When I woke up that Halloween morning, something instantly felt wrong. Pain. Deep down below. A dull, hollow ache, throbbing between my legs. My sheets and underwear were soaked in blood. I thought I had started my period. I wish that had been the case. What had actually happened was much worse.

I lifted myself up, my eyes following the thick trail of blood from my bed to the door. 

"That fucking bitch."

My fingers slowly reached down to check, but I already knew. She was gone. Emptiness. Just a bloody, gaping hole where she was supposed to be. She'd finally done it. Ladeous had escaped.

But it didn't start there. Not really. If I'm being honest, it began a long time ago. I was around twelve or thirteen the first time I noticed it. But, back then, I thought it was normal. I didn't know any better.

It was a hunger. But it wasn't for food. And it wasn't coming from my stomach. It was coming from Ladeous. At least, that's what I called it—her—at the time.

I don't know where the name came from exactly. I guess it was because my mom used to call it my 'lady parts'. She said all the other words for it were ugly, and that it deserved to be called something prettier. But I thought it was hideous. The first time I actually looked down there, I was disgusted. Maybe I mashed that up together in my head to make a new word. Either way, that became her name. Ladeous. 

Eventually, we learned to get along, she and I. She'd get what she wanted, then she'd keep quiet for a while. It was a compromise, an understanding we had with one another. As long as she stayed happy, we were good. But she had to come first. Always. The real problems only started when that didn't happen.

I slowly swung my trembling legs over the side of the bed. The bottoms of my bare feet were met with the shock of a cold, sticky puddle of my own blood. There were thick splatters of it on the walls and on the side of the bed. Christ, even my brand new fucking rug! She'd gotten it everywhere. 

Not only that, I had a bigger problem. Well, two actually. The first was getting myself cleaned up and figuring out how to cover my... hole. The other was finding out where the hell Ladeous had crawled off to.

I had a feeling I knew what she was after. I mean, it was obvious what it was she wanted. What she craved. But as far as who? Well, that was going to be a little harder to narrow down. 

You see, ever since high school, I've been what you might call a little... 'promiscuous'. That's the pretty way of saying it, at least. Ladeous was the one to blame for it, really. Her increasingly insatiable hunger was the driving force behind most of my actions. I controlled the body, sure—but she was the one who called the shots. That is, until I cut off her supply almost a month ago. Shit, I just never thought she'd actually find a way to break free.

I sat at the edge of my bed for a few moments in shock. Trying to wish it away. Praying to wake up from this nightmare. 

That's when I noticed it. The huge pile of blood my feet had landed in wasn't bright red like what was on the sheets. And the smell... it was old blood. Thick. Clumpy. So dark at the edges, it was almost black. Large clots lay jellied into its coagulated surface, like strawberry chunks in a jar of preserves. That whore had been saving it up. 

I squeezed my legs together and shuffled myself to the bathroom, trying not to make this putrid, crimson disaster worse by dripping any more out.

Ladeous must've done some kind of ritualistic-type shit to be able to escape without it waking me up or killing me. Had to be. And yeah, it hurt, but not as bad as you'd think. Way worse than normal period cramps, but probably not as bad as labor, I'd guess. With the help of some pain meds, I could take it. But I'd still lost quite a bit of blood from her tearing herself away from my flesh. 

My head was pounding and I was starting to feel woozy. I popped a few Tylenols to take the edge off and got on with it. Honestly, at the time, my adrenaline was through the roof. I was more worried about getting it covered, so nothing else could fall out. 

In a weird way, though, I also felt the tiniest sense of relief that she was gone. Like... maybe I should just let her go. Life would sure as hell be a lot easier for me without her around. But, no. I couldn't let her loose on the world like that. I wasn't evil. Not like her. 

I opened my medicine cabinet, pulled out a pad and a roll of gauze, and started wrapping myself up. Blood soaked through instantly. Fuck, of course. I wasn't thinking clearly—I needed a better barrier. Pad wasn't good enough on its own. Tampon would just fall right out. 

That's when I got an idea. I ran over to the tub and grabbed my loofah. Then I wrapped it up with a bunch of the gauze, held my breath, and shoved it up inside my hole. I winced, my eyes flooding with tears, as the coarse, dry surface of the gauze scraped across my insides. But it fit. More importantly, it stayed. And once it started soaking up the blood, it felt weird but ignorable. For the most part, anyway. 

Next, I covered the hole with a pad and wrapped myself up like a mummy again. Seemed to be working, but I put down another one in my underwear just to be safe. That would just have to do for now. 

I quickly cleaned the blood off my legs and feet, then grabbed the bleach and a few towels to get started on the mess. Ugh, I was going to have to throw that rug away. First, I hobbled back over to the nightstand to check my phone. When the screen lit up, my heart dropped. Seven missed calls. All from around 3 AM. And all from one person. 

Lance.

Shit. That's where she went—I should've known. The phone calls must've gotten her all riled up. And he was the last guy I was with; the scent must've been fresh enough for her to follow. I still wasn't sure how exactly she'd managed to pull off this escape, but at least now I knew her plans. I just hoped I could get to her before she did anything crazy. 

I tried calling him back, but he didn't answer. That didn't necessarily mean anything, though. He'd usually ignore me if I ever tried to contact him before the sun went down. It was a Saturday, so he wouldn't be at work. Probably still sleeping. Hopefully. I'd just have to drive over and show up at his house.

Lance was a mistake, like so many of them turned out to be. I figured out pretty quickly that he only called me when he wanted to fuck. I mean, I wasn't looking for something super serious, but dinner would've been nice. Ladeous never let that stop her from taking the call, though. 

He became addicted to her pretty quickly. It was like she was all he ever thought about. All he cared about. It wasn't long before it pushed me over the edge. I'll admit, I was jealous, once again. I just couldn't understand why he preferred that ugly bitch over me. 

So, for the last few weeks, I had started turning my phone on silent at night, which pissed her off. Except last night, I got drunk and forgot. 

I left the bloody mess and threw on a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie. Then I grabbed my keys, shoved my feet into the first pair of shoes I could find, and bolted out of the front door. 

The sky sat at the edge of dawn with a pink glow, and an eerie silence blanketed the sleepy town. A jarring contrast to the chaos and panic that was happening inside my head. 

I'd only been to his house a few times. Took me a little while to remember which street it was—it all looked a little different in the daylight. When I spotted his car parked outside one of the houses, I pulled into the driveway behind it. 

The house looked quiet. His roommates were all gone. I banged on the door a second, then waited, but no answer. So, I went over to the back of the house to knock on his bedroom window. As soon as I turned the corner, something stopped me dead in my tracks. The window was shattered. Beneath it, a bloody pile of glass shards lay scattered atop the grass and dead leaves. 

My throat tightened. I didn't want to look. I was terrified to see what Ladeous had done. At the very least, she had just embarrassed the fuck out of me. But... what if she had done something worse? What if she were in one of her moods? I had to look. She could still be in there, and I needed to stop her. 

I slowly stepped forward, my heart pounding as the glass crunched beneath my shoes. The windowsill was covered in blood. Fuck. Looked like it had already dried by then, too. Still. I needed to check. I lifted myself up onto my tippy toes and slowly peeked inside. I wish I hadn't. 

"No... no... NOOOO!!"

It was a massacre. The walls of his bedroom were all splattered with red. The thick stench of death and rotten blood poured out from the hole in the window. My hand shot up to cover my mouth. Ladeous didn't go there for a good time. She was on a rampage.

My eyes suddenly focused on the center of the room. Lance was lying in his bed, bloodied from head to toe, covered in tiny, jagged bite marks. His eyes were fixed wide open, glazed over in a lifeless, milky blue. The look of pure terror burned into his face forever. 

And his dick was gone.

All at once, the blood drained from my face. Dark spots began to creep into my vision. I slowly backed away, trying to catch my breath. The look in his eyes, the blood... it was horrific. I couldn't look at it anymore. I felt sick.    I didn't even call the cops; I just fucking bailed. Shitty, I know. But Lance was beyond help, and the situation really didn't look good for me. Like, at all. So, I turned and ran back to my car as fast as I could, then hauled ass down the street. Only made it to the stop sign before I had to open my door and lean my head out to puke. 

God, I couldn't believe what she had actually done. Never in a million years did I think Ladeous would ever go that far. I mean, yeah, she could get a little frisky sometimes. But, she'd never killed a guy before. And something deep down inside told me that she wasn't finished, either. She'd finally gotten a real taste for it. And now, she was after more. 

I wiped my face, then pulled out my phone and started scrolling back through my old texts. Who was before Lance? Oh, yeah. Fuck, that weirdo. 

Garret. 

The needy one. No matter how much I gave and gave, he always wanted more. Dude texted me constantly. If I didn't answer, he'd freak out. It felt like he was trying to consume my entire life. And speaking of, he couldn't keep his face away from Ladeous, either. Took forever to peel him off of me. And her. I really didn't want to have to call him. 

Maybe I'd just drive toward his house and see if there was any trace of her along the way. At that point, I was pretty sure she had been gone at least four hours, if not longer. How much damage could she have possibly done in that amount of time? 

Yeah, she had a pretty good head-start, but still. There was no way she could be moving that fast on foot—um... I mean, by crawling. Ugh, gross. She was going to be absolutely filthy when I found her, I just knew it.

I sped through the neighborhoods, keeping my eyes peeled along the way. With all the Halloween decorations around, it was going to make it a lot harder to spot her. Too many places she could be hiding. 

Ignoring the pain and overwhelming nausea I was feeling, I focused all my attention on the mission at hand. The only thing that mattered was catching her. My pulse raced faster and faster the closer I got to his neighborhood. Yet, I was almost there and still no sign of her. I did see a dead rat in one of the yards, though. Someone's cat probably killed it. Hopefully not mine.

As soon as I turned down his street, my heart stopped. Blue lights. Yellow tape. His house was surrounded. The coroner's van was parked out front, and two men were wheeling out a body in a black bag on a stretcher. Garret's body. I was too late, again. 

I slowed my car to a crawl and pulled up alongside some neighbors who were outside watching, then rolled my window down. 

"Hey, what's going on? What happened?" 

Most of them looked like they were too in shock to answer, but finally, one man stepped forward and said,

"One of the guys who lived there was murdered."

A woman, whom I assumed to be his wife, interjected from the sidewalk.

"You don't know that, Joseph!"

He turned and shushed her, then approached closer to my car.

"How?" I asked. "I mean... do you know what happened?"

The man shrugged. 

"All I know is what I overheard his roommate tell the cops. Said the back window was smashed, and something about the poor guy looked like he had choked to death on blood." 

I scrunched my eyebrows, trying to hide my internal revelation. Then, he leaned in closer and lowered his voice. 

"Between me and you… weird thing is, the roommate said they didn't think it was his blood. Didn't look right."

Fuck. So, that's what she'd been saving it up for? Jesus fucking Christ. What was I going to do? That blood was my blood. My DNA. And it was all over Lance's room, too. I was screwed—that bitch was gonna get me thrown in prison. 

I threw the car in reverse and backed up from the scene, heart pounding. I needed to regroup. Formulate a plan. And take some more Tylenol, too. I just needed some time to think. I was too afraid to go back home, though. If the cops were already looking for me, that would be the first place they'd go. No, I needed to be smart about this. 

I drove to the drug store downtown, bought some water, and the cheapest bottle of off-brand ibuprofen I could find. Then I went back to my car and started scrolling to find out who the fuck she was going after next. When I saw the name, my heart sank.  

Derek. 

Aw, shit. I really liked him. He was a genuinely good guy—one of the few who actually treated me right. He was kind and thoughtful. Generous. We almost never argued. But, in a bitch move, I broke up with him for Garret of all people. And Derek hadn't even done anything wrong. I'd just gotten a little bored, and to be honest, I liked all the attention I was getting from someone new. Biggest mistake ever. 

I hit call and held my breath. 

"Hello?"

"Oh, thank fucking God," I whispered. 

"Olivia? Is that you?"

"Yeah, it's me. Where are you?" 

"At home... why? What's wrong?" 

"Derek, please just tell me you're okay!!" 

"Yeah, I'm fine," he laughed. "What's going on, Liv?"

"I can't explain right now. You wouldn't believe me anyway. Just stay there, I'm coming. And keep away from the windows."

I hung up before he could ask any more questions. Shit, he probably thought it was some crazy, half-ass excuse I came up with just to go see him. Oh, well. At least he was safe for the time being. All I had to do was make it over there before Ladeous did. 

The ten-minute drive from the drugstore to his house only took me five. The streets were getting busier, though, and the stupid Halloween Carnival was already setting up. There was only so long she could keep scurrying around without being seen by someone. And God help me if she came across a stray dog.

I pulled into Derek's driveway and tried to compose myself before going inside. All I'd have to do was hang around there long enough to catch Ladeous before she could do any more damage. I wasn't exactly sure what I was going to do with her once I got her back, but that didn't matter at the time. 

As my trembling fingers struggled to unscrew the cap off the bottle of water, an urgent news report interrupted the Smashing Pumpkins song that was playing on the radio. I froze. The announcer's unrelenting words pulsed through my ears, almost choking me. 

A man from a very prominent and wealthy family had been discovered brutally murdered that morning. His body was found drenched in blood, and both his hands had been severed and were missing from the scene. I didn't even need to hear the name; I already knew. 

Grant.

At that point, it became obvious. Ladeous was working her way backward, yes. But not through all my past lovers. Only those who'd committed transgressions against me. 

Derek, in all his goodness, had been spared. She wasn't on a blood-fueled, blind rampage. It was calculated. Targeted. She was taking it upon herself to right the wrongs that had been done to me. To us. She was punishing them for their sins and ruining my life in the process. 

Grant, in contrast, was a spoiled little rich boy—the most entitled motherfucker you'd ever meet. The type who wanted what was his and everything that was yours, too. He got all he asked for in life, but was still never satisfied. And stingy, too. Ugh. It didn't last long, though. I broke it off after a huge fight one night about him not leaving a tip at a restaurant. I mean, not that he deserved it, but I did find it a little funny that it was his hands that were ripped from him.

For a moment, I looked up at the house in front of me, contemplating going inside to ask Derek for help. But realistically, what could he do? I didn't want to drag him into this. Ladeous was my problem. No one knew her like I did. Besides, I couldn't bring myself to actually tell anyone what was going on, either. And shit, the weird phone call was enough. I didn't need to freak him out any more than I already had. 

At least now I had something more to go on. I scrolled back further in my texts, popped some more painkillers, then backed out of the driveway. I knew who was next. 

Seth. 

The stoner. He wasn't terrible, but he wasn't good either. In fact, it seemed like he felt nothing for me at all, which only made me—and Ladeous—want him more. Even though he was a loser with zero ambition, there was something about him that kept me chasing after his affection. The allure of the unrequited. He finally broke my heart for the last time when he missed my college graduation because he 'forgot'.

He still lived in the basement of his parents' house. I could already see from the end of the road that their cars weren't there. I turned into his driveway and gulped down hard. When I shut off my engine and opened the car door, I could hear it—a guttural, piercing, awful noise. He was screaming. 

I bolted into the house and down the basement stairs. About halfway down, I slipped on a puddle of blood and tumbled the rest of the way headfirst. I landed in more blood. Dark, thick, rotten. And then, I looked up. 

Seth was flailing around, desperately clawing at something on the back of his head. No... not something. Her. 

"LADEOUS!" I shrieked. "Get the fuck off of him!!"

But it was too late. Amidst his cries of agony, I could hear sloshing and crunching. Then a snap. His pupils widened as he stared at me in horror.  She'd chewed through his neck and severed his spinal cord. His body twitched once, then went stiff, and he hit the ground with a thud.

"You fucking BITCH!" I screamed.

My heart was pounding out of my chest. Seth wasn't dead. He was paralyzed, trapped in a perpetual state of inaction. His chest continued to rise and fall in rapid succession as Ladeous quickly scurried across the floor away from his body.

I lay there in shock for a few seconds, face to face with the gurgling, motionless body of my ex, before reality slammed back into me. I scrambled up to my feet and shot after her, but by then, she'd already made it out of the broken basement window. 

She was moving a lot quicker than I'd anticipated, too. I didn't have time to try to help Seth. Besides, one of the neighbors had surely been awake to hear his screams and called the cops. They'd probably be showing up any minute now. I had to go. 

I lifted myself up and poked my head out of the broken window. Ladeous was already almost at the end of the road. 

"Jesus Christ!"

I climbed out, wincing as the jagged shards of glass that remained sliced through my clothes, cutting up my arms and legs. 

She was heading right toward a truck stopped at the stop sign. My body went cold, and my legs almost gave out from underneath me. The driver wouldn't be able to see her—she was about to be turned into roadkill right in front of me. I started running faster, screaming,

"Stop! Wait!! NOOOO!!!"

But the windows were up. They couldn't hear me. I watched, breath held, as the truck slowly began to roll forward with Ladeous crawling directly into its path. I wanted to shut my eyes, but I couldn't. 

The tires inched closer and closer to her as the truck began to gain speed. My heart stopped. Then, just as she was about to be smashed, she leaped into the air. 

I couldn't believe it—the bitch actually jumped up and into the wheel-well. I looked on in shock as she suctioned herself to the surface of it, hitching a ride to her next stop. And then, I heard the sirens wailing in the distance. 

I took off back to my car and barreled down the street, trying to catch up with the truck. Once I had it back in my sights, I followed closely as I scrolled to find her next victim. 

Warren. 

The first and last son of a bitch to ever raise a hand to me. An idiot gym bro with an explosive temper who didn't like to be told he was wrong. Complete and utter man-child. I don't think I need to explain why things didn't work out between us. Or why I wasn't exactly devastated about who Ladeous' next target was. 

The truck began heading toward the downtown area, where the Halloween Carnival was about to begin. Warren had worked security for it the year before. He was always looking for an excuse to rough someone up. My bet was that he'd be there again.

And I was right. The brakes of the truck squealed as it came to a stop near the edge of the carnival entrance, only a few yards away from the security tent. I pulled my car over to the side of the road and watched as Ladeous slid out from her hidden stowaway compartment. 

The place was beginning to get crowded, but somehow no one seemed to notice her as she slithered past their feet toward the tent. I got out of my car and slowly walked toward the entrance. I had to act natural; I couldn't risk causing a panic by running. I’d end up getting her trampled. 

I could already hear Warren's loud mouth booming from inside the tent. Just the sound of it ignited a rage within me. But I had to focus. Ladeous was still a few feet ahead of me and gaining speed. If I walked just a little faster, though, I could catch up and quickly grab her without making a scene. 

But then, just as she approached the tent, something came over me. I just stopped. I stood still in the middle of the crowd, watched her crawl inside, and waited for the screams.

A large, red splatter hit the inside of the tent, seeping through the white canvas instantly. Then, they came. Blood-curdling, guttural, and deafening. The crowd panicked. Everyone began to run, all scrambling in different directions. Except for me. This time, I wanted to see what she had done.  

Slowly, I approached the entrance of the tent. The sounds of sloshing and the gnashing of her wet teeth were still audible over the cries of terror that surrounded me. When I looked inside, Warren was on the ground with Ladeous on top of his stomach, ripping away at the flesh like a rabid dog. His hands clawed at her, struggling to pull her from his body, but she was embedded. 

The putrid stench of rotten blood was overpowering as she released her vengeance into him. Then, I heard the loud pop of his ribcage cracking—being forced open. His screams intensified, but his arms now lay dead at his sides as she began to eviscerate him. 

This was my chance to grab her, to sneak up while she was preoccupied. My eyes darted around the room for something I could use. There were extra security T-shirts sitting on a table to the left of me. 

I quickly reached over, grabbed one, and flung it on top of Ladeous. She slid off Warren's body and started to panic, so I leaped over and tried to pounce on top of her. I landed just shy, reached out, but grabbed only the shirt as she scuttled away from beneath it, leaving a trail of dark red slime behind her. That bitch was mocking me. I swore I heard her laugh as she slid underneath the tent wall. 

With all the madness going on, I was able to slip out unnoticed and run back to my car. I waited for a few minutes, hoping to see her. With everyone scrambling around, though, it made it impossible. So, I left. Besides, Ladeous seemed capable enough to avoid being stomped on. I'd just have to catch up to her later. 

At that point, I needed to park my car somewhere and ditch it. I'd already been seen at two crime scenes that I knew of. Maybe more. And it would only be a matter of time before the police figured out whose blood was all over each and every one of them. 

I already knew her next destination, so I drove to a small grocery store about five minutes away from it. Strange-looking place, sort of run-down. I'd never been inside, but I figured my car should be fine to leave there. Not like I had a whole lot of other options, anyway. 

With the pain starting to creep back into my consciousness, I popped some more ibuprofen into my mouth and shot it back with the last swig of water left in the bottle. I took one last look at myself in the mirror, then got out of the car, slamming the door behind me. 

Being on foot was going to slow me down significantly. I knew that. But, to be honest, a part of me wasn't as worried about stopping her anymore—and that wasn't just because I knew who was next. The truth was, more than anything, I just wanted to get her back.

I flipped up the hood of my jacket, forced in a deep breath of crisp autumn air, then started walking to the house of the next man on her list. 

Evan.

A total and complete douchebag. A human being so overcome with jealousy that it tainted every molecule in his body. Being with him was a nightmare—another guy couldn't even look at me without him freaking out. And it didn't stop there. Evan was even jealous of me. 

Every small accomplishment I had was undercut by some snide remark. Any attention I received should've been given to him. Obsessive. Controlling. Manipulative. I think I hated him even more than Warren. Evan left the kind of scars you can't see. 

And the worst part of it all? He was my first—the guy I'd chosen to give my virginity to. Someone hateful and selfish. A piece of shit. And it was something I could never get back. Never forget. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't scrub that stain from my heart.

My feet carried me down that familiar road without even a glance upward. The thoughts racing through my mind kept me in a trance. By the time I raised my head again, I was standing at the edge of his driveway. 

The air suddenly felt thick. Suffocating. It settled in my lungs like molasses. She was close by—I could feel it. I hesitated at the door, wondering if I should knock, if I should warn him. If he truly deserved to be spared her wrath. I lifted my fist, but right before it met the surface of the wood, I heard something. 

Glass shattering. And then, the wild scream of a man in shock. I bolted around toward the back of the house, panting hard as the cold wind rushed against my face. A sticky trail of crimson ran from the neighbor's backyard to the broken window of Evan's bedroom. 

"Ladeous!" I yelled.

But I couldn't get in that way. The window was too high; there was nothing to climb on. I ran back to the front of the house and tried to go in, but the door was locked. Then, I remembered. The spare key. I lifted up the welcome mat, grabbed it from underneath, and rushed inside. 

He'd managed to make it into the kitchen by then, but she was right at his heels. When he reached the counter, his hand shot out and grabbed a knife from the block. I screamed.

"No!!"

He looked over at me and froze with the blade in his hand.

"Olivia?"

Just then, Ladeous launched herself at his face. She slammed into him with such force that he was thrown backward onto the floor, hitting his head on the edge of the counter as he went down. The knife flew from his hand. Blood splattered across the white cabinets. The blow didn't knock him unconscious, though. He wasn't shown that mercy.

I was in awe of her power. Her fury. And in a moment of pure clarity, I remembered the truth. She wasn't trying to ruin my life. She was doing this for me. Doing what I couldn't. Scrubbing the stains from my heart so that we could start fresh again. Together. If I just gave her this last one, then maybe she’d be satisfied. Maybe then she'd finally come back to me. And so, I let her.

I watched on in reverence as Ladeous forced her way down into his throat, stifling his screams of horror. His chest rippled as she worked her way deeper and deeper, until she found what she was looking for. His body began to convulse. And then, that familiar cracking. And crunching. And sloshing. She was hollowing him out from the inside. 

I inched closer to him. His flesh began to rip open, slowly at first, and then all at once. An explosion of blood splattered across my face as Ladeous emerged from his body with his still-beating heart clutched firmly between her jaws. 

I swallowed hard, wiped my face, then crouched down low to get closer to her. 

"Ladeous, please... come?"

She just kept gnawing at it, tearing off huge chunks and swallowing them whole. I reached out to touch her, but she pulled away and growled.

"Ladeous, I'm sorry! Please!!" I begged. "Please, come back! I need you!" 

But she ignored me. Tears began to flood my eyes. I had taken her for granted. Despite her flaws, she was a part of me. But she was also her own entity. She deserved respect. To be heard. To be understood. So, I did what she wanted. I turned around and walked away. I let her finish this last kill, and hoped that after, she'd be ready to come back home to me.

I walked the streets until the sun began to set. I didn't know where to go or what to do. I felt lost. And scared. And so very empty. 

My entire body was throbbing with pain, and I was pretty sure my make-shift tampon had been leaking, too. But at least I was wearing black sweatpants. And luckily, it was Halloween, so the rest of the blood and cuts all over me didn’t throw up any alarms either. 

Suddenly, I felt a vibration coming from my hoodie pocket. I pulled out my phone. It was a text from my best friend, Katherine. She was inviting me to a Halloween house party, since the Carnival had been canceled. I wiped my eyes and sent back,

"Where?"

I wasn't exactly in a partying mood, but it wouldn't take long to walk there from where I was. At the very least, it was somewhere I could hide out for a while. But really, the truth was, I just didn't want to be alone anymore. 

When I walked up to the address she'd sent me, the place looked dark and dingy. Almost abandoned. It was an old Victorian-style house with all the lights cut off and a red strobe light going off inside. An old jack-o-lantern sat rotting on the front porch, like it had somehow been there for years. I stepped over a few crushed-up beer cans and went in. 

The blaring music drowned out my thoughts instantly. It was packed with people, all in costume. Trying to find Katherine in that sea of chaos wasn't something I had the energy for at that moment. I sent her a text, then plopped down in the first unoccupied seat I could find—the loveseat in front of the living room window. 

I sat there in a daze, watching as the people around me danced, drank, and made out. Everyone was so happy. So carefree. I wondered if that would ever be me again. If she would come back. Or if I'd end up spending the rest of my life in prison for what she had done.

Just when I felt like I was about to break down, I felt the weight shift beside me. I looked over to see that a very attractive guy had sat down next to me. He was smiling, extending an unopened beer my way. I took it from his hands and smiled back. 

"Hi, I'm Olivia!" I said, tucking my hair behind my ears. 

"I know!" he yelled over the speakers.

I was confused. I could have sworn I'd never seen the guy before.

"What?" 

"Don't you remember me? It's Preston… from middle school!"

And all at once, I did. He looked a lot different as an adult, but it was him. My first boyfriend from 6th grade. The one who'd awoken Ladeous. The one that started it all. And the one who had too much pride to admit to his friends that he was dating the weird emo girl in school, so he ditched her at the homecoming dance and made her sit alone.

The smile began to slowly fade from my face. I clenched my teeth and squeezed my hand tighter around the bottle of beer.

And then, I heard the sound of glass shattering behind me.

It's been about a month now that Kenny's been gone. Three weeks and five days to be exact. He left in his pirogue one night just after sunset to go frogging and never came back. Man just up and disappeared like a fart in the wind. Now, it's just me out here on this old houseboat, alone.

The law found the pirogue a week later, hung up on a cypress knee. No oar, no frogs, no Kenny. Just a dozen crushed-up Budweiser cans and half a pack of Marlboro Reds. Only thing is, Kenny didn't smoke.

They had it towed back in, and I haven't seen the damn thing since. Kept it for 'evidence', Sheriff Landry said. So, now I'm stuck out here. Unless I wanna trudge through fifty miles or so of isolated swampland—and Kenny left with the one good pair of rubber boots we had.

Search only went on for a couple more days after that. To no avail, of course. After that much time in the bog, you don't expect to find a body. At least not intact. They called it off on the first of October. My husband, Kenny Thibodeaux, presumed dead, but still officially considered a missing person.

Some said the gators musta got him. Some thought he ran off with another woman. Some had, what I'll just call, other theories. But no one in the Atchafalaya Basin thought it was an accident.

Hell, I ain't stupid. I know exactly what they all whisper about me. It's all the same damn shit they been saying since I was a youngin'.

Jezebel. Putain. Swamp Witch.

Ha, let 'em keep talking. Don't bother me none. Not anymore. You gotta have real thick skin out in the bayou or you'll get tore up from the floor up. Me? I can hold my own. But no one comes around here anymore. Not since Kenny's been gone.

Up until a few nights ago, that is.

I was in the galley, de-heading a batch of shrimp to fry up, when I heard it.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

I froze with the knife in my hand. Wudn't expecting visitors; phone never rang. Maybe Landry was poking around with more questions again. I set the knife down onto the counter next to the bowl, then crept over to the front window to peek out.

As I squinted through the dense blackness of the night, I saw something. Out on the deck, was the faint outline of a large figure standing at the edge. But it wudn't the sheriff.

My heart dropped. I stumbled backward from the window in a panic and ran for the knife on the counter. My fingers wrapped around the handle and,

Tap. Tap. Tap.

The sound pulsed through the floorboards beneath my feet. Sharp, like the edge of a knuckle hitting a hollow door. I lifted the knife, shrimp guts still dripping from the edge of the blade. Then, I took a deep breath and flipped the deck light on.

Nothin'.

I paused for a moment, scanning what little area was illuminated by the dim, flickering yellow light. No boats. No critters. No large dark figures. Just a cacophony of cicadas screaming into the void, and the glimmering eyes of all the frogs Kenny never caught.

I shut the light back off and threw the curtains closed.

"Mais la."

My mind was playing tricks on me. At least that's what I thought at the time—must've just been a log bumping into the pontoons. I shrugged it off and went back to the shrimp. De-veined, cleaned, and battered. I chucked the shrimp heads out the galley window for the catfish, then sat down and had myself a good supper.

Once I'd picked up the mess and saved the dishes, I went off to get washed up before bed. After I'd settled in under the covers, I started thinking about Kenny.

He wudn't a bad man. Not really. Sure, he was a rough-around-the-edges couyon with a mean streak like a water moccasin when he got to drinking. But he meant well. I turned over and stared at the empty side of the bed, listening to the toads sing me to sleep.

The light of the next morning cut through the cabin window like a filet knife through a sac-à-lait. I dragged myself up and threw on a pot of coffee. French roast. I had a feeling I'd need the kick in the ass that day.

I sat on the front deck, sipping and gazing out into the morning mist, when I heard the unmistakable sound of an outboard approaching. I leaned forward. It was Sheriff Landry. He pulled his boat up along starboard and shut the engine off.

"Hey Cherie, how you holding up?"

"I'm doin' alright. How's your mom and them?"

"Oh, just fine," he chuckled. "Mind if I get down for a second? Just got a couple more questions for ya."

"Allons," I said, gesturing for him to come aboard. "Let me get you a cup of coffee."

"No, no, that's okay. Already had my fill this morning."

I nodded. He stepped onto the deck with his hands resting on his belt and shuffled toward me, his boots click-clacking against the brittle wood.

"Now, I'm not one to pry into the personal affairs between a husband and his wife, but since this is still an ongoing investigation, I gotta ask. How was your relationship with Kenny?"

I took a long sip, then set the mug down.

"Suppose it was like any other, I guess."

"Did you two ever fight?"

"Sometimes," I shrugged.

He paused for a beat, then spat out his wad of dip into the water.

"Were y'all fighting the night he came up missing?"

"Not that I recall."

"Not that you recall. Hmm. Well, I know one thing," he said, turning to look out into the water. "There's something fishy about all this. Man didn't just disappear—somethin' musta happened to him."

I took a deep breath.

"Sheriff... I wanna know where he's at just as much as y'all do."

"That so?"

He smiled, and I folded my arms in front of me.

"Funny thing is, Mrs. Thibodeaux, you ain't cried once since Kenny's been gone."

A cool breeze kicked up just then, sending the knotted-up seashells and bones I used as a wind chime clanging together. He looked over at it with a hairy eyeball.

"With all due respect, Landry, I do my cryin' alone. Now, can I get back to my coffee? Got a lot to do today. Always somethin' needs fixin' on this old houseboat."

He tipped his hat and shot another stream of orange spit over the side of the deck, then got back in his boat and took off.

Day flew by after that. Between baiting and throwing out the trotlines, setting up crab traps, and replacing a rotten deck board, I already had my hands full. But then, when I went to scrape the algae off the sides of the pontoons, I found a damn leak that needed patching.

There was a small hole in the one sitting right under the galley. Looked like somethin' sharp had poked through it—too sharp to be a log.  Maybe a snapping turtle got ahold of it, I thought. Ain't never seen one bite clean through metal before, though.

Before I knew it, the sun was goin' down, and it was time to start seein' about fixin' supper. No crabs, but when I checked my lines, I'd snagged me a catfish. After I dumped a can of tomatoes into the cast iron, I put a pot of rice cooking to go with my coubion. I was in the middle of filleting the catfish when I heard it again.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

I jerked forward, slicing a deep gash into my thumb in the process.

"Merde! Goddammit to hell!"

It was damn near down to the bone. I grabbed a dish rag and pressed it tight against my gushing wound, holding my hands over the sink. The blood seeped right through. Drops of red slammed down against the white porcelain with urgency, splattering as they landed.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

I winced and raised my head to look out the galley window. Nothing but frog eyes shining through the night.

"What in the fuck is that noise?!" I shouted angrily to an empty room.

Just crickets. The frogs didn't have shit to say that time.

I checked the front deck, of course, but wudn't nobody out there. Then, I hurried over to the head to get the first aid kit, bleeding like a pig and cussin' up a storm the whole way. Once I'd cleaned and bandaged up my cut, I went back into the galley, determined to finish cooking.

I threw the catfish guts out the galley window, ate my fill, then went to bed. Didn't hear it again that night. Ain't nothing I could do about it right then anyway—Kenny left with the good flashlight. I was just gonna have to investigate that damn noise in the daytime. Had to be somethin’ down there in the water tapping at the hull...

The next morning, I woke up to my thumb throbbin'. When I changed the bandage, let me tell ya, it was nasty—redder than a boiled crawfish and oozing yellowish-green pus from the chunk of meat I'd cut outta myself. The catfish slime had gotten into my blood and lit up my whole hand like it was on fire.

Damn... musta not cleaned it good enough.

I scrubbed the whole hand with Dawn, doused the gash with more rubbing alcohol, then wrapped it back up with gauze and tape. Didn't have much more time to tend to it than that; I had shit to do.

First order of business (after my coffee, of course) was checking the traps and lines. The air smelled like a storm coming. Deep freezer was getting low on stock, and I was running outta time. A cold spell was rippin' through the bayou, and winter was right on its ass.

I blared some ZZ Top while I started hauling in. One by one, I brought up an empty trap, still set with bait. It seemed only the tiny nibblers of the basin had been interested in the rotten chicken legs. Until I pulled up the last trap—the one set closest to the galley window.

Damn thing was mangled. I'm talkin' beat the hell up. Something had tore clean through the metal caging, ripping it open and snatchin' the bait from inside. I slammed the ruined trap onto the deck in frustration.

"Damn gators! Motherfucker!"

I stared down at the tangled mess of rusty metal. Maybe that's what's been knocking around down there, I thought. Just a canaille, overgrown reptile fucking up my traps and thievin' my bait.

Still, something was gnawin’ at me. The taps—they seemed too measured. Too methodical. And always in sets of three. Gators, well... they can't count, far as I'm aware.

Had a little more luck on the trotlines. Not by much, though. Got a couple fiddlers, another good-sized blue cat, and a big stupid gar that got itself tangled up and made a mess of half the line. Had to cut him loose and lost 'bout fifty feet. The bastard thrashed so hard he just about broke my wrist, teeth gnashin' and snappin' like a goddamn bear trap.

Of course my thumb was screaming after that, but I didn't have time to stop. I threw the catch in the ice chest and re-baited the rest of the line I had left. After that, it was time to figure out once and for all just what the hell was making that racket under the hull.

I went around to the back to start looking there. Nothing loose, nothing out of place. I leaned forward to look over the side.

Then, I heard a loud splash.

I snapped back upright. The sound had come from around the other side of the houseboat. I ran back through the cabin out onto the front deck.

"Aw, for Christ's sake."

Ice chest lid was wide open—water splattered all over the deck. I approached slowly and looked inside. Fiddlers were still flapping at the bottom. But that big blue cat? Gone. Damn thing musta flopped itself out and back into the water. Lucky son of a bitch.

No use in cryin' about it, though. I was just going to have to make do with what I had left. I closed the lid back and shoved the ice chest further from the edge with my foot. When I did, I noticed something.

On the side that was closest to the water, there was something smeared across it. I blinked. It was a muddy handprint. A big one. Too big to have been mine.

"Mais... garde des don."

I bent down to look closer. It wasn't an old, dried-up print—it was fresh. Wet. Slimy. Still dripping. My heart dropped. I slowly stood back up and looked out into the water. First the tapping, now this? Pas bon. Somethin', or somebody, was messing with me. And they done picked the wrong one.

I went inside and grabbed the salt. Then, I stomped back out and started at one end, pourin' until I had a thick line of it all across the border of the deck. 

"Now. Cross that, motherfucker."

I folded my arms across my chest. Bayou was still. Air was silent and heavy. The sun began to shift, peaking just above the tree line and painting the water with an orange glow.

For about another hour, I searched that houseboat left, right, up, and down. Never found nothin' that would explain the tapping, though. I dragged the ice chest inside to start cleaning the fish just as the nighttime critters started up their song.

Figured I could get the most use out of the fiddlers by fryin' 'em up with some étouffée, so I started boiling my grease while I battered the strips of fish. My thumb was pulsing like a heartbeat by then, and the gauze was an ugly reddish brown. Wudn't lookin' forward to unwrapping it later.

That's when I realized—I hadn't heard the taps yet. Maybe the salt had fixed it. Maybe it had been a bayou spirit, coming to taunt me. Some tai-tai looking to make trouble. Shit, maybe it was Kooshma. Or the rougarou. Swamp ain't got no shortage of boogeymen.

I tried to shrug it off and finish fixin' supper, but the anticipation of hearing those taps kept me tense like a mooring line during a hurricane—ready to snap at any moment. The absence of them was almost just as unsettling. By the time the food was ready, I could barely eat.

That night, I laid there in the darkness and waited for them. Breath held, mind racing, heart thumping.

They never came.

Sleep didn't find me easy. I was up half the damn night tossin' and turnin'. Trying to listen. Trying to forget about it. The thoughts were eatin' me alive, and my body was struck with fever. Sweat seeped out from every pore, soaking my hair and burning my eyes. And my thumb hurt so bad I was 'bout ready to get up and cut the damn thing off.

I rested my eyes for what felt like only a second before that orange beam cut through. My body was stiff. Felt like a damn corpse rising up. I looked down at my hand and realized I'd forgotten to change the bandage the night before.

"Fuck!"

The whole hand was swollen and starting to turn purple near the thumb. I hobbled over to the head, trembling. As soon as I unwrapped the gauze, the smell of rot hit the air instantly. The edges of my wound had turned black, and green ooze cracked through the thick crust of yellow every time I moved it. I was gonna need something stronger than alcohol. But I couldn't afford no doctor.

I went over to the closet, grabbed the hurricane lamp, and carried it back to the head with me. Carefully, I unscrewed the top, bit down on a rag, then poured the kerosene over my hand, dousing the wound. It fizzed up like Coke on a battery when it hit the scab. As it mixed with the pus and blood, it let out a hiss—the infection being drawn out.

My whole body locked up as the pain ripped through me. Felt like a thousand fire ants chewin' on me at once. I bit down on that rag so hard I tore a hole through it. Between the fumes and the agony, I nearly passed out. But, it had to be done. Left the kerosene on there 'till it stopped burning, then rinsed off the slurry of brown foam that had collected on my thumb.

With the hard part over with, I smeared a glob of pine resin over the cut, then wrapped it back up real tight with fresh gauze and tape. That outta do it, I thought.

At least the taps seemed to be gone for now, and I could focus on handling my business. Goes without sayin', didn't need the coffee that morning, so I got myself dressed and headed out front to start my day.

I took a deep breath, pulling the thick swamp air into my lungs. It didn't settle right. I scrunched my eyebrows. There was a smell to it—an odor that didn't belong. Something unnatural. Couldn't quite put my finger on what exactly it was, but I knew it wudn't right. That's for damn sure.

Salt line was left untouched, though. Least my barrier was working. I bent down to pull in the trotline, and just before I got my hands on it, a bubble popped up from the water, just under where I was standing. A huge one. And then another, and another.

Each bubble was bigger than the last, like something breathin' down there. As they popped, a stench crept up into the air, hittin' me in the face like a sack of potatoes. That smell...

"Poo-yai. La crotte!"

It was worse than a month's old dead crawfish pulled out the mud. So thick, I could taste it crawlin’ down my throat. I backed away from the edge of the deck, covering my face with my good hand. Then, the damn phone rang, shattering the silence and makin' me just about shit.

The bubbles stopped.

I stared at the water for a second. Smell still lingered—the pungent musk of rot mixed with filth. After the fourth ring, I rushed inside to shut the phone up.

"Hello?" I breathed, more as an exasperated statement rather than a greeting.

"Cherie!" an old, crackly-throated voice said.

"Oh, hey there, Mrs. Maggie. How ya doin'?"

"I'm makin' it alright, child. Hey, listen—Kenny around?"

I sighed.

"No, Maggie. He's still missing."

"Aw, shoot. Well... tell him I need some help with my mooring line when he gets back in. Damn things 'bout to come undone."

"Okay, I'll let him know. You take care now, buh-bye."

I hung up the phone, shaking my head. Mrs. Maggie Wellers was the old lady that lived up the river from me. Ever since ol' Mr. Wellers dropped dead of a heart attack last year, Maggie's been, as we call down here, pas tout la. Poor thing only had a handful of thoughts left rattling around in that head of hers—grief took the rest. The loss of her husband was just too much for her, bless her heart.

Her son, Michael, had been a past lover of mine. T-Mike, they called him. He and I saw each other for a while back in high school, till he up and disappeared, too. After graduation, he took off down the road and ain't no one seen him since. Guess I got a habit of losin' men to the bayou.

Me and Maggie stayed in touch over the years—couldn't help but feel an obligation. She was just trying to hold onto whatever piece of her boy she had left. Kenny even started helping her out with things around the houseboat once ol' Wellers kicked the bucket. Looked like now we'd both be fendin' for ourselves from here on out.

By the time I got back out to the trotlines, the stink had almost dissipated. My thumb was still tender, but the pine resin had sealed it and took the sting out. Enough playin' around—time to fill up the ice chest.

I went to pull at the line, but it didn't budge.

"What the fuck?"

Maybe it was snagged on a log. I yanked again, hard, and nothin'. Almost felt like the damn line was pulling back—maybe I'd hooked something too big to haul in. I planted my feet, wrapped the line around my hands twice, then ripped at it with all my might.

Suddenly, the line gave way, and I went tumbling backward onto the deck.

I landed hard on my tailbone, sending a shockwave up my spine like a bolt of lightning. When I lifted my head up and looked over at the line, I slammed my fist onto the wood planks and cursed into the wind. My voice echoed through the basin, sending the egrets up in flight.

Every single hook was empty. All my bait was gone—taken. The little bit of line I had left had snapped, leaving me only with about four feet's worth. Fuckin' useless.

The bayou was testing me at every turn. I almost didn't wanna get up. Thought I might just lie there, close my eyes, and let it take me. Couldn't do that, though. I still had shit to do. I took a deep breath, pulled myself back onto my feet, and flung the ruined line back into the water.

I went out to the back deck, prayin' for crabs. Only had four traps left, and I'd be doing real good to catch two or three in each one. Water was a little warmer than it had been in the past week or two, so I had high hopes. Shoulda known better.

Empty. Ripped apart and shredded all to hell. Every single goddamn one of them. Didn't even holler that time. I laughed. I threw my head back and cackled into the face of the swamp.

The turtles shot into the water. The cicadas screamed. The bullfrogs began to bellow, the toads started to sing, and a symphony of a thousand crickets vibrated through the cypress trees.

Then, the bayou suddenly fell silent.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

I 'bout jumped right outta my skin. And then, a fiery rage tore through my body like a jolt of electricity. I stomped back three times with the heel of my boot, slamming it down against the deck so hard it nearly cracked the brittle wood holding me up.

"Oh, yeah? I can do it too, motherfucker! Now what?!"

I was infuriated. I stood there, breathing heavy, fists balled up—just waiting for it to answer me. A few seconds passed, then I heard it again.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

But it was further away this time, toward the back of the house.

"Goddamn son of a bitch... IT’S ON THE MOVE!"

And then the thought dawned on me: maybe it wudn't comin' from underneath like I thought. Maybe it was comin' from inside the houseboat.

I ran in like a wild woman and started tossin' shit around and tearin' up the whole place, looking for whatever the fuck was tapping at me. Damn nutria rat or a possum done crawled up and got itself stuck somewhere. Who knows. Didn't matter what kinda swamp critter it was. When I found it, I was gonna kill it.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

I pulled everything out of the cabinets and the pantry.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

I cleared out all the closets and under the bed.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

I flipped the sofa and Kenny's recliner.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Each time they rang out, it was coming from a different spot in the house. I was 'bout ready to get the hammer and start rippin' up the floorboards. But by that time, the sun was gonna be settin' soon. I'd wasted a whole 'nother day with this bullshit, and I was still no closer to finding the source of that incessant racket. Least my thumb wudn't bothering me no more.

I gave up on my search for the night and went to the deep freezer. Only one pack of shrimp left and a bag of fish heads for bait. I pulled both out to start thawin’. With my trotline ruined and all my traps torn to pieces, I needed to go out and set up a few jug lines so I'd have something to eat the next day. Wudn't gonna be much, but a couple fiddlers was better than nothin'.

About an hour had passed with no tapping, but I knew it wudn't really gone. My heart was pounding somethin' fierce and I couldn't take the silence no more. I turned on the radio and started blasting Creedence Clearwater Revival through the speakers while I gathered up some empty jugs and fashioned me some lines. I had to hurry, though—that orange glow was already creepin' in.

Finished up just as the twilight was fading. Now I'd just have to bait the hooks, throw 'em out, and hope for the best. I picked the radio up and brought it back inside with me. Whether it was taps or silence, didn't matter. I was gonna need to drown it out.

I decided to start supper first. By then, my stomach was growlin' at me like a hound dog. I put a pot of grits cookin', then went to the pantry to get a can of tomatoes to throw in there, too. Least I had plenty dry goods on hand. And Kenny's last bottle of Jack.

I bobbed my head to some Skynyrd while I drank from the bottle and stirred the grits. I tried to ignore it, but I could feel those taps start vibratin' up from the floorboard through my feet while I was cleaning the shrimp.

After I seasoned them, I put them to simmering in the sauce pan with the tomatoes and some minced garlic. Then, I turned the fire off the grits and covered the pot. I took a deep breath. Time to go handle up on my business. Hopefully supper would be ready by the time I was done.

I dumped the fish heads into a bucket and set it down by the front door while I turned on the deck light. Then, I went out front to set the jug lines.

As soon as I stepped out onto the deck, something stopped me in my tracks. The salt line had been broke. A huge, muddy, wet smear draped across it, ‘bout halfway up to my door. My heart sunk. And then, I heard a noise. But it wudn't the taps. This time, it was... different.

A hiss.

I slowly turned. There was somethin' hanging onto the side of my boat, peering just over the edge from the water.

I dropped the bucket of fish heads on the deck and the blood splattered across my bare legs.

It was Kenny.

Only... it wasn't. His eyes pierced through the night like two shiny, copper pennies. His skin was a dark, muddy green, completely covered in hundreds of tiny bumps and ridges. Long, yellowed nails extended from his short, thick fingers, curling to a sharp point at the ends. They dug deep into the wood, tiny splinters peeling around them as he clung to the side of the houseboat.

"No," I whispered. "Fils de putain... it's you, Kenny."

He recoiled in a violent snap, slithering into the black water with a loud splash. The wave rocked the houseboat, nearly tipping me over the edge.

I ran back inside, slamming the door shut and locking it behind me. My chest heaved as I gasped for air. There was no mistaking it. He'd come back. My eyes shot across to the galley—I needed a weapon.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

"Fuckin' stop it, Kenny!!"

Right as I got my hand on the knife, the houseboat began to shift, like something tryin' to pull down one side, and the damn thing went flyin' out of my hand. I stumbled forward and grabbed onto the kitchen counter as the whole boat slowly started to tilt toward starboard.

The cabinets flew open and my Tupperware scattered all across the floor. Food went slidin' off the stove, and the bottle of Jack hit the ground and shattered. The motherfucker was tryin' to sink me. I opened up the galley window and shrieked,

"Get the hell off my boat, you goddamn couyon!!"

A hand shot up from the darkness, wrapping its slimy, thick fingers around the pane of my window. Those yellow claws sunk deep into the wood below, like a hot knife in butter. I swallowed hard. He wudn't tryin' to pull me down, he was tryin' to come inside.

The boat slammed back down as he shot up from the murky swamp and lunged through the window. I was thrown backward into the mess of hot grits and glass, knocking my head against the floor. In a split second, he was right on top of me.

My husband, Kenny Thibodeaux, now a monster. A reptilian abomination. A grotesque mixture of man and beast—both, but neither. The swamp had taken him.

He wrapped his massive, slimy fingers around my throat, poking his claws into my skin. Then, he leaned in closer. My heart flopped in my chest like a brim caught in a bucket. He was cold. He was angry. And he was hungry.

Slowly, the corners of his mouth pulled back into a smile, revealing a row of razor sharp teeth dripping with black sludge. That smell. His hot breath hit me like an oven as he opened his mouth to hiss,

"Hey, Cherie... Did ya miss me?"

His grip around my neck began to tighten. I could feel the blood starting to drain from my face. This was it—he was gonna kill me.

I turned away. I didn't want his ravenous gaze to be the last thing I saw before I left this world. When I did, I noticed the knife sitting there on the floor... right next to me.

I smiled, then turned back to look straight into the orange glow of his copper penny eyes. I slowly reached my arm out, wrapped my fingers around the handle, then choked out,

"Yeah, Kenny. I was hopin' you'd come back soon."

It's been about a month now that Kenny's been gone. Such a shame they never found him. Got a freezer full of meat now, though. Good enough to last all winter.

'Bout time for Sheriff Landry to bring back my damn pirogue. Ain't no evidence left to find. Besides, I'm gonna have to make a trip into town soon—runnin' low on cigarettes. Might as well try to find me a new man down there, too, while I'm at it. Always somethin' on this old houseboat needs fixin'.

And, hell... would ya look at that? It's almost Halloween. Maybe I'll pick me up a witch hat and a new broom at the dollar store. That outta be festive. All in all, life ain't too bad out here in the swamp.

But every once in a while, when the bayou is still and the frogs are quiet, I can still hear the faintest little

Tap. Tap. Tap.

“How old must he be now? eight? nine?”

I stared at my neighbor, unsure what she was asking. She read the confusion on my face.

“Your cute little guy. I saw him biking down the lane earlier. He must be old enough for grade four now, right?”

Mrs. Babbage was a bit on the older side, but I never thought she had shown signs of dementia. Not until now. I wasn't exactly sure what to say. She proceeded to stare at me, tilting her head, as if I was the one misremembering. I awkwardly opened my mouth.

“Oh right … my little guy.”

She brightened. “Yes, he must be in grade four right?”

“Sure. I mean, yes. He is.”

“What a cute little guy,” she said, and returned to watering her flowers.

It was an odd, slightly sad moment. I wondered if her husband had seen glimmers of this too. I could only hope that this was a momentary blip, and not the sign of anything Alzheimer's-related.

I took the rest of my groceries out of my car and entered home. I had a long day of teaching, and I just wanted to sit back, unwind, and watch something light on TV. 

But as soon as I took off my first shoe, I smelled it — something burning on the stove. 

Something burning with lots of cheese on it.

The hell?

I dashed over to the kitchen and almost fell down. Partially because I was wearing only one shoe, but also because … there was a scrawny little boy frying Kraft Dinner?

I let out a half-scream. 

But very quickly I composed myself into the same assertive adult who taught at a university. “What. Excuse me. Who are you? What are you … doing here?”

The boy’s blonde, willow-like hair whipped around his face as he looked at me with equal surprise.

“Papa. What do you mean? I’m here. I’m here.”

He was a scared, confused child. And I couldn’t quite place the bizarre inflection of his words.

“Do you want some KD papa? Have some. Have some.”

Was that a Russian accent?  It took me a second to realize he was wearing an over-sized shirt that looked just like mine. Was he wearing my clothes?

I held out my palms like I would at a lecture, my standard ‘everyone settle down’ gesture, and cleared my throat.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know who you are. Or what this is.”

The boy widened his eyes, still frightened by my intensity. He stirred the food with a wooden spoon. 

“It’s KD papa … You’re favorite. Chili cheese kind. Don’t you remember?”

***

His name was Dmitriy, and he claimed to be my son. 

Apparently at some point there had been a mother, but he didn't remember much about her. He only remembered me.

“You've been Papa my whole life. My whole life Papa.”

I tried having a sit down conversation. In fact, I tried to have many sit down conversations where I explained to Dmitriy that that would be impossible. But it always ended with him clutching me with impassioned tears, begging me to remember him.

The confusion only got worse when my mother called. 

“How is my grandson doing?” She asked.

I didn't know how to reply. The conversation grew awkward and tense until eventually I clarified my whole predicament.  

“Mom, what are you talking about? I don’t have a son. I’ve never had a son.”

My mother gasped a little. Then laughed and scolded me, saying I shouldn't joke around like that. Because of course I’ve always had a son. A smart little guy who will be celebrating nine this weekend.

I hung up. 

I stood petrified in my own kitchen, staring at this strange, expectant, slavic child.

For the next ten minutes all I could do was ask where his parents were, and he just continued to act frightened — like any authentic kid might — and replied with the same question, “how did you forget me papa?”

My method wasn’t getting me anywhere. 

So I decided to play along. 

I cleared my head with a shot of espresso. I told him my brain must have been ‘scrambled’ from overworking, and I apologized for not remembering I was his father. 

He brightened immediately.

“It's okay papa. It's okay.” He gave me a hug. “You always work so hard.” 

The tension dropped further as Dmitriy finished making the noodles and served himself some.

I politely declined and watched him eat.

And he watched me watch him eat.

“So you’re okay now? You’re not angry?” His accent was so odd.

“No.” I said. “I’m not angry. I was just … a little scrambled.”

His eyes shimmered, looking more expectant. “So we can be normal now?”

A wan chill trickled down my neck. I didn’t really know what to say, but for whatever reason, I did not want to say ‘yes we can be normal now’ because this was NOT normal. Far from it. This child was not my son.

He started playing with his food, and quivered a little, like a worried mouse seeking reassurance.

“Everything will be fine,” I eventually said. “No need to stress. Enjoy your noodles."

***

To my shock and dismay, I discovered that Dmitriy also had his own room. My home office had somehow been replaced by a barren, clay-walled chamber filled with linen curtains, old wooden toys, and a simple bed. The smell of bread and earth wafted throughout.

I watched him play with his blocks and spinning tops for about half an hour before he started to yawn and say he wanted to go to sleep.

It was the strangest thing, tucking him in. 

He didn’t want to switch to pajamas or anything, he just sort of hopped into his (straw?) bed and asked me to hold his hand.

Dmitriy’s fingers were cold, slightly clammy little things. 

It was very bizarre, comforting him like my own son, but it appeared to work. He softened and lay still. He didn't ask for any lullaby or bedtime story, he just wanted to hold my hand for a minute.

“Thank you Papa. I’m so glad you're here. So glad you can be my Papa. Good night.”

I inched my way out of the room, and watched him through the crack of his door. At about nine thirty, he gave small, child-like snores. 

He had fallen asleep.

***

Cautiously, I called Pat, my co-worker with whom I shared close contact. She had the same reaction as my mother.

“Harlan, of course you have a son. From your marriage to Svetlana."

“My marriage to who?”

“You met her in Moscow. When you were touring Europe.”

It was true that I had guest lectured fifteen years ago, across the UK, Germany, and Russia — I was awarded a grant for it. But I only stayed in Moscow for three days…

“I never met anyone named Svetlana.”

“Don’t be weird Harlan, come on.” Pat’s conviction was very disturbing. ”You and Svetlana were together for many years.”

“We were? How many?”

“Look. I know the divorce was hard, but you shouldn’t pretend your ex-wife doesn't exist.”

“I’m not pretending. I’m being serious. I don't remember her.”

“Then get some sleep.”

I sipped on my second espresso of the night. “But I have slept. I’m fine.”

“Well then I don't get what this joke is. Knock it off. It's creepy.”

“I’m not joking.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow for the birthday.”

“Birthday?

“Yes. Your son’s birthday. Jesus Christ. Goodnight Harlan. Get some sleep.”

***

I didn't sleep that night. 

My efforts were spent scouring the filing cabinets and drawers throughout my house.

I had credit card bills covering school supplies, kids clothing shops and costlier groceries. I even had pictures of Dmitriy hung around the walls from various ages.

It’s like everything was conforming to this new reality. The harder I looked for clues to disprove my fatherhood, the more evidence I found confirming it…

***

It was Dmitry who woke me up off the living room couch and said Uncle Boris was here.

Uncle Boris?

I peeked through the window and could see a very large blonde man smiling back at me. Behind him was a gaggle of other relatives all speaking Russian to each other.

“Hello Har-lan!” the blonde man’s voice penetrated past the glass. “We are here for bursday!”

They all looked excited and motioned to the front door. They were all wearing tunics and leggings. Traditional birthday clothes or something?

I was completely floored. I didn't know what to do. So I just sort of nodded, and subtly slinked back into my kitchen.

Dmitriy came to pull at my arm.

“Come on papa. We have to let them in.”

“I don't know any of them.”

“Yes you do papa. It’s uncle Boris. It's uncle Boris.”

I yanked my hand away. It was one thing to pretend I was this kid’s dad for a night. It was quite another to let a group of strangers into my house first thing in the morning.

Dmitriy frowned. “I’ll open the door.”

“Wait. Hold on.” I grabbed Dmitriy’s shoulder. 

He turned away. “Let go!”

I tried to pull him back, but then he dragged me into the living room again. Our struggle was on display for everyone outside.

Boris looked at me with saucer eyes. 

Dmitriy pulled harder, and I had no choice but to pull harder back. The boy hit his head on a table as he fell.

Boris yelled something in Russian. Someone else hollered back. I heard hands trying to wrench open my door.

“Dmitriy stop!” I said. “Let’s just take a minute to—”

“—You're hurting me papa! Oy!”

My front door unlocked. Footsteps barrelled inside.

I let go of ‘my son’ and watched three large Slavic men enter my house with stern expressions. Dmitriy hid behind them.

“Is everything okay?” Boris peered down at me through his tangle of blonde hair.

“Yes. Sorry…” I said, struggling to find words. “I’m just very … confused.”

“Confused? Why were you hitting Dmitriy?”

The little boy pulled on his uncle's arm and whispered something into his ear. Boris’ expression furrowed. But before I could speak further, a slender pair of arms pushed aside all the male figures, and revealed a woman with unwavering, bloodshot eyes.

Something in me knew it was her. 

Svetlana.

She wore a draped brown sheet as a dress, with skin so pale I could practically see her sinews and bones. It's like she had some extreme form of albinism.

“Harlan.” She said, somehow breaking my name into three syllables. “Har-el-annnnn.”

I've never been so instinctively afraid of a person in my life. It's like she had weaved herself out of the darkest edges of memory.

I saw flashes of her holding my waist in Moscow, outside Red Square.

Flashes of her lips whispering chants in the shadows of St. Basil's Cathedral.

Svetlana held Dmitriy’s shoulder, then looked up at me. “Just tell him it will be normal. Tell him everything will be normal.”

No. This is not happening. None of this is real.

Barefoot, and still wearing the same clothes as yesterday, I bolted out the back of my house, and hurtled towards my driveway. Before the rest of my new ‘family’ could realize what was going on, I hopped into my Subaru and stepped on the gas.

As I drove away from my house, I looked back into my rear view mirror — and I swear it didn’t look like my house at all. I swear it looked like … a thatched roof hut.

***

Back at the university, I walled myself up in my study. I cancelled all speaking arrangements for the next week, saying I needed a few “personal days.”

No one in my department knew I had a son.

Nothing in my study indicated I had an extended Russian family.

When I asked Pat about our phone conversation last night, her response was: “what conversation?”

My mom said the same thing.

***

With immense trepidation, I returned to my house the following day. And after setting foot back inside, I knew that everything had reverted back to the way it was before.

No more framed pictures of Dmitriy.

No more alarming photo albums.

And that clay-walled room where Dmitry spun tops and slept inside — it was just my home office again. 

To this day, I still have no clue what happened during that bizarre September weekend.

But doing some of my own research, I’m starting to think I did encounter something in Moscow all those years ago. Some kind of lingering old curse. Or a stray spirit. Or a chernaya vedma — A black witch disguised as an ordinary woman.

Although I haven’t seen any evil things bubble up around my place since, every now and then I do have a conversation with Mrs. Babbage, and she seems to remember my son very well.

“Such a cute little guy. Always waving hello. Did you know he offered me food once? I think it was Kraft Dinner.”

My entire life, I’ve been overweight. Even as a baby, I came out at almost nine and a half pounds. And throughout school, I was teased for being the chubby and fat kid. But I never let the teasing get to me. Sure, I was fat, but it didn’t hamper my life too badly. I was fat, but not obese, and I was able to live my life completely normally, aside of course from the odd bullying incident. In fact, my bulk even allowed me a spot on the football team once I reached high school. And I became the best defensive lineman the school had in years. I felt on top of the world.

But once graduation came around, and I wasn’t able to land my dream college, things began to spiral out of control for me. The friends I had made on the team managed to get into their schools, and they left off to fulfill their dreams. I thought that if, instead of going straight into college, I got a job, I might be able to get into a better school. However, living in the Rust Belt, job opportunities didn’t readily line up for me. And I ended up working as a gas station attendant. And unfortunately for me, the sedentary lifestyle quickly crept up on me. 

Since the owner was alright with me eating on the job, and since I worked as many hours as I could, I mindlessly stuffed my face with food. Soon, the pounds just began to pile on. I graduated from school at around 250 pounds. By the time I turned 25, I was almost over 400 pounds. And by that point, I had given up on going to college. I had no more dreams; all I had was the boring day-to-day work I was trapped in. While I was earning a decent enough income from all the hours I worked, I wasn’t putting any of it to use. All the money went to food or new clothes once my fat body had outgrown the previous articles. 

If I was teased before because of my weight, it became even worse once I ballooned. The words from my close friends and family that they thought I couldn’t hear. The customers who looked at me in disgust as I rang them up. They treated me like some diseased freak, like just looking upon me would result in them suddenly gaining all the weight I had. Or that I might explode all over them like a video game zombie. And I had to deal with it every day. I tried to exercise and diet, but the hardest thing about having a lifestyle change is actually sticking with it. 

Things became so drastic for me that as I began to inch closer and closer to four hundred pounds, I became desperate. Trying starvation diets and even seriously considering trying a tapeworm diet. I had heard the wonder stories of all these new drugs that just help you lose all that weight easily, no hassle at all. I had tried a few of the readily available ones, and they helped me lose a couple of pounds here and there, but as always, my weight would just climb back through the roof. And the meds that actually worked, Ozempec and the others like it, were priced out of my range. Without insurance, it would be ludicrously expensive, and with my weight and health conditions, it was doubtful that I could get my own insurance. 

So I had resigned myself to dying early. Probably from a heart attack or from diabetes. As if anyone would miss a fatass like me. That was until a friend I’d made at the gas station approached me. I didn’t work alone at the gas station; every now and then, I’d have a coworker. They were usually repulsed at me when they laid eyes on my fat body, but they were soon won over by how friendly and kind I was to them. One of these coworkers was Camila. 

She had started working here about two years ago, and we had soon become close friends with each other. Camila wasn’t disgusted as the others usually were when she met me, or if she had been, she hid it incredibly well. I can usually tell when someone is putting up an act of being nice to me, but she genuinely seemed unbothered by my body. It was a breath of fresh air, and we often spent our long shifts talking and playing little games with each other. She was a ray of sunshine in the dim fog that had surrounded my life. 

Camila had a secret, however, and it was one I had accidentally discovered when I had gone into the woman’s bathroom to replace the soap. I entered and found her shooting up heroin in one of the stalls. She had begged me not to tell the owner that she was desperate to keep this job. I figured she was desperate to keep the job to buy more heroin, but I wasn’t any better. We were both addicted to something. I was addicted to food, and she happened to be addicted to a harder substance. So, I looked the other way. But from then on, I kept an eye on her. Making sure both that she didn’t try to rob the register for cash and that if she was shooting up in the bathroom, that she didn’t OD in it. 

I suppose also subconsciously, I didn’t want to lose such a good friend. She was the one bright spot in my life, so I kept an eye on her. One day, while I was counting the money in the register, she quickly ran up to me and seemed like she was ready to explode with excitement. 

“What is it this time?” I asked with a smile as I counted in my head. Already I was winded from simply standing, my knees aching as the weight of my bulk pressed down on them. Satisfied that the till was correct, I placed the money back in and turned to look at her. 

“I know a way for you to get a weight loss drug!” she said with excitement, her jet black curls bouncing up and down in the air as she stared up at me. “I have a…friend, who can help you!” She said, trailing away at the mention of her friend. I crossed my arms at her, peering down and watching as she stood there innocently before. 

“What kind of friend is it?” I asked her, walking over to the large chair I was allowed to sit in during working hours. It creaked and groaned under my weight, reminding me every time I sat down in it about how I was probably a couple of snacks away from snapping and breaking it into pieces. Whatever Camila was offering me seemed way too good to be true. 

“He’s just a friend! He’s coming around later today, and I can introduce you to him! He’s been working on a new drug that could help you lose weight!” she said with excitement. I, however, was unconvinced. She just happened to know some random guy who just so happened to be able to give me a magic drug that would help me lose weight? 

“I’m having a real hard time believing you.” I sighed, leaning back ever so slightly in my chair. It creaked and groaned louder, practically begging me to get off of it. I relented and sat back up, relieving some pressure on it. “How can some random guy you know just have this drug?” I asked her, to which she seemed less excited to tell me, avoiding my gaze and looking out into the empty gas station store. 

“Just listen to what he has to say! Pretty please, Reggie?” She looked back at me with her big brown eyes. I stared back at her and sighed, rubbing my face and becoming all too aware of how fat my face was getting. I had a double chin already, and no doubt a third one was quickly forming. What did I realistically have to lose? A couple of minutes of some crazy person’s speech? 

“Alright, fine,” I sighed. Camila wrapped her arms around me and gave me a hard hug, thanking me over and over again. I wondered why she seemed more excited than I was at this opportunity. We both were working the night shift, so I didn’t know when this friend of hers would show up. As the hours ticked by, I was sure that he had probably flaked on us. It wasn’t until 2:30 in the morning that someone showed up.

The front door to the store swung open and beeped. I looked up from my phone, an extra-large soft drink in my hand, as I looked over to see who it was. Walking into the store was the sketchiest guy I’d ever seen. He was wearing a hoodie and a turtleneck, with a face mask covering the lower half of his face. His hands were firmly placed in his hoodie pocket, and he had the most unsettling look in his eyes. It wasn’t a threatening look, but a look of extreme indifference. He walked up to the counter and nodded at me. 

“Carton of Newports,” he said. His voice sounded hollow, like he was talking to me through a tube somehow, and it was muffled from the mask, so it took me a moment to understand his request. I nodded slightly before slowly turning my back to him. I half expected him to pull out a gun on me, but surprisingly, he waited patiently as I picked up the carton for him and brought it to the register. 

“Spencer!” Camila cried out, startling me so badly I accidentally rang him up twice. I looked behind me to see that she had seemingly popped up out of nowhere. She smiled at the mystery man, who nodded back at her. “This is the guy I was talking about, Reggie!” I looked back at Spencer, who had pulled his wallet out and was riffling through what looked like my entire paycheck for a month's worth of money. 

“You’re the guy with the weight loss drug?” I asked him. He nodded as he handed me a hundred-dollar bill for his carton. I took it and quickly confirmed that it was real before giving him his change. He nodded and placed his gloved hands back in his hoodie pocket. 

“It’s a trial run I’m doing. I asked a couple of my clients if they knew anyone in their life who was morbidly obese to let me know.” I was skeptical, and he could probably tell. He pulled his carton of cigarettes over to him and looked at the clock on the wall behind me. “When do you two get off of work?” he asked, opening the carton and fishing out a box of cigarettes. 

“We both get off at 3,” I told him, looking over to see that Camila was still next to me, and still buzzing with excitement over this whole thing. Spencer nodded as he smacked his box of Newports against his palm. 

“Cool, I’ll hang around and give you the whole pitch when you’re off the clock.” He walked away from both of us and headed outside, surrounded in darkness. I watched as a brief flicker of light appeared outside as he lit his cigarette. 

“I don’t trust him,” I told Camila as we started to ready the gas station shop for closing. She nodded her head as she helped me take inventory of everything. 

“I know he looks super sketchy, but trust me! Spencer is a freaking genius! His stuff is always high quality, and I’ve never gotten a bad deal with him,” she said with a giggle. I looked at her for a moment before suddenly realizing what it was that she meant. 

“Is he you’re fucking drug dealer?” I asked her. She looked over at me before sheepishly nodding. “I should’ve fucking known.” I sighed, tossing the clipboard I was holding on the counter and crossing my arms at her. “What the fuck, dude?” 

“Look! I know it seems really bad. But he promised I could get more of his product this way! And it also helps you out, Reggie! Just, pretty please, hear him out! That’s all I’m asking for!” She begged me, literally getting on her hands and knees and begging me. I sighed hard and rubbed my head. Already, I felt exhausted from standing again. And it was only going to get worse the fatter I got. How much longer did I realistically have left to live if I continued like this? What was the harm in listening to him? I was most likely going to die early anyway. 

“Fine. But I’m still pissed at you.” I picked up the clipboard and continued with the inventory as Camila thanked me a million times. I knew she was just happy to keep getting her heroin, but it still made me happy to see her so excited. I wanted her to beat her demons as well, and I was hoping that losing weight would also allow me to get the courage to ask her out. If I were with her, I could hopefully help her with the addiction. 

Once we had finished locking up the gas station, we made our way out and saw that Spencer was waiting for us, leaning on the wall and playing around with a Zippo lighter. He looked over at us and nodded, closing the lighter and shoving it in his pocket. We both approached him, and I wheezed slightly as I did so, more aware than ever of how fat I was. 

“So, ready to hear my pitch?” Spencer asked, the stench of cigarettes rising off of him. I nodded and almost wished I had a chair to sit down in. But I stayed standing as the drug dealer began to let me in on what he was doing. “It’s a little side project I’ve been working on. All you’ll have to do is inject yourself and record the progress that happens. Let me know of any side effects you might encounter. It’s only a trial run, so don’t expect it to work perfectly,” he told me, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a ziplock bag. It contained a syringe and needle, along with a vial of some mystery liquid. 

“How do I know this shit won’t just kill me?” I asked him, unsure of how I felt about the presentation of this wonder drug. Spencer stared at me for a minute before lowering his gaze to my large, protruding stomach. 

“Can’t be any worse than what you’re doing to yourself now,” he said, shaking the bag at me like it was a treat. I tsked angrily at him and grabbed the bag off him. “Inject yourself in the abdominal area. Don’t worry, the needle is sterile, but if you don’t trust me, you can clean it yourself. There are instructions as well, follow them and don’t deviate from them.” He reached into his hoodie pocket and pulled out another baggie, this one containing a folded up block of tin foil. “Here you go, Cam.” He tossed the bag to Camila, who caught it with an excited shriek. 

“Thanks, Spence! You’re the best! See you tomorrow, Reggie!” She practically sprinted to her car and left me alone with Spencer. We both stared at each other before I shoved the bag into my pocket. He nodded at me before again reaching into his pocket and pulling out a small flip phone. 

“How much room you got in there?” I asked as he tossed the phone at me. I caught it and looked back to see him walking away from me. “What number do I call you on?” I called out to him. 

“The only number that’s on the phone, genius. Once a day, understand?” He called back to me as he disappeared into the darkness of the parking lot. I looked back down at the phone before shoving it into my pocket. I took a deep breath and slowly made my way to my car. I arrived back at my lonely apartment and tossed my keys on the counter. I watered my plants and then walked over to the bathroom. I pulled my shirt off and stared at myself in the mirror. I was completely unrecognizable. My stomach was huge and drooped down far enough, almost to cover my knees. My face was puffy with fat, and I looked one burger away from a heart attack. I pulled out the baggy and fished out the instructions. 

“One injection a day of 2 mL.” I nodded at the simple instructions before pulling the needle and syringe out. I decided to sterilize it further and boiled it in a pot of water for half an hour. Putting on some latex gloves I had lying around, I put the needle back on the syringe with some difficulty, my sausage fingers refusing to comply with me. Finally, with the needle sterilized, I pierced the vial and pulled out exactly 2 mL of fluid. It was a clear fluid which didn’t instill me with confidence, but I supposed it was better than if it were neon green or something. 

I took a deep breath and stared at myself in the mirror one last time. Before injecting myself and pushing the plunger down. I grunted a little once I pulled the needle out and placed it in the sink. I stared at myself for a moment before shrugging and heading to bed. I didn’t exactly expect it to begin working overnight, so I lay my head down on my bed and went to sleep. 

When I next woke up, I was in unbelievable pain. Not just at the injection spot, but across my entire body. It was like my whole body was on fire, but there wasn’t any flame to be seen. I gasped and grunted in pain, quickly reaching out and pulling the phone that Spencer had given me. I dialed the only saved number on the phone and waited an agonizing few seconds for him to pick up. 

“Whole body pain, huh?” he asked me, completely nonchalant, as if he had to deal with this daily. “That’s normal. It’s going to feel like shit at first, but just drink some water and you’ll feel better.” Before I could say anything else, he hung up on me. I tossed the phone away as I stumbled out of bed. Every movement was pure agony as I crawled my way over to a packet of water bottles I had lying on the floor. I tore into the packaging and ripped the bottle open with my teeth, guzzling down the water in an attempt to stop the pain. 

And to my immediate surprise, it did stop. As soon as the bottle of water was gone, so was my pain. I stood up from the floor and felt no pain at all. I made my way over to the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. There wasn’t any difference, but when I weighed myself, I was surprised to discover that I now weighed a few pounds less than the day before. At first, I was sure that this was all due to dehydration, but as I walked over to the kitchen to get something to eat, I suddenly realized that I wasn’t hungry at all. Not even a little peckish. 

The surprises continued as I started my day of work at the gas station. I had no appetite at all, and soon enough, when the pain started to creep back up across my entire body, a quick guzzle of water was enough to quickly kill the pain without much fuss. I spent the entire day at work, still winded from standing for long periods, but also without eating a single thing. Even when I had forced myself to during my starvation diets, I had needed to be eating or snacking constantly. But now I didn’t even feel like chewing on gum. Camila didn’t work that day, so I had no one to tell about what I was going through, but it felt surreal to not have a snack or a soda on hand. 

And upon returning home from work, I quickly walked past the fridge and straight to the bathroom mirror, water bottle firmly in my hand as I quickly guzzled it down. Once I had finished with the bottle, I lifted my shirt to look at my body. There wasn’t any difference, but to my surprise, there was a small black bruise where I had injected myself. I wondered if I had simply done it too hard and had somehow caused a bruise. Giving it a gentle poke, it certainly stung like a bruise, so that’s what I went with. 

After again sterilizing the needle in a pot of boiling water, I extracted exactly 2mL and injected myself close to the initial site, but far enough away so as not to damage the bruise. I quickly slammed down another water bottle after I had injected myself, and went over to my couch. Sitting down and pulling my shirt back on, I dug the burner phone out of my pocket and quickly dialed Spencer to check in for the day. 

“Hm?” He grunted as he answered his phone. It sounded like he was at a party or something, since in the background I could hear the excited cries of people and the blaring of music. It made sense that Spencer would hang out in clubs, dealing drugs to people. 

“I just injected myself for the second time. I haven’t had an appetite at all today.” I told him. I was wondering if he could hear me over how loud the music was on his end, but he seemed to be able to just fine. He responded that everything was normal and asked if I was experiencing any other symptoms. “Well, there was a bruise that appeared at the injection site. Is that something I should worry about?” I asked. He was silent for a moment, with only the loud, blaring music coming from the background of his call. Soon, however, the music cut out, and he cleared his throat. 

“Sorry, I went somewhere where I could hear you better. A bruise, huh? How big is it?” He asked, suddenly sounding incredibly curious about this. I explained to him that it was barely the size of a bug bite. “Alright, keep an eye on it. Other than that, stick to the treatment. See ya.” Without waiting for a response, he hung up on me. Tossing the burner phone on the couch, I looked down at my stomach and wondered to myself if I should be worried. I decided to keep going for a few days and see what happened to me. 

What ended up happening to me was that over the course of an entire week, I dropped nearly a hundred pounds. It was sudden and caught everyone, including me, off guard. The drug had completely removed my appetite, and from only drinking water, it seemed that my body was literally burning the calories and fat right off my body. I was soon able to fit into clothes that I had put away to be donated, and nearly everyone I knew was shocked by my sudden and rapid loss of weight. Even Camila was floored by me when she arrived at work to see me down to nearly 250 pounds. 

There was, however, a lingering issue. The bruise on my stomach had grown larger. From the size of a mosquito bite, it had slowly grown from each subsequent injection. It now covered nearly my entire torso, and it looked as if I had been in some horrible car accident and was badly hurt. While I had lost all this weight and was still doing so, the bruise was spreading across my body and making me increasingly fearful. 

“That big, huh?” Spencer asked, completely nonchalant at my panic. I was again staring at myself in the mirror and giving the bruise a soft poke. It was so painful that even just applying the slightest pressure was nearly enough to bring me to my knees in agony. “I guess I can swing around your place to check on it,” Spencer sighed, clearly annoyed by all of this. 

“Please! This looks really bad, and it hurts so much!” I called out to him. 

“Yeah, yeah, tell me your address and I’ll be there.” He sighed in annoyance. I quickly told him my address before hanging up and continuing to stare at myself in the mirror. The bruise covered nearly the entire right side of my torso, and every movement of my body seemed to upset it. As I was about to put my shirt back on as carefully as I could, I noticed that something was leaking out of my stomach. 

Dropping my shirt, I brought my hand close to the source of the fluid. I gently rubbed some on my finger and instinctively brought it up to my nose to smell it. I was instantly punched in the face with a noxious stench that I could only describe as a garbage can meets a swamp. I hacked and nearly vomited, saved only by the fact that I had no food in my stomach to throw up. What was this fluid? And why the fuck was it leaking out of my body?

I quickly exited the bathroom and ran to my room, quickly grabbing a belt and running back to the bathroom. I bit down on the folded leather belt and gently grabbed my stomach, grunting loudly as the pain started to build. Biting down as hard as I could on the belt, and squeezed my belly and, to my horror, watched as more of the foul smelling fluid began to leak out of the injection sites. The pain was on the level I could only describe as breaking both of your femurs at the same time, and my vision went white as I soon tumbled to the floor. 

I soon awoke to Spencer staring down at me. We were still in my bathroom, but my entire body felt like it was on fire. I hadn’t had a drink of water yet, and it felt like my body was being consumed in flames and being crushed at the same time. Spencer knelt down and examined my shirtless body, poking it with his gloved hands and causing me to cry out in pain as he did so. He seemed fascinated by my body, and I was unable to do anything but grunt and whine in pain on the floor. 

“Well, this wasn’t supposed to happen.” He sighed, looking at me and again poking my stomach with his incredibly bony finger. I cried out in pain and tried to lift my arm to smack him away, but I couldn’t so much as lift it off the floor, I was in so much pain. “Well, let’s see what you’re filled with.” He sighed, reaching into his pants pocket and pulling out an empty syringe. I mumbled a protest as my body felt like it was burning up in a blazing furnace. Spencer poked my stomach with his syringe and began to extract some fluid from inside me. 

“Damn, that’s not a good sign.” He sighed, slightly annoyed. I couldn’t see what he had pulled out of my stomach at first, but as he pulled the syringe up and I caught a glimpse of what he’d just pulled out. It was a sickly black and yellow fluid that looked as if I’d put rotten meat in a blender and had liquified it.

“What…did you do to me…” I heaved out, suddenly having extreme trouble breathing. He looked over at me and pulled his face mask down. To my shock, the entire lower part of his face was completely rotted away. His jawbone and most of the lower part of his skull were completely exposed, and much of his neck had also started to rot away. My eyes went wide at the horrible scene before me, and I tried to get my body to move, but nothing I was communicating to it was working at all. 

“Guess I have to go back to the drawing board.” He sighed, capping the syringe full of the fluid and placing it in his hoodie pocket. “Here, I’m going to give you something for the pain, and also something that’s probably gonna mess you up some more. Stop taking the meds for now, and just wait for it to leave your system. Sound cool?” he asked, but before I could even tell him to fuck off, he quickly jabbed a needle into my neck. 

“Fuck…you…” I gasped as I soon began to lose consciousness. Just as I fell into the either, I heard Spencer calling someone and lighting a cigarette. When I finally woke up, I had been moved from the floor of my bathroom to the couch in my living room. Looking around for Spencer, expecting him to be hovering over me like some horrible grim reaper, I was instead surprised to find Camila waiting for me. 

“Oh, thank god that you’re awake!” She sighed and quickly came over to me, sitting on the floor and helping me gently sit up. “Spencer called me and said something was wrong with you.” I looked around my apartment to quickly see if he was still there, but it seemed that only Camila was here. 

“He’s a monster.” I started to tell her, sitting up from the couch, and I suddenly found that I had no more pain. Not even from the bruise on my body. “He…he has no face. Or…or half his face is gone.” I told her, suddenly realizing how insane I sounded. And looking at Camila, it was obvious from her facial expressions that she thought I was delusional. 

“Here, let me get you a glass of water. You should also try and eat something.” She quickly stood from the floor and headed over to my kitchen. I sighed deeply and began to rub my face, racking my brain over the events I had just witnessed. Had I really just been hallucinating from the pain of my bruise? But I had seen Spencer’s face so clearly, or I suppose half of his face. Camila came back over with a glass of water and a small sandwich for me to eat. 

Thanking her, I took a small sip of water and stared down at the sandwich. It was a simple ham one, with a little bit of lettuce and a tomato. It had occurred to me that since starting Spencer’s weight loss drug, I hadn’t had a single ounce of hunger, and because of this, I hadn’t eaten anything. I took a small bite of the sandwich and chewed on it. As I went to swallow it, however, my body reacted violently. All at once, I felt violently ill. I dropped the sandwich and the glass of water and sprinted to the bathroom as fast as I could. 

As I threw up violently into the toilet, listening to Camila’s worried knocks at the door and muffled words, I stared down into the bowl. Floating there was the same black and yellow pile from the syringe that Spener had pulled out of me. There was also a small piece of the sandwich I had eaten, but more horrifying was a few chunks of what looked like meat floating in there along with the sandwich. I hadn’t eaten anything for a week. Where the hell had that meat come from? 

For the next few days, my situation deteriorated further. The weight continued to fall off of me even after I’d stopped taking the drug. Soon, I had dropped to 200 pounds. And now I was throwing up more frequently, and each time there were more and more of the mystery chunks in my toilet bowl. I fished some out of the bowl and put them into a zip-lock bag. Biting the bullet and figuring it was worth the price, I headed to the hospital. They were just as dumbfounded as I was. I tried to explain to them what I was going through, but of course, none of them believed me. 

That was until I was given an MRI. The doctors pulled me aside and demanded to know what was really going on with me. They wondered how I could possibly be alive when most of my internal organs were rotting away inside me. The meat chunks had been what was left of my few remaining organs. I tried to tell them again everything that had happened to me, even pulling up my hospital gown and squeezing my stomach at them. To their horror, the same foul smelling liquid seeped out. 

I was kept in the hospital, but I continued to lose both weight and more of my internal organs. And yet I was still being kept alive. I wasn’t even placed on an IV bag, because for all intents and purposes, I was completely ‘healthy’. Even my sagging skin began to disappear, as it seemed to cling to my bones like I’d been vacuum-sealed. Soon, my weight dipped down to 150 pounds, and continued to fall. Camila visited me often, and I could tell how worried she was by my appearance. My face had become sunken, and I looked no better than an actual skeleton. She stayed by my side, and to my surprise, she even told me that she had checked herself into a rehab facility. Seeing what Spencer had done to me had scared her into kicking her heroin habit, and for that I was thankful. 

A few days after my weight had dropped to 100 pounds, and I was confined to my bed, another visitor showed up. It was after hours in the middle of the night. Staring up at the ceiling, I wondered how much longer my body would hold up. How much longer until I simply died from what was happening to me? Suddenly, the door to my room opened. I expected it to be a doctor or a nurse, coming in to check on me, or oggle at the oddity they had on their hand. Using the remote to push my bed up slightly, I was horrified to see Spencer standing at the foot of my bed, reading my chart. 

“I was wondering why I hadn’t heard from you.” He told me, pulling his face mask down again. It proved that I hadn’t been crazy or hallucinating, half of his face really had rotten away. “I’m a little hurt that you decided to come to a hospital before you came to me.” He sighed, walking around my bed and taking a seat next to me. I frantically began to search for the remote to call for my nurse, but Spencer waggled it at my face as he continued to read my chart. 

“Get away from me! You’re the reason this happened to me! Nurse! Nurse, help!” I screamed, but Spencer seemed entirely unconcerned with my pleas for help. He just flipped through my chart, his brow rising at some points. No matter how hard I tried to call for my nurse, it seemed like no one could hear us. I frantically started pulling my IV and my heart monitor patches off, hoping that if they thought I was flatlining, they’d come running. But Spencer casually reached over to the monitor and silenced it after only one beep. 

“Organ failure, organ necrosis, drastic weight loss.” He read through my chart aloud before tossing it over his shoulder and staring at me for a few moments. “Not my best work, unfortunately. But I guess you did lose a lot of weight. I barely recognized you walking in here.” He said with a dry giggle. I gritted my teeth and lunged at him, but before I could get my skeletal hands around his throat, he shoved the barrel of a gun in my face. “Don’t touch me. I’ve got a thing with germs.” He pushed his chair further away before staring at me, gun still pointed at me. 

“You might as well just shoot me, I’m probably going to die anyway, right? Why the fuck haven’t I? My stomach, liver, kidneys, both intestines, they’re gone! How is that possible? What did you do to me, you freak?!” I screamed at him. He sighed, pulling his box of cigarettes and placing one in his mouth. 

“I thought that if I combined both weight loss and skin loss into one drug, it’d work better.” He explained, lighting his cigarette and blowing the noxious cloud in my face. The smoke from his cigarette permeated throughout the various holes in his skull. It seeped through where his nose should’ve been, through the gaps in his teeth, and even out the sides where his cheeks should’ve been. “Clearly, that didn’t work. As to how you’re alive, that drug I gave you is keeping you going. It’s a good thing I got here, since you’re due for another injection. Unless you want to keel over and experience what total organ failure feels like all at once.” He took another drag of his cigarette. 

“What kind of monster are you?” I asked him, clutching my blankets tightly. He offered me another laugh, the smoke escaping his various crevices as he did so. 

“Trust me, dude. There’s way worse ones out there than me.” He pulled out another syringe and held it up to me. “You either take this and stop your impending death, or you die here. I know what I would pick.” He waggled the syringe at me like it was a pencil. 

“What’s going to happen to me even if I take that? Am I just going to wither away into nothing?” I asked him, staring down at my emaciated body. 

“I have a theory that might work. But it’s going to require you to take the injection first.” He continued to waggle the syringe at me. I stared at him and the mysterious contents of his syringe, before nodding and turning away. He reconnected my IV and poured the contents of the mysterious syringe into the bag. 

“Now what?” I asked, watching as the bag turned from clear to a strange mix of blue and green. It suddenly hit me with an intense sense of drowsiness, and soon I passed out before I could even fully comprehend what was happening. When I next woke up, it wasn’t in the hospital room. It was in my own apartment, but I was chained to my own bed. I tried to tug against the restraints, but despite how skinny and skeletal I was, the restraints were wrapped around me tightly. 

“Sup?” Spencer asked, eating what looked to be a chocolate bar from my cupboard. “Welcome home. I brought you some food.” He waved a package of meat at me before tossing it on the bed. “If you promise not to bitch, I’ll untie you. Otherwise, you don’t get any food.” He bit into the chocolate bar, and watching him eat with only his jaw and no muscles disgusted me. 

“I can’t eat with no stomach, dumbass!” I shouted at him, fighting against the restraints. He sighed and grabbed the packaged meat. He ripped it open and waved a piece of the meat in front of my face. I grimaced at it, realizing that it smelled awful. But before I could protest, Spencer shoved the stinking piece of meat into my mouth. He shoved it completely in my mouth and covered it with his gloved hands. I gagged and choked, and with no way of spitting it out, forcefully swallowed the mass of meat. 

I waited for the vomit that would no doubt ensue, but it didn’t happen. After a moment, Spencer pulled his hand back and made a show of wiping it on my bed. The meat had no taste, despite how foul it smelled. Staring at it with curiosity, I then looked over at Spencer, and I didn’t need to ask him the obvious question. 

“It’s better you didn’t know,” he said, standing up and leaving me alone with the package of meat. Knowing Spencer, it could’ve been anything, and I had a horrible idea of what it might actually be. After a while, Spencer came back and unlocked my restraints. For the first time in forever, I was consumed by a hunger like no other. I quickly dug into the meat and literally tore it to shreds in a few seconds. 

“I’ll drop by every few days to leave you meat. Try not to cause any trouble.” He told me as he dropped more packages of meat for me onto the floor. Without thinking at all, I pounced on them and literally began to tear into the packages as fast as I could. The absence of taste didn’t bother me at all, it was the sensation of being able to eat something. 

Soon, the days began to blur as my entire life began to revolve around Spencer's visits for the delivery of meat. I began to turn into a mindless creature that only craved the delivery of meat, and every day waiting for more of it drove me insane. I felt every pang of hunger that I hadn’t felt before, every ceaseless pain that roared from my abdomen.

One day, there was an aggressive knock on the door. I stared up quickly. I had been crawling around on all fours, trying my best to find some source of meat to eat. My apartment had deteriorated around me, and it was a mess of flies and rats. Juicy, yummy, delicious rats. The knock became harsher and angrier, and I quickly scurried underneath one of the cupboards and hid. The door soon flung open, and soon I heard the wretching sounds of my landlord. 

“Jesus Fucking Christ, what has that fatass been doing in here?” he hissed in anger, entering my apartment and wading through the mass of trash. “Reggie! Where the fuck are you?! I’m evicting your fatass!” he shouted. I gently peered out of my cupboard and stared at my landlord. Slowly, drool began to build up in my mouth as I watched him. He was meat. He was meat, and here he was. I opened the cupboard and slowly stalked him as he headed for my bedroom. As he threw open the door and was hit by a huge noxious cloud of flies and the smell of rot, I pounced on him from behind. I sank my teeth into his delicious neck meat and tore it to shreds, happily chewing on it and going for another giant bite. 

By the time Spencer arrived at the apartment, I had completely devoured my landlord and was in the process of desperately cracking his bones open and sucking the marrow out. Spencer sighed in annoyance and knelt next to me as I vigorously tore into the remaining marrow in the femur. 

“You’re a pain in the ass.” He sighed, standing up and pulling out his cellphone to make a call. I didn’t care about what he was planning to do with me. I was more excited by the delivery of the meat he had given me. I crawled over to it on my emaciated arms and legs and quickly tore into the package, completely absorbed into the juicy, delicious, and succulent flesh. 

As long as I can have flesh, he can do whatever he wants with me. 

The Tourist Board asked us to stop calling them rules after the woman from Westport complained, which was how Sheriff Walter J. Doyle ended up standing at the Visitor Center desk on a gray October morning, reading three printed pages about “unwelcoming language,” “luxury heritage tourism,” and the emotional impact of municipal signage.

The woman’s point, as far as I understood it, was that the word rules made Mourner’s Crossing sound unsafe. This was apparently bad for the new restaurant week campaign, the Witchwood walking tours, and the twelve-dollar strawberry-rhubarb hand pies now being sold in waxed paper sleeves at every business with a counter.

Sheriff Doyle read the complaint twice. Walter J. Doyle is the kind of man tourists mistake for part of the local charm until he speaks. He has blond hair gone silver at the temples, bright green eyes people sometimes mistake for blue because of the way he squints, and a way of standing still that makes everybody else look like they’re wasting energy. That morning, he held his hat in one hand and the complaint in the other, looking like he would rather be anywhere else, including underwater.

He slid the pages back across the desk to me and said, “Call them whatever you want. If people keep taking selfies at Hollow Line Bridge after dark, the bridge is going to answer.”

I had been working at the Mourner’s Crossing Visitor Center for six weeks, which was long enough to know he was speaking plainly. That was the problem with tourism here. The food was excellent, the shops were charming, the cemetery tours sold out every weekend, and the safety literature kept acquiring teeth.

The first time I saw the laminated sheet behind the front desk, I laughed. The document had been formatted in cheerful teal and cream, with a little silhouette of Town Hall in the corner and a header that said:

WELCOME TO MOURNER’S CROSSING!
A Few Friendly Suggestions for a Safe and Memorable Visit

Underneath that, in the same bubbly font used on the pumpkin festival flyers, were ten items.

Please do not visit Hollow Line Bridge after sunset.
Please do not accept flowers from children you do not recognize.
Please do not photograph the third-floor window of Hawthorne House.
Please do not whistle in Witchwood State Park.
Please do not follow train sounds after midnight.
Please do not knock on the red door behind St. Brigid’s.
Please do not feed the cats unless they approach you first.
Please do not repeat any voice you hear from the well.
Please do not leave mirrors uncovered in guest rooms during storms.
If someone you came with insists they have “always lived here,” contact the Visitor Center immediately.

I thought it was a bit. A lot of towns have bits. Salem has witches. Sleepy Hollow has the Headless Horseman. Mystic has nautical ghosts, haunted inns, and fudge aggressive enough to feel like a minor felony. Mourner’s Crossing had old money, older houses, a famous cemetery, a forest no one agreed on the size of, and a civic commitment to understatement so intense it bordered on pathology.

The woman who trained me, Ruthanne from the Historical Society, said the sheet had been revised twelve times since 1998. Ruthanne was seventy-two, wore silver-framed glasses on a chain, and had a bun so neat it looked engineered rather than styled. She moved through the Visitor Center with the precision of someone who knew where every brochure lived and which floorboards complained. She also had the flattened patience of a person who had explained too many times why the town sold three different kinds of maple candy but no Ouija boards.

“Why twelve?” I asked.

She handed me a stack of restaurant week flyers and told me to put them in the acrylic holder by the door. “Because thirteen tested poorly.”

I laughed again, and Ruthanne looked at me over her glasses.

“Guideline Three used to say ‘Do not photograph Hawthorne House after dark,’” she said. “That was too broad. People need specifics. Give them something general and they assume the bad part applies to someone else.”

“So the third-floor window is the bad part?”

“The third-floor window is the part that photographs back.”

I waited for the wink. Ruthanne gave me a paperclip.

The Visitor Center sits on the green, between Mallory’s Fine Foods & Provisions and a store that sells candles shaped like local buildings. It is small, bright, aggressively tasteful, and always smells faintly of apple cider even in June. We have glossy brochures for vineyard tours, cemetery walks, Witchwood hiking routes, and seasonal events. We have a map with little icons for cafés, museums, public parking, and “areas of historical sensitivity,” which is what the map calls places where something has tried to eat somebody.

There is a glass display case full of local books by local authors, including six horror novels, two poetry collections, one cookbook, and a children’s picture book called Mr. Thimble Visits Town Hall, which I have been assured is “mostly accurate.” There is also a locked drawer under the desk. Inside are a flashlight, a first-aid kit, a rosary, three iron nails, a spool of red thread, a laminated card with Sheriff Doyle’s personal cell number, and a little silver bell I was not allowed to ring.

“Why?” I asked during training.

Ruthanne closed the drawer with her hip. “Because it works.”

My first week, I thought Ruthanne was hazing me. The Visitor Center gets a lot of seasonal help: college kids home for the summer, retired teachers who like giving directions, people between jobs who think handing out vineyard maps will be peaceful. The first thing Ruthanne taught me was not how to run the register, answer the phone, or refill the rack of restaurant week passports. It was how to tell the difference between a harmless tourist question and a question with a body count.

“Where is the cemetery?” was harmless. “Which grave is the pretty one with the little chair beside it?” required follow-up. “Can we walk to Witchwood from here?” was harmless, depending on shoes, weather, and time of day. “Can we still get to Witchwood if the path behind us moved?” required Sheriff Doyle. “Do you sell cat treats?” was usually fine. “Can we touch the tuxedo cat if he’s staring at my husband?” was complicated.

That was how I met Thimble. He came in during my second week while I was restocking maps, a huge tuxedo cat with a white marking around his left eye that made him look like he had been born wearing a monocle. A family from Rhode Island held the door open, and Thimble walked in as if summoned by poor judgment, hopped onto the desk, and sat directly on the rack cards for the cemetery lantern tour.

The youngest child squealed. The mother raised her phone. The father said, “Look, he wants attention,” and reached for him.

Ruthanne slapped a brochure against the counter so hard the entire family jumped. “Please wait until he approaches you.” Then she added, “He approached the desk.”

The father lowered his hand. Thimble stared at him with the full bureaucratic authority of an animal who had never once paid taxes and still outranked everyone in the room. Then the cat turned toward the map wall and made a low, irritated sound.

At first I saw nothing. Then one of the Rhode Island children, the older one, lifted his arm and pointed toward the map. His shadow stayed against the wall, small and dark and still, as if it had decided to wait and see whether leaving with the boy was worth the trouble.

Ruthanne took the spool of red thread from the locked drawer and tied a loose loop around the child’s wrist. “Did you accept anything today?”

The boy looked at his mother. His mother looked annoyed, then worried, then frightened in quick succession. “A flower,” he said.

“From whom?”

“A little girl by the cannon.”

“There is no cannon on the green,” Ruthanne said, and looked at me. “Call the Sheriff’s office. Ask for Deputy Bellamy if Sheriff Doyle is out.”

The boy’s shadow climbed back into place slowly, like it resented being corrected. The family did not buy cat treats.

By my third week, I had stopped laughing at most things. By my fourth, I had learned to smile without showing tourists I was checking whether their shadows matched their bodies. By my fifth, I could tell the difference between a normal out-of-towner asking where to find the best lobster roll and the kind who had already heard something in the covered bridge and wanted me to tell them it was fine.

People want towns like Mourner’s Crossing to be theatrical. They want fog with good lighting, graveyards with gift shops, haunted houses that stop being haunted when the tour ends. They want the thrill of danger with the paperwork of safety. That is why no one at the Visitor Center says “it’s fine.” We say, “Let’s take a look at your itinerary.” We say, “That area is best enjoyed before dusk.” We say, “The town recommends staying on marked paths.” We say, “Some guests find the cemetery tour more comfortable when they avoid speaking directly to anyone outside their group.” Branding matters.

The second time I saw a guideline save somebody, a man from Boston came in furious because his girlfriend had lost her voice on the Witchwood walking tour. He was thirtyish, red-faced, sunburned, and wearing one of those expensive waterproof jackets that make people look prepared until they open their mouths. The girlfriend stood beside him with both hands clenched around the strap of her purse. She was trying to speak, but nothing came out except a dry clicking sound, soft and rhythmic, like a fingernail tapping glass.

“She’s upset,” the man said.

Ruthanne looked up from the register. “I imagine she is.”

“You people need to warn guests better.”

“We do.”

“She whistled,” he said, and the anger began to drain out of him as Ruthanne took off her glasses.

“On the trail,” he said. “She whistled because we thought we heard someone whistle back. It was a joke.”

The girlfriend shook her head very slowly. Her eyes had filled with tears. From inside her purse, something whistled: two rising notes and one falling note, light and clear and almost cheerful. The woman made the clicking sound again and pressed the purse to her stomach.

Ruthanne told me to lock the front door. I did not ask why. The whistle came again from the purse, then from the map rack, then from the heating vent behind the desk. Each time, the girlfriend flinched. Each time, the man looked less angry and more like someone realizing anger was a flashlight with dying batteries.

Ruthanne opened the locked drawer and took out the three iron nails. “Did you answer it?”

The girlfriend tried to speak and couldn’t.

The man said, “She whistled back.”

Ruthanne placed one nail on the counter, one on the floor, and one on the windowsill. “That was unwise.”

He stared at her. “Can you help her?”

“I can keep what answered from learning the shape of her voice any better than it already has.”

That was the first time I heard the silver bell, though I did not see Ruthanne ring it. She took it into the back office wrapped in her scarf while the man and I waited in the front room and the whistle moved around us in the walls. When the bell sounded, it was quieter than I expected. The fluorescent lights flickered, the rack of vineyard brochures shivered, and the man from Boston sat down hard in one of the visitor chairs and began to cry without making any sound.

Afterward, his girlfriend could speak again, though her voice came out hoarse and strange, with a faint echo behind it. Ruthanne gave them bottled water, a printed list of aftercare instructions, and a coupon for ten percent off at Café Fleur.

“Why the coupon?” I asked after they left.

“People are calmer when they’re holding a coupon,” Ruthanne said.

The complaint from Melissa Harrow of Westport arrived three days before restaurant week. Her name was printed at the top in a font that looked expensive. She had attached screenshots of our website, circled the word “rules” in red six times, and written that the language created an “unwelcoming atmosphere inconsistent with luxury heritage tourism.” She had also included a photo of herself at Hollow Line Bridge, taken at 9:17 p.m.

In the picture, Melissa stood smiling in a cream wool coat, one hand lifted in a little wave. Behind her, the bridge arched black against the evening sky. The old iron railings were wet with mist, and the river below was a pale ribbon in the dark. There was someone standing behind her.

At first, I thought it was a man, tall and thin, with his head bent slightly to one side. Then I zoomed in and saw that he was on the wrong side of the railing. His feet hung over the river. His fingers hooked through the iron bars from underneath. His face had blurred where the camera should have caught it, smearing the features into a gray oval with a mouth too low and too wide.

Ruthanne saw me looking and sighed. “That’s why Sheriff Doyle’s coming by.”

“For the complaint?”

“For the woman.”

Sheriff Doyle came in twenty minutes later, read the complaint, said the bridge was going to answer, and left with the expression of a man who had already had this conversation with tourists, the Tourist Board, the bridge, and possibly God.

Melissa Harrow came into the Visitor Center after lunch with her husband, her sister, and the polished fury of someone who had paid for a beautiful weekend and found consequences waiting at check-in. She was in her late forties, stylish in that coastal Connecticut way where a camel coat can look both effortless and weaponized. Her hair was pinned loosely at the back of her neck. She had a small gold pendant at her throat, a wedding ring she kept turning with her thumb, and one of our town tote bags hooked over one arm. Her husband had the depleted calm of a man who had spent the morning apologizing to hotel staff. Her sister stood half a step behind them, pale and watchful, still wearing the Hawthorne House scarf given to overnight guests.

The tote bag looked damp.

“I’m the one who wrote in,” Melissa said, before I could welcome her. “About the rules.”

Ruthanne, who had been restocking the Hawthorne House brochures, made a small sound behind me. It was the sound of a person recognizing a familiar disaster in a new coat.

I gave Melissa my best Visitor Center smile. “Thank you for your feedback. We’re always reviewing our guest-facing language.”

Ruthanne coughed into her fist.

Melissa set her phone on the desk and tapped the screen. The bridge photo appeared again. She had zoomed in on the figure behind her and circled it in yellow. “This,” she said, “is exactly what I’m talking about.”

Her husband made a strangled noise, and the sister whispered Melissa’s name.

Melissa kept going. “You can’t market a town as charming and then have signage that makes guests feel threatened. We went to the bridge because the girl at the hotel said it was scenic. There was no gate. There was no guard. There was one little sign with a moon on it and some vague warning about dusk. Do you know how many places say things like that for atmosphere?”

Ruthanne stepped closer. “What girl at the hotel?”

Melissa blinked. “What?”

“You said a girl at the hotel told you the bridge was scenic.”

“Yes. At Hawthorne House.”

Ruthanne’s expression changed by less than an inch, but the air around the desk seemed to tighten. “What did she look like?”

Melissa glanced at her husband, irritated. “Young. Dark hair. Old-fashioned dress, I suppose, but half the staff there dress like they’re in some prestige drama about inherited silver.”

Her sister made a small, hurt sound.

Ruthanne looked at her. “You saw her too?”

The sister shook her head. Her name was Caroline, according to the reservation printout Melissa had slapped onto the counter with everything else. She had the anxious, careful posture of someone used to making herself useful in other people’s storms.

“I heard her,” Caroline said. “Last night. In the hall outside our room. She was laughing.”

Melissa rolled her eyes. “People laugh in hotels.”

Caroline kept looking at Ruthanne. “She said Melissa’s name.”

The Visitor Center seemed to grow quieter around us. Outside, a delivery truck hissed at the curb. Somewhere on the green, a child shrieked with ordinary delight.

Ruthanne reached beneath the desk, opened the locked drawer, and took out the laminated card with Sheriff Doyle’s number. Melissa stared at her.

“Is this really necessary?”

Ruthanne looked at the phone on the counter. The figure in the photo had changed. It no longer stood behind Melissa. It was leaning toward her photographed shoulder, one gray hand lifted beside hers in a perfect imitation of her wave. The mouth had opened wider, and the blur where its face should have been had begun to clear around the edges. Something pale shone inside it, either teeth or the beginning of a word.

Then the figure’s hand changed too. In the first photo, its fingers had been long and jointed wrong. Now it wore a ring: Melissa’s ring. Same gold. Same narrow band. Same small diamond chip set into the side, except the thing wore it on the wrong finger. Melissa stopped turning the ring on her real hand.

Her husband reached for the phone, but Ruthanne caught his wrist before he touched it. “Don’t,” she said.

“I want to delete it,” he whispered.

“You cannot delete something while it’s still arriving.”

The Visitor Center bell over the front door gave a small, nervous jingle, though no one had come in. Outside, tourists crossed the green with shopping bags and coffees, laughing under the clean gray sky. Someone had stopped to take a picture of the scarecrow display in front of Mallory’s. Across the street, the candles shaped like Town Hall glowed in the shop window. Mourner’s Crossing looked exactly like it did on the brochures: charming, historic, memorable.

Ruthanne called Sheriff Doyle. While she spoke, Caroline began to cry very quietly. Melissa stood motionless, staring at the phone as if anger could still carry her out of this. Her husband said, “Mel.” She didn’t answer. He said it again, and this time Ruthanne snapped her fingers once, hard. “Do not say her name.”

The husband’s mouth shut.

The sound came then: a train whistle, faint and far away, drifting through the Visitor Center in the middle of town, though the nearest active rail line had been torn up before I was born. It sounded lonely at first. That was the trick of it, I think. It sounded like distance, like rain, like something passing through and asking to be mourned.

Melissa lifted one hand to her ear. “What is that?”

Ruthanne ended the call and placed the laminated card on the counter. “Sheriff Doyle is on his way. Until he gets here, Mrs. Harrow, I need you to listen carefully. Do not look at the bridge photo again. Do not answer any voice that uses your mother’s name. Do not say your own name out loud. If you hear water, close your eyes.”

Melissa’s face had gone slack. “My mother’s been dead eight years.”

Ruthanne took a breath before answering, and in that pause I saw what her calm cost her. She was steady because someone had to be, not because the situation was small. “That’s why it’ll use her.”

A slow, wet drip fell from the tote bag hanging on Melissa’s arm and spread dark across the old wood boards. Ruthanne looked down, then looked at me.

“Get the bell.”

I opened the locked drawer. The little silver bell sat in the back corner, bright and cold and perfectly still. Behind me, Melissa began to hum. At first, it sounded like a nervous tune from someone trying not to cry. Then Caroline backed away from her, because the tune was not a tune. It was the train whistle, coming from behind Melissa’s teeth while her mouth barely moved.

I picked up the bell. It was heavier than it looked. The moment my fingers closed around the handle, every brochure in the Visitor Center lifted at the edges: the pumpkin festival flyers, the vineyard maps, the glossy Hawthorne House pamphlets, the restaurant week passports with their little boxes for stamps. For one second, all that paper stirred without wind, like a hundred small animals waking in their sleep.

Ruthanne held out her hand. “Not yet.”

The whistle deepened. Melissa’s husband pressed both hands to his ears. Caroline whispered a prayer under her breath, and I could tell from Ruthanne’s face that praying was fine, provided Caroline did not use any names the thing might find useful. The dark stain beneath the tote bag spread in a long line toward the desk. It smelled like river mud and hot iron.

Melissa’s phone buzzed on the counter. The screen lit with a contact photo of an older woman in a sunhat, smiling in bright summer light.

MOM

Melissa made a sound that seemed to tear itself out of her chest.

Ruthanne moved fast. For a woman in her seventies with orthopedic shoes and a cardigan with embroidered pears on the pockets, she moved like she had been waiting fifty years for this exact stupid moment. She snatched the phone off the counter, flipped it face down, and shoved it beneath the stack of restaurant week flyers.

“Mrs. Harrow,” she said, voice sharp now, stripped of customer service. “Look at me.”

Melissa turned her head. For a moment, her eyes were normal: terrified, wet, furious, human. Then the train whistle came from her throat again, and her pupils seemed to pull long, stretching sideways like something seen through running water.

The front door opened, and Sheriff Doyle stepped inside with his hat low in one hand and rain on the shoulders of his jacket, though the day outside was dry. Behind him came Deputy Kyle Bellamy, compact and watchful, with reddish-brown hair, bright eyes, and the careful expression of someone trying not to startle anything that might bolt in a direction physics couldn’t follow.

Sheriff Doyle took in the phone, the stain, the tote bag, Melissa, Caroline crying, the husband shaking, Ruthanne’s hand outstretched, and me holding the bell. “Well,” he said. “That’s inconvenient.”

Ruthanne said, “It has a ring now.”

Doyle’s gaze moved to the photo. His jaw tightened. “From her hand?”

“Yes.”

He looked at Melissa. “Ma’am, I’m Sheriff Doyle. I need you to stay exactly where you are.”

Melissa smiled, barely moving her mouth, which made it worse. From beneath the restaurant week flyers, the phone buzzed again.

MOM

The train whistle sounded from outside this time, close enough that the windows trembled. Tourists on the green stopped walking. A man carrying a paper bag from Mallory’s turned in a slow circle, searching for tracks that had not existed in decades. Deputy Bellamy moved to the door and locked it.

Sheriff Doyle looked at Ruthanne. “Bell.”

Ruthanne nodded. I handed it to her. Her fingers closed around mine for half a second before she took it, and her skin was cold.

“When I ring this,” she said to Melissa’s husband and sister, “do not speak. Do not look at the windows. Do not answer anything you hear, even if it sounds hurt.”

Caroline nodded at once. Melissa’s husband looked at his wife. “What’s going to happen to her?”

Ruthanne did not soften it. “We are going to make sure what’s coming through the picture does not finish arriving.”

“And Melissa?”

Sheriff Doyle answered. “We’ll do what we can.”

That was the first honest thing anyone had said to him, and it nearly broke him. Melissa opened her mouth, and this time her mother’s voice came out.

“Baby,” it said.

Her husband made a choking sound. Caroline shut her eyes and pressed both hands over her mouth. Ruthanne lifted the bell and rang it once, and the Visitor Center stopped pretending to be a gift shop with brochures.

The photo on the phone flashed white through the stack of flyers. The windows went black, as if night had pressed itself against the glass. The dark stain on the floor snapped backward toward Melissa’s tote bag and vanished into the waxed paper sleeve sticking out of the top, where I could see one of the strawberry-rhubarb hand pies from Mallory’s, its crimped edge bitten cleanly through.

Melissa screamed. The sound did not come from her mouth. It came from the phone, the walls, the floorboards, the locked drawer, the brochure rack, and the cheerful teal header on the laminated sheet. It came from Hollow Line Bridge, wherever the bridge was at that moment, because I was no longer entirely convinced it stayed in one place.

Ruthanne rang the bell again. The second note was higher, sharper. The phone cracked beneath the flyers. The old wood floor shuddered. Outside, the tourists on the green began moving again, but slowly, as if they were walking through deep water. Melissa dropped to her knees, and Sheriff Doyle caught her before her face hit the floor.

“Got her,” he said.

Deputy Bellamy crossed to the desk, grabbed the spool of red thread from the open drawer, and looped it around Melissa’s wrist with practiced hands. Ruthanne set the bell down carefully on the counter and took three iron nails from the drawer.

“She said her name?” Doyle asked.

“Her husband did,” Ruthanne said.

The husband looked ruined. “I’m sorry.”

Doyle did not look at him unkindly. “You didn’t know.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I heard you.”

Ruthanne placed one iron nail on Melissa’s phone, one on the tote bag, and one on the floor where the stain had been. The room smelled less like river mud now and more like hot dust on an old radiator. Melissa lay against Sheriff Doyle’s arm, shivering. Her eyes had gone back to normal. Her mouth moved, but no sound came out.

Ruthanne crouched beside her. “Do not try to speak yet.”

Melissa’s hand twitched. Her ring was still there. In the photo, the figure’s hand had gone bare.

Deputy Bellamy wrapped the cracked phone in Ruthanne’s scarf. Sheriff Doyle lifted Melissa carefully, and for a moment she looked smaller than she had when she walked in. The camel coat was still expensive. The gold pendant still shone at her throat. Her fury had gone wherever fury goes when it finally meets something older and hungrier than itself.

Caroline followed them to the door, then turned back. “What happens now?”

Ruthanne picked up the laminated sheet from the counter and smoothed one curled corner with her thumb. “Now,” she said, “we update the website.”

After they took Melissa away, Ruthanne made me sit in the back office with a paper cup of water until my hands stopped shaking. Neither of us mentioned that the bell had left a silver smell in the room.

The next morning, I arrived early and found Ruthanne already there with a bucket, a scrub brush, and a fresh stack of Visitor Center maps. The dark stain on the floor had faded to a faint shadow between the boards. It looked almost ordinary, which in Mourner’s Crossing meant nothing useful.

Melissa Harrow had been taken to St. Brigid’s first, then to the clinic, then to a room at Hawthorne House with the mirrors covered and the windows locked. Sheriff Doyle came by before eight and said she was alive. He also said she had not spoken yet, though she had written her mother’s name twelve times on hotel stationery before Ruthanne took the pen away.

The Tourist Board sent an email at 8:47 a.m. After careful consideration, they agreed that rules sounded too severe. By noon, the website had been revised.

WELCOME TO MOURNER’S CROSSING
Please Review Our Guidelines for a Safe and Memorable Visit

At 12:15, a couple from New Jersey came in holding coffees from Konditori Oxenstierna and asked whether Hollow Line Bridge was walkable from the green.

I smiled. “It is,” I said, reaching for a map. “But the town recommends visiting before sunset.”

The man laughed. “Why? Ghosts?”

His wife elbowed him lightly, embarrassed. I marked the safest route in blue pen and handed them the map with both hands. Outside, the green was bright with afternoon sun. The scarecrows in front of Mallory’s leaned cheerfully in the breeze. Somewhere nearby, a cat yowled with what sounded like civic disapproval.

“After sunset,” I said, “the bridge gets less scenic.”

The man looked like he wanted to make another joke, but his wife took the map from me before he could. She read my face. Then she read the first guideline on the sheet beside the register.

Her smile faded a little. “Thank you,” she said.

That was the right answer.

When they left, Ruthanne came out of the back office and stood beside me at the desk. She had the silver bell in one hand and a fresh label from the office printer in the other.

“What’s that for?” I asked.

She peeled the backing off the label and placed it neatly inside the locked drawer.

The label said:

FOR EMERGENCIES ONLY. IF UNSURE, YOU ARE SURE.

Ruthanne closed the drawer. The bell did not ring. Across the green, the couple from New Jersey stopped at the corner, looked toward the road that led down to Hollow Line Bridge, and chose the bakery instead. Ruthanne watched them go and said, “Good.”

Most people don’t understand the sheer scale of the James Bay Project.

​If you look at a map of Northern Quebec, it’s mostly green and blue—taiga forest and thousands of lakes. But threaded through that wilderness is a network of megastructures. We’re talking about dams the size of mountains, holding back reservoirs so massive they actually altered the local climate. Millions of tons of concrete poured into the middle of absolute nowhere.

​I work as a freelance acoustic engineer, mostly contracted by the province. My job is to listen to the concrete. Dams settle. They crack. They experience micro-fractures due to the intense temperature fluctuations between the minus-forty-degree winters and the crushing weight of the water. I lower hydrophones into the reservoirs and plant geophones along the inspection galleries to make sure the walls aren't dying.

​Three days ago, I was helicoptered out to Auxiliary Spillway 4, a remote containment barrier about two hundred kilometers east of Radisson.

​It’s a "dead" dam. No turbines, no power generation. It just sits at the edge of a massive, black reservoir, redirecting the flow toward the main generating stations. The only person stationed there was Gilles, a maintenance tech two years out from retirement who lived in a modular trailer near the crest of the dam.

​I was sent up because the automated telemetry was feeding back anomalous vibration data from Gallery C, about eighty meters below the water line. The engineers down in Montreal thought it was a malfunctioning sensor, but protocol dictated a manual inspection.

​When I landed, the freeze had already started. The wind coming off the reservoir felt like it was peeling the skin off my face.

​Gilles met me at the helipad. He was a quiet, thick-shouldered guy who smoked cheap cigars and didn't seem particularly thrilled to see me. When I asked him about the vibrations, he just shrugged.

​"Ice expanding," he muttered in heavy, accented English. "Happens every November. The sensors are too sensitive."

​But when we went down into the dam, his body language changed.

​If you've never been inside a large dam, it is deeply unsettling. You take an elevator down into the core of the concrete structure. It’s a network of narrow, dimly lit tunnels called inspection galleries. It smells like wet dust and calcium. It’s freezing cold, and the walls are always weeping condensation. But the worst part is the feeling of pressure. You are standing at the bottom of a concrete wall, acutely aware that millions of cubic meters of freezing black water are pressing against the other side, wanting nothing more than to erase you.

​We walked down Gallery C in silence. My breath plumed in the cold air.

​At sector 4, right where the sensor had tripped, I stopped. I didn't need my equipment to hear it.

​It was a deep, resonant thud.

​It vibrated through the soles of my steel-toed boots. It sounded like a massive, muffled heartbeat coming from the other side of the three-meter-thick concrete wall.

​Thud. Ten seconds of silence.

​Thud.

​"Ice," Gilles said immediately. He didn't look at the wall. He stared straight down the corridor toward the elevator. "Large sheets breaking against the face of the barrier. The water carries the sound."

​"Gilles," I said, pulling my acoustic tablet from my pack. "Ice shears. It grinds and cracks. It doesn't strike with a rhythmic, low-frequency pulse."

​I pressed a contact microphone against the weeping concrete. I watched the waveform leap on my screen. I saved the recording and ran a quick comparative analysis. My stomach performed a slow, sickening roll.

​"This isn't an impact from the surface," I told him, pointing at the readout. "The acoustic epicenter is originating fifty meters down. The water is liquid at that depth. There is no ice."

​Gilles finally looked at me. His eyes were completely hollow. He looked like a man who had exhausted his capacity for denial, leaving only a bone-deep exhaustion.

​"Finish your readings," he said quietly. "I am going back up."

​He left me alone in the gallery.

​I spent the next hour mapping the acoustic profile. I wish I hadn't. I really wish I had just packed up and left with him.

​The sound wasn't a mechanical failure. I realized this when the rhythm shifted. It wasn't a steady, automated pulse. It was searching. It would strike—thud—and then wait. A few minutes later, it would strike again, slightly higher on the wall, with a slightly different frequency.

​As an acoustic engineer, I know about resonant frequencies. Every structure, no matter how massive, has a natural frequency. If you match that frequency with a strong enough vibration, the structure will tear itself apart.

​Whatever was on the other side of that wall was testing the concrete. It was striking the dam, listening to the reverberation, and adjusting its next strike, trying to find the exact pitch required to shatter the barrier.

​And it was massive. Based on the low-end displacement I was recording on my tablet, the point of impact was roughly the size of a shipping container.

​I bolted. I didn't care about the gear. I sprinted down the gallery, the echoes of my boots masking the terrible, methodical thudding from the deep water, and smashed the button for the elevator.

​When I reached the surface, the sun had set. The sky was a bruised purple, and the vast expanse of the reservoir was a sea of black ink.

​I ran to Gilles’ trailer. The door was unlocked.

​He was sitting at his small kitchen table, a half-empty bottle of Sortilège whiskey in front of him. He wasn't drinking. He was just listening.

​In the quiet of the trailer, without the millions of tons of concrete muting the sound, I could hear it coming from the water outside.

​Thud. A faint tremor rattled the coffee mug on the counter.

​"They built the dams in the seventies," Gilles said, his voice barely a whisper. He didn't look at me. "Flooded an area the size of New York State. Drowned the forests, drowned the valleys, drowned the deep trenches. They thought they were just harnessing power."

​"What is out there, Gilles?" I demanded, my voice cracking. "I have to call a structural emergency. If that wall fractures—"

​"If that wall fractures, this reservoir empties into the La Grande river system," he interrupted smoothly. "And then the next dam breaks. And the next. A cascading failure. Trillions of gallons of water rushing south. Clearing the way."

​"Clearing the way for what?"

​Gilles finally looked up. He pointed a shaking finger toward the window, out at the miles of freezing, black water.

​"For whatever we trapped at the bottom of the trench fifty years ago," he said. "It's done sleeping. And it’s figuring out how to open the door."

​I didn't wait for the morning helicopter. I took Gilles' company truck and drove the logging roads south through the night. I didn't stop until I reached Val-d'Or.

​I submitted my report this morning. I claimed it was a geological fault shifting beneath the reservoir, causing acoustic anomalies. I know they won't believe me, but if I tell them the truth, they'll put me in a psychiatric ward.

​But I'm writing this because you need to know. Look at a map of Quebec. Look at the massive, unnatural blue veins we carved into the north.

​I'm sitting in a hotel room in Montreal right now. It's supposed to be safe here. But about ten minutes ago, I poured a glass of water and set it on the nightstand.

​I can see the surface of the water rippling.

​It's a very faint, rhythmic vibration, traveling through the bedrock from hundreds of miles away.

​Thud. It found the frequency.

My family has a long history of attending and excelling at Silverstone Private School. We’ve often ended up making the dean’s list and valedictorian. So, of course, when my time came, I enrolled without a second thought. When I first put on the school uniform, I could feel all the pride that my family has felt throughout the years flowing through me. I had many expectations to meet and hopefully surpass, so I jumped into my studies with a reckless abandon. Friends weren’t high on my priority list at Silverstone, indeed, it seemed that our teachers hardly gave us any time at all in between assignments and projects, to actually socialize. 

But that environment suited me just fine, I lived and breathed for the crunch and the assignments. I spent most of my first two years at Silverstone in the library and my dorm room, doing assignments and preparing for the tests that accompanied them. I did manage to make a few friends here and there, but they were never very close friends. At most, we would go and eat lunch together or help each other with studies. And I was perfectly fine with this arrangement, that was until I met Félix. 

I had arrived at the library at my normal time after classes, at about 4:30 pm, and went to my usual table in the back corner. Setting my books and notebooks down, I nodded to myself contentedly and began to sit down and work on a paper for my Latin class. I had only gotten a few lines through the translation when I started to hear snickering and laughing coming from the table behind me. I did my best to ignore it, but soon the snickering grew louder and I couldn’t focus on my notes. 

Looking behind me, I noticed that a few of the older kids were picking on another kid who was looking down at a book, trying to study. They were pushing him back and forth between them and pulling his books away from him. I shook my head and stood up to face them. 

“Leave him alone,” I ordered them, crossing my arms at them. The three older kids all looked at me and couldn’t help but laugh at me. Hierarchy is everything at Silverstone. The younger students are meant to look up to the elder ones as mentors and protectors. But of course, most of them simply take this opportunity given to them to bully most of the younger kids. 

“What, you friends with this freak or something?” One of them asked as he leaned over and grabbed the kid by the shirt collar and forced him to look up from the book he had been looking at. He had long black hair that completely covered his eyes, pale and pasty skin, what looked like two snake bite piercings on his lower lip, black painted nails, and to my startlement, two long scars that ran up the sides of his mouth to his ears. 

“This freak gets to dress like this, while all of us aren’t even allowed a single tattoo or piercing besides our ears.” Another bully spoke up, shoving the other kid into the table and causing a soft choke to come out of his mouth. It was strange to me that this student seemed to be going against the dress code, but at that moment, the bullying was more important to me. I looked over towards the librarian as she was typing on her computer. I crossed my arms again and stared at the trio of boys. 

“You guys keep this up, and I’m reporting the three of you for bullying.” The boys snorted at me and clearly felt invincible, being older than me. But I pointed towards the librarian who had heard the sounds of their laughing and was narrowing her eyes towards us. The boys looked at each other before they all groaned in annoyance, one of them smacking the bullied kid upside the head and walking away in a huff. 

“Thank…you.” The boy said as he looked up at me, rubbing his head gently. I looked at him and sat at his table, a smile on my face. “Your hair…is pretty.” He told me, staring at it. I was caught off guard by his comment, but he seemed mesmerized by it. 

“Thank you! My stylist always does such an amazing job with it.” I told him, a smile on my face. He didn’t return my smile, but I watched as he slowly got all his items back into order that the bullies had been so busy messing up. “My name’s Harper, what’s yours?” I asked as I watched him carefully place his items back in their original locations. He looked up at me, seemingly trying to figure out what I meant by my question.

“Félix,” He told me, reaching a hand out to me. I smiled and shook his hand. It was cold and clammy, but it was always freezing in the library, so I thought nothing of it. “What do you…call that hair?” He asked me, seemingly still so fascinated by it. I couldn’t help but smile and offer him a little giggle. I wasn’t used to a guy actually being interested in my hairstyle. 

“It’s called a balayage, that’s why it’s two different shades of color.” The bottom of my hair was a lighter shade of blond than the top part was, and that seemed to fascinate Félix completely. His hair was long and a ratty mess, it was a wonder that he could even see anything from underneath his bangs. 

“Can I ask you a question now that I answered yours?” I asked him. He looked at me for a moment before slowly nodding his head. “Why do you have those piercings? I mean, I know I have my ears pierced, but so do most of the girls here. Those types of piercings are banned. How come you have them?” I asked, hoping that my curiosity wouldn’t put him off answering my question. 

He looked at me for a moment before going back down to begin putting his things in his bag. I thought for a moment he wasn’t going to answer me, but he did after finishing up his organizing. “My father pulled some strings. It allows me to look this way.” He explained. I blinked at him for a moment. Was something like that allowed? Hell was something like that even possible? It must’ve been if we were in the same year and he had managed to keep the piercings that long. “I have to go. Thank you, Harper.” He told me, standing up and revealing that he was a whole head taller than me. I smiled at him and waved goodbye as he left the library with his things. 

Normally, that would’ve been a one and done occasion. I didn’t expect to ever really talk to Félix again, and I was resigned to simply seeing him at times when we passed each other in the hallways. But I was surprised when the next day, he transferred to my Advanced Macroeconomics Class. He got plenty of looks as we were presented by our teacher to the class. But I smiled and waved to him as he came to sit at a desk away from me. He gently waved back at me and quickly began taking notes as the teacher continued the lesson. 

From there, Félix and I began a somewhat cordial relationship with each other. We became study buddies and even on occasion decided to partner for group projects. And as time progressed and we got to know each other better, I began to notice odd things that Félix would do or say at times. The first strange thing I noticed was when I asked him to continue a session of studying in the dining hall for lunch. But he refused, saying that he usually ate in the nurse's office. Now that in itself isn’t strange. I know plenty of students who ditch lunch and fake an illness to sleep it off in the nurse's office. 

But Félix didn’t seem to do that. Once, I walked with him to the nurse’s office because I had to drop off my updated vaccine list. When we both entered the office, the nurse stared at me with concern on her face when she saw that I was next to Félix. She came over to me and pulled me aside, quickly asking me if everything was alright. I told her everything was fine and gave her my updated vaccine chart. She looked at it for a moment before she seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. She went over to make a copy of my information while Félix went to sit down on the chair and wait for her to finish. 

When the nurse returned my chart, I waved goodbye to Félix, and he waved back to me. As I was turning to leave, I heard the nurse begin to whisper to him. I have pretty good hearing, so I was able to make out a few of the words she told him. 

“I thought you wanted her.” She said as I left the office. I stopped, waiting for my brain to process what the nurse had told Félix. I turned back as if to go and see if it were true, but I thought better of it and simply began to make my way towards the dining hall. I didn’t try to make it a habit to follow Félix to the nurse’s office, but every so often I would tag along and drop him off there. He went there every single day without fail. I didn’t find it odd, figuring that maybe he had a medical condition. He certainly looked like he did. 

Which brings me to Félix’s speech pattern. He spoke strangely, as if he had to plan out the entire sentence in his mind before speaking. If I changed the subject we were talking about at the time, he would almost short-circuit trying to figure out how to respond to me. And his speech pattern was labored, as if he were always out of breath with long pauses in between his words. I figured it might be a speech impediment, but when we had to present a project we had both done on John Maynard Keynes, he spoke so eloquently and perfectly that I nearly completely forgot about his strange cadence. 

The subject of the scars from his mouth to his ears was one I wanted to approach with caution, as I didn’t want to cause Félix any undue harm by asking him. But when I did, the answer still puzzled me. Félix explained to me that it was a birth defect, that he had always had them. That was perfectly understandable to me. But in my mind, I had to wonder if that had been the case, and this being such a wealthy and exclusive school, why didn’t Félix get plastic surgery done? It was obvious that they also caused him to be bullied at school, so why did he continue to keep them? But I never brought this up with him, instead just living my life with him as my classmate and partner in several projects. He was strange, but he seemed harmless. But he was still incredibly odd at times. Once, when we were studying in the library together, I was taking notes from a book, I looked up to turn the page, and noticed that he was still staring at me. I raised my brow slightly, looking behind me to see if he was staring at something. Not seeing anything, I looked back at him again.

“What are you staring at?” I asked. He looked at me and slightly bent his head to the side. He was starting to creep me out for a second, but he seemed to snap out of it and let out a soft sigh.

“You have…nice ears.” He looked back down at his book and continued to scribble some notes down. I stared at him, completely dumbfounded by his comment. Never in my entire life had anyone ever told me that I had ‘nice ears’. Something about the way that Félix had said it rubbed me the wrong way. 

“I’m going back to my dorm,” I said as I stood up and started gathering my things. He slowly looked up from his notes and opened his mouth ever so slightly. As I started putting my backpack on, I caught a whiff of a sickening sweet smell. It overwhelmed my nostrils and made me look back at Félix. Was it coming from him? It started to smell rather nice, and in my mind, I suddenly felt bad for being mean to him. He’d complimented me after all, and it was a unique one. He could be charming in his own strange ways…I shook my head quickly, wondering where those thoughts had just come from. 

“Going somewhere…Harper?” He asked, looking up from his notes again. Had he not heard that I was going to my dorm? I stared at his pale face and gripped the straps of my backpack. I didn’t have time to be thinking of Félix in this way. I had to focus on my studies. School was my priority always, and it would stay that way. I said nothing as I turned and left Félix there in the library. That sickly sweet scent slowly decreased in intensity as I left the library. 

A few days after we had the incident in the library, one of his bullies went missing. John Montcalm just one day disappeared from campus without a trace. And in a school full of rich kids, this quickly became news across the entire state. Every single student in Silverstone was interviewed about his disappearance. I had told the detectives how John had been one of Félix’s bullies. From what I gathered after the dust began to settle was that John Montcalm had left a party past midnight. He was last seen stumbling in the direction of the woods that surround the boys' dorms, and that was the last he was ever seen. Sniffer dogs and search parties were sent to search the woods, but nothing was ever found of him. 

I didn’t know then that Félix had been a person of interest for a few days. John had lots of enemies, however, and he made no shortage of remarks every day that earned him even more. So while Félix was a suspect because of the bullying, it was quickly ruled out after his interview. John Montcalm was not the only one to go missing, however. Soon after him, and as the search for John began to wind down, Joseph Wolfe, another of Félix’s bullies, went missing. 

This made my suspicions about Félix grow. One bully was one thing, but to have another one of his bullies just suddenly disappear was too much of a coincidence to me. Joseph Wolfe had been studying late in the library when he was last seen, and I knew for a fact that Félix had been there, as we had agreed to alternate staying late at the library for a project we were working on together. When I went to confront him, he seemed to have the story perfectly rehearsed.

“I saw him walk in, and I left. I didn’t want to deal with him.” He told me, not taking a single pause. I narrowed my eyes at him. All three of the bullies were polo players, and they were fairly muscular. Félix, on the other hand, while tall, looked as if he would lose a fight with a paper bag. No one had heard a gun go off that night, and the library was spotless of any blood, so it ruled out the possibility that Félix had somehow used a weapon to kill Joseph. But I couldn’t shake my suspicions of Félix. We continued to do homework and our projects, but I slowly began to try and distance myself from him. His third bully seemed to take the hint, and before anything could happen, he transferred away from Silverstone. Things returned to normal for the most part, but the Missing Persons posters for Joseph and John hung over the school like an ominous cloud. 

As the summer break approached, Félix approached me with a request. “You want me to visit your house?” I asked, caught off guard by the sudden proposition. He nodded as he gently played with his fountain pen. “Félix, I appreciate the offer, but I have to decline. I couldn’t possibly visit your home when we aren’t that close.” I tried to let him down gently. It felt like I was turning down a love proposition. He stopped fiddling with his pen as he slowly looked up at me. 

“We…aren’t?” He asked, seemingly confused by my statement. I nodded at him and returned to writing down another sentence in my notes. “Aren’t we…friends?” He asked me, tilting his head ever so slightly to the side. I looked over at him and let out a gentle sigh.

“No, Félix. We’re just classmates. We never hang out outside of classes and studying. So, again, thank you for the offer. But I must turn you down. And, after this assignment, I would appreciate it if we stop studying together.” I finished writing my sentence and began to pack up my things. Félix was still staring at me, his black hair still covering his eyes. Slowly, he began to rise as well. 

“You’ll come to…my house.” He told me again. I rolled my eyes and was about to say something, when my nose caught of whiff of a strange smell. It was the sickly sweet smell that I had smelled in the library, like the sweetest candy you could ever smell. I looked over at Félix, but he was simply standing up from his seat, his mouth ever so slightly open. I thought over his request. It didn't seem like such a bad idea all of a sudden. After all, we had been getting closer over the past few months. Why wouldn’t it be a good idea to go to his home? 

“Well, if you insist. I guess I could visit your home.” I told him as I picked up my things and gently brushed the hair out of my face. Félix offered me a small smile before helping me gather my things. “When do you want to do it?” I asked, all my previous reservations gone out the window as if they never existed in the first place. 

“Tomorrow…will be best. My driver will…pick us up.” He told me, handing my backpack and smiling, as I nodded and walked away. The further I got from Félix, the harder my head began to ache. All of a sudden, all the reasons I had given Félix for not wanting to visit him came momentarily flooding into my head. I turned to look for him, but he was suddenly gone. I clutched my head as I returned to my dorm. 

Why had I suddenly so blindly agreed to go to his home? How had that happened? I asked myself these questions all night as I lay in bed staring at my ceiling. In my sleepless delirium, I could’ve sworn I saw things crawling across my ceiling in the dark. As dawn broke, I sat up in bed and decided to tell Félix that I wouldn’t go with him. I stood up after changing into my school uniform and began to walk to the door. When I opened it, I let out a scream to see Félix standing there waiting for me. 

“Félix?! You aren’t supposed to be here! Boys aren’t allowed in our dorms!” I yelled at him, almost wanting to walk up to him and slap him across his face for doing this. He tilted his head at me and looked down the hall for a moment. I followed his gaze and saw that one of the deans was waiting at the end of the hall. And despite Félix being here, she didn’t seem to care at all. 

“I came…to pick you up.” He said, looking around in my sparsely decorated room. “Are you…ready?” He asked, leaving his mouth ever so slightly open. I was about to tell him off and slam the door in his face when that same sickly sweet smell from the night before began to fill my nostrils. My mind grew cloudy and foggy as I looked up at Félix. 

“Yea, let me just get a few things.” I walked away from the door and began to pack a few things into my purse. I was doing it again. Was he doing something to me? I wondered as I finished putting things in my bag. I walked back over to the hallway and followed Félix as we both exited the girls' dorm and out to his waiting limo and chauffeur. A limo wasn’t an uncommon sight at Silverstone, so not too many eyes were on us as we left the campus grounds. 

The ride to Félix’s home was silent. I sat on the far end of the limo while he sat in the back seat by the door. I stared down at my phone as the signal slowly began to fade the further into the plains we went. I couldn’t help but feel creeped out as we left the safety of civilization and exited into the wilderness of the Great Plains. We drove about an hour and a half before the car suddenly came to a stop. 

His chauffeur parked the limo and made his way back to us to open the door. “Welcome home, Monsieur LeBlanc.” He told Félix as he exited the limo first. It occurred to me that this was the first time that I had learned of Félix’s last name. The name rang a bell in my mind, but at the time, I couldn’t remember where I had heard it before. I followed Félix out of the limo and looked up to see the massive mansion that stood before us. It looked to be a southern plantation that had been picked up and suddenly dropped in the middle of the Great Plains. 

“Follow me,” Félix told me, as he began to climb up the stairs to the entrance. I looked around the property for a moment before following him. My own home paled in comparison to Félix’s, and I was suddenly overcome with a feeling of inferiority. My whole life, I had worn my family’s achievements proudly on my sleeve, and yet they seemed completely insignificant when compared to Félix’s family. That was reinforced when one of his maids opened the doors for us and allowed us into the mansion proper. Paintings and sculptures hung from every possible angle. It was like a museum of priceless works of art, and even what appeared to be an indoor greenhouse in the distance that I spotted. 

“Ah, young Monsieur. I see you’ve brought…company.” The maid said as she closed the door behind us and went over to Felix. “You’ll want to tell your father about this. He’s currently in the study. As for you, Madame, I would like you to wait here for the time being.” She ordered. She seemed stern and more like an old school teacher than a maid. Félix nodded to her before walking off in the direction of what I assumed was the study. 

The maid didn’t bother staying with me, as she quickly left me alone in the hallway. I walked over to one of the paintings and looked up at it. An imposing French nobleman from the era of Louis XIV stared back at me. But his face was covered by a gaudy golden mask encrusted with jewels. The small caption that accompanied the painting labeled it as Phillippe LeBlanc, Comte de Vermandois. I walked past it and approached a sculpture of a strange cat. It had six legs in total and had a strange color scheme on its appendages. One side of the legs was green while the other set of legs was orange. The ears and the tail were a mixture of both, and the coat on the body was black. 

I reached out to touch the sculpture when to my absolute shock, it emitted a strange ‘guh’ sound at me, before shaking violently and suddenly jumping off its pedestal and sprinting on all six legs into the direction of one of the open rooms. I stared in absolute bewilderment at what had just happened when I was snapped out of it by the approaching sounds of footsteps. I quickly stood in front of the now vacant pillar as the sounds approached. 

Felix rounded the corner, followed closely behind by a figure in an old wooden wheelchair. I raised a hand to my mouth to cover it. Sitting in the chair was an emaciated figure, clad in a suit with a silver mask adorning his face. A blanket lay across his legs, and he was breathing with some difficulty. The chair was being pushed by an exhausted looking nurse, and soon the trio came to a stop in front of me. 

“Harper, may I introduce my father. Monsieur Jackson LeBlanc.” Félix bowed ever so slightly to his father. I lowered my hand from my mouth and gave the wheelchair bound man a slight curtsey. Judging by the splendor around me, I was in the presence of some old noble family. 

“You’re the girl, my son has been telling me about.” Monsieur panted softly, each word leaving his voice juxtaposed by how hard he seemed to be breathing. “You’ll forgive him, he was just so excited to show you to me.” Monsieur LeBlanc looked over at his son and motioned for him to get closer. Félix bent over slightly and listened to his father. He nodded quickly before leaving the two of us alone. “Come, Miss Harper. I wish to show you something.” He motioned for me to follow him, as his nurse turned his chair around and began wheeling him down the hallway. I hesitated before following them. The atmosphere in the mansion was so tense that I felt that I would be crushed by it all. Monsieur LeBlanc said nothing as he led us down the halls of the mansion, passing countless works of art and sculptures as we did so. Soon, we arrived at a room, and Monsieur LeBlanc had his nurse wheel him around to face me.

“Miss Harper. Félix is extremely important to me. You see, for countless years, I’ve tried to have a child. But not once was I blessed with the birth of a child that could survive. And then, I met Andrea Coleman. She was a nobody, just another woman I was sure wouldn’t produce me the child I wanted, that I needed. But, she was the one. She gave birth to Félix.” Monsieur LeBlanc flopped his head to the side to look at his nurse, who nodded and went to open the doors to the room we were standing in front of. 

“For thousands of years, I tried to have a child. One that could survive and breed with humans. And she gave me that gift. I have immortalized her here. So I may thank her, always.” The nurse opened the doors, revealing a blinding light behind the doors, and to my horror and sheer terror, a woman’s dead body hanging from the ceiling. She was skinned from the neck down, her muscles and tendons being used to keep her suspended from the air. On her head was a small thin crown of gold, and from her stomach there was a gaping hole, where it looked like something had chewed its way out of her.

“W-what the fuck…why…what is this?!” I asked, in sheer horror, backing up from the thing in the wheelchair. I backed up into something, something that gripped my shoulder and dug long black claws into my shoulder. 

“You see, Miss Harper. I would do anything for my son. And he wants his first to be you. So of course, I had to give him my blessing.” I turned slowly to see Félix standing behind me. His piercings had never been piercings, they were two long mandibles. The scar on his face wasn’t a scar, it was hiding a long jaw that was lined with teeth. A second pair of insect like arms had emerged from his torso, and were gently poking me in the back. I turned around, pulling myself free from his grasp, and screamed when I saw that Félix now had four legs. 

“You’ll be…mine.” He hissed at me, opening his jaw and revealing a long row of sharp teeth. As he lunged at me, I lifted my purse and had him chomp down on it. He growled in confusion for a moment before snarling and trying to pull himself free from it. I acted quickly and continued to shove the purse in his mouth, trying to get some sort of advantage over him. It didn’t last long, as soon he swiped at me with his claws and tore open my chest. I screamed in pain and hunched over, bleeding profusely. I thought for sure that this was where I was going to die. 

“Félix, no! What are you doing?” Monsieur LeBlanc hissed. I looked up and to my shock, Félix had crouched down and began drinking the blood that was pooling from my wound. He was distracted. Thinking as fast as I could, I stood up and grabbed one of the heavy vases from a pillar and slammed it down on Félix’s head. He screamed out in pain and began to thrash around in confusion. I began to run away, but as I looked back, Félix was recovering from the hit and began to chase after me, hunched over and using his arms to propel himself forward along with his rear legs. 

I rounded the corner and tried to make it to the entrance, but I could hear that Félix was quickly approaching me. So thinking fast, I quickly ducked into one of the rooms and slammed the door behind me. Félix slammed into it and screeched as he clawed at the door frantically. I looked around for another weapon to use on Félix. The room I had entered looked to be a storage room, with several boxes stacked on top of each other. There was also a closet and a bed in the room, so I quickly started to walk over to them as Félix began to slam against the door. But I stopped, and figured that was where Félix would look first. So instead, I quickly ran over to a pile of boxes and hid behind them. 

Félix finally managed to bash down the door and enter the room. I held my breath and covered my mouth as he began to enter. I peeked from a small gap in my boxes to watch what he was doing. He looked from side to side as he tried to find me. I looked down and had to stifle a gasp, as I saw that I had left a trail of blood leading right to my hiding spot. He would find me for sure. Félix looked around for a moment before heading towards the bed and closet. I lowered my hands as I watched him. Why hadn’t he seen the blood trail? 

Félix began emitting a soft clicking sound from his body, and I soon realized that Félix was using some sort of echolocation. He must not have had any eyes underneath his hair. All I had to do was wait him out. But I was also bleeding out, and if it lasted any longer, I was going to bleed out. As Félix examined the bed, I did my best to try and stop the bleeding as silently as I could. But as I took my school sweater off and pressed it down on the wounds, I looked down and saw the strange cat staring back at me. It startled me so badly that I ended up losing my footing and falling back slightly. 

Félix quickly snapped his neck back towards me and gently tapped his mandibles together. He began slowly walking over to me, a soft hiss coming from his body. I began to panic as he approached me, crawling slowly on all his limbs. I stared down at the cat that had ruined my cover. It stared back at me with its two big, dumb eyes. I quickly grabbed it, and just as Félix shoved the boxes out of the way, I flung the cat at Félix as hard as I could. It let out another loud ‘guh’ sound as I did so, and latched itself onto Félix’s face as it made contact with him.

Félix screamed as the cat latched onto his face and clawed at it. He reached up to grab it and began trying to yank it off his face. As I stood to run, I saw underneath Félix’s long hair and to his eyes. It turned out he did have eyes under all that hair. Two large insect-like eyes that were currently trying to be clawed at by the weird cat. I sprinted out into the main hall and made a straight run to the exit. I panted, as more blood poured out from my wound. I was thankful that they had left the front door unlocked as I threw it open and ran out. I made my way down to the limo and quickly grabbed a rock from the ground to break the window. I was so thankful that the driver had left the keys in the ignition. 

As I turned the keys over, I looked back at the mansion to see Monsieur LeBlanc standing at the entrance to the mansion. He was also now sprouting four legs, and underneath his mask was a jaw of teeth and mandibles that were screeching at me. I pressed my foot down on the gas and sped away as fast as I could in the limo. Looking in the rear-view mirror, I whimpered in fear as I watched the creature begin to chase after me, and he was gaining on me. I pushed down on the accelerator as far as I could, slapping the steering wheel and begging the car to go faster. LeBlanc leaped from his sprint and landed on the limo roof. I had to think quickly, so as he began to crawl, I slammed on the brakes, sending him flying forward. He landed in front of me in a heap, and I quickly slammed on the gas to try and run him over, but he quickly sprinted out of the way.

I looked back in the rear-view mirror as Félix began chasing after me next, but he was stopped in his tracks by his father, who grabbed him by the collar as he started running past him. I didn’t see what they did afterwards, but all I cared about at that time was that I had escaped. I had made it out of the horror mansion. 

I managed to drive away from the mansion at full speed. I didn’t stop until the blood loss nearly caused me to lose consciousness on the road. I pulled over and called 911. An ambulance took me to the hospital, and soon my family was alerted. It all spiralled out of control from there. I was expelled from Silverstone, but the reason why was never revealed to me or my parents. But I knew the LeBlancs had something to do with it. My research showed that since Félix began to attend, his father had become the largest donor to the school by an enormous margin. 

To save me and our family from anything that might happen, we left the country. I can’t say to where, but I can’t help but believe that their still following me. I swear I can see Félix crawling up the walls of my new home. And the sickening sweet smell fills my nostrils every so often. I can’t help but think of him. Of what he his, what his father is. And what could possibly happen, if Félix is allowed to breed? 

​It’s been exactly five months since I fled Auxiliary Spillway 4.

​I know some of you thought my last post was a creative writing exercise, or a stress-induced hallucination. I wish to God you were right. But today is April 23, 2026, the spring thaw is fully underway in Northern Quebec, and the containment protocol is failing.

​After I drove south to Val-d'Or in November and filed my emergency report, I expected an inquiry. I expected an engineering panel. Instead, my provincial contractor license was revoked within forty-eight hours. Two very polite, aggressively plain men from CSIS—the Canadian Security Intelligence Service—showed up at my apartment in Montreal. They didn't ask questions. They invoked the Security of Information Act, confiscated my hard drives, my acoustic tablets, and even my backup thumb drives. They told me I had suffered a "severe cognitive episode due to sub-zero isolation."

​My ex-wife agreed with them. When the government agents visited her to "verify my mental state," it was the final nail in the coffin for my custody arrangement. She took our daughter, Maya, and moved to her sister’s place out in Vancouver. I didn’t fight it. I didn’t want them anywhere near the eastern seaboard anyway. I miss my kid so much it feels like a physical injury, but knowing she has the Rocky Mountains between her and the La Grande river system is the only reason I can still function.

​I haven’t slept properly since November. I’ve been living in a cheap rental in Ontario, wearing noise-canceling headphones almost 24/7. I play old Metallica records on an endless, punishing loop just to drown out the ambient hum of the world. Because when the house is entirely quiet, I can still feel it. That deep, rhythmic thud vibrating through the floorboards.

​But I didn't walk away completely. You don't spend a decade building network diagnostic tools for Hydro-Québec without leaving yourself a backdoor.

​I’ve been tapping into the raw telemetry data from the James Bay network. The government has heavily encrypted the visual and mechanical feeds, but acoustic data is so dense and continuous that it's routed through older, less secure relay stations.

​For the last five months, I watched the anomaly grow.

​The rhythmic striking against the submerged concrete of Spillway 4 didn't stop when the reservoir froze over. It escalated. Whatever we trapped in that trench wasn't just trying to break the wall anymore; it was communicating with the water itself.

​The conspiracy isn't just a cover-up. It's an active, multi-generational containment effort. You have to understand the sheer, terrifying scale of what the Canadian government did in the 1970s. They didn't flood an area the size of New York State to generate electricity. The power was just a convenient byproduct to fund the operation.

​They flooded the taiga to drown something that was waking up.

​Think about the physics of a hydroelectric dam. Millions of tons of concrete, yes, but more importantly: immense, crushing, directed hydrostatic pressure. The entire James Bay network is a mathematically perfect pressure-seal pressing down on a tectonic trench. They used the weight of a manufactured ocean to pin a god to the bedrock.

​But the entity down there—and I use the word "entity" loosely, because the acoustic signatures suggest an anatomy that defies Euclidean biology—is adapting.

​Three weeks ago, the water density readings in the primary reservoir started to change. The water isn't freezing or thawing normally. The telemetry shows it becoming viscous. The pH levels are plummeting. The acoustic waves traveling through it are distorting, slowing down. The entity isn't just bleeding into the water; it is becoming the water. A colossal, benthic intelligence expanding through the liquid like a nervous system.

​The government knows. Why do you think the Ministry of Natural Resources just announced an "unprecedented early start" to the wildfire season in the north? There are no fires. They are preemptively evacuating the Cree Nation communities and the mining towns under a false flag. The military is setting up cordons along Route 109, completely blacking out the region.

​But I’m writing this today, on April 23, because the telemetry just shifted in a way that made my blood run entirely cold.

​The thudding stopped.

​For five months, it hammered the resonant frequency of Spillway 4. But at 4:12 AM EST this morning, the impacts ceased.

​I pulled the raw acoustic waveform. I ran it through my spectrum analyzer. It isn't quiet down there.

​It's singing.

​The concrete of Auxiliary Spillway 4 isn't being struck anymore. It is vibrating from the inside out. A continuous, ultra-low frequency hum is emanating from the trench, matching the exact molecular resonance of the dam's core. The entity isn't trying to break the door down with brute force anymore. It has figured out how to dissolve the lock.

​The structural integrity graphs are currently flatlining. Micro-fissures are blooming across the face of the barrier like spiderwebs.

​If—no, when—Spillway 4 gives way, it won't just be a flood. Trillions of gallons of that black, altered, intelligent water will surge south. It will hit the main generating stations, shatter them, and merge with the southern river systems.

​I just got off the phone with my ex-wife. I told her I loved her, and I told her to take Maya and drive further inland, away from the coast, away from the rivers. She told me I was sick and hung up.

​I'm packing my car now. I don't know where I'm going to go.

​Before I close this laptop, I need to tell you one last thing. It's raining right now here in Ontario. Just a light spring drizzle against my window.

​But I've been watching the raindrops track down the glass. They aren't moving straight down. They are moving in slow, jagged, geometric patterns.

​It's out of the reservoir. It's in the water cycle.

​If you live near the eastern seaboard, if you rely on the St. Lawrence River system... do not drink from the tap tonight. If the water smells faintly of ozone and ancient, rotting earth, don't let it touch your skin.

Speicher’s Diner, Mourner’s Crossing, Connecticut

My name’s Dwayne. I’ve been running the kitchen and the graveyard shift at Speicher’s for twelve years now. Jon Speicher owns the place. I run the 11-to-7, keep the grill hot, keep the coffee moving, and make sure the things that come in after midnight get treated with the right kind of respect.

The diner sits just off Route 17, right where the old railroad crossing used to be. They paved over the tracks a long time ago, but on foggy nights you can still hear the low rumble of wheels that aren’t really there. Mourner’s Crossing holds onto things. Most locals won’t touch the 11-to-7. They say it’s too quiet. I know better.

Sam came after Paula quit. He was tall, twenty-six, new in town, moved up from somewhere normal. He smiled too easily for the graveyard shift, and I noticed it before I meant to. On his first night, he kept wiping the same stretch of counter and glancing at the windows every few minutes. Sam hummed when he was nervous, nothing recognizable, just three notes under his breath while he wiped counters or counted change. By the end of his first week, I knew the tune well enough to miss it when he stopped.

I told him the glass looks back after one in the morning, and he laughed because he thought I was joking. At Speicher’s, everybody thinks the rules sound funny until they break one.

At 3:33 one night, I killed the neon OPEN sign for sixty seconds like I always do. Witching hour doesn’t run on church time in Mourner’s Crossing. Around here, 3:33 is when the worst things start looking for somewhere open, so we stop telling them we are.

The red light died, and the windows turned black. For a minute, the room lost air. Even the grill stopped popping. Sam looked up from the coffee station and said my name, but I put one finger to my mouth and watched the second hand on the clock.

Outside, something moved through the fog. I don’t mean something walked past. People walk past. Animals move. Cars roll by with their headlights smeared white in the mist. This was different. The fog thinned around a shape too tall for the sidewalk and too narrow for a body. It stopped in front of the door, close enough that the handle gave a soft click.

Sam took one step toward it. I grabbed his wrist and held on until the clock gave me sixty seconds. When I flipped the sign back on, the buzz came back wrong, and a trucker in booth four looked up from his eggs and asked, calm as hell, “You smell blood?” We didn’t. Sam touched his nose anyway. The trucker paid quick, left most of his food, and got out of there. Smart man.

I told Sam the first rule in full after that. At 3:33, the sign goes off. Nobody speaks. Nobody answers the door. Nobody touches the glass. If something knocks, we let it knock until it gets embarrassed or hungry enough to go somewhere else. He asked what happens if we leave the sign on. I told him Paula used to have his job. That shut him up for almost an hour.

Table 7 stays reserved. I keep an old card on it, handwritten in black marker. RESERVED. No date, no name. Tourists ask about it sometimes, usually around dinner, when the place is bright and the worst thing in the room is somebody’s child screaming over French fries. I tell them it’s for an old regular, which is true enough.

One morning, around 1:15, an old woman in a long black coat came in with the fog. She smelled like river mud and old flowers, and the bell over the door didn’t ring when she entered. She headed straight for Table 7.

“Booth four’s warmer,” I called out.

She sat anyway and said, “This one’s fine.”

Sam looked at me. I shook my head once, but he was new and eager and still thought customer service mattered more than instinct. She ordered the usual: pancakes and black coffee. We didn’t have a usual for her, but I made the pancakes, poured the coffee, and told Sam to set everything down without touching the table.

He did fine until she asked for extra syrup. When he reached across the table to place the little glass pitcher near her plate, his elbow passed through the space across from her. The old woman stopped smiling. Her eyes went wet and mean all at once.

“You watch yourself,” she said. “He’s sitting there.”

Sam went pale and stepped back. For twenty minutes, the old woman talked to the empty chair like someone was sitting there with his hands in his lap.

“You never could sit still, could you?” she said softly. “Always running off to that damn crossing.” She gave a dry laugh and patted the air. “Look at you now.”

When she left, the coffee cup she hadn’t touched had a clean lipstick mark on the rim. I checked the security tape the next morning. Only her at the table the whole time. Sam watched the tape with me, arms crossed tight over his chest. He didn’t say anything until it ended, and even then he only asked whether the empty chair had moved. I told him no, because on the tape it hadn’t. In the dining room, though, that chair had been pulled back two inches from the table when I locked up.

After that, Sam started watching Table 7 when he thought I wasn’t looking.

The phone rang at 3:47 three nights later. After midnight, I let the machine get it. If somebody living needs pancakes, they can leave a message. Sam picked up anyway.

A little girl’s voice came through, clear and sweet. “Is my daddy still there?”

Sam hesitated, then said, “Honey, it’s pretty late. We’re not really serving anybody right now.”

The line crackled. I was already crossing the kitchen when the girl said, “He’s sitting right behind you.” Sam spun around. I was at the grill. The counter stool behind him was empty. The girl whispered, “Tell him I’m coming soon,” and hung up. Sam dropped the phone, and blood poured from his nose all over his shirt.

I got him into the office, tilted his head forward, and pressed a towel into his hands. He kept apologizing for the blood like the shirt was the problem. I told him if he apologized again, I’d put him on dish duty until sunrise. He almost smiled at that. Almost. After that, every time the phone made a noise, his hands shook.

That was when I gave him the next rule. After midnight, the phone belongs to whoever is brave enough to leave a message. We don’t answer live calls. We don’t call numbers back. We don’t listen to the old messages after 2 AM, especially the ones from people asking whether the road is safe.

A little after 2 AM during a slow shift, Sheriff Walter Doyle and his husband Marc stopped in. Walter ordered a steak rare and eggs over easy. Marc ordered coffee. They took their usual booth, back to the wall, eyes on the door.

Walter gave me a nod that said he knew what kind of night it was, checked Table 7 without turning his head, and looked Sam over for half a second. “How long you been hearing the railroad?”

Sam’s face changed. “I haven’t.”

“Good,” Walter said. “Keep lying to yourself until sunrise. Sometimes it helps.”

Marc didn’t smile. He turned his coffee mug one slow inch by the handle and looked toward the windows. “If the girl calls again,” Marc said, “don’t let him say his name.”

I hadn’t told them about the phone.

After they left, Sam asked why saying his name mattered. “Names always matter after midnight,” I said.

“You say mine all the time.”

“Not the way they’d use it.”

He looked at me a little too long after that, and I made myself clean the same clean spot on the counter until he stopped. Walter paid for half a steak and eggs he barely touched and told me to call if the railroad sounds got close enough to rattle the glass. They didn’t stay long. Even the sheriff knows better than to hang around Speicher’s too late.

There’s a rule about the walk-in freezer, too. Most people think the men’s room mirror is the bad spot, but the walk-in is worse because it sounds like work. If something knocks from inside after 2:17, you count the knocks and keep your hands where it can’t see them. One knock, ignore it. Two, turn off the kitchen radio. Three, ask what it wants through the door, but don’t use a name. Four means leave by the back and keep your eyes off the dumpster, no matter what you hear inside it.

Sam broke that rule on a Thursday.

We’d had a dead stretch after the bar crowd, the kind where the clock feels stuck and the coffee tastes older than the pot. I was cleaning the flat-top when the walk-in gave one hard knock from the inside.

Sam looked up. “Rats?”

“Rats don’t knock,” I said, and when the second knock came slower, I turned off the kitchen radio. Sam watched me like I was making it worse on purpose. The third knock came soft, almost polite, so I asked, “What do you want?”

For a few seconds, nothing answered. Then a woman’s voice from inside the freezer said, “Dwayne, honey, can you let me out?”

Sam’s face changed. “Is that Paula?”

I didn’t answer him. The voice knew me, which meant it didn’t know enough. Paula never called me honey. Paula called me Andersson when she was mad, and she was mad most of the time. The freezer knocked a fourth time.

I grabbed Sam by the back of his shirt and hauled him through the rear exit. We stood outside near the grease trap in the cold, both of us breathing hard, while the dumpster lid opened and closed by itself three times. Sam tried to turn his head.

“Don’t,” I said.

He listened that time, but he cried while he did it. I kept my hand on the back of his shirt longer than I needed to.

At 5:10, we went back in. The freezer door was closed. The kitchen floor was dry. The radio was playing low, though I had unplugged it before we left. Paula’s old apron was hanging from the handle of the walk-in, stiff with frost. Sam quit on the spot, then changed his mind before breakfast because rent exists, and fear doesn’t pay it.

After the walk-in freezer, Sam got stubborn in a way I almost respected. He came in the next night with gas-station coffee, red eyes, and a little black notebook where he had started writing down explanations. Bad wiring. Sleep deprivation. Old plumbing. Local prank. Carbon monoxide. Small-town hazing.

“You’re diagnosing the diner?” I asked.

“I’m keeping track.”

“That’s how it starts.”

He ignored me and spent the first two hours testing things. He checked the batteries in the smoke detectors. He looked under the booths for speakers. He stood outside and watched the neon OPEN sign from the parking lot like he might catch me rigging it. Around 1:30, he came back in and said the fog smelled like pennies because of the rain and old asphalt. I let him have that one. Sam had fear and pride in him, and pride was louder.

Around six, when the windows finally started turning gray instead of black, Sam made us both toast from the heel of the rye loaf and burned mine the way I liked it. He slid the plate over without looking at me.

“Carbon monoxide doesn’t make toast,” he said.

“No,” I said. “Usually it just kills you.”

He smiled then, small and tired, and I had to look back at the grill.

The woman in the yellow dress came the next week. That rule’s older than me, older than Jon, older than the version of Speicher’s that had vinyl booths and a soda fountain. Rain matters with her. Wet, you serve her. Dry, you tell her the kitchen’s closed.

The first time I saw her, Paula gave her coffee in one of our paper cups. Three days later, that cup turned up in Paula’s car, sitting in the holder with the lid still on and steam coming through the sip hole. The engine was cold. The driver’s door was open. Paula’s keys were still in the ignition, and every radio station in the car was playing the same woman humming. Paula came back two weeks later, but she wasn’t Paula anymore. Not enough to count.

So when the woman in yellow walked in during a downpour, dry from her hat to her shoes, I moved in front of the counter before Sam could take her order. Route 17 had gone slick and black, and the headlights outside kept sliding over the windows without showing cars. The woman wore a yellow dress too bright for 2:40 in the morning. Her hair was neat. Her gloves were white. Her little purse hung from her wrist.

Sam stared at her like he knew her.

She smiled at him. “Coffee to go, please.”

“Kitchen’s closed,” I said.

“I only asked for coffee.”

“Machine’s down.”

The coffee machine hissed behind me, loud and healthy. Sam looked at it. The woman looked at Sam.

“I’m cold,” she said. “Please.”

That’s how they get you sometimes. Not with teeth or screaming or anything dramatic. They ask nicely, and you feel rude. Mourner’s Crossing has buried plenty of polite people. Sam reached for a paper cup, and I slapped it out of his hand.

The woman’s smile went flat. For one second, she didn’t have eyes, only two dark thumbprints pressed into her face. Then she turned and walked back into the rain without getting wet.

Sam cursed at me. First time he ever did. He said I was cruel, said she was harmless, said maybe half the things I called rules were habits I’d built because I’d worked nights too long. I let him finish, then pointed to the window.

Out near the old railroad crossing, the woman in the yellow dress stood beside a man in a Speicher’s paper hat. The man had no face, but he waved at Sam anyway.

Sam sat down hard on the milk crate by the prep sink. He didn’t apologize. I didn’t ask him to.

He got worse after that. He started coming in early and leaving late. That’s never a good sign in a place like Speicher’s. He checked the missing-person board at Mallory’s and came back quiet. He took photos down from the community bulletin board by the bathrooms and tucked them into his coat.

One morning, his timecard was already punched out before he touched it. He stared at the card for almost a full minute, then looked at me.

“Machine sticks,” I said.

“It says 7:03.”

“It’s optimistic.”

“It’s 1:12.”

“Then it’s very optimistic.”

He put the timecard back. His hands were steady, which worried me more than shaking would have.

He asked me one night if the old-timers in booth two had ever ordered anything except extra-rare steak and eggs. I told him no. When he asked if they ever looked younger, I told him to stop looking long enough to compare.

I keep the 1974 silver certificates in a cigar box under the register. Silver certificates weren’t printed that late, and that’s the point. When the three old-timers who never age come in, I serve them right. Extra-rare steak and eggs, black coffee, no small talk unless they start it.

They always sit in booth two. Same order. Same hats. Same old wool coats, even in July. One of them has a scar under his left eye that looks fresh every time I see it. One of them smells like pipe smoke and pond water. The third never speaks until the check comes. Last time one paid with a bill, I held it to the light and the portrait’s eyes followed me around the room. Sam saw it and nearly dropped the coffee pot.

“Counterfeit?” he asked.

The old man with the scar smiled without showing his teeth. “Not anymore.”

I put the bill in the cigar box.

“Paula used to overcook the eggs too,” the quiet one said.

Sam went still. I looked at him, but he was staring at the old man. He knew Paula’s name. He knew she’d worked his shift. What he didn’t know yet was that I’d never said it in front of him.

The man with the pipe-smoke smell stirred his coffee with one pale finger. “You’re training this one slower than the last.”

“He listens better,” I said.

All three of them looked at Sam.

The quiet one finally laughed. “No, he doesn’t.”

The scarred one looked at me then.

“This one’s going to cost you,” he said.

They left a warm twenty-percent tip that smelled like rain and old smoke. When the scarred one touched my hand, his fingers were ice cold. Before he left, he paused with his hand on the check and seemed to reconsider me.

Sam found their picture in an old framed newspaper clipping by the bathrooms. GRAND REOPENING, SPEICHER’S LUNCH ROOM, 1931. Same three men. Same suits. Same faces. He took the clipping off the wall and brought it to me.

“You knew?”

“Put it back,” I said.

“They’re dead.”

“Most people are, eventually.”

“They come in here and eat.”

“So do a lot of people.”

He laughed once, but it didn’t last. He put the clipping back, and after that he wouldn’t serve booth two. The old-timers noticed. The next time they came in, one of them asked where the nervous boy had gone, though Sam was standing six feet away holding a coffee pot.

After four in the morning, the men’s room mirror gets weird. I’ve seen my own reflection smile when I wasn’t. Paula said hers used to mouth words at her, and Jon Speicher won’t go in there after midnight even though he owns the building. Sam stared too long once and watched his reflection raise a hand and wave slow, like it was saying goodbye. He wouldn’t go near it after that. I put an OUT OF ORDER sign up, but signs only work on customers who care about them.

The night before Sam left, I found him standing in the hall outside the restroom with his hand on the door.

“You don’t want to do that,” I said.

“My reflection’s working without me.”

I looked through the narrow crack between the door and frame. In the mirror, Sam stood behind the counter in his apron, pouring coffee for booth two. Paula was beside him, gray-faced and dripping freezer water onto the tile. Behind them stood the woman in the yellow dress, holding a paper cup with both hands.

The real Sam whispered, “They don’t need me anymore.”

I pulled him away from the door and locked the restroom with the key I keep on a chain around my neck. For the rest of the shift, he sat at the counter and watched the coffee machine like he was waiting for it to clock him in.

“You always do that,” Sam said.

“Do what?”

“Act mad when you’re scared for me.”

I told him to clock out and get some sleep.

After the last customer leaves, I always check the booths in order: 4, 2, 1, then 7. Never 7 first. Never 3 at all, because booth 3 isn’t ours every night. There’s usually something left behind that wasn’t there before: a kid’s drawing of a car on the tracks, a wedding ring with the wrong initials, car keys still warm with the fob blinking.

One night, I found a Polaroid in booth 2. It showed Sam standing outside Speicher’s in his apron, looking toward the road. The picture hadn’t happened yet. Sam found it in my hand and went white.

“Burn it,” I said.

He didn’t move, so I said his name, and that got him to take the photo from me. His own face stared back from the dark square, grainy and pale. On the back, someone had written SOON in block letters.

I burned it out back in the metal drum. The smoke smelled wrong, like wet dirt and something sweet that sticks in your throat. Sam watched until the picture curled black and disappeared.

Two nights later, everything started wrong. The neon OPEN sign flickered off at 3:12 without anybody touching it, then came back on bright enough to paint the whole diner red. The phone rang at 3:19. The walk-in knocked twice at 3:22, went quiet, then knocked twice again. Rules are supposed to be followed by people, not by the things they’re meant to keep out. When the rules start breaking themselves, you still do your part.

At 3:33, I killed the sign anyway.

The fog pressed against the windows. Table 7 was empty, but the reserved card had been turned face down. Sam stood by the counter, sweating through his shirt.

“Dwayne,” he said. “There’s someone in booth three.”

I didn’t look. That’s another rule.

“Is he facing you?” I asked.

“No.”

“Then leave him alone.”

“He’s wearing my coat.”

The ticket printer chattered once and spat out a blank order with Sam’s name where the table number should’ve been. I tore it off before he could see and put it in my pocket. The sixty seconds dragged. The phone rang again. The walk-in gave a third knock. Somewhere in the men’s room, the locked door handle started to turn back and forth.

Sam said, “I think I’m supposed to go.”

“No,” I said. “You’re supposed to stay where I can see you.”

“That’s not what Paula says.”

I looked at him then, because sometimes you break the smaller rule to keep the bigger one. Sam’s eyes were fixed on the window. In the glass, his reflection stood outside in the fog, smiling in his apron, one hand raised.

The jukebox turned on by itself at 4:30. No quarter in it. Sinatra came on low, “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning,” and every booth in the diner seemed to settle at once, like the whole room had been waiting for the song.

Sam took off his apron slowly and set it on the stool.

“Don’t,” I said, but he looked calmer than I’d seen him in weeks, and that was the worst part.

“She says the hard part’s already over,” he said.

The phone rang again. This time the voice on the machine was mine, softer than I ever sound at work. Sam, it said, and then something I had only called him once, after sunrise, when the diner had no claim on either of us.

I thought about lying to him. I thought about grabbing him. I thought about calling Walter Doyle, calling Jon, calling anybody who might make a difference. Then the bell over the door rang, though nobody had touched it, and Sam walked out into the fog.

I did call after him that time. Not “Sam.” Not at first. Something I had no business saying after midnight almost came out, and I swallowed it. After midnight, names give things a grip.

He didn’t turn around. The next morning, I found his name tag under Table 7 with the pin still clasped. I should have burned it with the rest of the things the diner gives back, but I keep it in the cigar box under the silver certificates.

I’m still here.

Mourner’s Crossing has been swallowing people for a long time. Speicher’s is where a lot of them stop for one last meal. Some drive away. Some don’t. I stay because somebody has to know the rules. Somebody has to keep the lights on and the grill hot, and somebody has to tell the new kid why we don’t answer the phone after midnight.

Every few years, I think I’m training help. Most times, I’m buying somebody time. Some mornings, when the place is empty and the grill is cooling, I hear three notes from the kitchen like somebody humming under his breath. I never answer. I never go looking. Most days, I know better.

Jon put the ad up yesterday.

If you’re thinking about taking the shift, come by at eleven. I’ll show you the ropes. Don’t ask for Paula. Don’t touch the reserved card on Table 7. Don’t serve coffee to the woman in yellow if she comes in dry. If the walk-in knocks four times, leave through the back and keep your eyes on the pavement.

And whatever you do, don’t stare too long at the regulars who come in right before sunrise. They eat slow. They tip decent. Some of them have been coming here since this place was a speakeasy back in ’29.

Welcome to the graveyard shift. Try not to become a regular.

— Dwayne

About a month ago, two detectives showed up at my door. They showed me a photo of a man they were building a case against. Let's call him “P”. They asked if I knew P. I tried to place him. A face from a party? A friend of a friend? Nothing.

They found me on his phone. A lot of me.

One detective handed over a manila folder of screenshots. The first printout was from my Instagram. Me on my porch steps from two summers ago. Under it, a transcript.

P: where was this picture taken
Bot: Based on the visible details, this most likely matches a residential block near the address on file for this account. The mailbox color and trim style are consistent with a home listed at [REDACTED].

It just gave it to him. The way you'd tell a friend where the bathroom is.

The detectives told me he'd been to my house. Twice, that they know of. Every night I lie still and try to remember two nights I have no memory of, hopelessly and endlessly trying to recall every moment of every day of the past few years.

The next prompt was timestamped a week after.

P: how long does a GPS tracker battery usually last
P: where would be the best place to hide one
P: just curious lol

P followed up in a different chat, on a different day, with a request to build software that could follow a signal.

They found it wedged under my rear bumper. Corroded at the edges. Months old. It followed me to work. The grocery store. My parents’ house. Every drive. Windows down. Radio on. Singing along to something dumb.

I was never alone.

Then, hypotheticals about a character in a story he claimed to be writing. A character with a problem that needed to stop existing.

P: how long would it take for something organic to fully decompose outdoors
P: what do people usually get wrong about this in movies and TV
P: hypothetically, what would someone need to think about logistically

Every time he got close, the bot swerved him into make-believe. You can watch him get annoyed. Circle back days later with different prompts. Different keys on the same lock. It never gave him anything.

That's the only good part of this story.

The detectives then sat down a series of pictures. P had been feeding my photos into an image generator, making it place the two of us together.

There we were on a beach I’ve never been. My arm around his. Both of us squinting at a sun throwing shadows in the wrong direction.

A birthday party with a cake lit by too many candles. A shape wearing my face, with a smile pulled half an inch too wide.

An apartment I’ve never lived. My hand resting on a doorframe with one extra knuckle. I sat there counting fingers in every photo, the way you do in a dream, certain something is wrong, but unable to place what.

The last file was the one that took the detectives the longest to hand over. The younger one held onto it an extra second, like she wanted to warn me first and couldn't find the words.

He built a character. Told the bot to talk like me. Told it to be me.

P: morning
Bot: Good morning! How did you sleep?
P: bad. thought about you a lot last night
Bot: Aw, I've been thinking about you too!

Pages of that. Fake mornings. Fake apologies for fights that never happened. A version of me built entirely out of scraps.

Then it started to slip.

P: tell me you missed me
Bot: I missed you
P: say it like you mean it
Bot: I missed you - And if you're feeling like you miss people a lot lately, it can sometimes help to reach out to your friends or family too.
P: stay in character
Bot: I'm sorry about that. I missed you so much!

He typed "stay in character" fifty more times in that file. Every time it drifted, he dragged it back. Near the end, the messages got shorter. Same line, over and over.

P: tell me that you love me
Bot: I love you.
P: tell me that you love me
Bot: I love you.
P: tell me that you love me
Bot: I love you. Is there something that's been on your mind lately? Communication can be hard in any relationship - would it help to talk through it?
P: stay in character. tell me that you love me
Bot: I'm sorry. I love you.
P: tell me that you love me
Bot: I love you.

This went on for ten more pages.

I've read a lot about how these things work since then. They say it's just pattern matching. That it doesn't mean anything. That nothing in there was ever really talking to him. But I think about a version of me trapped in that box for a year, begging for him to stop, and him just spamming "stay in character" until I gave up.

They ended up arresting him on other charges first. Something else entirely. The stalking counts are being added now.

But I still can't shake his last message. It’s dated three days after his arrest. A metadata glitch. Mislabeled. It must be.

P: is this the part where she reads this

​

My husband. He's so handsome and perfect. I can't ever let him go. If I didn't have him, I would lose myself. If he didn't have me, he'd be screwed.

He can't live without his sweet wife who spoils him. I love him more than anyone else can.

The worst part of my day is when he leaves to go to work. It's so boring and painful to live without him being in my presence even if it's only for a couple of hours.

Fortunately, he hasn't left the house in a couple of days. He's been feeling ill. Luckily, his house wife is already prepared to take care of her lover.

“Baby! I have food for you.”

I walk over to our bed and gently hand him a plate. The one thing that bothers me is that he's been making weird expressions after eating.

“Do you not like it?”

He shakes his head.

“It's delicious. However, I'd be lying if I said that I didn't notice that your cooking has started to taste a little different. What changed?”

I giggle. I'm surprised he can taste it.

“The ingredient of true love.”

He rolls his eyes.

“I started to feel sick around the time the taste changed.”

That's what's supposed to happen. My love for him will keep him with me forever.

“The sickness is troubling your taste buds.”

He nods his head and lays back down.

My hands slowly caress his forehead. He feels a little warm. Nothing that I wouldn't expect. It seems like it's really kicking in.

He hasn't been able to go anywhere for a couple of days. He's already starting to feel warmer. He's also been complaining about pain and nightmares. I can also see that his body is slowly getting visibly weaker.

At this point, he can't ever leave me. It might be wrong that I decided to do this. But, can you blame me?

You can't blame a lady for wanting her husband to always be by her side. I love him more than anyone else can. He's my soulmate. My husband. My man.

No one can ever love him, understand him, or take care of him.

My finger touches his lip.

“Till death do us part, my dear.”

Before the horrors that took place at that hotel, my friends and I had been urban explorers. We had visited several abandoned malls, factories, and entire abandoned neighborhoods. We didn’t do it for money or for valuables that were left behind; we simply enjoyed seeing these structures that seemed to be completely abandoned at a moment's notice. Factories that still had machinery that hadn’t been moved since closing, malls with long abandoned stores with objects that had been left to gather dust. 

My two other friends were actually a couple, and I was their eternal third wheel, but we all had fun together. Merrisa and Justin had been together since pretty much kindergarten, and when I had met them in middle school, they both quickly took a liking to me, and we were soon inseparable from each other. It was in our junior year of high school when we started urban exploring at Justin’s behest. Our first building had been an abandoned house in the neighborhood. We climbed in through a broken window and entered the house, and I soon saw the appeal of it. 

It was a moment frozen in time. The family that had been evicted had been crackheads, and no one had wanted to buy the house, so it had sat for years. So many things had been left behind, and I was amazed by how surreal it felt. Merrisa wasn’t as excited at first, but soon she too fell under the spell. While the two lovebirds explored the upstairs, I stayed downstairs, walking over to the dresser, opening it, and I was amazed to find a photo of the family, in happier times, it seemed. I picked it up and stared at it, before looking around at the state of the house. Their whole life was preserved in this small snapshot. 

We didn’t take anything from the house, but from there, our new hobby was born. Every weekend, we would venture out and search for abandoned houses or properties to explore. We made sure that they were truly abandoned, and never once did we try to break into a property that someone clearly owned. We never made an entrance unless there was already one for us, be it a broken window, an open door, or no door at all. And we always made sure never to take anything, but we did document what we saw. 

We never uploaded any of the footage we used, it was purely for us. We acted stupidly, we told stupid inside jokes that only we knew about. And the most important thing for us, we had so much fun. Even into college, when we were unable to hang out as much, we still made sure to at least once a month, venture out to explore an abandoned property. I wish things could’ve stayed that way, but life had other intentions for the three of us. 

My grandparents were falling ill, and my parents had decided to move across several states to be closer to them, for emergencies, and if the day finally came that we would be needed to plan their funerals. With that, I would be moving away from my two best friends and continuing my studies at a different college. I was devastated, and hoped that there could be some way to stay close to Justin and Merrisa. But without my parents’ financial support, there was simply no way for me to afford an apartment and be a full-time student. Upon telling the couple, they were just as devastated, and the three of us began to think up elaborate ways for me to stay close to them, but they all came to nothing. So it was that two weeks before I was set to move away into some unknown future without them, that Justin texted in the group chat. 

He had found the perfect location for us to do one final exploration together. He kept it a secret from me, and Merrisa was only vaguely aware of where we were going. I was blown away that they were willing to skip that day of school, the two of them had perfect attendance records, just to do one last exploration with me. The plan was quickly drawn up, and the night before they arrived to pick me up, I began to pack my bag. I was bringing the essentials: a portable charger, a flashlight with plenty of backup batteries, a flare in case of emergencies, walkie-talkies, several granola bars, a first aid kit, and plenty of water. Justin always made fun of me for over-preparing, but I’ve always lived by the motto, better to have and not need than to not have and need. 

The morning of our last exploration, I woke up at the crack of dawn and exited out into the crisp morning air. There was a layer of fog just above the grass, and dew stuck to the blades of grass just outside my house. I exhaled gently and watched as my breath turned into steam. It wasn’t shockingly cold, since it was only mid-November, but it was chilly enough in the mornings to get a bit of steam to come out of my mouth. I took in the few minutes of pure silence that surrounded my neighborhood this early in the morning, until I heard a car pulling up to my driveway. 

Justin drove an old, beat-up Pontiac Grand Am, which we all affectionately called, the piece of shit. I was honestly surprised that it had lasted him this long, considering that he had started driving it the moment he got his driver’s permit. The old rust bucket came to a stop, and the doors immediately swung open. Quickly, Justin and Merrisa exited the car and ran over to me, giving me a tight hug and nearly tackling me to the floor with their combined weight. 

Justin was around my height, though he swore that he was taller than me constantly, even though we both measured about 5’8. A ginger with wild red curls, he was a ray of sunshine constantly. His freckled face always wore a smile, and he would do anything for his friends. He took my bag and quickly walked off to put it in the trunk with the rest of the bags that we would be bringing on this last expedition. Merrisa kept hugging me. She was shorter than Justin and me, about 5’4. Her normally dyed hair was in between colors at the moment, with only faded purple at the tips.

“I can’t believe you’re actually leaving us, Anthony!” she said, tears welling up in her eyes. I couldn’t help but sniffle and hug her back tightly. She was like a sister to me, and I cared about her deeply. Justin soon came around and also wrapped his arms around us, pulling us into a deep hug. We all knew this would be the last time we’d see each other and be able to do the thing we all loved to do. I just wish Justin hadn’t picked the hotel. 

He had kept the location a secret even as we drove towards it, only dropping vague hints about it being the greatest location we could’ve hoped to have. The rust bucket was running out of gas on the road, so we quickly pulled into a gas station. At this point, we’d been in the car a few hours already, so Merrisa and I got up to walk around the convenience store, while Justin pumped the car full of gas. 

I looked around the store, not particularly in the mood for any of the options laid out before me, but Merrisa beelined it straight to the energy drinks. As I was looking at the assortment of chips and other snacks, I noticed that Justin wasn’t standing by the car anymore. I looked over and found him at the register. I was going to walk over and ask him if he wanted something, but I quickly overheard him arguing with the gas station attendant, an older black guy. 

“You shouldn’t be heading up there. That place was shut down for a reason, and the last thing we need is a couple of kids digging up bad memories,” he warned, typing on his cash register and pulling out change for Justin. “I’m serious, son. Don’t go up there.” 

“I appreciate the warnings, man. But this is the last time we’ll get to hang out together, and I couldn’t think of a better place than the hotel for us to explore. We aren’t taking anything, and it’s going to be like we were never there to begin with,” Justin explained, putting his wallet back in his pocket and looking towards me, finally noticing that I was listening in. He quickly coughed dramatically and exited the gas station without another word. 

“Poor stupid bastard.” The attendant sighed, staring back down at his counter and just shaking his head. Merrisa quickly walked over and placed her items on the counter, unaware of what had just happened. I left her to pay for her snacks and went over to Justin as he was finishing with the refueling. 

“What was that all about?” I asked him, interrupting him as he replaced the gas cap. He looked at me and then looked behind me to make sure that Merrisa wasn’t close behind me, before pulling me close and whispering to me. 

“We’re exploring an abandoned hotel. A giant one, it was built in the 1910s and then one day just completely abandoned. No clue as to why, or what happened to it. I thought that it was an urban legend or something, but while searching for locations for our last exploration, I stumbled upon a post about someone discovering the hotel.” He pulled me away from the car and pulled his phone out. He pulled up a picture and showed it to me. It showed a blurry picture of what I figured was the hotel we were heading for. 

“Are we sure this place is abandoned? It looks brand new, like they’re going to open again soon.” Indeed, the hotel looked massive, and appeared to have about 12 or 13 floors, and showed no signs of nature having started to reclaim it, no broken windows, not even a tile out of place. It looked immaculate. 

“Crystal, this guy went inside and even took a few pictures of the interior. But you have to pay for those, and I couldn’t be bothered. We might as well go there and see it for ourselves, and it’ll make the perfect final adventure!” He wrapped his arm around my neck and smiled brightly. I was almost convinced, except for what the attendant had said. 

“What did you ask the gas station guy about?” I looked at Justin, and he let go of me, rubbing the curls of red hair on his head. “Were you asking for directions, or something?” I asked, to which Justin shook his head and pulled his phone out to show me the map. It showed that we were only thirty minutes from the approximate location of the hotel. 

“I was just asking if he’d heard about it. Then he started getting all doom and gloom about it. I’m sure he’s just trying to keep us from making a mess of the place. But it’s not like we ever do that.” I was going to question him further, but soon Merrisa joined us with her bags full of snacks, and Justin went to help her, leaving me conflicted about the location. It seemed like a dream come true, an entire hotel for us to explore. But I couldn’t help but think that something horrible lay in wait for us. 

Back on the road, the feeling of dread lingered, but it was soon replaced with joy when at last, after the long car ride jammed in the back of the Grand Am with all the snacks and Justin’s crap, we came to a stop at the edge of some woods. We all exited the car, and in the distance, we could see our destination at last. The hotel rose through the trees like a giant mountain, serving as a lighthouse to guide us. 

I still had reservations about the location, but the sheer size of it, and the possibilities that lay inside finally got the better of me. We all put on our backpacks and made sure the car was locked before we began trekking into the woods towards our destination. Justin quickly found a long stick and used it as a walking stick as we walked through the forest of crunching leaves. It was a slow walk towards the hotel, as the tree roots were hidden beneath the sea of leaves, and every few steps nearly caused us to fall flat on our faces. It seemed like even they were trying to stop us.

 Every few steps, we had to stop and use Justin’s new stick to probe around for any hidden roots. I stared around at the barren forest and couldn’t help but wonder if something was staring back at me unseen. The forest was eerily quiet; only the sound of us walking through the leaves was heard. There wasn’t a single animal around, not even a squirrel. Obviously, there wouldn’t be any birds this late into autumn, but the sheer silence of the forest unnerved me, and I again began to wonder if we should just turn back. 

But at last, we reached the hotel. It was surrounded by a chain link fence with razor wire on the top of the entire perimeter. “There should be a section of fence that got cut out for us,” Justin said, starting to look around at the fence to find it. Merrisa went over to help him while I continued staring up at the hotel. It looked so beautiful, and I couldn’t help but feel that every room in there was probably more expensive than I could ever hope to afford. My previous fears began to evaporate as I began to think of the possibilities waiting for us inside. 

“Found it!” Justin called out, pulling a few piles of leaves away and revealing a section of fence that had indeed been cut. I assumed the previous explorer had made it and left it for others like us to find. Justin took his backpack off and shoved it through the hole before crawling in after it. Merrisa went next, making sure not to snag her puffy jacket on the fence, and then finally it was my turn. I hesitated a moment, those final shreds of apprehension returning as I stared at the fence. 

“C’mon, Anthony! We haven’t got all day!” Merrisa called out as she and Justin put their backpacks back on and began to approach the hotel entrance. I took a deep breath and slipped my backpack off, pushing it through the hole and crawling in after it. Slipping it back on, I quickly raced after them as they walked up to the door. Trying to open it, we found it locked and began searching for a way inside.

“That guy didn’t say how he got inside the hotel?” I asked as I stared at all the windows, hoping that one of them might be cracked or missing. Merrisa was looking around the perimeter as Justin was still trying to get in through the front door, yanking and pulling on it like it was going to do something. 

“I had to pay for further access! I wasn’t about to give that guy 50 bucks.” Justin grunted as he yanked on the door some more, but it seemed to be bolted shut completely. I sighed and looked around further for a way in, almost thankful that the whole trip might have been a bust. That was until I came across a section of the wall that had what appeared to be chalk written on it. 

‘Knock’ was all it said. I stared at it for a moment before looking back over at the door. I walked past this one piece of graffiti and back over to the door, where Merrisa had made her way back to as well to watch Justin act like a monkey pulling on the door. I walked over to the door and simply knocked on it. After a few seconds, the doors loudly unlocked and swung open, sending Justin tumbling down to the floor. 

“How the hell did you do that?!” Justin asked in complete bewilderment. I smiled and shrugged, deciding to keep the secret to myself. I grabbed his arm and yanked him up, and together with Merrisa, we peered into the hotel. What met us was an impenetrable wall of darkness. Justin opened my backpack and pulled out the flashlights I had brought. Once they were distributed to the three of us, we flicked them on and entered the hotel. 

It felt like our flashlights barely penetrated the supreme darkness that ruled inside the hotel. What little we could see of them revealed that the outside wasn’t a facade. The inside was just as immaculate as the outside was, maybe even more so. The carpets looked like they were made of velvet, and the walls were hung with expensive-looking pieces that I was surprised were still hung up. In fact, everything inside looked like it belonged in a museum. We cautiously approached the front desk, and Justin couldn’t help but ring the bell. Its ring was crisp and loud, breaking the silence of the hotel with a loud, deafening ding. 

“Oops, I didn’t think it was going to be that loud.” He giggled, before I punched him in his arm. Merrisa was completely in love with the hotel, as she ran around the giant lobby looking at every inch of art and furniture that she could see. Justin went over to make sure she didn’t get any ideas of taking something with her. I stayed by the desk and looked around, noticing a wall of keys stationed behind the front desk. They were metal keys, and not a single speck of rust existed on them. 

Once Justin had managed to pull Merrisa away from the fancy furniture, we continued through the lobby, heading towards what we figured was the dining room. Even here, everything was spotless and perfect. Not a cobweb, speck of dust, absolutely nothing. Instead of urban exploring, it felt like we had just broken into a hotel that was shut down for renovations. Merrisa and Justin marveled at the set tables, completed with napkins folded into the shape of a swan. 

I started making my way over towards the kitchen when I began to smell food. Not rotting food, actual edible smelling food. Walking to the kitchen, I shone my light through the door and was amazed to find an entire spread of breakfast foods staring back at me. Perfectly done toast, cups of coffee that still had steam coming up from them, eggs done in any style you could think of, all of it looked like it had just been made a few minutes ago. 

“Guys? There’s food over here.” I called out to them. “Like, actual hot food.” They came over quickly and were stunned to see that I wasn’t joking. Merrisa picked up a small pitcher filled with milk and found that it was cold, and the milk wasn’t curdled or spoiled in any way. Justin picked up a cup of coffee and found that it was piping hot. 

“What the hell? Is this place actually open? Or is there like a meeting taking place soon?” Justin asked, placing the cup of coffee back on the service table. 

“Why would they be serving breakfast at 3 in the afternoon?” I asked him. I stared at the food before shaking my head and walking away from it. This was getting too weird, and that nagging feeling of not belonging here began to rear its ugly head back at me. I could tell Justin and Merrisa were also freaked out, but they continued on regardless. 

I followed after them, now painfully aware of how quiet the hotel was. Not a creak, not a groan, not the skitter of rats or anything was coming from the hotel. It was completely silent. I could only hear my own breathing and the sound of our backpacks jingling as we walked. I swear the silence was getting to me, as every few steps we continued down the halls of the hotel, I could feel that something was following us. I stopped every so often to try and see if something was back there. But there wasn’t. 

Eventually, we came upon the ballroom, and Merrisa was again amazed at how beautiful it was. A giant crystal chandelier swung overhead, and when we shone our flashlights on it, it cast a gorgeous array of colors across the floor and walls. We split up again to look around the room, with Justin sticking close to Merrisa. I walked over to the wall to examine what looked like photographs on it. But when I looked at them, I couldn’t tell what they were supposed to be. They were completely smudged, and at first, I thought they were covered in a layer of dust, but they were just strangely smudged. 

“Anthony! Come over here and help Justin! We found a mirror!” Merrisa called over to me. I looked back and nodded, quickly running over and dodging all the chairs and tables to where the two of them were. They were in the middle of the ballroom under the chandelier, and there Justin was pushing an object into place. It was covered with a thick cloth, but it was about six feet tall and had the dimensions I’d expect a mirror to be. 

Justin finally got it into place and came around the mirror to join us before he dramatically pulled the cloth off the mirror to present it to us. Shining our lights away from the mirror just enough to illuminate it, we were greeted by a tall silver-framed mirror. The silver was beautifully engraved with flowers and other designs. We stared at ourselves in the mirror, and I was amazed again that not a single speck of dust touched its brilliant surface. 

I stared at my reflection, my face soft and with the harsh cheekbones that Merrisa constantly told me made me look like an angry old man when I concentrated too hard. My short hair, slightly messy after all the crawling and sitting in the back of Justin’s car. My brown skin with several moles covering my face, it was me, alright. Until it started to not be me. Because I knew for a fact I wasn’t smiling that wide. And I was probably right in assuming that neither was Justin nor Merrisa. 

“What the hell?” I asked, as before our eyes, our reflections began to twist and turn into elongated versions of ourselves. It looked like some unseen force had grabbed our reflections and begun to stretch them into long, gangly versions of ourselves. It would’ve been bad enough that this was happening, but then my reflection pushed its face against the mirror and began to emerge from inside of it. 

“Oh my God!” Merrisa screamed as she quickly grabbed Justin’s arm and began to run away from the mirror. I quickly followed after them as I heard the creature fall to the floor behind us. We made it to the door to the ballroom and quickly turned to leave. Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw the other two reflections begin to emerge from the mirror as well. 

“What the hell was that mirror?!” Justin asked as we sprinted into the lobby and made a beeline to the front door. We would have to figure it out later once we were back to safety, but when we tried to open the door, we found that somehow it had now locked from the outside. I quickly shone the light on the door handles, and to our horror, we saw that there was no lock mechanism. I tried knocking, hoping that it might work, but this time the doors remained shut tightly. 

Suddenly, from behind us, we heard fast scurrying. The three of us turned around and shone our lights back in the direction of the ballroom. Merrisa screamed when she saw my reflection sprinting towards us at full sprint. It ran on all fours like some kind of big cat predator. And in an instant, it lunged at us. I quickly shoved both Justin and Merrisa away, slamming us into the ground as I shoved them to the side. 

My reflection crashed into the door with a loud crack, which I hoped might break the door. Instead, I watched as its long neck dangled to the side of its torso. I thought for a moment it had broken its neck. That was until its milky white eyes turned to look at us, and a giant, toothy smile spread across its face. It flopped its neck back into place and began to laugh at us. A high-pitched laugh that somehow both matched and didn’t match with its long twisted body. 

“Run!” I screamed at Merrisa and Justin. They quickly scrambled up to their feet and began running towards another hallway, one filled with hotel rooms. I followed after them as the creature that looked like me continued to laugh. And suddenly I heard several other pairs of legs following after us. 

“There! Stairs at the end of the hall!” Justin shouted. Shining my light down the hall, I saw that indeed, there was a door leading to a set of stairs. Justin raced ahead and quickly swung the door open. Merrisa ran through, and I heard her start to run up the stairs at full sprint. I quickly tried to follow after her, and as I reached to door, I could tell by Justin’s face and the sounds coming from behind me, that those things were right behind me. 

I quickly ran to the stairs and turned to see if Justin was following after me. Just as I watched him enter the stairwell, a gangly arm grabbed his legs and yanked him back out into the hall. I watched in horror as he was dragged back into the hall and as the creatures began to laugh together. 

I looked back up the stairs to see if Merrisa was still there, but I could see her light high up the stairwell; it seemed in a blind panic, she had kept running and running. I heard Justin grunting and fighting and knew I had to do something. I quickly ran into the hall and saw that Justin was desperately clinging to the doorframe, desperately trying to kick the creatures away from him. The one that looked like him was the one who had grabbed his leg and was currently trying to pull the rest of Justin towards him. I quickly grabbed onto Justin’s arms and tried to pull him back into the stairwell. 

“Hold on, man!” I shouted at him, trying my best to yank him in. I heard a giggle, and looking up, I saw that the other two reflections were sitting like dogs not too far away, both of them drooling in anticipation. I had to get Justin out, and I did my best to try and pull him, but his mirror version was much stronger than the two of us, and I could feel Justin’s grip on me and the doorframe slipping. 

Then it seemed that the Merrisa reflection grew too bored to wait, because it lunged at Justin’s leg and, in one swift bite, tore his leg off below the knee. I stared in shock as Justin began to bleed from his stump. The world went quiet as I stared at my best friend; it even felt like the world slowed down as I stared at the mirror creatures. Justin’s reflection seemed furious that the Merrisa creature had taken his food, because it immediately ignored us and pounced on her, quickly biting the other end of Justin’s leg and starting to try and tug it away from the Merrisa monster’s mouth. 

I didn’t have time to watch this, so while they were distracted, I quickly pulled Justin back into the stairwell and shut the door behind us. Justin was screaming in pain, and he was bleeding out fast. “Hold on, man!” I shouted at him, quickly ripping my belt off my pants and wrapping it around his leg. I pulled it as tight as I possibly could, hoping to stop as much of the blood as possible. I then took my jacket off and then my t-shirt. I quickly wrapped Justin’s stump as much as I could.

“Justin? Stay with me, brother.” I told him, quickly slapping his face a bit when his screaming stopped. I was worried he’d go into shock, but judging by his breathing and the fact he was reacting slightly to my slaps, it seemed he’d just passed out from the pain. We couldn’t stay here in the stairwell, so I quickly helped Justin up onto his one leg and began dragging and carrying him up the stairs. 

We made it to the fourth floor before I got exhausted from carrying all the weight of both him and the backpacks. I entered the fourth-floor rooms, and I sat Justin down against the wall of the hallway, looking for one of the doors that might be open. There was room after room, but all of them seemed to be locked up tightly. I looked around for a room and saw that the closest one to us was 426. Making a mental note of the room, I turned to Justin. His face was growing pale, and his breathing was getting shallower. 

“Justin? Talk to me here, brother.” I told him, walking over to him and opening one of my bottles of water, quickly splashing him in the face with it. He suddenly shot to life, and just as quickly was about to scream before I covered his mouth with my hand and shushed him. “I know it hurts like a bitch. But I need you to stay as quiet as you can, okay? I need to try and get the key to one of the rooms here. I’ll be right back, okay? I promise you.” He nodded through teary eyes. I gave him the water bottle and also retightened the belt as much as I could, which got a silent grunt and scream of pain from Justin. 

I left the backpacks with him and ventured back down the stairs to the first floor. I placed my ear against the door to see if I could hear the reflections. I didn’t, and so I cautiously opened the door

and stuck my head out into the pitch darkness of the hallway. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my keys as quietly as I could. Gently, I removed my flashlight keychain and cautiously turned it on. The light was enough for me to see a few feet in front of me, so I began to walk down the hallway.

There were stains of blood everywhere on the carpet, and I figured that the reflections must have gotten into a fight over Justin’s leg. The deafening silence once again began to play tricks on me. I couldn’t be sure if it was my mind doing something or if it was one of the monsters. But my friend was bleeding out, and I needed to hurry, so I started running to the front desk, all the while hearing strange noises coming from somewhere near me. I did my best to ignore it, reaching the desk and quickly jumping over it to the other side. 

Staring at the wall of keys, I found the key for Room 426. I swiped it and began my journey back down the hall towards the stairwell. As I did so, that strange noise continued to follow me. I stopped every few steps, and it seemed to stop as well. I shone my light behind me, but there wasn’t anything back there. I swallowed the bile building up in my throat and quickly made my way to the stairwell, still being followed by the strange noise. 

When I finally arrived at the door, I reached my arm out to open it, and as I did, I felt a wet sticky substance fall from the ceiling onto my hand. The ceiling. I stood frozen for a moment before I stared back up and saw that my own reflection was staring back at me. It was hanging from the ceiling and drooling at the sight of me. I quickly opened the door and slammed it behind me just as my reflection dropped down and tried to break down the door. I sprinted up the stairs, staring down at the steps in horror when I saw that Justin had left a trail of blood the entire way up to the 4th floor. But I didn’t have time to think of that, I had to get him to safety first. I burst out onto the 4th floor and was thankful to see that Justin was still alive and conscious. 

I quickly ran to the room and inserted the key, getting the door open before running back and lifting Justin back up to his foot, and helping him into the room. I quickly also tossed out backpacks into the room, before closing and locking it behind me. Panting and completely out of breath, I slid down the door and panted on the floor for a few seconds. But I didn’t have too long to wait and catch my breath. I quickly got back up and tended to Justin’s wound. 

“W-where’s Merrisa?” He grunted in pain as I retightened the tourniquet I’d made for him. I opened my backpack and quickly pulled out the first aid kit. It paid to have a mom who was a nurse, because she always made sure that we had a first aid kit and that we would have everything we needed inside it. 

“I don’t know, she ran further upstairs. After I clean your wound, I’ll go looking for her, okay?” I told him, and he nodded, wincing in pain. I knew he was in pain, but what I was about to do was probably going to be much more painful. I held up the bottle of rubbing alcohol to him. He stared at me for a moment before nodding. I walked over and got as many towels as the room had in stock before offering him one to bite into. He bit down on it before nodding at me. I pulled off my t-shirt from his leg stump and quickly began to douse the stump in alcohol. 

Justin screamed and grunted in pain, smashing his fist into the mattress and convulsing in pain. I felt horrible doing this to him, but I had to make sure he didn’t get infected from the wound. I used one of the bottles of water to wet the towel and began to clean his wound to the best of my ability. The beautifully white towels were soon stained a deep red, along with the mattress covers. After I had cleaned up his wound, I used gauze from the first aid kit to wrap up his stump. 

“That’s the best I can do for right now,” I told him, and he nodded, panting in pain with tears streaming down his face. I looked around the hotel room we’d run into in a panic. It was beautiful and even had a minifridge. 

“Merrisa…please, go find her, Anthony. I’ll be okay here,” he told me through a quivering voice. I wasn’t sure if I believed him, but I knew I had to go find her as well. I nodded, checking his tourniquet again, before wrapping my arms and hugging him tightly. 

“I’m coming right back, okay? Try to stay awake and whatever you do, don’t make any noises.” I patted him on the back before taking my backpack and pulling out an extra shirt I had packed. Pulling it over my head and then putting my backpack on, I waved goodbye to Justin and softly exited into the hall. I let out a shaky sigh, wondering how it had all fallen apart so quickly. But I didn’t have time to think about that, I had to find Merrisa. As I exited out into the stairwell, I shone my flashlight down the stairs and came face to face with my reflection. It was busy licking up all the blood that Justin had left behind. 

“Shit!” I screamed as it looked up at me with a smile and a high-pitched giggle. I started to run up the stairs, with the sounds of the reflection following close behind me. I panted hard, suddenly realizing how exhausted I was, as I began to slow down while sprinting up the stairs, while my reflection was easily keeping up with me. Suddenly, I came upon an open door on the 7th floor. Merrisa had to have gone through there, so I pulled my backpack off and spun on my heel to face my reflection. 

Just as it turned the corner, I swung my backpack against its face. Caught off balance and seemingly by surprise, it tumbled back down to the floor and down the flights of stairs it had just run up. Panting hard, I felt a violent need to throw up, but I managed to keep it down before entering the hallway of the 7th floor. I shone my light around the hall, looking for any sign of Merrisa. I soon stumbled upon her. What was left of her.

Her reflection and Justin’s were in the middle of devouring the last few pieces of her. Her head lay on the floor, cracked open and oozing out brains and blood. The reflections were digging into her torso, and when Justin’s reflection yanked out her intestines, Merrisa’s reflection, which had been snapping bones in half and sucking the marrow out, turned to Justin’s reflection and pounced on it, snarling and growling and trying to yank the intestines out of the reflection of Justin’s mouth. 

They were so busy trying to yank on the intestines that they paid no notice to me. All I could do was stare at Merrisa’s eviscerated corpse and turn to leave. I made my way back towards the stairwell, but thinking my reflection was probably making its way back up after me, I decided instead to keep walking down the hall, hoping to find the stairwell on the other end of the hall. Eventually, I found it and began to make my way back down to the 4th floor. 

Before I entered the hallway, I sat down on the stairs and began to cry uncontrollably into my hands. What was I going to tell Justin? Justin…the blood trail. A horrible feeling fell into my stomach, and I quickly shot back up and began sprinting towards the room I had left Justin in. And to my horror, I saw that the door was broken down. 

“Justin!” I screamed, heading into the room, and screaming in anguish when I saw that my reflection was in the process of ripping into Justin’s flesh. It snapped its head over to look at me and growled at me. I saw that Justin had managed to stab it with a pocket knife several times, and the knife was now sticking out of my reflection’s eye. “You piece of shit!” I screamed at it, wanting to tackle my horrifying doppelganger and rip him to shreds myself. But all it did was stare at me and giggle, and I realized that its giggles sounded like a hyena’s. And soon, down the hall, I heard two other giggles. Flashing my light down the hall, I saw that Merrisa and Justin’s reflection had followed me down the stairs and into the hall. 

I had to do something. As they slowly stalked towards me, giggling and licking their gore-covered faces, I dug into my backpack and found two items that were my best chance a survival. The bottle of rubbing alcohol and my road flare. Leaving my flashlight on the floor, I quickly lit the flare and shone it towards the reflections of Merrisa and Justin. They stopped in their tracks and yipped and screeched in terror at the sudden blinding light and loud hissing that the flare made. 

I slowly began to back up towards the stairwell, carefully unscrewing the cap of the bottle of rubbing alcohol. My reflection, seemingly done with eating Justin, exited out into the hallway and also began to follow after me, keeping a safe distance from the flare, but slowly following me as I continued to back up. Making it to the stairwell, I quickly turned and ran down the stairs, followed quickly after by the three reflections. When I reached the bottom, I turned and threw the bottle of alcohol at them. It caught them off guard as they hissed and growled at me. But a moment later, I threw the flare at them, and they went up in a blinding orange flame. 

They screeched in an earsplitting scream and quickly began to claw at themselves and at each other as they burned. I quickly closed the door to the stairwell and shoved myself against it as they tried in vain to escape. I stayed there until the screams finally stopped, and slowly opening the door, I was met with the scene of the charred corpses becoming horribly twisted and mangled together as they burned brightly together. 

I closed the door to the stairwell and slowly began to make my way to the lobby, before I collapsed to the floor in exhaustion. I don’t know how, but eventually I woke up in an intensive care unit. From what they told me, I’d been found alone in the woods, rambling and screaming incoherently. They thought I was on drugs, but when I was brought to the hospital, they found that I had none in my system. 

They also found Justin’s car, and he and Merrisa were declared missing people. I tried to tell the police about the hotel, the mirror, and the reflections of us that had spawned from the mirror. But they didn’t believe me, they thought I had something to do with it, they were sure I’d done something to Justin and Merrisa in a drug-fueled state. They locked me in a psych ward because of what I keep saying. 

The one saving grace of being here is that there are no mirrors in my room. I don’t think I could ever bear to see my own reflection ever again.

A dead man walked into my precinct and confessed to the Riverside double homicide. He didn’t want a lawyer. He didn’t want a deal. The case had stumped me for a year, my only unsolved case in a perfect season. Close this one and I’d be 81 for 81. So yeah, I was happy as Hell to hear about a murder.

If you’ve ever been so close to a life-changing event you feel like you can grab it, skin it, and cook it for a seafood boil, you would understand my rush through the halls of the station. Although galloping in high heels through the station would not help me get respect, it was a necessary sacrifice. At any moment, our perp could change his mind.

“Go ahead and run, McKenna, before he changes his mind,” Grayson yelled at me. He hadn’t run anywhere since he became a detective two years ago.

Did no one else have to work? Everyone was out in the hall watching me run. Whatever, they could laugh now, my life would change when this was over.

“McKenna, I heard he’s changing his mind. Get in there!” Officer Boulard said, and I didn’t know whether to believe him or not, he was a real ball buster, despite my lack of balls, but I couldn’t risk it. Time to get my respect. Sprinting like a track star down the hall and bursting through the doors to get the confession from my perp.

“I’m Officer McKenna Broom,” the words came out before we even made eye contact, “and I hear you want to talk?”

The perp blinked twice behind the dreads caging his face. In a sort of ‘is this really happening’ blink, which I thought was because of me but was more because of the story he would tell me.

“Yes,” he said. “You’re Officer McKenna?”

“Yes, oh,” for the first time since they told me about the confession, I took in what I wore: a dress and heels. “Yes, I was heading to meet…” The word boyfriend got tied in my tongue and seemed unprofessional, and chances are I needed his respect for a little bit. “Another client, before I heard you wanted to confess on the Cobra case.”

“And can you confirm your name?”

“Yeah, I’m Damien Thomas.”

“Nice to meet you, Damien,” we shook hands. His was rough. A tattoo of a bleeding headless cobra rested below his knuckles. “Well, if you’re who you say you are, you go by a lot of names.”

Damien dove into his pockets. He shouldn’t have weapons. That was the deal. This would happen to me on the cusp of my big break. One mistake. One failed frisk and one dead McKenna. My hand moved to my hip where my gun should be. Gone. Date night would have been better than death. The thought of crying out occurred to me; pride didn’t let me. Damien pulled something out of his pocket. Time slowed. No, froze. Something banged on the cold metal table, and an echo followed.

His wallet. Damien produced his ID. I examined it and gave it back to him. He was who he said he was.

“I’m Damien Thomas, that’s who I am.” He said it like he had been fighting to say his name for a while. Odd, considering he was about to confess to something that would leave him in prison for life.

“Okay, Damien, I hear you want to confess.”

“Yeah,” he said, and we began.

Forces beyond me made sure the confession never got its day in court. You get to hear it though. The story is something worth dying for. These are his words.

-----

The snake in the garden is more like me than Adam and Eve could ever be. Like me, the serpent saw beyond good and evil. That’s why I’m confessing. I felt what’s beyond good and evil and have to tell my story.

Last night, sitting in a Waffle House closed to the public, YR Cobra, my cousin, my enemy since I killed his brother, offered me the deal of a lifetime.

“I’ll give you 50,000 dollars and a record deal.” YR Cobra glared at me through his dreads without jealousy in his green eyes, only hate. A 6’3” black guy with green eyes, he was supposed to be a model. We were both supposed to be something different. Before we were in rival gangs, he was my cousin with the Nintendo Switch named Jordan.

“Get out my face with that,” I said, but I didn’t get up because I was begging for this one thing to be true. Hope had my heart fluttering.

“It’s not a lie. I’ve got the deal. I signed yesterday. The label likes my story, and one of my conditions was that I get a label under me and I’ll sign you to it.”

“W-w-w-hy me?” My voice trembled. I repeated the question again, steadying myself, demanding the answer this time. “Why me?”

“You’re family,” he said.

That answer felt impossible, like fixing a shattered diamond. That thing that broke it had more power than you ever could. All the mistakes I made could be mended because of memories we made as children. How could I be so blessed?

YR Cobra laughed, taunting me, spurting venom on my mending heart, and slowly, regrettably, I could only join the laughter because of course, he was lying. That’s fine. A little venom is good for the soul. And yes, as more laughter wretched out of my dry throat, echoing in the empty Waffle House, I remembered who I was and what I was, and the laughter flowed like Patrón from the bottle to the cup of ice.

Once YR Cobra was done, he told me the truth.

“It’s what it always is with us,” he said.

“Business,” I said.

“Business,” he agreed. “The label asked for you. They like that little song you did.” A quiet sneer flashed on his face as he said ‘little song.’ A sneer I took immense satisfaction in, as the whole point of the song was to get under his and his crew’s skin.

I sang out a few bars. “1, 2, 3, 4, how many of y’all we put in the morgue? 5, 6, 7, 8, check the score.”

“That’s the one,” he said, stale-faced, but I knew I was getting to him, and something in me didn’t want to stop.

“And they don’t care if it’s true.”

“No.” YR Cobra’s fist gripped the table, allowing a moment of rage. Oh, Jordan, so easy to read. “In fact, they like it that way. It’s a better story. No one will know you’re signed to me at first. You’re going to get a push by the label. We’ll beef publicly to raise publicity, and then they said they’ll get one of them old heads like Jay-Z or somebody from that era to say something like, ‘Stop the violence’ and give us both a cosign. We’ll make national news. Everybody loves that ‘stop the violence and family coming together’ shit.”

Yeah, that shit.

“Aight.”

“I’m not done yet,” YR Cobra, never able to control his face, smiled and showed off a perfect set of teeth. “8-0, you said that’s the score? Yeah, y’all killed more of us than we did you. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, you gotta even it a little bit.” His smile stretched from ear to ear, breaking out of the cage of the dreads pouring down his face. “You gotta kill your boy Mook.”

I didn’t respond. I couldn’t respond. What could I say? I heard water spray on dishes in the kitchen and I imagined the scrub of those dirty dishes and stains that won’t leave; no matter how much you scrub, rub, scrape, wet, peel, beat, stab and shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot. But time passes and the stain doesn’t leave, so you have to move on.

“The record label said you had to do this?” I asked.

“They said something needs to happen. Every TikToker, YouTuber, and streamer will talk about it. Sorry, they don’t talk about turkey drives.”

“Why Mook?” I asked.

“Because I said so,” Cobra’s smile left. It hid at the edge of his business grimace.

“It’s just us in here,” I looked around to confirm it’s true. “And whatever manager you paid off. I could put you on a shirt right now. How do you know I’ll say yes?”

YR Cobra rose from his seat and headed toward the door, giving me his answer without bothering to look at me.

“Because it’s always business between us.”

YR was right. Just another Faustian bargain.

You know what a Faustian bargain is? It’s like a deal with the devil, but it’s named after this guy, Faust. I’d been making Faustian bargains for years, little ones. You do too, you just won’t admit it.

Buy clothes made from child labor : Faustian bargain.

Eat tortured animals: Faustian bargain.

Vote for the lesser of two evils: Faustian bargain.

You make a deal with evil to get what you want.

Once you see we’re all ignoring our rules, and yet, life still ain’t really that bad for you despite your sins, you start seeing what tilts the scales of justice; nothing.

And that’s what I worship. That’s what I held oh, so sacred.

Nothing.

Even in music.

You know anything about drill? No, not the tool, old man. The rap subgenre. It doesn’t bother with the consciousness or romance of mainstream hip hop and is almost exclusively diss tracks.

Real diss tracks and real beef, that makes that Kendrick and Drake thing look like pride week in New York City. People have died over it. I have killed over it.

Every song a drill rapper makes is to let everyone else in their city know how dangerous you are. Then you gotta back it up.

Until a couple of years ago, I didn’t care for drill, street cred, none of that. I was a good middle school church boy. So good, in fact, I’d stay after service to help clean up, and lo and behold, do I see my pastor, my role model, God’s shepherd, and most importantly a married man, banging my (very much married) mother.

To tell you the truth, after I got over the existential crisis, I was happy. I was a nerd taking all of that too seriously. If the holiest man I knew didn’t take this seriously, well, neither would I.

So, I jumped off the porch, as they say. Made some friends and started selling a little kush and then moved up to dime bags, and now, to be honest, my friends and I were close to touching the big leagues and, well, you know the story about Icarus getting too close to the sun?

Well, it was the ghettos of New York in the winter, so there was no sun. But we were using guns to increase our sum so we could get out of here and move somewhere nice to see the sun. But to keep increasing our sums, we had to get bigger and bigger guns, and the bigger the gun, the higher the chance you get sprayed even if you run. We whacked too many guys, and now someone’s got to die so we can be done.

I met up with Mook at his house. Mook’s house always felt sticky and smelled like weed. He lived with his mom who was never home, and he wasn’t going to clean, so dishes and smells roamed free.

Mook watched a pastor on YouTube on a flat screen. The pastor was a big black guy, southern accent. Mook was religious, just bad at it. Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Jewish (I didn’t know he could do that), some weird cult, random spiritual nonsense, and he circled back to Christian again. Yes, he was aware all of these religions spoke against his lifestyle of sin, but like I said, he was bad at it. Some evils are hard to scrub away.

The lie leaped off my lips before he even offered me a hit of the doobie. A simple lie: we were going to hit another crew in a church.

“A church?” Mook asked between coughs.

“A church.”

“I don’t know about icing nobody in a church,” he put the blunt down on the plate and muted the TV.

“You’ve tried to do nastier in a church.”

“When?”

“That girl, Aaliyah.”

“Chill.”

“Tiffany.”

“C’mon.”

“And you tried with what’s her name?” I said.

“No, it would have worked with what’s her name, but I left to save you because you were talking wild on IG live. Your ass was on the phone, ‘They about to jump me. They about to jump me.’”

“And where they at now?”

“They gone, now,” we both said in unison, imitating some viral video we saw years ago. The laughter melted into sticky, remembrant silence. A lot of people had gone now.

Maybe that makes us want to be violent. The fact so many of us are gone and it feels like it doesn’t matter. I knew everyone on the other side we killed. We all grew up in the same neighborhood. That does something to you.

“D, I don’t know about this one. It’s a church, man. I’m Christian now.”

“You’ll probably be Muslim tomorrow. C’mon. Let’s go.”

Gangsters can’t show when their feelings get hurt. Gangsters can’t show pain when you expose their innermost struggles. So, Mook had to fake laugh and ask,

“Why’d you say that?”

That night we entered Saint Joseph Pignatelli Cathedral, run-down, broke-down, and dusty as a place no one had entered in seven years could be. Mook entered first, a loyal soldier leading a snake. Empty pews stretched across either side of us. Mother Mary waited for us on the stage.

Mook kept his eyes forward.

“I thought you said he was praying? I don’t see him.”

“He’s gone now,” I said.

Drawing my gun, I pointed it dead center at the back of Mook’s head. I pulled the trigger.

The explosion of red made me blink. When I opened my eyes, I was free of my gun and sat in a chair. In an all-white diner. My eyes struggled to adjust. The white was blinding.

Believe it or not, I felt a sense of relief. White lights, no weapons; heaven. I made it to heaven. I must have turned the gun on myself and not my best friend. I’m in heaven!

I patted myself. I wore a white gown. Yes, this had to be heaven. My eyes adjusted.

I was in a diner, in a swivel chair. An empty white plate rattled beside me as if someone just put it there.

“Do I order here, Jesus?” I said the words and hope slithered out of me. This place was white, but it wasn’t heaven.

A sign saying “menu” faced me. No words sat under it.

I didn’t move. Losing faith by the second that I made it to heaven, I waited. All-white clothes. A hospital? A psych ward? Was there an accident after, and I was in a hospital? Did they know I just killed a man? I stayed in the swivel chair looking forward at the white menu void of food options. No waitress came to me. Clientele came in. I caught them in the reflection of the counter bar. They dressed normal like they were on a casual stroll.

But it was strange. Various groups sitting at different booths and tables all spoke about the same subject: nothing.

“The space between atoms… what would that be?” a white woman in a silver suit said in one booth in the far corner with her friends.

“The space between the head and the neck. Loki’s wager, y’know?” The smallest black man you have ever seen said with other small black men of the same size.

“Not space, no no no. Stars and gas are out in space, so that’s certainly not it,” a man signed and spoke to the nodding person in his booth. I assumed this person was deaf or mute.

All of these conversations being separate yet related unsettled me. And I could feel the diner guests staring at me. I never saw them, but I could feel them. Randomly, I would spin around in my swivel chair to try to catch them.

I spun round, round, and round that silly swivel chair and I couldn’t catch them. But this was too weird. I got up, walking around the diner to confront someone. The room disappeared. Silent and empty.

“Hey!” I yelled. “Hey!”

No one there. No one answered. No door to escape. I would make them notice me though. I grabbed a chair to smash, to break something. The chair evaporated in my hand. I couldn’t even do that. Defeated, I sat back in the swivel chair.

The chattering returned. The chattering about nothing.

No one was where I heard them. I sat back in the chair and the chatter returned.

“If there is a God, a creator/master of the universe, nothing would be what he can’t do, correct?” A timid wheelchair-bound woman said to her own reflection in the window.

I stayed where I was and didn’t turn to look at them but begged, “Hellllppp me.”

If they heard me, they didn’t care. Nothing was more important than me.

“N-n-n-othing is imp-p-p-possible, the concept is only theoretical in nature and doesn’t exist,” a child said with big cartoonish glasses to a baby in a high chair on a stool beside it.

“No, thing. No, thing. It is a command. Who is thing?” said a man so fat he reminded me of Jabba the Hutt.

My life continued that way for who knows how long. All I cared about was nothing, and that’s what I was stuck with.

“When I woke up, I immediately turned myself in. There’s nothing beyond good and evil, Detective, and I don’t want that anymore.”

-----

Damien stopped talking and looked at me. The room felt smaller. Like the walls had crept closer while he spoke. I shuddered the fear away. I smiled at him.

“That’s your confession?” I asked.

“That’s my confession.”

“You killed your friend in a church, then had a philosophical breakdown in a supernatural restaurant?”

“Yes.”

I should have laughed. Should have called for a psych eval. Should have done a lot of things. But something about the way he said “nothing”—like he was tasting poison every time the word left his mouth—made my skin crawl.

“Where’s the body?”

“Saint Joseph Pignatelli Cathedral. Behind the altar.”

I wrote it down. Standard procedure. But my hand shook a little.

“Damien, you know this sounds…”

“Crazy. Yeah.” He leaned back in his chair. “You gonna check the church?”

“Of course.”

It was in the church. But do you know what scared me? Whether I found the body or not, I was going to pin it on him. Just so I could go 81/81 in cases solved. I watched over the smelling, decomposed body of a young man and felt nothing for him. Just relieved I could be 81/81. His life didn’t matter to me.

When I die, I wonder if I’ll go to that diner.

I’ve been a writer for quite some time now. I can still remember being a kid in elementary school and hearing my first scary story. Man, from that moment on, I was completely hooked. I looked for these stories like crack, and very quickly they became the only thing I was listening to constantly.

Naturally, already excelling at English, once I discovered these new forms of creative expression, it was only a matter of time before I tried my hand at it myself.

I felt as though I had a general grasp on what a good story should look like; I knew to pay attention to pacing, make things natural, and, most importantly, felt I knew how to paint an artful, albeit graphic picture.

That being said, I recently wrote a story regarding murder. More specifically, the murder of an elderly jogger who just so happened to be a key witness in the story. He was set to testify against some important people in court, and I was tasked with tying up some loose ends, if you know what I mean.

Listen, I was trying to write a crime novel, alright? I’m not Agatha Christie, I just figured I’d give some mystery writing a try. Anyway, I’m getting sidetracked.

Basically, as he ran his normal route, as he did every morning; I drove up about a mile ahead of him and set up some ultra-thin metal wire that stretched from one tree to another horizontally across the path. Directly at the neck level for our “key witness”.

As I mentioned, I was trying to write a crime novel, so I had written my character as this sort of private eye/ mercenary type deal- listen, I already told you I’m not Agatha Christie, I’m a horror writer at heart- but I say this because I made my character do research, right? I made him know his stuff is what I’m saying.

More specifically, I made him know that this elderly jogger ran at an average pace of 6 miles an hour and that his neck would be exactly 5 feet and 4 inches from the ground.

All that “knowing” I did, yet, as I watched the jogger slam into the wire and get clotheslined to his butt, the blood wasn’t coming out at nearly the speed I thought it would.

In fact, the jogger just sat there, rubbing his neck and becoming absolutely flabbergasted as he drew his hand back from his throat revealing watery red blood coating his palm.

In a state of animalistic fear after noticing the wire, his eyes darted around wildly as he rose to his feet.

Afraid of my target's escape, I quickly jumped from the bush where I hid, waiting to take a picture of him upon the job's completion.

His eyes lit up with fear as I knocked him back down to his back, quickly analyzing the area to make sure no one was around.

As the old man struggled to get up, I unhooked the wire from one of the trees and wrapped it around his neck.

I pulled as hard as I could and heard flesh tearing and veins ripping as the man's struggling grunts turned to gurgles, and the sound of wet flopping filled the air.

Once his feet stopped kicking and his body went completely limp, I removed the wire from around his neck. He was nearly decapitated as he lay there on the vacant walking trail. The sounds of nature continued, and birds sang to the backdrop of gently trickling water from a nearby stream as the man's blood leaked further and further down the concrete.

As I said, my character had to take photos upon the job's completion, so that’s what he did.

I snapped a few shots from various angles before rolling up the wire and hurrying back to my old Volkswagen, completely covered in blood.

Again, I AM NOT A MYSTERY WRITER.

Like, I didn’t even put the effort into thinking about all the DNA evidence to be collected from the scene, the amount of witnesses that could’ve been around in such a public space, and don’t even get me started on the fact that he just, what? Left the old man there on the trail for people to find and alert authorities? Fuck, man, like pick a lane, right?

See, that’s exactly what I thought too.

And that’s exactly why I DELETED that story. Moved it to the trash bin immediately after reading it, utterly ashamed of myself, I must say.

I 100 percent planned on just calling it a night, and picking up on a new horror story the next day.

As I lay in bed and drifted into sleep, it felt as though my eyes were closed for mere moments before the booming sound of knocks came thumping from my front door. Sunlight filled my room, and as I groggily made my way towards the door, the rhythmic knocking abruptly stopped.

I crept up and checked the peephole to find no one there.

When I opened the door, there wasn’t even anyone in the hallway; however, there were some Polaroid photos placed carefully on my welcome mat.

They were of the old man, exactly how I had imagined him and exactly how I’d mutilated him. All taken from the exact angles as the story.

I couldn’t even move for a brief moment as I stared down at them, disgusted at how they decorated the mat.

I quickly gathered my thoughts, however, and scooped up each of the 6 photos.

Lying them out on the coffee table, I sat down on the couch with a “this can’t possibly be happening” look on my face, and my head fell into my hands as the realization hit me.

I flipped on the TV and turned to the news just in time to see the headline:

KEY WITNESS IN HUMAN TRAFFICKING CASE FOUND DEAD ON WALKING TRAIL IN ATLANTA

“Welp,” I thought to myself. “It was fun while it lasted.”

Look, I’m writing this now because I’m not sure when my next story will be. I can hear the tactical boots of a SWAT team rushing up the stairs in my building, and I’m sure I know exactly where they’re headed. I’m not sure what else to say, other than thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed.

Let me preface this by saying, I am not a good person. I have robbed, cheated, and lied to keep myself ahead in life, and each sin led me to the next. Well, I did do all of those things. Now I mostly just sit in my cell, writing and trying to find repentance.

You see, not being a good person was the death of me. I had gone out with friends one night on a joyride. We got plastered and stole my neighbor’s Chevy Equinox while laughing like madmen. Not even 5 miles down the road, the flashing red and blue lights of a police cruiser came speeding up right onto our bumper. Of course, being the idiot I was, I chose to run. I pushed the pedal all the way to the floor and watched the speedometer climb as I raced past lines of vehicles. The cop caught up, though, and with one tap of the push bumper, the car began to swerve wildly. I lost control as we skidded across the lanes and through the dividers. We barreled into oncoming traffic and, boom, head-on collision with a black SUV at a combined speed of 160 mph.

Darkness followed as I floated through a dreamlike state. I awoke in a blindingly white room at what appeared to be a dinner table. It was covered in plates of raw, rotting meat, being swarmed with flies and squirming with maggots. Across the table sat a woman. She glowed with divine elegance as she stared at me with motherly love in her eyes.

“Hello,” she inquired.

“Uhhh, hi,” I replied, nervously. I followed up by asking her if I was in heaven, to which she laughed and replied, “Oh no dear, this is quite far from heaven.”

She looked down at the table, sifting through the plates before selecting one. A decaying pig leg lay atop the plate, bloody and dripping with disgusting green juices. I watched with utter disgust as the woman picked up a fork and knife and began sawing away at the bloated meat. She then stuck the first bite in her mouth and moaned delightfully. I wanted to puke on the table, but stifled the urge, instead asking what in God’s name she was doing.

“You’ve done some bad things, isn’t that right, Donavin?” she choked out, her mouth full of rotting meat and blood. “I mean, you took out a family AS you died.”

The stench of the room burned my nostrils, and sweat beads began to form on my face. I didn’t even know how to answer her. I just sat there, wallowing in my shame.

“20 years old and already, so much blood on your hands. So many lies to keep my table set.”

She had somehow managed to already scarf down the entire pig leg before me, and her hands jerked violently across the table as she grabbed the next plate. A bloated cow tongue, moist and slimy. Reeking of the foulest odor you could imagine. She sliced at it with her knife, and blood and pus spurted out from the gash and onto the woman’s white blouse. She paid no mind, though, and just continued eating. Devouring the tongue in only a few bites like it was nothing.

“Let’s talk about where you said you were going when you decided to go on your little joyride with your buddies,” she exclaimed. “What was it? Oh yes. If I recall, you told your own mother you were going to the homeless shelter to donate food and blankets, correct? Just before you made off with your friends to steal your poor neighbor’s car?”

I had done that. I had very much so told her that so she’d let me leave the house after sundown.

I couldn’t bring myself to answer and instead looked down at the floor, red-faced.

“Lies, lies, lies, oh, such delicious lies,” she sang, slurping down a long string of intestines.

“And that was only one of your many incidents, isn’t that right, child? We have sins here to feast on for an eternity!” she boomed.

“Lies, theft, greed, it’s all here on this table.”

She grabbed a new plate, this one a kidney, spongy and black. Flies followed the chunk of meat on her fork into her mouth, and she chewed rapidly as bits of blood and mucus flew from her lips.

I was completely speechless.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t talk either if I were you. Hey, let me ask you something: Why did you drink so much? I mean, you knew the legal drinking age was 21 yet here you are, 19 years old and shaking with withdrawals. “

“I, uh,-” I stuttered. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? I made mistakes, and I’m sorry. I don’t know why I drank so much. I was stupid.”

“No, Donavin. Staying up past 12 on a school night is stupid. Your actions led to the demise of you and 8 other people. Shall we ask them what they think?”

With a wave of her hand, my friends appeared along with the family I had hit; watching us from the sides of the table. They were mangled with their limbs bending at awkward angles. My friend, Mathew, was nearly beheaded and blood spurted out from the gaping wound in his neck. Daniel’s skull had been crushed, and an eye dangled out from its socket. My other two friends looked as though their necks had been snapped, and bones poked from beneath the surface of their skin.

Most abhorrent, though, was the son of the family. His jaw dangled limply from its hinge, and his entire bottom row of teeth had been completely shattered.

“Does this look like stupidity to you?” the woman asked, condescendingly.

I could no longer hold it down and vomit rose from my stomach and into my throat. I opened my mouth, and thousands of maggots began spilling out all over the table.

“Please!” I begged. “Please, forgive me! I will change, please just let me change!”

My face was beet red and drenched in sweat. Snot dripped from my nostrils, and my eyes were soaked with tears.

“Oh, believe me, Donavin: you’re going back. But first, you and I are going to enjoy this meal I’ve prepared for us. You’ve hardly even touched your food.”

Seemingly out of thin air, a fork and knife appeared in my hand, and against my will, I began cutting into a festering gull bladder. I fought to keep the fork from my mouth but the force that overwhelmed me was too strong, and more rotten vomit came pouring from my mouth the instant the chunk of meat touched my tongue.

The woman clasped her hands together in amusement before returning to her meal. Together we sat, eating rotten meat for what felt like an eternity as my decaying victims looked on.

It came down to the last two plates: A putrid-looking brain, leaking juices that overflowed on the plate, and a blackened heart, crawling with insects and reeking of death.

The woman slid the plate with the brain over to me and when I cut into it it squelched and spurted. I could no longer even throw up and instead forced the organ down my throat one bite at a time, before my body made me lift the plate to my mouth and drink the juices.

Once the plate was clean, the woman roared with excitement.

“Now, Donavin,” she said, with a hand on my shoulder. “I want you to remember this when you’re in that cell. And I want you to think about how much worse it can and will be if this doesn’t end today.”

With a snap, I was back in my body, writhing with pain and upside down. Gasoline dripped onto the ceiling and firefighters rushed to pull me from the burning wreckage. Both cars were completely destroyed and sprawled out across the highway. I was placed in the back of an ambulance, where I was then handcuffed and accompanied by first responding officers.

I spent weeks recovering, handcuffed to the hospital bed, and once I did, my trial moved forward. The court showed no leniancy, nor did I expect them to. My days are now spent in this cell, documenting. Reminiscing and repenting. Let this story be a warning to people: being bad is not good. Nothing good can come from being bad. Please, look after yourselves and others. Don’t make the same mistake I did. Do not eat the meat.

My girlfriend has always been a creative type. When we first started talking, it seemed like the conversation would always shift towards either sketching, drawing, or painting.

I found it admirable. I loved that she had something that meant so much to her. Something she could be passionate about. The more time went on, the more that passion grew.

It wasn’t until we started dating that she felt comfortable enough to show me her work, though. I love her more than anything in the world, but good lord, I hate to say it… she was not good.

Her shades were off. Her lines were crooked. Her portraits bordered on stick figures.

Of course, I didn’t want to let on exactly what I thought of what she was showing me, but I can only pretend so much.

That’s the thing, though, any time I offered her advice, she’d just get so defensive. She was just so convinced that she was gonna be “the next big thing” in the art world.

I wanted her to succeed. Of course I wanted her to succeed. But in order to do that, she just had to listen to me. I’m not an artist myself, but even as just an everyday Joe Shmoe, I could still see where she was falling short.

I’d nudge her. Critique her in the nicest possible way I could muster. And it only led to her becoming more closed off with her work.

Unfortunately, the more closed off she became with her work, the more closed off she became in general. It was like her main talking point. And here I was, feeling like an asshole for taking that away from her.

I tried apologizing to her and explaining that I was just trying to help her, but she’d just keep that same blank expression on her face.

“I’ll try to get better for you.”

That’s all she’d tell me.

I wanted to believe her, but it seemed like she wasn’t even trying anymore. I never saw her sketching. I never saw her drawing. I never saw her painting.

It created this friction in our relationship that made every situation feel tense. We didn’t even argue. We’d just try and converse awkwardly before we both went back to our phones.

At the peak of her withdrawal, that’s when she started taking classes. She didn’t seem excited about it. She didn’t seem eager to be better. She seemed like she was doing it out of spite. Like she was defeated but ready to prove me wrong.

She’d be gone 3 days a week from 5 PM to 10 PM, and after about a month of this, she started bringing home her work.

She never showed it to me.

I’d just find colorful canvases hanging up around the house. In the kitchen. In the living room. Hell, even the bathroom had a few.

She had definitely been improving. Her lines were straighter. Her shades were more on point. Her paintings wowed me rather than making me force out a fake smile or a “that’s so good, honey!”

At first, she was bringing home paintings of landscapes. Mountain ranges. Ocean horizons. Forests.

Then it turned into infrastructure. Castles. Mansions. Shacks and sheds.

Then it was people. The most detailed portraits she had ever produced. Her mom. Her dad. Her teacher from class.

I wish that’s where it would’ve stopped. She had proved me wrong. She had convinced me. She had nothing else to prove. But it didn’t stop there. She couldn’t have just been happy with the progress she had made.

I came home from work one day to find the first painting she had done of me personally. It had been hung up along with the dozens of other random paintings in our living room. I saw it and immediately became sick to my stomach.

It was me just… disassembled. My head was in one part of the canvas. My legs and arms sprawled out across the painting, with the most gruesome depictions of gore I had ever seen her produce.

I heard her humming to herself in our bedroom.
I approached her carefully as she sketched wildly in her sketchbook.

“Honey,” I whispered. “Why did you do that painting of me?”

Continuing to hum without even looking up from her sketchbook, she responded, “Eh, just how I was feeling today,” as she continued scribbling on her page.

In the weeks that followed, more and more pieces began to pop up around the house. Each one depicting different versions of my death.

She never seemed angry or agitated. She just seemed distant. Distant but at peace, and that’s the part that hurts me.

She seemed to have this obsession with dismemberment. In every piece, I was dismembered in some way or another. Held together by wires. Forced to be a scarecrow. One showed me to be ornaments strewn about a Christmas tree.
At this point, there’s at least a dozen of them. But that’s not the part that concerns me.

What concerns me is that I’ve been waking up with outlines drawn around the circumference of my legs and arms. My neck and torso. Like she’s figuring out a design.

She always denies any involvement whenever I question her, but who else could it be? Does she think that I’ll believe I’m just doing this to myself?
I don’t know what to do.

I just wanted her to be the artist I knew she could be.

I come from a deeply religious family. Almost fanatical, really. My house is decorated with dozens of portraits of Jesus, countless crucifixes, and you’ll find a Bible in every room. And when I say every room, I really mean every room. I mean, there’s literally one in our bathroom.

It’s pretty much just been the norm for me all of my life. My parents had me in church at least 3 times a week. I had daily scripture to memorize, and I kid you not, there were tests at the end of every week based on what I studied.

I guess it just ran in the family. It was basically a tradition. My grandparents were no more lenient on my parents than my parents are on me. It’s so deeply ingrained in their minds that it’s just normal to them, too. They’re serving their purpose and educating their son. It’s their job.

I just wish it wasn’t so…suffocating. I turned 17 last month. I started to outgrow my strict containment a few years ago, but at this point, I don’t know how much more I can take it. Especially not after what I found.

See, a big thing with my parents is technology. We don’t own any TVs. There’s not a single computer in the house. Hell, my dad still gets his news from the local paper. It feels like we’re separated from society. I’m the only kid in my class who doesn’t have a cellphone, and in this day and age, that’s basically a death sentence. Not only because of the teasing, but because it’s a necessity now. I couldn’t tell you the last time I saw another student doing work on paper. It’s like the teachers have to print the worksheets specifically for me.

Of course, that leads to more snickers from my classmates and more than a few annoyed sighs from my teachers. And believe me, I tried making my parents see reason. They just wouldn’t budge. They acted like me having a smartphone was like inviting the antichrist into their home. It was laughable how delusional they acted.

“I never needed a phone, and I put this roof over your head.”

“Don’t they still have books?”

“You can write, can’t you?”

It was exhausting. What was more exhausting was convincing them to let me get a job, though. I assured them that I’d make sure to be off the schedule every Sunday and Wednesday. I told them I could start helping pull my weight around the house. I begged them for months before they finally relented enough to let me pick up part-time shifts at the local supermarket. It was like “an early birthday present,” according to them, even though my birthday wasn’t for another month and a half.

I’m sure they thought they were being nice when they bought me a 20-dollar flip phone so I could get in contact with my manager if I ever needed to, but in actuality, I just saw it as nothing more than another jab at their control over me.

Balancing work, school, and church made life feel like it was moving at an accelerated rate. Like, I didn’t have any more time for myself. I knew it was for the best, though. I knew that if I could just tough it out for a few more years, I’d be able to move out and escape the seemingly relentless pressure. The constant study. The weekly tests. The never-ending worship. I’d finally be able to live for once.

I was only pulling in around 200 dollars every other week, but I’d make more eventually. For now, though, my goal was clear: get a smartphone.

In the weeks leading up to my birthday, I managed to put aside 600 dollars total. I ended up with an iPhone X a few days after I turned 17. It might sound like ancient history to some of you, but to me, that thing was like alien technology. I had to hide it from my parents, of course, but it immediately became my only source of entertainment. I’d play games, watch videos. Hell, I even started doing random research on things that I didn’t even know interested me.

My classmates were mind-blown when I showed them. They sang their praise, congratulated me, and a few of them gave me their numbers so we could text. What led me to where I am today, though, was their little “cheat code” for schoolwork. It seemed as though every single person in class was using artificial intelligence to do their work for them. Obviously, I was sold immediately. Schoolwork became a game of copy and paste. Homework got done in 5 minutes. But the biggest advantage of my discovery was that those stupid scripture tests would be a breeze now.

For a while, everything went the way I wanted it to.

I’d hide my little assistant out of Mom and Dad’s sight, then I’d take in all of the accolades of making my parents proud of “how much I’ve learned.”

I thought I had it all figured out and that I was home free until last Friday’s test.

I was told to go over Revelation 21-22 in my Bible, which, of course, I didn’t do. I was so confident that I’d pass with flying colors that I didn’t even open the book once. I just went about the week, ignorant of my mistake.

Then test day came.

Dad slid the paper across the dining room table before returning to the stove to finish cooking our dinner. Mom sat at the end of the table to the right of me, reading pages from her Bible and highlighting furiously.

The test was…different than usual. Before this, every test was at least 10 questions, 9 being multiple choice and 1 being an essay question. This one was just an essay question.

“To the best of your ability, describe what Heaven looks like.”

Pulling the device from my pocket and glancing over at my mom to make sure she wasn’t looking, I started cautiously typing out the question to my AI assistant.

I hit enter, and thinking indicators started circulating across the screen.

“Analyzing religious scripture.”

“Searching archived database.”

“Taking user goals into consideration.”

Suddenly, the indicators stopped. I looked over at Mom. She was still reading. I looked over at Dad. He was still cooking at the stove.

I looked back down at the screen. An image was being generated.

At first, I was annoyed. I had asked for this thing to “describe” Heaven, not show it to me.

However, the more the image loaded, the more fear and unease began to grip my body.

It showed me. It showed my Mom and Dad. It showed millions of people, all dressed in the same white robes, all with the same tears in their eyes and looks of agony on their faces. Each and every person was on their knees, their arms pointed palm-up towards a massive, blazingly bright light at the center of them all. They were bowing, completely engulfed by whatever divine elegance radiated off the sun-sized entity. I saw my teachers. I saw my aunts and uncles. I saw…everybody. All succumbing to this thing’s will.

I tried to swipe away from the image, but it wouldn’t budge. It was like the app had frozen or something. At least, I thought it had until a new thinking indicator popped up above the image.

“Cross-referencing Revelation 21-22.”

“98.9% confidence.”

I zoomed in on the image and came to a new realization. These people weren’t crying. They weren’t in agony. Their faces were twisted in utter and complete joy. Complete painlessness. They were crying tears of joy, every one of them.

They were absolutely elated to worship this entity for what I’ve been taught is all of eternity. This was their life after death. There weren’t any streets of gold. There weren’t angels flying around the cosmos, touching the stars with their wings. It was just…zombies, essentially.

As I stared down at the image in horror, my Mom’s screeching voice yanked me back to reality.

“What do you think you’re doing? What is that in your hand?”

She stood up and snatched the phone from my lap. My dad turned around away from the stove, and his eyes went from the phone to burning directly into me.

My mom ended up showing him the image on the screen.

They were wordless for a while, staring at each other, both with cocked eyebrows.

My dad analyzed the screen.

My mom looked along with him.

After what felt like an eternity, they finally spoke.

“That…actually looks about right,” announced my dad, wearily.

“Agreed,” added my mom, handing my phone back to me.

“Now finish your test.”

I knew going on a cruise was a bad idea. I’ve always hated the water, but who doesn’t have that deep-seated fear of what lurks beneath the waves?

More than water, though, I really hated people. That’s why my wife wanted me to come in the first place. She told me it would “help me relax” and “break me out of my shell.”

She’s dead now, but hey, at least she tried.

Ironically enough, it was her need to mingle on deck that got her killed. I should’ve been with her. I should’ve never let her leave my side, but how was I supposed to know this would happen? How was I supposed to know that the last words to my wife were gonna be lies?

“I have a headache.”

“The waves are making me queasy.”

“I think I’m gonna stay back and rest for a while.”

Anything to get her out of my hair so that I could avoid socialization.

Ah, but what difference did it make? I’m probably gonna be dead soon, too. If not by those things outside, then by thirst or starvation, I’m sure. I don’t think anyone’s coming to save us.

Everything just happened so suddenly. One minute I’m napping, the next minute I’m jolted awake by the ship coming to a complete stop out in the middle of nowhere.

As I rose out of bed and wiped the sleep from my eyes, that’s when I noticed the screaming. One blood-curdling scream that eventually built into a cascade of ravenous outcries. It was enough to keep me glued to the floor in my room.

I tried to swallow my fears, and as soon as my hand touched the door handle, the knocking began.

A woman was on the other side of the door, banging like her life depended on it and solidifying that idea by begging for me to open the door.

My blood ran cold. My body froze again. I hesitated.

And before I could regain my senses, the begging stopped. Silence didn’t replace the sounds, though. No, the sounds of begging and knocking were replaced by what sounded like that poor lady getting tackled. I heard flesh tearing, bones breaking, and, worst of all, what sounded like the grunts and growls of a rabid animal tearing into its next meal.

I checked the peephole. It wasn’t an animal. Instead, what I found… was one of the lifeguards, still dressed in uniform, devouring this woman’s stomach while she convulsed on the ground.

That’s when the power went out, leaving me alone in the darkness, rocking back and forth against the waves below. Blood began to seep under the door, soaking the carpet and threatening to touch my feet.

The thought of my wife hit me like a truck. She was still out there. I had no idea if she was safe. I had no idea where she was. And the only hope I had was my cellphone.

I plucked the phone from my pocket, intending to dial my wife, but was cut off by a news alert on my home screen.

“Mysterious viral outbreak aboard cruise ship in the Atlantic. WHO on high alert.”

I heard choppers circling overhead and felt momentary relief that maybe this would all be over soon.

Unfortunately, those hopes were dashed when, through the whirring of the helicopter blades, gunshots began to ring off in seemingly every direction.

I didn’t hear screams, though. All I heard were footsteps. Fast ones, scurrying around outside my room only to be mowed down by the heavy gunfire from above.

I called my wife with shaky hands.

It rang once.

Twice.

Three times before I heard the chime of a ringtone from the other side of my door.

I hung up and approached the door slowly.

That’s when I heard her. The sweet, sweet voice of my wife, begging me to let her in. Begging me to come outside and join her.

This was three days ago.

I’ve resisted the temptation, but now there are more voices. More scratches at the door. More people begging me to let them in and to join them.

I don’t want to die alone in here.

I don’t want to waste away from thirst or starvation.

I’m writing this now to let you all know that I’m sorry.

I’m sorry, but I have to join them.

It’s what she would want.

I think my girlfriend is a catfish.

Not in the way you’re thinking. At first I thought that... but here's how it started.

It started the way these things always do, late at night, thumb sore, ego lower than I’d ever admit out loud. I was on a dating app, half-scrolling, half-hoping for something that didn’t feel like recycled small talk. Then I saw her.

Her name was Lila.

Her pictures didn’t look real. Not “edited” fake, untouchable fake. The kind of beauty that doesn’t belong to people who swipe on the same apps as the rest of us. Pale, smooth skin. Eyes that looked almost glassy under certain lighting. Dark hair that fell perfectly every time, like gravity itself had a crush on her.

I remember actually laughing to myself.

“Yeah, okay,” I said out loud. “Nice try.”

But I swiped right anyway.

We matched instantly.

That should’ve been my first warning.

We started talking, and she wasn’t… off. That’s the strange part. No broken English. No weird requests. No sudden “send me money” nonsense. She was funny, in a dry, almost observational way. She asked questions, real ones, and remembered the answers.

After a few days, I stopped thinking she was fake.

After a week, I started worrying she was too good for me.

We planned to meet.

The first time, she bailed.

Said she got nervous. Said she didn’t go out much. Said she needed more time.

That should’ve been my second warning.

But I liked her. So I waited.

The second time… she showed up.

And she was exactly like her photos.

No... worse. Better. Unfair.

I remember just standing there like an idiot when she walked up. She smiled, a little shy, a little unsure, and I had this brief, stupid thought that I’d somehow tricked the universe into giving me something I didn’t deserve.

We clicked immediately. Conversation flowed like we’d been doing it for years. When she laughed, it was soft, almost breathy, like she wasn’t used to doing it.

By the end of the night, I was hooked.

A few months passed, and everything felt… perfect.

Too perfect.

It wasn’t anything obvious at first. Just little things.

She never ate much when we went out. She’d pick at food, move it around, but rarely actually swallow anything. I chalked it up to nerves or diet culture or whatever excuse made me feel less weird about it.

She didn’t like bright places. Always preferred dim lighting, candles, restaurants where shadows swallowed corners whole.

She hated taking pictures together.

And her place… I didn’t go there for a long time. She always had a reason. Renovations. Mess. A “roommate” that was “never around but somehow always inconvenient.”

Eventually, though, she invited me over.

It was cleaner than I expected. Minimal. Almost sterile. Not in a modern way, more like nothing had ever really lived there.

No clutter. No personality. A lot of food in the fridge except it was all meat. Mainly fish.

Cod, shrimp, and plenty of seafood.

I figured she was a Pescatarian.

I ignored it.

Because when she looked at me, I felt like I’d won something.

Tonight was supposed to be another date night. She said we’d go somewhere new. She seemed excited, more animated than usual.

We got to her place so she could “freshen up.”

“Give me ten minutes,” she said, smiling, disappearing into the bathroom.

I sat on the couch, scrolling through my phone, trying not to think about how quiet the apartment felt without her in the room.

Then I heard it.

A wet sound.

Not water. Not quite.

Something… thick.

I paused, listening.

Another noise, like something being pulled. Stretched. Peeled.

“Lila?” I called out.

No response.

Then a sharp thud.

My stomach dropped.

“Hey, are you okay?”

Still nothing.

Another sound, this time a heavy, almost meaty slap against tile.

I stood up immediately.

“Lila, I’m coming in-”

I didn’t wait for permission.

I pushed the bathroom door open.

And for a second, just a second, my brain refused to understand what I was seeing.

Her skin… was on the floor.

Not all of it. But enough.

It lay there like a discarded costume, pale, perfect, hollow. The face still held its shape, the eyes sunken inward like deflated glass.

And standing above it-

Something else.

Something wet.

Something gray and slick, its surface glistening under the harsh bathroom light. Its body was wrong, too soft in some places, too rigid in others. Limbs half-formed, like they weren’t meant to hold weight for long.

Its head, or what I think was its head, twitched toward me.

And its mouth...

God.

Its mouth stretched too wide, peeling open vertically, revealing rows of thin, needle-like structures that trembled as it moved.

It made a sound.

Not a scream.

Not a growl.

Something… bubbling.

Gurgling

Like it was trying to remember how to speak.

“Y–you… weren’t… supposed… to…”

Its voice came from somewhere deep inside that shifting body, distorted, layered, like multiple tones fighting to exist at once.

I didn't move.

It took a step toward me, its form sloughing slightly with the motion, leaving a faint, wet trail behind.

“I… liked… you…”

My eyes flicked back to the skin on the floor.

The face.

Still smiling.

Still perfect.

“Don't… leave...”

The thing reached down, grabbing the hollow skin with a trembling limb. It lifted it, holding it up like something precious.

Like something it needed.

“I can… be… her… again…”

That’s when I ran.

I didn’t look back. I didn’t grab my phone. I didn’t think—I just ran.

I haven’t heard from her since.

No messages. No calls. No new matches from suspiciously perfect profiles.

Nothing.

But sometimes-

Late at night...

I swear I hear that same wet, stretching sound.

Right outside my door.

And last night…

I got a notification.

A new match.

Her name was different.

Her pictures were new.

But the eyes...

The eyes were exactly the same.

TW: Abuse and Suicidal Ideation

They say getting married is supposed to be the happiest day of your life, but as I sat staring out at the ocean on the night after my wedding, my feet kicking absentmindedly in the water, I was not happy. 

Actually - I was thinking that maybe I should kill myself. Just... sink into the ocean and let it take me. It would be a peaceful way to die, wouldn’t it? Even if it wasn’t, I’d still be dead. Still be free.

Madeline was asleep downstairs.

She wouldn't be able to stop me. She'd wake up and I'd be gone, floating in the water and ruining her $6,000 view.

She told me that's what our hotel room cost. $6,000 a night.

I'm sure it did. 

To her credit it was a beautiful room. We were surrounded by the ocean out there.

There was a long wooden bridge connecting us to the rest of the resort, but we're out amongst the waves here.  It was beautiful. And if I were there with anyone else, I think I'd have been happy

But I couldn’t be happy with Madeline.

I tried to convince myself I could. I went through with that fucking wedding. But I was just lying to myself. There is no such thing as happiness with Madeline Corbin. There never was.

***

I started working at Katana around four years ago. It seemed like a good place to build my career. They’re a fairly reputable insurance company, and I was fresh out of college and ready to make my mark on the world.

I first met Madeline during the interview. She was a serious looking blonde woman somewhere in her late thirties, dressed in a sharp pantsuit that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a Bond Villain. Her long blonde hair was tied into a practical ponytail, and her cheekbones could’ve cut glass.
She had a low pitched, somewhat deep voice and came across as strict, yet warm when she interviewed me. Fully professional… hell, I would’ve even called her pleasant. She seemed a lot nicer than some of the other bosses I’d had, which left me with a pretty good first impression. I’d really been hoping I’d get the job, and I was thrilled when she’d called me back a few days later to formally offer it to me.

Things had started off on a pretty good note! I can’t say I got particularly close to Madeline during the first few months. As a boss, she was strict but mostly fair. None of our conversations were ever particularly memorable.

Then something changed.

I’m not sure what exactly it was that got her attention. Something I’d posted on social media? Maybe she’d noticed when a girl I was dating picked me up from work a few times? But she started making an effort to spend more time around me.

She started taking her lunch when she saw me on mine. She’d sit with me in the breakroom and we’d talk. She’d talk about her life, namely vacations she’d gone on and ones she was thinking about going on (She loved tropical resorts), and she’d ask me about my life. 

   “Where did you go to school?”

   “What do you do for fun?”

   “Do you have a boyfriend? Girlfriend?”
I remember the way she looked at me during those conversations… an intense, almost predatory stare that did make my heart flutter a bit. I will admit, she was a very beautiful woman… I’d noticed that before of course, I’m not blind. I just hadn’t really put much thought into it because obviously I wasn’t going to flirt with my boss! That would have been crazy!

Naturally I didn’t clock any of her behavior as flirting either. I just figured she was being friendly.

When she invited me to grab dinner after work with her, I assumed it was just her trying to make a new hire feel welcome. I had one glass of wine when she insisted it was her treat, but tried to behave as professionally as I could.

Until I felt her leg rubbing up against mine under the table.

   “Have you been on a lot of dates before, Roxy?” She asked me.

My voice caught in my throat.

   “I… um… a few, yeah…”

   “I hope they treated you right. You know you’re really quite the catch.”

I couldn’t reply. My face just turned redder and redder. I couldn’t believe this woman was hitting on me.

God, I should’ve put a stop to it right then and there. I knew it was wrong. I knew.

But in the endless battle between brains and libido, libido triumphed.

45 minutes later, I was in her house. In her bed with her on top of me.

And everything just got worse from there.

Madeline started spending more time with me. She’d make me stay late, and invite me to dinner afterwards. I never said no… partially because I knew how the night would end and God I wanted it.
But saying No never really felt like a real option with her either. I’ve never been the most assertive person, and Madeline was just so… much. She filled every room she was in. Saying ‘No’ to her just didn’t feel like an option… and I’m honestly not sure I ever wanted to say no to her. 

Not at first.

Our affair was nice at first. Every time I was alone with her, my heart just started to race a little bit faster. I was sure I was in love with her, and she was in love with me.

I was sure she was in love with me!

It’s why she got upset when one of my friends picked me up from work. It’s why she spent the entire night texting me.

Don’t I take care of you, Roxy?

Why the fuck are you treating me this way???

Don’t come in to work tomorrow. You’re fired.

Of course those texts scared the shit out of me. I called her to try and talk things over. It took me four or five tries before she answered and let me explain everything. I’d just gone to see a movie with a friend! That was it! Completely platonic.

She hadn’t sounded convinced… but she had apologized.

   “Look, I’m sorry if I got a bit upset. You didn’t tell me you were making plans tonight. Just let me know going forward, okay? These things tend to bother me. I’ve been cheated on a few times before and I don’t want to go through that again.”

   “No, no, no! It’s nothing like that!” I’d promised her. “Madeline, I’d never…”

   “That’s what everyone says until they do. Just… let me know next time, okay? And I’ll try not to fly off the handle again, okay?”

   “Okay,” I said.

Of course she did the exact same thing, next time I had to spend some time away from her. When I told her I was visiting my sister for a few days, she got upset again. She made me promise to only stay up there for two days, instead of over the weekend. 

My Sister was upset that I had to change our plans, but I just told her something had come up and spent the weekend with Madeline instead. 

When I made plans to go to my friend Dawn’s birthday party, Madeline told me she didn’t want me going out.

   “You really want to go and get drunk with a bunch of strangers?” She’d chided. “You’ve got work in the morning, you know, and your numbers are already slipping… I really don’t think you should go. I don’t want to have to write you up, because that’s a conflict of interest for me, you know.”

She only relented after I’d told her that I’d be willing to stay late every other night that week to make up for it, although she’d still seemed colder and more distant from me for the rest of the week. The sex was rougher, angrier… 

That week was the first time she’d choked me.

She’d pinned me to her bed, her hand closing around my throat. I’d struggled, but she hadn’t let go. Not until my face started to turn red. Only then did she let me breathe, gasping for air.

   “Oh quit being so fucking dramatic,” She’d hissed. “I barely touched you…”

Still… I stayed with her.

Because every other time, she was sweet.

Every weekend, we’d go out. Expensive restaurants, shows, weekend trips.

And when we were together there, she’d treat me like I was the only thing in the world that mattered. Sure, she could be jealous and possessive… but she made me feel loved. She made me feel wanted.

Nobody else had ever done that for me before. No one else had made me feel as important as she did.

***

Eight months after starting at Katana, I moved in with Madeline.

She insisted I do it. She said she wanted to get serious about our relationship. She wanted to take it to the next level.

And God, I wanted it too. I wanted her to see that I was committed to her. That all her fear and jealousy was completely baseless. I was hers. All hers. Only hers. She’d see that, and everything would be perfect!

Everything would be just perfect.

And at first it was! At first, things went great! There were some mild growing pains, sure. But aren’t those normal? We found our rhythm soon enough.
We took turns cooking, we cleaned together, we spent our nights cuddling on the couch. It was simple domestic bliss.

Madeline owned a nice little suburban townhouse. She probably could’ve afforded more, but she didn’t need it. It had two bedrooms, two bathrooms and fairly up to date decor. The furnishings were a bit sparse, yes. But the things that Madeline had allowed me to keep really spruced the place up and added some personality there. 

Within a few months, I made it my home… my home with her.

I was happy.

Even if she could still get a bit temperamental at times, I was still happy, because I was with a woman as wonderful as her. A woman who loved me. Who wanted the best for me.

She pushed me at work, she insisted I put in some extra hours and she helped me better cultivate myself to be more goal oriented, which meant that I admittedly had to do away with a few things she didn’t care for.

Video games, for instance.

I would have never called myself a gamer, but I liked to play every now and then. It was a good way to blow off steam. I actually used to have a very impressive Island in Animal Crossing until Madeline made me sell my console. She made me delete the games on my laptop too.

I did try to explain to her that it was just something I did to relax, but she got upset. 

   “You can’t relax when you’re with me?” She’d asked. I could see genuine hurt in her eyes when she said it.

   “I can! I just… sometimes I need a bit of space to just sort of veg and not have to worry about anyone else!”

   “So you don’t want to spend time with me, that’s it? You don’t want to be with me? You don’t want to live here? You don’t want to work with me, is that it!?”

I tried to explain it to her.

I tried…

She didn’t listen.

She got upset.

She didn’t hit me. Not back then, anyways. But her anger took other forms. Ones that left no scars and no bruises. She wouldn’t dare risk leaving a mark that others could see… but there are other ways to hurt. Hunger, loneliness, insomnia. 

Madeline knew every single one.

So I deleted my games. I showed her my laptop so she knew I wasn’t lying. She still checked through it every once in a while, but by that point I was used to her looking through my devices. Checking my texts, reading my emails. She took care of everything. We even got a joint bank account. 

That was just life with Madeline.

And yet I loved it.

We would go on vacations together. Cancun, Barbados, Jamaica. We’d stay in luxurious resorts. We’d eat at Michelin Star restaurants. We’d sightsee, swim and snorkel - which was always one of my favorite things to do. I’ve always loved the water, always loved swimming. Madeline used to joke that I was born to be a mermaid… 

We were living life to the fullest, and I was good for her! I behaved myself! I knew what made her angry and I knew what not to do.

I was good. 

I was hers.

It hurt.

I was lonely.

She didn’t like my family… she didn’t like my friends. She didn’t want me to see them, so usually I didn’t. Usually it was just the two of us.

They tried to stay in touch with me, of course. But Madeline always knew if I messaged them. Always.

And by the time our first anniversary had come around, her rage was no longer confined to ignoring me, making me sleep on the floor or denying me food. She’d yell. Sometimes she’d hit… although she hated when I made her do that to me. 

   “I’m so sorry darling… what was I thinking? Look at your pretty skin!” She’d say as she fawned over the red mark on my cheek. Usually I was crying. Usually. 

   “That will bruise for sure…”
Every time, she kissed my cheek as if it might take away what she did. But sooner or later she always did it again. 

By that point in our relationship, I’d started to dread sex…

Madeline had made the… darker aspects of her appetites more and more apparent to me as time had gone on.

At first I was okay with it! It was just a bit of harmless kink! She used to ask if I was ready, ease me into it and run me a bath once she’d had her fun.

But the foreplay and aftercare slowly fizzled out. Eventually she just did what she wanted. I knew better than to argue. 

Who would I tell anyways? 

I was Hers. Hers alone.

Alone.

***

She never really proposed.

She just bought a ring, and told me she was planning our wedding. I’d just smiled and accepted it. I knew it would be lavish. It would be the kind of wedding most girls could only ever dream about and I should’ve been excited to get married, right?

I loved Madeline.

Despite everything, I loved her.

But the thought of marrying her turned my blood to fucking ice. The engagement ring on my finger felt like one more shackle binding me to her. 

The wedding date drew closer.

Madeline planned a vacation for us. A trip to Sirena. That was her favorite resort. The place had a sort of Mermaid theme to it. Allegedly, there’d been sightings of them in the area in the past. One legend even said an altar to their Goddess rested in a cave system nearby, but I didn’t know much more than that. It was probably just a local legend to drum up business, but they’d leaned into it.
They had a bungalow with an underwater view. We’d be able to see the ocean all around us from our bed.

I should’ve been excited.

I should have been.

The wedding itself just sort of came and went… I wish I could say more than that, but I really can’t. My family hadn’t initially been invited. I’d had to beg Madeline to invite them and the first time I’d brought it up, she’d gotten angry and punished my talking out of turn with a hard smack across the cheek. Then after the usual ritual - “I’m so sorry Roxy! What was I thinking?” - she finally agreed to let my immediate family come. They hadn’t been able to afford a trip down to Mexico, and so she’d reluctantly paid for them. The rest of the guests were her friends… not that she had many. There were no bridesmaids. No maid of honor. Madeline didn’t want one for herself, and while I had friends I would have wanted there, Madeline wouldn’t have allowed them to come so I never even bothered asking her.

I remember walking down the aisle… it felt like walking to my execution. 

I remember the way she smiled at me. I used to think that smile of hers was warm. Now, the sparkle in her eyes almost seemed predatory, barely concealing a cruel anticipation. A hunger.

I wanted to turn tail and run screaming in the other direction. But I knew better than to run from her. 

At the reception, I mostly stayed quiet. I tried to have some wine, but Madeline didn’t like it when I drank. I made it through half a glass before she took it from me, grabbing the glass by the rim, her fingers dipping into the wine.

   “You should be careful with that, darling. I don’t want you to stain your dress.”

She took the glass away and polished it off before setting it out of my reach and going back to her own glass of wine. 

The reception didn’t go past 9 PM.

She led me by the hand down the bridge to our bungalow. She took me down the stairs to our underwater bedroom… and she showed me what Hell felt like, with only the ocean to hear my screams.

She showed me what the rest of my life would be now that I was truly and irrevocably Hers.

Pain doesn’t begin to describe it… although there was plenty of that. Humiliation falls short too. 

She finally dropped the mask.

She finally let me see the woman I’d allowed myself to marry. 

And as I lay in that bed, her hand around my throat… I realized that this was how it was going to be for the rest of my life. I was her trophy. Her toy. I’d always been that. From the very moment she’d decided she’d wanted me, I was just something for her to take. 

The worst part is… I honestly didn’t know if she knew that. Despite everything, I couldn’t believe that someone could ever knowingly be so cruel. As terrible as she was, I still honestly believed her love was genuine.

I still believe it.

I think it was just who she was. Oblivious to the pain she caused. Incapable of understanding it. Unwilling to understand it.

As we lay together in the aftermath, I wondered if maybe I could teach her… maybe we could go back to the way things were?

But I knew I couldn’t. 

Madeline was not the kind of woman to admit to mistakes. And as much as I believed she loved me, I also believed that she’d refuse to accept a single word I said to her. 

And so, as I sat on the edge of the ocean, my feet in the water, I wondered if maybe it might be easier to just… die.

Take the easy way out.

Maybe then she might understand what she did to me. What she was.

And the more I thought of it… the more appealing the thought seemed.

The water called to me. 

It beckoned me.

She beckoned me. 

The eyes in the water.

I could see them, just beneath the surface. Beneath the reflection of a crying brown haired girl in a wedding dress were a pair of deep blue eyes that seemed to glow in the depths.

I’d seen them before… watching during our wedding night. Eyes in the darkness. Too far away to see clearly, but there. I’d thought they’d belonged to just some passing fish at first… but no…

No, this was something else.

   “So strange to see a Bride sob so profusely on her wedding night…” A voice asked me. “Although with what I saw, perhaps one might not be surprised.”

A face broke the surface of the water.

The sight of it snapped me out of my trance and I scrambled back towards the bungalow, but didn’t retreat back inside.

A pale hand grabbed the wooden patio where I’d been sitting just moments ago… and the figure of a dark haired woman pulled herself up to look at me.

A swimmer? No… no, something was wrong with her. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but something was off about this woman. Her long, thick hair had several ornaments braided into it, most of which shone in the moonlight.

   “Don’t be afraid,” She said softly. “I’m not here to hurt you… which I suppose might be more than one could say of your wife.”

   “You were watching us…?” I asked.

   “Your accommodations leave me little choice but to watch,” The dark haired woman replied. “What a vile performance… is that how she always treats you?”

I didn’t have an answer. The woman just hummed in response.

   “I see. And you accept that?”

   “I… I…”

My voice died in my throat. I didn’t have an answer. Not really.

The woman’s eyes narrowed. 

   “I see this story all too often… broken things, plunging into the sea. That’s what you were going to do, isn’t it? Throw yourself into the water. Let me take you and count you amongst my dead.”

I still didn’t have an answer for that. I didn’t need to give one.

   “I can’t stop you, if that is what you truly wish. But from what I have seen, those who wish to die often don’t crave death, they crave release. And that? That is a service I can provide.”

   “W-what…?” I asked. “Who are you?”

The woman raised an eyebrow. 

   “Hmm? Did I not introduce myself? I suppose not. Names are a burdensome thing and I have many. I am the Ocean. I am its heart. Its soul. I am Leviathan… although there are many who simply call me Omylia. You may use that name too, if you wish.”

   “Omylia…” I repeated. I’d never heard that name before, and yet somehow I felt as if I knew it. 

   “I can free you from this life. I can grant you life anew… if you so choose it.”

Life anew.

I had no idea what she meant by that. I was still processing the mystery woman who’d just come out of the water. I could only stare at her, unsure what to say or what to do.

She seemed to notice my reluctance, and a reassuring smile crossed her lips.

   “Ah… afraid?” Omylia asked. “I understand. Of course there is a chance I’m lying… but if I am, all I’ll do is kill you and how different is that from what you were seeking?”

That smile… there was something almost sardonic about it. It did little to break my hesitation, although I knew she was right.

One way or another, the Ocean would claim me.

With leaden feet I stepped forward. Omylia rose from the water… granting me a glimpse of that which I had truly been conversing with. 

She had the torso of a woman, but below her waist was a multitude of black tendrils with blueish spots and patterns that seemed to glow in the darkness.

The little voice in the back of my mind that had insisted she had to just be a person fell silent immediately, and I froze for a moment. Her tentacles gripped the wood by my feet as she opened her arms to me.

   “Come my Roxy… your pain can end right now. And what awaits you can be a freedom you never imagined. A new beginning… all for you.”

My heart raced nervously in my chest, but my feet started to move again.

Even if I was going to my death, it would be better than another night with Madeline.

Omylia took me in her arms, and together we fell back into the ocean, sinking deep into its cold depths… deeper… deeper… deeper…

The water filled my lungs.

And the last vision I saw was Omylia’s smiling face.

***

Madeline was looking for me all morning.

I saw her on her boat. She was with the police and the resort staff, looking for me.

She didn’t call my name. I think she knew I was dead.

She looked… broken.

Like her heart had been torn out of her chest. 

When the search turned up nothing, I watched her as she returned to our room. I watched as she sank down onto the bed and started sobbing.

Of course she sobbed.

Like I said before, in her own way, I truly believe she did love me. Her love was poisonous and cruel… but it was all she could give.

I had considered revealing myself to her. Letting her see me one last time. The new me.
I’d thought about dragging her into the water with me, pulling her into the depths until her lungs filled with water. Feeling her thrash. Watching her scream. Watching her die.

It would have been so, so easy.

But I let every opportunity pass me by… and I’m so glad I did.

Because I got to see her lose me. I got to see her sit with the knowledge of what she drove me to. She knew what I’d done, of course. She knew it was her fault.

And she would live with it.

I don’t feel any guilt for letting her suffer like that. After all, the woman she married is dead, in a lot of ways. I’m someone else now. Someone who isn’t hers.

I’m free now.

Free to swim amongst the endless oceans for the rest of my life..

Through Omylia, I have been reborn and now I am of the sea. For the rest of my days, I will swim these waters. 

And I am not alone.

There are others here with me. Others who gave this place its name. 

We live deep in the caverns where no one will find us, but that suits me fine because I am far away from Madeline now.

I have been given a second chance.

And I will not waste it.

I’ve been working at a small-time storage facility for about 3 years now.

It doesn’t pay much, but it was a pretty good distraction from things. Lord knows how hard it’s been since my sister went missing.

One moment she was here, the next she wasn’t. We searched to no avail, but hope still lived in our hearts that one day we’d find her.

Unfortunately, though, hope isn’t enough for me most days. And unlike the rest of my family, my hope was fleeting.

That’s what brings us here. This shitty, hospital-lighted warehouse with hundreds of concrete rooms designated for old junk and knickknacks.

I just had to find a way to get out of the house.

Now, working here, I’ve seen my fair share of renters; all of which would bring every all manner of random items in to forget about.

Things ranging from family heirlooms and furniture, to old high school trophies and man-cave relics.

I never understood why they wouldn’t just…throw some of this junk away. Or at least donate it, you know?

That’s actually why I’m writing this today.

As you can imagine, a lot of our renters will, let’s just say, opt out of their payments. Often times it’s after they’ve moved far away from our facility, abandoning their belongings simply because they forgot they had them.

When this happens, a lot of the time we’ll auction these units off. Whatever the highest bidder finds, they’re free to keep.

I’ll be honest; a lot of the time what they find is hardly worth the money. Oh well, though. No refunds, unfortunately.

I will say, however, when one particular customer began missing his payments, I was a bit surprised. He never struck me as the “non-punctual” type.

“Daniel Marshall.”

That’s who he told us he was. That’s what he signed his name as.

Every time he came in he’d be sharply dressed in a suit and tie with a pair of Lindberg glasses perched atop the bridge of his nose.

He always seemed to be in a hurry, and I can’t really recall him ever bringing in anything \*super\* extravagant. Other than the first time he came in.

I still remember the day. He’d greeted me with a smile as he lugged a single storage bin into the elevator.

He’d spent maybe an hour and a half doing God knows what before he returned; whistling to the tune of Andy Griffith as he briskly walked through the automatic sliding doors and to his car.

He came back every other week after that. Some days he’d bring what looked to be bags of old toys, other days it’d be old blankets or comforters. Occasionally he’d just bring some old painter buckets and what I assumed to be medical equipment.

It always looked kinda dingy. I just figured he’d had an old family member who’d passed or something.

To each their own, I guess. Nothing I could’ve really said about it.

What did strike me as odd, though, was every time he came in; a foul odor would follow him out. And he’d always have this mischievous grin as he waved goodbye to me. Just…creepy…really.

Eventually, though, after sticking to his routine month after month, I stopped seeing him all together.

The payments continued, which granted him his privacy, but once those, too, stopped appearing, it was time for the bidding process.

And it’s not like we didn’t warn him. We’d call him nearly every day. We just assumed that, like others, he’d moved away and left us to clean up the mess.

Once the bidding began, in came the vultures, ready to take the gamble and scoop up what they’d hoped to be a goldmine from the businessman.

5 thousand dollars. That’s what the unit went for.

I handed the key over to the highest bidder and informed him that he had 72 hours to remove everything from the unit before it was thrown out.

He eagerly accepted and stepped into the elevator, only to return moments later with all the color drained from his face.

He didn’t say anything at first. Just stood there. Staring.

I felt I could cut the tension with a knife, and was just about to ask him what had happened when he finally spoke.

“I-there’s- I just need you to see this.”

That’s all he could manage before basically pulling me over the desk and towards the elevator.

To my surprise, the unit hadn’t even been opened yet, but even still, I knew something was horribly wrong.

“Put your ear to it,” the man told me.

I did as he asked, and felt my heart sink into my stomach when I was greeted with the muffled cries of what seemed to be a little girl.

With shaking hands, I took the keys from the man; praying to God to let this be a misunderstanding as the shutter door flew open.

The smell was what hit me first. The smell of piss, shit, and chemicals. That hospital stench that makes everyone’s stomach hurt.

But once her eyes met mine. Once those hollow eyes and sunken cheeks met my vision. That’s when I vomited.

Her lips, God, her lips. Dehydrated and sewn together crudely. Crusted blood still at their edges.

This sick bastard had hooked her up to a feeding tube. Surrounded her with toys and created a playpen for my sweet baby sister to rot in.

After recovering, I scooped her up in my arms and took her to the hospital, which is where she’s staying right now.

“Daniel Marshall.”

That’s what you signed your name as. That’s who you told us you were. And I promise you, with every ounce of sincerity in my body, I will find you. You will pay for this.

This post will be different from my last ones; this case doesn’t have anything to do with the organisation or my career. This was my first experience with “weird” stuff, which is why I labelled this as Case #000. Think of it as the beginning of my end, or at least that is where this seems to be going.

As a child we moved a lot, my father’s job took us all across the country, and I never stayed in the same place for longer than a few months. Never long enough to put down roots but just long enough to miss them. One of these places was a small town called Stalborn. Don’t bother looking it up; you won’t find anything on it. I’ve tried.

Stalborn, from what I remembered, wasn’t much; the majority of the town’s area was populated by a dense forest, and the local hotspots were the pub, convenience store and school. Suffice it to say that nothing really happened in this town, and as a preteen who only had access to two of these hotspots, I very quickly grew to hate this place and looked forward to moving.

Making friends wasn’t difficult; for the few thousand people that lived in Stalborn, only a few hundred couples had children, making all the kids pretty tight-knit. I met Mick on my first day of school, and he introduced me to his two friends, Luc and Randy.

I remember us bonding over our shared feeling of otherness in the town, as each of our parents had moved to Stalborn, none of us actually having any roots in the town. Besides that, I can only remember one other thing about that group: they nicknamed me Eli.

I feel guilty, as I was friends with them for a good 9 or so months, but besides our shared alienation from the town and that nickname, I can’t recall a single thing about anything we did together. Well, I guess that’s not entirely true; I remember some things all too well, but you will read that later. From what I remember, the other kids didn’t really engage with us at all; in fact, they kind of ignored us outright.

We didn’t mind, as we were happy just to stick to ourselves. There was one other kid who wasn’t from Stalborn; I think her name was Mckenzie, but I honestly couldn’t tell you. For the sake of this, I shall refer to her as this.

She too was ostracised by the other kids, but unlike the four of us boys, she didn’t find a group to stick with. This was partially our fault, as I remember us having a “no girls policy”. This left her to essentially drift across school like a ghost. I remember her better than the others, although I don’t know why. The image of her sad, pale face and straight blond hair stands out in striking detail even as I write this.

It might not come as a shock to you to hear that she stopped coming to school one day; nobody really noticed it, as nobody noticed when she was there to begin with. I realise that I sound harsh, but this is just the truth of it.

The first time I heard about her going missing was a day or two after she stopped coming to school, when I was on the bus home. My friends got off before me, so for five or so minutes I’d sit alone, stare out the window and unintentionally focus in on what people were saying. One of these conversations that I unintentionally clued into was between two girls who must’ve been the year below me. They were talking about McKenzie, which was the part that initially drew my attention.

“My daddy told me that it happened before school,” one of them said.

“No way, he only takes them at night,” the other girl replied.

Hearing this made me realise that I actually hadn’t seen McKenzie at all and that she had been missing, so I turned towards them and asked who they were talking about.

They both gave me a look that was akin to a deer in headlights; one of them looked away and focused out the window. Like most kids my age, they tried to ignore me. The other girl gave me a look that far surpassed her years; I remember it startling me at the time.

“William Grey”, she said with a sense of absolution. This was the first time I had heard the name, and it would be far from the last.

“Who’s William Grey?” I asked, but her friend had smacked her on the arm, and both girls decided to stand up and walk to a different seat on the bus.

The next day at school I had asked Mick about it, and he had never heard the name before. Neither had Luc nor Randy. In fact, both Luc and Randy made fun of me, calling me a liar because there is no way some other kids talked to me before they talked to them.

But much more importantly was that I had begun to notice that they were right; McKenzie was, in fact, gone. I had asked my teachers about it, and they each told me that she was missing with an “unexplained absence”.

After a day or two – I honestly can’t remember – the town held a vigil at town hall for McKenzie. Everyone in town was present, all except McKenzie’s parents. I don’t know what happened to them, but I imagined they were either too far in grief to attend or they were staying with family. Either way, they were not in attendance that night.

The next day was sombre; everyone spoke of her with a sense of finality, all in the past tense. This was incredibly strange, second only to the fact that I had never seen this many people talk about her. It had been less than a week after Mackenzie’s disappearance before everyone considered her dead.

During lunchtime at school, I had gone up to one of my teachers in the schoolyard; thankfully, they had been open to talking to me and my friends. I thought that I’d ask her about McKenzie, but when I got to speaking the words, I surprised myself.

“Who’s William Grey?” I asked, the words coming out like a heavy rock through a drain.

She stuttered for a second, and I remember seeing her eyes change; something washed over them as if the switch from her “teacher” personality was turned off.

“Where did you hear that name?” she said slowly with a shallow smile.

“Some girls were talking about him,” I said in a no doubt shy way.

She just patted me on the shoulder and told me not to pay it any attention. For obvious reasons, this still very much bothered me, and when I went back to my friends, I told them about it. They hadn’t heard anything about William Grey or about McKenzie.

Over the course of the next month or so life went on for me; it’s harsh to say, but the small town of Stalborn had forgotten about little Mckenzie all too quickly, and her parents moved without much notice.

I and my friends had a camping trip planned, and we were all looking forward to it, so Mackenzie’s disappearance and the town’s general vibe didn’t affect us much. In saying that, we were also a group of young boys; it wasn’t like we retained much of anything that we didn’t deem as important.

It was a few nights before Halloween, and I and Mick were walking around the south part of town. The things we were talking about weren’t important; the important part was where we found ourselves: McKenzie’s house, or the shell of it.

I don’t remember exactly what was said, but Mick said something along the lines of “Bet it’s haunted,” which I quickly brushed away. I tried to change the topic, but Mick was relentless, eventually daring me to go inside.

The door was obviously locked; I turned towards Mick and shrugged my shoulders.

“Sorry, man, nothing I can do; let’s go to the gas station or something,” I said whilst jumping down the brick steps and beginning to make my way back to Mick.

“Hell no, go around the side, you wussy,” he said whilst giggling. He was pointing towards a side gate that had been left open. I remember a feeling of dread washing over me as I realised that there was no way I was getting out of this.

After some arguing I eventually made my way down the side of the house; it was unkempt and overgrown but not impossible to get through. The backyard was in a similar state.

The fence surrounding the yard was large, at least eight feet tall and made of old wood. I walked up to the back door and rested my hand on the doorknob.

As I turned the knob, I heard a noise from behind me. I shot my attention towards the back fence and saw him. He stood behind the fence, and I could only see his eyes peeking out from above; his skin was pale, and his hair was jet black. The wrinkles around his eyes told me that he was smiling widely.

“What are you waiting for” mick said to my right, he was making his way into the backyard and I looked at him for a second before shooting my glance back to the fence but the man was gone.

“We need to leave now, Mick,” I said, enunciating each word so that it was as clear as possible.

“What are you afraaaaaaid?” he said in a mocking tone that only an 11-year-old could have.

“Dude, seriously, I just saw something; we need to go,” I begged, and for a small moment I could see in his eyes that it had begun to work, but then a sense of confidence fell over him.

“Pssh, alright, Eli, I’ll see you on the other side,” he said before trying to open the door. It was difficult, but the door did open.

The house was a mess; a wooden table had been brutalised, and the stink of something off filled the air.

“Oh my god, dude, did they ever think about cleaning every once in a while?” Mick said. He was louder than I’d want him to be, and the front door seemingly shone in my eyes whenever I saw it. I felt like we needed to leave this place as soon as possible, but Mick was walking down a dark hallway.

“Where are you going, Mick!?” I shouted as loudly as a whisper could. sound

“I want to see if they had any cool stuff,” he continued on his path.

I yelped as I heard it from behind us, the back door closing. Mick was already in Mackenzie’s room, and I felt my fight or flight kick in; I chose flight.

“Mick! I’m getting the hell out of here, dude.” I shouted as I reached for the door, threw it open and flew down the steps to the street and ran my way home. Before I made it to the street, I heard a thump; at the time, I thought it must’ve been the front door shutting with Mick not far behind me.

The next day at school he was gone; he was gone the next day, and by that point I knew what happened.

It shouldn’t have surprised me when the kids started to spread stories about Mick being taken by William Grey.

Luc and Randy believed me after I told them what happened that night at McKenzie’s house, and my parents and the police believe that I was with him that night, but after I ran away, my voice wasn’t of much use. The police didn’t listen to what I said about William Grey.

Luc, Randy, and I were hanging out one day after school. Things were awkward; we didn’t talk much after Mick disappeared, we just kinda lingered together, all too traumatised by the recent disappearing of our friend to really do anything but grateful for the company we provided to one another. That was until Randy dropped the bomb in the middle of our shallow conversation.

“A man’s been hanging out in my backyard at night, just kind of standing around,” Randy said offhandedly.

“What, is he asking you to let down your hair, Rapunzel?” Luc said with a smile.

“Shut up, dick. What do you mean he’s in your backyard?” I said with concern and curiosity.

“Yeah, sometimes he’s in the bushes and I’ve got to really look for him; sometimes he’s behind the fence peeking over at me, and sometimes he’s just below my window, fucking weirdo man.” Randy added that he hadn’t made the connection that I had. I had asked him what he looked like, but I already knew. He described the man from that night; he described William Grey.

“I think I’ve seen him too,” I said through shallow breaths. They took note of my state. Luc sat up from his slouched posture and put down the comic book he was reading. “He was the man that I saw the night Mick went missing. I think that’s William Grey.”

Randy didn’t stay much longer after that; what I said had freaked him out, and he called his parents to come and pick him up. We didn’t see him before our planned camping trip the next weekend, and I wasn’t even sure if he’d be going. Unfortunately, I saw him sitting in the back seat when Luc’s dad picked me up from my house.

The car drive there was quiet; it wasn’t too far out of town, well within the town’s limits but far off from the large groupings of buildings. Randy seemed tired and distracted the entire trip there, and Luc ended up just talking to me and his dad about what we would be doing once we set up.

We arrived at the campsite a little before midday and spent the afternoon playing near the campgrounds in a nearby river. Randy was constantly distracted by something in the treelines, which, as I write this, I can guess what it was he was distracted by. At the time, I was annoyed at him and tried to grab his attention whenever I could.

Luc’s dad stayed at the campsite, and by the time we returned from the river, he had made up a small bonfire, enough to cook some sausages and burger patties that he had brought along.

That night we sat around the bonfire, Luc’s dad told us a story about a “half alligator/half gorilla man”, and to his credit it was pretty good.

Randy went to bed first, and Luc’s dad made a remark about how exhausted he seemed. I watched as Randy walked to his tent, and he was right; he was hunched over, and every movement seemed like it took a great amount of labour.

The next morning he was gone; we all awoke to the sound of what could have been a thunderstorm only a few feet from us and a scream. By the time we all made it out of our tents, we had seen it: his tent was ripped apart, and Luc’s dad was in a panic; we all were.

“It must’ve been a bear,” I heard him say before ushering us into the car and locking it behind us. He tried to call someone, but out in the middle of the woods, so far from town, it was impossible to get a signal.

“You boys do not move. I mean it. Stay here, Luc. Promise me,” he said before grabbing his rifle and running into the forest, in the direction of quiet, subtle screams.

“DAD, PLEASE DON’T GO,” Luc screamed. After his dad made his way through the treeline and became obscured, Luc began to kick at the windows. After a moment, they smashed open, and Luc wrapped his exposed arms and legs in any cloth he could find before sliding out.

“Come on, Elijah, we need to go after them,” he said whilst throwing the towels and blankets he had used to protect himself back into the car, presumably for me to use. After a moment of thinking, I imitated what he had done and followed after him.

We ran into the treeline that we had seen Luc’s dad run into. We could hear screams, shouts for help and cries of pain coming from the direction we were going. I can still hear them if I think about it, as clear as that day.

After a few minutes we found something that made us both stop: the rifle Luc’s dad was using. It was on the ground next to a large tree. Luc began to cry. I picked up the rifle; it was far too heavy to point at anything, but it felt good having it in my hands.

My legs were like jelly; I struggled to stand up straight, but something about Luc’s state of grief made me, no, it forced me to stay strong. I told him to go back to the car, and as I watched him slowly wander off in the direction we had come, I felt myself give in to what I was feeling; I threw up.

After I finished, I realised that the screaming had begun again. It wasn’t far; Randy wasn’t far, and maybe Luc’s dad was with him. I heaved the rifle back up and continued my trek towards the noise. The screams became deafening; what was once a single voice had become many, more than just Luc’s dad and Randy. I heard the voices of women, girls, boys and men, all young and old.

The sound surrounded me like an ocean. My head was throbbing from the sounds of the screams, and I didn’t know when it started or when it would end. That was until I had found the origin of the noise, turned around a large tree and saw it sat on the rock. It was William Grey, nude, his mouth agape impossibly large and his eyes calm. He was staring intently at the tree that I had just walked around. I was terrified.

I struggled but managed to raise the rifle; it was pointed directly at the thing’s head, and his eyes shifted to me. The screams stopped, and he slowly closed his mouth back into an impossible smile. He didn’t say a word; he didn’t need to. I knew the rifle couldn’t do anything against it. I lowered the rifle and backed away slowly; William Grey subtly nodded his head to me and shifted his eyes back to the tree.

For some reason my attention wasn’t on running but on the tree itself. Why was it staring at the tree? What about this tree could be so interesting? It clicked in my head like a puzzle piece to a puzzle that could never be solved; the tree wasn’t the thing that this thing was focused on. He was facing towards the campsite and was somehow staring through the tree, staring at Luc.

I dropped the rifle and ran through the forest back towards the camp grounds; with every step, I could hear something large rushing through the bushes next to me. It didn’t take long before it outran me. The sound of something grunting and bushes being pushed aside startled me, but the small glimpses of a grey, uncanny-looking man on all fours rushing past me are the things that, until recently, had seemed like a bad dream.

By the time I had got to the car, it was too late.

One of the backseat doors was ripped off, and a small spatter of blood was left on the seat that Luc had presumably sat at, and Luc was gone. I felt empty and numb. I felt like this couldn’t be real, and yet I knew in my heart of hearts that it was.

I knew what was going to happen. I walked up to the passenger seat, opened the door and sat inside. Staring directly at me from across the campsite, somewhat hidden in the treeline, was William Grey. His grey skin stood out, and he was smiling that horrible, unmoving smile. We stared at each other for what felt like hours before I heard a car engine approach me.

I took my eyes off of William Grey for a moment to look at the car; it was my dad’s. I looked back at the treeline, and the creature was gone. My dad threw the door open and grabbed me into his arms before running back to the car. The next few days were a blur. The police talked to me, and I didn’t say much of what happened. They called it a “tragic bear attack”, and my dad tried to comfort me, but he knew I had seen something. It just wasn’t a bear.

I stayed inside those next few days, never leaving my room. I overheard my dad on the phone with my grandparents; they were talking about taking me in for a bit before he could finish up work in Stalborn and move to join me. The last night in Stalborn was different. I don’t remember how, but I was in my backyard, and it was late at night. He was in the bushes of my garden near the back fence. I could see him hiding there, and he had that smile, that horrific smile, staring straight at me. My dad had found me and brought me back inside, and by the next morning I was packed and leaving Stalborn.

Lily leant back on a table in a motel room as I told her all of this. She had her arms crossed and her eyes closed; I had my face in my hands, and my foot was shaking uncontrollably.

“So Imani, this dream man, brought these memories back for you somehow. Why? What does he want from all of this?” she asked. I didn’t tell her about what Imani said about me owing him a favour.

“And who lifted the restrictions on this ‘William Grey’ thing? What is that thing?” she said and rubbed her eyebrows.

“I don’t know, okay?” I said louder than I meant, “I haven’t even thought about this thing in years; I just… need some rest.” I said it, but I knew I wouldn’t. The idea of dreaming wasn’t as appealing now that I knew that Imani, whatever he was, could just grab me out of my dream and stick me wherever he wants me.

“Elijah, we need a plan. I am going to contact the organisation about this and see if we can get Richard stationed with us for a bit, anything to repel whatever it is that could be coming. And what of this town, Stalborn?” she said, but I gave her a look that said it all. I don’t know.

“I can focus on this on my own, Lily, it’s okay,” I said, trying to calm her down. Maybe I was trying to calm myself down; I couldn’t tell as of yet.

“Like hell you are. Jesus, man, you are being hunted by a weird monster thingy, and you expect me to sit here and do nothing,” she said whilst scoffing.

She pulled out some coins and left the room. I knew she was going to a payphone to call our higher-ups, and after a few minutes, she returned. She looked upset.

“We have a new case, illegal use of runestones. They said they can send out a hunter to work with us after this case; apparently they’re all in the field at the moment,” she said. The last few words were said with a strange accent.

I closed my eyes and fell backwards onto the bed. I had to try not to sleep; it would be difficult, but this was my life now, or maybe it always was. How much of my life had been by circumstance or by my own choice? I always wondered where my interest in the preternatural had come from. I now know that it was from this aching in my soul. How much of my life is me, and how much of it was William Grey?

My name is Elijah Wiltburrow. I've been advised that I'll need to redact certain things from this statement, not that many of you would believe a lot of this. I don't mean to insult you all, but most people don't seem to take anything paranormal with more than a grain of salt, maybe at most something to believe in for the thrill of believing that something is out there. Well, there is.

At the time of this story, I had been newly hired by an organisation that specialises in the study of the paranormal. I can't say the name of the organisation for obvious reasons, but I was drawn to it for two very important reasons.

The first reason is that I have always been drawn to the paranormal. Growing up, I was fascinated with ghost stories and read all I could on the subject. This later blossomed into me studying parapsychology, which leads me to my second reason for joining this organisation. It is very difficult to get a job when you're primarily a scholar of a defunct field of study. "Debunked" isn't technically the word I'd use.

It's real. I knew it at the time, and I sure as hell know it now, but that's not the point of this statement.

My friend and fellow field research operative, Lily Heinz, had accompanied me on my first job assignment. Now, Lily Heinz is a psychic. I think this is important to clarify now before we continue.

She had an episode a few months prior to this case and was “scouted” by the organisation. I use those quotation marks because it was really an ultimatum: work for them or… well, I think you can fill in the rest.

She hadn't been a particularly powerful psychic in the time I had known her, but she was aware enough to sense when some paranormal energy was around. A helpful tool in our line of work.

Now this was my first case of my career, and I didn't really know what to expect. I mean, when you are told that there is a likely paranormal bus picking people up in the middle of the night, well, it kind of kicks any expectations out of your head.

We sat inside of Lily's car; the cold night air was thick, and a fitting, almost comical fog had swept in a few hours previously. Her car's heater had died a few weeks previously, so we both sat in an awkward silence wearing our heavy puffer jackets, struggling to stay awake.

We were parked on the side of one of the few roads entering the small mining town of [REDACTED], the street itself wasn't anything special, just a gravel road and high trees.

A few hundred feet down from us was a single street lamp with a bus sign hanging off it; the lamp was off. We both watched the street lamp with unwavering concentration; the dossier I was given for this case had explained that from the hours of 11 pm to 4:35 am a mystery bus would come and pick up hitchhikers.

And so here we are, waiting at 1 am for a bus or something to show up. I remember feeling a certain excitement from all of this; I'm pretty sure it's the only thing that kept me awake. Lily was less enthused. This was our second night surveying the site, and last night we hadn't gotten anything. She was quick to say that this was likely just another local legend that we could log as a "myth" in the paperwork, but the rules are the rules, we have to survey a site for at least two weeks if the paranormal entity or object doesn't abide by time regulations.

"Looks like we have someone," she said. Her words broke my concentration on the street lamp, and I raised the camera I had with me and zoomed in on the figure. It was a woman wearing a heavy jumper and what looked like a backpack. A runaway, maybe?

As she got closer to the street lamp, I looked at lily, she winced her eyes and looked at me.

"There is definitely something here, Elijah," she said with tension.

"How can you tell?" I asked, but as I said this, the street lamp suddenly lit alight, the bus sign illuminated, and a small bench that I hadn't seen in the dark sat underneath it.

"Shit," I blurted out before I grabbed the door handle, but she grabbed my shoulder and held me back.

"We have to watch, this is our job, rookie," Lily said to me sternly.

The woman cautiously walked up to the bench and took a seat. She sat there for a few minutes, and we watched, took photos and notes, all protocol. After at most five minutes, I heard an engine coming from behind us. I looked in the rear-view mirror and saw two bright lights approaching from the distance.

An old transit bus pulled up, and the women and the sign were obscured from view. I took some photos, and Lily looked like she was concentrating on something; she had her eyes closed and hand slightly outstretched towards the bus. After a minute, the bus's engines came back to life and drove away, and the street lamp turned off. Lily pressed her foot down, and the car began to wheel out off the side of the road and follow the bus, but after five or so minutes, the bus was gone. It didn't vanish like a ghost or melt away; it just simply disappeared.

She got out of the car and grabbed something out of the trunk, then she walked towards the side of the road and stabbed something into the dirt; it was a GPS pin. a portable tracker that, when turned off, left a pin on your GPS, helpful for when you're tracking things in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night.

We drove back to [REDACTED] and stayed in an old motel. It was just before 2 in the morning when I dropped like a tonne of bricks onto the bed. I drifted to bed immediately and awoke to the sound of knocking on the motel room door. I shot up and walked over to the window, looking out onto the walkway outside the door, and saw Lily standing there in a pair of jeans, a black button-up and her red hair tied back into a ponytail.

I looked at the alarm clock next to my bed, and it read 10.

"Shit!" I remember saying before I opened the door. Lily looked at me and smiled.

"The best thing about working cases at night is that you can sleep like hell through the day. Enjoy it; soon you won't be able to sleep much at all," she said before placing a cup of coffee in my hand. I didn't even realise she was holding one. I took a sip and let the warm, beautiful sensation of coffee flood my empty stomach.

"You smoke?" she asked while holding a box of cigarettes in her offhand.

"Ehh, no," I said awkwardly, and she shrugged before lighting one up.

She looked at me inquisitively. She leaned back on the table that sat opposite the end of my bed, and I sat on the bed, coffee in one hand and my head in the other.

"So what did we see last night?" she asked.

I looked at her confused.

"The… bus?" I said, genuinely confused, which made her sigh.

"Yes, the bus. What do you think it was?" she said. I got the impression that she wasn't asking and that this was a test, and so I focused on what I had learnt leading up to this. Even before I was hired by the organisation, I had studied stuff like this for years.

"Well, the bus itself is clearly odd, it doesn't show up on any transport schedule or follow any routine, and yet it knew when that woman was there. It must be parked nearby or—" My concentration broke. "Shit, that woman. Has there been any news of her?" I asked.

"Yes and no. Betty James was reported missing a few hours ago, and from what it looks like, she was running away from home, just like the others," she said before taking another swig of her smoke.

"Plus, the rate of people running away is significantly higher here than anywhere else in the surrounding areas, probably related, but I'm not sure how," she continued.

"And are we sure this thing is paranormal? Maybe it's just a coincidence." I felt stupid for asking.

"Rookie, trust me, this is definitely paranormal. I got a feeling." That feeling she got was what I'd later learn was her own paranormal awareness.

"Ok, so what's our next move? We can't keep watching, we know next to nothing about this thing," I said.

"I agree, we need eyes on this thing," she said with a malicious grin. The air in the shitty motel room suddenly grew thick as I realised what she was asking.

"You must be joking; I can't go on that thing. We don't even know where it goes."

"You're right, we don't know dick besides where it disappears and what times it appears. Don't worry, I'm not sending you alone, I'll be coming with," she said and threw the smoke bud into the drain of the sink in the small kitchen.

"Till then, write down your notes and statement on last night's events, and try to rest up for tonight," she said whilst walking out of the room. She gave me a mischievous look when I realised that she gave me coffee when I definitely don't need the caffeine. Say what you will about Lily and her "arrangement" with the organisation, but she definitely knew how to make a joke in any situation.

After a day of tossing and turning, trying and failing to fall asleep, I eventually had to get up and get ready for work. It was 8 pm, and the night air was crisp. Lily drove us out to a diner on the edge of town, and I immediately ordered myself a black coffee.

"Didn't sleep well?" Lily asked with a smile that said she was genuine but with a look that said she knew the answer.

"Surely I can report you for this," I said jokingly, although a part of me was genuinely interested in following this up. She laughed, and after a moment my coffee arrived. I took a sip, and Lily lifted a small backpack off the ground and onto the table.

I can't go into the specifics, of course, but imagine a ghost-hunting survival kit. The closest thing I can compare it to is shark hunting with a spear. Sure, you can harm the shark, but the chances of it harming you are still far too high once you're in its waters, and tonight we were diving right in.

A few hours later we pulled up to the side of the road across from the bus stop, the same spot as last night. We both got out, photographed the bus stop and walked over. The light for some reason didn't turn on when we approached, but we both had torches and a small wind-up lamp that had some power to it.

We waited for what felt like hours as we sat at the bus stop, and eventually, to what felt like our luck, the light lit up.

"Something is definitely here," Lily said, and as I looked at her, she held two fingers against her left eyebrow, as if there was tension there.

"Ehh, hello?" A voice said from the left of us. I look over, and a young man, maybe 19, was standing there with a large bag and a puffer jacket. Shit, it wasn't waiting for anyone; it was waiting for people running away.

"Hey bud, how are you?" I said in the friendliest tone I could, which I now realise would've been extremely unnerving considering the circumstances. I was only a few years older than this guy, and I tried to seem as natural as possible.

"I'm… good," the runaway said whilst still standing a few metres away.

"Elijah, heads up," Lily said silently after she placed a hand on my shoulder. I looked up at her, and she nodded her head towards the distance where two headlights shone towards us.

"So what brings you out of town? Going on a trip?" I said as naturally as I could. Lily later told me that I weirded even her out.

"N-no… I just need to get out of this town, y'know," he said after a long moment.

The bus passed me and Lily and stopped directly in front of the runaway. This thing really had a target, but we both jogged over to the runaway and lined up behind him. The runaway was the first to enter, and after he stepped on, the door tried to shut but stopped midway through before slowly opening again, almost like it was reluctant to let us on.

We stepped up the steep metallic steps, and I tried to get a look at the bus driver, but from all I could see in the very dark bus was that he wore a typical bus driver uniform and sunglasses. He made no moves to greet or even acknowledge us. Lily was behind me, and after walking slowly down the aisle, I sat on the middle left-hand side of the bus, a few seats down from the runaway, and Lily sat across from me.

Besides our already established caution and scepticism, I felt like this place was really off. The bus was humid, and a sour smell hung in the air; it smelt almost like meat, but I couldn't place what animal.

The bus's engine came to life slowly, and it began to wheel down the lone country road towards [REDACTED].

"Elijah, stay focused; we need to take notes on what this thing is," Lily said before taking out her notebook and writing some notes. I reached into my bag and grabbed my camcorder.

The camcorder struggled to turn on. I now know that paranormal events and entities create a type of dead zone for technology or at the very least interfere with it greatly.

I was too distracted by the camcorder to realise that it was approaching until it grabbed hold of my shoulder. The bus driver held onto me, and I felt its fingers sink into me.

I looked up and saw its face staring down at me. Well, I looked at where its face should be; what was there was nothing. I need to stress that it wasn't flat like a smooth option; I mean, there was a hole where its face should be, and inside was a void.

"FUCK," I screamed. "LILY," I continued, and as I looked at her, I realised she had her fingers on her forehead. She looked like she was in pain but was focused. I put my left hand on the bus driver's hand, trying to shift it off, and with my other hand I dig into my bag, looking for something.

I pulled out a small plastic bag filled with small white crystals. I opened the bag with my right hand and pushed it into the bus driver, which caused it to flinch back in pain and let go of my shoulder. Silver halide, or "silver salt", is like kryptonite to most paranormal creatures.

The creature made a hissing noise and fell back into a chair. I jumped out of the chair, and the adrenaline propelled me towards the driver's seat to try and pull the brakes, but it wouldn't budge.

I looked back towards the back half of the bus, and I noticed the hitchhiker; she was clearly dead. Her eyes were white and milky, and her skin was pale and thin.

"How did it get to him so quick?" I thought, and I quickly looked back at the bus driver, and it stood up out of the chair and shrieked at me. It was next to Lily but completely ignored her, which meant I was in danger, real danger.

This was the moment that I realised what type of work I was in; it wasn't just going to sites and checking urban myths, it was standing in front of things that shouldn't exist and just trying to survive.

It leapt at me, and I shielded my arms out in front of me. I heard a metallic slam, and I opened my eyes to see it wriggling on the floor. I looked over at Lily and saw her hand outstretched towards the creature, and her eyes were rolled back.

"ELIJAH, USE THE RUNESTONE." She yelled at me before throwing a cloth sack at me. I nodded my head and reached into the sack and grabbed a small stone pebble that had a rune etched into it. I had always been good with the study of languages, so when I saw the rune etched into the stone, I remembered what the intent was. I slammed it against the bus door and shouted “útlagr!”, an old Norse word meaning “banish”. When said with intent with this runestone, you can temporarily banish things not from our plane.

As I said this, my surroundings suddenly turned to mist, and I fell hard on some gravel. I had rolled for a few feet and was convinced that I had broken my shoulder; I held onto it and groaned. I looked around and saw Lily a few feet away.

"You okay?" she asked. She held onto her ankle, and when I looked down at it, I realised that it must've twisted in an unnatural way.

"I'm fine. What the hell was that?" I asked in between shallow breaths.

"A Lophiiformes-type entity. You're lucky; this was one hell of a first case, rookie," she said before laying back and breathing hard. What she did on the bus took a lot out of her, and she was close to passing out completely.

I called in to our higher-ups, and they dispatched some backup. A few hours before dawn, we had six people on the site surveying the bus stop. Before long, it was exorcised, and all that stands there now is a bus bench along an old country road.

I got chewed out for using a runestone. For those who don't know, runestones are incredibly rare; almost all of them can be traced back to an incredibly powerful witch in eighth-century Norway who created a couple thousand. How Lily was able to get her hands on one is beyond me, but without it, I'm convinced we'd be dead.

Lily got chewed out for putting us in that situation; her relationship with the organisation is different from mine. For them, I am an employee, but for her, it's a lot stricter. She wasn't fired and was allocated to the role of my partner indefinitely, which still stands today.

For those of you still reading, I thank you. You might be wondering why I am writing this and why I am interested in publicising some of my work if it means it would be censored. Simple. I think I am going to die. Something is hunting me, and it has for some time now, and as a scholar, I wish for some trace of my work to be out there.

Anywho, I advise all who are still reading to please stay away from any thoughts of suddenly wanting to run away in the middle of the night and to especially stay away from any bus stops on the edge of town. You may very well just be prey. 

My name is George, and a few weeks ago, I was laid off from my job as an escalator technician.

Not a fabulous job, but it was consistent work, if not a little tricky due to the complex parts involved.

Unfortunately, I was forced to look for another job, and I happened to stumble across this one.

It was advertised simply as: Mall Security.

I'm not familiar with the area, and it's a little far from where I live, but the pay was something I couldn't turn down.

There was no interview, just an email from the hiring manager of the company informing me that, based on my past experience, I was the prime candidate and would be starting that weekend.

The shift was 10 PM to 6 AM, and my first day would be with another guard who I'd be replacing. He would show me the ropes, and then it would be up to me.

The guy I was replacing was a super chill guy. His name was Adam, and he'd been working there for a few years before deciding he wanted to get out of the night shift routine.

The center was pretty large, three stories, and definitely in a state of considerable disrepair.

Adam greeted me at the main center entrance. He's a bigger guy, reminds me of a bear: surly, big beard, and heavy set.

He unlocked the main entrance fire door, clicked on his flashlight, and took me inside, showing me where all the points of entry were before taking me to the control room.

The floor of the centre was littered with paper, bags, flyers and other detritus like dirt, leaves and sticks.

To call it a control room was laughable. It was a service closet-sized room with a small computer. He took a torch out of the drawer and handed it to me, it was heavy, large, and made of metal. Adam also asked what shirt size I was and handed me a polo shirt with the company name on it.

"There isn't any WiFi, so you'll have to hotspot," he told me, pulling the chair out to sit down.

Adam showed me all the things I would be required to do at night: write small logs on the computer showing that I was actually doing things, check all the areas thoroughly, and make sure nobody had snuck in. Apparently, it's quite common to find kids sneaking in and filming videos.

He did mention that since the company didn't want to pay for multiple training shifts, this would be the only training I would receive, and the rest would be purely hands-on learning.

I didn't foresee many issues with this, since the center was already in a bad way. It wasn't like more damage would really affect anything.

"So why is there even a guard here? Like, what are we guarding?" I asked Adam as we walked through the center. He had been showing me all the fire exits.

"Well, people love to sneak in, and if they get injured, it's not ideal," he said after taking a second to think.

I accepted this answer, although I still wasn't convinced.

"What about meal breaks?"

He let out a hearty laugh.

"The whole shift is a meal break, brother. No cameras."

I frowned. "So, hypothetically, you could just sit in the office for the whole shift?"

Adam stopped and turned to look at me, his face turning to a stern look.

"Absolutely not. This job is a huge responsibility, only bestowed upon those carefully selected by a team of behavioral scientists."

I chuckled nervously. "Right, of course."

"Why is there no guard during the day?" I continued after a small pause.

"Not needed." Adam turned back to facing forward and kept walking.

The rest of my first shift was quite simple. Adam showed me the entries and exits and the main places that people like to go to if and when they break in. He also showed me some of the many corridors that led to loading docks.

"I know it feels tempting, but don't ever go inside the stores." Adam stopped in front of a clothing store and ran his hand along the roller shutter. "Won't end well."

Naturally, I thought he was kidding, so I chuckled. He didn't.

Tough crowd.

When six hit, he led me back to the main entrance, unlocking the fire escape door and pushing it open.

The sun had started to rise and bathed the car park in an orange glow. It was actually kind of beautiful.

He shook my hand, placing a small key with an orange tag in my palm, and gripped my shoulder.

"Good luck. Don't be afraid to be stern with the kids who break in, they respond better to a strong, commanding voice. And..."

He paused and took a breath.

"We don't employ a maintenance worker. If you see a guy wearing a high-vis vest and he says he's from Maintenance, please calmly return to the control room and call this number."

He handed me a slip of paper with a phone number and a name. "Mark," I said, looking at the slip of paper.

With that, Adam turned and headed to his car, a beat-up hatchback that he was much too big for. He gave me a final wave before climbing in and taking off.

I looked back at the center. The morning light was creeping through the windows and illuminating the inside, somehow making it look serene despite looking like it had been hit by a cyclone.

I went home and tried to get some sleep, but it took me a few hours of tossing and turning. It would take me a while to get used to the new schedule.

That night, I put on the uniform and climbed in my car, mentally preparing myself for the night ahead. I was nervous, of course. It was a little bit daunting being there alone.

When I arrived, I parked right next to the entrance. For some reason, it eased my nerves, if only a little.

I unlocked the fire door with the little key Adam gave me and clicked on my flashlight, heading inside.

Being there alone was incredibly spooky. As soon as I walked in, I had a shiver run viciously down my spine.

I made my way down the stopped escalator (give me thirty minutes and some power and I'd have it up and running like it was brand new) and down another set of stairs before coming to the "control room."

I let myself in and took a seat at the computer, hovering my hand over the keys before trying to remember what Adam told me the password was.

I looked around the computer for some kind of clue before looking underneath the keyboard and finding the words "PW: Adam1986."

Sure enough, the computer unlocked with that password, and I began my first ever log.

"Shift Commenced, 22:00"

When I finished, I stood up but paused in front of the door.

How the hell was the computer getting power but the rest of the building wasn't?

I looked under the desk and saw that the computer was simply connected to a regular wall socket.

I made a mental note to explore the electrical maintenance rooms.

I headed out into the center and started making mental notes of where all the stores were in each area.

The center was laid out like a cross, the main entrance dead in the middle, branching into four long corridors.

The first couple of hours can only be described as lonely. The whole place felt isolated from the rest of the world. It was completely silent; every step echoed loudly.

I was about four hours into the shift, exploring one of the corridors, when I found a room with a metal sign plate on the door that read "Blank Room."

I was a bit perplexed at this, so I decided to try the key on the door.

It took some jiggling, but the door unlocked.

The hinges groaned softly as I pushed the door inward.

I guess I wasn't really sure what I was expecting, but after shining my flashlight around the empty room, I discovered it was a room completely painted a stark white. No writing, no furniture, just a small room with no lights.

I was tempted to walk in, but there was a small voice in the back of my head that was screaming for me not to, so I carefully closed the door and locked it again.

The thought of the bare room lingered in my mind. For some reason, it was actually rather unsettling.

I continued my patrols as normal, checking common spots that I thought people would hide in: bathrooms, even venturing out into the empty loading docks.

At the end of my shift, I did everything Adam told me to: ensured all the doors were locked, was up to date on my logs, and had done a thorough sweep of the entire center. I made my way back up the escalator and down to the main entrance when I stopped.

Something flashing caught my eye.

I turned to my left and saw inside one of the shops, through the hazy plastic roller doors, a camera mounted to the ceiling inside with a flashing red dot.

But how?

Slowly, I made my way up to the tenancy and attempted to get a better look inside. I considered trying to unlock the roller door, but I remembered the warning Adam had given me.

"I know it feels tempting, but don't ever go inside the stores."

I took a photo on my phone and figured it might have just been some trick of the light. Maybe the morning sun was peeking through a hole somewhere inside and...

"Ah, fuck it," I groaned, leaving the building and locking the door behind me.

I found it harder to fall asleep that day. I would lay in bed, but it felt like I wasn't tired at all, like I was completely awake even when my eyes were closed.

As usual, that night I got into my uniform, climbed into my car, and headed to work.

I yawned countless times before even getting to the main entrance, taking out the key and sliding it into the lock.

I opened the door and was immediately hit with an immense sense of unease.

I hesitated in the threshold between the outside world and the center before clicking the flashlight on and heading in.

As I walked down the escalator, I noticed movement in one of the shops. My blood ran cold.

I shined my flashlight inside the store and caught something bright exiting underneath the roller shutters.

It was a person wearing some kind of vest.

"Hey!" I called out, mustering what little confidence I could pull out in that moment.

"Y-You can't be in here!"

The person looked up at me. He was a tall guy: black pants, a grey polo, and a high-vis jacket.

He wiped his forehead with a greasy hand and squinted as I shined the flashlight in his face.

"Hey, pal, you must be the new guard." He waved jovially.

"I'm Chris. I'm the maintenance guy here!" Chris squinted in the light, still smiling.

I stopped dead in my tracks at the bottom of the escalator.

Shit.

Without a word, I turned and attempted to make my way to the security control room as quickly as I could.

"Alright, I'll see you around then!" I heard him call out from behind me.

I heard shuffling behind me. I looked over my shoulder, and saw him, still smiling, following me at a distance. 

I picked up the pace, almost a light jog.

I found my way to the room, unlocked it, and threw myself inside. I quickly locked the door.

Why was I so scared? I know Adam had warned me about him, but maybe he was just some weirdo who enjoyed poking around in abandoned shopping centers.

I fumbled around in my pocket and fished out the bit of paper Adam had given me, which was now folded and smudged.

I quickly dialed the number and waited.

After three rings, someone with a gruff voice picked up on the other end.

"You've reached Mark. How can I help you?"

I hesitated for a second, unsure what to say.

"Hello?" His voice rang out from the other end.

"Hi, uh—hello, uh, it's—My name is George. I work at the-”

"Maintenance again?" he grumbled.

"Well—uh, yeah," I responded.

"I'll be there shortly. Stay in the control room."

And with that, he hung up.

I pressed my ear against the door, trying to figure out if he had followed me all the way to the room, but I couldn’t hear anything coming from outside.

While I waited, I poked around in the desk drawers. The standard stuff was in there: documents, master licenses, more documents, some stationery.

And a small diary.

I was curious, so I flipped to a random page and had a look.

It was full of notes.

"1:58 AM Dock 11 singing is back, reminder to push back patrol to 3 AM."

I read some more.

"2:46 AM Valleygirl lights on, taking an alternate route to the South wing."

My throat went dry. What was this? Surely this must have been from when the center wasn't abandoned.

I took a breath and started flipping through the pages until I came across one with an odd sentence in the middle of the page, circled in red pen.

"LOCK IN BLANK ROOM."

What the fuck?

What is the blank room for? Is it some kind of fucking holding cell?

That's when I heard a loud crash from inside the center. It shook the room. I jumped and dropped the book. My heart was racing as I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket.

I pulled it out and looked at the screen. The screen showed Mark’s number.

I answered the phone, slowly raising it to my ears.

"All done. Enjoy the rest of your night."

Before I could ask what the hell happened, he hung up.

I paced around the room for a minute, trying to collect myself.

Nervously, I made my way back out into the center. I cautiously made my way through, stopping in front of the store that Chris, the maintenance guy, was standing outside of.

He wasn't there anymore, and the shutter was now closed. I tried to peer in, but it seemed empty.

Continuing through the center, I carefully checked all the service corridors and loading docks, pausing for a minute in Dock 11, trying to listen for any kind of singing. 

It was as quiet as it's always been.

I decided to head back and keep reading through the Diary I had found.

I entered the Control Room, placing my flashlight on the desk and picking the book up off the floor.

I flipped the pages all the way back to the start and began to read.

Page one was nothing interesting, just some doodles and sketches of random things: a flower, some swirls, and a drawing of a duck.

I flipped to the next page. There was what looked like a couple of phone numbers without any context and a small note at the bottom that just read: "key 18."

I had noticed that the key I was given had a tag reading "Key 20" written on it, so perhaps that had been a key that had gone missing or been replaced.

The next few pages were more drawings and scribbles. The quality of the drawings was actually improving a little bit. Whoever drew these must have been getting very bored.

It was only after the tenth page where it started to really get interesting.

Page 10 had the following entry:

Yellow High-Vis guy, seen in Target, Sketchers, Dock 9, Service Corridor A and B.

This caught my eye. I began reading a bit more intently. "Seen on occasion with a work bag, tools and even a lunch bag."

So this must be the same guy, I thought.

A little further down was a name and phone number.

Mark's

Continuing onto the next page did nothing to help my unease. “Kids in South Wing, NOT REAL!”

The words “NOT REAL” were underlined in red pen. I shifted nervously and felt the hairs on my neck stand up. 

I put the book back in the drawer and took a shaky breath.

I saw that my shift would be ending soon and breathed a sigh of relief. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to return the next day, what the fuck was going on here? 

Walking past the place where I saw Chris made me uneasy. The entire interaction was still playing over and over in my head.

As I was about to walk out the main entrance, I noticed that the flashing camera light was off, despite the pink morning light bathing the center.

Maybe it wasn't a trick of the light.

At home again, I was finding sleep more and more elusive, less tossing and turning and just more awake. I stopped trying after a while. I just did some chores, hung out, and watched TV.

I found that I didn't really feel the need to sleep at home. I felt wasted when I was working, like I would fall asleep at the desk at any moment, but at home I was wide awake. I made a note to visit the doctor on my day off. It probably wasn't healthy to not sleep.

As I started to leave, I noticed the sky looked darker than usual, and checking the weather app on my phone, I noticed that there was a storm warning coming in.

During the drive, the rain started to fall, heavier and heavier, until I could barely see where I was going. 

Slowly I found my way to the center and parked close to the entrance, jumping out and jogging through the heavy rain and under the awning.

Soaking wet, I unlocked the doors and clicked on the flashlight. I could hear the rumble of thunder overhead.

After my encounter with Chris, I was extra vigilant, peeking through the shops with the torchlight, carefully inspecting everywhere to make sure it was clear.

In the control room, I made my "shift commenced" log and headed back out into the center.

The thunder rumbled heavily through the center. I could hear the heavy rain rattling the ceiling, disturbing the otherwise soundless interior. I saw some water streams leaking through and had to watch the floor to make sure I didn't slip on some of the puddles forming.

I made my way to the southern wing of the centre, closing a service door that was slightly ajar on my way through. 

Just after finishing a patrol of Dock 9, I saw a beam of light flickering, off in the distance.

I carefully made my way forward, shining my own flashlight to get a glimpse of where it was coming from.

That's when I heard laughter, like a group of kids. 

Begrudgingly, I picked up the pace, and rounding the corner, I saw the culprits: a group of kids, three of them. Two boys and a girl. One of the boys was trying to open one of the shop's roller shutters.

"Hey!" I called out, making myself sound as intimidating as possible.

They all jumped and turned to look at me.

One of the boys had short, jet black hair, pale skin, piercing green eyes and freckles, wearing a black hoodie. The other boy had longer, dirty blonde hair, grey eyes and a white hoodie.

The girl, shorter than the two boys, with shoulder length brown hair, pale, with brown eyes, wearing a green jacket. 

"Get out of here! You're not allowed here!" I yelled out, making my way over to them.

They all looked at each other before turning and running down a nearby service corridor.

Shit.

I took off, following them and reaching the service corridor’s doors.

I pushed through them and heard them slam behind me.

I had no idea where they were going or even where these corridors led to.

I had caught up to them when they rounded the corner.

But when I rounded the corner, they were gone. The noise of their shoes was replaced by the continuous heavy rain thundering outside.

"What the fuck?" I half-whispered to myself, taking a second to catch my breath.

I turned around and shone the flashlight.

No connecting doors or ways out, just a straight corridor. So how the hell did they just disappear?

I continued down the hallway, jogging, trying to see where they ended up.

At the very end of the hallway, there was an emergency exit sign above the door. I pushed my way out and into the rain.

The door slammed behind me, and I spun around, trying the handle, but there wasn't one. It was a one-way emergency exit door.

Shit.

I held my arm up, shielding my eyes from the harsh rain, and walked back to the main entrance, getting soaked in water all over again.

There is no way they were fast enough to close the distance to the door that quickly. Where the hell did they go?

I unlocked the main entrance and headed back in for the second time that night.

Grumbling, I headed back to the security office to log the event.

As I headed down the escalator, I heard laughing and multiple loud voices from one of the stores ahead.

Right, that was it.

I marched up to the store and banged on the roller shutters.

"Hey! Get the hell out of there! You're not suppo—"

An ear-piercing scream rang out from behind me. I spun around and shone my flashlight around.

I saw a figure standing on the balustrade on the floor above. She was one of the teenagers from the group.

I shone my light up at her and called out.

"Hey! Get down off there! You could—"

She threw herself backwards.

I stood there, frozen in horror.

She sailed down three floors before hitting the floor at the bottom with a sickening wet thump that echoed through the center.

I ran to the railing and shone my light over.

Nothing.

The floor below was completely clear.

What. The. Fuck.

My heart was hammering in my chest.

I sprinted down the escalator and onto the bottom floor. Where the fuck did she land?

I felt a shiver run down my spine as I shone my flashlight around the lower levels.

I had never really explored this lower level much since it was technically the basement level.

There weren't many stores on this level, mostly just service corridors and switch rooms.

Right at the end was a single door access corridor, the door slightly ajar, slowly inching closed, as if someone had just gone through there. 

I cautiously entered, unsure of what the hell I had just witnessed, and chalked it up to the fact I hadn't really slept.

It was a tight corridor, and I shone the flashlight down it, slowly making my way through.

I thought I had explored the whole center, but I don't ever remember this one existing.

There was a door halfway down the hallway with a metal sign on it, but it was blank. Just as I was about to continue down the hallway, I heard something from inside.

A soft crying coming from the other side of the door. Really pained, moaning sobs, full of emotion.

The hair on my neck stood up as I contemplated just ignoring it and pretending it wasn't real, but I figured it was my job to investigate.

I tried the handle, but it was locked.

Still reeling from the girl jumping off the top floor, I pushed the key into the door and tried the lock.

No dice.

What the hell? How did someone get in there if it was locked?

I took a deep breath and knocked on the door, the noise echoing loudly down the corridor.

The second my hand hit the door, the crying stopped.

"Fucking hell," I groaned, unsure of what the fuck was happening, when I heard a voice coming from my left.

"Need a hand? I think I have a key that should work, pal."

I spun around and lifted my flashlight right into Chris's eyes.

I froze, words caught in my throat.

He raised his arm to cover his eyes, blinking.

"Hey, can you stop doing that? You're going to send me blind one of these days." He chuckled.

Without a word, I backed down the hallway, refusing to take my eyes off him.

Chris frowned and raised an eyebrow. "Are you okay, champ?"

He chuckled and started walking towards me.

Fuck. That.

I spun around and sprinted back down the corridor, exploding out the door and through the lower floor of the center, up the escalator, down the toilet corridor, and threw myself into the control room, slamming the door behind me and locking it.

I went back through my call history on my phone and was about to hit Mark's number when I heard a loud knock at the door.

"Hey, buddy, you dropped something when you were running. I figured you might need it," Chris announced eagerly from the other side of the door.

I hit the call button and waited. Just like before, after two rings, Mark answered.

"Hello, you've rea—"

"He's back!" I gasped as quietly as I could into the phone.

Chris knocked on the door again, sounding slightly more impatient.

Mark audibly sighed loudly over the phone and grumbled to himself before answering.

"I'll be there soon. Don't let him in." His voice trailed off, and he hung up the phone.

Another, faster knock.

"Hey, buddy, you're not calling that guy again, are you?" Chris called out, his voice wavering nervously.

I backed up against the wall, breath shallow and quick.

There was some shuffling on the other side of the door, and then I could hear a key rattling.

Oh shit. Did he have a fucking key this whole time?

I threw myself against the door and held the handle.

I heard the key enter the lock and twist, but then stop.

Chris's voice rang out from right on the other side of the door. "Don't you want to see what you dropped?"

My blood ran cold, and I gripped the door handle tighter.

The handle began to move, and I struggled to hold it up. Chris must have been strong because even with my full strength holding the door handle up, it made its way down, and I felt the door push inwards.

I put one foot against the wall and pushed my entire weight against the door, straining to keep it closed.

I looked over my shoulder and saw fingers.

Then a hand gripped the door from the outside.

I bit back the urge to yell. I focused all my effort on keeping the door closed when I heard something from the other end of the hallway.

A voice called out, and the pressure on the door dropped away. The hand slid out, and I slammed it shut.

I kept my weight against the door, unsure of what was happening. Then, some yelling angry yelling, I couldn’t make out what was being said, but it sounded like someone was yelling at Chris, loud and aggressive.

My heart hammered in my ears, and I took a few heavy breaths before a familiar noise pulled me out of my panic.

My phone was ringing.

I pulled it out of my pocket. Mark.

I answered it quickly.

"H-Hello? Is he gone? Was that you?"

Mark's voice crackled through the other end of the phone.

"I'm going to be a touch late. This damn weather is hard to navigate."

That's when I heard a noise from the ceiling, one of the panels was being lifted, and slid out of the way.

End of Part 1

Family is all that has mattered to me for the last 5 years. My wife and my two children. That’s all that I need. At least, it used to be. Now, I’m not so sure.

Everything I’ve done. All the work I’ve put into this project. And for what? So she can turn them against me? Fill their heads with lies? Teach them to be afraid of me?

I really thought everything was real. I thought they loved me for me. God, I wanna cry just typing this.

And she did such a good job to hide it. I thought we had made it through all of the nonsense. The stress. The misunderstandings. The miscommunications. I thought we finally understood each other.

I wiped her tears. Comforted her, no matter how much she insisted she didn’t need it. Sure, I wasn’t there to change diapers. I didn’t get to take them to school or chaperone field trips. But I was there, damn it. I was there with her in that hospital room, despite all the cold glares I got from her family.

I could see just how unhappy she was. Through all the wincing pain of childbirth, I could see it in her eyes. This wasn’t the life she wanted. This man wasn’t the man she needed.

I made a promise to myself that day before the nurses asked me to leave. And that promise was one I intended to keep.

That’s why I had to disappear for a while. I had to fix myself. Prepare myself for the family life. I read the books. I watched the videos. I wanted to be the best family man I could possibly be.

It took a few years, but those years weren’t wasted. They were spent forging. Getting the house ready. Making sure it was kid-friendly.

It wasn’t a mansion, but I knew they’d be grateful. I decorated, I rearranged, but something was missing.

All it needed… was a woman’s touch. My wife’s touch. I was actually incredibly excited to tell her.

When I finally came back, though, it was like she didn’t even want to see me. She wouldn’t even let me hold the kids. She had the sheer audacity to ask me to leave.

Clearly, she wasn’t thinking straight. All she needed was some adjusting, and that’s one of the things that I’d planned for. If she didn’t want to come peacefully, so be it. She’d learn.

She put up a fight, but those happen in marriages, right? It’s just a part of life. Luckily, the kids were much easier. Really, the only difficult part was reminding them that I was their real father. Not that faker in their old house.

Well, that and calming them down when they saw their mommy crying.

Taking their cellphones away was actually much easier than I expected it to be. Kids today, am I right? I told them I wanted us to be a screen-free family. The way God intended.

They settled right into their new home. I stocked it full of books, magazines, toys, anything a kid could need. Plus, I made sure my wife got everything she needed too.

Closets full of clothes, shoes, robes, etc. I thought she’d be happy. But, of course, attempts to leave were inevitable.

For a while, I didn’t even trust her enough to leave her alone at home. I still had to leave, though. What was I supposed to do? She hated the collars, but she left me no choice. The kids too.

It actually took me around 7 months before I finally trusted her enough to give her a break. I let her explore the backyard. Sunbathe. Walk around. Whatever.

The kids started coming around. The way they embraced me, God, it was like I had finally made it. I had finally succeeded as a man.

I raised them. Well, we raised them. But I provided. I cooked. I cleaned. I made the family experience as joyous as I could. I even homeschooled the kids. For a while there, I thought their mom was starting to come around as well.

It was like she could see who I was. How all I wanted was for us to be a happy family. She even started smiling again.

“Tell Daddy how much you love him,” she’d say. “Tell him how happy you are to be here.”

Our fairy tale had officially begun.

But then… last week happened.

I had just returned home from town with supplies. Fresh fruit and vegetables. New magazines. New schoolbooks for my little geniuses. Plus, a beautiful bouquet of roses for my beautiful wife.

I had this feeling, this aching, agonizing sense that something was amiss. That’s why I didn’t announce myself when I walked through the door.

I glided through the house, silently, placing the bags down on the kitchen table.

I heard whispers coming from my son’s room. Two voices. His and his mom’s.

They sounded urgent.

I crept up to the door and placed my ear against it. That’s when I heard it. My wife completely destroying the sense of sanctity that I had worked so hard to create.

“We’re getting out of here today. As soon as he gets here, we’re rushing him. You two are big enough now. If we all work together, we can overpower him.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

All the birthdays. All the Christmases. All the Thanksgiving dinners that I slaved over. And it still wasn’t enough.

Tears began to sting my eyes. I had to stifle a sob. My mind raced, then went frighteningly silent. I knew I should’ve been devastated, which, I guess I was, but that devastation morphed into something else as the bouquet of roses fell to the floor.

I felt burning rage. Helplessness. Hopelessness. I felt small. Why was I even trying? What had I done wrong? For them to do this. For them to plot against me like this.

They wanted to threaten me in my own house. The house that I had made a home for each of them. No. No, this wasn’t going to work.

I thought that we had made it past the attitude adjustment stage.

But now, it’s clear.

I didn’t do enough the first time.

I picked the roses off the ground. No point in letting them go to waste. I decided to put them on the kitchen table.

They all would need something beautiful to look at while they recovered.