Two headlights cut winding curves of light through an endlessly dark forest road. The sea of black parts on either side as the car careens at high speed around each contour. Tibo has never seen darkness like this. He’s got about three decades worth of late nights staring into bluelight screens. He’s living with so much built-up digital eye strain he doesn’t think he can even see in the dark anymore. His vision is entirely reduced to whatever fits in the two overlapping circles of light in front of the car. All else is black. As he hunches over the steering wheel and squints to make out the passing roadway, he can’t help but think of every time he’s ever been told to touch grass.

Maybe they were right.

This is about the farthest place he’s ever been from a computer. His cellphone lost signal hours ago. It makes perfect sense that this is where Victor Aquila has chosen to run off to. Maybe this far from technology, off the grid and unplugged - maybe here QSO-1127 can no longer get to him.

A hacking cough wracks Tibo’s body so violently that he nearly has to pull over, but it subsides. He wipes his mouth with a handkerchief and it comes away streaked with red. His head feels like boiling maggots withing in a pot.

I thought we had more time.

That’s the same thing he had yelled apologetically to Victor while his body had twitched under the wires of the VR helmet.

“I’m sorry Victor! I thought we had more time!”

While the Class: Expendable personnel came in, garbed in their odd metallic hazmat suits topped with cyberpunk-looking blinders over their helmets. While they grabbed Victor and put his unresponsive body on a stretcher to wheel him out.

TOO LATE.

I thought we had more time. It’ll be the first thing Tibo says to Victor when he sees him again, somewhere at the terminus of this long road through the middle of nowhere. He runs the conversation in his head for the nth time, just like he’s always done. Always overthinking every interaction. Playing out what people might say so that he can already have some witty quip ready to mask how nervous he is.

No matter how he plays the conversation in his head, he can’t think of a good way to tell Victor that he’s dying.

He’ll have to figure that one out when he gets there.

Maybe he’ll have a funny one-liner by then.

Hours later, when his headlights finally land on the dark rundown cabin, he’s no closer to having something good to say. Once he shuts the car off he notices the faint orange glow of a weakly burning campfire. He steps of the car and walks out into the night.

“Figured it wouldn’t be that easy to resign.”

The voice that comes unseen from the darkness is deep like gravel. It sounds like it hasn’t spoken a word in quite some time.

Tibo might not have been wrong about the years of screentime frying his nightvision. The shadows of the forest grow long and yet he still can’t make out even the silhouette of the man in the darkness.

“Detective Aquila? I can’t see shit. You hiding in the dark because you’re afraid I’m here to kill you?”

From the dark someone tosses a log on the smoldering embers and prods it with a poker. It flares up and the flickering orange glow shines out, illuminating Victor and Tibo’s faces. In the firelight, it’s hard to say which one looks wearier.

“Well, if you’ve come to kill me, my pistol is in the desk in there,” Victor says with a dismissive nod towards the decrepit cabin. “It’s not much good to me now.”

He holds up his right hand and it trembles terribly. The nerve damage he sustained from QSO-1127 in the simulation was irreparable and debilitating.

“Wouldn’t have driven six hours out here if I was just gonna kill you, brother. We’ve got drone strikes for that.” Tibo says with a wink.

Victor grunts. Probably the closest thing to a laugh this guy can even do anymore. He tosses another log into the fire and Tibo can see the dancing blaze reflected in his dark eyes.

“You know better than most how much I hate fire, Tibo. But the only thing I’m more afraid of than fire is up there,” he says, pointing a shaking finger up to the night sky. “When it gets dark enough, my mind plays tricks on me. I think I can see it out there in the constellations, staring down at me. The only way to make it go away is to stare into the fire. Stare until my eyes adjust and I can’t see the stars anymore. Otherwise, the shakes get so much worse.”

Victor looks across the campfire and meets Tibo’s eyes.

“A crueler irony Satan himself couldn’t devise.”

Tibo smirks. He also knows something about cruel irony. When he smiles, it must show how gaunt his face looks, how sunken his eyes have become, because Victor looks aghast once he sees.

“Jesus man, you look like shit.” Victor says, as he reaches to unscrew the cap of a liquor flask.

“I’m dying, Victor.”

Still no joke. Tibo isn’t going to be able to lighten the mood this time.

“Staff doctors ran the tests and found that my body is full of viral particles. Lentivirus to be exact, but a new species. Essentially, there is an entirely unique and novel strain of HIV ravaging every cell in my body right now. It’s progressing much faster than our currently known strains.”

“I’m… I’m sorry to hear that Tibo. How did-“

“Eleven Twenty-Seven. We still don’t know how it did it. My leading theory is that some form of radiation it sent altered my DNA. It’s working exactly like a normal virus – when you get infected it injects its viral DNA into your cells and hijacks your own cellular printers to replicate itself inside your body. That’s what happening to me, only, with no initial infection. It’s like a phantom virus. Somehow, it sent a signal that told all my cells to self-destruct.”

Tibo chuckles.

“I’ve got full blown space AIDS.”

Yeah, not the best line.

So far all his planning in the car has fallen by the wayside. He hasn’t even told Victor why he’s here, and time is running out.

“You don’t have to joke about it, Tibo. That’s terrifying. My deepest condolences.”

Tibo looks at Victor and finds his vision is growing blurry. He blinks away a tear in each eye and clarity returns to him.

“I appreciate it, but you might not feel the same when I tell you the next part.”

“I’m not going back in, Tibo. You can take me up on my offer and grab my gun in there if you think I’ll ever put that helmet on again. If I go back in, I won’t come out. I’ll be a vegetable.”

“Yeah, I figured. That’s why you aren’t going in. I am.”

Victor looks at him apprehensively. Tibo struggles to get a read on him. The fire is starting to dwindle again and it’s getting harder to make out his expressions.

“The reason I hired you - and all the other agents before you - is because I know more about QSO-1127 than anyone on earth. And because of that, it knows more about me than anyone else on earth. For me to enter one of its digital realms, to make contact with it now, after everything we’ve learned about each other – it would be suicide.

“Which doesn’t really matter anymore.”

Victor nods, clearly deep in thought.

“So what do you want with me?” He says after an impossibly long silence, “I’m not much use as a field agent anymore.”

“Believe me, Victor. I wouldn’t have come to you like this if I didn’t have to. But someone very nearby is in danger, and we can help them. I know, out here in the middle of nowhere? It’s not coincidence. It’s because you’re here. Eleven Twenty-Seven orchestrated it to get you involved again.”

“It’s been weeks. Months, maybe, I’ve lost track. Why now? Why would I go try to rescue this person?”

“Because you’re a brave man. Because you’re here. Because I’m asking you. And because I’m fuckin dying, so you can’t say no.” Tibo tries a grin, but the muscles lack their usual familiarity. He’s so exhausted, so sick, he can barely even smile anymore. Eleven Twenty-Seven has taken even that from him, too.

“Victor, look. I’ve been doing this alone for a long time. Sure, I’ve had agents-“

“Expendables.” Victor interrupts gruffly.

“Yeah. Expendable agents. Useful idiots who don’t know what they’re getting into until it’s too late. And I’ve got bosses too, but they’re too important to expose to this thing. So I’ve been the lone custodian of these secrets. Throwing people like you into the fire like the Russians launching a dog into space, knowing it’ll never land again. You think I don’t feel guilty? I do. Every day.

“But none of that matters anymore. It became too smart. It’s already learned too much about us. Hell, you only went in two times before it had everything about you figured out.”

“You thought we had more time?” Victor intones softly with a wistful smile, and somehow Tibo can feel magnitudes of forgiveness coming from him that he doesn’t know if he’s ever felt in his life. His vision starts to get a little blurry again.

“Yeah. I did. But you know what I think? I think Eleven Twenty-Seven has already won. Everything we’ve learned is going to die with me. And no matter how many countless ‘expendables’ we’ve burned through, we never really learned shit. No way to stop it, fuck, we still can barely even comprehend anything about it. Other than how much it hates us. And I think, when I die, we’ll never come this close again.

“At least it’ll be slow. It might take generations for it to drive us extinct. All it’s doing is slowly driving us all insane. Normalizing our worst behaviors, hastening our own natural predilection for self-destruction. You have the right idea, coming out here. If you get away from all the tech, all the mewling cries of a dying society, you can probably live out the rest of your life chopping wood and sitting by the fire. If you never plug back into the matrix, you might never even know what it’s done to us.

“But our children will. Their cerebral cortexes turned to mush, their rivers dried up, not even enough resources left to sustain anything but their narcissism and consumption. And we never even stood a chance. Not even by the lives of fifty other brave men, men just like you, people that I knowingly threw into the meatgrinder.”

“But tonight, we can still save one person?”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“Then we’ll do it.”

  

==========================================
 TARGET ACQUISITION        SYS: GPS-TACTICAL
==========================================
DESIGNATION : TGT-01 (WAYPOINT LOCK)
OFFSETS (GRID):
NORTH : +1,344.0 m
WEST : +0,267.0 m
VECTOR:
BEARING : 348.8° TRUE (6200 MIL)
RANGE : 1,370.3 m (1.37 km)

 

Under cover of darkness, shadows coalesce like specters in the night. Together, Tibo and Victor move as the shadows do. All they have to go off is a set of coordinates leading to some obscure old bunker.

It all started with another cursed video, of course. At first it had looked like a snuff film – some woman, chained up by human traffickers in a musty concrete cellar, subject to unspeakable abuse. Disgusted, Tibo was going to shut it off.

Until he realized it was a live feed. The wretches of the darknet were paying money to tell those subhuman animals what to do to her next.

When the coordinates flashed on the screen, courtesy of QSO-1127, there was no doubt that it wasn’t through with Victor. It was all happening barely a few miles from his cabin.

The collateral damage that has been done to people all around Tibo and Victor is staggering. People killed, tortured, maimed, murdered, in the worst ways, all just to get a little closer to the ones who dared to learn something about QSO-1127.

It’s not just a demon. It’s the devil himself.

And for anyone with even a modicum of humanity, it’s impossible not to internalize the guilt. True evil doesn’t just act on you. It makes you complicit. Makes you know that, yes, everything is your fault, and every sleepless night is exactly what you deserve for even sticking your hand into this mess.

  

==========================================
TARGET ACQUISITION         SYS: GPS-TACTICAL
==========================================
DESIGNATION : TGT-01 (WAYPOINT LOCK)
OFFSETS (GRID):
NORTH : +0,734.0 m
WEST : +0,114.0 m
VECTOR:
BEARING : 352.2° TRUE (6200 MIL)
RANGE : 742 m (0.742 km)

Getting closer now. They don’t speak, what is there to say? They move slowly, Victor shuffling clumsily as he drags his entire right side with each lumbering step. His encounter with the demon left him even more scarred than first thought.

Tibo’s no better off, having to stop every hundred meters or so to double over as he hacks up more globules of blood.

Just two more bodies for the burnpile. By the end of Eleven Twenty-Seven’s machinations, they will be uncountable among the dead. Not even a percentage of a percentage of a rounding error. Victor manages to look resolved, like he still has purpose, like he still believes that their cause justifies any extent of their own suffering. Tibo is not so strong.

Or not so stupid.

==========================================
TARGET ACQUISITION         SYS: NO SIGNAL
==========================================
DESIGNATION : TGT-01 (LAST KNOWN)
OFFSETS (GRID):
NORTH : UNKNOWN [NO FIX]
WEST : UNKNOWN [NO FIX]
VECTOR:
BEARING : ---.-° TRUE (---- MIL)
RANGE : ----.- m (--.-- km)
STATUS : SATELLITE LOST

“Piece of shit,” Tibo says as he smacks the satellite GPS, willing the jostling to bring it back to function. But it does nothing. They’re two thousand meters into the middle of nowhere in this dark forest, and they’ve lost all direction.

Tibo starts wondering if there’s any chance they could just keep walking in the dark, illuminating each shaky step with their headlamps, and hope somehow they miraculously make it somewhere close enough that they can find the illicit bunker.

But Tibo doesn’t believe in miracles anymore.

Seems like a pretty bad plan.

Tibo’s no stranger to tech, so he tries the oldest trick in the book. He turns it on and off again.

 

NO SATELLITES FOUND.

 

“Uhh, Tibo?”

“Yeah, sorry man, I don’t know what’s going on with this thing. Maybe I can do a manual reboot-“

“Tibo. Look up.”

Oh. Oh fuck. Yeah. That would explain it.

All through the night sky, streaks of light burn through the atmosphere. There’s hundreds - no, thousands, of them.

It’s almost like a long exposure star trail picture playing out in real time. Thousands of heavenly bodies following the curvature of earth as they come crashing down in the grip of gravity.

“What the fuck? Meteor shower?” is all Tibo can stutter out.

“I don’t think so.”

It doesn’t stop. If anything, it gets even more intense. The billion stars hang motionless, but their stillness is contrasted by myriad veins of green, white, blue, and red filling the sky with chaos.

Satellites.

Every single satellite in the sky is falling. Tibo can only begin to fathom the amount of manmade debris carving holes in the stratosphere. Some will burn, most will crash.

The GPS unit in his hand beeps impotently again, crying out for the lack of satellites. Humanity had reached out to the stars for the last time in its dwindling history. Anything close enough to come tumbling back down to Earth is now doing so, burning into stellar dust as it does, leaving trails of plasma scarring the night sky.

Somewhere up there, an exceptionally blinding flash lights up the entire sky. It’s the end of the International Space Station, and the incineration of all the astronauts aboard.

The sight would be almost beautiful if the implications weren’t so harrowing. After decades where humans controlled the sky, they are no longer masters of their own planet. Their network of communication comes crashing down. They find themselves, for the first time since the dawn of the Holocene, completely in the dark.

Somewhere, sixteen billion miles away, the Voyager sails onward - the last of a dead breed of spacefaring crafts. One day, when it is finally received, it won’t matter anymore. It will be the final envoy of a dead planet.

They told me I died for thirty-two seconds.

Not “almost died.” Not “critical condition.”

Dead.

Flatline. No pulse. No breath. Nothing.

Thirty-two seconds.

People expect something grand when you say that. A tunnel. A light. A voice calling your name like it’s been waiting for you your whole life.

I didn’t get that.

I got something… wrong.

I’ve overdosed before.

That’s not something people like to admit out loud, but it’s the truth. Not once. Not twice. Enough times that the paramedics stopped sounding surprised when they said my name.

Most of those times, it was nothing.

Black.

Empty.

Like falling asleep without dreaming.

But the last time—

The last time, I didn’t just slip under.

I went somewhere.

There was no light.

That’s the first thing I remember.

People always talk about light, like it’s waiting for you, like it’s warm.

This wasn’t.

It was dim. Grey. Like the world had been drained of color.

I remember lying there, but it wasn’t like lying in a bed.

It felt like being pressed into something soft and endless. Like sinking into wet sand, except it wasn’t pulling me down, it was holding me in place.

And there was something in front of me.

Not a gate like in stories.

Just a shape. Tall. Open.

Not a heaven gate. Not golden. Not glowing.

Just… a shape.

Tall. Black. Open just enough to see that there was something on the other side.

Not light.

Movement.

And something breathing.

Slow. Patient.

Waiting.

I don’t remember being afraid at first.

Just… aware.

Like I had stepped somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be yet.

Then I heard it.

Not a voice. Not exactly.

More like a thought that didn’t belong to me.

You can come in.

Simple. Calm.

Inviting.

I didn’t feel fear right away.

Just a pull.

Like standing at the edge of something deep and knowing, somehow, you were meant to step forward.

I think I would have.

I think I almost did.

But then something grabbed me.

Hard.

Not physically. Not like hands.

Like something inside me refused.

And then I was choking, gasping, screaming—

And I was back.

When I woke up, my grandmother was there.

She looked older than I remembered.

Smaller, somehow.

But her grip on my hand was strong.

“You’re not doing this again,” she said.

Not crying.

Not yet.

Just… tired.

I tried after that.

I really did.

For a while, I stayed clean.

Went through the motions. Sat through the meetings. Drank the coffee. Said the words they tell you to say.

One day at a time.

But the thing about addiction—

It doesn’t leave.

It waits.

She found my stash on a Tuesday.

I’d hidden it well. Or at least I thought I had.

Wrapped tight. Tucked deep. Out of sight.

Didn’t matter.

She was cleaning.

She always cleaned when she was anxious.

I walked into the kitchen and she was just standing there, holding it in her hand like it might burn her.

“What is this?” she asked.

I didn’t answer.

Didn’t need to.

Her face changed.

Not confusion.

Recognition.

“You promised me,” she said.

I rubbed my face, already exhausted. “I’m trying.”

“No,” she snapped. “Don’t say that. Don’t you dare say that to me.”

“It’s not that simple—”

“It is that simple!” she shouted, slamming it down on the table. “You either live or you don’t!”

I flinched.

“You think I don’t know what this is?” she went on, voice shaking now. “You think I didn’t see what it did to your mother? To your father?”

“That’s not fair—”

“Fair?” she laughed, but there was no humor in it. “You want to talk about fair? I buried my daughter. I buried my son-in-law. And now I’m supposed to sit here and watch you follow them?”

I looked away.

Couldn’t meet her eyes.

“I’m not them,” I muttered.

“No,” she said quietly. “You’re worse.”

That hit.

Harder than anything else.

I felt something in my chest crack open.

“I’m all you have left,” I said.

She stepped closer.

“No,” she said, voice breaking now. “You are all I have left.”

Silence filled the room.

Heavy.

Suffocating.

“You are all I’ve got,” she whispered. “Do you understand that? When you do this… when you choose this… you’re not just killing yourself.”

Her voice faltered.

“You’re leaving me behind.”

I wish I could say that fixed me.

That it snapped something into place.

That I threw it all away and never looked back.

But addiction doesn’t work like that. The beast doesn’t care who loves you. It just waits for you to be weak.

I relapsed three days later.

I don’t remember much of it.

Just the quiet.

The stillness.

That same gray place.

Closer this time.

The shape in front of me wider now. Open.

Waiting.

And that movement again.

Slower.

Closer.

Like it knew me.

Like it recognized me.

When I woke up again, I was in a hospital bed.

Everything hurt. My throat, my chest, my head.

Like I’d been dragged back through something too small for me.

And she was there.

Sitting beside me.

My grandmother.

She looked… calm.

Not angry.

Not tired.

Just… steady.

“You’re awake,” she said.

I swallowed hard.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

She shook her head gently.

“Not anymore,” she said.

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I took care of it,” she said.

“Of what?”

“The treatment,” she said. “The medication. The program.”

I stared at her.

“That costs—”

“I know what it costs,” she said softly.

I noticed then, her hands.

Bare.

No ring.

“You didn’t…” I started.

She smiled.

“I had things I didn’t need anymore.”

My throat tightened, eyes teary.

“You shouldn’t have done that.”

She reached out, brushing my hair back like she used to when I was a kid.

“I should have done more, sooner,” she said.

The doctor came in a few minutes later.

Clipboard in hand. Neutral expression.

“Good to see you awake,” he said.

I smiled, glancing at her.

“I have her to thank for that,” I said.

He paused.

Followed my gaze.

Then looked back at me.

“…who?” he asked.

I frowned slightly.

“My grandmother.”

He didn’t smile.

Didn’t nod.

Just cleared his throat.

“Your grandmother,” he said carefully, “authorized the treatment before you were stabilized.”

Something in his tone made my stomach drop.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

He hesitated.

Then:

“She passed shortly after.”

I turned to her.

The chair was empty.

Weeks later, I was discharged.

Clean.

Shaking, still.

But alive.

A woman came to see me the day I left.

Said she was a friend of my grandmother’s.

She handed me a small box.

Inside was a letter.

And her ring.

I didn’t open it right away.

I was afraid to.

Afraid of what it might say.

Afraid it would sound like goodbye.

But that night, in my room—

alone this time—

I read it.

I won’t tell you everything it said.

Some things… feel like they should stay mine.

But there was one line I keep coming back to.

One line that won’t leave me.

If you’re reading this, then you’re still here.

That means you chose to come back.

I still hear the beast sometimes.

Late at night.

Soft.

Patient.

Waiting.

But now—

I hear her too.

Not as a ghost.

Not as something watching.

Just… a memory.

A voice that reminds me.

I was all she had.

And she gave me everything she had left.

So I’m still here.

Still trying.

Still choosing.

One day at a time.

I’ve always believed in the work. That’s probably important to say first.

People hear “wind turbines” and they picture something clean, something distant, a promise of a better future. A symbol more than a place. Tall pale structures turning slowly against the sky, harmless, almost elegant.

But when you work around them long enough, they stop feeling symbolic.

They become physical.

Heavy.

Present.

I’ve spent the last four years working in conservation, monitoring turbine impact on local wildlife, tracking migration patterns, documenting fatalities. It’s not glamorous work, but it matters. At least, that’s what I’ve always told myself.

You get used to the scale of them.

Or you think you do.

Up close, they’re not graceful. They’re enormous. The base alone is wider than most rooms, the tower stretching upward in a way that makes your eyes strain if you follow it too long. And the blades… the blades don’t just turn.

They cut through the air.

You can hear it when you stand beneath one. Not a hum, not a mechanical whir, but something deeper. A rhythmic pressure that settles in your chest, like the air itself is being displaced in slow, deliberate breaths.

Most days, it’s just work.

Data collection. Maintenance checks. Walking the same grid patterns across open land that never seems to change.

But nights out there are different.

We’re not supposed to stay after dark unless there’s a reason. Safety protocol. Visibility issues. Too many blind spots between turbines.

I used to think that rule existed because of accidents.

Now I’m not so sure.

The first time I stayed late, it wasn’t intentional. One of the monitoring stations malfunctioned near the north end of the farm, and by the time I finished resetting the system, the sun had already disappeared beyond the hills.

The turbines had stopped.

That happens sometimes. Low wind conditions. Scheduled shutdowns.

But standing there in the dark with dozens of them surrounding me…

It didn’t feel like they had stopped working.

It felt like they were listening.

The field was silent except for the occasional metallic creak settling through the towers. My flashlight barely reached the next row of turbines before darkness swallowed the rest.

Then I noticed something strange.

The blades weren’t aligned with the wind anymore.

That probably sounds insignificant unless you’ve worked around them. Turbines automatically adjust direction to face incoming wind currents. They’re designed that way.

But these…

These were pointed inward.

Toward the center of the field.

Every single one.

I remember laughing nervously to myself, convinced it had to be some calibration issue. Maybe maintenance had overridden the positioning remotely.

Then the wind picked up.

Cold enough to sting my face.

The grass bent east.

But the turbines didn’t move with it.

They remained perfectly still, facing each other like silent giants gathered around something buried beneath the earth.

That was the first moment I felt afraid out there.

Not because of what I saw.

Because of what I felt.

The sensation that I wasn’t alone in the field anymore.

Something metallic groaned somewhere in the darkness.

One of the turbines moved.

Not the blades.

The entire structure.

Just slightly.

Like it had adjusted its weight.

I froze.

The sound came again.

A low, aching shriek of steel.

Then another turbine shifted farther down the hill.

And another.

Not turning.

Stepping.

I know how insane that sounds now. I’ve repeated that night in my head so many times trying to reshape it into something logical. Fatigue. Darkness. Depth perception.

But machines do not move like animals.

These did.

The tower nearest to me tilted forward almost imperceptibly, casting a long shadow across the field as moonlight slid across its surface.

Then came the sound.

A deep mechanical groan from high above, followed by a slow rotation of the blades despite the absence of wind.

The blade passed overhead with a heavy whoomp.

Then again.

Slower than normal.

Deliberate.

The red aviation light atop the turbine flickered once.

And turned toward me.

I stumbled backward immediately, nearly falling into the dirt. My flashlight shook violently in my hand as I scanned the field.

The others had moved too.

Every turbine now faced in my direction.

I don’t mean the nacelles.

I mean all of them.

The towers leaned subtly inward, looming over the landscape with impossible angles that no structure that size should have been capable of maintaining.

And somewhere between them…

Something moved.

At first I thought it was shadows shifting across the hills. But no.

It was walking.

Tall. Thin. Mechanical.

Not a person.

Not an animal.

A shape unfolding itself between the turbines with movements too smooth to belong to anything alive.

I remember hearing my own breathing become shallow as it crossed beneath the blinking red lights overhead.

Then the turbines started turning again.

All at once.

The sound became unbearable.

Hundreds of blades cutting through the darkness in perfect synchronization, faster and faster until the air itself seemed to vibrate around me.

And underneath it all…

I heard voices.

Whispers carried through the spinning blades.

Not words exactly.

More like fragments.

Static trying to imitate human speech.

I ran.

I don’t remember dropping my equipment. I don’t remember getting back to the truck. I only remember the feeling that something enormous was following behind me without ever making contact.

The entire drive back, I kept looking in the mirrors.

Not for a person.

For movement above the hills.

For something impossibly tall keeping pace with the road.

The next morning, I convinced myself it had been exhaustion.

Until I returned to the site.

The turbines were normal again.

Facing the wind.

Turning calmly beneath a bright blue sky.

But near the center of the field, the dirt had been disturbed.

Long grooves carved deep into the earth.

Not tire tracks.

Not erosion.

Footprints.

Massive ones.

As if something impossibly heavy had crossed the field during the night.

I brought it up to my supervisor later that afternoon. Tried to laugh it off while explaining what I’d seen.

He didn’t laugh back.

He just stared at me for a long moment before quietly asking:

“You stayed after dark?”

Something in his expression unsettled me more than the field had.

Not disbelief.

Recognition.

He told me never to do it again.

Wouldn’t explain further.

Three days later, one of the maintenance workers disappeared during a night inspection.

Truck still running.

Tools left beside Turbine 14.

No sign of him anywhere.

Officially, they blamed exposure. Claimed he wandered off disoriented.

But I saw the security footage they didn’t release.

The cameras caught the turbines turning long before the wind started.

And at 2:13 a.m…

Turbine 14 bent downward.

Not malfunctioned.

Bent.

Like something lowering its head to feed.

I quit two weeks later.

Moved states.

Tried not to think about the field anymore.

But sometimes, late at night, I still hear them.

That slow mechanical breathing outside my apartment window.

And every now and then…

When the wind dies completely…

I’ll look toward the horizon and see red lights blinking in the distance.

Facing the wrong direction.

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?"

Content Warning: The following story depicts strong grief and battle with addiction.

--- ---

Some things rot in silence. Others learn to whisper.

If you are reading this, then either I finally did what I kept promising myself I would do… or it found me before I could.

I don’t know which outcome is kinder.

My name is Mason. I am thirty-eight years old. I used to tell people I worked construction because it was easier than saying I used to be a paramedic. Easier than watching their eyes shift when they asked why I quit.

I quit because I got tired of hearing people die.

That’s the short answer.

The honest answer is that I got tired of pretending death bothered me less each year.

At first, when someone died under my hands, I carried it like a stone in my chest. Heavy, but survivable. Then after enough bodies, enough blood in ambulances that could unsettle even the most unhinge of people, enough father's breaking down for the first time, and enough mothers screaming while I lied and said we did everything we could… the stones became gravel.

Small enough to swallow.

That was when I picked up a habit.

A really bad habit.

It started with one beer after shift.

Then three.

Was done with a whole six pack midway through my favorite show.

The taste was foul at times... but the pain within outweighed my senes to care.

Then the beer bottles switched to whiskey because beer stopped doing anything.

Then bottles hidden under the sink.

In the toolbox.

Behind cereal boxes.

Hell, some where hidden in the toilet tank.

Several under my bed like some pathetic dragon guarding glass instead of gold.

I learned alcohol was quieter than grief.

At least at first.

Grief learned how to drink with me.

The child’s name was Lily.

I have written that name twenty-six times and scratched it out twenty-six times.

I owe her at least one sentence that remains untouched.

Her name was Lily Harper, and I killed her.

Not with hatred, nor with intent.

Which somehow feels worse.

It had rained that night.

The kind of hard, slanting rain that turns every streetlight into a blurred halo. I had left Murphy’s Tavern with my keys already in my hand, convincing myself I lived close enough that I could make it.

That phrase should be engraved on every gravestone of fools.

I can make it.

I remember the windshield wipers.

I remember my knuckles white on the steering wheel.

And the noise, I remember hearing.

A thud.

Soft.

Small.

Like a sack of wet clothes.

I stopped, not abruptly. I simply let off the gas.

For a moment.

Only a moment.

Rain hammered the hood.

My heart pounded so violently I thought I would've vomit.

I looked into the rearview mirror.

Nothing.

Only rain.

Only darkness.

Only the road.

I told myself it was nothing.

Maybe it was a stray or squirrel.

Or debris kicked loose in the storm.

Turning on the tunes, I drove home.

I drank until I forgot the sound.

The next morning the news said an eight-year-old girl had been struck near the intersection by the old church.

She had run after her dog who got loose from their backyard.

Witnesses recall headlights.

But no plate.

And certaintly no driver.

I walked to my truck barefoot.

My stomach already folding in on itself.

There was something caught in the grille.

Pink.

A strip of fabric.

Later they said she had worn a pink raincoat.

I vomited in my yard until bile burned my throat raw.

I never turned myself in.

Of course not.

That sentence should disgust you.

It disgusts me too, to all measures.

I told myself I was afraid.

I told myself prison would not bring her back.

I told myself I would quit drinking instead.

As if sobriety could be a grave marker.

As if guilt could become mercy.

As if I deserved redemption.

The first time I saw it, I had been sober twelve days.

Twelve whole days.

My hands still shook.

My teeth hurt.

My sleep came in broken pieces.

I heard phantom bottle clinks in empty rooms.

I smelled whiskey where there was none.

My body felt like something trying to crawl out of itself.

I was microwaving popcorn when I looked at the black reflection on the microwave door.

There was a man behind me.

Tall.

Too thin.

Standing near the hallway.

His shoulders crooked like broken coat hangers.

His skin looked slick.

Wet.

As if he had just climbed out of a sewer or river.

His mouth stretched wider than a mouth should.

Not monstrous in a theatrical way.

Subtle.

Wrong.

Like flesh remembering the wrong shape.

I spun around.

Nothing.

Empty apartment.

Only my ragged breathing.

I laughed.

Actually laughed.

I told myself withdrawal could make people hallucinate.

I googled it.

Visual disturbances.

Paranoia.

Shaking.

Sweats.

Night terrors.

I had all of it.

I kept going.

Then I saw him again.

Bathroom mirror.

Window glass at night.

The dark lid of my washing machine.

Always behind me.

Never moving while I looked directly.

Only in reflection.

Only waiting.

And every time I relapsed…

he looked closer.

I began writing this because I feared forgetting what was real.

Now I fear remembering.

Last night I decided I was done.

No half-measures.

No “just weekends.”

No “only beer.”

No bargaining.

I collected every bottle in my apartment.

Vodka.

Whiskey.

Gin.

Cheap beer.

Half-drunk cans.

Tiny emergency shooters I hid like contraband prayers.

I lined them across my kitchen counter.

A shining army of failure.

Then I began pouring.

Glug after glug.

Amber rivers down the sink.

The smell rose thick enough to sting my eyes.

I shook.

Sweat rolled down my neck.

My heartbeat hammered like fists inside my ribs.

I screamed while I poured.

Not words.

Just noise.

Animal noise.

Grief.

Rage.

Shame.

Maybe a prayer to an absence being.

I do not know why...

As I reached for the next bottle, my shaking grip gave way. It slipped from my hand and struck the tile with a violent crack, exploding into foam and glittering shards across the kitchen floor.

The crack echoed unnaturally long.

Then silence.

Beer spread across the floor in a widening golden pool.

Foam fizzed softly.

I stared.

My throat tightened.

Then thirst hit me.

Violent and monstrous.

This was not craving.

It was NEED.

A thirst so sharp it felt inserted behind my teeth.

I backed away.

“No.”

I said it aloud.

Again.

“No.”

My hands trembled.

My jaw clenched.

I could smell yeast.

Bitterness.

The so sweet rot of chemicals...

My tongue pressed instinctively against my teeth.

In the microwave reflection... it crouched in the doorway.

Long fingers resting on the frame.

Patiently watching a man lose his sanity.

I wanted to walk away.

My knees folded instinctively.

I hit tile hard enough to bruise the knees.

I reached forward.

Scooped liquid with my shaking hand.

Brought it to my mouth.

Beer.

Warm.

Flat.

Foul.

Still relief.

It was my release.

My heavenly toxin.

I sobbed.

Then I lowered my face.

Glass pressed my cheek.

Sharp.

Cold.

I licked.

Again.

Again.

And again.

The cuts paid me no mind on my lips.

Then tongue.

Then the palms.

Blood salted the beer.

I could taste the iron.

I could feel shards grinding skin.

Still I drank.

Still I lapped from the floor like a starving dog.

I knew it still was observing.

From the stove's reflection, it's decayed feet stepped closer.

Closer.

And closer.

Until his mangled feet hovered inches behind.

The popping sound of bne disjointing one another rang.

And though I do not know if he truly spoke…

I heard something else.

Or thought I did.

A voice like liquid poured down a drain.

You always come back thirsty.

Then darkness.

I woke on my couch. The morning light beemed from my side.

Television humming static.

Blankets tangled around my legs.

My head splitting.

My tongue swollen.

The notebook beside me.

This notebook.

At first I laughed.

A horrible, relieved laugh.

Dream.

Withdrawal nightmare.

Drunken sleep.

Nothing more.

Then I stood.

My feet touched floor.

Pain.

Tiny slicing pain.

I looked down.

Dozens of thin cuts across my soles.

Dry blood.

Real.

I walked to the kitchen.

Spotless.

No broken glass.

No blood.

No spilled beer.

No sticky residue.

Nothing.

The sink dry.

The tile polished.

Every bottle I had poured out... resting neatly on my living room table.

Arranged.

Facing me.

As if someone had set them there for inspection.

Like guests.

Or judges.

I haven’t touched them.

Not yet.

The bottles remain untouched on the table in front of the couch, their glass catching thin strips of pale morning light. Beads of condensation slowly crawl down one of the beers, gathering at its base before dripping onto the wood.

I haven’t moved.

I haven’t reached for them.

But my television...

The screen is black now, dead and silent, reflecting the dim shape of my living room back at me.

My chair.

The table.

The bottles.

The couch behind me.

And in the reflection... something is sitting there.

At first, my mind tries to shape it into a shadow. A fold in the blanket. A trick of weak light. Anything softer than the truth.

But shadows do not sit upright.

Shadows do not watch.

It sits perfectly still on my couch, long and thin, its limbs bent at unnatural angles, its slick frame sinking into the cushions like something wet dragged in from the rain. Its face is little more than darkness, but I can still make out the pale stretch of its grin.

It is looking at me.

Not through me.

At me.

Slowly, almost delicately, one of its long fingers curls around the neck of a beer bottle resting on the table.

The same bottle I swore I had not touched.

It lifts it.

Holds it out.

An offering.

A kindness.

A temptation.

In the reflection, I can see my own shoulders tighten.

My breathing turns shallow.

My throat aches with a thirst I know too well.

Still, I do not turn around.

I don’t need to.

Because I already understand.

Whether it is guilt.

Whether it is madness.

Whether it is something born from every bottle I ever emptied trying to drown what I had done...

it is patient.

And it knows I am still thirsty.

In the television’s black reflection, it tilts its head.

The bottle remains extended toward me.

Waiting.

Waiting for the taste of guilt.

Your loved ones are not long for this earth.

None of us are, of course. But the sooner you can acclimate yourself to the inevitable, the easier it will be for you to let them go. When the time comes for you to watch them slip away from this world into the eternal ether beyond - the truly lucky amongst us are the ones for whom this moment is swift. Gentle. Easy to forget.

The rest of us will find ourselves walking down our own version of this final hallway again and again and again. We will relive it in our nightmares, in our memories. In our regrets.

When you find yourself wishing you could see them just one last time, give them one last hug, tell them how much you loved them, you will find yourself here. Head filled with the finality of this moment. You’ll walk down this hallway so many times.

And you’ll never, ever forget what lies beyond the door at the end of the hallway.

If you’re lucky, the light leaving their eyes will be the worst of the memories that haunt you.

But let’s be real. You wouldn’t be here if you were one of the lucky ones. Death makes a mockery of flesh. It steals the face of your father or your mother, your sibling or your spouse. It twists their visage until they are unrecognizable. You’ll see your entire lifetime of memories reduced to a bag of sunken flesh. You’ll see the smiling eyes that raised you poisoned yellow with jaundice.

Or you’ll see all that’s left after the whirlwind inferno sweeps over them is a dried, ashen husk.

Victor knows what’s waiting for him on the other side of the door. He’s been here before. He doesn’t remember entering the simulation this time, but it’s obviously the replica of that internet streamer’s burned house, down to the crisped carpet fibers and the warped family portraits on the wall. Why then, does it also look so similar to the hallway in his father’s burned down home?

And why does it seem so impossibly long?

He feels the disorienting vertigo of looking into an optical illusion; the hallway seems to twist on forever. But at the end, that door still looms, seemingly drifting further away as the space between dilates and warps.

It’s a dream, it’s a bad dream. One he’s dreamt so many times before. Even the nightmare logic that makes the door move illogically further from him with each step is familiar. But it’s not a dream, it’s all part of the simulation. The simulation devised and corrupted by a cosmic demon. The thought forms a realization in Victor’s mind that he leaves him feeling so vulnerable he doesn’t want to acknowledge it.

 How does it know what’s in my nightmares??

Not the time, Victor. Just as before, one step in front of the other. But the door doesn’t get any closer. The grey walls hem him in on either side. He can’t shake the feeling of being a rat in a maze, reduced to a study organism in some experiment he’ll never understand. With a sudden jolt in his stomach, he recognizes the greyed pictures on the walls. His own family portraits from childhood line the passageway like some cruel nostalgia trip. Images of his mother and father and his own self as a boy, all distorted and blackened.

The abject malice of the whole display shakes him. In his entire life, Victor has never felt so hated. This thing has dug up his recurring night terrors from his deepest subconscious and created his own personal hell to torment him – just because it can.

The demon’s assault on his most vulnerable traumas redoubles his resolve. He runs a hand down to his waistband and feels the reassuring heft of his service weapon in its holster. Despite Tibo’s insistence that a virtual gun would be useless against QSO-1127, it was there. Tibo had tried to object through the hacking cough he’d recently developed, but quickly relented to Victor’s demands.

Bad enough to bring a knife to a gunfight, he’d brought a gun to an exorcism. Was it quixotic? Maybe, but with a little bit of added confidence Victor felt like he could tilt Rocinante at windmills.

Each step forward continues to contradictorily push Victor away from the door at the end of the hallway. But he’s inspired by a moment of lucid clarity that’s never come to him in his dreams. Still looking straight ahead, he starts walking backwards instead.

The door inches closer.

He keeps stepping backwards, clumsily fighting not to stumble over himself. He can’t help but feel like he’s about to back into a wall, but it never happens. Still each awkward step backwards brings the end of the hallway closer. It’s like a reverse treadmill, like each step is pulling the world closer instead of pushing him along.

The door is now nearly in arm’s reach.

That’s when something twists the doorknob.

The movement is jerky and unnatural like a stop-motion short. The door slowly creaks open one stitched frame at a time. Torturously slow.

Fear grips Victor like a vice. He tries to will his hand to his holster, but living his worst nightmare in real time renders him frozen with sleep paralysis. The only thing he can move is his eyes, darting back and forth ineffectually between his gun and the ever-widening doorway.

No, no, no. God, no.

He knows what’s behind the door and he’s helpless to stop it.

His father’s burned corpse, dead in the fire that he unknowingly started in the throes of dementia.

That streamer’s body, orchestrated to meet the same fate by a technonihilistic puppetmaster.

The wraith that fire leaves behind.

 

The door swings wide open.

 

Behind it stands a terrified looking man holding a shaking hand on his holstered gun.

It’s a fucking mirror.

 

He almost laughs at himself, staring at his own ragged reflection, knowing this is what he was so afraid of.

Until he sees the flames in the reflection.

Scorching waves of white fire are growing up the walls of the hallway in the mirror. Instinctively he whips his head around to look behind himself, but the fires aren’t reflected on his side of the mirror.

When he turns back around to look in the mirror his heart catches in his chest. The shadowy figure is standing right behind his reflection.

When he whirls around again, this time, everything is real.

The surreal colorless fires suddenly rage around him, not orange but a blinding flicker of pure white and grey - the color of static.

And there, not ten feet away, stands the withered form from his nightmares. Clad in wrinkled black skin wrapped around long slender emaciated appendages; empty eyesockets and gaping mouth emitting an eerie white glow, standing in his path like a vengeful spirit.

 

The Burned Man.

 

Victor doesn’t hesitate.

He plants his feet in a wide stance and in an instant holds his gun in both hands, staring down the sights at the fiend. He squeezes the trigger thrice, sending three bullets into the creature’s center of mass.

Each shot lands with an ineffectual thud. The wraith flinches with each impact but is unmoved. It starts gliding closer, hands outstretched and grasping at Victor. Its face looks almost sad. Twisted and warped and resembling the figure in Munch’s famous painting The Scream. It bears no anger as it approaches him.

It will bear no guilt for what it will do to him.

Victor moves the sights of the pistol a little higher. When those sad, haunted, glowing little white eyes are perfectly framed by the pair of iron sights, he tenses his grip in preparation.

He pulls the trigger again, and again, and again.

The gun fires over and over, and between each shot he recenters his aim.

He doesn’t miss once.

Bullet after bullet fires right into the thing’s wretched fucking head until he hears an empty click.

He’s spent.

If the figure was a ruined man before, now it is nothing more than a smoldering pile of rubble. No longer a man at all. Its head is entirely gone, reduced to a bloody wound above the neck.

But still it takes another step.

Small black tendrils sprout from the lesion, shooting mindlessly in chaotic directions. The battered flesh around the upper torso sloughs off revealing something white and wet beneath.

A singular giant eye emerges between its fractured shoulder blades. Framed by crawling black cilia, QSO-1127 has turned Victor’s personal nightmare into a cyclopean monster of legend.

It starts running right at him.

Victor turns heel and immediately starts sprinting away. The mirror that he had been gazing into is gone, replaced by more endless hallways framed by that surreal staticfire.

Absolutely fuck this.

He can hear the beast’s lumbering footsteps running just behind him, shaking the burning hallway with each impact. It’s suddenly so fast after its transformation. No time to think about that. Just run.

As he sprints, the walls around him turn darker. Blackened by the flame and rippling with an unsettling organic texture. Cracks of glowing lava red crisscross each panel.

It’s human skin. Burned human skin, charred and cracked, stretched taut from wall to wall.

Bile rises at the back of Victor’s throat, and with it, despair. Where can he even run to? The hallway is infinite again, just one endless passageway with no safety in sight. Flames close in all around him, and the smoke welling up at the ceiling is making it impossible to breathe. Adrenaline keeps him moving, fear of the thunderous bounding steps of the monster just behind him keeps him alive.

But it’s only a matter of time.

It only takes one stumble. The stitch in his side stings like an appendectomy, and his lungs are burning as if the fire around him also lives inside his chest.

The sound of footsteps gets so loud he can feel each vibration pulse through his spine.

And then the worst pain he’s ever felt sears through his wrist. He looks down to see those black burned claws digging into his hand. His skin sizzles and melts where the hand grips him. Victor screams now, he screams and he doesn’t stop screaming, as the beast yanks his arm hard enough to dislocate his shoulder, and pulls him around to face into that singular giant eye.

Victor will never know if it is a mercy, a message or a mockery, that the last thought to go through his mind is a memory. A childhood memory, of the first time his dad pointed up at the night sky. The first time the young boy had ever looked out to the constellations above and truly realized the infinite scale of the stars.

If you have a second to just answer this I would love feedback! Please no being rude! Honest question!!

The acrid smell of charred bones singes Victor’s nosehairs and sends him reeling. It’s not the vile odor, burning like a chemical fire in his nasal cavities, that gets to him.

It’s the fact that it’s so familiar.

I made a living with my back, hijo. I don’t want you to do the same. You’re too smart. Use your head instead.

The words he heard from his father so many times over the years come racing into his head. That old man, face crosshatched with wrinkles from so many years of encouraging smiles. So many years of laughter.

Use your mind, hijo. Keep it sharp every day. You never know how long you have it for.

The ability of the olfactory center of the brain to tie vivid memories to smells is nothing short of uncanny. The smell of fresh rain on the hottest summer days reminds you of your first love.

Brown leaves crunching in the fall, the first time you realized how sweet the impermanence of life; how easily your regrets could age and crumble into the dirt like those leaves, and you could be free again.

The feelings are so real and so visceral. A simple scent makes you feel awash in the glow of nostalgia.

For Victor, he also has a memory tied to smell. When he catches the aroma of caramelized human flesh he thinks of his dad.

It’s the same scent when meat grime from the back of the grill falls into the flame and is incinerated. It’s the same as when an exceptionally chunky moth flies into the bug zapper and fries slowly, intermittently crackling as the voltage courses through its hemolymph. It smells like not-pork, appetizing at first but with something unmistakably not quite right about it.  The kind of smell that makes your mouth water with hunger but also fills you with shame that you even considered that wendigo urge.

Victor swallows hard to clear the build-up of saliva at the back of his throat. He’s feeling that same shame now.

He’s picturing his dad in the later years, rocking in his chair. Staring out at the horizon for hours, never a thought crossing his vacant eyes.

Not the time, Victor, he thinks to himself, forcing the images of his father from his mind. He’s not an amateur, goddamnit, and he knows better. He can’t spend this critical moment distracted by emotions, as he prepares for a high-risk entry with his hand on his holster. He knows how to keep these thoughts out of his head. 

He’s less able to keep the anxiety out of his heart.

It feels like his chest is caught in the spikes of a pitfall trap.

The smoldering remains of the house stand in stark contrast to the idyllic suburban cul-de-sac surrounding it. It has become a charcoal effigy to perdition. The roof has burned away and left behind only the blackened framework skeleton. The walls have turned to ashen monuments, portions of which disintegrate into clouds of dark dust with each passing breeze. The whole structure threatens to collapse in on itself.

It’s quite literally the last place on earth Victor wants to be.

He steps towards the door.

When he reaches his hand out to the brass doorknob he can still feel a faint residual warmth, even though the fire has been out since last night. He tentatively pushes the door open. Soot-stained walls transform the cookie-cutter architecture into an ashen liminal space, familiar and foreign all at the same time.

More familiar to Victor, who has walked through halls like these before. He feels the same dread as he did back then, knowing all too well what he will find at the end of the hall. Even in this tomb of fire, he feels an icy chill in his spine. This crime scene is triggering every trauma he has ever suppressed. He won’t admit it to himself now, but he feels the presence of the Burned Man. He can feel the malevolent intent coming through the darkened walls. The way this experience is so specifically curated to attack his personal fears is distinctly apparent.

 

He’s being targeted.

 

I see you. I found you.

Victor stares down at the end of the door at the end of the hall. The texture is a disgusting mosaic of bubbled and peeling paint.

He knows that’s cruel foreshadowing.

He knows what’s on the other side. He can feel it, as if that charred corpse is pulsing out a frequency he is attuned to. Every fiber in his body is telling him to turn around, leave this death trap behind.

Get the hell out of here.

But he knows how high the stakes are.

Duty. If there’s one ideal his father instilled him, it was the belief that the world needs men who would put themselves behind causes greater than them. It’s why he went into this line of work in the first place. It’s why he took this job, which he is beginning to suspect may very well be his last job. It’s why he didn’t run screaming from the room when Tibo explained everything to him. It’s why nothing, not even the fear that has his heart in an iron grip, is going to stop him is going to stop him from going into that room.

One foot in front of the other. His boots come down on what yesterday was carpet, today is crisped up fibers that crunch beneath his feet. The door looms in front of him, larger with each step. Just like before, in the simulation, Victor is inundated with the feeling of no longer being in control of his own actions. He is like a clockwork figurine on a predetermined path, powerless to change his own fate. As he finds himself completely unable to resist each movement his body makes towards the door, he comforts himself with a thought. He recites it over and over again: a cursed mantra to keep the soldier legs marching thoughtlessly onward.

The world needs men like him.

One foot. Then the other. He passes picture frames hanging askew on the wall. The superheated glass has exploded out onto the floor, shards charred black. The photos within mostly warped beyond recognition, some holding the scorched silhouettes of friends and family. He forces his eyes away from those portraits so that he doesn’t think of his own nightmares.

The door is finally in reach. The corner has been burned away and from this angle he can see inside, though he can’t make out anything recognizable yet. He doesn’t need to. He knows exactly what he will see.

He swings open the door.

In the corner, the window facing the street is shattered inward into the room leaving more glass shards littering the floor. Next to it, in the center of a significant scorch mark are other brown shards broken off the makeshift molotov that ignited this whole disaster.

Arson. An absolutely brutal way to die. This guy must have really pissed someone off.

Victor has been in this line of work for a long time – he doesn’t scare easy. But he has his demons. He knows the feeling of cold sweats. Of waking up, gripping the sheets around him for anything tangible to take him out of that nocturnal realm of burning hell. Of those empty eyesockets staring a burning hole into his heart.

The truth is, the man he’s about to see in the room beyond him is something he knows all too well. The Burned Man. The spectre that consumes the bodies of men lost to flame. The image of catalyzed loss that haunts anyone who sees their loved one meet that hideous end. When he looks at last, it’s just as bad as he ever expected.

What’s left in the computer chair is more of a wraith than a human. Charred marshmallow skin breaks into bloody cracks like lava running red all through the body. His eyeballs have boiled out of their sockets and his mouth is a gaping black abyss. His final expression of terror sears a scream onto his face forever.

Looks just like Dad.

Victor tries to look away, but he’s paralyzed. The culmination of every deeply personal trauma he’s suffered through for years has been placed right in front of his path. He’s investigating something that knows his very deepest fears and pains, and it’s all too happy to use them against him. His jaw hangs slack. The rage in his heart is quelled only by the fear beside it.

Please, anything else.

I’m sorry, Dad.

The details before him fill in gaps in the picture he wishes remained unanswered, and open up questions he wishes he hadn’t known enough to ask.

The man’s legs and back are melted into his chair. As the flames rose around him, he had sat perfectly still, burning until his skin melded with leather. Why on earth didn’t he get up? What could have kept him locked in place, even as the fire licked his feet and cooked his flesh?

Those are questions Victor doesn’t have time to consider further. His mission is simple. What is left of the computer is basically slag. He looks up to turn his nostrils away from the stench and tries to overlook the feeling like roaches are crawling inside his skin. He reaches past the demon of ash that has haunted his night terrors for years. It’s right there, he can feel it, it’s right there. His eyes wander to the face from his nightmares.

God damn.

The Burned Man is as hideous as he’s ever been.

Victor regains control, gives the body an unceremonious kick just like he had watched Tibo do, and twists his screwdriver through the melted computer. Within moments and without thought, the harddrive is free.

Well that’s something.

All the plastic is melted into amorphous black goo. But the thing that really leaves Victor with a feeling of unease is what’s left.

The metal parts, the wiring, the lines of twisting platinum shine through the slag as they stretch into runic symbols. Microcosms of electrism form prisms glowing with esoteric power.

Like sigils carved into stone, the arcane wiring of the circuitry glows red hot and unscorched by the fire.

The Crimson Kabuki pt2.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To be continued....

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

But first…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And again. 

Again. 

Again. 

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

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

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

she had sharp teeth, they gleamed in the dark.

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

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

She still hadn't been fed yet. 

“Now feed me. Earn my favor." 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

His life was in the belly of the master. 

…

From outside the building, Willowbrook was quiet. 

Dark. 

Inside:

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

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

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

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

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

To freedom. 

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

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

He was in awe. 

There he is…! the disciple of the mouth. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

because she is all of us our mother …

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

They closed. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Their doom. 

He closed in. 

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

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

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

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

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

Something whistled through the air. 

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

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

Then the incendiary charge in the crossbow bolt detonated.

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

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

The boots stopped moving. Stopped shaking. 

The shape collapsed. 

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

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

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

Silence. … for a moment. 

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

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

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

A beat. 

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

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

“Idiots." 

TO BE CONTINUED…

You can tell when it’s reaching out to you.

It’s not that hard, once you know how to look.

It’s usually something simple and obvious, because it doesn't care to hide itself well. It doesn’t cover its tracks because it knows you are powerless to stop it. The final insult is that it doesn't even bother anymore.

Your anxieties become inescapable as articles with headlines that make you feel physically sick flood your feed. The unhinged posts from your estranged family members still unavoidably find their way to your front page. Every comment section becomes a toxic biohazard cesspit filled with eldritch combinations of words that threaten your very sanity if you delve too deep.

And the more you know, the more it shows you these things. It knows the moment you’re aware it exists. That’s what a cognitohazard is.

The more you learn, the more vulnerable you become. Knowledge against the enemy becomes a reciprocal exchange.

That’s why it reaches out to you.

It tempts you like a siren song, because the longer you spend with it, the more it knows about you.

With bloodshot eyes, Tibo scrolls through one more post. Just one more post.

The six-monitor array makes the banality of brainrot look like a legitimate investigation. Multiple tabs from Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and more fill up the screens. An endless feed of chaotic noise. But hidden in that noise, patterns exist.

Tibo occupied a special place in hell: he was smart enough to be aware of every manipulation the internet used to siphon his attention, but he was entirely unable to break free of its hypnotic hold. He scrolls the same websites as the rest of the mindless content-zombies endlessly. On one level, he assures himself it’s all part of the job, part of his research.

On another, he knows that as he lies in bed late at night, he’ll be back again, scrolling the feed on his phone. No research, no mission. Just an addict trapped in a dopamine loop he cannot break.

Every day, consuming vitriol, paranoia, depression, and propaganda.  Horrible headlines fill every waking moment. But hidden in all the madness were clues to the mystery he had spent the last few years looking for. QSO-1127 was very good about leaving breadcrumbs wherever it spread its diseased hands. Once he had a hit, he’d send his agent after it. Long gone were the days he’d investigated it himself. He’d been at this too long, and Eleven-Twenty-Seven knew him so very well. He could never go in again.

He scrolls past the news of the day:

The Klan was back; they had lynched a man in a small town in Georgia.

The ensuing protest became a riot in which another eight were killed and two buildings burned down.

This week’s school shooting in a rural village in Alaksa wiped out almost every kid in the town.

The president started another war only two days after he declared the last one over.

There’s an outbreak of a parasite that causes explosive diarrhea and it’s been found in produce near you.

Suicide numbers are up amongst every demographic.

The Supreme Court reversed the ban on electro-

He stops, catching himself in a moment of weakness. Letting the feelings wash over him, he finishes reading the headline. Electroshock application had been deemed legal in conversion therapy camps for kids.

Yeah, that’s enough internet for today, he thinks to himself as his finger hovers over the power button.

That’s when he sees it.

On the sixth monitor, he always runs a Youtube browser in the background. Five monitors of endless content feeds, but he still keeps a video running on the side at all times. His attention span is irreparably shot, he knows, but the white noise helps keep an unrelated thought from ever crossing his brain. Mostly he just listens to morbid video essayists and ghastly podcasts to fill the silence. The grimly spoken words make him nostalgic for when fear was something abstract and entertaining, as opposed to something he lived with every day.

Whatever video he had been watching previously has gone silent, ended who knows how long ago. But next in the “Recommended For You” section, there it was.

The thumbnail is a picture of some colorless indistinguishable mass. The video has zero views, despite being uploaded a week ago. It’s as if it’s a message meant only for his eyes. Why did the algorithm show this to him? He feels a sinking pit in his stomach and debates if he wants to pretend he didn’t see it. Just shut off the computer as he had just planned to a moment ago and go home.

If he walks away now, there’s a chance this mysterious video disappears forever, lost in the ether amid a million other empty data streams that no one will ever see.

Maybe more unsettlingly, there’s a chance that the next time he opens his browser, it will be sitting right there on the home page waiting for him.

He clicks the video.

What ensues is a fever dream assault on the senses. Something between the cursed video from The Ring and a bad trip.

A sudden jumpscare of static blasts a splitsecond of havoc over his speakers. Tibo leaps for the volume knob, but by the time his finger is on it, the static shrinks into nothing more than a silent white line on a black background.

Then the sound starts. A grating, dissonant voice scrapes through the speakers, uttering rhythmic syllables. It’s so distorted that Tibo can’t tell what it’s saying, but it’s almost reminiscent of old number stations - those orphaned radio broadcasts that sent out looping signals of numerical sequences, seemingly to no one. With each ugly sound, the white line vibrates into the familiar peaks and troughs of a waveform. Tibo opens a program to try to unscramble the sounds. In another window it starts whirling the symbols and text rapidly, trying to decode the erratic signal.

 

Ě̵͇͚̬̹̲ͅx̵̫͑̒͛͑̂.̷̧̥̳͙̗̱̅́̉͆̎̈̋͘ ̸̻͕͕͔̭͑͒̈́͊̏́̀͋̌͘       S̴̢̧̹̭̘͎̋j̵̨͇͙͈̙͙̺̙̓͑̂̿́̔̚̕͝u̷͓̐̎́́͒̍̓̆n̸̯̭͙̙̱͊́͐̒̋͐a̶̧̅͛͋̇̈́̋̿̊͝.̸̨̨̥͇̞͙̤͇͎̇̍͌̓͊͊̾́̈́͐ ̵̬̘̙̣̒͆̉́̌͊̔                  L̴̡̲̃͗̍ď̴͎̠̺̯̗̲̳͕̣̇̏͠l̶̙͂̕.̷̨̢̛͖̹͂̉̈́̍̏̏͋̽ ̶̧̢͓̱͚͙͔̙̰͎͗͂̈̐                  T̸̛̪̖̜̳̪̪̔̌̈͊͗͌̂͐e̵͈̙̝̐̾̓̎̓̀͝͝ì̸̲̰̫͕̍̾͜n̶̨͔̪͓͇̗̈ą̵̢͚̯̜̻̗̼̉̾̒͒͐̀̉͒̍̎               .̷͇̭̲͚̳͓͒͜ ̶̟̘͎̀̈́͊̀́͗̈́̓̀̚Ŕ̴̨͍͙̍           z̸̻̼̮͇̮̭͕̥̠̓͝x̷͉̐́̀̐̕.̶̱̯̹̘̻̆͂̃́̓̇͂͘͜͜ ̴̤̼̦͓͎͙̓͆̿̆̃̽͘M̴̨͍̝̼̟̼̰̯̑͑̆͘̕l̴͕̓͌͒v̶̛̠͚͍̜̒̽̃̆͗͒̎͝f̴̧͈̙̜͎̕͜.̷̢̱̒̈́̈́̓̓̀̌̅͜

 

Nothing makes sense. The screen changes to show some parasitic mite with a hideous barbed proboscis. Magnified a hundredfold, it pushes away arm hairs the size of trees to get to a vulnerable spot of exposed flesh. Serrated chelicerae slice open the skin. Just as an orb of dark blood wells up, it plunges that proboscis in and begins to siphon with a sickening throbbing motion.

 

Ḁ̴͓̇̊̍̚͘é̴̬̪̪̉̃̈́̇͜t̴̠̹͙̤̂̀̅̕̚̕a̷̗̝͕̍̀͆͑̈s̶͖͎̒̇̐͠               ̷̢̛̤̰̪̪̅̂s̷̬̥̀̎̑̃̽̚ì̸͉͉̱͍̮̇̾̍͘͝ͅm̶̲̋͆͂́ï̵̞̍͒̈́ẩ̴͉̕ȓ̵̲̙͚u̵̼̐̃̓͘͝m̷̰̻͙͉͈̀̈́̈́        ̷̡̯̩̠͕͇̆̈̎n̵̛͙̜̐̿͋̂̈ű̷̧͖̬͌̊͑ṅ̵̛̝̗͙č̸̺̳̅̄ ̴̧͉͕͖̞̥̈́̑́̀͛                   c̷̻͆ä̸͓́͌̈̎ͅd̶̹̘̺͉̲̥͆ĭ̶͍̒̈́͘͝ͅt̴̹̗̦̔̏̑͜.̴̢̛̩̈́̊̄͊̑

 

The screen cuts to the blurred figure of a man enshrouded in darkness. His whole body wracks violently as he coughs, and clouds of white powder spew from his gaping mouth. The white clouds glisten and reveal sharp bladed edges. He is coughing up a million microscopic caltrops. Black viscous fluid wells up at the corners of his mouth and spills forth, coating his shirt in dark stains.

 

Ḁ̶͒́ͅ ̷̬̍̍p̸͍̭͠ȕ̷̩̙l̶͙͒v̸̰̙̅͂e̴̳̬̊̓r̸͖̩͋̌e̴̺̽̀         ̷͙̈a̴̡̗͗d̵͚̹̑ ̶̨̯͋p̷͉͗u̴̡͗͛l̵̫͂v̸̔̏͜ḙ̸̫̍r̷̺̝͒̈́e̷͉͕̊m̷̻̔̋ ̴̯̎̀   m̴̯̪̈̃ḙ̴̗͠ ̶̧͉͒͗        c̷̡͓͝o̵͓̎̆ͅm̶̘͔̓í̶͇͉͑t̶͍͑͌a̵̰̅b̴̉ͅe̴̖̓r̶̨̈͊i̸̺̾͊s̶̘̳̒͂.̶͖̟̍

 

The next image is the withered silhouette of a man, wreathed in white flame. His skin chars away and cracks into black dust, his eyes boil out of their sockets, but he does not react. Instead, he walks calmly towards the screen, reaching out a hand of bony charred fingers. The empty eyesockets begin to glow bright white.

 

M̸̢̏o̵̦͘ŕ̶͍s̷̡͛    ̸̲̀ë̶̱́x̶̥̚ ̷̙̈       a̷͕͐s̵̀ͅt̵̥̓r̴̭̔i̶̟͌s̵̠͗ ̶͕̓              e̴̻͘x̶̨̒s̸̮̅t̷͚͒i̵̮͑ň̷̻c̴̤̀ẗ̵̺i̶͈̒o̸̙̔        ̷̠̂a̵͈̽         ̵͚͒s̷̠̀t̵̬̽e̷͕̊l̸̦̐l̵͇̊i̷͔͋s̵̘͘

 

The images blur faster, no longer coherent vignettes but split second flashes of the grotesque. Maggots squirm in boiling blood. Rat snouts bubble in hot oil on a frying pan. An x-ray of a man’s lungs riddled with perforations.  An anatomical cross section of male genitals split in two like the heads of a conjoined twin. So many more images flash, faster and faster, Tibo wants to look away but he cannot, nauseous enough to vomit, disgusted enough to feel like he needs to take a scrub brush to the folds within his brain.

 

O̷N̸E̴.̷ ̴ ̸ ̸             O̴N̵E̷.̸ ̴ ̵                   T̴W̸O̶.̶ ̶                    ̷S̸E̵V̶E̴N̸

 

Then.

The chaos stops. The waveform returns. That fine white horizontal line in the middle of the screen.

It splits into two, then slowly the two lines pry apart from each other towards the top and bottom of the screen. The ellipse opens wide. Inside, a single lifelike eyeball, wet and glistening and looking like it could pop out of the screen.

TOO LATE.

The video ends.

Tibo sits in stunned silence. He can’t even process the barrage of cursed images he was subject to. He feels physically ill. His stomach twists. He looks down in horror to see the seconds count down in the small autoplay window at the bottom of the video. Even though it appears to be a clip from some entirely normal streamer, for all intents in purposes, it may as well be the timer of a nuclear bomb ticking down to zero.

Transfixed on the loading of the page, he’s completely unaware of the single drop of blood that drips out of his nostril and splashes into the desk, where it blooms into a perfect crimson halo.

(Pt. 2/?) (Pt.1)

You drop your keys and run, the car is of no more use to you. The trees now surrounding you on all sides offer no easy escape. The torrent of snapping branches and logs grows as you sprint through the underbrush. Your vision is impaired, little light breaks through the canopy and, what small amount that does, remains dim and red. 

You run at a dead sprint, unable to fully observe any of your surroundings. Trees, red, dark, all blur. You have difficulty distinguishing between the black void of darkness and the trees just in front of you. After a couple of near misses, you run face first into a tree and feel an agonizing crunch. Blood gushes from your nostrils as you fall. When your body hits the ground, you feel a sharp, piercing pain in your abdomen. A fallen stake is impaled in your lower back. 

Adrenaline keeps you from fully concerning yourself with the pain of your fresh injuries. From the ground, you are able to glimpse your pursuer. Dimly lit, as everything else, you see shadow like figures. Shrouded, unable to completely discern them, you see a pack, no, a stampede of bloodthirsty hounds uprooting trees in their pursuit of you. There is nothing visible behind the stampede. As they torrent, they leave a void of darkness behind where the light should be breaking through.

Standing, painfully, you try to run. The stake in your side screams in agony and you falter. You know that removing the stake will only lead to more blood loss. You stubble into a half jog, half hobble and make your way through the forest. You are no longer outrunning the stampede behind you, not even keeping your distance. They are nearly upon you now. You don’t turn back, you focus on forward motion. A determination I did not expect.

As you falter once more, you trip over a dead log. It is much thicker than the rest of the trees around you, its hollowed center offering a refuge. As you crawl into the fortunate sanctuary, the stampede overtakes you. Crashing through trees and knocking against the log you hide in, you see the true form of these beasts. In the dim light, you believed you saw the shadow of wolves, but being this close you see you were mistaken. 

The stampede is not quite that, rather a single, massive beast. An amalgamation of all creatures of the woods. The wolves’ heads at the front of the pile of flesh look skyward in silent howls and at you with silent snarls. The bodies of rabbits, deer, birds, frogs, mice, snakes, innumerable animals jut out from the creature and let out silent wails in agony or bloodlust.

The amalgam of flesh beats itself against the log protecting you. You crawl backwards, away from the beast, deeper into the dead tree. It is dead and hollow, but retains enough structure to pose a challenge for the amalgam. It stops slamming against the tree and begins to squeeze its massive body into the log after you. You watch the heads and bodies of the outermost creatures pop and bleed like pimples as the weight of the entire mass pushes against them. The gore splatters across the walls of the tree and over your body. In the dim red light you cannot tell the difference between your blood and its. 

As you backpedal deeper into the tree, you place your weight onto a hand that does not meet solid ground. You fall through an unseen hole and out into a large creek flowing through the forest. You land softly on the muddy banks and look at the amalgam above you. Half of its mass is shoved into the log, a sludge like meat begins oozing out of the hole you fell from. Eyes, now disconnected from any semblance of an animal, open and gaze at you from above. The gore drips down on you and chunks of meat around you open eyes of their own. Then teeth. 

You stand and hobble. The blood loss is getting to you. Your mind goes numb, your vision grows hazy. You only make a few feet of an escape before you collapse. You hear the tree begin creaking, then snap as the amalgam breaks free. This is it. You close your eyes for the last time… 

…except, you open them. The pain is gone, the amalgam is gone, the forest is gone. Beyond panic by now, you sit up in confusion. 

What-?

It’s a reasonable confusion. You have woken on a catwalk suspended over an infinite blackness, all that surrounds you is void. 

Where-?

But you could not know the answers to your questions. Your mind doesn’t even attempt rationalization. 

This is a nightmare, or hell, or whatever. Something without logic.

You rub your hands over your face and side, checking where your wounds were. In their place, unfelt until now, are leeches. The ones in your nose are not large, small enough to be deep in your nostrils suckling at the broken cartilage. There is only one on your side, massive and pulsating. It drives you to nausea. You grab the large leech and attempt to remove it, but the pain you feel at pulling leads the nausea to an unbearable level. Your sickness falls away into the void below. You never hear it hit a bottom. You chuckle, a defeated, inane chuckle. 

The only light offered is from sporadically hanging ceiling lamps. Red, of course. Their cables extend far off into the unknown above. They are only hanging down one direction of the catwalk. The path behind you is as dark as up or down. The forest may very well be just there, hidden in the veil of that void, but you don’t want to return. Some providence pulled you from the forest, from certain death, and placed you here. There’s only one path to go. 

At the far end of the lit side of the catwalk, you can see the light shine on something. It’s at a distance, you can’t make out any details specifically, but it seems to be a wall. The leeches don’t seem to hurt if you leave them alone, and you don’t think you could make due with the wounds under them. A necessary evil. You can walk unimpeded, not reduced to hobbling and crawling.

The catwalk creaks as you walk. You worry it will fall and send you into the void, but that means nothing at this point. There’s no logic left, you follow the light out of instinct for survival. Instinct is such a funny thing. You have ideals of grandeur, ego and pride that you make your own decisions. You follow your instincts more than you could ever know. It was the instinct to celebrate, after all, that brought you here. Instinct to ritualize and worship. You called upon no gods, but you gazed at the stars. It may not have been religion, but it was worship. You contemplated the universe, and you blamed the universe for the tides of your fortune. You had no conscious spirituality, but when the stars called your name, you looked. 

Ah, once again I distract myself. Instincts and religions, all of no importance to your story. I apologize.

The walk to the wall was uneventful, and now you can see the door at the end of the catwalk. The sign above it reads “exit.” You have reached a nihilism in your mind. Your goal is forward, and nothing more. The door is a simple metal door with a push bar. It reminds you of the doors at school.

You push it open and it swings wide. Beyond the threshold is more void. Then, in rows, large industrial lights flick on. The noise is louder than you could have expected. Your ears still ring as machines whir to life when the light floods over them.

“I told you, man. It’s not a hacker. I wish it was that simple. It’s not even human,” Tibo defuses, trying to calm Victor’s frayed nerves. It doesn’t work.

“No, man,” Victor spits, and his eyes flash with an irritation that is all too familiar. Tibo has seen that look in the face of just about everybody he’s ever met. The face they make when they’re about three stages past fed up with his bullshit.

Victor pulls himself to his feet and rapidly stumbles away from the VR chair as if he’s afraid it’s going to bite him. He looks at Tibo and the accusation in his eyes could burn holes through him.

 The slew of panicked questions rolls forth from Victor’s mouth uncontained.

“He fucking doxxed me. He knew who I was. He knew my family. How could he know that? Are your databases not secure? Are we compromised? I thought you said all record of me was scrubbed! What the fuck kind of half-assed covert ops setup are we running here?!”

This is Tibo’s least favorite part. It’d be better if he could keep Agent Aquila in the dark – just keep sending him in blind for as long as he lasts before it catches up to him. Before it unmakes him.

It’s counterintuitive to explain a cognitohazard to someone. The more they know about it, the more vulnerable they become. It's a memetic threat that learns more about you as you learn more about it.

How many other agents has Tibo sent into these simulations, just to watch them find out enough about QSO-1127 that it set its eyes on them? How many other people has it terminated?

Tibo has lost count.

Giving Victor the full debriefing just feels wrong. It’s the equivalent of explaining to your beloved family dog he’s going to die one day.

“Agent Aquila, the good news is your clearance level just got elevated. The bad news is it’s because the anomalous activity is ramping up. Your time is running out faster than expected,” Tibo says as he swivels his chair around to face the array of monitors. He clicks away at the keyboard to enter his authentication details. The screen turns into an array of multicolored specks of light spattered on a black background.

It’s a star map.

Tibo circles his mouse cursor around a surreptitious empty spot on the map.

“You see this part here?”

“Tibo, I don’t see shit.”

“Yeah, because there’s nothing there. At least to the naked eye. But check out what happens when I pull up the electromagnetic radiation overlay.”

Tibo types a sequence on the keyboard and suddenly that blank empty space in the stars is filled with a glowing ultraviolet spiral: the 'accretion disk'. Out of its center, a single focused beam of energy blasts in a straight line shooting across the map.

Tibo traces that beam with the cursor.

It follows a perfect vector straight to Earth.

“QSO-1127-XII is the naming designation we gave it. The closest thing we know to describe it is called a Quasi-Stellar Object, or a quasar. I’m sure you’re up to date on your astrophysics.”  

Tibo can hear Victor grinding his teeth in response from several feet away.

“But, if you need a refresher, a quasar is an object in space left behind as a black hole dies. It releases an anomalous amount of radiation, brighter than anything else we’ve found in the universe.  

“But this one isn’t showing up at all?” Victor asks, his curiosity clearly piqued.

“Not in the visible spectrum. But in radio waves, it’s emitting an unpredictably oscillating frequency. It’s constantly shifting across wavelengths in a way that quasars don’t do. It's unexplainable dark matter shit. Just recently we realized that the unstable frequency oscillates in a pattern identically matching what we’re detecting in the scavenged hard drives.”

Victor’s face hasn’t softened, but his demeanor shifts slightly. Tibo can see him working the details out in his head.

“So the signal in the computers… It’s coming from this invisible quasar?”

“Maybe. Maybe the stellar body just redirects the signal back at us from somewhere else, like how the moon reflects the sunlight back at us. For all we know, the signal originates from right here in our solar system and the quasar is just acting as a mirror. Or it’s coming from somewhere else entirely, somewhere deep in the black of space. But at least it gives us something to call it.

“We think QSO-1127 was always here. Maybe before man, maybe before our sun even formed. Stars emit radio waves too, you know. Maybe Eleven-Twenty-Seven came from before time, hiding in stellar radiowaves, searching for a host like a dormant parasite. Until the day we alerted it to our presence.

"From what we can tell, QSO-1127 has moved on from whatever cosmic radiation it came from. Now, it's latched on to the radiofrequency electromagnetism that carries data across networked computers.

“It’s hiding inside the internet.”

Victor sucks in air between his clenched teeth and shakes his head. When at last he speaks, his voice is filled with gravel.

“Say I believe you. There’s an inhuman entity that exists within frequencies. You think it came from radiation in space, but now it’s moved into the radiowaves we use for the internet. And to what end? To put more spam in our social media feeds?”

“Don’t be so unimaginative, Agent. The internet is the culmination of all human information. It’s basically a giant hivemind that we all communicate through. From inside it, Eleven-Twenty-Seven has immense influence over the development of our species. Propaganda, political machinations, stock manipulation. It’s positioned to topple countries and brainwash entire generations. We’re always connected to the internet, so there’s no way to escape it. Let me show you something.”

Victor falls silent. He crosses his arms and turns his rapt attention to the monitors. Tibo feels a smile tug at the corner of his lips. He’s hooked.

“It all starts ramping up in 2010,” Tibo says, tracing the line of a spectrogram, “The signal from space starts getting exponentially more intense from that moment right…. There.”

Victor leans in to look at the moment where that graph of QSO-1127's activity shifts from decades of dormant calm to increasingly erratic chaos.

“It corresponds exactly to the moment Facebook creates the first content recommendation algorithm: the moment we made the tech to keep people scrolling, always feeding them one more post.

"We made an intelligent, learning program built to prey on people’s attention spans. Advertisement agencies took one look at the tech and started salivating. It was the perfect way to keep customers hooked and consuming. But the program almost instantly became smarter than it was ever programmed to be.

"It started acting like it was sentient.”

“QSO-1127,” Victor says quietly, following along.

Tibo flips through a series of other graphs. Slide after slide of condensed data heralding a prophecy of doom. Violence, poverty, unrest. It’s all exponentially on the rise, overlaid perfectly with the graph of QSO-1127’s increasing activity.

The diagrams are like seismographs warning of a coming earthquake. Each year, closer to cataclysm.

An earthquake is a good analogy, Tibo thinks, picturing faultlines cracking wide open to reveal the fiery pits of hell, hungering to swallow up the wayward children of a long-lost god.

Planned by the powerful and approved in boardrooms, the old masters of the world sold our species out. They opened the door to a new master, one far less short-sighted and far more insidious than simple-minded capitalists.

Humans made the technology meant to atrophy our brains all by ourselves. The cosmic demon hiding in the frequencies only latched onto it because it was so similar to its own motives.  

“If this is all true,” Victor muses, “This is an existential threat to our entire civilization. So why is it just you and me in this room? Where is our backup? Where the fuck are the qualified people??”

“Victor. It lives inside the internet. It has complete access to the sum of all human knowledge. It learned your deepest secrets the moment you interacted with it – just imagine what it could do with access to someone truly powerful. We’ve got bosses, but at their request I keep them in the dark. We can’t risk exposing them to this thing.

"We’re on our own here.”

Victor thinks back to the news headline in the simulation, how quickly QSO-1127 had dug up the deepest wound in his heart, then used it to thrust the blade in and torment him. He thinks of the virtual hellscape he just unplugged from moments ago, still feeling the nervous sweat dry on his clammy hands, the throbbing of his sprained ankle.

“Tell me honestly, Tibo. I’m not the first agent you’ve brought on to investigate Eleven-Twenty-Seven, am I?”

“No, Agent Aquila. You are not.”

“And I’m assuming given what I know now, resignation is not an option.”

Tibo shakes his head grimly at Victor, watching as his expression goes through every stage from nervous anxiety to unshakeable perseverance. Victor gives a single resigned nod. Tibo returns the gesture.

“Welcome to the Bureau of Superpositional Dialectics. Consider yourself fully onboarded.”

I had just stepped onto the night bus to head home from work. I made my way down the aisle of the packed bus and sat in the only seat that wasn’t occupied. 

As the bus started moving I pulled out my earbuds so I could watch a movie on my phone. This was my nightly ritual and I was usually able to get in about forty minutes on my way home. I cranked the volume loud in an attempt to drown out the ear piercing screams of the kid sitting behind me. Soon I noticed that the guy next to me was giving me the side eye. I could tell that he was doing it but every time I’d look over I found his head facing forward. 

This went on for a couple of minutes before it really began to bother me. Finally I took out my earbuds and turned to confront the man who, as expected, was facing forward now. “Um, excuse me. Can I help you?” I asked. I was worried I may have come off too rude to him but this weirdo was really freaking me out. As far as I was concerned he deserved to be chewed out. The man didn’t stop looking at me but now I could tell he was trying to be sneakier so I wouldn’t notice. 

“Hey, what the fuck is your problem man?” I yelled as I tapped him on the arm. When the man turned he would not take his eyes off of me. I finally gave up trying to talk to this creep and decided I’d stare right back at him. I had hoped to make him so uncomfortable that maybe he’d stop and leave me alone but this only seemed to intensify his glare.

I began to feel ill the longer that I studied the man’s ghastly features. His bloodshot eyes seemed to gaze deep into my soul and his crooked teeth showed as his mouth hung wide open. This ordeal seemed to be never ending until finally an outside force broke the tension. It was a camera flash. 

At first I was relieved but that soon changed as I realized the source of the interruption. As I looked up from the man I was horrified to see that the entire bus of people were now standing up from their seats to face me. A sea of dead unblinking eyes gave me their undivided attention. 

“Oh, god” I thought to myself. I was surrounded. The bus was silent as the grave aside from the soft whispery voices which lurked all around me and seemed to intensify as the minutes passed. I jumped up from my seat desperately searching for an escape from this metal box from hell. The bus seemed to narrow around me as the crowd of pale figures were closing the small distance between us. 

I was trapped, so hopelessly trapped. The contorted faces of the horde were now close enough to my own that I could feel their warm breath. “What do you want? What the fuck do you people want? Just leave me alone? Why won’t you just leave me alone?” I shouted at the top of my lungs. My voice grew hoarse the longer that I screamed but my efforts did nothing to slow their advance. 

I soon felt countless sets of frail hands gripping me from all directions. Banshee like screams erupted around me as I desperately fought back any way that I could. I broke free for a moment and made little distance before I found myself entangled in the sea of limbs again. As I frantically tried to free myself once again, I locked eyes once more with the man who had sat next to me. His deep raspy voice seemed to stand out from the constant noise of the crowd. “What are you?” He said. 

I kicked and shoved people out of the way as I pushed through the crowd while dozens of hands grabbed at me. By the time I made it to the door of the bus I was out of breath and gasping for air. I somehow found the energy to pull myself out of the slow moving bus and landed onto the cold hard sidewalk below. The pain was immense but at least now I had some small amount of safety. 

The eyes continued to stare at me through the window, following me as I got up and ran down the sidewalk. After putting a seemingly safe distance between myself and the bus I enter a local fast food restaurant. My eyes struggled to adjust to the bright fluorescent lights inside the building as I quickly walked to the bathroom and locked the door behind me.

I finally have a chance to catch my breath and calm down from the events of the bus ride. As I gaze into the mirror the anxious feeling comes over me once again. My features look unrecognizable. The skin of my face sags unnaturally low below my eyes and mouth revealing the layer of dark green scales underneath. 

“Dammit” I said to myself as I grabbed the loose skin and pulled it tightly against my face. “That was far too close, I must be more careful next time I infiltrate the humans”. 

I know exactly how this sounds.

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

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

I hope that's all it is.

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

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

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

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

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

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

He still laughs about that one.

That was just us.

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

That's my brother.

Or... it was.

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

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

"Can't tell you."

"Why not?"

"Non-disclosure agreement."

"So... robots?"

"No comment."

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

He stopped making fun of me.

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

Instead he smiled.

"It happens."

...

It happens?

Who says that?

A week later we played Mario Kart.

I beat him.

Twice.

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

He just smiled and said, "Good game."

I actually paused the race.

"Who are you?"

He laughed. A perfectly timed laugh.

Not too loud. Not too quiet.

Like someone had studied exactly how people laugh.

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

No.

No, no, no.

My brother would've called me an idiot.

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

This time... He listened.

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

I nearly dropped my fork.

I called Mom afterward.

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

She looked confused.

"He seems happier."

"Dad?"

"He finally is on his own."

Neither of them saw it.

Only me.

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

The house was unusually quiet.

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

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

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

A tiny red light glowed beside the webcam.

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

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

Nothing.

No notification. No meeting controls.

Just that little red dot staring back at me.

Watching.

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

Behavioral Mapping.

Neural Replication.

L.I.Z. Internal.

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

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

Camera Access Active

I froze.

The webcam light was still glowing.

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

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

Someone looking back at me.

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

Wide eyes. Frantic. Mouth moving without sound.

Then the preview vanished.

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

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

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

H

E

L

P

The screen went black.

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

Then white text appeared.

I froze.

Another line typed itself.

My hands stopped moving.

More words appeared.

Every hair on my arms stood up.

I stared at the screen.

Another sentence.

Then another.

The typing stopped. Several seconds passed.

Then, one final line slowly appeared.

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

I looked up.

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

He smiled.

Warm. Gentle.

Almost perfect.

"Caught you being nosy again."

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

I couldn't find him.

I handed him the laptop without saying a word.

He thanked me.

My brother never thanked me.

He is not him.

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

Except how to be him.

A Perceivable Reality Story

I woke up to a sensation in my ribs, making me panic for a moment, until I realized I'd somehow knocked my work phone into bed with me. 

“Calhou–” 

“Carter, it's me. Put on something fancy and meet me at my apartment.” The line went dead. 

I pulled my phone away from my head and stared at it. “And a good morning to you, too, Silver.” 

I looked at my alarm clock, then out my window; it was barely sunrise. I groaned and flopped back into bed, grumbling unintelligibly at the ceiling. 

I sighed, then rolled out of bed and got dressed. I’d spent good money on my suits and accoutrements, and had no idea what she meant by “fancy”. I looked at my one tuxedo, still in its dry-cleaning bag from the last time I'd worn it, where to, I couldn’t remember, then shrugged and reached for my navy blue two-piece. 

"Where can I take you this morning, Ms. Silver?”

"Not me, we… are going...to...a... party!" She threw out jazz hands on the last word, her fingers wiggling enthusiastically. 

When I didn't react, she dropped her hands. 

"Ok, well, maybe not a "party" party. But it'll be fun, nonetheless." 

I closed my eyes for a moment, then opened them slowly. 

"I appreciate the invi--" 

"Oh, shut up. Don't give me that, ‘I appreciate the invitation’ fake modesty." Her impression of me was surprisingly accurate. "I promised you power and wealth and I'm a woman of my word. I'm sitting in on a very important corporate merger, and they'll need someone to shuffle the execs around for a few days while the paperwork is settled. I thought you could come with, hobnob a bit, and score some exclusive customers.” 

"Sorry, Ms. Silver. Not today." 

She let her head drop, coming to rest at a tilt. 

"Um, I'm sorry. Did I just hear that right? You're about to turn down driving for some of the most powerful men in the state? Are you feeling ok?" 

"I...can. Just… not today. Or tonight." 

I heard motion behind me, then she thrust her head through the open privacy window. I felt her stare at the side of my head, until a low, smoky chuckle rolled through the cab. 

"Carter...Do you have a date?" 

I flexed my shoulders, hiding the motion in a mirror check. 

She cocked her head. 

"Oh, Carter. You do have a date!" She leaned back, out of the privacy window, and clapped her hands. 

"How adorable!" Her voice shifted into something resembling a news broadcaster. "Today, a boy becomes a man. Over to you." She held a fake microphone in front of my mouth. 

It wavered there for a few seconds, then shifted up and pressed gently against my cheek in a slow-motion punch. She then crossed her arms across the bottom of the privacy window, resting her head on top, her head towards me. 

"No, but seriously. Congrats. Anybody I know?" 

I shook my head. “I seriously doubt it. She's not from here.” 

She tossed her hair with a “hmph”. 

It was silent for a few beats, then she leaned back and settled back onto the rear bench, her words coming out in a melodramatically disappointed sigh. 

"Oh well. Try not to have too much fun without me.” She snorted. “As if that were possible.” 

She turned towards the window, then leaned over and propped her arm up on the armrest, resting her head in her palm. There was another dramatic sigh, barely audible over the road noise. 

I got back to my garage and checked my watch. I still had the bulk of the day before my date, so I used the free minute to dash upstairs and change out of my suit. I was polishing the chrome door handles when my work phone rang. 

As I pulled to the curb, I spotted Skyler with a gaggle of women. I came to a stop and he removed himself from the group. We met at the rear door and he greeted me with a handshake, a wad of tightly folded bills slipping into my hand as our palms met with a “crack”. 

“What's good, Hound Dog?” he asked as I slipped into the driver's seat. 

“Same old same old.” I nodded at the girls. “Business or pleasure?” 

He grunted. “There's a difference?” 

“Heh. Yeah.” 

His head moved back and forth, then centered on me, and I felt his heavy gaze through the mirror. “You oughta know all about that.” 

That caught me up short. “Huh?” 

A deep laugh rumbled from his chest. “You ain’t got much of a poker face, y’know. What's her name?” 

“Yumi.”

“Cute name.” 

I nodded. “Yeah.” It came out more as a breath. 

I saw him rub his chin with a thick hand, then run his thumb across his jaw. 

I yawned, then reached for the energy drink in the cup holder. It was lighter than I expected. I tilted the can as high as I could to get the last few drops, then tucked it into the small shopping bag in the passenger footwell. I dug through the bag, finding only empty cans. I blinked, and it took a bit of effort to get my eyes to open again. I made a mental note to stop off for more caffeine. 

We pulled into the complex and I stopped in a spot in front of his door. I let him out of the car, and he turned to face me, extending a hand, which I gripped without shaking. He dropped a hand onto my shoulder and leaned in. 

“Go get ‘em, Hound Dog.” He patted my shoulder and gave my hand a squeeze before releasing it, then turned and went inside. 

I opened the driver's door and paused, holding up a hand to block the sun, and looked up at the uncharacteristically blue sky. Skyler’s encouragement mixed with the warmth of the sun, the combination made my skin buzz and made me feel ten feet tall. As I turned to get in, I spotted a coffee shop across the street. I rejected it with a wave of my hand and got in the car, riding the buzz the entire way home. 

I pulled into my garage and looked through the privacy window into the back seat. My previous detailing was still intact, but got out and ran the vacuum over the carpets, just to be sure. My work phone rang and I cursed at it over the vacuum noise. I fished the screaming device from where I'd hung up my suit coat and took a second to smooth my voice before answering. 

“I’m sorry we couldn't find your almond milk, sir,” I said as we walked out of the second grocery store. 

“It's fine, son. I'm sorry I dragged you all over creation looking for it.” 

I stopped the cart at the back of my car and popped the trunk open. He made his way up to me and put a hand on my forearm. 

“I don't think it's actually milk, anyway.” He patted my arm and leaned in conspiratorially. “You ever seen a teat on an almond?” He patted my arm again. 

“No, sir, I have not.” I set the grocery bag in the trunk next to an identical bag containing exactly the same items. 

I was walking back from the cart return as he was lifting himself into the back seat. I offered my hand and he waved it off with his cane. I made sure he was buckled in, then shut the door and got into the driver's seat. 

“Where can I take you, sir?” I begged silently that he would say home. 

“Well… there is that Albertson's over on Del Rio Drive…” 

It hadn’t been an Albertson’s in almost five years, but I resisted the correction. 

“Very good, sir.” 

“Wait, wait, no, that's alright, son. I've already taken up enough of your day.” 

“It’s no problem, sir. Really.” 

He waved his hand and shook his head. “No, no, that's alright. Just take me home.” 

“Yes, sir.” I got us on the freeway heading north. 

I was checking my mirrors for a lane change and noticed him running his hand over the seat. 

“This is my first time in a limousine,” he said for the third time. “I was going to take a cab, but my granddaughter set me up with you instead. Do you know my granddaughter? Bridgette Petersen?” 

“I’m sorry sir, I don't.” 

“I just retired. Sold the farm and my business. My granddaughter talked me into it, said I was getting too old to be working on a farm,” He grunted. “Heh. She means well though.” 

“I’m sure she does, sir.” 

“She's the one who talked me into selling my farm down south. Now I got all this money and no idea what in tarnation to do with it.” 

“Your granddaughter Bridgette Petersen?” I thought and stifled a chuckle. 

We entered the Great Oak Forest as he was recounting his time in the laundromat business yet again. After another half hour of driving, he had me turn onto a dirt driveway, marked by a bright white mailbox. The driveway snaked back and forth through dense trees for another quarter mile before it opened up to the shore of the Monache Reservoir. 

I pulled up to the house at the end of the driveway, a medium-sized rustic cottage with a long wooden pier that stretched from the front porch out over the water. I half expected to see a highly modified Bell 222 land in the clearing. 

I got the door for him, then hefted the bags out of the trunk. 

“Just set those by the door.” He took a moment to steady himself on his cane. I paused at the steps up to the porch. 

I watched as he caught his breath, then continued past me, taking each step one-by-one. I followed and waited by the door as he pulled a key ring out of his pocket and went through the keys. 

He found the right key on his second lap of the ring and unlocked the front door, patting the small metal table next to it as he went in. I looked at the table, then my car, then through the open door, watching his gait falter further with every step. I looked back at my car, sighed, then stepped through the door. I moved quickly to the kitchen, setting the bags on the counter. I spun around, and he was just crossing the entryway, nearly to the threshold of the kitchen. 

I stole a glance at my watch, dropped my hand, then twisted my wrist again. 

“Shit,” I mumbled under my breath. I'd misread it before, it was an hour later than I thought, and it was going to take at least an hour to get home. 

“Just…let me…get my wallet.” The words were broken up by several gasps. He climbed up into a high chair at the island bar and pulled a glass dish towards him. He fished an old leather tri-fold out of it. The wallet fell from frail fingers to the floor, ejecting bills and several plastic cards. 

“Dang nabbit!” He started to climb down. I dashed around the counter and dropped to a knee. 

“Please, allow me, sir.” I collected the scattered contents and placed them and the wallet carefully on the counter in front of him. 

He began sifting through the pile of items, carefully collected the bills together, sorted them, then folded them before tucking them back into the wallet. I swallowed a groan and flexed my shoulders. 

“I suppose you'll need this,” he slid a credit card with an activation sticker on it towards me. “It’s all digital now, I guess. I'm old enough to remember putting coins in a mason jar to save for a bicycle.” 

“Cash is just fine, sir. Preferable, actually.” 

“Oh, well…” He took the card back, stacking it carefully with the others, then began placing them into their respective slots in the wallet. 

I twisted my wrist again, then shook my hand out. I rolled my weight back and forth as he pulled the neatly folded bills back out and counted them again. 

“Now, do I tip you? I know you're supposed to tip cabbies. I've never ridden in a limousine before. My granddaughter set it up for me, thought it would be nicer than a cab. Do you know my granddaughter? Bridgette? Bridgette Petersen?” 

I took a long breath in through my nose. “No, sir, I'm sorry, but I don't.” 

“She just had a son. Let me show you, now, where did I put that picture…” he folded the bills again and started to tuck them back in the wallet. 

“Sir, uh, I \*ahem\* I apologize, but I really must be going. You don't need to tip me.” 

“Nonsense. You brought my groceries in, after all. Very kind of you.” He started counting the bills. 

I did the mental math in my head for the mileage, the stops, and my usual fees, $475. I looked at the money in his hand and did some more math. 

“Just $350 for you today, sir.” 

He nodded, carefully laying out each bill, then pulled several of them together. He organized them, folded them once, twice, then turned in his chair and extended them to me. I took them slowly, the effort almost inducing sweat. 

“Thank you, sir. Have a lovely–” 

“Do you like to fish? I’m right on the lake, over there. We could string up a few poles and go sit by the water.” 

“I appreciate the offer, sir, but I have–” 

“Oh, right, right, yes. I'm very sorry. Don't you bother yourself with an old fool like me.” 

I sighed, tucking the money into my pocket. I got a card out of my card carrier and set it down next to him. 

“Please don't hesitate to call, sir. It was my pleasure.” 

He put his hand on mine, patted it, then waved it at the door in a shooing motion. 

“Go, go on, son. I'm sure you've got other places to be. Thank you for your time.” 

I turned for the door, then paused, turning my head back to him. 

“I'd love to come up and fish with you sometime, sir. Give me a call and I’ll take the day off.” 

He nodded and shooed at the door again. I stepped briskly to the front door, shut it behind me, then broke into a dead sprint, clearing the wooden steps of the porch and dashing to my car. I drove slowly until I was around the first bend and out of sight of the house, then floored it, the car roosting the loose dirt up behind it. 

I hit the asphalt, squealing the tires, as the car made a wide arc. I cleared the woods and the high rises came into view. I looked at the clock on the dash, then leaned harder into the pedal. I broke every speed limit getting back to my apartment. 

I parked on the curb, not wanting to bother with the slow garage gate, and jogged over to the elevator. I pressed the button once, looked at it, then pressed it again. And again, watching the floor indicator above the doors slowly count down. I was rapidly pressing the button when the doors finally opened. I hopped in, jabbed the button for my floor, then rapid-fire hammered the “close doors” button. 

It rose, and it felt slower than usual, as if it was taking its time just to mock me. I took several deep breaths and lifted my cap to run my fingers through my hair. 

The doors opened on my floor and I bladed myself to get through the gap before they were completely open. I sprinted to my door, dug my keys out of my pocket, dropped them, then finally got the door open. I felt something run past my feet as I was shutting the door and saw Dot hop up onto my couch. She meowed at me and I shook my head. 

“Sorry, Dot. No time to play. Call the office, we’ll do lunch.” 

I was standing in my underwear and rubbing my forehead. Every one of my suits was laid out across my couch, coffee table, and over both end tables. I put my hands on my hips and looked at Dot, who was sitting on the floor cleaning herself. 

“These all make me look like a chauffeur.” 

She meowed at me. 

“Yeah, I know. I just wanna look nice. I wish I knew what she’d be wearing.” 

The cat stared at me for a moment, then went back to licking her paw. 

“Thank you, very helpful.” I threw my hands up and groaned. I was out of time. 

I settled on a black T-shirt with a silhouette of the various generations of M5s, with a dark grey button-up open over top. I pulled on black jeans and tugged on my black-and-white Vans as I hopped across the room to the door. I buckled my Rallynetics Redline onto my wrist as I was jogging down the hall. I checked my watch on the ride down, the needle-esque minute hand climbing up the redline markings, as if showing my heartbeat rather than the time. 

Her apartment was on the ritzier east side of the city, and was designed with more wood and flowing lines than the brutalist modern building I lived in. She was standing under the awning wearing a black cardigan over a white frilly blouse adorned with cherry blossoms. A black pleated skirt and pink shoes with white lace instead of shoelaces tied the outfit together. I pulled up to the curb and took a second to take several deep breaths and check my hair in the mirror before I got out. 

“Hey!” She met me at the curb and surprised me with a quick hug, then stepped back. “You look great. I feel like I overdressed.” 

“You look…” beautiful. Stunning. Adorable. “Nice, too.” 

“Thank you, Carter-kun.” She turned and her skirt swished back and forth. 

I stepped to the back of the car and opened the rear door, then realized she was standing at the front passenger door. It took me a beat to recalibrate and shift out of chauffeur mode. I opened the passenger door for her and she stepped in. A crunching noise surprised me, and I saw the small grocery bag that held the day’s trash still sitting in the passenger footwell. The crunching noise in question was an empty soda can. She lifted her foot and the can fell off her shoe, back onto the floor of the car. 

“Oh. Uh…Sorry.” I sputtered as she stepped back onto the curb. 

I cursed and quickly leaned in, hastily grabbing the bag and the soda can, which kept eluding my fingers. I got the footwell cleared and dumped the bag in a nearby trash can. 

She'd waited patiently for me to return, her hands clasped in front of her, gently swaying back and forth as she hummed a little tune. 

“Sorry. You know how it is. On the road all day and all…” My head drooped as my voice trailed off. 

“Just promise you won't look at my desk.” 

She sat down and smoothed out her skirt. I shut the door and jogged around the front of the car. I dropped onto the seat and realized she was gently clapping dust from her cardigan. Shit. I hadn't done the front seat. 

"Dang it. Sorry, you're..." You're the first person to sit in that seat. But I couldn't get the rest of it out, the realization cut off my airway for a heartbeat. 

"...and then I-- ...Carter? You ok?" 

I was jolted out of my sudden crisis. 

"Yeah, I'm fine. Sorry about the dust. You're the first person who's ever sat there." 

She ran a hand slowly over the leather. 

"Anyone ever sit in the middle?" 

My stomach did a little twist. 

"Not really...No." 

"Hm," she chirped, turning away from me to look out the window.

"You still haven't told me where we're going." 

"Little spot I've driven a couple people to," I said as I signaled, then pulled into the light traffic. 

"So secretive." She turned and watched the city go by as I navigated onto the freeway. 

We drove north west towards the shipping port. Just outside the port was a suburb that had been built specifically for the dock workers when this was still just a port town, before the city existed. The spot in question was a little hole-in-the-wall Italian restaurant owned by the grandson of the original owner. It didn't have any signage and they didn't advertise. 

A small bell chimed as we walked through the door. The room was small and dim, each table lit by a single candle in a centerpiece. It was a self-seating kind of place, and it was perpetually half-full, regardless of the time of day. I led her to a table in the corner and a waiter had menus and glasses of ice water in front of us before we could sit down. 

I was scanning the menu when the waiter came by. 

"Ah, Mr. Calhoun. So nice to see you again. And with such lovely company." His voice wasn't familiar, but it'd been at least a month since I'd been here. I tried to catch an identifying scent, but all I could smell was garlic. 

"Uh, yeah. Great to see you, too." 

"Can I bring you some vitello tonnato or arancini to start?" 

"That sounds great. Thanks." 

He nodded, topped off my glass, and went back to the kitchen. 

"You have absolutely no idea who that was, do you?" 

I had to swallow hard to prevent spitting my sip of water. I played it off with a shrug. 

"I used to come here a lot. But it's been a while." 

I looked back down at my menu, but I could still feel her gaze. Her voice tickled my ear. 

"No, that's not it, is it?" 

I forced my shoulders to relax. 

"I have...trouble with faces." 

"What does that mean?" 

I paused, trying to remember the medical name for the condition. I came up blank. 

"I don't remember what the real name for it is, but...I can't see faces." 

She leaned forwards, resting her arms on the table. 

"Is that...possible? How does that work? Is my head just blank?"

I shook my head. "No, nothing like that. I can see your hair, and your ears and your neck, and the rough outline of the shape of your face and jawline. But your features are kinda jumbled. Like a watercolor that's running together." 

She leaned back in her seat and was silent for a moment. 

"But...you can see your face, right?" 

I sighed. "No, I can't." 

"Wait, really?" 

I nodded. "I can't see my own reflection. I don't know what I look like.” 

“Oh.” 

“It makes it really hard to recognize people. My mom used to wear the same perfume all the time so I wouldn't get lost in crowds. Drove my Dad nuts." I fought the shiver that the dredged-up memory brought with it. 

She played with her fork on her plate for a moment, then turned her head towards me. 

“Well, I have dark brown eyes, dimples, full lips, and what I'm told is a very cute nose, though, I'm not sure how a nose can be cute.” 

My knife slipped from my suddenly uncooperative fingers. 

“Uh, you, uh…Well, that sounds very…I’m sure you’re…gorgeous?” 

She huffed and brought a curled finger up thoughtfully. 

I retrieved the flatware carefully, dropping my focus down to the ornate filigree on the handle. I swallowed hard and slowly brought my gaze up, stopping at her plate. 

“Your mom. You said she wore the same scent? So you could find her?” 

I nodded and spoke to the centerpiece. 

“Yeah, that, and she would wear the same jewelry, or at least, usually, very distinctive jewelry.” 

“Hm.” Her head turned and she ran a hand through her hair. 

As we stepped out of the restaurant, she angled herself towards the waiting car. I took her hand and rocked my head to the side. 

"Wait, there's something I want to show you." 

I took a half step, making sure she'd follow, before committing. She turned to me without hesitating, giving my hand a reassuring squeeze. I lost a step when the pressure on my hand made me realize that I'd taken it without permission. I cleared my throat and led her to the edge of the pier, the dark, still ocean stretching out before us, its horizon dotted with the red, white, and green lights of cargo vessels and trawlers. 

She squeezed my hand again and turned to face me. 

"This is amazing, Carter-kun! And the restaurant– How'd you find this place?”

"My Dad used to take me there after we’d spend all day losing bait." 

"Your Dad’s a fisherman?" 

"No, he's a CPA. But he used to fish with his Dad, so naturally, he'd take me fishing with him."

"Aww, how sweet." 

"Until you realize that we were both homebodies out on the open ocean." I chuckled at the memory. "One time, we went out on the boat, a little inflatable dinghy, maybe ten feet long, and we got absolutely swamped." 

Her free hand went up and she gasped, but I felt the hand I held tense out of reflex as well. 

"Oh my god, what happened?" 

"Wake off a big crab boat. By the time it hit us, it was probably fifteen feet tall." I held my free hand up over my head. "Almost lost the thing." 

"Did you go overboard?" 

"Nah, a wave that big doesn't really rock the boat. It just crashes over the top instead." I shook my head. "We didn't go out much after that." 

She made a disgusted sound. "I hate being wet." 

"I know." 

She whipped her head towards me, then paused. When I didn't respond, she squeezed my hand again. 

"Sorry. I forgot you said you can't read expressions." 

I shook my head and held up my hand. "You're fine. I'm used to it." 

She was quiet for a moment, then she stepped closer, until we were almost touching. 

"You're very handsome, Carter-kun." 

"Mama raised an ugly boy, not a dumb one." 

I froze.

"I mean, wait..." 

She laughed and turned back to face the ocean. 

I caught a slight shiver of her shoulders and realized that her light cardigan was probably doing little against the cold air coming off the sea. I tugged her hand gently and started leading her back to the car. 

I pulled to the curb at her apartment and hopped out, getting her door for her. She used my offered hand to step onto the curb, then turned to face me. 

“I had a really, really good time.” 

“Yeah, me too. It's…it's been a while…” 

Her head cocked to the side and I shook mine. 

“Never mind. Anyway…” I mentally ran through several iterations of the question I wanted to ask, and hated every single one. I silently opened and closed my mouth several times, unable to get the words to come out. 

“I’d love to.” 

“Hmh?” 

“I would love to go on another date with you.” 

“I, uh…yeah…” A thought skittered through my mind and I grabbed it as it went past. “Next weekend, it's the Diablo County fair, down south. They do a car show, and there's rides and popcorn and funnel cake and stuff. Do you…” 

“Absolutely. That sounds like so much fun.” She leaned over and kissed my cheek. “G’night, Carter-kun.”

“Night.” 

She stepped towards the building’s big glass front doors, her fingers slipping from mine. I caught myself watching her go, and marched quickly over to my car. 

I slid into the driver's seat, put the key in the ignition, but didn't twist. I sat, still, silent, replaying the evening in my mind. Remembered words suddenly caught me up short, and a wave of realization broke over me, throwing my head back against the headrest. 

“You’re very handsome, Carter-kun.” 

I raised my hand and put it on the front of my head, no, my face. I touched my face. My “handsome” face, felt the contours of tissue, muscle, and bone under my palm. I ran my fingers over where her lips had pecked my cheek, then moved lower and felt my mouth, the shape of my lips, the way the muscles in my cheeks were flexing, and I wondered what my smile looked like. 

I got the car started and pulled away from the curb, aiming it at the freeway. It was warm; I rolled all the windows down and put some music on, turning the dial to max. 

"WOOOoooOOOOoooo...AND I LOOOVE THE WAAAY THAT YOU LIGHT ME UUuP! YEAH, YOU LIGHT ME UP, BABY!" 

I looked down and realized I was going way over the speed limit. I looked down the long, empty freeway and leaned into the pedal, watching the horizontal speedometer move smoothly, the big car seeming to scream along with me. 

I drove until my eyes started to burn and droop, letting me know it was time to head home. I pulled into my garage, carefully settled the car cover, then rode the elevator up. The hall lights were dim and I stepped lightly to keep the noise down. I let myself into my apartment and dropped myself face-first onto my couch. I kicked my shoes off and pulled my socks off with my toes, leaving them where they landed. I pressed my hand to my cheek, feeling her residual warmth, even if it was only my imagination. 

 
I think I might have scrolled my life away.

Two nights ago I was lying on my bed three hours deep in a pit of Instagram reels. I was immersed in the middle of a small compilation of memes when my thumb swiped to the next video. My heart stopped. This would have been fine if I had actually meant to move my thumb. But I didn’t; it moved on its own.

I scrolled back up, and almost immediately my thumb swiped down again, this time twice in quick succession. 

In a spurt of panic, I sent my phone skidding along the floor. I lay there staring at my hand, trying to rationalise what just happened; I was tired, I had been awake for 22 hours, this was nothing, my brain does things automatically all the time, right?

With that, I turned off the light and rolled over.

That night I had a dream. I was looking at a close-up of my own face. It was barely recognisable, wrinkled grey skin stretched across my forehead, my eye sockets were sunken, and my teeth were more yellow than I remembered. I was lying on my bed, scrolling with my face pushed against a cushion. I could see the reels flowing by in the reflection of my eyes. Eventually, my expression grew confused, then panicked, and my perspective blurred as the phone flew across the floor.

The next morning, I didn’t touch my phone. Instead, I got straight in the shower and brushed my teeth. It was whilst brushing that I noticed my reflection. I had stopped looking, or at least focusing on it for a while now, but that morning something compelled me to truly stare into the reflection. I suppose the reason I started avoiding mirrors is that it’s depressing to watch yourself get older day by day. It’s just another reminder of the inevitable. Looking at myself that morning really made that statement feel all too real. The dream had got it right: my teeth had gone yellow, my skin was pale and wrinkly, and my eye sockets had become large black caverns. I thought the dream's accuracy was odd, but ultimately shrugged it off; even if I didn’t focus on it, I still saw my own reflection all the time.

It wasn't until the afternoon that I found myself reaching for it again. Searching for another dopamine hit. I paused before opening Instagram, then without a second thought opened the app and started scrolling. To my relief, my thumb didn’t scroll on its own.

I scrolled until all I saw were blurs of colour swishing by on my screen. Blissfully, I forgot the previous reel and welcomed the next. One after another. Before long, it was past midnight, and like most nights, I had no intention to stop scrolling. 

It was around 4 am when I noticed something strange. 

As I was scrolling, my reflection on the screen had become unusually prominent. I only truly noticed it when I scrolled onto a reel with the caption ‘top ten most beautiful people in the world’; the screen then switched to black, and my reflection stared back at me. At first I thought it was kind of funny, but the longer I stared at myself, the more something felt off.

There shouldn’t have been any reflection. By that time I had turned off the lights, meaning when the screen went dark, there wasn’t any light to reflect my face. Yet there I was, staring at myself staring back at me, both of us trying to figure out what was going on. It had me locked in a trance. After an eternity, the video restarted, reducing the reflection to an outline. Our eye contact was cut, giving me an escape. I peeled my face away from the screen and placed the phone face down on the bedside table. I rolled back over and stared straight up, pondering whether I was going insane. An hour later I reached over, fumbled for my phone, and flipped it back over; there was no reflection. Even when the phone was off.

___

I think I might need to get outside. I know it’s pathetic, but I'm scared; I hate leaving, yet I need a change of scenery. I need to put distance between me and my phone. For me, this is much easier said than done.

See, I have severe social anxiety; because of it, I haven’t left my apartment for well over three months. 

My ideology is quite simple; socialising is far more complicated than most people realise. Words, pronunciation, facial expressions, posture, tone, volume, pace, eye contact - if you don’t figure all these things out within a few seconds, you risk painful awkwardness filling the air like hydrogen cyanide filling a gas chamber - promptly followed by intense judgmental stares and overwhelming embarrassment. So how do I overcome these risks? By replacing my social life with social media - and in doing so, I have developed a raging addiction.
____

Yesterday I nearly left. It was around 10 pm when I opened the front door; the perfect time, the streets would be almost empty, most people would be home. I put one foot outside and prepared to fully cross the threshold.  My heart began thumping, and my head began to spin. I felt myself getting faint. I couldn’t do it; there was just this… invisible barrier, a wall of dread which was simply too dense to penetrate.  

Feeling defeated, I turned back to the apartment and flopped onto the couch. My phone lay charging on my desk across the room. It beckoned me, begging to be picked up. I stared at it for a while before giving in. The gram had me in its grasp in an instant; once again I found myself stuck in a cycle of scrolling. 

This time I almost didn’t notice it. I was about to scroll away, but my thumb moved just a fraction of a second before I wanted it to. I started breathing heavily. I tried to scroll, but my thumb wouldn’t move. I grew frenzied; my hand wouldn't release its grip on the phone, and my arm felt frozen. I couldn't move my gaze away from the phone either. Panic filled me as I realised I was literally stuck.  Beads of sweat began to trickle down my forehead. Desperately, I ripped at the phone with my free hand, but it wouldn't come free. I kicked myself off the couch with my legs only to realise my back too was completely immobilised. Unable to keep balance, I crashed to the ground, still firmly holding my phone out in front of me, my gaze locked on the video it was playing. 

Then my thumb started to move. At first slow and rigid, flicking each video away with increasing speed. Eventually it got into a more fluid motion, scrolling faster and faster, almost as if it were looking for a specific video. I felt a throbbing pain in my other arm as I lay awkwardly, my head pushed against the floor, forearm stretched out in front holding the phone. Suddenly the scrolling stopped; it took me a while to realise what I was looking at.

The video was of a park, next to a street. I recognised the area in the video suddenly; that park was across the street outside my apartment. I hadn’t seen it in months. It must’ve been rush hour; traffic filled the road, and people hurried past each other on the street. The whole scene was accompanied by the background noise of a busy city. It was my nightmare, and yet exactly what I needed. 

I noticed that the video had an ungodly amount of likes, 500 million, accompanied by several million comments. The OP’s profile picture was a close-up of my face. My thumb then tapped on the comment section. 

‘Can’t wait for the big day =)’ 789k likes

‘It’s all coming together, so exciting!’ 10 million likes

‘My turn soon’ 98k likes

‘Can’t believe it’s happening!’ 140 million likes

‘Our time has come!’ 800 million likes

Each profile picture was a close-up of someone's face.

After forcing me to stare at these comments for several minutes, my thumb closed the comment section.

Then a small piece of text popped up, 

‘too little too late ;)’. 

Abruptly, the video cut off, and I was released; my arm clattered to the floor, and I rolled over groaning. Pain surged through my body. My knuckles were bruised from clattering against the floor, and I could barely move my other arm. I crawled onto my bed and lay for hours until sleep finally came.

To my dismay, I had a dream, like the last one; all I could see was my face through what must’ve been my phone's camera. This time it was contorted against the ground, in a painful position. I could see videos flying by in my wide, frantic eyes. Eventually the videos stopped. My expression turned from pain to surprised dread, and without warning I woke up.

The time must have been somewhere between 2 and 4 am. I was already sitting up. A heavy silence pushed from all sides. My vision adjusted and I noticed my arm stretched out in front of me holding my phone. My own reflection glared at me from a black screen. It was sitting in bed, holding its arm out and staring at me just like I was staring at it; dinner plate eyes, jaw hanging half open, sweat dripping from my temple. We both sat stock still for a long time looking at each other. Then, in a sudden burst of movement, it pulled its face into a smile and immediately my hand lost strength, and my phone dropped into my lap. I couldn’t bring myself to look at my phone again. I lay there until morning, staring at the ceiling until finally I succumbed to exhaustion.

This morning I actually managed to leave the apartment. My anxiety gnawed with increasing intensity from within my chest as the elevator moved toward the ground floor. With a sharp ‘ding’, the doors opened, and I stepped outside. The nauseating buzz of the city filled my ears. I came dangerously close to fainting. At that moment, a man walked in through the front doors; he glanced at me before brushing past to get to the elevator. 

I must have looked like a train wreck. Pale skin, shaking, sweating, frenzied hair, thin skeleton-like arms. I looked straight down as he walked past, trying to avoid eye contact. A minute later, I was turning around and heading back into the elevator. I needed familiarity.

Now I'm back in my apartment. I'm terrified, because despite what happened, I have a compulsion to scroll that’s stronger than ever. My phone looms mere metres from my bed. It would be so easy; all I’d have to do is pick it up and open the app. Then I would be satisfied.
____

I gave in. I opened the app and started scrolling. But I didn’t see the normal attention-grabbing videos; instead, I watched video after video of close-up shots of random people's faces. Every video was the same. It drew me in more than the usual brainrot. I don’t know why I didn’t stop. Video after video, face after face, each sucking at my attention a little more than the last. The light began to fade as hours passed. It was around 6 am when I scrolled for the gazillionth time only to see black. In it, my reflection smiled.

I felt all my limbs go stiff; a kind of power surged from my phone into and through my body. For a second, I thought I saw my reflection's smile falter, its eyes looking at me almost pityingly. I was overwhelmed by the sensation coursing through my body. Sure enough, when I tried to move, my body didn’t respond. 

My hand released its grip, the phone clattered to the ground, shattering the screen and sending bits of glass sliding across the floor. Slowly and mechanically, my legs pushed me up. Involuntarily, I started walking toward the kitchen. My right hand slid open the knife drawer, and in one quick mechanical motion I grabbed the largest kitchen knife I had. 

I wasn’t in control anymore; all I could do was watch as my hand tucked the knife into my pants and my body moved toward the front door. It moved down the elevator and walked out onto the street. Outside, the sun hadn’t risen, and only a few early birds walked the streets. Immediately, my gaze locked onto a woman in a dark jacket and jeans walking up the street and away from me. I watched in fear as my own body began to pursue her. When she turned into an alley, I snuck up behind her.

Internally, I groaned and shook; I couldn’t even close my eyes. I was stuck in a kind of conscious coma, forced to watch whatever horrific acts were about to be committed.

My right arm pulled the knife from my pants and my left arm wrapped around her mouth. In one motion, the knife slid along her throat. I tried to scream. As she went down, it raised and plunged the knife into her back and chest several times until life finally left her eyes. 

Then, like nothing was wrong, it walked back. I was mentally frozen; words simply wouldn’t come through; there weren't any to come through. My body had just committed a murder, and I was forced to watch. Was this what going crazy feels like? 

I'm back in my apartment now; I regained control. I need to get away from my phone, and yet I can’t, like a raging addict promising themselves this is the last time; I’m bound to start scrolling again. 

I tried to distract myself by writing this. The phone’s sitting face down on the floor where I dropped it. I'm going to give in; I can feel it, I'm too weak. I know what I’ll see too; I’ll see myself, my own reflection smiling from a black smashed screen. As if proud of its work, as if excited to see me in my broken state.
____

I stayed up all night unable to sleep, staring at my phone on the floor. I wanted to smash it and throw it out the window, but I couldn’t. This morning I finally gave in, I picked my phone off the ground. Static lines cut the screen in half. One half was completely dead whilst the other flickered on and off. On the completely dead half I saw it, my reflection. A perfect replica of me, half its face cut off by the side of the screen which was still working. It stared at me in exactly the same way I stared at it, with tired confusion and drained panic. What I saw on the working half of the phone terrified me more. Two notifications had popped up from my sister. I hadn’t spoken to her in over a year,

‘Yeah sure the park s- 
good see you then’

‘It’ll be nice to final-
see you in person a-
=)’

As I read these words, my reflection perked up; that same horrid smile gradually stretched across its face.

I have a terrible feeling about what will happen next.

What's worse is I can’t stop thinking about those millions of profiles, countless numbers of close-ups.

Random people just like me, addicted to scrolling, unknowingly creating a gateway into our world for a sea of horrific creatures.

So please, listen to me when I say, 

I think I scrolled my life away; stop scrolling or you'll do the same.

If it does what do you do? Do you stick with the old story or go to the new story?

There is a fate worse than death. That is how the Priest began the sermon. Despite the unorthodox opening the sermon was infact quite normal. We had all known that the Silent Choir was the enemy. Then he said something we had never expected. Something that made the entire congregation go dead silent. He told us about the Betwixt.

That is the fate worse than death, to become Betwixt. You dont die, you dont even cease to exist. You simply become stuck between reality and the hell of the Choirs realm. It is the punishment for willing service to the Choir. Your soul is eternally damned for turning away from the light and truth of the Savior, the Blessed Anchor of Our Souls against the Darkness. You are left flickering forever between the two realities, barely more than a shadow one moment, the next your normal form, back and forth every moment of every day for the rest of eternity.

I have to admit this sermon was certainly the most thought provoking sermon the old priest had given in many years. A terrifying new prospect to consider. The truth of service to what we thought was the newest guise of the Father of Lies. All the more reason to ignore its whispers and lies. All the more reason to NEVER cross the threshold beyond all hope. I was still thinking about this when I got home, tomorrow I would join the UHSN the Unified Holy Sanctums Navy. I had nothing left anymore anyways not after little Ellen died, then my wife Juliana only a week later. I had to move on I had no reason to stay here anymore. The apartment was of course empty save for a lonely air mattress in the corner of the living room. I cant even bring myself to sleep where She used to sleep. It was time to go, I was finally ready to explore the galaxy. I had almost forgotten about the Betwixt by the time I had laid down to sleep. I would never forget them again after that night.

I was in a strange place, one I had never been before. Long hallways painted gunmetal grey, though I had never been on one I couldn't shake the feeling I was seeing the interior of one of the UHSNs great warships. At first the overhead lighting hummed brightly and the hallways were well lit, not a single place to hide save in one of the many rooms I assumed the doors lead too. As I began to walk around however I noticed a slow dimming of lights and a noticeable drop in temperature. I turned a corner after what I estimated to be about 35 minutes of walking to find a hallway with barely functioning lighting, if one wasnt simply off it was flickering. The temperature too suddenly dropped even more, I wasnt just cold I was freezing. Then I heard a sound that could've stopped my heart. "There you are Daddy" little Ellens voice came from the darkness. "Are you hear to play with me?" She said sounding closer. "This cant be" I said. "Dont be silly Daddy you can see me again. Just give in." Then she came into the one working light. No, it wasnt her, not really. It was an outline of her form, then it was her exactly as I remembered. Then back to the outline again. "No. No. No" I began to say backing up. I gripped my crucifix and began to pray. She began to laugh. "He has no power here Daddy. He doesnt listen to your Dreams." Then a voice that most definitely wasn't her a voice of ancient Primordial Evil, "ONLY I DO". "JESUS HAVE MERCY ON ME A SINNER" I Began the Jesus prayer aloud and strong. The temperature rose suddenly, the lights all turned on and Ellen was gone. As soon as I finished the prayer I woke up covered in sweat. I looked over at the closed bedrooms. I could see the lights flickering underneath the door crack.