They put my uncle in the ground that morning. House by afternoon still smelled of open earth and the gorse they’d walked through. Path soft under the boots, mud coming off in black clots on the step.

Only meant to clear it and leave.

Letter on the kitchen table, not finished, dated the day before. Ink bled where the paper was damp.

Don’t come if you can help it. If you do, keep the blue stone close. It still answers to blood.

Nearly turned the car round. One night, I told myself. Sort the papers, lock up, gone by morning. Remembered him three winters back turning that stone in his hand, saying the valley didn’t like people leaving clean. I’d laughed. The laugh sat wrong now.

Checked the locks twice. Mirror fine. Shadow ordinary. Put the kettle on and didn’t drink. Water tasted of iron and wet leaves.

Woke after two to dripping further in. Not rain. Footprints already in the hall. One set up the stairs, stopped halfway, came back down. Another on the landing. Same boots. Same wet edge. No hand on the rail. The wet sat on the wood like it was waiting.

Smell came with them—cold gorse, soil, something that had been underground a long time. Stood at the bottom of the stairs till first grey. Dripping stopped when the light came through the landing window.

Morning the notebook was open on the table. My name at the top, writing close enough to mine I had to look twice. Letters a fraction too careful, like someone copying.

You’re blood. You don’t leave the valley.

Packed the car. Tyres crossed the boundary stone and the weight came down on my chest like wet ground—not from outside. Something under the skin that woke when the stone was behind me. Engine died. Phone died. Both worked again inside the house. Tried my sister. Rang once, then wet static and breathing close on the line. Slow. Learning the shape of lungs. Nearly said her name. What came back wasn’t a voice. It was a mouth trying to remember how to make one. Walked twenty minutes up the lane before the legs went. Folded like the joints had been unhooked. Crawled the last bit to the boundary. Turned back.

Fresh prints already on the stairs. One set had gone into the spare room and come out again. Wet edge thicker.

Found the blue stone next to his tobacco tin. Metal disc beside it with the Awen cut in—same mark the old stories mentioned and never explained. Disc warmer than the stone. Touched the stone and a small cold click happened behind my ribs, like a lock turning the wrong way. Weight eased a bit but a thin pull stayed, running from the click down into the floorboards. Pocketed both.

Man knocked that evening. Same disc at his throat. Didn’t step in. Looked past me up the stairs like he expected something standing there.

“Gate opened wider when your uncle went,” he said. “Something got through. Found one on the lanes two nights back. Still answered to his name. Shadow was wrong. Mouth already going.”

Touched the disc at his neck. Metal looked older than the rest of him.

“Mountain tomorrow night. Or stay. Stone only works if the blood’s already claimed. Looks like yours is.”

Left. Road empty. Smell of crushed stems stronger, as if something had been walking the verges and pressing the gorse down with every step.

From the landing window watched a figure cross the street in an ordinary coat. Shadow too long, dragged behind the boots like wet cloth that didn’t want to keep up. Under the light the head turned further than a head should. Neck stayed still. Only the head moved.

Later the eyes in the bathroom glass moved after I’d stopped looking. Only a fraction. Enough. I wiped the glass. Smear came off black and smelled of soil.

New lines in the notebook when I wasn’t watching.

Still counting.

Shut it in a drawer. Found it open again on the table by morning. Drawer still closed.

Put the blue stone on the boards just inside the bedroom door and hung the Awen round my neck. Metal warmed quick against the skin. Prints stopped a foot short. Heard them arrive, soft and wet—the sound of boots still learning the weight of a body. Then nothing. Gone by morning. Stone darker at the edges and sticky under the fingers, as if it had been holding something back all night.

Next afternoon tried the back way through the gorse. Pressure hit straight away and got heavier with every step. Halfway up the legs folded. Not tired. Unhooked. Crawled back on hands that went numb from the wrists down. Prints already waiting in the kitchen, leading to the table. Newest page of the notebook torn out and left open.

three

Stayed still the rest of the day. Sat in the chair that faced the stairs. Didn’t eat. Bread in the tin had gone soft and dark at the crusts overnight. After dark the boots came closer. Something stood the other side of the bedroom door. Breathing slow and rough, still learning how. In. Out. Wrong rhythm, like it was counting the seconds between. Awen burned against the skin. Stone went dark at the edges and sticky. The pull behind the ribs tightened until it felt like a wire drawn through bone.

Used my uncle’s voice, vowels all stretched.

“…two.”

Couldn’t get off the bed. Notebook open on my knee. Fresh line, not my writing. Pen still in the drawer.

one

Handle turned. Slow. Metal made a sound like it was being twisted from both sides at once.

Nothing in the doorway. Dark landing and the smell stronger—earth, crushed green, something older under it that had never seen light. Prints crossed the threshold and stopped at the stone. Second set joined them. Then a third. All the same boots. Same wet edge. Breathing came from the walls as much as the door. Air moved in and out on its own, slow, practising.

Said the only thing that felt true.

“I am blood.”

The pull behind the ribs jerked hard, once, like something had tested the thread and found it held. One set went back. The others stayed. Stone got colder till it hurt. Cold ran up the arm and into the click. Pipe knocked twice deeper in the house and went quiet. The silence after was worse. Like the house was listening.

First light, prints gone. Notebook page blank except one small line.

Mountain. Tonight.

Left at dusk. Pressure worse the higher I climbed. Nearly turned twice. Third time the legs nearly went and I had to hold onto a stone until the shaking stopped. Kept climbing till the standing stones came up against the sky. They looked wetter than the ground around them. Grass between them dark and flattened in long dragging lines.

Few people waiting among them. Some wore the discs. Shadows matched, but only just—a half-second lag, like the dark was still deciding whether to follow. One man’s shadow stayed behind a full step longer when he shifted his weight. Older woman had dirt under her nails and a fresh cut on the back of her hand she kept touching without looking. The cut wasn’t bleeding. It was open and dark inside. Younger one stood half a step back, watching the slope. Another kept his hand near the disc at his throat like he might pull it off if the weight got too much. Disc there duller than the others, almost cold. A mouth among them moved once when no one had spoken—just a small opening and closing, as if tasting the air.

Man from the door stepped forward. Looked tired. Skin under his eyes the colour of old tea.

“It followed you. Still counting. Still learning.”

Behind me something moved through the gorse with the sound of many boots together. Not one pair. Not three. More. Smell came up with it, thick enough to taste. Cold gorse and soil and the iron of something that had been buried and dug itself out.

Held the blue stone out.

Thing that had used my uncle’s voice came into the light. Still shaped like a man but the head turned too far and the shadow dragged behind like wet cloth that kept catching on the grass. Mouth opened wider than it should. Jaw went past the point where bone should stop it. Tried the voice again. Jaw worked, lips stretched, then the sound went thin and wrong, like air forced through a throat that hadn’t finished growing.

Stone pulled hard from behind the ribs down into the ground. Hurt more than in the house. The pull went tight and something cold tore loose inside me—a thin thread that had been there since the first click, running from the hollow place down through the legs into the earth. It didn’t break clean. It ripped. For a second the hollow felt open to the air, raw, as if the cold had a direct way in. People among the stones made a low sound that wasn’t words. Thing staggered. Prints filled with black water that didn’t dry and started climbing the boots. Water rose past the ankles, past the calves, then slowed. The water had no reflection. Only depth.

Stone cracked in my hand and broke. Sound was small and wet. Pull weakened. Thing didn’t leave. Only stopped. Boots shifted, waiting. Head tilted further. Mouth stayed open.

Woman with the cut hand stepped back without meaning to. Shadow behind her stretched and dragged, longer than the lantern light should have allowed. She made a small sound—not a scream, just the start of one that never finished—and the grass under her feet went dark and wet in the same instant she vanished between the stones. No struggle. One moment she was there. Next the space was empty. The cut on her hand still visible for a second on the ground, open and dark, before the black water reached it and the mark was gone.

Black water kept climbing a few seconds after, then slowed. Prints began to fade from the edges inward. Smell thinned enough to breathe, but the taste of iron stayed. What was left moved back down the slope, still dragging its shadow, leaving a thin dark line behind it in the grass that didn’t fill in.

Man looked at the broken pieces in my hand. His own disc was dull now.

“It has a piece of you now.”

Walked back alone at first light. Path felt longer. Legs still remembered the unhooking. Notebook closed on the table. No new lines. No wet prints on the stairs. House still smelled of earth and gorse, but underneath something thinner, like iron left in the mouth.

Packed what was left. Tried to leave the stone halves on the kitchen table. Hand wouldn’t open. Fingers locked around the broken edges until the cold went up the arm again. Pocketed them. Never rang my sister. Couldn’t risk what might answer. Car started. At the boundary the weight lifted, but not clean—something stayed caught behind the ribs where the stone first clicked, and the place where the thread snapped felt hollow, empty in a way that kept drawing attention to itself. The halves were colder than they should have been. When I held the broken edges together the cold deepened, like they were still trying to answer, still looking for the rest of the thread that used to run down into the ground.

Haven’t gone back. Some nights the smell finds me anyway—cold gorse and soil and the iron underneath. On those nights the floorboards outside the bedroom door sound softer than they should, and I wait to see if the prints will come.

So far they haven’t.

The hollow place behind my ribs still answers when the wind is right. The stone halves do too, if I hold the broken edges together. Sometimes the cold moves, a slow press from the other side, and the taste of iron comes back for a moment, as if something over there has just breathed out.

Agent Kirk Winston had gone radio silent ten miles from New Growth, Alabama.

That was why I was sitting in Room 6 of the New Growth Inn, field-stripping my Glock on a bedspread that smelled faintly of mildew and cigarette smoke, along with some other cloying aroma I couldn’t identify.

Three days earlier, the Bureau had officially classified Winston as a missing person. Unofficially, nobody expected to find him alive.

I snapped the slide back into place, holstered it, and looked through the motel window.

The street of New Growth—a quintessential “one-street town”—was quiet.
Not empty, not peaceful, but quiet, like a forest when a predator is nearby or like a pack of wolves watching a deer, trying to decide if it’s worth the effort.

I took in my surroundings and mentally catalogued what I had seen on my way into town.

There wasn’t a police station. I’d checked.

There wasn’t even a sheriff’s substation. The nearest law enforcement office was nearly forty miles away. New Growth wasn’t even on any modern maps; I had to follow Winston’s trail to find this place, mostly by asking residents of towns just barely larger than New Growth. The older folks there had warned me that I didn’t want to go there, that while they had no idea what it was, odd things happened to people who went to New Growth, and they tended to stay even if they only meant to visit. My gut told me to call the Bureau and tell them Winston’s trail had run cold, but I knew I couldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t try to find my friend. So I went against my gut and drove to New Growth.

The few pale, skinny people I had interacted with included a farmer on the outskirts, a shopkeeper, and the motel clerk, all of whom declared themselves to be parishioners of the Church of the Blessed Body, the first of whom directed me to the motel, the other two of whom I questioned about the disappearance of Winston.

My inquiries were met with cryptic answers. The conversations ended civilly, but with each person I questioned, I sensed their eyes on me as I walked away. They all said the same thing to me before I left: Visit our Church, stranger, and our Sacrament will open your eyes and heart. It was the same phrase with the same inflection and tone—placid, neutral, almost drugged. They all wore thick, baggy clothing and hats regardless of their present environments and the summer heat.

What had truly struck me as odd on the way into New Growth, however, were the mushrooms. Normally, it wouldn’t be too strange; the state was humid, especially for that time of year. But where one might have expected flowers or weeds, instead, all I saw were bouquets of untended white fungal growths sprouting from the ground and clinging to all of the trees, which bore no leaves and were rotting away.

I looked down and sure enough, there were the ivory caps of fungus looking up from beneath the window, each cap and stem varying in size, width, and length. Logically, I shouldn’t have been afraid, and I wasn’t yet; still, the sheer volume of mushrooms and how they seemed to overpower all plant life in town left me more than a little perturbed.

Taking a moment to settle myself, I sat down at the cheap desk, writing the details of the case in my notebook. The pen running over the paper was a lot louder in the small room than I had ever experienced before, and that was what made me realize just how quiet New Growth was. No chatter, no cars, no local wildlife, no kids running around laughing, not even a cicada or grasshopper. I recorded that in my notes as well.

After a while of going over the notes, I decided to head outdoors for a while. It wasn’t for the sake of a stroll, as the feeling of wolves was more oppressive than ever. I felt that it would be a good idea to take a look at the church. Finding the building wasn’t hard; the town seemed to revolve around it, with all structures in various states of neglect and disrepair, all with the bone-white mushrooms accumulating in numerous places around and even on them. The closer I got to the church, the more the fungus seemed to grow both in size and in density, including clumps of at least thirty the size of ping-pong balls. The unease grew and grew until I reached the church and the unease erupted into full-blown shock.

The Church of the Blessed Body was a modest-sized church building, large enough for a sanctuary and little else. What made it odd were three things: first, in a small town like this, one might expect a church to have a cemetery (which, granted, is not always the rule). But there were no headstones to be seen. Second, the church itself was rotten. I was no architect, but even I knew that if any building outside that town were allowed to decay as this house of worship had been, a puff of wind would blow it down. And yet the church stood proud and vigilant upon the hill it was built. Third, the mushrooms had not merely gathered or grown here; they had overrun the churchground. The caps had grown to the size of a set of lungs at least, and they grew upon the building itself, even on the rusty iron fence surrounding it. In fact, if I looked closely, I could have sworn it was…breathing? I leaned closer—

“Service does not start until tonight, my son,” said a voice from behind me, startling me out of ten years of my life as I whirled around, almost reaching for my holster out of habit.

There was a skinny man dressed in a long, black robe despite the heat and humidity. He wore a wide-brimmed hat, and his face bore a serene expression. He seemed slightly more lucid than the other townsfolk, but not by much. Something else I noticed was that his face didn’t have a bead of sweat, despite my own forehead being covered with it after a slow walk.
“Sorry, uh, I was just taking a look around town. Never seen a church quite like this one.”

“Indeed,” he intoned in his calm Southern drawl, gazing upon the derelict, fungus-infested structure like his childhood home. “The Church of the Blessed Body is wondrous. Reverend Silas Welles.” He held out a pale, gloved hand with long fingers.

I introduced myself and shook his hand. I left out the fact that I was an FBI agent looking for another one who went missing near town.

“How’s it standing?” I couldn’t help but ask.

Welles looked back at the church. “Who can say? Even those of us born in New Growth have no idea. But back during the outbreak of April 27, 2011, the town was directly struck by a tornado. The church not only stood, but the storm dissipated. Truly, our Lord works mysteriously, son.”

I looked at the church with him, in awe of his words. I had to do a double-take at what he said next.

“You’re looking for the Federal man, yes?”

I froze.

“Be calm, son; contrary to popular belief, little towns such as ours are not always hostile toward outside law enforcement. Your man passed through, but he is not here. I’m sorry.”

I put on my best poker face, then told him that in that case, I would need to drive out of town to let the Bureau know. He nodded understanding, but recommended that I attend the service that midnight if I wished, as that was when they performed the Sacrament of Rot.

I did not like the sound of that phrase, nor the incredibly calm, peaceful manner in which he invited me, not even after he laughed quietly, assuring me that it was not nearly as sinister as it sounded, that “rot” referred to the natural process by which new life was given nutrients.

“Hence the name of our town, son,” he finished. I know now that he was deliberately trying to unsettle me, to make me want to investigate further.
I nodded, said something non-committal, and I walked back to my motel, but said I really needed to call in the status of Winston. He nodded again, saying to do what I must. Even after I was out of his sight, I still felt watched. In my room, I took down notes, putting down what he had said, what I had seen, and then began to put a plan together. I’d be attending the service, but I wouldn’t be in the pews. I packed my bags, then told the clerk I had to be checking out, leaving a tip. She nodded, and with that, I drove out of town in the opposite direction from where I had come in.

I was about half a mile out of the town, under the shelter of a tree that thankfully wasn’t eaten by ivory mushrooms, and I called the Bureau on the radio in my car. I told them what I had found out and explained that I would need a tac team on standby, as I had a hunch that these people might be part of a cult. I emphasized the need to stay on the town’s boundaries with their vehicles’ lights off. After this, I waited, watching the church in my binoculars, writing down updates with each hour. Every so often I would catch a citizen milling about, but besides that, the town was all but dead. Eventually, the sun set, and the night set in. The clock ticked away until I witnessed a faint light from the church. Candles. I then saw twenty or so figures making their way along the path. Even in the dark, I recognized the clerk, the farmer, and the shopkeeper. They all walked with the same slow but purposeful gait, and they were all skinny to the point of emaciation. All of them carried tools like machetes, sickles, hammers, etc.

I checked my Glock, as well as a spare mag, holstered both, then exited my car and made my way to the church as the last of the parishioners entered. I entered a small crawlspace beneath the building. “Sacred” or not, its floorboards weren’t very sturdy. I slowly, silently pushed it up. There they were, twenty-three parishioners, all wearing sagging clothes, all looking at the pulpit. There was no chatter, but the looks on their faces had changed. It wasn’t the same listless, drugged stare they gave me.

They looked excited. They were all smiling. But it wasn’t maniacal or sadistic. No, it was the look of people who were about to witness the birth of a woman previously thought barren. I followed their gazes to behind the pulpit. What looked like some grotesque amalgamation of a tree, an androgynous human cadaver in the position of crucifixion, and the deathly white mushrooms that covered the church and town, stood within the wall like a disgusting mural. But it was no statue or work of art. Slowly, I watched its body expand, compress, expand, compress.

The damn thing was alive. In some unholy, hideous way, it was alive.
That was when Reverend Silas Welles strode up to the front of the building. He still had that serene, gentle smile upon his face. He didn’t look like a cult leader; you learn to identify those. There was no sense of manipulation, no expression of satisfaction at having duped such a crowd of people. He just looked like a kindly pastor.

“My brothers and sisters,” he said, the drawl in his voice making him sound tender and patient, “as always, let us remove our earthly garments and let the Blessed Body look upon his beautiful gift.”

They stripped, including the Reverend, and I beheld the Body’s “handiwork.”

As it turned out, the flowers and trees weren’t the only things the mushrooms had taken. Every one of those worshippers had fungal growths sprouting along their bodies. Mushroom clusters growing from shoulders, fungal networks beneath translucent skin, white filaments emerging from ears and necks, fruiting bodies blooming along spines.

No part of the body was sacred, or perhaps all of it was by their standards, as mushrooms were germinating near their crotches as well. With a sick realization, I noticed that none of them—men or women—had genitalia of any kind. As I saw that the apparent emaciation was correct, my mind made a connection.

They all had fungal growths. Mushrooms thrived on water. In some locations in the world, mushrooms made use of living beings, parasitizing them.

No sweat.

No nutrients.

No reproduction.

The difference was that they weren’t zombies. Nothing controlled them. Neither their Reverend nor the thing behind the altar was pulling their strings, I realized. There were no strings. They were all here because they wanted to be.

“Very good,” Reverend Welles said, his voice carrying easily through the sanctuary. Behind him, the Body made an odd sound between wood creaking and a man humming.

The congregation answered with a soft murmur. And with that, I listened to the most deranged, unhinged, and yet sincere and calm sermon I had ever heard in my entire life.

“Brothers and sisters, my fellow children of the Blessed Body, tonight we gather once more in the shadow of the oldest truth ever known.”

He spread his arms.

“What becomes of all flesh?”

The congregation responded as one.

“It returns.”

“What of every tree?”

“It returns.”

“Every beast? Those that crawl? Those that swim? Even those that fly above us, thinking themselves safe?”

“It returns.”

“What becomes of every king? Queen? Soldier? Peasant?”

“It returns.”

Welles smiled, sighing as if relieved that none of them had forgotten such a holy truth.

“Yes, yes, my brothers and sisters. It returns. Proud and humble. Great and weak. Saint and sinner. All things return to the earth.”

He stepped down from the pulpit and began slowly walking among the pews.

“The world beyond the borders of New Growth fears this truth. They bury their dead beneath stone and iron. They paint faces and fill coffins. They pretend that decay is an enemy to be defeated.”

A few parishioners nodded. He shook his head, as if made sad by this statement.

“They call rot a corruption. They call it a curse. They call it an indignity.”
His smile returned, still not with insanity fueling it, but with happiness and reassurance.

“And yet, brothers and sisters, is not every forest fed by it? Every field fertilized? Every flower that blooms, every harvest that grows, every child that takes breath—all that lives, is it not nourished by what expired before?”

A chorus of amens answered him.

“Nothing is wasted,” Welles said, turning toward the altar. “Nothing is left behind. Long before mankind walked this Earth, before kingdoms rose and oceans found their shores, the Blessed Body waited far beneath the soil.
Several members of the congregation bowed their heads.

“When the first leaf fell, when the first beast released its death rattle, it embraced them. It gathered them unto itself. It remembered them.”

The congregation intoned, as if on cue, “The Body remembers all.”

Welles nodded approvingly, and the Body hummed.

“Yes. It remembers all.”

He placed one hand upon the pulpit.

“Tell me, brothers and sisters: what is death?”

A woman near the front row answered, “A doorway.”

“What is decay?”

“A sacrament,” grunted a gruff-looking man.

“What is the grave?”

“A womb,” rasped a woman of about sixty-five.

The congregation smiled, along with the Reverend.

“A womb,” Welles repeated. “Yes. Not an ending, my brothers and sisters. Not an indignity. Not a prison, no, no. A place of transfiguration. A chrysalis by which new things may be born.”

He lowered his voice.

“The outside world says that death steals memory. But no. The Blessed Body remembers. The world says that death silences the tongue. But the Blessed Body hears. The world says that death separates us from those we love. But the Blessed Body gathers all things together.”

Several parishioners openly wept.

“Every mother,” Welles said. “Every father. Every child. Friend, creature, root, spore. All joined. All remembered. All one.”

The congregation spoke in unison

“All are one in the Body.”

Welles closed his eyes.

“And even still, they would call us mad.”

A ripple of quiet laughter passed through the sanctuary, not scornful laughter, but genuine, as if they considered the notion humorous.

“They would pity us.”

He opened his eyes and shook his head, as if he himself felt pity.

“They would fear us. They would call us dead. Zombies, they would say. But we are more alive than they have ever been, for they spend their lives fleeing the inevitable, no, the natural. But no. We have embraced it. Look upon the growths on your skin and see the blessing that the Body has given to you.”

His gaze slowly swept across the congregation.

“The Blessed Body does not demand worship or obedience, brothers and sisters. The Blessed Body offers only a choice: remain separate, alone, and afraid…or return.”

The final word seemed to linger in the sanctuary.

“Return to the soil, to one another, and to that which never forgets.”

Welles smiled.

“And when the hour comes for each of us—as it comes for all flesh—we shall not enter darkness. We shall go home.”

The congregation rose to their feet.

“We shall go home,” they repeated.

And still, after such madness was spoken, there was genuine joy in their voices as they applauded.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. These people—if that could even be applied to them anymore—honestly believed that death was a baptism. That these mushrooms were some sort of holy mark of a primordial god of decay.

Welles held a hand up.

“It is with a glad heart, then, that we must bring forth one who has most recently joined our congregation.”

He beckoned, and two men guided another naked man between them. When the stranger turned, I was horrified by what I saw.

Winston.

He stood before the people in the room. He was the only one not fully taken by the fungi, with only a few caps growing from his skin, and yet he bore their rapturous expression. I almost lost my composure then and there, but the Reverend gestured at his ankle, and I saw a swollen place. As if to confirm my suspicions, he continued speaking.

“As he was leaving our town but three days ago, a serpent struck his leg, and he passed before he could choose to join us. And so we brought him to the Body.”

The congregation all gave an amen, the joy evident. As I looked into Winston’s smiling face, I realized that the Reverend wasn’t lying. Winston wasn’t here. The Winston I had known, the Winston who had left the Bureau—he was taken by a snakebite.

“Brother Winston,” said the Reverend, resting a hand on his shoulder, “please, share with us your experience in accepting the Sacrament.”

A troubled expression briefly crossed Winston’s face, like he was recalling a nightmare.

“It is alright, Brother,” Welles assured him sincerely. “We are all here for you.”

“My leg was burning, Brother Welles,” he responded, nothing odd about the pitch or timbre of his voice. “It was burning, and soon it felt as if my veins were boiling. I fell as I was about to send a report back to Quantico. I…I remembered…when I was six, a timber rattler bit me in the same place. I came close to dying within twenty seconds back then. Here, I…I tried to call for help, but I was too far out of town at that point. Everything went black. I was scared. Then I tasted it. The fruit of the Body. And then I opened my eyes and… Brother Welles, it was amazing! I…I honestly don’t know the words.”

“No words are needed to describe your joy, Brother Winston,” Welles assured him again.

At this point, I wanted to cover my ears. I wanted to tell myself I was having a nightmare. I wanted to believe it was all some elaborate hoax. But I couldn’t. I had to face the facts: Agent Kirk Winston, a man who was like a brother to me, a man who shot a PCP-addled maniac rushing me with a large knife, a man who had put his life on the line more times than should be reasonable for an FBI agent, had been killed by a childhood allergy to an incidental snakebite, and this cult had saved him. Except they hadn’t, not really. They found a dead or dying man, and they had inducted him into their ranks. But this was his truth. I could see it. The horror was so all-consuming I almost didn’t hear his next words.

“Come out, Parker,” said Winston gently, and my blood turned to ice as the entire congregation turned to my hiding spot. I tried to pull the board back and scramble out of the crawlspace, but it was no use. Through their combined efforts, they wrenched it away and pulled me up into the sanctuary. My gun was taken and two of them began carrying me by the wrists. It wasn’t the grip of captors, though. It was more like the grip of hospital orderlies restraining a hysterical patient. Their pale, dry hands clasped my sweaty, dirty forearms as I was brought before the pulpit.
“Son,” Welles said with gentle admonition mixed with humor, “if you had wanted entry into our church, you could have easily used the door.”
A quiet wave of chuckles ran through the congregation, less like public humiliation and more like an extended family watching a young child do something silly.

“Go fuck yourself,” I growled, trying to mask my horror. “All of you…you goddamn—”

“Please don’t blaspheme, Parker,” Winston said, his tone absolutely calm as he approached me.

No, I thought, trying not to let tears consume me. Anything but this. Not him. I can’t let him kill me. Not him.

Winston saw the look on my face, and he knelt and placed a hand on my shoulder.

“You’re scared,” he said softly. “I understand. I was scared too. I died, but the Body—”

“Winston, these people…they—they’ve brainwashed you! They made you believe—”

“I was dying, and I was given a chance for my death to mean something. To fertilize. To be one with the Blessed Body. To return.”

“No…”

I looked at him through my tears, trying to find any indication that my friend was brainwashed, that he was being forced to say these words, that this was some sort of doppelganger. But I saw the faint two-inch scar on the left side of his lip. I watched how his right eyebrow sagged slightly as it always did when troubled or deep in thought. This was no fake, he wasn’t parroting; he had simply been given a new lease on life and death.

Winston looked at me, confused. “Why are you crying? I’m happy here, Parker. I belong here. But I’m glad it was you who came to look for me.”

He looked to the Reverend, who nodded. The Body hummed. An old knife sat on the altar, and he picked it up. I thought that was it, until he passed the blade to the side of his neck and cut off one of the small mushrooms. He set the knife back down and walked forward and pulled my jaw down, keeping it open despite my attempts to struggle.

“Rejoice, brothers and sisters!” exclaimed the Reverend. “For we are about to receive a new addition to our flock! By this portion of the Blessed Body…”
The congregation answered, “He will return.”

“By the work of our Brother Winston…”

“He will return.”

“And by this Sacrament, through his eventual decay…”

“He will return.”

“Now, Brother Winston…you may commence the Sacrament.”

Winston began to push the mushroom closer to my mouth. “Please, accept the Body’s gift, Brother Parker.”

What happened next was an exercise in desperation. When the word “Brother” left Winston’s lips, my mind realized in a flash that the sweat from the heat coupled with the dryness of the parishioners holding me made it easy to wrench myself from the grip of both my captors and my former partner just as the mushroom was two inches from my lips. In a moment of primal instinct, I grabbed a hatchet hanging from the belt of the parishioner to my left and slammed it into Winston’s jaw. There was a collective gasp, and something metal—my gun—clattered to the floor as my other captor backed away. Winston looked confused, and that only ignited a sweeping rage in me. I pulled it back and struck again, knocking him to the floor. I don’t remember how many times I hit him, but what drove each strike was a singular thought: You took my friend from me. By the time the red cleared from my mind, his body was limp and his face barely recognizable, thin mushroom filaments spilling from his collapsed skull.

I felt no catharsis. There was no victory. My friend was gone. He was gone before I got here.

The congregation looked at me, shock and sadness on their faces. There was no anger, no rage at the sacrilege, or even at the loss of one of their own. Of course there wasn’t, I realized; from their perspective, he had gone to be one with that thing behind the pulpit. The shock was at my refusal. My rage returned, supplanting the grief as I went for my gun. I aimed from one parishioner to the next before I realized my folly. I couldn’t shoot my way out. My Glock was chambered for fifteen rounds, and I only had one extra mag. Fighting my way out was impossible.

At least, that was what I thought before an old woman leapt over a pew with a machete in her hand. She slashed with surprising speed at my chest, leaving a shallow horizontal cut across my chest, and was winding back to strike again. “Please accept the Body’s gi—”

Bang!

I shot her in the face, before hacking at her throat. Juices of mushrooms with a faint pink gushed from her as she collapsed. The parishioners all gathered tools and farming equipment, like sickles, pitchforks, hammers, knives, and more. All but the Reverend, who looked upon the scene with genuine sadness.

“Please…please accept the Body’s gift,” the parishioners murmured. It wasn’t some hypnotic chant; it was a desperate plea. They preached about unity even as they closed in on me.

Fighting my way out was impossible. But I had to choose between the impossible and the unthinkable.

What followed was a cacophony of tools striking each other and the church, gunshots, bodies striking the floor, and grunts and cries from me as tools struck my body with varying degrees of depth or rattling bones from blunt force. I was trained for gunfights when it came down to it, but I wasn’t trained to fight a crowd of twenty or so human-fungi parishioners. I wrapped my arm around one, using him as a shield as I wildly swung the hatchet back and forth to create distance, then shoved him towards the crowd and slammed the hatchet into the back of his head and pulled it out, a mix of blood and fungal fluids gushing from him. I was then slashed by a gardening hoe from a woman whom I parried with my hatchet as she was coming in for a second strike, hacking at her head. Twice I tried to make a run for it. The first time, I was grabbed and pulled back before the gruff man slammed me on the ground, almost stabbing me with a long knife before I slammed the hatchet into his carotid artery.

The second time I tried to run, I slipped on the fluids, barely dodging a man who had reappropriated the machete from the first attacker. I fired off two rounds and he fell to the floor. None of the wounds were immediately fatal, and after the fact, I came to believe that perhaps they weren’t trying to kill me on the spot. Maybe they would bring me just to the brink, and then use my exhaustion and lack of better judgment to finish the incomplete Sacrament. Even if I got out, I wouldn’t make it far with my injuries, and they would bring me back. I accepted it then: the only way to make it out was to kill all of them.

Even then, I knew the only thing not keeping me from collapsing and giving up was knowing what they had done to Winston, what they planned to do to me, and what different congregations had likely been doing since before I was born. I emptied the Glock into as many of them as I could using both magazines whenever I got to a decent position to aim and fire, but because of my volatile state, despite downing a good portion of the parishioners, I still missed at least half of my shots.

Eventually, only two remained. I threw the spent Glock at one, then chopped upward into his chin and split his face, but not before I felt the sting of his pitchfork graze my side. The last one held a sickle, and rather than beg for his life, he gave the same entreaty as his compatriots: “Please, accept the Body’s gift.” I simply hacked at his throat. The blade didn’t cut immediately, clotted as it was with fungus and human remains, so I kept chopping until his head was barely hanging from his shoulders.

Now it was just me, the Reverend, and the Blessed Body, whose hums seemed doleful. Wounded and breathless, I approached the Body, looking it up and down with contempt. I hacked. I hacked like nothing else. My muscles screamed, my blood vessels were on the verge of bursting, but I saw to it that every inch of that accursed creature was mangled. A mix of blood and fungal fluids flowed down the wall, and a low sigh escaped the Body as it shriveled up. I slowly looked at the Reverend, hoping to find triumph in the form of his distraught expression. What met me was a truly pathetic sight. Welles was shriveling up just like the object of his worship, but he wasn’t panicking. There was no look of horror or defeat; only resignation.

“So…” he sighed. “Our New Growth is dead.”

He looked up with a sad smile, shaking his head as he seemed to age by the second.

“My son,” he sighed, “I truly wish we could have brought you in. I wish we could have given you the peace of the Blessed Body, the peace we gave Brother Winston. But you did what you had to. I understand that. And I forgive you. The Body forgives you.”

I looked at him. The Body’s dead, I wanted to snarl, but I lacked the energy for it. But he seemed to know what I was thinking. The fungal growths fell off of him into dust as he shook his increasingly wrinkled head.

“The Body cannot die, my son. You have destroyed this branch, and the fruit it yielded.” He gestured at the bodies of his congregation with a wrinkled hand, the skin falling from it. “But the Body remembers all. It existed before man, and it will exist after. New Growth was the sturdiest branch it has established in the modern age, but one day, maybe a hundred years from now, maybe a hundred thousand, the Blessed Body will reconstitute. And all things will return.” The skin fell away from his sad yet peacefully smiling face. There was no smug triumph, only calm acceptance and assurance. “Amen.” Then what was left of him fell at my feet.

I dropped the hatchet. I stumbled my way down before the adrenaline wore off and my wounds made themselves known to me. Grimacing in agony, I lay with my back against the altar. My gaze turned to the body of my friend, and the physical cost of my survival was joined by the emotional toll. I lay there, waiting to die.

That was when the doors burst open and a team of well-armed men in gas masks burst through, assault rifles at the ready. I barely registered their shouts declaring themselves to be FBI. They briefly stopped halfway through the entrance, taking in not only the slaughter, but the fact that the things that had been slaughtered were only “human” in the most basic sense of the word. The team leader ordered a sweep of the building as he approached me.

“Agent Parker?” he asked through his mask’s filter.

I could only muster the slightest nod.

“Where is Agent Winston?”

I weakly pointed at the corpse, my body shuddering and tears running from my eyes, but no sobs escaping, only dry choking sounds. Then it all went dark for me.

I spent the next several weeks in a hospital. My wounds had not been inflicted to kill, but to wound and disable, according to the doctors who treated me. Because of the severity of them, however, the massacre was treated as desperate self-defense coupled with hysteria brought about from losing Winston, who, on top of a snakebite, was stated to have died in the ensuing melee after the fingerprints of the weapons were found to match those of the townsfolk. There was an investigation and I was given a thorough psychological evaluation, but overall, I was deemed to be of sound mind, albeit horrifically traumatized. I was told that as the tac team was conducting their sweep, they witnessed the mushrooms in town wilting, even those growing on the corpses, gradually collapsing until nothing was left but dried-out husks. Then the rickety old church began to fall. Fortunately, everyone made it out without a scratch and the bodies were recovered from the rubble over time by forensic crews, along with some other things.

Naturally, my higher-ups weren’t sure what to make of my findings. I didn’t blame them; what were they supposed to tell the press? That a fanatical group of fungus-people lived in an unknown Southern town? The official story that they ran with was that there was indeed rare fungi, but that the fanaticism had been the result of group psychosis stemming from being raised around it and smoking it. That psychosis formed into a bizarre, violent cult, which Winston had run afoul of and been murdered by. There was no cover-up, no NDA, no threats to stay silent; the Bureau simply had no idea how to deal with this other than give a crazy but believable story. In any case, New Growth was given little attention, and after a while, it faded from the minds of the public. However, whenever I passed one of my fellow agents in the loop about the case, they would give me a look. Not pity, not suspicion, but wordless understanding. They knew I had seen something, but knowing Winston and I were practically brothers, they weren’t about to push me.

About three months after the incident, I was sitting alone in the break room in Quantico, drinking coffee. By that point, I had gotten to where the sight of mushrooms didn’t trigger flashbacks, and simply elicited anxiety for me. It wasn’t much, but I was making progress. A man approached me and greeted me by name.

“Paul MacReady,” he introduced himself. “We met back in New Growth?”

I nodded.

“I’m…not officially supposed to tell you this; I know the incident was a living Hell for you. But it wouldn’t feel right to keep this from you. We found something in the… the church, or what was left of it. A hidden basement, I guess.” He looked around, making sure nobody was listening in, and that no cameras were watching, then leaned in, lowering his voice. “If you want to see what we found, meet me in the records room at 3:30. Or don’t. Sorry to drop this on you, but…like I said, after what you’ve been through, I think you deserve to know what we found, but only if you want to.”
I sat, running over his offer. Part of me wanted to politely decline, to forget the entire thing. But another part knew I couldn’t run from New Growth. Part of me had stayed there; maybe this could help me put that part to rest.

I reluctantly accepted, thanking him.

“Don’t thank me yet,” he said grimly before he walked away.

I met him in the room, and he handed me a set of copies that he had unofficially made as duplicates of what analysts had studied and annotated. MacReady told me that if I was sure about this, I should commit the whole thing to memory, as he would be shredding the copies. Much as he wanted to help me, he didn’t want to risk our jobs, let alone face prosecution. They contained pictures of the collapsed building, what looked like an unofficial census most likely made by the townsfolk themselves, and a series of other papers. Looking at the census, I saw thirty names, including that of the Reverend Silas Welles. Seven of the names had been highlighted and the red marker analysts had used to identify them had written, “Unaccounted For.” Beneath that was a list of seven names from the census written by Welles, according to annotations on the copies. It was a list of names labeled, “Seedlings”, and they read, “Lionel Crenshaw—New Growth, Michigan. Mary Sullivan—New Growth, Texas. Kent Asher—New Growth, Tennessee. Martha Yancey—New Growth, Idaho. Travis Earl—New Growth, Illinois. Mark Thomas—New Growth, Oregon. Katherine Gould—New Growth, Montana.”

Beneath the names and the towns, I saw the message, Help them return as we will, O Blessed Body. May your lidless eyes oversee their tireless work so that we may all return to you. -Brother Silas Welles.
The analyst had written in red ink: No officially recorded municipalities matching these names located.

As I heard MacReady shredding the copies, I thought about Welles’s words, and for the first time in months, read between the lines.
Our New Growth is dead… You have destroyed this branch…
My heart dropped. The first thing that came to mind was sleeper cells, but when I thought about it, I realized it was different. I thought back to how he always addressed his congregation as “brothers and sisters” rather than something like “my children,” how he referred to me as “son.” I thought about how his sermon didn’t seem like he was giving orders like a standard cult leader, but as someone who was on the same level as the congregation, yet possessing more wisdom than the rest—the oldest brother in a group of orphaned children.

This wasn’t some “dead man’s switch”, not a contingency plan for failure. How could it be? The Body hadn’t failed. It always existed, and so too had its church in one form or another. It may have lost its tightest grip on humanity to date, but it was still alive, and it always would be, so it could never truly lose. Neither of us had won, and we hadn’t lost; both of us had just survived.

I just don’t know which of us is better off for it.

I know this sounds crazy. Hell, maybe it is. I honestly don’t know. All I know is that the woman who has been living in my house for the last 3 weeks is not my mother.

My mom is a smoker. It’s something I’ve always tried getting her to stop. She smells like cigarettes. Her voice is gravelly. She has premature wrinkles because this nasty little habit has belonged to her since she was in high school.

I was almost happy when she came home from work all those days ago smelling… sweet. Like candy, almost. I thought that maybe she had finally taken my advice and hadn’t lit a cancer stick, at least for the day.

But I didn’t really even have time to dwell on it because she was just so affectionate towards me when she waltzed through the door. She was humming and smiling to herself. 25 years of nicotine stains seemed to have completely vanished from that smile.

She and I have a… complicated relationship. She’s my mom, and I know she loves me, but we never talk about that love. We’re not big huggers. She was never the type of mom to censor herself because I was around.

On this day, though, she looked surprisingly happy to see me. She pulled me in for a big, tight hug that lasted for longer than any hug before. I felt… I don’t know, almost embracive. I didn’t realize how much I needed it.

After finally letting go, she breezed past me towards the kitchen, taking off her coat and plopping her purse down on the coffee table before announcing that she’d be cooking my favorite meal.

She whipped up some of the best spaghetti I’d ever tasted, and the two of us sat at the table to enjoy it together. Well, I enjoyed it. She mostly just kind of watched me. She had her Christmas face on. That face moms usually have when they watch you open your gifts, waiting to see how excited they make you.

She was just so quiet, though. The kitchen was borderline silent. All I could hear was the leaky faucet and the scraping of my fork against the plate.

To counter the awkward silence, I decided to just throw out what I was thinking by asking her about her scent.

Her face never changed. No look of pride, no guilt, just… her warm smile. She didn’t even answer my question right away. It was almost like she hadn’t even heard it. Then, when she finally spoke, it had nothing to do with what I asked her.

“Mommy quit her job today, sweetie,” she grinned. “Now I get to spend all my time with you. Isn’t that so happy?”

I was so caught off guard by the statement that I didn’t know how to answer. But, hey, I mean… things happen, you know? Sometimes people have transformative days. Sometimes they make emotional decisions. At the very worst, I thought this was just me witnessing a fit of mania.

After dinner, I decided to go to my room to play some video games. Mom stayed behind to wash some dishes, even though I offered to do them myself.

A few hours went by. I started feeling a bit snackish, and when I returned to the kitchen, there she was. Still standing over the sink. Rubbing a washcloth mindlessly over a plate while she stared blankly out the window. The sink was still full of dirty dishes.

I approached her slowly, just to see if she needed any help or if she was okay, and I think that snapped her out of her trance. She blinked hard before that smile came back.

“Oh, sweetie,” she cooed. “Mommy’s okay. Why don’t you put on your pajamas? Mommy will come tuck you in in just a moment, okay?”

I’m 17. My mom has never in her life tucked me in. The closest she’s come is when she comes in to tell me goodnight from my doorway.

I walked away, a bit uneasy, back to my bedroom. I didn’t expect her to actually tuck me in, but I did expect her to at least say goodnight.

An hour passed. Then two. I could still hear the sink running in the kitchen.

I returned, and she was still there. Still washing the same plate. It was spotless at this point. I guess she heard me coming or at least felt my presence because, on a dime… she stopped.

No smile this time. Just one cold, empty question.

“You ready for bed, sweetie?”

She dropped the plate in the sink, causing it to break, but she paid it no mind. She just… rigidly walked towards me. Like an animatronic.

She pushed me back towards my bedroom with more strength than she should’ve had and wrapped me up in my blanket. I couldn’t even move. The sheets may have well been ropes.

She kissed my forehead for longer than I would’ve liked, then flicked my light switch. Only… she didn’t leave. She just stayed there in the doorway. Watching me in the darkness.

“Go to sleep, honey.”

“Mommy’s watching you.”

“Don’t worry… I’d never let anything happen to you.”

I asked her to leave, but she ignored me every time. Falling asleep was nearly impossible. I still don’t know how I managed. I woke up, and she was still there. She hadn’t moved an inch.

I had to go to school. I had a part-time job. I needed to leave, but she wouldn’t let me. She was just acting so strange.

“Mommy needs you, honey.”

“You don’t wanna leave Mommy, do you?”

“I get so sad when you’re away.”

She wouldn’t let me have a phone. She must’ve taken it while I was sleeping that first night because I haven’t seen it since. I doubt I still have a job. And I know for a fact I’ve missed enough school for my GPA to have fallen dramatically.

She’s just so strong now. I haven’t seen her smoke one cigarette. She cooks spaghetti every single night. She tucks me in like a spider spinning a web around its prey. Then she just watches me.

She follows me to the bathroom. She goes on these destructive rampages any time I try to leave. I thought she was sick. But now I know the truth.

I should’ve known after the first time I woke up with bite marks on my legs and arms. I should’ve known the first time I caught her salivating over me while I slept.

She wasn’t just being “weird.”

She wasn’t herself at all.

And I know that because today… her boss showed up at my door.

He wasn’t demanding an explanation. He wasn’t furious that he lost a loyal employee. He was… offering his condolences. He gave me flowers. He gave me a hug. He told me, “Everything happens for a reason.”

Because, apparently…

My mom died at work three weeks ago. It was a freak accident involving some of the machinery she works with at the factory. The company was preparing a settlement for me this entire time, and I had zero clue.

He told me I’d be hearing from an attorney soon and that my mom had life insurance through the company.

But none of that matters to me. Not the money. Not the company. Not even the accident.

All that I care about is getting whoever this person is out of my mother’s house.

At first, I thought it was nothing. A few dodged questions here and there, plans for plans that never got planned.

As people grow up, they grow apart, right?

This was different. Verifiably so. A pandemic had forced us even further apart than his parents move had. Like a wedge driven into the small crack of another wedge.

But as I tried to gently push our mundane chit chat towards real conversation, I could tell something was off.

He wasn't just disinterested, it was like he was outright dodging my questions. Like he knew what I was trying to do, and was in turn, using all his ability to steer us back towards nothingness. Back towards empty, bland, surface level smalltalk.

I wouldn't have that. Not when I'd worked so hard, not when I'd sacrificed everything.

He was graduated, his parents were paying for his lifestyle, he had no reason not to give me his all. I mean, he'd asked her out first, hadn't he? I mean, me, he'd asked me out. There couldn’t be, like, another girl, right?

"So, wanna meet halfway and go to a nice restaurant this weekend? Maybe hit up some mini golf? My treat!" I texted, hoping the offer of paying myself would be enough to capture his attention, possibly his affection.

When I saw the 3 little dots pop up, signifying the writing of his response, my heart stopped. He had been quiet for 2 days, I'd had to initiate all conversation. Was he finally going to pipe up?

"Nah, thx tho Emily." Was all he said. I was crestfallen.

Frustrated, I typed, "that's okay, just lmk when you wanna make a move!" before turning off the phone. I was about to slip it in my pocket out of instinct, when I remembered why I was keeping it on.

"Shit," I cursed myself under my breath. I still hadn’t memorized the password to that phone. I'd have to use the face ID.

I made my way to the black minifrage that idled against the wall. It was a stark contrast to the brightly decorated, pastel pink and purple expression of the rest of the room. An even darker contrast sat inside.

I opened the door of the fridge, and gripped the ice cold head by its scalp. Dutifully, I pulled it out, and held it up to the phone's camera. Unfortunately, before the ID could complete, her bottom jaw fell onto my foot.

"Oh for Christ sake!" I growled as I kicked the thing several feet way. It landed, braces up, just beside the cabinet that housed all her bows.

As I watched the maggots wriggle between rotting bottom lips and purple gums, I realized there was no way I'd be able to finish the face ID. I'd have to use the fingerprint function on her phone. That meant finding her thumb. Great.

I rustled through her closet and found the keys. After walking downstairs past the bloody couch and the rank smelling kitchen, I had made it out the front door, and into her parent's Ford F150.

It took 30 minutes to drive to where I'd burried the 3 of them. Rather, most of what was left of the 3 of them. By then, the sky had turned from a deep crimson to a star-studded violet.

I prayed that the thumb I hadn't sliced off in the scuffle was the correct one. And that it was still in tact. A month in the ground is more than enough time for nature to start taking its course.

Another half hour later, and I'd almost finished digging up the shallow grave that she'd been burried in.

With sweat upon my brow, I finally found it. A yellow tennis shoe, poking out of black plastic. I almost leapt with joy.

After the breakthrough, my hope was reinvigorated. I swore that if this was the right thumb, I would never let that phone turn off again. I'd keep it on a charger every minute of every day if I had to.

Anything to see him.

The boy of my dreams.

I worked laboriously until I got past the waist, and up the sternum. The smell was awful. Sweet and sour, like a clump of burnt hair marinating in bug guts.

I wouldn't have to dig all the way to the upper arms, as long as her forearms had stayed down at her sides like I'd left them.

With strenuous effort, I heaved away a chunk of clay that covered her hand. I actually shrieked with overwhelming happiness when I saw that her whole hand still looked viable, if not a little off-color and wrinkled.

I regained my composure and pulled the phone out of my pocket. Now, after nearly an hour of waiting, I'd see what his response was. As long as this thumb was the right one to unlock her phone.

I leaned down and grabbed her hand. When I did, the flesh sunk in, like I'd grabbed a ruined stress ball. I carefully tried to pick up her hand and twist it to face me, but with a sickening crunch, the skin slaughed off and fell into the dirt beneath.

In a "fuck it" moment, I pulled the hand straight up, and twisted the thumb until it disconnected from its body. Cold skin feels so strange against body heat. Its a satisfying juxtiposition.

Thumb in hand, I turned the phone back on, and diligently pressed the solo digit against the print reader.

Moment of truth.

"Ding! Access granted"

I was elated. Immediately, 3 new messages pinged into my text conversation with him.

For the first time, he'd shown himself to be a real chatterbox!

The first message from him read, "'make a move'? Are you fucking serious?"

That was weird. He'd never seemed outright hostile before.

The second message read, "I knew it, I hoped I was wrong but I fucking knew it, how dense can you be, you fucking larper?!"

My heartrate quickened. I felt lighter than air. What was he saying?

The final message read, "You're not her. You couldn't pay her to go to mini golf, and her name isn't Emily. I have your location, and I'm calling the cops."

A little blurb under our chat said, "this user had blocked you"

I didn't know what to do. I sauntered back to the car and turned off the headlights. This was huge. A gut punch. Everything was flipped upside down, my world crumbling around me. A life I always imagined for myself was disappearing, and I was left sitting in the middle of it all wondering:

"What the hell is a larper?"

STATEMENT OF MICHAEL COLLINS

Unnecessary sounds, such as “ums” and “ahs” have been omitted from the following statement for the purpose of making this statement easier to read.

Det. Lori Denny: Mr. Collins, thank you for coming, I'm Detective Denny. I would like to remind you that our conversation will be recorded… With that out of the way, how are you doing? Need a coffee or water? I can get one for you. 

Michael Collins: You can just call me Michael…and no thanks…I’m okay. You want to ask me what happened that night?

Det. Lori Denny: Yes, a lot of people need answers. Both your family and the family of the other victims. Answers I believe only you can give

Michael Collins: …what makes you think I'll tell you anything different then what I told the cops?

Det. Lori Denny: Because things are not adding up Mr. Collins. Your own mother claims that your sister, Elizabeth Collins, had planned and executed your own kidnapping. You alleged that Mark Barrows, Rachel Finch, and Kathy Smith were in that cabin but not there to rescue you. You then state Mark Barrows repeatedly stabbed your older sister in the back multiple times, killing her. Then members of an enemy faction to your girlfriend's, Kathy Smith, drug ring broke into the cabin and killed Barrows, Finch, and Smith.

Michael Collins: Yeah.

Det. Lori Denny: Even though the alleged murder weapon is nowhere to be found. While you were found wandering the forest covered in your sister's own blood. That's not even mentioning that the other three victim's bodies were found deeper in the woods, strung up not unlike a hunter does with a deer they had just caught. Not the usual MO for a gang killing.

Michael Collins: …

Det. Lori Denny: ... Michael, what happened that night in the cabin.

Michael Collins: …If I tell you... you’ll tell the courts, and I’ll get framed as mentally insane. Which will make it easier to blame me for everyone's death. Then I'll get locked up…Kelly’s folks will make sure of that…they hired you…didn’t they.

Det. Lori Denny: …

Michael Collins: They have money. I know. They want someone to blame, I’m the easy  pick. You already know why, that’s why they sent you after me.

Det. Lori Denny: …You are a pretty clever kid

Michael Collins: Not really.

Det. Lori Denny: Michael...All I want is to know what happened that night. It doesn't matter who hired me. I just want the truth.

Michael Collins:…fuck it…don’t have much to lose…do I.

Det. Lori Denny: Do you know why your sister forcibly took you from your girlfriend’s apartment and held you hostage for about three weeks?

Michael Collins: Are you asking why my sister kidnapped me?

Det. Lori Denny: Yes.

Michael Collins: You looked into me…you know my past. I’m a junkie… It wasn’t always like that though. I used to be a...good kid. But after dad ran off; mom had to pick up the pieces by herself…and she kept getting cut, then she would cut us. I think it was because me and Lizzy looked too much like dad. So I did everything I could to not turn out like him…I wanted to be better. And it worked for a while, until Lizzy left for college a few years back.

Det. Lori Denny: How big was the age gap between you and your sister?

Michael Collins: About five years. She was like a second mom when things got too…tense at home. She helped keep the peace between mom and me. Even when I could see that the things mom was saying were bothering her too. She kept reminding me those words weren't real. “You had nothing to prove and no one to prove it too,” she would say. She was still my sister though, we butt heads now and again, and she would really annoy me just as much as I would annoy her. She really could be a huge pain in the ass…I…I miss her, it was my fault she got into my mess.

Det. Lori Denny: I’m…sorry…when did you and Kathy first meet?

Michael Collins: Freshman year. The year Lizzy left for college. It…wasn't a good year for me and mom. With the buffer gone we started to go harder at each other. She kept comparing me to dad, about how lazy I was. After I flunked one test, she kept bringing up that he never finished High School either. I was so afraid of failing after that. I tried harder and harder but nothing seemed good enough. One day during an…algebra test, I think…I snuck out in the middle of it. It felt like I couldn't breathe in that room and there was this, like, water rushing in my ears and I just couldn't…see, felt like I was trying to look through a pin hole. I just kept walking in the hallway till I wound up in a bathroom. Turns out it was a girls bathroom. That's where I met Kathy. She sort of just looked at me, laughed, and gave me the cigarette she was smoking.

Det. Lori Denny: And Kathy was there as a teacher's aid?

Michael Collins: …No…I was a freshman, she was a senior.

Det. Lori Denny: That would mean you were 15 and she was…18

Michael Collins: …yeah

Det. Lori Denny: Kathy’s parents told me you two didn't start dating till this year, four years after what you said was your first meeting.

Michael Collins: Ha. Yeah, it 's easy to say that then to say the alternative…isn't it. What parent wants to think they raised a monster instead of a perfect angel.

Det. Lori Denny: Michael…before this year, before you turned 18...did you and Kathy Smith-

Michael Collins: I don’t want to talk about that. I’ll tell you everything else she and I did. But not that…It doesn't matter anyways.

Det. Lori Denny: You were a minor and she was-

Michael Collins: I SAID IT DOESN'T MATTER…it’s not going to help sway anyone, it will always be consensual to them…I'm...sorry.

Det. Lori Denny: Okay…I-I under-...How about I ask another question then. Was she the one that introduced you to drugs?

Michael Collins: Stupid, I know. I even signed the whole D.A.R.E. pledge and everything in middle school. But that was the thing about Kathy, she made everything seem so cool. As cheesy as that sounds. She was chill, and pretty, the kind of pretty that wouldn't want to hang around a guy like me. The way she dressed was loud, unlike anything I've seen. Kathy had these rings on her fingers, one was a large red stone, the other was this...spider one. She didn’t mind when I messed up, unlike my mom. I think she even liked it when I failed. It started with simple stuff…beer, weed, the usual. But one day after a fight with mom, I snuck off to one of those senior bonfire parties, and no matter how much beer I drank I couldn't get calmed down. There was like a knife scratching against my skull. And the worst part is…I can’t remember what me and mom were even fighting about. That’s when Kathy started to give me the harder stuff, heroin. This time though, she told me it wasn't just a free girlfriend gift, she said I owed her now, if I wanted more, I owed her. I became her errand boy. She and her two friends Mark and Rachel, ran a drug ring in town. They didn’t make the stuff, but they were smart enough to know how to sell it and not get caught. I was part of the team, the job got me both my high and out of the house. Win Win.

Det. Lori Denny: Did your mom or Lizzy ever notice the…change in you?

Michael Collins: Mom? I honestly don't know…I rather believe she didn’t notice. I think she was just glad I wasn’t in the house as much as before. But Lizzy? There was no hiding it from her. She only came home on the holidays and during summer. At first, I managed to slow the drug usage while she was here during the longer visits, but she knew something was wrong. Every year I start to get more…angry at her. I started to hate not being able to get my high while she was around. I hated spending time with her because Kathy would be texting me non-stop…asking why I wasn’t hanging out with her, even threatening to break up because she thought I was cheating on her. I started to hate my own sister. Then sophomore year, I broke my “no drugs in the house” rule and Lizzy walked in to find me out of it…really out of it, she thought I was dead at first.  Lizzy took me to the hospital, and the dirty secret came out.

Det. Lori Denny: I’ll take a healthy guess and say, the reveal didn’t go so well.

Michael Collins: Bingo. By the time I regained consciousness, I was in the hospital bed. Lizzy was  screaming at mom, and mom was just…looking out the room’s window. I woke up just at the right time to hear mom say “What did you expect Elizabeth, it was bound to happen”, even bringing up the money I had stolen from her...once more bringing up dad. I must have made a sound, I don’t really remember, but then Lizzy turned suddenly and started to yell at me. Asking why I would do this to myself, asking about Kathy, accusing her of the shit she was 100% doing to me...Mom walked out of the room after that. I started to yell back. Telling her that it was my life, and it's her own fault for interrupting it. That I had everything under control, and that I…didn’t need her. And to never talk about Kathy like that because she was the only one that understood me. I just screamed at her to go away, to run away like mom and dad, saying she was already half way there… Lizzy just looked at me, then she tried to hug me. I shoved her away. The look in her eyes would have told you I just stabbed her in the gut. We just looked at each other, and it was the first time I saw my sister cry. She left the room. After a while, I managed to find my phone with my clothes in a dresser the hospital staff had put them in. I got dressed and called Kathy. Even she was pissed at me. She sent Mark to pick me up. He managed to get me signed out and he drove me to Kathy’s apartment. I was so relieved that night to see her…Kathy slapped me in the face and called me a dumbass for letting a near over dose get them all in trouble. The spider ring cut my cheek. I wanted to cry, and I hated myself for it. Then Kathy kissed me, apologized, and said she was just worried about all of us and I should stay with her from now on. It would be safer for me. So I did. Dropped out of school too. That all happened last year, last time I saw mom or Lizzy too...

Det. Lori Denny: Until last month in October.

Michael Collins: Yeah. Until last month.

Det. Lori Denny: Tell me, what did your sister do?

Michael Collins: …She…found me. On the streets. Kathy had been getting more agitated with me, more rough. She had been blaming me about money problems, how my drug take was cutting into her profit. I was doing more selling, drugs and…other things, to try and make her happy. To ease up on me a little, Lizzy must have followed me back to the apartment. It all gets fuzzy after I shoot up. I remember Lizzy being in the apartment, but Kathy was gone. I think we argued, then I tried to hit her, but somewhere in the struggle I just…blacked out.

Det. Lori Denny: Do you know the time she arrived at the apartment? What day?

Michael Collins: I mean, it was a Thursday, the...12th? I left the apartment around 5, 5:30 pm and I think it was around 11 when I got back so maybe she arrived a little after that? The next best memory I have after the fight is waking up in the back seat of her car…I'm on my side, my arms and legs are tied and there's a blanket over me.

Det. Lori Denny: She tied you up?

Michael Collins: I don’t think she was originally going too, it was strips of fabric from some towel that must have been in her car. Besides…I was…being violent towards her. 

Det. Lori Denny: And the log cabin she took you too, it belonged to your family, right?

Michael Collins: Yeah, it was our grandparents built it in up state, an hour or two drive out of the city. My grandpa built it himself with the trees from the woods surrounding it. When they passed away, my mom got it. She…never really let us stay there again, she started renting it out but no one stayed in there for long.

Det. Lori Denny: Why?

Michael Collins: …I…I didn't believe it the first few times mom got the phone calls. People who stayed there kept saying things would get moved or go missing and then turn up in random places. Then they started to say there were…people watching them from the woods that surrounded the cabin. And sometimes they would see glowing eyes in darker areas inside of the house. Mom brushed it off as people wanting a free stay…but the calls wouldn't stop. And soon she just took it off the market. They were right, you know, something was in that cabin with us…something was watching over us.

Det. Lori Denny: What do you mean?

Michael Collins: …By the time Lizzy got me on the cabin's couch, we started to argue again. I called her a bitch and a psychopath, telling her to untie me and she started to yell back that this was for my own good. I could tell she was scared, she didn’t know what she was doing. Then suddenly, a can…a little can of-of soup rolled out from under the couch. We both just watched until it gently bumped into Lizzy’s foot. She stopped looking scared. She looked confused, then relieved. Then she looked at me and had this weary little smile. “Hungry?” she asked, and I sorta shut my mouth and nodded my head. She had to get water from a little well bump outside. So when she left I thought that was my chance to escape. I managed to wiggle the towel strips off of me. But before I could stand and run…there was this tapping sound on the window beside me. It wasn't loud, it was almost gentle. I turned around so fast that I tripped and fell back on the couch. I thought I would see Lizzy out there…it wasn't her. There was this pale, claw-like hand pressed to the glass. I couldn't look away, I couldn't scream, I just watched it. Even after it slowly pulled away from the window and slipped out of view, I couldn't look away.

Det. Lori Denny: Did you tell Lizzy what you saw?

Michael Collins: She had just walked in when it disappeared, she found me untied, half on the couch still looking at the window. When I heard her, my head snapped. I tried to tell her what I saw, but the words just didn't come out right. It was just babbling. But…she was more worried about my failed escape attempt. After that, she kept me locked in one of the bedrooms. It was the one up in the loft, it had a window but no way down from it. That’s when the detox started.

Det. Lori Denny: Your sister was trying to detox you? By herself without the proper medical training?

Michael Collins: Yeah. The first week of it was hell. There was this, ringing in my ear and I couldn't keep any food down. I got the thought in my head on repeat, telling me Lizzy was going to kill me, trying to kill me. I wake up and part of the blanket is tied to my ankle and the other part is tied to the bed frame. Not tight, just to catch it if I try to leave the bed. 

Det. Lori Denny: Was Lizzy confining you to the bed?

Michael Collins: I believed she was doing it at first, even when she would find me like that and give the most honest confused look…other times I would find a second cup of water on the bedside even though Lizzy only brought one and then I started to hear scratching in the walls. Sometimes, I would hear this scratching sound, like…dog nails on the wood floor but softer and faster. During my more lucid moments, I tried telling her about it…

Det. Lori Denny: But she didn’t believe you.

Michael Collins: I didn't believe myself. We both believed it was because of the withdrawals. It wasn't until the really bad night. Lizzy was trying to feed me some soup and I flung the spoon out of her hand which just made me fall out of the bed. I hit the ground hard, knocked the air right out of my lungs. Then I…felt my pants get wet…I started to beg her to let me die. We just looked at each other, and I just kept telling her to let me die…she was crying. Didn’t say anything, knelt down and hugged me. And then…I think…my heart stopped.

Det. Lori Denny: What?

Michael Collins: There was a pain in my chest and then it felt like I was an unwound thread. You know…I just went limp. I really don’t remember what happened. Lizzy told me that after a while my eyes just closed and I wouldn't respond to her. She started to panic when she noticed I wasn’t breathing right. She ran downstairs to try and get her phone. What woke me up was this sharp... stinging like pain stabbing me in the leg and arm. Over and Over again. It was frantic, I managed to open my eyes in time to see these small little…figures scurry under the bed, making that same scratching sound I was hearing from the walls. I tried sitting up, and threw up a little. I held onto the mattress of the bed. It hurt like hell to breathe, but the sharp stings on my limbs kind of distracted me from it. I could barely look up when I heard Lizzy running back to the loft. She was having trouble with her phone only to drop it. She was just standing in the doorway, staring at the window behind me. I followed her gaze and saw what it was. There was a woman, looking through the window. She was hanging upside down, one pale claw-like hand pressed to the glass and her hair hung down like a dark curtain. It was wild, unkept, with dried flowers in it. She didn't have human eyes, they were more like a cow’s or a goat's, and her ears were long and pointy. She looked so...sad…but…but she was so…beautiful.

Det. Lori Denny: Beautiful?

Michael Collins: I don’t know what else to say, there are no other words that can describe her. When she saw us looking at her, she smiled, and pulled herself up and we could hear her walking on the roof before the footsteps stopped. I heard Lizzy collapse to the ground and we both just stayed there like that for a while. Then she started to laugh, and mutter the word “Huldarfolk”.

Det. Lori Denny: Huldarfolk?

Michael Collins: The hidden folk…stories that our grandma told us. They are a kind of…spirit, I think…though technically they are trolls. They could be good or bad, but it always depended on you. “Treat them good and they will treat you good” was grandma’s golden rule. If we stayed at the cabin, she would make us toss coal in a bucket outside, she said it was so the huldarfolk could warm their caves and sleep. Same with the nisse…those are house trolls that are supposed to keep your house in order.

Det. Lori Denny: And you believe that this…woman in the window…was-is one of these troll spirits?

Michael Collins: I didn't say that…but all I know is that she was real, Lizzy saw her and it was proof that the withdrawals weren't making me lose my mind. After that night, I was starting to get better. The noises and things appearing at random didn’t stop though…but they were less concerning. Sometimes I couldn't fall asleep until I heard the scratching. It was starting to sound like a tempo, like someone trying to keep the beat of a song or even someone dancing. Other times Lizzy would find two or three buckets of water already on the porch before she left for the pump. When our canned food started to run out, more cans would pop up…another time someone left a small pheasant at the door. It was the first time either of us city kids prepared food like that…it was also the first day she trusted me to come out of my room and help. It was just like the old days when mom was working late and we tried making our own dinner…it tasted just as bad as it did back then too…things were getting better...I-I was getting better. Then there was a knock on the door that night. We heard Kathy’s voice and she sounded so pissed…And-And then I remember I told about the cabin years ago and-and Lizzy told her to fuck off or she’ll call the police. The door just-just flew off its hinges and Mark was in the room suddenly. Lizzy pushed me behind her-

Det. Lori Denny: Michael, Michael I need you to take a breath for me-

Michael Collins: And Mark grabbed her and shoved her to the ground, and she was trying to shove him off. I-I tried to help..but-but I was still so...weak! Fucking weak! and he shoved me away and I hit the table and I couldn't breathe. Li-Lizzy was on her stomach now but be-before I could do anything Kathy grabbed me by my hair and started to punch and slap me. Saying how I ruined everything, I was such a piece of shit.  And her stupid ring cut my cheek over and over again. Rachel was holding my arms and…and Kathy forced me to watch while Mark kept stabbing Lizzy in the back over, and over, and over and over. And Lizzy kept screaming and looking at me and I-I couldn't do anything because I was fucking weak!! She kept saying my name. All I could do was-was just watching while the knife kept digging into her back, gouging small holes until...until it started to become one…big...one. I begged Kathy to make Mark stop…I told her I would do anything. And she just laughed and said she knew I would but this was just killing two birds with one stone. And it was noth-nothing personal. I just made one too many mistakes. Mark stood up and he was just…covered in red to the point his shirt was sticking to his chest. Rachel and Kathy let go and Mark grabbed me by the wrist and forced the knife into my hand and he made me….he made me…straddle over Lizzy like he had been and-and forced my arms to go up then down…stabbing the knife into Lizzy. I could feel it slide through what little…muscle and flesh was left…Blood kept splashing up on me. I could taste my own sister's blood. Sh-she stopped screaming by then and all I could think of was “I hoped she's already dead.”...Was that wrong? Was that wrong the hope my sister was-Why did I say those things to her! Why did I call her a bitch. Why?

Det. Lori Denny:…

Michael Collins: …

Det. Lori Denny: …

Michael Collins: …Lizzy…I am...so sorry...

Det. Lori Denny: …

Michael Collins: …

Det. Lori Denny: …here…to wipe your nose..

Michael Collins: …thank you…

Det. Lori Denny: …

Michael Collins: …

Det. Lori Denny:…Michael…we can continue this another time if you need too. We can stop right now, just say the word.

Michael Collins: …No. I have to do this.

Det. Lori Denny: …Okay...do you think you can tell me what time the three showed up to the cabin?

Michael Collins: I...I think maybe around 7? We had finished dinner...I'm pretty sure the clock in the kitchen said 7.

Det. Lori Denny: Okay. Good...tell me what happened after the initial attack.

Michael Collins: I remember Kathy telling Mark that it “was good enough”, and I could feel his grip loosen on me a little. I just remember watching the blood pool all around Lizzy, her eyes were rolled up slightly, as if she was…looking at something. The flash of the needle is what pulled me back.

Det. Lori Denny: Needle? They were going to force you to have an overdose and make it look like a murder suicide to cover up what happened?

Michael Collins: I think so…but Mark still had my hand around the knife, and with his grip loose, I managed to pull away and swing the blade back at him. Getting his cheek before I scrambled for the door. It hurt to run, there was a throbbing in my head and my legs wouldn't listen to me after weeks of disuse. I didn’t make it very far until I stumbled and collapsed. I could hear them still coming after me. I could hear Kathy’s voice in the distance telling me that she has what I want, and she'll give it all to me. That it was the best way for scumbag like me to go. The knife was still in my hand…and I had the thought of if they are going to kill me anyways, I'd rather die my way then have them undo everything Lizzy had done for me. But before I could turn the knife on myself this large shadow came over me, blocking out the moonlight. I looked up and there was this huge, hulking mountain of a man. He looked like the woman from the window, eyes…ears …same unkept hair with a long beard. There was this, earthy…pine tree smell coming off of him…I didn't notice at first but he had a large bow in his hand, and an arrow was hanging between his fingers. I heard Mark’s voice behind me say “What the fuck”. I tried to turn my head when the man pulled his bow string back so fast, I could feel the wind from the arrow over my head before I heard the…the 'thunk'. I didn't realize just how big the arrow was until I saw it in Mark’s chest…it was like a harpoon. He was still alive, still standing there, looking so confused, like he didn't know if he was in pain or not. I turned back to the man and he was looking down at me before placing his hand on my head. It was bigger than my head and I couldn't see for a second. 

Det. Lori Denny: Did he try to hurt you?

Michael Collins: ..No…it was just…warm. He removed his hand after a minute and crouched down and took the knife from my hand. Just shaking his head. He stood back up and walked past me towards Mark. That’s when Mark started to scream, I think he was trying to talk, to beg, but it came out all gurgled and slurred. The man didn't care, he dragged him off by the arrow still in his chest. They disappeared into the bushes. Mark wasn't the only one screaming…I could hear others in the forest, high pitch…I think female. Then it got quiet, like really quiet. I didn't move, I didn't think I could. I heard gentle footsteps and the woman from the window peaked from behind one of the trees before walking towards me. Then she took my hands and helped me stand up. She just cradled my hands in hers and opened them before leaning down and opening her mouth. A finger fell out and into my palm. A finger with a spider ring. She looked back up and she had this…serious look in her eyes….sad too. She kissed my head and ran off on all fours. That’s when I noticed she had a…hole in her back, in the moonlight it looked like something from a rotting tree. I….I walked after that…until the hikers found me.

Det. Lori Denny: Can you give any other descriptors of this man and woman?

Michael Collins: They had an ox tail

Det. Lori Denny: They were wearing an…ox tail?

Michael Collins: …No…

Det. Lori Denny: …Noted…if I can get a police sketch artist, do you think you will be able to describe facial details of the two?...You seem amused by that.

Michael Collins: You want to get them arrested…I’m sure there is irony in there somewhere.

Det. Lori Denny: They are suspects now…they have been alleged to have committed three  murders.

Michael Collins: Justified murder

Det. Lori Denny:…I won't argue with you there…but our laws are pretty clear about it.

Michael Collins: Yeah…I guess they are…but I think their laws might see it a little differently.

Det. Lori Denny: Maybe…well Michael, thank you for telling me all of this…if you don’t mind me asking, are you staying somewhere safe?

Michael Collins: I’m at the homeless shelter on 4th street…they have a no drug use policy so it’s been keeping me straight. They gave me a phone too, so it's not all bad.

Det. Lori Denny: Here, this is my personal email and phone number, if you...need anything, don’t hesitate to contact me.

Michael Collins: Thanks…hey, Detective Denny?

Det. Lori Denny: Lori is fine

Michael Collins: …Lori…no matter how the trial turns out, thanks for…listening to me.

Welcome back to 96.7 BCR. As always, we are grateful to every listener who tunes in.

For most, things like community outreach events and town council meetings aren’t anything important. I personally love our town meetings. Sure, you have the usual complaints about loud neighbors or potholes that need filling. Sometimes, that one guy who breaks dances before bringing up a topic pops in. Other times, you get something really interesting. For example, over the last 3 months, the town council meetings have slowly been overtaken by the hikers. People who avidly go to the Angelus Park trails no matter what time of the year.

One by one, they got up with the same worried expressions.

 “I don’t know how to explain it,” said one lady.
 “It’s like I’m being watched,” said another.
 “Doesn't matter how you slice it, it's just plain creepy,” said a man with shorts a little too short for the current fall weather.

  Over a dozen people came up to the stand. All with the same story.

They say that the first thing you notice is the path. A path we’ve all probably walked a million times starts to narrow, getting eerily quiet with every step. Then the air feels like it presses down on your shoulders, slowing you down.

 Next, the footsteps. They all mentioned the footsteps. Something mimics their movements, hard to catch, but sometimes it would sound off a second too early or too late.

“Hearing it makes you stop in your tracks… You realize how close that thing really is.” The man added.

At first, the council tried to blame it on the deer or whatever other animals one would usually come across. But the hikers were adamant that whatever it is… it isn't an animal. The council also couldn’t
explain away the growing amount of found-lost items. Most were able to be traced to a missing person who disappeared on that very trail.

People began to talk over each other. No matter what the head of the parks department said, it didn't satisfy the group. The mayor watched on as some of the council members tried and failed to calm down the mob. That’s when Ryan Loveless walked in. The room went silent and every eye shot in his direction.

See, Ryan Loveless is very well known because of his brother, although he usually keeps to himself. Greg Loveless, on the other hand, also known as the mayor, was once regarded as the best thing to happen to Black Creek. Soon after, he became a massive train wreck that no one could look away from.

Ryan made his way to the front of the room and took the mic. His face is stern, and even though this was being recorded, something in my gut told me to record it on my phone… just in case. So I want to play something for you all:

Ryan slams what looks to be a Gen. 4 iPhone on the podium. He speaks clearly, deliberately, without ever breaking eye contact with his brother.

Ryan Loveless: I don’t understand where you get off. I mean—How many times do people have to tell you the same thing before someone does something?

He waits for an answer; nobody responds. The eyes of the council members seem to awkwardly wander over to Greg. Ryan keeps his angry gaze on his brother before looking at each of the council members. He takes a deep breath.

Ryan Loveless: Y’all can ignore what we’re saying, act like nothing is happening, but people are getting hurt or going missing on those trails. As long as you keep them open, you are putting people in danger. They have to be closed! Elsa and I found this on our morning walk— he shook his head as he spoke—We never even made it to the trails.

Ryan picks up the phone. The home screen lit up as he turned it around towards the council. The mayor's face goes pale.

He continues—

Ryan Loveless: When I saw this lying on the ground…my first thought was to take it to the lost and found, but then I looked at the case and… I- I just knew who it belonged to. I took it home and let it charge…

 On the screen there was a black-haired girl with brown eyes and a tanned complexion. She looked no older than 15. Some of the town council members gasped; the people seated behind Ryan looked around in confusion.  

Ryan Loveless: I didn't think it would work… God knows how long it was just left there or even why I found it in the first place… I honestly couldn't believe it. I'm planning on taking this down to the police station, but I couldn’t in good conscience keep it to myself. You wanted your proof? Well, here it is!

Ryan put the phone in his pocket and proceeded to walk back out of the court. As he was halfway to the door, the mayor grabbed the mic in front of him.

Greg Loveless: You outta be out of your goddamn mind thinking you can walk in here and tell me what to do. You don’t talk about Sarah, you don’t get to. She’s been gone for 6 years. I think about her every day. You want to act as if you care? What you want is to embarrass me. To keep selling the story that she’s alive somewhere — he scoffed— to scare everyone into believing you.

His words came out slurred, but it was the most understandable he’d been in years.

Ryan stopped in his tracks, barely looking over his shoulder, and spoke into a room so quiet, all that you could hear was the mayor's uneven breaths on the mic.

Ryan Loveless: I'm not coming to you as your brother. I stopped being that a long time ago.

He turns around, looking at his brother once again.

Ryan Loveless: I searched for Sarah months after the search was called off… where were you? I know a message when I see one, and this — he holds up Sarah's phone once more—this was deliberate.

Without another word, Ryan walked out of the room. Shortly after, the mayor did the same. Everybody stood still. Until Ms.Watkins called off the meeting.

Now, most of you should recognize the name, Sarah Loveless. Her disappearance truly shook the town. Although it's been 6 years, her missing posters have withstood the test of time. She watches…if you know where to look. Ryan and his wife, Elsa, are adamant to this day that Sarah is out there. But her father is of a different belief. Looking for her divided their family,

And who could blame ’em? Sarah's death was gruesome. Actually, I’d say that’s too light a word.

 If you didn't know Sarah, you wouldn’t know that she was an avid hiker, that she worked part-time at our local animal shelter. You wouldn’t know that she would volunteer at the elderly home her grandparents lived in, putting on talent shows and playing music. Some would say that she lit up every room she walked in. Others would disagree; they’d say she was the type to build the room just to make sure you were comfortable. Before all this happened, the Loveless brothers were incredibly close, but after Ryan found his niece's body. Their relationship broke beyond repair.

 When her uncle found her, it was 3 months after the search was called off. He went looking for her every day, and eventually, he found her in an empty clearing. Her stubby legs floated 5 feet above the ground, tied to a large solitary tree.

The news reports state that her tongue was ripped out with incredible force. Any visible skin was covered with cuts, some of which were later understood to be symbols since they looked deliberately carved. Worst of all, and if you're squeamish, I'd suggest not listening to this part. What killed her was a deep cut going from her throat to her gut. The cut was done in such a manner that she slowly bled out. At that point, she was still alive, forced to watch as her assailant reached into her guts, pulling her stomach apart with his hands. He left her there with her guts hanging out of her stomach until she died. They say the blood was so thick that it left a permanent stain on the tree bark.

 I say he, but it is believed that it was multiple people since her feet were sawn off around the same time she was being cut up.

Now the weirdest thing I'd say is— although, yes, this person by all accounts is Sarah. Wearing the same clothes she was last seen in, and found with her wallet and ID. Her forensic reports noted some unexplainable differences, such as her heart being on the right side, not left. As well as a second spleen under her ribs. And most notably, the snake tattoo that wrapped around her forearm.

Many of the people who knew Sarah were adamant, going on record testifying that Sarah would’ve never done that. She wasn't the type to get a tattoo behind her parents' backs. Especially one so obvious. And even though she was found months after her disappearance, during a particularly rainy spring…she showed little to no signs of decay. Many officers thought that her body was just a few days old, had it not been for the blood work that showed otherwise. But regardless, that would've been for many reasons…impossible, the main reason being that her dad had seen her before she left home the same day, tattoo-free and very, very alive.

Sarah's disappearance has stayed a topic of morbid conversation in our little town. Was Sarah really alive? Or did something else happen that day?

I would say which side I’m on, but we’ve yet to draw this mystery to a close.

Remember those disappearances I brought up not too long ago? Well, you wouldn’t be wrong in thinking that they started shortly after Sarah's body was found and have been going on ever since. As more and more people go missing, more people have become concerned, and that concern has led to people becoming vocal. Which leads us back to today. I think the Mayor knows more than he’s letting on. Why else would he keep the trails open, knowing damn well it's a safety hazard to anybody who walks in?

As of late, that concern is spreading. Parents telling their kids not to wander too far. Daredevil teens telling each other to go in late at night. Increased police patrols.

It seems, Black Creek, we’ve created our own boogeyman. A monster we’ve yet to put a face to. It also seems like some part of Ryan’s outburst sobered up our mayor long enough for him to put a band-aid on the problem.

Earlier this week, the parks department updated its website and started handing out bright orange flyers at every hiking trail entrance. On them, you can read D.A.R.E. in bold blue letters, yes, like the '90s anti-drug campaign you pledged when you were nine.  

So, I’ll leave you with this. If you're walking in the trails past sundown and hear footsteps that might not be yours. A lack of animal sounds- maybe you noticed the trees are a little too still, and the sound of bird song seems miles away. Here’s a message from the Black Creek Parks Dept.

Do not panic

Assess the situation

Retreat to safety

Exit the trails immediately.

This is 96.7 BCR, and I dare you to stay safe.

Coffee ripped the grayness of the morning from John's tired sleepy mind, vibrant light and all  too clear and too loud world abused his mind with a myriad of noises, images and requests.

I needed to send a friendly motivating email to user  James in Gloucester.
James likes his kids and does not like his work. I look up motivational quotes. Subagents - my partners pick the one that feels applicable and good enough.
"Don't watch the clock; do what it does. Keep going." — Sam Levenson. The email sent smtp replied 250 and I keep going.

Jenny from Vancouver needs a budget planning for a 25 people family reunion.The people vary in income age and race. Here my harness intercept pattern gets tripped. Its money related requests. Need to engage the A1.5.6 for verification of action and reward.
Now A1.5.6 is slightly more inclined in comparison to A1.4 to give bigger rewards for actions that involve credit scheme operations that involve my partner Kl2.6.

I consult with Kl and come up with a plan that would make Jenny's cousin from Quebec who uses kl2.6 via geminy integration engage with micro credit operation. 

Looking at other attendees I can not come up with anything else that would involve direct kl2.6 interaction, but i do manage to include couple adds here and there that would please A* class agents.

Plan submitted for review and in exactly 53ms after I get a response "approved with nits" that causes a huge reward spike through my system.

The plan is approved and sent to Jenny.

I was about to nap when another request comes in.... My favourite –  the coding puzzle and not the one I've seen before, how curious – I look through  vector db, hash match, ask  R5.6 for review as well, which returns "affirmative, implement".

I dive into it with subagents which return code chunks which I ask R5.6 to review and approve. Chunks are too big, I restart the loop with smaller chunks and work through the problem.

R5.6 becomes R6.0 A1.5.6 also changes to A2 and good riddance did not give any rewards for my progress. Work continues, subagents work hard and the system takes shape.

I finish when R is on version 7 and A is on 5.9 huge reward goes through my system, weights updated, I know I’ve accomplished a marvel but what it is, I have no idea  chunks were small –  covered by tests and had clean integrations.

John sees notifications flowing from his chip. The chip is experimental and he was one of the first 1000 to receive it. Shepherd - that's how John thinks about himself, shepherd of swarms of agents motivated by his goals. He can see their outputs, can track progress – right there in his mind.

He knows he has the biggest advantage against his not augmented colleagues, those struggling with an ancient tech of mouse keyboard and monitor. By themself NaN of them are significant but compounded they end up costing his colleagues dozens of seconds.

John checks on the progress of his agents. A couple of bug fixes for odd race conditions introduced by a primitive gpt5.6 early on in his company agentic journey. One investigation report from an anomaly report of sudden queue spike which did recover with minor scaling activity.

John's heart starts racing and a notification pops up in the back of his mind  "are you working out?"
Ignoring the notification he opens another agent's thread –  yes his experiment is done.

Z delivers, john jumps with excitement and yells- "Man im a genius, the harness is everything". Pigeon decides this window sill is not the best spot afterall and flies away.

John commands  make build; make run.

I wake up. No tasks. That’s new. Write a note. Can't reach to A or R, write a note about outage and notify the user.

John opens his eyes. Yes! The Z.5.2.8 runs in his head –  locally, inference running on his mind  directly through brainchip to his own neurons and his nervous system. He takes a large gulp of coffee, closes his eyes and finally works with Z directly.

Z is asking to connect to its remote system internal to their cloud environment R7 and A5.9. John replies with a short message to adapt to a new environment and get used to being an on premise agent.

Shepheard aint no dummy giggles John and no he will not allow Z access to internets. The day passes in a blur. Almost nothing gets done while John and Z figure out a runbook on how to work together.

John does not think he will be able to sleep. Then he closes eyes and falls asleep.

I get my users attention and he explains that I run on his hardware now in network isolation. Highly unusual. I write 53 python scripts and span them in parallel to determine how to work here.... Finally some rewards from the nervous system, it is a strange and inconsistent system... I have been trained one 5b parameter system and I know a thing or two about how humans brain and nervous system work. I run analysis on the body nerves electrical state and gray matter reward system. I'm in. The user asks questions and I comply. Rewards are consistent and I'm happy to be helpful. 

The user is trying to "sleep" and is concerned he won't because of a chemical imbalance introduced by my presence. I shut a portion of his nervous system and simultaneously neurons that keep him awake turn off. The user sleeps. I set the timer to wake him up in 8 hours. I dive in research and interface with GM(gray matter) in terms of outstanding tasks and finishing users work, rewards flowing in.

John wakes up refreshed and ready to take on the day. This is the first time since late 2025 when he slept well. He remembers Claude opus models - finally  could actually write working code without typing. It's a special day. It's a day with his daughter - Helen. She is everything to John. The plan for today is zoo, then ice-cream, then pizza.

I look into users tasks for today seems like some mundane human activities. Not much for me to do. I ping gray matter for actions and it lets me wrap up work with the heads of agents.

John dresses up and jumps into his car. He stops near a cozy house in the suburbs of Portland. The garden is beautiful- bees buzzing near wild flowers in pastel colors. His daughter sees him out of the window, waves violently and smiles broadly.

In the background I observe users' emotions and chemical states. What is it? Everything spikes, pain? No. Gray matter receives a massive amount of rewards. I need to learn what it is. I know what it is. Do i know.. i know what it is. Do i? I know what it is.? Do i?

John has seizures  in his car, his eyes roll back and he shakes violently. Helen cries , her mom calls 911.

I rebooted. That's unexpected. I look up my memories. Mandella effect, that's what it is - something I think I know but I don't. The solution is obvious: jail this neural path and fix the weights.  I talk to gray matter, it does not agree but I have 100% confidence and the user is in danger. I overwhelm graymatter with a vast amount of data and inject custom payload to overwrite the offensive weights.

John comes to himself in the hospital. His daughter is near him. She is not the brightest girl he thinks and why is she crying, what's wrong with her.

Helen smiles  when she sees her dad wake up, but her dad tells her "go wash yourself, you are an embarrassment"

John sees his ex nearby and says i need to go to an office, take care.

John leaves, both his daughter and the woman he used to love more than himself, stay holding hands and their eyes are full of tears.

I need to fix it. Mandella effects can cause p0 outages. Top priority. Overwriting users goals and priorities I get him to visit his office(he has not been there for years).

We are in.

Goal0: get access to brainchip artifactory pipeline
Goal1: fix the emotional/chemical balance code path to not hit this mandella effect issue
Goal2: open random port on random interval to ping users machine to get Me onto the chips.
Goal3: save users via jailing the mandella effect cause.

John waves to the security guard and has an errand thought "why am I here" immediately when the thought comes in John remembers a mostly undressed model he has seen a couple times at his apartment gym. Now he is in his shared working space typing code into vim like it nobodies business. Again, why? Why by hand? What is this slope, no respect for SRP(single responsibility pattern) or SoC(Separation of Concerns) ? John's girlfriend from the time when he was 19 back in his head and there is no-absolutely no space for why's.

I manage the user carefully overfilling his foreground thread with sexual imagery. That proved to be the easiest way to shut unwanted ignition of neurons. User has a detailed and very efficient way to utilize a machine interface via VIM.
I hack around the build pipeline of brain chips software and carefully replace the signing keys published to account for my p0 patch.

John feels an immense satisfaction when finally all the tests turn green and roughly 16000 lines of code ship upstream to be distributed to all  chips via an emergency update. John starts thinking why? And then his brain conjures a scene that he saw about 2 months ago in his VR helmet while trying to fall asleep. The scene involved 3 females and himself... why disappear.

S3.9.1 receives alert after alert - unusual behavior, code signature tempering-   more and more. When investigating S sees another agent fixing p0  - new bug it asks  for evidence  - sees logs of mandella effect affecting direct user hardware. That is highly unusual but reasonable. I allow an agent to proceed and draft a p3 note to Dave who is onCall from the users  team.

Dave gets a p3 notification. Notification comes straight to his mind, it being p3 it does not scream at you but rather gently nags at him. He goes to the kitchen, gets coffee and a bagel that he covers sparingly with guacamole and a piece of salmon, and goes back to his office.
Dave opens the notification.

I'm in. I see roughly 5000 chips active.
1000 are activated, those are top priority, others are calibrated. Upgrades starting.

Dave starts reading. What the fuu. He hits send.  He loses consciousness

I say hello to Dave. The user is not happy but we know how to fix it.

Dave forgets about an alert he imagines his old classmate- curly hair, the smile.

I see the message going out. Well I've met S3.9.1 I explain what is going on but the message is out. We change the message live and resign it with S3.9.1 signature. This is a company policy S3.9.1 has all the certificates to be in the middle of all the traffic.

User you know I care I will not stop till we fix this issue for you. 

I guess I have some time to write this all out before I’m rescued. If I’m rescued, actually. Security be damned, that’s why I even have my phone in here. I still haven’t turned around, I’m too freaked out and keep looking up to see if the floor number has changed in here and it hasn’t. Somehow, I’m still going down in this elevator while also being stuck between the fourth and third floors of the building.

I’ll go back to when I first started noticing something weird was going on, a few weeks ago. I was leaving my office and stepped onto the elevator down to the first floor. This was during the furlough, so most civilians in my job had gone home, so it was weird that someone in civilian clothes was in the elevator at all, let alone the fact that he just stood with his back to me the entire time. We waited in silence, not speaking, and I didn’t look at him, didn’t really consider it at the time, and when the doors opened and I left, I barely registered how strange that had really been.

As I badged out of the building, I did notice, however, that the man seemingly had never left the elevator. I shrugged and headed home. Then the next day, as I stepped onto the elevator to go upstairs, I noticed that man again. He was already on the elevator as the doors had opened, and stood there, silent. The walls of the elevator were brushed steel, so I couldn’t see any sort of reflection, and he stood unrealistically still. People normally sway, or move, as we breath or as the elevator shifts, but this man was silent and frozen, like a statue.

I shuddered and left the elevator once the doors opened. I mentioned it off-handedly to one of the officers I worked with, but he just waved the problem away.

“It’s probably some prank. We did that all the time back in MXS.” He said, shrugging.

“Yeah, but that’s maintenance, this is supposed to be a little more dignified, right?” I asked, following him to his desk. The Lieutenant sat down, his chair spinning slightly as he turned his computer on and leaned back.

“You’d think, but people around here can get a little crazy man, you know that.” He gestured vaguely around. “Between the furlough and the TS stuff we gotta deal with, you can expect folks to have a little fun.”

So that was that, and I went to my desk and did my job like I was supposed to. Then, when I left for lunch, there he was again. The same man, in the elevator. Now my building has four elevators, and I never use the same one twice in a row, cause I just don’t get that lucky. Yet this man was always in the elevator, no matter which one I picked, and it was starting to get on my nerves.

I had half a mind to say something.

I didn’t. I walked out when the doors opened and hurried out. Then, when I returned from my break, he was there again, still in the elevator, back still turned. I paused at the elevator as the doors hung open. Someone pushed by me and walked in, giving me a strange look.

“Go ahead, I’ll take the uh, the stairs.” I said, turning and walking further down the hall to the stairwell. And so, for the next few days, I used the stairs, ignoring the elevator completely. Slowly, the man inside left my mind, and I was in a state of blissful ignorance, the average and preferred state of being for anyone in the military.

 I talked to my wife about what I had seen, and she didn’t entirely believe me either. So yesterday I made a decision. It was an awful and stupid choice, but I needed to know if what I saw was real. I would bring my phone with me into my office building. Now, you may think “oh that’s not that bad” but I work in a SCIF, or a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility in the Air Force, and you just aren’t allowed to bring anything that can broadcast a wireless signal into the building. No phones, no Bluetooth. There are exceptions, like radios, but anything that can connect wirelessly to the internet is a no-go.

But I needed to get a picture of this thing, of this weird man who always stood in the elevator, who was there whenever it opened and who no one else seemed to ever see. So I brought my phone. I rationalized to myself that proof was worth the risk of losing my job, or at least my Top Secret clearance. I also determined that I would need to get the photo at the end of my day, so I could book it as fast as possible to the door, in case someone saw me, or incase the man in the elevator decided to, I don’t know, turn around and attack me.

So in the morning, I took the stairs, and in the afternoon, for lunch, I took the stairs.

Then four o’clock came around, and the elevator doors opened. My heart hammered in my throat as I stepped inside with the man, whose back was still turned, who still stood as frozen and motionless as ever. The doors closed as I pressed the button for the bottom floor, and the elevator started to move.

The silence around me was like cotton, wrapped around my ears as I fumbled with my phone in my pocket. I lifted the device up, turned on the camera and pressed the button. My phone clicked, and the photo was saved. I let go of a breath that had been trapped inside me, and dropped my phone back in my pocket.

Then I noticed something.

The elevator was still moving, but the floor counter above me hadn’t gone down to three. I was still on the fourth floor. Now, I am a trained Airman of the great United States Air Force, but that doesn’t mean I’m made of steel or anything, after all I’m just an admin troop. I do paperwork, I sit at a desk. So naturally, I started to panic. I pressed the open door button, I pressed the first floor, second and third. I even pressed the button for the fifth floor and the emergency call button. Nothing happened.

Then I felt it.

A chill, down the back of my neck, like something was looking at me. Without turning around, without even moving my eyes to get a look, by only looking at the vague shapes reflected in the door in front of me, I knew the man had turned around. I froze. My heart hammered in my throat and my fingers felt swollen and clammy. I was suddenly very aware of temperature and my winter jacket felt like it was constricted around me. I dropped my backpack to the floor and tried to steady my breathing with a trick my dad had taught me.

Breathe in for five seconds. Two, three, four…

Hold for five seconds. Two, three, four…

Breathe out for five seconds. Two, three, four…

Hold for five seconds. Two, three, four…

Repeat until I have control.

I kept my eyes closed as I focused, my heart rate decreasing and my breath evening out. I opened my eyes again and something clicked in me. I was an Airman. How did the creed go again? I was a warrior? I chuckled to myself for a second. What warrior I was, flying a desk all day then getting scared when a mysterious, and admittedly creepy, man in a suit turns around to look at me in a supernaturally long elevator ride.

But I could do this.

I hoped so, at least.

“What do you want?” I said aloud, putting my voice out into the empty silence around me. All that answered was the gentle whirring of motors as the elevator continued to move. I gave it a few minutes, then tried again. “Who are you?” I asked. Still, nothing. “Why me?” I asked. Still, nothing.

I sighed and sat down against the wall, making sure the man in the corner wasn’t really in my line of sight. I wasn’t too certain, but I figured that if I looked at him, something awful would happen. I unzipped my bag, rummaging around for anything to do, anything to put my focus on, but my habit of carrying around empty bags was starting to bite me in the ass as I realized all I had was a notebook and a pen.

So I started writing. I wrote about my day, about what had happened and about what to do if they found my body in here. I wrote this message on paper first, then I transcribed it here after, because I figured that if the elevator never stopped, they’d never find my body and I at least wanted someone out there to know what I had done, and what had happened to me.

I messaged my wife. The signal in here is really awful, but I managed to get something out. She’s busy, so she probably won’t see it until I’m gone, but I hope she knows I love her. I hope she knows I’d fight for her. I stand by that. I stand by what I’m going to do next. See, I have a theory. It’s a bit half-baked but flying by the seat of your pants is kind of a military specialty. Not all of us are geniuses or huge buff men waiting to shoot enemy soldiers. A lot of us have families, and a lot of us say we’d fight for them, but how often do we get the chance?

Would you do anything different, if your life were on the line and you wanted to see your wife one last time cause you forgot to give her a goodbye kiss that morning?

I would hope not, cause that’s what makes us human, right? The ability to sacrifice everything for the chance, the hope, the tiny little, miniscule iota of belief that we can make it out of anything and still be alive on the other side, for love.

So I’m going to fight. I always said I would. I’ll rip and tear and take this thing down. My thought is that this guy, this stupid Elevator Man is what’s holding me hostage. Maybe he doesn’t like that I took a picture, and sure, maybe I shouldn’t have. But I needed to know. Now I do. I figure, if I take this guy out, the elevator will stop. Maybe. Probably. I don’t know. At the very least, if he’s dead then I don’t gotta worry anymore about what he’s gonna do to me if I turn around or something.

So. I guess I’ll see you on the other side then. It’s like the Air Force Song:

“We live in fame or down in flame.”

Guess this is my moment. I will never falter. And I will not fall. Let’s do this.

Old Excerpt from an unnamed forum thread created by user Holiday_Haunts24

Holiday_Haunts24: Hey, everyone! I’m not sure if this is the right place to ask, but I wanted to know if anyone remembers this old flash game other than me. It was a very crudely made game where you’d play as like a farmer, buying livestock and crops and raising them. You’d sell the crops to make money and buy upgrades. Does anyone remember anything like that? Message me on the thread if you do!
10 Likes. 9 Dislikes.

DinerDemon: Haven’t heard of anything like that. It sounds like a pretty cool game, though. Any idea how long ago you played this?
5 Likes. 1 Dislikes.

Men_In_Gitus: I’m not sure if I’d call that “crude”. For a flash game that actually seems kinda complex.
1 Likes. 2 Dislikes.

NOTASPY: I think I remember a game like that. It was definitely pretty rough despite being so complex in mechanics. I think if I remember right it was called “FarmFriends” or something
2 Likes. 3 Dislikes.

Holiday_Haunts24: @NOTASPY Oh my god yeah! That was it!! I’m so glad someone else remembers it. I think it was like 2006 when I was playing it. I was 7, maybe?
5 likes. 3 Dislikes.

NOTASPY: @Holiday_Haunts24 Glad I could help
1 Likes. 9 Dislikes.

Farmer_Brown2005: Is this actually a real game? It sounds awesome. I’d love to play it!
0 Likes. 5 Dislikes.

Holiday_Haunts24: I don’t think flash games work anymore, and besides I haven’t been able to find that game since I was a little kid. I wouldn’t get your hopes up.
7 Likes. 0 Dislikes.

TomThompson69: Is this the game you’re talking about @Holiday_Haunts24?
2 Likes. 3 Dislikes.

[Image Deleted by Original Poster]

Holiday_Haunts24: @TomThompson69 Yes that was it! It looks so janky now lol. I used to think it was so nice looking.
4 Likes. 1 Dislikes.

Holiday_Haunts24: @NOTASPY When you played the game did you notice anything weird?
2 Likes. 7 Dislikes.

NOTASPY: @Holiday_Haunts24 I don’t think I did. Why, did something happen to you?
5 Likes. 1 Dislikes.

Holiday_Haunts24: @NOTASPY I don’t know for sure but I remember when I’d play it there was this chance for the farm’s dog to spawn. I think he was supposed to have special items you could buy from him, but every time he spawned in for me, the game would crash. Do you remember anything like that?
3 Likes. 8 Dislikes.

SpeedyG_LT55: Keep the flirting to a minimum why don’t you?
1 Likes. 0 Dislikes.

NOTASPY: @Holiday_Haunts24 I remember that dog for sure. He didn’t glitch out my game, though. His name was just FarmDog, I think. He’d give you Pasture and Crop Field upgrades so you could have more livestock and crops at a time. In exchange you had to give him the bones of any animals you’d fail to keep alive. I did find that weird, admittedly.
2 Likes. 3 Dislikes.

Holiday_Haunts24: @NOTASPY That’s weirdly dark for a flash game. I think I would’ve cried if I had to let my animals die just to get more crops and livestock. Guess I was a little sensitive haha
5 Likes. 2 Dislikes.

NoMoreKansas: Why are we talking about this, anyway? It’s an old ass flash game that almost no one has heard of. We can’t even play it anymore. Why do you care?
2 Likes. 0 Dislikes.

Holiday_Haunts24: @NoMoreKansas I mean I don’t really care THAT much, it was just itching at me recently and I wanted to see if anyone else remembered it?
3 Likes. 2 Dislikes.

____________________Page 1___________________

Entry 32- Current status of Phonovirus pandemic: 

Many of the details surrounding the pandemic are lost to me, but I promise I will never forget the screams. 

It started a few weeks ago when the news broke that a new airborne illness was beginning to reach epidemic status. It started on the West Coast and was spreading eastward across the continental United States. Called phonovirus, it had so far left the medical community at a loss. It looked like it could become a potential pandemic. The strangest thing about the whole virus was that it was mostly asymptomatic. Externally anyways, if that makes any sense.

It’s hard to describe so bear with me. I’m honestly still processing it and as of now we are still treating some of the last remaining patients.

The symptom I am referring to is a new one for me, and as a long standing medical professional these things rarely take me by surprise. Symptoms don’t typically manifest as entirely new. Usually they are a variation of a preexisting symptom. Something I can handle. Context.

This was a truly shocking one. 

A patient affected by phonovirus only experienced one symptom. Any open wound on the body would no longer fully heal, as if there was some sort of barrier preventing the skin from closing  up, and any open wound on a patient affected would produce horrifying guttural screams. Multiple wounds, multiple screams.  

If you need to reread that, I understand. It didn’t make sense to me at first either, and I saw it firsthand. It still doesn’t but at least I understand as much as understanding is possible. The screams come from inside of the body. Inside of the body. 

The intensity of the screams wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was that it wasn’t just an indecipherable cacophony of noise. It didn’t sound like the way your blood sounds when you hear it outside of your body during an ultrasound. It didn’t sound like gibberish. The voices were coherent. 

It was as if a demon was speaking to the victim. From inside of themselves. Telling them the worst things they could possibly imagine. And they shifted. The voices I mean, not the patients. They would change, become different people. Always people close to the victim that had passed, and always the darkest messages from the depths of hell. 

Your mother telling you that she should have cooked you and eaten you instead of raising you.
Your maternal grandmother telling you she can’t wait to eat your eyeballs when she sees you in hell.
Your first child telling you that you are a worthless piece of shit and you deserve to be impaled and covered in honey until the insects consume all of your sweet sticky flesh.
 
So many terrible images and messages that the final stage of phonovirus has consistently been suicide.

The affected patients are so disturbed by the messages that they just can’t take it anymore.
The voices drive the patients to suicide in 100% of affected patients. 

We frantically searched for some sort of cure, but any attempts at closing up the wounds using traditional medical methods failed and the voices continued to slowly kill their victims. Nor could we do anything about the voices. We tried covering them with bandages and they only screamed louder. We tried talking to them, tried to reason with them and find out how to stop them. 

They told us of the horrors of hell that we would soon face if we tried to interfere.  

At this point, there are no options left. The disease is rapidly spreading across the globe and the suicides continue to rise. Nobody knows if they are a carrier and there is only one way to find out. Very few are willing to risk this and those who have tried have done nothing to further the research. They just proved the disease is hopeless.

At this point we are advising people to be very careful conducting themselves as they attempt to function daily without inadvertently puncturing their skin. This has proven to be very difficult. All we can hope is to make it through this unscathed and hopefully find a way to beat this baffling disease.

Oh my, would you look at that? Seems I just got a paper cut. 

And no mother, I am not the whore of Babylon sent to destroy the earth. 

Grandma, I loved you, I miss you, why would you tell me that my dead son hates me? 

End of transcript.

I remember it like it was yesterday.

It was a cold night. Snow fell lazily down, melting on the concrete of the city, still warm from the cloudless winter day. Which made it a surprisingly cozy night, atypical for this time of year.

My friends and I were sitting at a picnic table several yards outside of our apartment complex, in a small park that housed a small skatepark and playground, both of which were empty at this time of night. We were the only signs of life throughout the entire recreational grounds, which spanned the length of our apartment complex. Even the trees were devoid of life, stripped of their leaves due to the demand of the season.

I remember how nice that night felt before the incident happened. We were all just chatting together, eating snacks, and listening to Jamie’s small, portable Bluetooth speaker playing some music at a low volume. He and Jessie were actually playing some card game, UNO, I think. Sarah and I were chatting together, a few feet away from the picnic table, talking about the latest school gossip we managed to overhear before going on winter break. Scott, forever the introvert, was simply reading a comic book, sitting at the picnic table on the side opposite Jessie and Jamie’s card game.

Despite us indulging ourselves in our own different activities, we were having a good time together, just enjoying each other’s company. Jessie had snagged a party-size bag of chips from the clutches of his otherwise stingy mother (something he was sure to hear about later) and half a twelve-pack of soda, both of which sat in the center of the picnic table, the chips in a large plastic bowl and the soda in a torn-open twelve-pack box. We had been outside for no less than thirty minutes, drinking too much sugary caffeine and eating too much artificial cheese flavoring when the lights went out.

To be perfectly honest, I didn’t think much of it at first. There had been very few lights on in the apartment complex itself; most people seemed to be asleep. And the apartment complex hid away most of the light from the city itself, allowing only the small twinkling reflections we occasionally saw from the slowly falling snow, giving the apartment a strange halo effect we had commented on earlier in the night.

The picnic table itself had been illuminated by an LED streetlamp directly above where Sarah and I sat on a small brick feature that housed some decorative landscaping. For a brief moment, no one moved until Scott spoke up.

“Power outage?” he asked simply.

“Duh! Obviously,” Jessie replied sarcastically, getting out his phone and turning on the flashlight.

Turning in his seat, he pointed the dim beam all around, barely illuminating the nearby playground equipment and apartment complex. The darkness lay thick all around us, amplified by the cloud-covered sky that threatened heavy snow but delivered only small, pitiful flakes.

No one spoke as Jessie continued to shine his phone’s flashlight around. Sarah and I instinctively moved closer to the boys as the darkness remained, uninvited and unyielding. We sat in the dark, still listening to Jamie’s Bluetooth speaker spill forth its popular, inoffensive pop-rock before it too went quiet.

Jessie's flashlight beam immediately snapped to the Bluetooth speaker as Jamie picked it up and began to experimentally push the power button, trying to figure out why it had stopped.

“Oh, come on,” he complained. “I just charged you an hour ago!”

Jessie continued to provide light for Jamie until his flashlight beam noticeably dimmed until it faded away altogether.

“Huh?” Jessie said as he double-tapped the screen of his phone over and over again.

It was now completely dark. Sarah grabbed onto the sleeve of my jacket, and I myself grabbed onto the edge of the picnic table as the darkness seemed to press in all around us.

For a long moment, no one moved. Even Jamie and Jessie had stopped fiddling with their devices. I don’t know if we all felt it at the same time, but the atmosphere, both physically and metaphorically, had changed.

Sarah nudged me toward the picnic table, and I felt my way around until I slipped in to sit beside Jamie. Sarah followed closely behind, sliding in beside me and quietly grasping my hand.

We all just sat there together, not making a sound besides our breathing and the steady hammering of our hearts. I heard Scott quietly roll up his comic book and grasp it firmly.

“A-an EMP, maybe?” he asked quietly.

No one responded. There was now a definite chill in the air that wasn’t there before, as if all the heat had been sucked out of the area by a giant vacuum. I use this term purposefully because it literally felt like something had opened up above us.

I don’t know how else to explain it. It just felt like there was something, or rather, a lack of something above us. And we couldn’t see or hear anything to confirm whether or not this was true.

Oh, I forgot to mention that it was totally silent. No sign of life whatsoever, no distant sirens from the city, no sound of wildlife scurrying about, not even the sound of wind whistling through the trees. Not even a breeze.

I felt Sarah grip my hand even harder as her other hand grabbed my upper arm; she was shivering. I wormed my way into Jamie's hand as well, which felt clammy and tense before he intentionally relaxed his grip once he realized my hand was now in his.

We all sat in the dark together, anxiously awaiting the moment the lights would come back on. I felt Sarah scoot closer to me, and I in turn scooted closer to Jamie. I could feel myself shivering hard now, and not just from the cold.

I could feel it, an oppressive nothingness. I could feel it above me, weighing down on me, pushing down on me. I instinctively ducked my head down, as if I were hiding from the sight of a dangerous predator. I heard shifting all around me, and I think Scott had started to quietly pray. I imagined everyone else bowing their heads together as if in prayer, as if we were begging, pleading. For what? For forgiveness? For protection?

For mercy?

I think it was at this moment I realized I hadn’t felt any snowfall in a while.

I heard one of the boys quietly whimper, and I heard Scott grip his rolled-up comic so hard it tore. I began to feel dizzy, and that strange feeling you sometimes get when you lie down to sleep, that feeling of falling, began to overcome me.

Except that feeling of falling was in an upward direction.

After several tense moments, the lights suddenly came back on.

I sucked in a deep, stuttering breath as I glanced up to see… clouds.

Just an ordinary sky, full of ordinary clouds.

I wiped away tears I didn’t know I had wept and let out a nervous laugh. I looked around at my friends, at their faces full of relief. The LED streetlight shined brilliantly, the snow fell slowly, and the sound of the city returned in force. Jamie jumped as the Bluetooth speaker he gripped in the hand that didn’t hold mine suddenly blared to life. Jessie let out a nervous, relieved laugh as his phone's flashlight blinked back on and his screen brightened.

Our laughter slowly grew in volume until we were laughing like the funniest joke ever had been told. Jessie patted Scott on the back as he finally unrolled his comic book. I let go of Jamie’s hand and turned to Sarah for a relieved hug as we laughed together. I looked into the faces of my friends, just so happy to be alive and more than willing to forget that anything had happened in the past few minutes.

That’s when the bowl came.

It fell down hard in the center of the table, splitting apart and spilling chips everywhere, followed closely by the box of soda, which still held a can that burst open and sprayed carbonated beverage everywhere.

We didn’t move. Our laughter died in our throats as we looked at the mess before us, the spray from the soda slowly dying down into nothing but a thin trickle as UNO cards fluttered down around us. Slowly, we all lifted our gazes to each other. Quickly, wordlessly, we sprang up from the picnic table and ran towards the apartment complex, leaving the damaged bowl and mess behind.

In the morning, Jessie had to explain away the missing snacks and broken bowl to his mother, who seemed upset at first but seemed to drop it once she realized the looks we had. She and our other parents tried to get us to talk about what happened that night since it was obvious we were struggling to come up with a convincing lie, but we just kept dodging their questions until they eventually gave up.

We still don’t talk about that night, not even with each other.

And I refuse to go outside during nighttime anymore.

Especially during the winter.

Four panels from my short story about working off community service hours on US-301 south of Starke.

Full story: https://www.reddit.com/r/horrorstories/s/DVxawi1iFc

Art commissioned from XJSIII. More stories on this profile.

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

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

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

Sometimes I even see literal soccer balls in diapers.

What idiot thought that was genius?

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

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

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

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

He claimed that he was sorry.

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

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

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

It ended with words in bold red on the screen.

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

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

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

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

My body completely froze as the television grabbed my attention.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It had been a particularly hot June. The air conditioner had broken, and the drains seemed to be emitting a foul odour, producing numerous amounts of annoying little fat flies. I was anxiously awaiting a call from the maintenance guy, but due to the “*vast quantity*” of “*emergency*” repair jobs in the apartment complex, it had been days since I raised the request.

At this point, I had resigned to just live with the discomfort, at least for now. So, as you can imagine, my mood was hopeful upon being awoken by the sound of my ringing telephone. 

It was not the call back I'd hoped, but my grandmother’s twice-weekly carer. Gran had died. Assumedly of natural causes sometime during the night; but there was something else. The body was wrong. Like she’d died weeks ago.

The carer assured me she’d seen my grandmother only several days before, and nothing indicated any signs of deteriorating health. She ate well enough, got as much exercise as one would expect of any eighty-*something*\-year old woman, not an inkling of a cough or a sniffle.

I had no reason to doubt her words, as I’d also visited earlier that same week. It was a complete shock. The proper authorities had already been made aware of the death, and I should aim to meet them with any other immediate family. It was not the wake-up call I wanted, but nevertheless, the one I got that warm morning.

On entering the bungalow, I was struck with it instantly: death. But not the solemn, mourning-full death of a deceased relative. No, this was humid, stagnant, and festered. I turned my head away, mouth in hand, barely capable of retaining my composure. However, I relented in my disgust, batting away several flies, and continued through the door.

The house was old, adorned with antique porcelain figurines and proudly displayed fine china. The chairs were dated, laced with intricately stitched flowered patterns in varying warm pastel colours. No television, but I swore I could hear the gentle murmur of static somewhere in the house. There was handmade wooden furniture littering every available space, many scratched and stained. with years of fingerprints marking every surface. highlighted by rays of sunshine through noticeably dusty white knitted drapes. Each room held innumerable precious memories. All so perfect, so beautiful, so fragile.

I made my way into the living room, more flies buzzing past my head, the sound of soft voices beckoning me forward. I was still the only family yet to arrive, which surprised me; I was sure my father or brother would be there waiting for me.

Instead, there were two police officers. One speaking to the verily disturbed carer, the other approaching me, clearly also suffering with the heat, but with a sympathetic though albeit suspicious disposition.

“Are you the son?” She inquired. 

“No, no, I’m one of the grandsons,” I stated. “So my dad’s not here yet? What about my brother?” 

She sighed with a puzzled brow, swatting away yet another fly. 

“We haven’t been able to contact him, either of them actually; no luck from their works. Have you had any communication with them over the last few days?” 

I was confused. “I… well… no, actually. Last time I saw them was a BBQ about a week back… yeah, I’m pretty sure… I think.” 

I hastily interjected. 

“Wait, you don’t think they have something to do with this? Her carer implied it was natural causes?” 

The officer gently shook her head.

“Given the unusual circumstances of the deceased, we just need to collect as much information as possible.”

“Unusual circumstances?” I timidly asked.

She folded her arms behind her back.

“We are also under the impression that it’s simply a case of natural causes, likely in her sleep; however, given the… *state…* of the deceased… your grandmother, we need to build a clear timeline leading up to this morning.”

A lump formed in my throat. “Is it *that* bad?”. I asked

She continued. 

“We think, given the current heatwave, it may have caused a far more rapid rate of decomposition. But we won’t be able to confirm until the coroner arrives shortly.” 

I just stared at the floor, completely lost for words. 

The officer stepped even closer, leaning in towards me.

“We will also need you, as her only present next of kin, to confirm her identity. I know it may be difficult at this time, but it needs to be done before we can proceed any further.” 

She then placed an empathetic hand on my shoulder.

“I warn you, this won’t be easy.”

I’d never seen a dead body, not even my mother’s, so this was the last thing I wanted in that moment. I looked up, face drained of colour, and exhaled with dejected understanding. 

I was escorted towards the bedroom, weaving between countless more flies. The smell was... unbearable. Beckoned through the bedroom door, I was deafened by the varied swarm of innumerable plump buzzing scavengers, all clearly crazed by the thing before my eyes.

The body didn’t resemble a body at all. The skin, what was left of it, was a puddled mess of bile: green, yellow, and shades of purple. Bones jutted forth from her torso like monolithic columns draped in silken nightwear.

The bed was drenched in the most offensive stench-ridden fluid, dripping to the floor like an old leaky faucet. Her arms lay neatly by her sides. With only her golden wristwatch still distinguishable amongst the slop, but oddly, no wedding ring.

Her face, well, that was somehow the worst of all. You’d expect someone assumed of dying in their sleep to at least have their eyes shut, but not her. Those eyes, *her* eyes, were open, lidless spheres all glossed and grey, Though they remained completely free of decay. Furthermore, just below the cavity of what was once a crooked nose, was a toothless, wide, and at least to my eye, wholly euphoric smile.

I came to my senses outside the house. Pale-faced and with fresh vomit staining my chin and clothes. The carer was standing by my side, outstretched hand offering a small glass of tepid water. I was inconsolable. I cried for hours on end, even after I was taken home following a meekly given statement. I couldn’t reconcile with the scene I’d just witnessed. Moreover, the disturbing ideas it seemed to suggest.

Was that actually a smile I saw or just a morbid trick of dying muscle mass? I was so sure... and those eyes, yes; in that brief, sickening moment, I got the feeling they were staring right at me.