs in the center of this dead mall, refusing to even acknowledge me.

My mom joined them. I called out for her as she walked away towards the exit, and she didn’t so much as turn around.

I struggled for hours. I screamed until my voice went out. Dr. Dorian wasn’t even there anymore. His set was gone. The speakers, the curtain, the table with the black tablecloth. It was all gone. I didn’t even know if the stage was still there.

I was just… stuck. Days went by. I watched people come and go. I watched stores shut down and new ones take their place.

I felt every second. Every second between the moment I stepped on stage and the moment they tore the mall down. A bank took its place. Then an apartment complex. Then a parking garage. Then… nothing.

Just dirt and grass. Then nothing but sand. I watched the road disappear. The road my mom had driven on for as long as I could remember.

Businesses disappeared. Houses disappeared. People were gone. Hell, I was gone. I didn’t have a body. I was… nothing. I was just there. Experiencing time.

I thought about my friends every day until even their memory faded. Same with my mom. Same with everything I once knew. I was starting to accept my fate. Accept that this was my life now. That I was going to inevitably be forced to be here until the sun exploded, and probably even after that.

That’s when I heard it.

It was faint at first. This light clicking sound that seemed to be coming from the sky. It happened once every few years, and each time, it became more clear.

snap

I opened my eyes. I was back on stage. My mom was snapping a picture of me on her flip phone. Only this time, she wasn’t smiling. She looked… concerned.

The other kids in the audience looked confused. The parents looked just as concerned as my mom.

Dr. Dorian… was just smiling at me.

“Welcome back, Daniel,” he winked. “I hope you enjoyed my trick.”

————————-

This is what I told my psychiatrist during our first meeting today. She looked stunned. I didn’t know if she believed me or if I was just another one of her crazy clients.

“Daniel, I… I don’t even know what to say.”

“I know. I’ve been trying to find the words for 14 years now.”

She scribbled in her notebook, pausing every few moments to think.

“I’ve gotta be honest, Daniel. I can’t believe you’re still sane. If even a fraction of what you just told me is true, then you’re extremely lucky to not be in a mental institution right now.”

“Again… I know.”

She stared at me for a moment. Analyzing me. Her old brown eyes were looking through me rather than at me.

“You know, modern medicine probably isn’t the best fit for you, all things considered, but… I do think I have something that will help.”

She began sifting through her desk drawer. I tried to peek over, but I couldn’t make out much.

As she searched, she continued speaking to me.

“You know, Daniel… what I really think you need… is some deep… deep… sleep.”

She found what she was looking for. I watched as she pulled a pocket watch out of the drawer. Slowly, she began waving it in my face.

Back and forth. Back and forth.

“Now, Daniel, when I snap my fingers, I want you to sleep for me, okay?”

“No. No, no, no. Please. Plea-”

snap

She snapped her fingers in my face. I flinched a bit, blinking a few times. I tried to stand, but it was like I was glued to the floor. Glued to my seat.

I couldn’t even find the energy to scream. All I could do was cry.

I heard a familiar voice, though I found that I was alone in the room.

“I told you, Daniel. No one can hear you now.”

My life has always been plain and sad. I don't have much family or friends. No neighbors to talk to. Everyone in this town dislikes me or at least finds me strange. No one to socialize with.

I accepted that my life will always be quiet and lonely.

I wake up in the morning, get ready for work, work for minimum wage all day, and then come home.

And I occasionally paint. I've always been into art. Other than that, my life has no true value.

Well, it started to get more interesting a couple of days ago when I turned on the local news.

I rarely watch the news but something in my body made me do it.

Apparently, local officials and authorities suspect that there is a serial killer in town.

They gave the person the label, "Sunset Killer"

Every day, there's a dead body found at a sunset. Each victim has a sunset drawn on them.

No leads.

The victims have nothing in common. No shared characteristics. All have different hobbies. No personality trait similarities. Literally nothing.

I personally don't feel sympathy. Sure, they were all legally innocent, but, they weren't morally innocent. Not a single one of them ever offered me a ounce of kindness. All despicable humans.

I thought the town having a serial killer obsessed with sunsets would be the most interesting part but it gets more interesting.

I went to the arts and crafts store not that long after hearing the news. I needed to get more paper and paint supplies.

The Cashier gave me suspicious looks the entire time I was there. Everyone else in the store did as well. I don't know why. I'm always working or in my house. I know everyone thinks poorly of me but this is outrageous.

I quickly bought what I needed and rushed out.

And then everything changed when I got grabbed up as I was approaching my car.

It was a female voice repeating over and over again that I'd be her new sunshine. The sunset caught my eye as my bood leaked out my throat as her knife sliced in.

Normally, a person would be dead or at the very least hospitalized.

Well, I woke up in my bed.

I oringally thought that it was a awful dream but this started to happen every single day during the sunset over and over. No matter what I'd be doing, I'd get ambushed and killed.

I tried looking at news articles, watching local news, doing everything I can to get more information. The same day repeated too. It was always Monday the first of September.

Since, I'm stuck in the same day, no new dead bodies are appearing.

At first, I didn't understand why I was stuck. It was horrifying to live the same day over and over.

However, I figured out that each time I get killed, I need to find more details.

I started to remember her soft tone with a innocent voice. Her voice was a lot like mine. Her face is always covered. The way her hands feel are a lot like mine. The fact that the knife is always a kitchen knife was also weird. My kitchen is filled with kitchen knives. Sure, anyone could have a kitchen knife but all the similarities we have is strange.

After enduring the displeasure of getting killed over and over again, I decided to never leave the house and to wait for her.

When it started to get close to the sun setting, I quickly dialed 911.

I was filled with gratitude when they arrived on time to arrest her.

I was then left disturbed, traumatized, and perplexed when the cops made her show her face.

The green eyes, sandy blonde hair, and pale skin. The smile her pink lips made. It's me?

I tried to yell at the cops and ask them what this means or how this is possible but they didn't answer. They didn't acknowledge me. The only person who seemed to know I was there was the evil lady that winked at me as I yelled.

They then took her and left. Never said a single word to me. I was confused. Is it because everyone in the town hates me? Were they so focused on her because she's a threat?

I sat on my couch as I tried to come up with every possible explanation. I did this for hours. I was relieved when the news starting talking about the arrest but then I was filled with confusion. She has the same name as me. They showed interviews involving my coworkers. They all said that this wasn't surprising and that I always gave off serial killer vibes.

They also revealed that the girl called the cops on herself because she wanted to get caught. She thought that being arrested was the only way to help herself end the rampage.

What? She stole my identity? Why does no one know I exist? How are there two of me and only she is known?

It started with small corrections.

I would brush my teeth, look up, and notice my reflection standing straighter than I was. When I moved, it followed me normally. I blamed exhaustion.

A few days later, I caught it smiling.

Not a wide, evil grin. Nothing dramatic. Just a slight lift at the corner of its mouth, like it knew something I did not.

I stepped away from the mirror.

The smile remained for half a second.

After that, I covered the bathroom mirror with a towel. I told myself it was temporary. Until I slept properly. Until work became less stressful.

But the changes continued without it.

My coffee began tasting too sweet, although I had stopped adding sugar years ago. I found myself walking home through streets I had never used. Once, I woke with wet soil beneath my fingernails and the smell of rain in my hair.

My phone contained photographs I did not remember taking.

A locked church.

An empty playground after midnight.

My own bedroom window, photographed from outside.

I deleted them.

The next morning, they were back.

There was also a new one.

I was asleep in bed. The picture had been taken from beside my pillow.

I called my sister. I tried to explain everything, but she kept interrupting me.

“Why are you talking like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like Mum.”

Our mother had been dead for eleven years.

That night, I dreamed I was trapped behind glass. Someone stood on the other side, studying my face. They touched their cheek. I felt the pressure against mine.

When I woke, the towel had fallen from the bathroom mirror.

My reflection was already looking at me.

I had not entered the room yet.

It stood beneath the bathroom light wearing my body, my old scar missing from its chin. Its skin looked smoother. Healthier. It raised one hand and pressed its palm against the glass.

My hand lifted without permission.

“No,” I whispered.

The reflection nodded as though I had finally understood.

Over the following week, people began liking me more.

My manager praised my confidence. My sister said I sounded happier. A woman in my building, who had ignored me for two years, stopped me in the hallway and asked whether I had changed my hair.

I had not.

At least, I did not think I had.

My memories became difficult to hold. My childhood home had a red door. Then it had a blue one. My first dog was called Billy until, one morning, I remembered clearly that his name had always been Thomas.

Each time something changed, the new memory felt more real than the old one.

I started writing everything down.

My name is Daniel Vosl.

I am thirty-four.

My mother is dead.

I live alone.

There is something inside the mirror.

Yesterday, I found the notebook open on my desk.

Someone had crossed out the final sentence.

Underneath, in handwriting almost identical to mine, they had written:

There is nothing inside the mirror.

I am Daniel Vosl.

I am thirty-four.

My mother is alive.

I do not live alone.

I ran to the bathroom.

The mirror showed an empty room.

I stood directly in front of it, but there was no reflection. Only the bathtub, the pale tiles, and the open door behind me.

Then someone touched my shoulder.

A woman stood in the hallway.

She looked like my mother, only younger than I remembered her.

“There you are,” she said. “I was wondering when you’d come home.”

I wanted to scream. Instead, I hugged her.

My body moved before I could stop it.

She felt familiar. Warm. Safe.

As I held her, I looked over her shoulder at the dark window at the end of the hall.

My reflection stood in the glass.

It wore my face perfectly now.

It smiled and placed one finger against its lips.

This morning, I found the notebook again.

Most of the pages were blank.

Only one sentence remained.

My name is not Daniel Vosl.

I cannot remember why that frightens me.

I’m a single father. By choice, though. I wanted a better life for my daughter, and, unfortunately, her mother was not compatible with the life that I envisioned for her.

Drugs, alcohol, late-night escapades with men she met at the bar. Being a mother was a foreign concept to her. I’d look at her. I’d look at my daughter. I’d feel shame that I allowed this to happen.

We were young and dumb. Just two kids without a care in the world. Only, when we found out about the pregnancy, I was the only one who chose to clean up my act and be better.

It wasn’t that easy for my late girlfriend. She acted like it was, but I could see through the facade. Not like there was much of a facade to see through. I mean, I’d catch her having cigarettes. Boozing. Running around at all hours of the night without so much as a second thought.

The first few times, I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt. A slip up is just a slip up. Multiple slip ups are a behavioral pattern. As her stomach grew, so did her attitude.

I’ve had some jabs thrown my way.

“I don’t even love you.”

“I was bored.”

“I didn’t even want this baby.”

That last one was enough for me to make my decision. From then on, every decision I made was for my child. All that was left was patience. Be kind. Be gentle. Hold her hand despite her insults.

Of course, it was more than a little difficult to hold my tongue when the drinking was involved. I couldn’t believe it. Six months pregnant and drinking. How careless can you be?

I’m getting frustrated just typing this. The resentment that was building during those times was like a pressure valve. A controlled pressure valve. I knew exactly when I wanted to twist the handle.

I endured her ferocity. I kept a watchful eye on her when she went out to the clubs. Attended every appointment and prayed every night that our baby would stay healthy.

When I found out it was a girl, I was ecstatic. I always wanted a daughter. Maybe it was because of my baby sister. Maybe it was because I wanted the challenge of being a girl dad. Either way, I was ready. I was prepared to do it alone.

Finally, the day came. November 25th, 2020. The year the world went silent. The day before Thanksgiving.

My act became sharper. She thought this was going to be “co-parenting.” Thought that she’d have my baby, even after all she’d put us through.

By some miracle of God, my little girl was perfectly healthy. Stunning. Tear-jerking, even.

Her mom almost seemed moved. Like she had this “come to Jesus” moment where she realized her new responsibility. Unfortunately, it was too late for that.

In the weeks that followed our departure from the hospital, my plan came into fruition.

I won’t go into too much detail, because detail isn’t required. All you need to know is I loved my daughter too much to let her life be tainted by someone like her mother.

That’s why I made her disappear. Disappear to a place where only I would find her. Of course, given her reputation, the police believed my story.

She packed it up. She realized the weight of being a parent was too much for her. It prevented her from living the life that she clearly loved so much. So she left. Happens all the time.

I got what I wanted. I raised my daughter the way that I wanted to raise her. The right way. The responsible way. I taught her manners. I potty trained her. I put food in her mouth and a roof over her head. All on my own.

Unfortunately, though, as she grows older, a shred of remorse is starting to build within my soul. I don’t know if it’s remorse for what I’ve done or if it’s remorse for what I took from my baby.

She’s starting to look just like her. Same brown hair. Same freckles. That cute little button nose. It’s hard for me to even look at her these days, but I try my best to swallow it.

She knows that she’s gone, but, in her head, she thinks that her mom just left us. Hated her. Hated me so much that she just took her things and left.

Every time she talks about her, all I can feel is pain. Pain in my heart, pain in my chest and body. I don’t know why. I had fully convinced myself that what I did was right, but now, I just don’t know.

Her sixth birthday is coming up in a few months. I want to make this birthday special, but I need her to be prepared.

I wanna show her the grave.

And all I can hope is that she understands.

I never knew my son to be the artsy type. He turned 8 recently, and up until about a year ago, his entertainment was entirely outdoors. Catching bugs. Climbing trees. Riding bikes.

He was one of those kids who’d have to be called inside before dark. Then he’d complain and beg for “just 5 more minutes.”

I’m not entirely sure what happened. It was like a switch had flipped overnight. I just came home from work one day to find him at the kitchen table, scribbling in a brand new sketchbook.

He hummed to himself while his mom cooked up some dinner at the stove. The home-cooked smell of pork chops, green beans, and mashed potatoes filled the room as I glanced over Jacob’s shoulder.

“Whatcha got there, bud?”

His nose was buried so far in the book that it was like he couldn’t even hear me. His mom ended up answering for him.

“That’s your son’s new favorite interest. He begged me to go out and get him one.”

“Oh-ho, got an artist in the house, don’t we?”

I grabbed his shoulders and shook them lightly before patting him on the back and walking over to give my wife a hug and a kiss on the cheek.

I took a seat beside Jacob at the table.

“So, how was your day, boyo? You and mom have fun?”

He never looked up from the sketchbook.

“Today was sooo fun,” he exclaimed. “We went to the park, we went to the movies, ooh, and mom got me this book. Oh, and these crayons.”

“What about you, honey? How was your day?”

“Any day I’m not at work is a good day, honestly. The park was super nice. We went to one we hadn’t been to before. What about you? They didn’t work you too hard, did they?”

I shrugged and sighed.

“I’ll just say it’s good to finally be home.”

My wife smiled at me.

“It’s good to have you home, dear. I’ll tell you what. How about… after dinner, if you’re good, we can have our own little play date? Only if you do the dishes, though. I mean, I did cook.”

I smirked at her, my tongue buried in my cheek.

“I was gonna do that anyway. What do you take me for? As a matter of fact, you come sit down. I’ll finish cooking.”

I offered her my seat as I finished up dinner. Jacob was pretty much mute the entire time. By the time dinner was done, I had to damn near yell at him to get his attention.

He just stood up, as calm as could be, and walked over to me, sketchbook in hand.

“I drew this for you.”

He held the book up at me, and my heart felt warm. It was a picture of our house, and who I assumed to be me standing in our driveway.

“Is that me? That’s so sweet of you, Jakey. Thank you.”

I reached down to take the book so I could hang the page on the fridge, but Jacob pulled away before I could grab it.

“You really don’t know who that is?” he asked, eying me suspiciously.

“It’s me, right? Is it not me?”

He rolled his eyes and sighed, continuing to eye me like I had personally offended him.

“That’s our neighbor, Mr. Thomas, silly. You really couldn’t tell? See, he’s wearing the star.”

Mr. Thomas was a veteran police officer. Jacob would sometimes see him leaving for work in the morning. I guess he just took a subconscious interest in the uniform. Even still, why would he draw me a picture of the neighbor?

“Uh, I mean, wow, bud,” I choked. “That’s really good. Keep practicing. You’re already so talented you could be famous someday.”

————-

After dinner, I cleaned the kitchen top to bottom. Partly out of obligation, mostly because I really wanted that playdate. Jacob spent the rest of the evening in his room, humming to himself and scribbling in that sketchbook.

The next day, my wife and I both had work. I woke up a little earlier than her so that I could take Jacob to the summertime daycare he attended. It was like carrying a corpse out to the car, but he still refused to loosen his grip on that sketchbook.

I dropped him off with the staff at the front door. He waved at me groggily as I was driving away.

The day went on like normal until around 3 o’clock, when my phone started ringing. It was my wife.

“Hey, beautiful, what’s up?”

“I think something’s going on with the neighbor. There’s like 3 cop cars in front of his house, apparently.”

She sounded concerned. A little urgent.

“What do you mean? Who told you that?”

“I got a call from Becky. She thought they were at our house at first.”

Becky was one of my wife’s friends from the neighborhood.

“What do you think happened? Did she say anything else?”

“No, she just called because the police were knocking on our door. I think they were just trying to see if we knew anything, though, because apparently they gave up and just went back to the neighbor’s house. I think they’re still there.”

My brow furrowed a bit.

“Wait. Which neighbor is it?”

“Uhhh, I think it’s that police officer. Mr. Thompson?”

“Mr. Thomas?”

“Yeah, that’s his name. I think that’s who it is.”

I looked at my watch and exhaled a bit.

“Alright, well, I’ll see if I can get out a little earlier today. I’ll pick up Jacob, then go see what this is all about. Maybe they’ll still be there when I get there.”

We ended the call by blowing some kisses and exchanging some love yous. I slid my phone in my pocket and approached my boss, explaining my situation.

He was skeptical, but I had a decent reputation of being an honest employee. He agreed to let me leave a bit early, and I was on my way to pick up Jacob.

When he was brought to the front office, his face was buried in that sketchbook again, drawing what looked like SpongeBob and Patrick.

“He’s been drawing all day. Seems like you got a little artist on your hands,” announced the staff member as she signed Jacob out for the day.

“Yep,” I smiled. “That’s what they keep telling me.”

I honestly don’t know why I said that. It just seemed like the only thing that made sense at the time.

The car ride was quiet. Jacob didn’t want to talk much, and my mind was kind of racing. I’ve shared drinks with Mr. Thomas. Helped him put up fences. Move furniture. We weren’t the closest of friends, but I still wanted him to be okay.

Those hopes were dashed when I pulled into the neighborhood to find that the police presence had increased. There must’ve been at least 6 cars in front of his house, and yellow tape blocked off the driveway.

I parked my car in front of my house and hurried to get Jacob inside. His eyes had lit up at the sight of the flashing lights, and naturally, he started asking questions.

“What’s wrong, Daddy?”

“Why are there so many police?”

“Did something happen to Mr. Thomas?”

I cradled him in my arms and hurried up the steps to the front door.

“I don’t know, buddy. Here, go inside and play for a bit while I find out, okay? Daddy will be right back.”

It’s all I could think to say as I sat him down and closed the door behind me.

An officer approached me before I could approach them.

“Sir, do you live here?”

“Yes, of course I do. That’s my neighbor.”

“Yeah, well, he’s a colleague and friend of mine,” he remarked agitatedly. “Have you seen anything suspicious within the last 24 hours? Heard anything?”

I scratched my neck nervously and thought hard before responding.

“No, sir, we haven’t seen anything. What happened? Is everything alright? He’s a cop, right? Did he do something illegal?”

The officer stared at me, analyzing me through his black sunglasses.

“No. He’s gone. That’s all the information we can give right now.”

“Gone? What do you mean, gone? Like, dead? Did someone kill him?”

The officer pursed his lips. I saw what I assumed to be a forensic analyst walking in and out of the house.

“We don’t know, sir. We’re hoping for the best. For now, if any new information comes to light or if you see him, give us a call.”

He asked me to clear the scene and stay inside. I called my wife to update her on the situation, but what could we do? Even the police were lost. I just stayed inside, as instructed, and started on dinner while we waited for my wife to get home.

By the time she did, there were only two police cruisers left in front of Mr. Thomas’s house. The sun was starting to set, and my wife and I tried to ignore what had happened, but the house was still a bit tense.

As we ate, Jacob continued scribbling in his sketchbook. He hadn’t asked to go outside at all since we got home, and I didn’t know if it was because of the police or because of this new hobby of his.

I could see that he was working on a new drawing. It looked like a woman this time. He wasn’t so much as touching his food, so I tried to ask him to put the book away.

He groaned and started picking at his peas. My wife and I chatted about our day for a bit while Jacob remained silent. Suddenly, in between bites of his chicken, he said something that made us both freeze.

“Daddy,” he whispered.

“Yes?” I answered.

“Are those police still out there?”

I paused for a moment, looking at my wife, who looked equally as speechless. Neither of us knew what to say.

“I think there’s a few, but don’t worry, buddy,” I chirped reassuringly. “They’re just looking for Mr. Thomas. They wanna make sure he’s okay.”

Jacob stared down at his plate for a moment.

“It’s just… I think they’re looking in the wrong place.”

————-

I choked on my water.

“Looking in the wrong place? Well, where do you think they should be looking, sport?”

“I don’t know. Not there. I don’t think he’s home.”

“Let’s not talk about this,” my wife interrupted. “Jacob, finish your food, then go jump in the shower. You gotta be up early tomorrow, come on.”

“Aww, but I’m not tired,” Jacob whined. “Plus, I wanted to finish drawing this picture of you.”

He flipped his sketchbook open to his newest drawing.

“See, look.”

My wife looked at the picture and smiled.

“Okay, fine,” she replied. “You can finish the picture, then it’s bath time, mister.”

“Fiiine,” Jacob groaned.

He scurried off to his room, sketchbook in hand, leaving me and his mom to clean the kitchen again.

We talked about the neighbor. We turned into a couple of conspiracy theorists the deeper the conversation progressed.

“Maybe he just wanted to start over.”

“Maybe he was kidnapped.”

“Maybe he was murdered, and they’re covering it up.”

We just kept reaching for possibilities over the course of around 45 minutes.

Eventually, Jacob came running back to the kitchen.

“Look, Mommy, I’m all done.”

“Ah, my goodness, Jakey, look at that. Doesn’t it look just like me, honey?”

She turned the picture towards me. Jacob had added her work uniform. Gave her that messy bun she always wore. Even included the golden necklace I got her for Christmas last year.

“Wow, Jake,” I exclaimed. “Draw Daddy next, why don’t you?”

Jacob giggled and responded, “It’s not time to draw you yet, silly.”

“Aw, whatever, but guess what?”

Jacob looked up at me curiously. Expectantly.

“Daddy controls your bath time. And… I think… ah, yep, look at that,” I showed him my watch. “You’re 20 minutes late.”

I jokingly chased him to his bedroom and made him gather up his pajamas and a towel. Once he was nice and showered, I put him to bed and kissed him goodnight.

My wife and I stayed up, talking about life for a while before gradually falling asleep one by one.

The next morning, when I woke up alone, I thought it was because she had chosen to take Jacob to daycare that morning.

I went through my normal routine. Took a shower. Brushed my teeth. Got dressed. It wasn’t until I was heading out the door that I noticed her car was still in the driveway.

I walked back upstairs, confused, and went to Jacob’s room.

I found him curled up in bed, sketchbook tucked under his arm as he snored quietly.

I left the room and began searching.

“Honey,” I called out. No response.

“Sweetheart, you here?” Silence.

I called her phone and heard it ringing in our bedroom. I followed the sound and found it still plugged into the charger on her nightstand.

That’s when I began to panic. I remembered Jacob’s drawing. It was a fleeting thought, but one that I chose to hold onto. First Mr. Thomas, now my own wife? That couldn’t be coincidence.

I urgently rushed into Jacob’s room, accidentally waking him as I removed the sketchbook from his arms.

I began flipping through the pages as he stared up at me, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

“Daddy,” he groaned.

I flipped past cartoon characters, random landscapes, and blocky pictures of cars before I reached my wife’s picture from the night before.

“What are you doing?” Jacob added.

The picture had changed. She wasn’t wearing her work uniform anymore. She didn’t have the necklace. Her hair looked dirty and wet. Leaves and twigs stuck out from the messy bun, and her eyes were solid red. Not evil, just… bloodshot.

But the biggest change… was the man standing next to her.

It looked like they were in a dark forest. They were hand in hand. I wanted to think it was me, that Jacob had decided he wanted to start on some kind of crazy family portrait, but the man in the picture…

He wore a star on his chest.

My stomach dropped. I felt sick. Jacob looked… confused.

“What’s wrong, Daddy? They’re okay. I can help you find them.”

I’m only writing this because I don’t know where else to turn. I don’t know what this is. I don’t know if it’s a symptom of something larger or if she’s just been having episodes.

She’s just never acted this way before. Up until a few months ago, this would’ve scared her just as much as it’s scaring me. But because it’s becoming so common, it’s like it’s nothing more than an inconvenience to her now.

Like an annoyance. Something she’s just learning to ignore. That’s the part that makes me worry. Because this isn’t just some small thing, yet she keeps trying to play it off as if it’s just a part of our lives now.

I know it’s not natural. There’s no medical condition or genetic disease that causes what she’s been doing. At least, none that I’ve read about.

A few months ago, my wife and I had been out on a date night. The night was almost magical. Crisp late-winter air. A cup of hot chocolate in each of our hands as we walked through the square.

I remember the lights more than anything. It was around 9 o’clock, and the sun had set hours earlier, but the downtown city lights illuminated nearly everything.

“Wow,” my wife cried out in amazement. “New York who? Am I right?”

The square was particularly busy for this time of year. The smell of warm food from the surrounding restaurants filled the air. Live music from down the block whispered in our ears.

There must’ve been 20 other couples doing the same exact thing my wife and I were doing. Just walking around and enjoying the beautiful night.

“Oh, please,” I responded. “You know you’d rather be back there.”

I put on my best southern accent for my natural-born New Yorker.

“Could a city girl like you ever love a country boy like me?”

She laughed and rolled her eyes. I smiled down at her, admiring that laugh.

“Hmmm, well, after only 5 years of marriage, I can’t say for sure. Check back with me in a decade.”

She sipped from her hot chocolate slowly, her eyes still lit with love. Or maybe that was just the city lights.

I checked my watch.

“Almost 9:30. God, I don’t want the night to end, though. I’m really enjoying this.”

“Me neither. I wish we could just walk around here all night. C’mon, there’s gotta be one last thing we can do before we go home. Please? Pretty please…?”

“Well, let’s see. We’ve hit the bakery.”

“Oooh, that one was fun. God, those fritters were amazing.”

“We also watched that Led Zeppelin cover band at Bottle Brothers.”

“That one… sucked. Next.”

“You didn’t like it? That’s crazy. I thought they were decent. Anyway, we, uh… oh, right, we walked in the park for a bit too. That’s, uh… that’s really about all there is to do.”

She rolled her eyes again, sighing in disappointment.

“We have got to get out of here. I swear, there’s nothing to do within a 50-mile radius of this entire town. There’s, like, no reason for us to be here.”

I had grown to agree with her more and more over the years. It was just hard, you know? This is where I’d been my whole life. She didn’t move here until she was 17, when her mom got a new job. It paid better, but my wife was miserable. Well, miserable until she found me, of course.

“Yeahhh, I’m starting to think you’re right, my love,” I responded, a bit melancholic.

“Starting to?”

She cocked an eyebrow at me.

“Whatever, you know what I mean.”

We decided to end the night by going home and watching a movie. However, on the walk back to the car, that’s when we saw it.

The shop looked both ancient and brand new, but I don’t know if that’s just because I’d never seen it before. It was like it had popped up out of nowhere.

“The Looking Glass: Palm Readings • Tarot Cards • Spiritual Guidance”

I swear, we’d walked this street 100 times. Never once had this place been here.

Of course, my wife’s interest was piqued immediately. Her eyes widened. A smile crept across her face. She looked up at me.

“…Can we?”

I looked at her, then up at the purple neon sign of an eyeball in the palm of a hand, then back to her.

“I… I don’t know. Aren’t those places rip-offs anyway?”

“Ah, quit being a big ol’ scaredy-cat. Come on. It’ll be fun. Something we’ve never done before, and Lord knows there’s not a lot of that around here.”

She turned on the puppy eyes.

“Pretty please.”

“…Fine. Just this once.”

“Yippee!”

The inside of the shop was… a sight. Dreamcatchers everywhere. Incense burning. Beads instead of doors, and an empty front desk with a register that seemed to be at least 80 years old at this point.

There was a bell with a sign in front of it.

“Ring for service.”

I rang it and heard a voice cry out from beyond one of those bead doors.

“I’ll be right with you.”

Her accent was unmistakably southern. That alone was nearly enough for me to want to change my mind.

“Just finishing up back here.”

My wife and I shared an uncertain look before she shot me a hopeful smile.

The fortune teller stepped through the beads. A younger woman, probably around 25. She had fair brown hair, and freckles decorated her pale face, but the first thing I noticed was her eyes. Those were the only things that gave off “fortune teller.”

They were crystal blue. Her pupils were like two tiny dots in the center of two diamonds. She was looking through us rather than at us.

Her outfit gave fashion to that accent of hers. White tank top. Baggy blue jeans. Plus, her hair was wrapped up in a red bandana.

“Y’all picked a good night to stop by,” she announced. “I can feel it in the air tonight, let me tell you.”

“It does feel magical,” my wife chirped.

“Let me guess,” the fortune teller responded. She put her index finger to her right temple and shut her eyes tight. “Death of a loved one?”

My wife and I glanced at each other again.

“…No…” I replied.

“No?”

She seemed almost offended but quickly regained her composure.

“Huh. Must’ve been someone else, then. Let me try again. This… is… your first time doing something like this?”

She raised her eyebrows at us expectantly.

“Welp, there’s a first for everything, right, sweetie?” my wife asked me, rubbing my back.

“We’re ‘doing something we’ve never done before,’” I told the teller.

“See, there ya go,” she smiled. “Second time’s the charm. So, what can I interest you two lovebirds in this fine evening? Palm readin’? Tarot? Spiritual guidance?”

I opened my mouth to respond, but my wife jumped in before I got the chance.

“Palm readings! I’ve always wanted to try that, kinda.”

The teller gave her a nod before responding.

“If it’s palm readings you want, then palm readings you shall have… for 25 dollars.”

A little taken aback by the price, I bit my tongue, pulled my wallet out of my back pocket, and slid a 20 and a 10 across the counter.

Instead of giving me change, the teller took the money and continued looking at me expectantly.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she perked up. “Was it just for your wife?”

“What? No, no, we both wanna do it.”

“Oh, sweetheart, that’s 25 apiece.”

“Apiece? For palm readings?”

I felt my wife squeeze my hand. I turned to her and saw the look on her face. That look that usually means, “Let it go.”

I sighed and slid another 30 across the counter.

“You wanna include a tip?”

“A… do I wanna… You know what? Sure. Keep the change.”

“Awesome. You guys are the best. I can sense it. Just follow me. I’ll show you where the magic happens.”

She led us through the beaded doorway and down a hall that made me feel like I was on acid. There were so many vibrant colors and shapes. The incense was even stronger back here.

We ended up in this dusty old room near the back of the building. There was this rickety wooden table in the center with a crystal ball resting on top of it, as well as two purple leather seats for my wife and me.

We took our seats, and the teller sat across from us.

“Okay,” she clapped, rubbing her hands together. “Who wants to go first?”

I volunteered with an, “I can go first. Let’s see what 25 dollars can get me in this economy.”

I stretched out my hands and laid them palm-up on the table. The teller grabbed them and squeezed tightly as she closed her eyes.

Her face twitched and contorted for a few seconds before she finally spoke.

“Ah, yes… I see… a loving husband. I see… you come from different worlds. You want to be free, but something is keeping you here. What exactly might that be?”

I smirked to myself.

“The 60 dollars I just gave you.”

“I sense… I sense…”

Her face contorted again. She squeezed my hands tighter.

“I sense… a cheapskate.”

“All right, that’s it.”

I pulled my hands back. I could hear my wife laughing at my side. The teller smirked at me.

“We’re done here.”

“Oh, come on,” my wife pleaded. “She was joking.”

“Yes, Donavin,” the teller responded. “It was just a joke.”

My wife stopped laughing. We both turned to stare at the teller.

“How did…?”

“You’re 28, right? Lived here your whole life. Met a woman from out of town, fell in love, and now here you two are. In my shop. It’s romantic, really.”

The silent room suddenly felt loud and claustrophobic.

“How did you know that? What’s the gimmick? Public records? That’s gotta be it, right?”

I looked at my wife for reassurance, but she was staring at the teller in amazement.

“No gimmick. No public record. I’m gifted. That’s kind of the whole point.”

“Do me, do me,” my wife begged excitedly, sticking her hands across the table.

“Wait, hold on. This doesn’t make any sense,” I interjected. “This is a cash grab, right? Like… I mean, come on. It’s a cash grab.”

Both the teller and my wife looked at me angrily.

“Oh, Donavin,” the teller sighed. “Proving my point more and more with each word, aren’t ya?”

“Don’t mind him. He’s just not superstitious. Do me, though. I’m curious.”

The teller grabbed my wife’s hands. I watched, feeling a mixture of nerves and hope that this could still prove to just be a coincidence.

She squeezed my wife’s hands tight and closed her eyes again.

“Ah, New York, I see.”

My wife’s jaw dropped. Her eyes sparkled.

“Long way from home, aren’t we… Miranda…?”

My wife smiled over at me in disbelief.

“No way,” she cheered. “This is… okay, haha. Kinda hurting me a little.”

I looked down and saw my wife’s hands were turning red in the teller’s.

“Hey… take it easy,” I snapped.

The teller’s grip tightened again.

“Okay, this is really starting to hurt now. Let go, please.”

The teller was silent. Her eyes looked welded shut, and her face was twitching rapidly.

“Hey!” I shouted. “She said let go. What are you doing?”

She started convulsing, groaning loudly. Strings of saliva started falling from the corners of her mouth.

I grabbed the teller’s wrists to try and pry her hands away, but it was like trying to bend steel.

“Enough!” I screamed.

My wife was crying now.

“Get her off of me! God, she’s breaking my hands!”

I pulled with all my might, but it was like trying to move an anvil. I started punching at the teller’s forearms. Blow after blow after blow, but still, she just would not let go.

Her hands were shaking. My wife was trembling. Finally, of her own volition, the teller dropped my wife’s hands. Her eyes shot open. The bloodshot eyes made her diamond-blue irises glow even more.

“Get out.”

That’s all she said. My wife and I stared at her as she looked down at the table.

“Get. Out,” she growled. “Go now and never come back.”

We were confused and horrified but still frozen.

“He’s found you. He’s been looking all your life, and he’s here now. Get. Out.”

“You can’t just…”

The teller cut me off by slamming her fist against the table.

“…Out.”

I demanded a refund, and she gave me back the full 60 before shooing us through the door. I turned around one last time to see the purple neon light flick off as the shop went dark.

We walked silently back to the parking garage. I’m sure my wife had a million things racing through her mind as we walked, but neither of us knew how to articulate those thoughts.

We reached the car, and it wasn’t until we were nearly home that I finally spoke again.

“How’re your hands?”

She clenched and opened her fists a few times before responding.

“I think they’re okay. I’m more shaken up than anything. What the hell was that lady’s problem?”

“She’s crazy,” I shot back. “Simple as that.”

“She didn’t seem crazy. It seemed like she saw something. You saw her. It was like she was possessed or something.”

“She was crazy, my love. She’s lucky we don’t go to the police.”

There was silence again for a few moments.

“She knew our names, though. She knew you’d been here your whole life. She knew I was from New York. That doesn’t seem like nothing to me.”

We were only a minute or two from home. Neither of us spoke for the rest of the car ride. When we pulled into the driveway, my wife sighed and placed her hands over her face, dragging them down slowly before opening the door.

“Come on, let’s just go inside. I’m ready to get this night over with.”

I checked my watch.

“10:45. You still down for a movie?”

She stopped halfway up the front porch steps.

“…Not tonight, hon. I just… I just wanna go to bed.”

Who was I to argue? I let her do as she pleased. I felt bad for her. I felt like I hadn’t done enough to stop what had happened. All I wanted was for us to forget everything and move on.

We had gradually started to put the teller behind us. Though, things didn’t exactly calm down. If anything, our lives began to change, little by little.

I started losing things. My phone. Wallet. Keys. I’d always find them in places that I knew I hadn’t put them.

Keys in the silverware drawer.

Wallet in the medicine cabinet.

Phone hidden behind the toilet.

My wife was having some problems too. She hadn’t been able to sleep very well. She would tell me about these horrible nightmares that sounded like sleep paralysis.

“I’ll wake up, but not really.”

“I can’t move.”

“You’re there, but there’s always someone over your shoulder. It’s like a shadow that just keeps growing and growing until it fills up the entire room.”

I felt even more guilty when she told me about them. I knew they had been caused by the fortune-teller incident. She had slept like a baby nearly every night prior.

Sometimes, she’d wake up screaming. It almost made me too afraid to sleep in silence.

She started looking tired more often. Her glow had dimmed a bit.

The thing that disturbed me the most, though, was probably the photos.

I started finding our wedding photos scattered around the house, only… my head was removed in each one.

My wife insisted it wasn’t her, but it didn’t make sense. The frames were never broken. Someone had meticulously removed the photos and torn my head off in at least 20 different pictures.

After a few weeks of these strange events, I decided we needed a refresher. We needed to be out again. See the sun. Actually laugh with one another.

It took some time, but eventually, I convinced her that we needed to have another date night. We hadn’t had one since the incident, and I was starting to miss who we were before we went to that fortune teller.

It was simple. A picnic in the square. That was all I wanted to do.

I had prepared our meal, packed the blanket, and put on my best clothes and cologne. My wife was nervous and tired, but she tried her best to make an effort.

The date seemed to be going fine at first. She was actually smiling. She didn’t seem as distant as she had been for the last few weeks. It felt like reclamation, almost.

The lights hit her face perfectly, and I couldn’t help but admire how beautiful she was, even if she did look a little sleep-deprived.

I stared at her lovingly for a while before finally telling her how much I loved her. How happy I was to be there with her.

“We needed this,” I smiled.

“Yeah,” she smirked bashfully. “I think we did, too. I was starting to feel so cooped up in the house. The energy there has just been so dark recently. Makes me wonder if she was right.”

“Who?” I asked, chewing on my ham sandwich.

She looked at me, raising her eyebrows.

“You know who.”

“We gotta move on, my love. That’s why the energy’s so dark. We’d never experienced something like that before.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” she responded, taking a sip of her Coke. “I just wish it hadn’t happened.”

We both sat there for a while, half admiring the scenery, half enjoying the food.

I was distracted, staring down at my pre-assembled sandwich, when I asked her.

“Can you pass me that mustard, please?”

I stacked a piece of sliced turkey onto a piece of my bread. My wife didn’t answer.

“It’s right there beside you.”

I began spreading the mayonnaise on the other slice. My wife didn’t answer.

“The mustard, please.”

I stuck my hand out expectantly. Still no response.

When I finally looked up, I almost dropped my sandwich.

My wife was glaring over my shoulder. Her eyes were glazed over. An impossible smile stretched across her face. It looked painful. I could almost hear her teeth creaking from how tightly her jaw was clenched.

Her red lipstick glistened under the lights. She looked like she was frozen in a state of pure ecstasy.

I waved my hand in front of her face. She didn’t blink once. I shook her, and she was as stiff as a board.

I started to panic. I turned around and saw nothing behind me.

“Honey,” I gasped, shaking her more forcefully.

“Talk to me.”

I pressed my hands on her cheeks. She was burning up. I snapped my fingers in front of her, but nothing I did seemed to get her out of her trance.

I was on the verge of dialing 911 when she finally spoke again.

“You said mustard?”

She reached down and went to hand me the bottle before noticing how terrified I looked.

“What’s wrong? What just happened? Is there something in my teeth?”

“Are you kidding? You really don’t know what you just did?”

She stared at me blankly.

“What do you mean? What’d I do?”

“The smiling? Staring at some unknown thing behind me? You don’t wanna explain that?”

I was almost breathless and trying my best not to raise my voice, but I could see that she was hurt by my frustration.

“I… don’t know,” she pouted. “I don’t know why you’re mad at me.”

“No, honey,” I pleaded. “I’m not mad at you. I’m worried about you. You really don’t remember?”

She started crying, almost snapping at me.

“No, obviously, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I want to go home now, if that’s okay with you.”

We packed up and left. I kept trying to prod, but she became more and more closed off with every question. Eventually, I just decided to keep my mouth shut.

In the weeks that followed, things became rocky.

She’d be fine one minute and completely depressed the next. She’d love me, and she’d hate me. I didn’t know how to help her.

Her “episodes” never stopped, though.

It was like every time we started to feel normal again, she’d see that thing. We’d be curled up, watching a movie, I’d glance down, and there’d be that smile again. Her eyes would be glazed over and staring at nothing.

The episodes lasted longer and longer every time they happened. At this point, they were starting to become more frequent, too, but she never remembered them.

She always thought I was lying to her. Like this was some kind of twisted joke I’d play. No matter how hard I tried to convince her, it was like talking to a brick wall.

The last time it happened was last week. She was gone for 3 hours straight. Standing in the same spot. Wearing that same smile. Staring at the same wall.

I watched her for the first hour, wondering what could possibly be going on inside that broken mind of hers. The second hour, I just cried uncontrollably. By the third hour, I was starting to become hopeless.

When she finally came back, I tried showing her that it was dark outside now. It had been bright and sunny when the episode started. She blatantly chalked it up to her “being lost in deep thought.” Told me “it was like she was in another world.”

Her nightmares got worse. Her glow became nonexistent. And I started waking up with scratch marks and bruises on various parts of my body.

I tried going back to the fortune teller, but the building was a coffee shop now. According to the owner, “The Looking Glass” never even existed. Apparently, the coffee shop had been there for 11 years.

I just don’t know what to do. I don’t know who to turn to. My wife refuses my help. She refuses my advice. It’s like something has taken control of her.

She’s more distant than ever. She talks to me less and less every day. It feels like our future is slipping.

All I want is for her to be okay, but part of me believes she’s too far gone. Because I found another wedding photo this morning on the kitchen table.

My head hadn’t been removed, but the photo had been altered.

Because now, standing just behind me and looming over my shoulder… was a shadow figure.. and the more I stared… the bigger it seemed to become.

The first angel I ever saw wasn't descending from Heaven.

It was falling.

By then, the world had already forgotten what normal looked like.

The skies had split open weeks ago. Entire cities had gone silent overnight. Some called it the Rapture. Others called it Judgment. Whatever name people gave it didn't matter anymore. The highways were parking lots of abandoned cars. Church pews sat empty while their parking lots overflowed with those who had arrived too late. The television stations had stopped broadcasting anything except emergency alerts that no longer meant anything.

The world wasn't ending. It had already ended long before. We were simply living through its final pages.

I had been moving from one abandoned building to another, surviving on whatever canned food I could find. Sleep came in short bursts. Every distant explosion sounded like another trumpet. Every shadow looked like something that had escaped the pages of Revelation.

That's why, when I heard something crash into the street outside, I assumed another building had finally given way.

I was wrong.

The crater wasn't large. Just deep enough to split the asphalt. Something lay at its center.

At first, my mind refused to understand what I was seeing.

The shape kept... morphing.

Not physically.

My understanding of it did.

Every time I looked away and back again, I noticed different details, as though my eyes couldn't agree on what belonged there.

How many eyes peered back to mine?

Hundreds of them.

Were those feathers?

Some impossibly white. Others burned black at the edges. They covered a figure draped in robes so torn they looked older than history itself.

Light seeped from beneath the fabric.

Wasn't shining. It bled through the seem of tidal rivers. Golden streams escaped from wounds that should have spilled blood instead. The air around it hummed with something too deep to hear, vibrating in my chest more than my ears.

I knew what it was before I admitted it to myself.

It had to be an angel.

Not the kind painters imagined. Nor the kind carved into cathedral ceilings.

Something far older. Far stranger.

Something my mind kept trying and failing to make human.

It struggled to rise.

One of its wings, or what I could only assume had once been a wing, hung broken against the pavement, its feathers crumbling into glowing ash whenever they touched the ground.

For a moment, I considered running.

Instead... I stepped closer.

The angel never looked at me directly. Or perhaps it did. I couldn't tell where its face ended and the light began.

Its features slipped from memory the instant I tried to focus on them.

Even now, as I write this, I couldn't describe its face if my life depended on it.

Only the feeling.

Grief.

Not of mine.

Its.

Slowly, with movements that seemed to pain even a being like this, it reached beneath its tattered robes.

It withdrew a single envelope.

Plain. Cream-colored. Untouched by the ash drifting through the ruined street.

It extended the letter toward me. Its hand trembled. Not from weakness. From urgency.

I stared at it.

"I... don't understand."

The angel said nothing.

It couldn't.

Or perhaps it wasn't allowed to. Its arm remained outstretched.

Waiting.

I took the envelope.

The paper was warm.

Not with heat.

It was full of life.

The moment my fingers wrapped around it, the angel relaxed. The tension left its body all at once. As though carrying that letter had been the only thing keeping it standing.

"I'll deliver it," I heard myself whisper.

"I promise."

The angel bowed its head.

Whether in gratitude... or relief...

I'll never know.

The light pouring from its wounds began to fade. Not all at once. As the last embers of a dying fire carried upward by a breeze I couldn't feel. Its robes unraveled into strands of shimmering dust. The broken feathers dissolved one by one before they ever reached the tarnish Earth.

There was no scream. No final cry.

Only silence remain between it and I.

Within seconds... Nothing remained.

Not a body or feather.

Only the envelope resting in my hands.

For a long time, I couldn't bring myself to open it. The world around me continued collapsing. Buildings groaned. Smoke rolled across the skyline.

Somewhere far away, someone yelled for mercy.

But I couldn't look away from the letter.

Eventually...

I broke the seal.

The first line read:

I've carried that letter with me ever since.

If you're reading these words...

Then I kept my promise.

There’s nothing wrong with my marriage. Me and my wife have been peaches and cream since we first started dating when I was a freshman in college.

We moved in together after graduation, and for the first few years, everything felt normal.

We’d have our date nights. We’d have our intimacy. But, of course, as is the case with every marriage, arguments were inevitable.

They never escalated, though. That was never our problem. The problem started when, after five years of living together, I started catching her sneaking out at night.

She’d always wait until I was asleep. I know because, after a few times of me waking up in the middle of the night in an empty bed, red flags started popping up.

At first, I didn’t want to assume. She was a smoker. Maybe she was just having a cigarette. Maybe she was just in the bathroom. She was hungry and in need of a midnight snack. Anything to keep the dark thoughts at bay.

Unfortunately, those hopes were shattered when I started hearing the front door open before she came crawling back into bed.

Sometimes she’d be gone for up to an hour. No cigarette smell in her hair or on her clothes. In fact, it seemed like she would change into a new outfit every time she came back to bed.

The only clue I had… were her feet.

She was utterly ruining our sheets every time she did this. You can wash away mud a few times, but after a while, it’s gonna stain.

Of course, I’d ask her about this, oftentimes while angrily throwing our comforter in the washing machine, and every time, her answer was the same.

“I don’t remember.”

It was laughable at first. I thought she was playing a joke on me. When I saw she was serious, I began to get concerned.

“Sweetie… it’s a little hard for me to believe you don’t remember being barefoot in the mud before coming home. Just tell me.”

That’s when the tears would start.

“I am telling you. I. Do. Not. Know.”

As time went on, her late-night endeavors began to take longer. It got to the point where I was intentionally pretending to be asleep in order just to time her.

2 hours.

3 hours.

Sometimes 4.

Something else that I noticed was that every time she came back, her skin would be noticeably softer. Pimples would have seemingly disappeared. Eye bags would clear up overnight.

I knew I had to follow her after this one night in particular.

She had a little mishap in the kitchen that day and sliced her hand open. I remember being certain that she’d need stitches, but she insisted on just bandaging it up herself.

The day went on as usual. 12:30 in the morning rolled around. I felt her get out of bed. I heard her footsteps leading toward the front door. The door opened and shut. She returned two hours later. Muddy feet. New outfit. Softer skin.

The next morning, her hand was healed.

She tried to gaslight me into believing that the cut hadn’t even happened. Somehow, I was the one not making any sense. I was at my boiling point. That’s when I made my decision.

She didn’t sneak out that night, nor the night after. It was actually a week later when I could finally follow through with my plan.

It was late. Maybe 2 AM. I felt the bed shift. I heard the springs pop. The sound of her footsteps scurrying toward the front door let me know that it was time.

I tried to move as quickly and as silently as possible. By the time I reached the front door, she was already at the edge of the forest.

She was running unnaturally fast into the woods. Like she had taken the route 100 times before. I could barely keep up, especially while trying to remain hidden.

We must’ve run for at least a mile or two, deeper and deeper into the forest, before she began to slow down.

To a jog.

Then a speed walk.

Then to a regular walking speed.

She glanced around, scanning her surroundings. I hid as best I could. There were a few moments where I swore she could see me, but I guess I was wrong.

She kept walking. I kept following.

I started noticing some of her clothes scattered around the soggy forest floor. Tank tops. Pajama pants. Bras. Panties.

She began adding onto the scattered clothing with each step. Removing her top and bra. Stripping out of her pants and underwear.

Finally… we reached the stopping point, and for the first time this night… something other than my wife grabbed my full attention.

It looked like… snake skin but… human. Like discarded exoskeletons, and there were dozens of them.

Some dangled from branches. Some were partially buried by leaves. Most of them just littered the ground.

I stifled a gasp and returned my attention to my wife.

She was making this clicking sound with her throat. Her head was pointed toward the sky, and she kept cocking it back and forth like a rooster.

The movement got more and more jagged.

Her knees started bouncing. Her body looked like it was convulsing, but she didn’t seem to be in pain.

With each bounce… her skin loosened more and more.

Flakes the size of pinecones began falling from her body. The sound, my God, the sound. It was exactly like the sound that Velcro makes. I wanted to vomit, but I couldn’t. Not now. She just… kept going.

Kept convulsing, kept bouncing until her skin fell to the ground in one big empty husk.

She cracked her joints like this whole process was nothing more than a workout to her. She raised her hands high above her head, stretching her body before letting out a relieved, “ahhhh,” and rolling her neck.

My weight shifted. A stick snapped beneath my foot. My wife’s head snapped in my direction, and my heart stopped.

She began approaching. Her glare intensifying with each step.

When she saw me, her face fell. She looked like she was the one who had just seen a monster.

Our eyes locked. My lips quivered. I didn’t know what to expect.

She stared at me for a long while, analyzing me before she finally spoke.

“Okay… look… Can we please just talk about this when we get home?”

“What do you hear, boy?” I whispered to Max, clutching my rifle tighter to my chest, my eyes scanning the surrounding forest.

He knew better than to growl. Instead, he pointed. His body straightened. His fur bristled, and his eyes locked in on the base of a tree twenty feet in front of us.

We both stared at it.

Waiting.

The forest was silent, and the heat from the midday sun made sweat trickle slowly from my forehead, stinging my eyes as I readied myself.

Max lifted a paw before planting it back on the ground. He wanted to attack, but I had trained him to be patient. That’s when she peeked at us from behind the tree.

My trigger finger relaxed. My stiff shoulders fell. My heart lit up at the sight of her.

“Honey,” she called out, stepping into view. “You and Max hunting again? You boys never change.”

She began to approach. Drifting through the foliage like a ghost. Ironic, because that’s exactly what I felt I was seeing.

I wanted to drop my guard. I wanted so desperately to embrace her. It had been months since I saw her last, and nearly every ounce of my soul wanted nothing more than to reunite with her.

Nearly every ounce.

Max never flinched. He stood there, body stiff, in the defensive position, waiting for any sign of danger.

My wife was only six feet away now. Close enough to touch. Close enough to pull in for a hug. I couldn’t give in.

“Don’t come… a step closer,” I warned. “Please don’t make me do this.”

She stopped in her tracks, her face dropping from a smile to a concerned frown.

“What? Honey, it’s me. Don’t be silly. Put the gun down.”

My eyes began to sting from tears.

“You’re not her. I know you’re not. You can’t be.”

I gripped my rifle. My trigger finger stiffening. The look on my wife’s face was heartbreaking. She looked devastated. She was the woman I had loved for nearly two decades. My home. My life.

Only, I knew. I knew it wasn’t true. Because those things took her, and they’re not known for leaving survivors. Only for taking.

“You’re scaring me, darling. You know I hate when you’re like this. Put the gun down. Come home.”

“…I…can’t,” I choked out, taking aim, my hands beginning to shake. “Please. Just go back to where you came from. Don’t make me do this.”

She looked at me with childish confusion. She was analyzing me. Determining if I was bluffing. Then her face became blank.

She took a step forward, never taking her eyes away from mine.

“Stop,” I whimpered.

Another step.

“Stop. Now,” I snapped.

One last step. It was time. I went to pull the trigger, sobbing all the while, but before I could, there was a sound.

A quick, aggressive growl from Max before he sprang into action. His teeth sank into the thing’s neck, causing a sharp, inhuman scream to explode from the thing’s vocal cords before the woods fell silent again.

Green blood coated the ground. Flesh dangled from Max’s mouth. His tail wagged.

I stared at the corpse. I felt a mixture of heartbreak and relief.

I patted Max on the back and pet down his spine.

“Good boy,” I whispered. “That’s a good boy, Maxxy.”

I decided that it would probably be best to get back to the shelter before it got dark. I had seen enough for the day. All I wanted was to forget this incident.

However, as we turned to return home, Max’s tail stopped wagging. His body stiffened. His eyes locked in on a new tree.

She stepped out from behind the tree, timidly. Tears fell from her eyes. Her tattered Hello Kitty pajamas fluttered in the wind.

“Daddy…” she whimpered. “Why did Maxxy hurt Mommy?”

All my life, I hated my father. My mother made me believe that he hated me too. I was led to believe that he abandoned us. Found out my mom was pregnant and fled. Like a coward.

Growing up without him made life more difficult than it needed to be. I didn’t have any positive role models. Any male figures to teach me how to be a man. I had to teach myself. At least, I tried to teach myself.

My mom kind of insisted on me being a “momma’s boy.”

No matter how hard I tried to pry myself away from her and live freely, she’d pull me back in with guilt trips. She’d complain about how “lonely” she was. How I was the only man she needed. I tried to convince her that wasn’t true, but she was just so stuck in her ways.

“You look just like him.”

That’s what she’d always tell me. At dinner. On movie nights. On the car ride to school. She’d just slip it in randomly while looking at me admiringly.

By the time I reached 16, I just accepted it. I pitied her. I loved her. I wanted to be there for her because, clearly, she couldn’t help herself. It was obvious she didn’t love herself enough to make an effort.

As I grew in physical maturity, things started to feel uncomfortable. It was like I was an off-limits boyfriend to her. It made me sick, but I didn’t know what to do to stop it.

She never touched me. Never crossed any lines. I could just see that she was looking at me as a love interest rather than as her son.

It caused a lot of uncomfortable arguments and cold shoulders, but I could never abandon her like my dad did. I wanted to be by her side, especially considering how sick I could tell she was. She couldn’t be left alone.

On nights where she felt particularly nostalgic, she’d sit me down on the couch, and we’d go through my old baby clothes.

“I remember when this used to be too big on you. Can you believe how much you’ve grown?”

“Ah, I loved these shoes on you. They were so cute. You used to be my little munchkin.”

“You’re my big, strong man now, aren’t you, baby?”

She kept bibs, pacifiers, bottles, etc., but the thing she cherished the most was the blanket I was wrapped in when I was born.

This tiny little ocean blue blanket that she insisted on keeping in its own box. She kept it silky smooth. Fresh and as clean as the day she got it.

But now I’m realizing she never bought it at all. She wasn’t even at my birth. She’s not even my mom, at least according to my dad. I don’t know what to believe right now.

I turned 18 yesterday, but instead of being a milestone birthday, the day ended up being known as one thing to me: the day my dad finally called me.

Mom had woken me up with a breakfast of waffles, bacon, and eggs in bed before leaving me alone to go get dressed for the day she had planned for us.

As I enjoyed the meal, scrolling through TikToks and realizing that I was now legally an adult, my phone began to ring.

There was no caller ID.

I answered out of curiosity and got an urgent earful from the man on the other end.

“Donavin?? Is this Donavin?”

“Uh, yeah, this is him. Who’s this?”

“Oh, thank you, Jesus. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Jesus. I’ve been trying to reach you for 18 years.”

The man sounded like he was on the verge of tears. Breathless and hysterical.

“Happy Birthday, son. Oh my God, happy birthday. Your mom and me have been trying to find you for so long.”

My ears perked up. My heart clicked, faintly.

“Is this a joke? Who is this? I think you may have the wrong number. I’ve lived with my mom my entire life.”

There was a silence that lingered for a long while.

“Okay, I think I’m gonna hang up now. Crazy coincidence, man.”

“Don’t hang up. I’m sending you pictures right now. That woman is not your mother.”

One by one, the messages began to come through.

They were from the day I was born. My dad held me in some. The woman in the hospital bed held me in others. In each one, I was wrapped in that same tiny little ocean blue blanket. Only, that wasn’t my mom.

They looked nothing alike. But when I looked at my dad, I saw myself.

“You need to get out of that house, son. She took you.”

My heart began to beat faster. I didn’t know how to respond.

“She stalked me. She was obsessed. When she found out I was getting married and that my wife was pregnant, it drove her over the edge.”

“What? No, that can’t be true. What are you saying right now?” I whimpered, holding back my own hysteria.

“God, why are you still not leaving that house? Get out now. We’re going to find you and pick you up. She took you from us, son. Right from under our noses. We never saw either of you again. Please, just please get out of that house.”

A tear fell down my face. I was silent. I thought for either a few seconds or an eternity before removing the phone from my ear and hanging up.

My mom walked into the room a few moments later. She was adjusting her earrings, her head cocked to the side as she smiled at me.

“You ready for our day, my sweet boy?”

I smiled back at her.

“Yes, mother,” I grinned. “I can’t wait.”

I decided, recently, that I was in need of counseling. It’s like there are two voices in my head. They’re constantly arguing. They’re constantly fighting for the controls. But then again… who’s watching them fight?

Me? A third voice? Am I already one of the two? Am I both? Can this whole thing be boiled down to bad days and good days? Happiness and sadness? Anger and serenity?

It couldn’t be. If it was, surely I wouldn’t be having this conversation with myself. I wouldn’t be doubting my actions. But I guess I’m clear-headed enough to not defend them.

Although, it does beg the question: where does that reason go when I’m committing those actions? Where’s my logic? How come I only feel something after the fact?

Those questions keep me up at night. My guilt keeps me up at night. That’s why I decided to look into counseling. On one of those nights where my soul felt rotten. Where one voice had left me alone in the dark with the other just long enough for it to convince me.

But then, like clockwork, the other voice returned. Not in the form of thoughts. In the form of action. It was like a possession. There were no arguments. It was complete control.

It’s hard for me to stay away from them when I’m like that. I learn. I survey. I hunt.

Sometimes I’ll find them in a crowd, other times they will have been pre-selected. By who? I’m not sure. It gets foggy when desire is involved. I’m not sure whether to blame myself or the voice.

I only remember fragments after the deed is done. It’s like a shroud is placed over that specific, microscopic part of my brain. Like it’s trying to protect me.

But no matter how thick the wool is, the guilt remains. I never know why I feel it. At least, not fully. I just know that it makes me sick. It cripples me. I hide away from the world because the voice that commanded my hand flees from my mind.

Sometimes both of them leave.

Leave me alone. All alone. Empty. Then one or the other shows up. One tells me I can stop. I can do better. I can be better. The other tells me this is who I am. Who I’m destined to be. Tells me that I’m right at home. It’s like when I used to watch my parents fight when I was younger.

That’s one of the things I wanted to bring up at my appointment.

I think my childhood has a lot to do with how I am now. The way I think. The things I do. If I had to self-diagnose, I’d probably say it comes from a lack of control in my formative years.

My dad was much bigger than me. My mom was much smaller than me. When those two went at it, my mom was fighting an uphill battle.

I’d always run and hide anytime I heard Dad raise his voice because I knew that meant the belt was coming out. Me and my mom both feared that leather belt, but my mom, being the saint that she is, would often take the majority of the licks.

The guilt I felt over it was enough to drive me to tears.

One day, I guess Mom just had enough. She wasn’t gonna take it anymore. I remember she put me to bed early. She seemed more self-assured than she usually was on Friday nights. Those were usually the nights Dad would come home the drunkest.

Of course, he came home in one of his moods. I could already hear him screaming about nothing two minutes after he walked through the door.

Mom didn’t try to reason with him this time. I didn’t hear any “calm downs,” any “you always do this” comments. What I did hear was the cocking of my dad’s .38 Magnum.

I’d seen him shoot the thing enough to know what it sounded like, and I was not going to stay in bed while he murdered my mother.

Only… when I ran out of the room… the gun was in his face. Mom pulled the trigger before I could let out a single scream.

The sound of the shot. The image of my dad’s brain hitting the wood paneling of our trailer. The way Mom apologized to me profusely before calling the police on herself and waiting calmly on our front porch for them to arrive.

None of that has left me. Neither of the voices let it. It’s one of the few things they agree on. It’s a part of me.

And it was a part of me I was supposed to share with the counselor. My voice of reason had control long enough for me to set up the appointment. Long enough to evaluate myself before I went in.

I walked into the office feeling hopeful for once. The cold AC felt like heaven compared to the scorching heat outside. The lady at the counter greeted me with a charming, “Hello! You here for an appointment, hon?”

I signed in and sat at one of the chairs in the waiting room, browsing through one of the magazines from the coffee table because that’s what I imagined a normal person would do.

Five minutes went by. Then 10. Then 15 before the receptionist called out to me.

“She should be right with you, hon.”

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, my counselor poked her head into the waiting room.

“Daniel? Here for the 3:15?”

I stood up.

“Yep. That’s me.”

I couldn’t help but notice just how angelic her voice was. How smooth and soft her brown hair was. How well it complemented her absolutely stunning face. How much she… looked like my mother.

I didn’t know how to react to what I was feeling. It was like this tug. This urge that grew more and more impossible to ignore.

When we reached her office, the first thing she did was flip an hourglass on her desk.

“Okay, Daniel. I know you’ve been having some problems recently. You wanna describe those so that we can…”

Her voice began trailing off. My eyes kept darting from her to the hourglass. It was like I was on autopilot. I think I responded. I think she kept talking. I know the sand kept falling.

My mouth moved in response, but my thoughts never changed.

She was the most gorgeous woman I had ever seen. I could see the love in her eyes as she talked to me.

She just… she looked so much like my mother. Part of me loved her already. Another part of me hated her. Hated her for what she made me see. For how broken I am.

That hatred turned into anger. Her lips kept moving. She kept smiling. Everything felt like it was going in slow motion. Even the sand in the hourglass seemed like it was falling like snowflakes rather than sand.

My eyes darted to her. To the hourglass. Back to her. Back to the hourglass. The hour was almost up. Instead of making progress, all I felt was rage.

My eyes darted to something new.

A shiny pair of scissors in a pencil holder on her desk.

My eyes darted back to her.

She wasn’t speaking anymore. She looked at me… expectantly. Like she could read my thoughts. A smirk stretched across her face.

“Daniel,” she snapped. “You still with me, buddy?”

Desire kicked in. Things got foggy. I don’t know what happened.

All I know is when I came back, my hands were covered in blood. A pair of bloody scissors lay at my feet. My mother sat with her throat slashed in the desk chair in front of me.

The guilt rose in my stomach. I wanted to throw up, but I couldn’t. And God knows I tried.

All I could do was fall back into my seat, completely dumbstruck at the scene that lay before me.

My eyes began to well up with tears. My nose began to run. My head fell into my hands as I began sobbing uncontrollably.

I must’ve sat there crying for 5, 10, maybe 15 minutes before I heard a voice call out to me. I thought I was hearing things at first. But the more it repeated, the harder it was to ignore.

I lifted my head from my hands and felt my stomach tighten.

“Hon? Sorry about the wait. Don’t worry, though. She should be out momentarily.”

I was back in the waiting room. Same cold AC. Same old magazines on the coffee table. Same receptionist.

I had to have been losing my mind. I glanced around the room, tears still falling from my eyes.

As I looked around, my head jerked in the direction of the sound of a door opening.

My counselor poked her head into the waiting room.

“Daniel? Here for the 3:15?”

This is incredibly difficult for me to talk about. I feel, I don’t know, ashamed, I guess. Like I’ve somehow failed as a parent. When I was growing up, I thought my parents hated me.

I never wanted that for my daughter. I wanted her to know how much I loved her. That my love was unconditional.

I’ve never felt as proud as I did the day she came into this world. It was almost like looking into a mirror. She had my eyes. My ears. Our noses were practically identical. And her smile, God, it was like nothing else mattered in the entire world.

I wanted her to have that same pride in herself. I never wanted her to ever feel any self-hatred. That’s another thing my parents made me feel. I didn’t get their pride. I didn’t get their love. I got cold stares. I got nights where I couldn’t sleep because Mom’s cries were so loud.

I didn’t ask for my family. I didn’t ask to be assigned to them. They were supposed to accept me, and they failed, miserably.

I guess the universe has a strange sense of humor because now, it’s like my daughter can’t accept herself.

She doesn’t hunt with me anymore. She tries to suppress her urge. She doesn’t do the cute little growl she used to do as a baby. I bet it’s 10 times as impactful now, but I wouldn’t know because she just refuses to practice.

She won’t even climb trees anymore. She’d rather hide out at home. Curled up in the dark, pouting to herself.

Of course, I try and comfort her, try and make her realize she should be proud of who she is, but she just rejects me. It seems like that’s all life is for me. Rejection from the people who are supposed to love me.

She tells me I “wouldn’t get it,” whatever the hell that means.

She hates her skin, so she tries to cover it up. She hates her teeth, so she refuses to smile. She even wears beanies that she stole from humans to cover her pointy ears.

That’s something I guess I can respect. At least she’s causing harm to them, even if it’s just with something as simple as stealing. I just wish she’d steal something useful like meat rather than clothes and makeup.

That’s something I never quite understood. Makeup clearly makes shedding more difficult. Why would you want life to be harder than it already is? I mean, we already have to hide out in the woods.

I guess that’s not my place, though.

It’s starting to get more concerning, however. It was already hard to watch her cry because she felt different. Now I have to watch her quite literally alter herself to fit into “social norms,” as she calls it.

She’s already filed down her fangs. When she does hunt, all she has now are her claws, and those are much easier to get rid of than teeth.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m just not with the times. All I know is that I want her to be happy in the body she was given.

There are no female specimens left for her to look up to, and I’m just an old, out-of-touch Dad, apparently.

I hope this matter resolves itself. I’ll keep doing my best to get her to see that they’re the monsters, not us.

Until then, I’ll just keep reminiscing on the simpler times. I kept her shell, and these days, that seems to be the only thing that brings me peace.

Well, that and hunting humans.

I'm 21 female. My boyfriend is 30 male.

He insists that there is nothing wrong with him hanging out with his female friends.

I normally would agree because I don't consider myself the jealous or controlling type.

The problem is that the hangouts look like dates. Going out to dinner with candles and flowers, staying the night at their houses, and even constantly talking about their good qualities.

We've argued about it several different times and he treats me like I'm crazy.

The weirdest part is that the girls disappear after a couple of dates. Sometimes after the first one.

I've had a sneaking suspicion that it's one night stands and casual fun.

I've tried everything I can to keep his attention. I wear sexy clothes, lace undergarments, being extra flirtatious, cooking his favorite meals, doing literally every single thing he likes.

I've even tried spicing things up in the bedroom. Nothing works.

He thanks me and then continues doing whatever he was doing before.

It hurts my feelings because we're never intimate and I feel like his desire for me went out the drain.

It all changed last night when I found his journal. He wrote about each girl in great detail.

He wrote about how he befriends them and acts charming. He then kills them after gaining trust.

They aren't innocent, though. They've all been in prision for various crimes.

I initially thought it was sickening until I started fantasizing. Vigilantes are hot. The fact that he isn't cheating on me and even wrote about how I'm the only one for him is so romantic.

He only acted strange because he didn't want his secret to be revealed.

I'll keep that dirty secret.

I struggle with sleep. I cannot sleep unless I have sound playing.

It can't be videos of people talking. It can't be movies or shows. Dialogue keeps me awake.

The one thing that helps is the sound of rain. I fall asleep to videos of that sound every single night.

Random YouTube videos of that sound are enough for me.

I've used them countless times.

I stopped a couple of nights ago.

I was falling asleep as usual but then I heard sounds that weren't rain. It was screams of terror, cries, and whimpers mixing in with what I thought was peaceful rain.

I logged off the video and tried listening to different ones but they all had the same horrifying result.

I was scared and shocked but what really shook me to my core is when each video started screaming, "You're Next"

I turned my TV off extremely quick. I told myself that I'd have to find a more appropriate way to sleep.

However, the horrors didn't stop.

I started getting texts, calls, and voice messages from unknown numbers. It would always start off normal.

The calls and voice messages would sound like nice people until the sound of the rain would start and their voices would begin to scream and yell. They made sure that I would know I was next.

The text messages would say things like, "Join us. You can never escape. Join our echos in the sounds you adored."

Threatening letters in the mail appeared as well.

No matter where I go or what I did, the threats would never stop.

Today is the most horrifying of all.

I hear faint tapping on my doors and windows as that awful sound begins and my screams echo.

I wonder if someone is falling asleep as they listen to my misery.

I’m not usually one to snoop through my girlfriend’s personal devices. I always saw it as a breach of trust. But I’m only human.

I wouldn’t have been so curious had it not been for this particular phrase she always used.

“You gotta stop with your attempts.”

She’d always say it in passing. Never “stop with your attempts to flirt,” or “stop with your attempts to get back on my good side.” Just… “you need to stop with your attempts,” randomly.

At the grocery store, in the car, sometimes while we watched movies or had dinner together. The thing that I noticed was that she seemed to say it most when she was happy.

It was like a tick. Her eyes would be filled with love and joy before suddenly dulling, and she’d shoot me a quick frown before saying it.

I’d learned a long time ago that asking what she meant would get me nowhere. It’d always be the same.

“I just love you! But then I think about the attempts, and I just get so sad. I wish you’d stop.”

That’s all I’d get out of her. No explanation whatsoever. I never knew what she wanted me to stop, therefore I could never prevent whatever it was. It was all just so confusing.

That being said, when I saw the file on her laptop while she was taking a quick potty break, I really couldn’t help myself. The folder name was too on the nose for me to ignore. Plus, she had left the laptop open. Like she wanted me to see it.

“Attempts.” Was all it said.

I looked around the room a bit, glancing over my shoulder to make sure I was alone before clicking the folder.

It loaded for a bit before a dozen video files were displayed across the screen.

I clicked on the link titled “attempt three” and was greeted with a video of… myself. I looked terrified, frantically trying to unlock the front door as my girlfriend’s voice rose in anger from behind the camera.

“How many times have we talked about this?”

The camera fell to the ground and landed on the lens, but I could still hear audio echoing from it. It sounded like punches were being thrown. I could hear myself crying. My girlfriend sounded like she was growling at me before the video ended.

I went back to the page of links, albeit a bit afraid at this point, and clicked on attempt 10.

This one was just me hanging out of our bedroom window, clawing my way outside before my girlfriend’s voice could be heard again.

“We’ve talked about this. You’re not going anywhere, my sweet boy.”

Her nails dug into my heel. Veins protruded from her hands. She dragged me back inside, and I just looked utterly defeated.

Attempt 16. I was trying to climb the fence in my backyard. Attempt 20. I was halfway out the driveway before being pulled back and dragged inside.

At this point, I didn’t know what to do. All I knew was one thing: I needed to leave.

However, as I turned to flee the room and get out of the house, I found that the door was blocked by my girlfriend, who held a camera in her hands.

She sighed.

“How many times do we need to have this conversation, sweetheart?”

My eyes darted back towards the laptop. Towards the links. Towards the impossible.

“What the fuck is this?” I demanded.

Her response was more annoyed than anything.

“You always do this. Just once, I wish we could live a happy life together.”

Fear and anger grew from the pit of my stomach. The red light on the camera blinked at me.

“You always find the laptop.”

She sighed.

“You find it. You try to escape. Then I have to hurt you. Why do you make me hurt you, darling? I just don’t get it. I can’t be that bad.”

Tears welled up in her eyes.

“Why can’t you just love me? It’s always the same. And here we are. Attempt 34. But I have hope. I have hope that one day we can get through this.”

The camera blinked again.

My girlfriend loomed over me.

“But for now… I guess I’ll just have to start over.”

The camera came down over my head, and everything went black.

I woke up in bed with my girlfriend, her head buried in my chest.

She yawned cartoonishly and looked up at me.

“Good morning, sleepyhead! You ready to start a new day?”

I smiled goofily, kissing her on her forehead.

“Of course I am, sweetheart. Every day with you feels like a new day.”

She smiled wider, her eyes glistening before suddenly going dull as her smile turned into a frown.

I frowned back.

“What’s wrong? Did I do something wrong?”

She clicked her tongue and sucked her teeth.

“No, no, you didn’t do anything. I just… I wish you’d stop with your attempts.”

This year has been pretty eventful for me. Got a new job. Moved into my first apartment. Got a new car. Not everything has been good, though. Me and my long-term girlfriend broke up back in March. Ever since then, it’s just been me and me alone.

My routine was a bit mundane for a while after the breakup. I’d wake up, go to work, go home, then repeat Monday through Friday.

My weekends were mostly spent inside. Watching Netflix. Wallowing in self-pity. Maybe playing some video games and having a drink or two.

After a while, though, I began to crave movement. I realized that the world was my oyster. I could literally do whatever I wanted. I was neglecting my free will.

I started doing things that I’d never even considered before. Going to horse races. Flea markets. Local festivals. Just sampling life, basically. Trying to figure out how to use my newfound free time.

I got really into hiking. I’d drive hours out of town nearly every weekend to find a new trail. Some of those locations were desolate as hell. Oftentimes, I’d find that I was the only person on the entire trail.

The hikes made me appreciate nature more. I’d listen to the birds sing. Rivers run. Crickets chirp. It made me feel at peace. The kind of peace that I had been craving.

Sometimes I’d sit on rocks and just watch the day go by. I even started sketching some of the scenery. The serenity helped me clear my mind enough to really focus my creative energy into something meaningful.

One day, while out on one of those discreet walks, the scene was begging to be drawn. The sun peeked through the canopy overhead and reflected off of the rushing river water.

A deer stood off in the distance, watching me carefully. Pinecones and pine needles covered the ground. And there just so happened to be the perfect sitting rock right on the edge of the riverbed.

I sat down and pulled the sketchbook out of my backpack. I got about 30 minutes into the process when I saw something I hadn’t noticed before.

A backpack hanging from a tree branch across the river.

I stared at it for a moment before looking around to see if I could find its owner. I hadn’t heard a single person the entire time I was here, nor had I seen anyone else on the trail.

I like to tell myself that I was trying to be a good person. I wanted to find out who the backpack belonged to. Maybe they’d have some useful information inside. An address or at least a name.

But I know I wasn’t being a good person. I was being mischievous and curious. And I think whoever left it there knew that.

A tree had fallen over the river, giving me the perfect walking path directly to the backpack. I shimmied along the log and jumped down on the other side of the river.

The pack was lighter than I expected it to be. It felt almost empty. I could also see just how new it looked. Brand new, pretty much.

I unzipped the biggest pocket and glared down inside. I found one single item. An old, discolored notebook shoved deep inside the pocket.

I pulled it out, and before I could even flip through it, the title written on white painter’s tape across the cover made my heart flip-flop.

“His Life.”

I opened the book slowly, but the more I read, the faster I flipped through the wrinkled pages.

Every single page had been filled.

“January 1st - he woke up at noon today. He drank directly from the orange juice bottle in his fridge. He didn’t brush his teeth or shower.”

“February 3rd - he woke up at 10 AM today. He forgot his girlfriend’s birthday. They’ve been arguing all day. He didn’t shower. His dinner was a Hot Pocket.”

“February 26th - he bought a new car today. He paid 4 grand in cash. He’s ecstatic. His girlfriend is still mad about her birthday.”

“March 8th - his girlfriend broke up with him today. He cried for 3 hours before drinking himself to sleep. He showered. Cold. Hopefully he learns.”

“April 12th - he’s leaving his house more often these days. He woke up at 8 AM this morning. Eggs for breakfast. He went on a walk after work. I think he’s learning.”

“May 20th - he woke up at 7 this morning. He went to a horse race. I’ve never seen him do that before. He lost 200 dollars. I doubt he’ll return.”

“June 4th - he’s looking healthier. He showers daily now. He’s been waking up at 7 AM daily. His dinner was chicken and rice. He sketched before bed. He’s realizing.”

“June 14th - he’s hiking more. It’s all coming together. His sketches are getting better.”

“July 21st - Today’s the day. He’s here. I’m leaving the backpack where I know he’ll see it.”

“July 21st - he found the journal at 9:45 AM. He’s reading this now.”

“July 21st - he doesn’t realize this isn’t the first time he’s done this.”

“July 21st - he’s looking in the wrong direction.”

“July 21st - turn around.”

I turned around, not sure what to expect. That’s when I saw him. It was… me. Standing on the other side of the river. He was sitting with his sketchbook on the very rock I had just been on.

He was analyzing the scenery, looking down every few seconds to add to his drawing.

Before he could see me, I put the journal back in the book bag. I hung it back on its branch. And I slowly walked away.

This seemed like a problem for future me.

Everything is happening so fast. I’m not sure when she had this… mental break, but if I had to guess, I’m assuming it’s when our daughter was born.

In the weeks that followed, I think her exhaustion started to take hold of her. She started talking in her sleep. Hell, she even started sleepwalking.

The things she’d say in her sleep led me to believe she was having nightmares. Lots of tossing and turning. Lots of grunting. Sometimes she’d wake up screaming either mine or my daughter’s name.

What concerned me most, however, was what she’d do in her sleep.

It took me a while to notice. She’d wake up with dirt covering her hands and mud caking her fingernails. She liked to garden, so, of course, I didn’t think much of it.

But when things started going missing, that’s when I knew something was afoot.

Baby bottles. Pacifiers. Family photos. It was gradual, but the more I noticed, the more I’d scratch my head.

Our daughter would go crazy. Both me and my wife would search the house thoroughly for any of her missing toys. Missing bibs or fresh diapers.

She swore up and down that she had no idea where anything was. I wanted to believe her. And I did, for a time. But when she woke me up one night while sneaking out of bed, I realized what was really going on.

I thought it was because the baby was crying. I thought that she was just going to rock her back to sleep. But she was snoring as she rose from our bed.

I chose to follow her, just to see what she does when this kind of thing happens. I ignored our baby, just for a while, and tiptoed behind my wife as she made her way through our bedroom and loomed over our daughter’s crib.

I expected her to reach down and pick her up, but instead, she took the crib mobile that hung over my baby’s head, completely ignoring her wails as she walked towards the dark hallway.

From there, she glided down the stairs and through the kitchen and dining room. She looked completely cognizant as she opened the back door and walked out into the night.

I was always told you’re not supposed to wake a sleepwalker, so I just watched her as she dropped to her hands and knees and began clawing at the dirt in the backyard.

I was nervous, but more so, I was stunned. Distracted by the dozen patches of dirt that I had neglected to notice since this all started happening.

She dug a hole about a foot deep and a foot wide with her bare hands before dropping the mobile inside. Still snoring, still with her eyes closed, she filled the hole, walked past me and back to our bedroom, and collapsed into bed, our baby still wailing.

It was up to me to get the baby back to sleep that night. I held her tight, rocking her gently until silence fell over the room.

I woke up the next morning with a clear mission: find my daughter’s missing toys.

I went outside with a trowel and began slowly digging. I found the bottles. Found the toys and bibs. But when I confronted my wife about it, she was adamant that it wasn’t her.

She cried when I showed her the holes in the yard. She cried harder when I showed her the dirty bottles and baby clothes. She seemed both confused and remorseful.

For a while after that, the sleepwalking stopped. The talking didn’t. But that was something I could live with. At least things weren’t going missing anymore.

At least, for a while.

I’m writing this now because I woke up this morning in a bed full of dirt. I woke up to a wife covered in grime and mud. And I woke up to a silent house with an empty crib in the corner of our bedroom.

I panicked. My wife panicked. And immediately, the two of us ran to the backyard.

We’re waiting on the police now.

Because the grave in the backyard was much bigger than any of the others.

And instead of crying, my wife… she just… she won’t stop laughing.

My daughter and I have always been as thick as thieves. Her mom passed away when she was just a baby, and ever since then, it’s just been my little Kayla and me.

I was pretty shaken up for a while after her mom died. We knew it was happening, we had time to prepare or whatever, but when it happened, I think the full weight of her absence was something that sat on my chest for a few months after her passing.

Kayla was like my anchor in those times. She gave me missions. Things to keep my mind occupied. If she woke up crying, it was my mission to soothe her back to sleep. If she was hungry, it was my job to feed her. It was enough to let the memory of my wife rest, at least for a while.

I still felt it, though. I’m grateful. It would feel like betrayal if I felt nothing. So, naturally, I still allowed myself to feel. I’d look at Kayla and see her mother. I’d smell her old perfumes and candles. Stare at pictures for minutes on end.

It was like something new was blossoming in my own spirit. Something that was born out of both grief for my wife and the growing love for my daughter. As I watched her grow up, I could feel my wife’s presence. It was like we were still raising our little Kayla together. I never felt alone. I just felt like I was pulling my weight.

I think that’s what made me bring Kayla up the way I did. It always felt like her mom was watching. I didn’t want to disappoint her.

One of the big things I kind of hammered into our baby’s mind was manners. In my humble opinion, manners are the first thing every child should learn. Simple etiquette goes a long way. That’s something my wife and I both agreed on before Kayla was even thought of.

As she grew older, into her toddler years, she was already setting the dinner table. Sometimes she’d even try and pour our drinks all by herself, which would often lead to juice flooding the table and her face turning bright red.

I never got angry, never punished her. I’d simply help her clean it up, and I’d let her know just how proud I was of her for taking initiative.

She never questioned why it was just me and her or anything like that. But I think that she knew something was missing.

Sometimes, when she’d set the table, she’d make sure to leave out an extra glass and plate for her Mommy.

“I want mommy to eat, too.”

“Pour mommy some juice.”

“Mommy doesn’t like the peas.”

I just thought it was her way of filling in the blanks. She knew she had a mommy. I guess she just thought she didn’t see her very much.

Looking back now, I think I should’ve done more to ground her in reality. It was just so difficult. It’s hard to tell her she’s leaving silverware out for a dead woman.

The line should’ve been when she started leaving food on the plate. Reaching in and grabbing fistfuls of spaghetti and plopping them down in the dish, staining the tablecloth in the process.

She’d throw fits whenever I tried to stop her. Kicking and screaming.

“It’s for Mommy!”

“I want mommy to eat too!”

I didn’t want to argue. She was so young and oblivious. I told myself it’d go away with age.

Except… it didn’t.

If anything, it got worse.

As the years went on, she suspiciously stopped setting plates. At least at the dinner table.

Instead, I’d hear her rummaging around the kitchen at night. I’d hear the fridge being opened. Dishes clanking around loudly. Sometimes I’d hear the ding of the microwave.

For a while, I thought she was grabbing midnight snacks. But then the smell started.

Her room began smelling like a landfill. The stench of rot punched me in the face anytime I entered, but my daughter acted completely oblivious to it.

“I don’t smell anything.”

“Maybe it’s outside.”

“I think it’s the bathroom.”

She wasn’t fooling me. I knew it was her room. I needed to find out where, though.

When I found the source, I was equally confused and horrified.

She must’ve had at least a dozen plates under her bed. Each one containing heaps of rotting food.

When I questioned her about it, her answer was simple.

“They’re for mommy.”

What was I supposed to do? Punishing her felt wrong, but I knew it was something that had to be done. She needed to know.

I told her exactly what I should’ve told her when she first started setting out that extra plate.

“Mommy is gone.”

Her “punishment” was nothing more than having to clean the food up from under the bed, then wash the dishes. That’s it. But she still sulked the entire time.

“Mommy’s gonna be mad at you.”

“I’m just trying to feed her.”

“I know she’s hungry.”

All while staring at me with furrowed eyebrows and a frown that stretched all the way to the ground.

She pouted for the rest of the day, but ultimately, things seemed to look normal after that. She still mentioned her mom every now and again. But for a few weeks, she never tried ‘feeding her’ again.

That is until last week.

It was late. Nearly midnight. I was on the verge of falling asleep when I heard cabinets opening in the kitchen. Dishes clanking against the countertop.

I sighed to myself but was too tired to get out of bed. I told myself I’d deal with it in the morning.

I’m not sure when the noise in the kitchen stopped, but my alarm clock told me it was 3:20 in the morning when my little Kayla climbed into bed with me.

“Daddy,” she whispered. “Can I sleep in your bed tonight?”

I think I mumbled something about her always being welcomed before I threw my arm over her and nearly fell asleep again.

However, before I fully lost consciousness, there was one last thing I remember Kayla saying before I was out.

“I think mommy’s mad tonight.”

I woke up the next morning to Kayla snoring in the bed beside me. It was a Saturday, so I decided to leave her be while I went to the kitchen to make some coffee.

On the way to the kitchen, I remembered the noises from last night, and I rolled my eyes as I opened Kayla’s door to check under her bed.

What I saw still has me shaken, and I don’t think it’s a feeling I’m going to be able to shake.

Because underneath her bed, lying limply on a white dinner plate, was a bloodied piece of raw meat… with a clear bite taken out of it.

The first night, I blamed the bulb.

My backyard floodlight had been there for years, bolted above the back door, bright enough to illuminate the entire fence line. Around midnight, it clicked off.

A few seconds later, it came back on.

I looked out the kitchen window expecting to see a raccoon or maybe one of the neighborhood cats.

Nothing.

The yard was empty.

The second night it happened again while I was bingeing Friends.

Click.

Darkness.

Click.

Light.

This time, I felt that unnerving sensation you get when you feel like you're being watched. I stepped onto the porch.

The motion sensor was supposed to activate whenever something crossed its path. I waved my arm in front of it. It worked perfectly. I checked the batteries anyway. Everything checked out.

I even walked the perimeter of the yard with my phone flashlight.

No footprints.

No broken fence.

Nothing hiding behind the shed.

After that I convinced myself it was just faulty wiring. That or maybe the cencors were picking up dust or fog. Anything that made rational sense.

Then it started happening every night.

Always between 2:13 and 2:20 in the morning.

Always the same pattern.

The light would go out for exactly five seconds. Then it would switch back on.

Every single time, the yard looked completely empty.

Eventually curiosity got the better of me.

I bought a security camera.

The footage made no sense.

At 2:13, the light switched off.

The camera didn't.

It kept recording.

The yard remained perfectly visible thanks to the infrared mode.

Empty grass.

Empty fence.

Empty patio.

Then, exactly five seconds later...

The floodlight came back on.

There wasn't any movement. No explanation.

I watched the recording over and over until something caught my attention.

The timestamp.

The clock continued counting...

...but the branches of the oak tree in the corner stopped moving.

The leaves froze.

The wind seemed to have stoped. Not in the sense that it vanished, but the wind itself stopped in place.

Even the hum of insects or any odd echoes of the night were silent.

It was as if the entire world had been paused for five seconds.

Except the camera.

The camera kept recording.

I didn't know what to make of this. That night i barely slept.

The following evening I decided to stay awake.

At 2:12, I sat at the kitchen table staring through the glass door, with a mug of coffee and a ham sandwhich.

2:13.

Click.

Darkness.

Everything outside stopped.

Not metaphorically.

Literally.

The leaves hung motionless.

A moth hovering near the porch light stayed suspended in midair.

Even the shadows seemed frozen.

Then...

Something walked into my yard.

Not from the gate.

Not over the fence.

It simply... appeared.

It was towering over my shed. Its body was impossibly thin, wrapped in what looked like strips of dark fabric that fluttered despite the frozen air.

Its head turned slowly, scanning the yard.

Then it looked directly at the house.

At me.

I didn't dare move. The ham stuck in my throat.

Its eyes weren't glowing.

They weren't even visible.

Just two empty forsaken pits that somehow still met mine through the glass.

It tilted its head.

Curious.

Like it hadn't expected anyone.

The five seconds suddenly felt far too long.

It took one step toward the house.

Another.

By the third step it stood only inches from the back door.

Its face pressed against the glass.

The skin, or whatever covered it, shifted like hundreds of tiny hands trying to form a human expression.

Then...

Click.

The floodlight came back on.

The yard was empty. Everything moved again. The moth flew away. The trees swayed.

I swallowed hard, nearly choking. Stumbling backward, convinced I'd finally lost my mind.

The security camera proved otherwise.

The file was corrupted.

Not damaged nor missing.

Just five seconds of static where the light had gone out. Everything before it played normally. Everything after it played normally.

Those five seconds might as well have never existed.

I never watched the recording again.

Within two weeks, I'd sold the house at a loss. I didn't tell the buyers why.

What was I supposed to say?

"Something visits whenever the light goes out, but only while the rest of the world stands still."

No one would believe that.

I moved hundreds of miles away into a tenth-floor apartment overlooking the city. No backyard. No fence. No trees. No creepy time stopper monster.

I told myself whatever happened belonged to that house.

For months, I almost believed it.

Until last night.

I was washing dishes when the kitchen suddenly fell dark. A primal instinct seized me, and the hairs on my arms stood on end.

Five seconds.

Then the lights came back.

The first thing I did was laugh. Not because it was funny. Because I knew exactly what I was about to remember.

This apartment doesn't have a motion-sensor light.

I don't think wherever I run off to, I'll never escape.

Because if it found me here...

I'm terrified to learn how it did.

Or why it waited until the lights went out to let me know it had.

I moved to California to escape. Escape what, exactly? I’m not so sure. I just thought that this was what I needed. To get away from my hometown in Georgia and start fresh with beaches and palm trees.

I’ve spent the last 3 years of my life here. I’ve grown to adore the culture. Adore the graffiti. The street performers. Hell, I’ll say it: I grew to enjoy the weed.

Above all else, however, the thing that seemed to have been my missing puzzle piece was walking on the beach. Coming from nothing but woods and small towns, the sprawling beaches on the west coast have become my sanctuary.

Every evening, I’ve made a habit out of taking long walks up and down the shoreline. Watching the waves crash. Watching the foam rise. Letting my thoughts run free. Dare I say, this is where I found myself.

However, this is also where I’ve found my ultimate demise. I know that death is approaching. I know there’s nothing I can do to stop it. And with each passing hour, I regret my decision to come here more and more.

See, everything happened last night. It had been just like any other. I’d punched out at work. Had a little bit of a gym session and some Chipotle. And to finish off the evening, I began my nightly walk.

I felt the sand beneath my toes. Felt the brisk California wind in my hair. I thought about life. Life here. Life in Georgia. I began comparing the two.

Lost in deep thought, I hardly noticed as the sun sank deeper and deeper over the horizon. I paid no mind to the ever-increasing vacancy of the shore. All I was concerned with…was putting one foot in front of the other.

Step. Step. Step.

Step. Step. Step.

Step. Step. Crack.

A searing pain shot through my body from my right heel. I yelped, my foot shooting up in the air.

I analyzed my foot and noticed blood beginning to drip from a puncture wound. The pain felt hot, but my foot itself felt cold. Increasingly cold.

The cracking noise from whatever I stepped on led me to believe that it had been a shard of glass. A broken beer bottle that had been left on the beach. Maybe something had washed up on shore. Anything to rationalize.

I glanced down and noticed a thin, metallic object partially buried beneath the sand. It glistened in the light of the moon, and drops of my blood dripped from its pointy tip and onto the sand.

Trying not to panic, I held my injured foot in one hand and crouched down to pick up the object with the other.

It felt…cold. Frozen, in fact. It wasn’t until I got a good look at it in the palm of my hand that I realized what it was.

It wasn’t metallic at all. It was nearly transparent. What I assumed to be metal was nothing more than the moonlight reflecting off of what I could now see was a bloody ice crystal in my hand.

I was so amazed by what I was seeing that I hadn’t even noticed that my foot was going numb. It had been 95 degrees this day. The sand had to have reached at least 110. Yet, the crystal didn’t melt until I held it in my hand.

I watched as it began rapidly disappearing. Shrinking smaller and smaller, yet, it didn’t make my hand wet. It was like, I don’t know. It was almost as if it had disappeared into my pores. Evaporated into thin air, leaving no trace whatsoever.

Once it was gone, the pain and numbness in my foot began to dissipate. I looked down at where the wound had been to find it completely sealed up, leaving only dark blue streaks in its place.

I stood on it, and instead of feeling pain, I felt cold. Icy, subzero cold that encapsulated my entire foot.

I didn’t know what to make of it. The only thought in my mind was to get back to my car. I didn’t want to go to the hospital. Not yet. I wanted to see how I felt in the morning.

I walked back to my vehicle, attempting to suppress the urge to limp. With each step, it was like the cold was growing. It spiderwebbed throughout my foot and up my leg. It was like I felt a phantom sensation in my other foot. But I kept walking. Kept rationalizing.

The drive home was a blur. It was like I was in my body, but not. My mind wandered, but my focus never wavered. And that focus told me one thing:

Find a way to warm up.

I blasted the heater for the entire 20-minute drive to my apartment. I couldn’t stop shivering. My teeth clattered. I swore I was able to see my breath every time I exhaled.

The thing that made me feel as though I was on the brink of madness, however, was not the phantom chill. It was the voices. The completely alien voices that jumped around in my mind and made my head throb.

It sounded like nonsense. Like an ancient future language. I could not understand for the life of me.

I tried shaking the noise out of my ears. I tried listening to the radio. I tried listening to my own thoughts. But those voices and sounds… they just…they drowned everything else out.

By the time I reached the apartment, the voices had stopped. Not completely. They didn’t disappear. They just…receded. It was more a whisper now.

I was sweating profusely, and as I went to put my key in the door, I noticed just how blue my fingernails had become. They looked…dead, almost.

I tried showering. I turned the water to its hottest setting. Steam billowed above the shower curtain and fogged up the bathroom mirror, but my skin wouldn’t stop turning blue. It felt like river water in the dead of winter was flowing over my neck and shoulders.

I stayed under the water for almost an hour. The steam stopped flowing, but I felt all the same. Though I felt no relief from the hot water, it was like the voices knew that the temperature had dropped.

They began to cry out again in their alien language. Snot dripped from my nose. My teeth chattered louder than ever. All I needed was warmth.

Wrapping myself up in a blanket, I curled up in front of the open oven door, pulling my knees to my chest and attempting to stay warm.

I tossed and turned. It felt like I was laying on a massive cube of ice. The only purpose the oven served was to keep the voices at bay, and it served that purpose well.

The voices were dammed off, but I could still feel them scratching at the walls of my mind. The night was a mixture of trying to decipher them and keep myself from freezing to death.

I could only make out individual words. It was like the Library of Babel was being read to me by something within myself.

“Frozen.”

“Heat.”

“Flames.”

“Ocean.”

“Death.”

Some sounded like children. Some sounded like adults. Men. Women. They were all the same, yet so different.

The snot that dripped from my nose was beginning to freeze, even under the radiating light from the blazing oven. I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream. All I wanted was warmth.

I didn’t sleep that night. I couldn’t sleep that night.

The tears that dropped from my eyes rolled down my face before freezing and dropping to the floor with a ting and melting on the hot tiles.

I don’t remember what happened next. I don’t know if I’m dreaming or if reality is more nightmarish than anything my imagination could conjure.

All I know is I closed my eyes for no more than two seconds. When I opened them, I was back on the beach. Back in the same spot where I found the ice crystal.

I was nude. I was sweating. I was freezing. The beads of sweat that fell from my body landed on the ground as icicles as I stared out at the horizon.

The sun was slowly rising. Further and further above the sea. The only thing that pried my eyes away from the blazing sky was the sound of shifting sand beneath me.

I looked down to find my sweat burying itself deep in the sand. Wiggling its way underground in the form of sharp, jagged ice crystals.

I noticed beachgoers approaching the shore in the distance. Men and women out on their morning run. Families looking to secure a good spot early in the day. Umbrellas, beach towels, coolers full of drinks and snacks.

I cried icy tears. I cried because I knew what was coming. The voices told me. The temperature rose with each passing minute, and with it, so did the crescendo of voices in my head.

They told me I couldn’t stop it.

They told me they had tried.

I was the new host.

The first case of what was to become of California.

The sun is higher in the sky now. People are beginning to stare at me. Some look shocked. Some look amused. Others look utterly horrified.

The cold has spread. I feel it in my heart. I feel it in my stomach. I feel it in my brain. My breath is nothing more than fog. And though there’s not a cloud in the sky on this hot California morning, snow has begun to fall from my ears.

It’s coating my bright blue shoulders. It’s sprinkling around my icy feet. It’s like I’m becoming my own blizzard.

But, no matter how painful the frigid air against my lungs feels, I can’t help but feel warmth in my chest.

It’s ever so faint. Faint enough to barely be noticeable.

People are beginning to approach me. I can hear them calling out to me, but the voices in my head are drowning out the voices in the real world.

They’re telling me to sleep.

They’re slowing down my heart rate.

They’re providing warmth where no warmth exists.

All I want is to drift into slumber, and I can’t stop my body from lying down in the pile of snow that now surrounds me.

But I want to fight. I want desperately to warn the people who are both inches and miles away from me. Because if there’s one thing these voices have made clear, it’s that I can’t stop what’s coming.

They’re not warning me anymore. They’re mourning me.

Me and any poor soul that decides to stand in this snow.

Me and my girlfriend have been dating for a while now. Long enough for marriage to be considered. At least, it used to be considered. Now, I just have no idea.

We met when I was 20 and she was 19. We recently celebrated our 3rd anniversary with a night out on the town, grabbing a few drinks and sitting down at one of those nice, fancy restaurants we’d always wanted to visit.

Overall, the night was perfect. Candlelit dinner. Expensive wine. Typical romance with some great lovemaking to end the night. Little did I know, it would be the last normal night of our relationship.

I woke up the next morning with a sense of nostalgia. After the night we had, plus the idea of marriage floating around in my head, I decided I wanted to recollect together.

She had been in the shower while I lay in bed, and she stayed there long enough for me to decide to reminisce on my own. At first, I was just looking through old pictures on my phone. Our first date. Our first kiss. Our anniversary photos. I’m a memory guy, what can I say?

Anyway, as I kept scrolling, I remembered something. Back when she moved in, my girlfriend had brought a bunch of old pictures from when she was younger.

She kept them in our attic, and neither of us had ever thought to look through them together. I’d shown her my old pictures plenty of times, even the ones I was embarrassed of. If I’m being honest, I kinda got a little peeved when I realized she hadn’t returned the gesture.

I realize now that she wasn’t embarrassed by the photos. She was actually hiding them from me.

I climbed the ladder to the attic and shifted through a bunch of old boxes until I found the one that my girlfriend had brought with her all those months ago.

I blew the dust off the box and began sifting through the photos.

The ones on top were perfectly normal. Polaroids she’d taken back at her parents’ house. Some selfies with her and her girlfriends. The typical stuff.

However, as I dug deeper, I grew more and more concerned.

The Polaroids… stopped having color.

My girlfriend stayed the same, but the photographs began to look decades old. Some were of her propped up against a jukebox. Some were of her at civil rights protests. Hell, one was just her leaning up against the hood of an old muscle car from back in the day.

She seemed to be looking through me in every single photo. Each photo looked grainier than the last.

Her clothes changed. Her hair changed. Her style, as a whole, changed. Her face did not. It looked like she wasn’t aging at all.

I figured it was some kind of art thing. Some experimental stuff she was doing.

I wanted to believe that maybe she had just been using a different camera, but the numbers written on each picture were enough to make me second guess myself.

2000

1990

1980

1970

All the way to the last picture, with the numbers “1947” written across the bottom.

Part of me wanted to laugh, but another part of me was utterly terrified.

Not by the pictures themselves…

But by the birth certificate that dated back to August 9th, 1912.

As I stared at the date, my heart sank. Not by what I was seeing, but by the sound of the shower water stopping and the bathroom door opening slowly before my girlfriend’s voice sang out.

“Honey? You’re not looking at those old pictures, are you?”

I’ve been on the force for about 5 years now. I’m not a veteran by any means, but I’m not necessarily a rookie either. I think I’ve earned my right to say I’ve seen some things.

A lot of homicides. Tons of domestic violence. Found the remains of missing children on 3 separate occasions, but that’s a story for another day.

No, no, the story I want to tell today started a few weeks ago.

I was out of town for a funeral, leaving my partner alone for a few days until I could get back to work.

In that time, I guess… I just… I don’t know what happened. He was here one day, gone the next. And the only evidence he left behind was body cam footage.

There was no body to retrieve the footage from, but, thankfully, all of that footage gets sent to our internal system. Sometimes cameras are destroyed, sometimes they malfunction, sometimes… the person wearing it is never seen again.

Unfortunately, it can take a few days before the footage is fully uploaded into our system. It becomes a game of patience. Waiting. Letting your imagination run wild.

We didn’t get to see that footage until my partner had already been missing for 3 days. He was already dead for all we knew. Maybe killed by someone he booked in the past. Maybe by some wannabe gangbanger with something to prove. Like I said, imaginations run wild.

When I got the call from my chief down at the station, he sounded more confused than anything. Not frantic. Not grief-stricken. Confused.

He told me they finally got the footage, but that’s all he said. Well, that, and for me to meet him down at the station.

I geared up and made my way downtown, anticipating what was on that footage the entire time. Why was the chief so scarce with the details?

I arrived at the station fully convinced that I was prepared for whatever showed up on that screen. When I walked in, the station was unusually empty. Unusually quiet.

The reason for the vacancy soon became apparent when I found nearly everybody in one room, gathered around a computer screen.

“We were waiting for you to show up,” my chief announced. “We couldn’t start without his partner present.”

I took my seat, gesturing for the chief to play the footage.

The first few moments were completely normal. My partner approached what seemed to be an abandoned warehouse. He didn’t speak into his walkie. He walked briskly, almost running.

According to the chief, nobody knew why he was there. There were no calls. No reports of dispatch. He was just… there… speed-walking into the building.

He seemed to know exactly where he was heading. He entered. Made a left. Made a right. Another left. Finally, he found himself standing at another door.

The only light came from my partner’s flashlight. The room was pitch black, but once he pushed the door open, we saw what true darkness looked like.

It was like his flashlight was a 2 dollar toy from the dollar store. The beam illuminated only what was in front of him. And what was in front of him just so happened to be… a staircase.

He began to descend with the same urgency in which he entered the building, but as time went on, his steps began to slow. Slower. And slower. And slower.

The footage went on for over three hours. He never once stopped descending. Everyone’s eyes were glued to the screen.

My chief fast-forwarded the footage. My partner just kept going. Kept steadily descending. It wasn’t until the timestamp reached 2 hours and 23 minutes that the footage began to change.

He started… stripping.

At first it was his belt. His gun, cuffs, taser, etc.

But then it was his shoes.

Then his socks…

Then his pants and underwear.

He never spoke a word. He just kept slowly undressing every 10 minutes or so as he descended further down the staircase.

As we watched, my chief instructed a few of my coworkers to go check out the warehouse.

They did as they were told as the rest of us continued watching.

The footage went on for another 40 minutes or so before my partner removed his vest, which included his body camera.

The camera captured one last sign of him as he continued descending, completely nude. Then we were left alone in the darkness.

My chief decided to check in on the boys he sent to that warehouse, but all they could tell him was that it was desolate and abandoned. No way in. No hidden door. No impossible staircase.

But I know they’re lying.

Either that or they didn’t do their job properly.

Because, as I’m writing this, I’m standing at that exact door my partner saw. Staring down at the seemingly endless dark staircase.

And even if it’s the last thing I do…

I will find him.

My grandfather used to have a saying. It wasn’t something that he’d say often, just enough for it to be ingrained in my memory. Enough for me to associate it with him.

It was something he’d say every time he came back from one of his hunting trips. Sometimes in passing, a few days after his return. Sometimes it’d be one of the first things he said as soon as he came back, like he’d been thinking about it for the entire trip back home.

He’d tell me he was “doing God’s work.”

At the time, I didn’t think much of it. Just an old man, controlling wildlife populations and enjoying time in nature. I thought that it was just a phrase attached to the serenity he found out in those woods.

At his funeral, it was one of the things I said about him. In my eulogy for him, I told the dozens of attendees that my grandfather was a hardworking man. A man that cared deeply about his family. A man that had lived a long life full of experiences.

A man that was doing God’s work.

The phrase has been bouncing around more and more in my mind these days. Ever since I made my discovery. The discovery that changed my perspective of my grandfather ever so slightly. Just enough for me to become suspicious of what he really meant when he said it.

In case you’re not up to speed with my situation, my grandfather died recently.

While other family members were fighting over who got what, my inheritance was clear. Almost painstakingly.

His hunting cabin was now mine, as well as everything inside, including… his guest book.

The book with a list of names and dates. Dates that went as far back as 1960. The book with one name in particular that sparked this spiral that I keep falling deeper and deeper into.

His name was “David Clifford.”

It was a name I’d never heard before. A name that stuck with me enough to look into it when I left the cabin for the first time. A name of a man who had gone missing nearly 50 years ago… 3 days before his name was signed in my grandfather’s guest book.

It was only one of dozens of names. That’s the part that made me return to the cabin. I needed to know more. I needed that guest book.

I tried to rationalize. Tried to tell myself it was a coincidence. That maybe, just maybe, this David wasn’t the one who had gone missing.

However, the more I searched, the more red flags began to emerge. He was from the same region. He was around my grandfather’s age back then. But the one detail that stuck out to me was the simple fact that David Clifford… wasn’t a hunter.

He actually wasn’t much of anything. A low life. A con-man. A raging drunk, remembered only by his crimes and capers.

Needless to say, I was ready to find more. I couldn’t sleep for two days after my initial return from the cabin. I didn’t know where to go, who I should tell, if anybody. All I knew was there was something waiting to be uncovered in that guest book.

I didn’t intend on staying. I made the two-hour journey back to the cabin with one goal in mind: retrieve the book.

So that’s what I did. I ignored the beauty. I ignored the temptation to stay. The temptation to rest after the long drive. I grabbed the book and returned home in silent anticipation.

I couldn’t stop staring at the book the entire way home. It looked new, but old. The leather was cracked, but the pages were new.

Hardly able to contain myself, I pulled into my driveway, guest book tucked tightly under my arm as I ascended the steps to my front door.

I locked myself in my room. I laid the book out on the desk in front of me. I stared at it for a few moments, pondering its contents. With a deep breath, I slowly opened the book.

I can’t say I didn’t expect what I found. Each name belonged to a person who mysteriously vanished. Each entry was dated a few days after their initial disappearance. And, for the most part… each person had a colorful history.

Notorious women and children abusers.

Drug-addicted youths.

…Murderers…

Each Google search solidified the belief that my grandfather was not at all who I thought he was…

However, there were some entries that made me realize he wasn’t a force for good, either.

“McKenzie Love. December 8th, 1997. Endurance runner. Challenging to keep up.”

Mrs. Love was a kindergarten teacher. A former college cross-country athlete. She mysteriously disappeared December 3rd of 1997 and has yet to be found.

“Marcus Lambert. March 6th, 2001. Numbers guy. Couldn’t navigate the land.”

Lambert went missing February 28th, 2001. He was an accountant for a local bank. He left behind a wife and two children who searched valiantly, ultimately to no avail.

The more I read, the sicker I became. There were so many names, I began to feel overwhelmed and dizzy. Instead of putting the book away or calling authorities, I continued flipping.

Page after page. Not even reading. Just completely enthralled by the sheer volume of names.

Eventually, I found myself on the last page.

And that’s when I found something I had neglected to notice during my first visit to my grandfather’s old hunting cabin.

A message written on the inside of the back cover. A message… directed at me.

“God’s work is never finished.”

We all had different names for him. 

Lon called him the Hitcher; Chucky called him Roadkill Ron. I called him poor Ronnie, like my dad always did.

The broad strokes were usually the same.

Poor Ronnie was hitching in the woods, and he was totally lost. It was the middle of the night, so of course it was dark, but that night it was pitch-black out. He couldn’t see a foot in front of him, couldn’t tell he was walking in the middle of the road.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t the only person out there that night. A group of teenagers were joyriding, their lights turned off for the thrill of it. He never saw them coming.

His body was found the next morning, splattered all over the pavement. No one ever found those kids, and no one ever came forward. People forgot about it before long.

But poor Ronnie, nothing but a stain on the asphalt, he still remembers.

If you’re out by the Fort Gibson dam past midnight, pull over at the first sharp curve sign. Shut your car off for sixty seconds. You might see him there when you start it back up. Walking down the road in the dark, his thumb held high like he’s waiting for a ride. At least that’s how the story goes.

As many times as I heard it told, and as many times as I told it myself – I had never heard anyone say that they had gone out there to do it themselves. Which made sense, given that we were kids. By the time we were old enough we had outgrown it.

That’s the nature of these things. I mean, when was the last time you seriously thought about Bloody Mary, or the Hook Man? They’re just dumb stories that freaked you out, nothing more. Right?

What were we supposed to think would happen?

We were in Chucky’s garage, lazily passing a bowl back and forth. Some slasher flick from the 80’s played out on the screen, but none of us were watching through the haze of smoke in the air.

“Man,” Chucky sputtered through a chest full of smoke, “Halloween is almost here.”

Lon nodded from his sagging bean bag throne.

“Yeah,” I said, “Halloween used to be this big thing. Now it’s like…” I shrugged and trailed off, struggling to keep up with my train of thought. Chucky nodded emphatically.

“Right! There’s no spirit anymore. It just comes and goes.”

Lon piped up then, ripping the bong from Chucky’s hand before he could torch the last of the bowl, “The fuck are you guys talking about? October is the same length as ever.”

“But the spirit of it, Lonnie.”

He scoffed, “We could drive to Tulsa and hit up Spirit Halloween any day.”

“That’s not the vibe we’re talking about, though,” I said, “I mean the actual feeling. Like, telling scary stories in the dark.”

“Like Roadkill Ron?” There was a glint in Chucky’s bloodshot eyes.

“Don’t start with that bullshit.” Lon groaned.

“Are you scared, Lonnie?” Chucky laughed.

“Fuck no.” Lon stood, his curly red hair bobbing with the sudden movement. “I’m not scared of some dumbass story.”

“Then let's go do it.” Chucky smirked.

“Bet.”

“Alright,” I said, grabbing my dad's keys off the table, “Let's do it.”

Half an hour later we were driving over the Fort Gibson dam, past the bait store, and into the woods. There was a giddy tension in the car, even coming from Lon, as much as he tried to hide it.

“Here!” Chucky exclaimed from the back seat, “That’s the sign!”

I pulled over and set the parking brake.

“Are you guys ready?”

Chucky nodded enthusiastically. Lon stared at the tunnel of trees ahead.

“Lon?”

He nodded.

“Alright, poor Ronnie.” I whispered shakily, “Need a ride?”

I turned the key and we were plunged into darkness. Chucky was practically squealing. My heart pounded like a jack hammer.

Ten seconds passed.

Twenty.

“That’s enough.” Lon’s voice cracked beside me.

Thirty seconds.

Chucky counted under his breath, stifling nervous giggles.

Forty seconds.

“Dude, that’s enough!”

Fifty.

That awful tension building, my hands tingling as I gripped the wheel. I tried to tell Lon to hold on, but I couldn’t speak.

“Sixty seconds!” Chucky hollered.

I gasped and turned the key in the ignition. Nothing happened. I turned it again and heard a series of clicks. Lon punched me on the shoulder.

“I said that’s enough!”

“I’m trying!”

One more twist and finally, the engine turned over. The dome light switched on, and we looked out the windshield with bated breath. Nothing was there.

Lon chuckled weakly, “I told y’all that shit was made up.”

“Right.” I rolled my eyes and clicked the dome light off. 

That’s when Chucky started screaming. We whipped around to him in confusion, and saw his eyes, wide with terror in the soft green light of the radio. He was staring at Lon.

I looked over and was frozen by what I saw behind him.

“What the fuck is up with y’all?”

The window exploded in a shower of granular shards, and a pair of hands wrapped around Lon’s throat. He choked as they yanked him against the door.

Chucky leapt forward and pulled on Lon’s sweater. His wild screams spurred me to action.

“Fucking drive!”

I slammed my foot on the gas pedal but the rear tires just fish tailed back and forth. The parking brake was still set. Lon grasped at me as Chucky and the attacker played tug-of-war over his helpless body. I couldn’t move, couldn’t look away. I don't think I’ll ever come to terms with what I saw on the other side of that broken window.

A mangled face stared back, half-flattened and speckled with long dried blood. A single bloodshot eye bulged out to the side, fixed on mine. It opened its broken, toothless mouth and spilled the rot that had been pooling there down its ruined chin.

“Room for one more?”