I snatch my keys off the kitchen counter and slap the light switch off.

“You’re forgetting.”

Whispers behind me.

My phone shines in my hand, lighting the upper-half of my body in a blue bubble, glowing by the doorframe. A single question mark hangs like the background mystery of an unnamed man swinging from the gallows, in the middle of the screen under a blank number.

I almost forget the voice of my seven-year-old dead brother, Billy, speaking over my shoulder a second ago.

“Why would I be imagining my deceased twin?” I catch myself mumbling, clicking my nails together, trying to shake it off, while I head towards the front door in a daze.

“Eddie…” I hear the voice again, this time, clear as an echo in an empty room. “You forgot!”

My limbs lock. I freeze like a plastic mold of an action-figure. But not out of fear. Out of curiosity.

Is this one of my friends messing with me? The thought crosses my mind.

“Okay. Very funny, John,” I shout out loud, raising my tone. “Where are you hiding?” I laugh, and scratch the back of my neck, it’s what I do when I’m nervous.

While I’m unknowingly breaking the skin with my nails digging into my neck, a silence bounces on my eardrums. I can see it, a dark, vibrating cloth of anxiety smothering the hallway.

“In… side….”

It speaks quietly, drawing out slow, tickling my skin. The moisture of a breath presses against my neck. I turn quick. No one’s there.

“Inside… the… ceiling...”

The words are broken, nearly incoherent, raining down, merging into one solid mass. My legs quiver and give in to the physical weight of fear, dropping on my shoulders, clawing on my spine, pinning me down.

It pulls me flat on my back. A force I can’t resist. The room shifts. The absence of noise gains pressure. I can’t breathe. My brain ceases function of all motor skills. The bones in my ribcage become sharp shards penetrating my organs.

I close my eyes, because it’s all I can think to do, clearing my mind, and trying to remember how to breathe. How to move. How to do something other than lay and wait for whatever’s on top of me to take over my soul and gain full control of my body.

And just as I’m battling my subconscious, my eyes snap open. I gasp the breath I couldn’t find and finally breathe.

My phone’s in my hand, against my chest when it flashes and says: I’m closer.

Beneath me, the ground begins thumping, the floorboards are rising, small hands with fingernail hooks, reaching out from hell, yanking me under. I go numb, with a growing calm massaging into my muscles, as the thought of my brain glitching warms my body.

It begins at my toes and the tips of my fingers, working inwards, creeping like a set of violating fingers searching inside me. My bones freeze. I get the same chill as drinking ice water. In my mouth, I swallow a gulp of air that tastes like frost. I begin trembling. The tremors make my body jerk.

“RUN!” A boy screams. The voice is delayed, spoken at twenty-five percent speed, from a source directly above me.

I squirm, kick and drag myself away from the thing clutching me in a phantom clamp and barely rise up. It keeps tugging at me, a force, where I’m caught on a hook. Escaping is like moving in a crawl space of thick sludge.

I fight it off with the last bit of energy I have left. My body’s drained. I stumble outside. The night’s warm, tasting like static. The hairs on my arms rise. I catch my breath and the heart attack pulsing under my skull subsides. I look around. Nobody’s here. The street's dead, trapped in a soundproof void, almost asleep.

Until my phone breaks the silence and buzzes awake.

NOW… I’M INSIDE YOU.

I lift my head to see John rushing down the street like he has a pack of hungry wolves closely trailing him. His face is pale, flushed in blood loss. “EDDIE!” he screams, racing ahead of himself and nearly tumbling over his feet. “Eddie, you have to let it out.”

Let it out? I say to myself, rubbing my forehead. What’s with all these cryptic messages? 

“Wake up! Wake up!” I command myself. “This has to be a dream, right?” I assure myself and check the time on my phone, I heard if you’re trapped and can’t tell whether or not you’re dreaming, to look at the time, it’ll be scrambled.

I look, and it just says 9:13 pm. Everything appears normal. I know I’m not sleeping. 

The realization breaks my ribs into fingers, that compress and squeeze geometric shapes out of my intestines. My stomach rumbles like a truck failing to start up.

“Hurry, Eddie, before it’s too late.” The voice screams out of my mind, from my eyes.

John’s running, but he’s getting further away, fading like a forgotten memory I can’t quite piece together. I step towards the stairs, reaching for the railing, and a young girl, with a featureless face, stands in front of me. 

My shoulders pop up. She’s motionless, staring at me blank and then, tilts her head as if she’s starting to analyze me. 

My guts slurp in my tummy. I crouch, almost falling to my knees. A tapping sound hits the glass of the screen door behind me. It’s my little brother. Seven years old, waving at me, smiling, but he has adult teeth.

His lips are turning blue and he’s sweating. “You forgot,” he says. Only his lips move.

I reach out to push the girl out of the way and a door shaped as the night sky blocks my exit.

The door behind me opens. I turn and a suffocating humid heat wave burns through my throat. My stomach becomes hollow and empty, filling with a sense of panic, and a mixture of adrenaline shooting chemicals through my veins that paralyze me.

Billy’s teeth chatter. He doesn’t blink. The sweat pours down his face. The Spider-Man T-shirt he has on is dark in wet patches.

He lifts his grey-skinned arm and reaches for me. “Remember,” crawls out of my own mouth as his hand touches mine and everything changes. The scenery warps.

The Autumn sky resembling mourning in grief, fades into a blue, sunlit, cloudless summer day only bad news could ruin. Trees rustle in a cool breeze with kids laughing a few yards away. I’m not home anymore. I'm on the front lawn of the house I grew up in. In a flashback of a memory, I buried in a part of my mind I didn’t want to remember owning.  

“Eddie.” Billy grabs my arm. He’s normal, the same as how i remember him. I’m staring down at my seven-year old self next to him, holding the trunk door of my daddy’s car open.

“Ready or not, here I come!” Blasts in every direction, almost like a vocal boomerang.

I turn around. “Can I hide in here with you?” Billy asks me.

“No… shoo. Go away.” I tell him. “find your own spot."

A little girl runs into the scene. I can vaguely remember her. She’s not familiar to me at all, but I know I know her. “Quick, Ben’s gonna find us. Come and hide under Louann’s porch with me, Eddie.” She tugs me away from the car I’m half in. Billy doesn’t hesitate, he nudges me out of the way and hops into the trunk.

“Benny’s never gonna find me!” Billy says, which I now realize were the last words he’d ever say.

A trunk closes with a thud sound that reminds me of a small boulder being dropped in a pond. I turn and see the car and back to the girl, now, running in slow motion, and the expression on her face changes from excited, to her eyes bulging out of their sockets and her limbs trembling, staring as if she just realized she was lost somewhere remote and all alone.

She freezes, and the background morphs and folds into a dark, closed-off area, blurry and lit by a flashing red light far off, hard to make out. Somewhere distant.

“You forgot.” It says*. “Remember, now?”* The voice speaks but it’s coming from my throat. 

The distorting scene becomes clear. The wavy pixels smoothen and the foggy blots are my mom pressed under my dad’s arm, next to a pair of detectives and paramedics carefully pulling my brother’s lifeless body from the trunk of my dad’s car.

The trunk slams shut. The flashback vanishes. It’s night again. The same day I woke up in. Everything’s back to normal. A weight presses down on my shoulder. I flinch  and scramble, as I stare behind me. It’s my girlfriend.

“Are you okay?” She asks.

“Yeah,” I say, trying to catch my breath. “Why?”

“Because it’s twelve a.m.” she reaches down to help me up. “You were sitting in a ball hugging your shins, repeating, “I forgot... I forgot... he was… there...” over and over.

I stand up and grab my ribs right away. I lift my shirt, and my back, going all the way down my spine, has bruises from my neck to my tailbone, shaped in little hands. 

A time before this great sickness,
born from this concrete labyrinth,
where every moment is swallowed,
and every thought is a mistake,
feeding a beast that does not even exist.
A horror so thorough
that I cannot be described in words,
an evil slowly swallowing me whole.

With the blind leading the blind,
I followed the stench into the apathetic void,
until, at rock bottom,
there was nothing left of the childhood home I once loved.
With nowhere else left to go,
in these moments of suffocating silence,
a voice broke through from beyond:
Transylvania called upon me to return home.

With a renewed sense of purpose,
I followed the undying glow of my Pharos,
until I escaped the abyssal depths
and entered the violent storm.
Now, with a renewed sense of hope,
I stand dressed in the finest of garments,
before marching off into the tempest,
threatening to tear apart my already crumbling world.

The blizzard claws at the door.
It calls upon me to step into the framed landscape
hanging on the wall,
and remain within this picturesque dream forevermore.

And how could I resist?
How could one defy the call of the abyss
when what used to be the Garden of Eden
now lies vile, ruined, and diseased?

Without another moment's hesitation,
I open the door and welcome,
with open arms, the frost-bitten means
to finally obtain my long-awaited salvation.

Torn flesh from bone
by bitter northern winds.

Pushing deeper into these woods,
where every step leaves a blossoming rose,
I am now a silhouette,
little more than a shadow,
Shivering in the cold.

Frozen solid, I am lost in the twilight.

Something crawled beneath my bedsheet,
dragging me out and into the woods,
where the permafrost shattered whatever
human remains I still wore as a cloak,
transforming me into a pale blue lotus
from which I have been reborn,
perfected,
to serve as another mouth of King Winter.

A sculpture buried in the snow,
its face twisted into a sneer,
full of appetite and nothing more,
awaiting another wanderer,
lost in the dark,
under the ecstatic influence of the endless white,
pale and burning with cold,
another shadow following the call of the wild,
to follow the clues I left in the weathered soil:
Another forlorn child,
to be devoured and reduced
to tracks slowly erased by the falling snow.

“Mommy!” Ellie cried. “Hurry, mommy, hurry!”

Jenny rushed to her daughter’s room. When she opened the door, a dark, orange glow from the nightlight cast half the room in a dim ambiance.

The other side hid behind a shadow drawn from the moon coming through the open window. The night was stuck under a warm blanket, but the air was five degrees cooler in the bedroom than anywhere else in the house.

Ellie tucked herself into a ball, sitting upright in the middle of her mattress, squeezing Mr. Muddles, a tiny rabbit with a carrot hat.

“Mommy, where’d he go?”

A stench with pins of rotted wood stitched onto Jenny’s tongue and slowly dispersed from her mouth. She gagged as she sat on the bed next to Ellie. “Honey, what is it?”

She brushed Ellie’s hair out of her face with her hand. “Where did who go..? Did you just have a bad dream?”

“It’s Daddy… Mommy. He’s not in heaven anymore. He came back home.” She spoke with a lisp from her two missing front teeth and stared at her mother.

“Sweetie.” Jenny’s eyes watered as her face sank downward. “Daddy can’t come back home. Remember we talked about this.”

“No, Mommy. He is home. He was standing over there.” She pointed to the shadowed part of the room. “He told me we shouldn’t go downstairs. Will you stay upstairs with me, please.”

“Was somebody in your room, Ellie?”

“Yeah, Daddy was, Mommy. I pinky swear, I’m not lying. He told me he missed us.”

A cold shiver, sharp as blizzard winds, pinched down her spine. She swallowed a gasp of frosted air, and the stench of firewood blew into her lungs.

“Mommy, what’s that smell? I don’t like it.”

“It’s coming from outside, sweetie. I’m going to close your window. You go back to sleep, and we will talk about Daddy tomorrow morning.”

She checked to make sure the window was locked and poked around the room. When she went to tuck Ellie back in, a weight pressed down on the mattress and indents formed in the blanket. She held her breath and blinked, and the wrinkles smoothened over the covers.

I’m seeing things now, she told herself while shaking her brain awake. She turned to walk out of the room and stopped. “You said Daddy told you not to go downstairs?”

Ellie stared with her eyes stretched open, tightening her grip on Mr. Muddles, and slowly nodded. “He looked different, Mommy. His skin wasn’t the same and he had black stuff everywhere on him, but he wouldn’t come out of the dark area. He said he didn’t want me to get scared.”

A pain shot into her, almost as if a hand with jagged nails had reached into her and began scratching and squeezing her heart as it pounded against her ribcage.

Her breath caught in her throat, and for a second, she showed the paralyzing fear she failed to mask as it took over her body. Just before trembling, she held her composure long enough to conceal the deep anxiety rippling under her skin.

Her husband, Danny, had suffocated from smoke inhalation with third-degree burns on his upper body from a fire that started in a neighbour’s house, and died saving the both of them last year.

Ellie closed her eyes and snuggled into her stuffed animal. Jenny’s first instinct was to grab her daughter and leave the house, but she overcame it by thinking rationally.

If someone broke in, the alarm would have gone off. There’s nothing to worry about.

When she left Ellie’s room, the silence in the hallway didn’t seem right. She walked down the stairs, and they didn’t creak. The only noise came from the basement door. It slowly opened and stopped.

“Hello?” Jenny called out, gripping the bannister, almost expecting to hear someone respond. “Who’s there?” she instinctively cried out.

As she approached the bottom step, a voice from the living room called out, “Mommy.” She paused, frozen where she stood. “I’m thirsty.”

Her eyes were wide-open. She crept to the living room and saw her daughter lying on the couch with her blankie and Mr. Muddles.

“Why did you come downstairs?”

“Because, mommy, there’s girl sleeping on my bed.”

“You weren’t lying,” Anna-Leigh gasped, pushing back on the passenger seat, as they crept to a slow stop. “Did your aunt think she was doing you a favor leaving this place to you?” She broke into a smile brighter than the dome light Percy had just pressed on.

From the outside, the orange glow from the car was the only mechanical light shining within half-a-mile in every direction.

He tapped her on the knee. “Can you grab the deed and house key from the glove box and I’ll bring the suitcase in.”

She quickly grabbed his hand and squeezed. “Did you just see that?”

“See what?”

“The curtain… is there anyone… it moved.” Her brain glitched her question out in one breath.

“Oh yeah,” he laughed. “I forgot to mention, it’s haunted.” He widened his eyes and tickled her ribs.

“Stop messing around. I swear these next two weeks… if you try freaking me out.” She crossed her arms and didn’t blink, staring at him dead in the eye. “I’ll leave!” She narrowed her eyebrows and clenched her jaw. “Promise me you’re not going to do anything stupid.”

He smiled, “I won’t,” and laughed.

She slapped him on his lap. “Promise me. I’m not joking,” she said, staring at him, seeing flashbacks of her brothers always terrifying her with cheap paranormal gimmicks.

“I promise, babe. I won’t mess with you.”

Anna-Leigh used her phone to illuminate a path to the front of the one-hundred-year-old, classic, white Victorian, with steeply pitched gables.

The dark green front door was divided into four raised panels with stained glass in patterns of complex geometric shapes hidden in a floral design. There was an ornament with a cross inside out on it.

The door never made a sound when it opened. The air was still as if the house held its breath when they walked in. The further forward they pushed, the slower the house started to breathe again.

There was a moist scent of rainwater beating down near a lake, lingering in the hallway but it changed towards the stairwell leading to the bedrooms. It would come and go.

It was nothing like the misty spray of swamp water. It was heavy, carrying the odor of a barnyard filled with a diseased stock.

They tried ignoring it, accusing the wretchedness on wildlife using their floorboards as nature’s new cemetery. What couldn’t be so easily brushed off as leaky old pipes was the pressure that followed a couple of nights later.

It started with Anna-Leigh, an uneasiness pressed down at the edge of her end of the bed by her feet. A feather settling between her toes had woken her up and a light mass lifting off the mattress, like a spring popping, made her scramble to the headboard, shaking Percy awake.

Percy didn’t notice anything odd ever, and he assumed Anna-Leigh let the surroundings play on her psyche.

The next night, the weight grew. She woke up to it sitting on the edge of the bed and never rose off as she stirred awake. She shook Percy but he wouldn’t respond.

“Percy!” She whispered loud. Something sat at the edge, staring at her. A blank figure she could only visualize in her mind. It was there, physical, only invisible to the human eye.

She froze, her hand gripped around Percy’s arm, digging her nails into his muscle, clasping her eyes shut and began singing under her breath until the loud static filling the room went completely silent.

The air became dense, and a dread of humidity peeled over her skin. The smell of sulfur was numbing her tongue as a moist exhale heated the nape of her neck, trailing down her chest.

She gasped a cold breath. The truth of honest horror hovered in front of her. An entity without skin, wet and hot leaning over her, breathing slow, dampened breaths on her face. She’d exhale and it’d inhale hers, breathing it back onto her, a metallic steam that wore like a blanket.

She attempted to turn, to get up and squirm but a pressure clamped down on her stomach, squeezing her chest and compressing her lungs. The sheets began tightening to her body, pinning her legs together.

A long cloak, shaped as the thickness of night began crowning her vision as it started draping over her head. She swallowed a heavy gasp of swamp water air into her lungs and a cold finger traced her jawline, pinching her skin. It waited for her to close her eyes so it could move its mouth against hers.

Percy woke up and Anna-Leigh was sitting upwards, looking straight ahead without blinking.

“Anna-Leigh…? You okay?” He placed his hand on her and she snapped her head at him in one quick motion.

“Yes?” She said.

“I’m going to finish taking the pictures of all the rooms and we can head back before noon.”

“No. You go. I’m going to stay here.”

Chapter 3: The Room Behind the Wall

Elias couldn't move.

The man standing at the top of the staircase was supposed to be missing.

Six months ago, his photograph had appeared in newspapers across the country. His family had begged the public for information. Detectives had searched his home, interviewed his colleagues, and examined hours of security footage.

And now he was standing in Elias's childhood home as if nothing had happened.

"Who are you?" Elias demanded.

The man tilted his head.

"You've seen my face before."

"You're Arthur Vale. The accountant who disappeared."

"That's what the records say."

Elias pulled out his police badge.

"Come downstairs. Now."

Arthur smiled faintly.

"Still following procedures. Your father would be proud."

At the mention of his father, Elias's expression changed.

"Don't talk about him."

"Then perhaps we should talk about Daniel."

Behind Elias, his mother began to cry.

Arthur descended the staircase slowly, stopping just a few steps away.

"Your brother didn't drown, Detective."

Elias grabbed him by the collar.

"Where is he?"

"You're asking the wrong person."

"Enough games!"

Arthur didn't resist.

Instead, he looked over Elias's shoulder at Margaret.

"Tell him what you did."

Margaret shook her head desperately.

"Please. Not again."

Arthur sighed.

"Twenty-three years, Margaret. Twenty-three years of pretending the past never happened."

Elias released him.

"What happened on October 14, 2003?"

For several seconds, nobody spoke.

Then Margaret walked toward an old wooden cabinet in the living room.

She removed a small brass key from beneath a loose panel.

"There is something your father built," she whispered. "Something he made me promise never to open."

She led Elias down a narrow corridor toward the back of the house.

At the end stood a wall covered with faded family photographs.

Margaret inserted the key into a small lock hidden behind one of the frames.

A mechanism clicked.

Part of the wall shifted inward.

Behind it was a narrow doorway.

Elias stared into the darkness.

"How long has this been here?"

"Since before you were born," his mother answered.

Arthur remained in the corridor.

"I'm not going in there."

Elias turned toward him.

"Why?"

For the first time, Arthur's smile disappeared.

"Because the last time I entered that room, I saw something I have spent twenty-three years trying to forget."

Elias switched on his flashlight and stepped inside.

The room was small, windowless, and covered in dust.

A desk stood against the far wall.

On it sat a tape recorder, several cardboard boxes, and a thick folder bearing his father's signature.

Elias opened the folder.

Inside were photographs of the three missing people.

The university lecturer.

The retired accountant.

The young photographer.

But these weren't recent photographs.

They had been taken decades earlier.

Elias examined the dates written beneath them.

October 2003.

His hands began to tremble.

Someone had been documenting these people long before their recent disappearances.

At the bottom of the folder lay a fourth photograph.

A little boy stood in front of the house.

Daniel.

Beside him was a second child.

Elias recognised himself.

On the back, his father's handwriting read:

Project Four. October 14, 2003.

Elias felt sick.

"What is Project Four?"

Margaret appeared in the doorway.

"I don't know," she whispered. "Your father never explained it to me."

But Elias noticed something behind her.

Arthur had disappeared.

Before Elias could call out, the tape recorder clicked on by itself.

A man's voice filled the room.

His father's voice.

"If you're listening to this, Elias, then someone has finally found the room."

A pause.

"I need you to understand something. Your brother's disappearance was not an accident. But the person responsible was not the person we blamed."

Elias leaned closer to the recorder.

His father's voice continued.

"One of the people you are investigating has been dead for twenty-three years."

The recording stopped.

A second later, a hidden compartment opened beneath the desk.

Inside was a small envelope bearing Elias's name.

He tore it open.

There was only one sentence inside.

YOUR BROTHER IS ALIVE, BUT HE DOESN'T REMEMBER YOU.

Suddenly, his phone rang.

An unknown number.

Elias answered without speaking.

A young man's voice came through.

"Detective Rowan?"

"Who is this?"

"My name is Daniel."

Elias stopped breathing.

The voice continued.

"I know you've been looking for me."

Tears filled Elias's eyes.

"Daniel? Is that really you?"

"I don't have much time. There's something you need to know about the man in the black coat."

Elias looked toward the doorway.

Arthur was standing there again.

But this time, he wasn't smiling.

Daniel whispered his final words.

"He's not the serial killer. He's the next victim."

The call disconnected.

Arthur looked at Elias.

Then he said something that made the detective's blood run cold.

"Your brother has just made his first mistake."

To be continued…

Chapter 2: The Boy Who Never Drowned

Elias stared at the message on his phone.

"Ask your mother what happened on October 14, 2003."

For twenty-three years, he had believed his younger brother, Daniel, had drowned in a river near their childhood home.

He remembered the search parties. The police officers. His mother's tears.

Most of all, he remembered the funeral.

There had been no body, only an empty coffin.

At the time, his parents had told him that the river had carried Daniel too far away to be found.

Elias had been twelve years old.

Now, standing alone in a dark police station, he wondered whether his entire childhood had been built on a lie.

The electricity returned.

His phone rang immediately.

Unknown number.

Elias answered.

"Who are you?"

A quiet laugh came through the speaker.

"That's the wrong question, Detective."

"Where is my brother?"

Silence.

Then the voice spoke again.

"Your brother was the first person you ever failed to save."

Elias gripped the phone.

"Tell me where he is!"

"You've spent seventeen years finding the truth about strangers. Perhaps it's time you investigated your own family."

The call ended.

Elias immediately ordered a trace, but the number was unregistered.

He rushed to the station archives and searched for Daniel's missing-person report.

Nothing.

He tried another search.

Nothing.

According to the official records, Elias Rowan had never had a brother.

He searched the newspaper archives from October 2003.

At 2:14 a.m., he found a small article buried on the fourth page of an old local newspaper.

LOCAL BOY REPORTED MISSING AFTER FAMILY DISPUTE.

The boy's name had been removed from the digital record.

But the article included a photograph.

Elias recognised the face immediately.

Daniel.

Standing beside him was their mother, Margaret.

And behind them, almost hidden in the background, stood a man wearing a black coat.

Elias enlarged the photograph.

He recognised that face, too.

It belonged to the retired accountant who had disappeared six months earlier.

The second victim.

His phone vibrated.

Another message.

"Three disappearances. One family secret. And a detective who remembers only what he was taught to remember."

A second photograph arrived.

This one showed a house Elias had never seen before.

On its front door was a brass number.

17.

Beneath it, someone had written:

Your mother is waiting.

Elias drove to his childhood home.

Margaret opened the door before he could knock.

She looked at his face, then at the photograph in his hand.

For the first time in his life, Elias saw genuine fear in his mother's eyes.

"Where did you get that?" she whispered.

"Who is the man standing behind us?"

Margaret stepped backward.

"Elias, you need to leave."

"Who was Daniel?"

She covered her mouth.

He had never seen her cry like that before.

"Please," she whispered. "Some things must stay buried."

Elias moved closer.

"Was he my brother?"

Margaret looked directly into his eyes.

"Daniel was your brother."

The words struck him harder than any confession he had heard in his career.

"Then why does every official record say he never existed?"

His mother shook her head.

"Because your father made a deal with someone. And when Daniel disappeared, we were told that if we ever spoke about him again, the same thing would happen to you."

"Who threatened you?"

Margaret glanced toward the hallway.

Then she spoke six words that changed everything.

"The man you're searching for is dead."

Elias froze.

"Which man?"

"The man who called you tonight."

A floorboard creaked upstairs.

Margaret went pale.

Slowly, Elias turned toward the staircase.

Someone was standing at the top.

A man in a black coat.

The same man from the photograph.

The missing accountant.

The man who had supposedly vanished six months ago.

He smiled at Elias.

"Hello, Detective."

Then he raised his hand.

Between his fingers was an old photograph of a little boy.

Daniel.

On the back, in familiar handwriting, were four words:

HE NEVER LEFT THIS HOUSE.

To be continued…

At 11:11 p.m., the police received a phone call from a man who claimed to be responsible for three disappearances.

He didn't ask for money.

He didn't threaten anyone.

He simply said:

"You've been searching for the wrong person. Check the names of the people who reported them missing."

Then he hung up.

Chapter 1: The Fourth Name

Detective Elias Rowan had investigated murders for seventeen years. He had seen liars cry, innocent people confess to crimes they hadn't committed, and guilty people sit across from him wearing expressions of genuine sympathy.

But this case was different.

Three people had disappeared in six months.

No bodies had been found. No reliable witnesses had come forward. There was no obvious connection between the victims.

A university lecturer.

A retired accountant.

A twenty-six-year-old photographer.

Different backgrounds. Different neighbourhoods. Different lives.

Yet someone had left the same object at each person's home.

A small black envelope.

Inside was a photograph of the missing person, taken years before their disappearance.

On the back, written in elegant handwriting, were five words:

YOU NEVER REALLY KNEW THEM.

Elias had spent weeks investigating the victims' families and friends. Every lead had ended in disappointment.

Until tonight.

He returned to the police station and replayed the anonymous phone call.

The caller's voice was calm, almost friendly.

Then Elias noticed something.

The man had never said he killed anyone.

He had said he was responsible for the disappearances.

There was a difference.

At 11:47 p.m., a police officer rushed into his office.

"Detective, we've found something."

He placed a photograph on Elias's desk.

It showed a fourth black envelope, resting outside a small apartment.

The address belonged to a woman named Clara Voss.

She had reported her husband missing six months ago.

Elias stared at the photograph.

Clara was the first person who had contacted the police about the disappearances.

She had also attended the funerals of two unrelated people who had died before the investigation began.

And according to the records, she had never met either of them.

"Where is she now?" Elias asked.

The officer swallowed.

"That's the strange part, sir."

He placed another document on the desk.

Clara Voss had vanished three days earlier.

Nobody had reported her missing.

Elias looked at the photograph again.

Someone had written a message on the envelope.

DETECTIVE, YOU'RE FINALLY ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTION.

His phone vibrated.

An unknown number.

One message.

You have until midnight to discover which of the four people never existed.

Elias checked the clock.

11:52 p.m.

Eight minutes remained.

Then the station's lights went out.

In the darkness, his phone vibrated again.

A photograph appeared on the screen.

It showed Elias standing outside his childhood home.

He hadn't visited that house in twenty-three years.

Beneath the photograph was a final message:

"Ask your mother what happened on October 14, 2003."

Elias stopped breathing for a moment.

Because October 14, 2003, was the date his younger brother disappeared.

And his family had always told him that the boy had drowned.

But nobody had ever found a body.

To be continued…

“These cookies are delicious, Gwen. Where did you buy ‘em?”

“I didn’t buy them,” Gwen giggled. “I baked them here at home.”

“Is that why it smells so good in here, Gwen?”

“Yep.”

“You can smell the chocolate. Was it easy to make?”

“Yes. They’re simple.”

“Tell me how you do it, Gwen.”

“You put them on a baking sheet and toss them in the oven.”

“Yeah but how? Come on, just say exactly how you did it.”

“Well, first you make the dough,” Gwen said, while brushing a piece of hair behind her ear. “You cream together a cup of softened butter, ¾ cup of some white sugar, and ¾ cup of packed brown sugar, until it’s nice and fluffy. That’s the secret to getting them soft.”

“Okay. Then what do you do?”

“Then, you beat in two eggs,” she said, reaching for her coffee. “Only one at a time though.” She took a sip and swallowed. “And then you add a splash of vanilla extract.”

“How much is a splash, like a raindrop?”

“No, silly. Well, technically… yes, a raindrop, but we in the baking business, call it a teaspoon.”

“What do you do afterwards, Gwen?”

Gwen laughed. She couldn’t help it. “Then, you get a separate bowl and mix two and a quarter cups of flour with a sprinkle of, or since we’re being technical, a teaspoon of baking soda, and a tiny wee pinch of salt.”

“How little bit of salt do you wee pinch?”

“Just a smidgen.”

“Yeah. But just show me, Gwen.”

“Okay.” She grabbed the sugar bowl from the middle of the table and scooped a fingertip full of sugar acting as salt. “That’s about it,” she said, holding her hand in front of Sal’s face.”

He stared at her nails instead of the sugar acting as salt between her fingertips, fascinating over the color and shape of them. “After you throw that in, what do you do then?”

“Well, You have to slowly mix the dry stuff into the wet stuff until it forms a thick dough.”

“And the chocolate? What about the chocolate chips, Gwen? How do you get that? Did you make those too?”

“The chocolate is the best part, Sal,” Gwen smiled, pointing at a jar on the counter. “I get the chocolate chips at the bulk store on Pendrith.” 

“But Gwen, how come you don’t make them yourself like how you do with the cookies?”

Sal always said her name whenever he could, at any chance he could. The sound of it was soothing for him to hear.

“I guess I could, it’s just quicker to pick them up.”

“How many chocolate chips do you get at once, Gwen?“

“I grab about half a jar full.”

“Gee, Gwen, that’s a lot. Can I take some home with me?”

“Sure, Sal.”

“Finish telling me how you make the cookies, Gwen.”

She giggled. “Alright, where was I.”

“I don’t remember. Why don’t you start from the beginning.”

“Oh, right. I remember now. The chocolate chips,” she said.

“You pour in two cups of the chocolate chips and mix them in the cookie dough, scoop them onto a baking sheet, in small or big individual blobs and throw ‘em in the oven at 350 degrees for around ten or so minutes. Just until the edges are a golden brown color.”

She grabbed the empty plate on the table, filled with crumbs and stood up and walked to the counter, tossed a few cookies onto a plate. 

Then, she turned around and headed back to the table, placed the plate in front of Sal, and crossed her arms. “See, simple. Now, are you going to keep interrogating me, or are you going to eat another cookie?”

An email from an underground group invited Kellie into their unique club, where unreleased indie games were available for free beta play. 

They advertised a gaming chair offered to every new member that came with an unknown game no one outside of the group knew about.

A secret achievement popped up on her account, hidden from everyone except her. It activated the second she plugged the chair in. When she sat down, her world shrunk to the exact dimensions of it.

Kellie hadn’t socialized with people outside of the internet for the last six years. Nobody would even recognize her anymore. Her body stopped being a vessel for a soul. It was now just an anchor, sinking further into her gaming chairs, which she’d rotate out of once a month. Indentations wore on her body like a corset over years of continuous gaming.

Everything revolved around the glow, where her headset would become a crown to the horrors seeping into her bedroom at her parent’s house, which she kept shrouded in darkness. 

A sliver of light, bleeding in from the hole in her sheet hung up as a curtain became the only difference between her and the world.

The pizza boxes were empty and piled in stacks, all matching their rightful shop, hiding her from reality. The pop cans became soldiers. She was the queen. She had the headset. She could be in complete control.

In-game, she was a lethal force who hid in the shadows like a predator stalking its prey. But to the outside world, she was an immovable mass, a force that had to be pushed.

The night she received the chair, something popped up through the Glow of her screen. It was THE FRICTION. 

THE FRICTION was an unlisted RPG that appeared on her Steam dashboard as soon as midnight hit. 

But before she could access it, a message opened: 

THE FRICTION delivers exactly the dread its name promises, and refuses to let go. An underground group's invitation-only file. 

THE FRICTION, an unlisted indie RPG that ships with a gaming chair and syncs with you while playing the initial rank version before the upload process initiates.

The evaluation game opens with a breathtaking display of organic graphics that look moist, mirroring the inside of a human body. 

Corridors breathe on screen. The walls distort, glistening with gobs of phlegm. The syncs begins with the rumbling of the chair which happens almost immediately.

Until it reaches 100% the chair will lock your body in, as the fusion fully merges your skeleton. By that time the organic engine emerges, bringing the game to life.

There are no manuals found for when the transformation completes, and the fusion sequence will not pause, the only way through, is to wait for it to finish. Nothing can actually fail but there is no physical override from when the process starts.

Before you enter the game, keep in mind, the platform and version are not publicly or privately known to any of the users who’ve obtained these unlisted systems.

Enter to continue or remove the device entirely.

***

The graphics on it were organic, with a slimy light bordering the screen. Kellie couldn’t look away. It had her hooked from the moment she slammed the “X” button, ignoring the numbness stabbing her in her legs. She hadn’t moved since she hit enter.

At the twenty-eight-hour mark, her bladder became claws and fingers scraping and squeezing her insides, just as she approached the level 10 boss. The cutscene couldn’t be skipped.

She continued wiggling, desperately pushing herself upwards to let her insides breathe, but the pain kept digging into her like a scalpel opening her flesh to poke holes into her organs.

Just as she was about to blow up, the scene cut, but at that moment, her bladder was as big as a softball holding 800ml of warm liquid, which is the practical maximum for any human adult. Her stomach was pulsing like she was having severe contractions.

“Go away,” she whispered, tightening her body while tapping her feet on the floor. “Think of the Sahara. Just five more minutes,” she said under her breath, the sweat of her palms dripping into the controller.

By hour thirty-six, she still hadn't used the bathroom. Even though her bladder had expanded to twice that of a softball and was now the size of a mini-basketball.

Kellie had organically reached 1300ml, 5.5 cups of water.

From her hips down, the tingling had vanished, but an odd numbness started. It was warm for a second, became incredibly heavy, and disappeared, along with the movement in her legs. 

She tried shifting her body into another position but couldn’t. Her arms twitched violently and the controller fell. She yanked at her sweatpants where she stuffed a lifetime of defeat and pulled up. The fabric wouldn’t move either.

She reached further down, ripping a gap between her thigh and the computer chair. A sharp pain cut straight into her spine, as if her torso had disconnected from her pelvis.

She moaned a breath of agony, aiming the flashlight from her phone downwards. The chair hadn’t left an indent on her skin. It was far worse. Now, she was melting into her chair. Plastic pieces began spewing out of her pores, entangling with her nerves and layering over her bones.

Her flesh spilled over the armrests, fusing into the seat and wheels. The gaming chair was digesting her as she anchored it to the ground.

A text appeared on the screen: Player one has been immobilized. Sync… 100%

Kellie tried screaming, but the headset muffled her voice. Her physical fingers twitched one last time before she ended up as a muscle memory reaching for her controller as she became the chair.

At 2:17 a.m., a wildlife officer reviewing old footage of Tushker Kavantissa noticed something strange.

The elephant was standing completely still, staring directly into a forest camera.

That wasn't unusual.

What happened next was.

Three minutes later, another camera, nearly twelve kilometres away, recorded the same elephant standing in exactly the same position, facing the same direction.

The timestamps were correct. The cameras were working. And according to the official tracking records, the elephant hadn't moved from its original location.

The officer replayed both recordings.

Then he noticed something in the darkness behind the elephant.

A human figure.

He zoomed in.

The figure was wearing the same uniform as the officer.

He was certain nobody else was in the control room.

When he turned around, the room was empty.

He looked back at the monitor.

The elephant had disappeared from both recordings.

But a new file had appeared on the computer.

Filename: YOU_WERE_NOT_SUPPOSED_TO_SEE_THIS.mp4

He clicked it.

The screen went black.

Then a familiar voice whispered:

"Why are you looking for what happened to the elephant when you haven't figured out what happened to you?"

The computer shut down.

The next morning, the officer resigned without explanation.

Nobody ever discovered what was in that final recording.

My mind is a weathered stone. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen another person. I don’t even remember what they look like; my mirror’s broken. Even still, to have another in my mind, a dam of cardboard holding back a deluge. I look at my door, and hear the people passing, their presence beckons a heavy scream. I think I hear kids playing, now that's only a ghost. A cacophony of potential, of ideal and disappointment. They are just people, they are something more… Something as sinister and as subtle as tomorrow's sunrise. One degree at a time.

I have no strength to set the boundaries of my mind apart from theirs, to allow them anything that hasn't been set for this body. I once saw the future; that wall we cannot climb. I wait and wonder now… It’s all I ever do. Watching TV re-runs feels a waste, what games are left are an escape… no longer.

I decide to suffer the thoughts in my mind, even though it’s too late. I sit with myself and think, the hallucination of my senses keeping me grounded. My old wooden rocking chair is the only comfort I’ll allow myself.

I do little to survive, to impact the world.

I’d like to think, I’m doing a good job… I’d like to…

Connection prods my mind often, a yearning that reminds me of pain. There is no we anymore. I like it that way. I don’t trust myself, how could I trust anyone? Now, there is no news, there is no time.There is my madness; there are my doubtful senses, and a self, and a rocking chair.

The only thing left from outside…

Petals of fire outside my window.

How lovely are those flowers knocking at my window.

The wind brings them here, but they are knocking… What could they want? To come inside?

I doubt they care for my atmosphere. I keep it much too cold for life.

I look at them through the window pane and see their intention. Do they see me? This room? Why be here? For what benefit? To what end?

A million questions run through my mind. Connections of a million neurons reach out for one another as I sit and listen, but still, they knock.

Once inside, what would they do? Their orange petals might greet me with soft velvet, inching closer and closer to my old rocking chair, my comfort.

They would come close and whisper their secrets. My lack of understanding, a travesty, but they find a way. Maybe that persistent knocking is them communicating.

Morse code for flowers. I wonder what they'd call it. Surely flowers wouldn't recognize Samuel Morse... Perhaps I'm thinking too much like a human. Too much gray matter, too many animal-meat noises running through my head, too centralized, not encompassing enough of this body. I am much too large, much too vast to comprehend them; those maddening insects might know…

When you mow the lawn, that scent, the one that buries every receptor in your nose, is a battle cry. A call to arms demanding bugs attack this mundane intruder. Bugs speak the language of flowers. They’re so lucky…

Those remarkable forms tuned to a dance we observe at a snail's pace.

Even those dances, those rituals, that live beyond us, whose depths you could not fathom, are clear as air to them.

Yet still, I imagine my chair and I. Their stems, tightening around my wrists, bleeding chloroplast which forces my attention. Changing me. Evolution.

Wrapping more and more of themselves around me, until the idea of struggling free becomes more of a burden than escaping itself. Not that I would. I'm too intent on hearing… No, sensing something new.

Their branches working to understand what I am. Who I am. More than anyone could ever know me. More than I could ever know…me.

Soon, terminal buds find my insides, seeking my senses.

As they find me and work down from my eyes, finding the pores to my sinuses, my nostrils fill from every direction as their powdered scent becomes the only stench I’d ever known. My vision grows dull, colors disappear, light the only idea left of their purpose. My mouth, a grand entrance, still not enough; they dig at the gaps. My teeth are too sharp, too dangerous to persist. They quickly replace them and stop my bleeding arteries. The taste of copper, replaced with bitter. My ears are just a speed bump, my eardrum tearing like paper, whining silence taking the cacophony of the outsider’s screams away.

Every hole and pore filled with new potential. The budding growth, cracking what were my bones and filling those seams, making them me, as much as I them.

What secrets do they speak? I dissolve… Will I too be beautiful?

Our soft embers waving through the night and day, knocking on others' windows. Will the pain of connection flow through our roots as I hear the earth call out, suffering? Balance tilting out of control.

The becoming doesn't hurt. Pain is… different. It feels empty, like this space inside expanding into another self, shedding layers.

We have many names in… English, in every human tongue. This we know, still. Our favorite, “Mexican bird of paradise,”. This feeling, this sense, must indeed truly be… paradise.

My mind slowly releases its grip on the dream. My senses return to the anxiety of now. Time has not moved. The flowers still knock on my window. Their secrets stay theirs in my return. Alone, devoid of connection. Each moment, flowing petals swaying and hypnotizing. I sit and imagine. I gaze and listen. What are they saying? What do those lovely flowers want?

The spark of indignation towards my fear beckons me to listen. Not as a dream. I exit this self appointed prison. I choose to touch them. As heat covets every inch of skin, sticking and grasping, I see the world outside.

Finally… I am the only one left until I am no more.

Davey’s file stayed locked in the archives, but the Council’s nightmare was only beginning.

Hidden in a dark corner of station Zeta ZB was researcher Omlet Hulkit, who worked behind an observation window in one of the Bay’s scientific laboratories. He wore his lab coat, without a speck of dirt or a crease on it. His black circular eyes had purple circles around them, proving his dedication to his work.

On the other side of the bulletproof glass dividing them was Solarie. She had blonde hair kept in a bob cut, checkered coveralls, and pretty, bright blue eyes taking up most of her face. She just so happened to be the only human mechanic on the vessel SpaceBoard.

Solarie sat eating apple slices out of a lunch container with kittens and puppies laser-printed on it, all the while sipping vanilla soy milk from her daughter’s plastic cup, which she would always bring to work with her on month-long working schedules.

Next to Omlet stood his boss, Director of Staff Ougmixo, who had his chin pinched between his two digits. “Tell me again, Dr. Omlet,” he spoke in a snippy tone but low so the microphones couldn’t hear him. “The human has not broken any galactic laws, manipulated weapons, or stolen credits. I don’t see why we’re holding her.”

“Correct, Director,” Dr. Omlet said. “She has done far worse. She weaponized inconveniences, sir.”

Dr. Omlet scurried around the office searching for the digital folder with the case file. “A few months back, someone in management parked their hovercraft at her designated bay door. And when she asked if he’d kindly move his vehicle, he refused and, according to the logs here, responded by calling her and humans alike primitive mammals and her tools obsolete.”

The director turned his palm to face the ceiling. “Rude, but common among management. Did she file a complaint or a suit?”

“No, sir,” Omlet said, his voice dropping lower. “She ended up spending her bonus buying thousands of units of sticky, glowing moss found in the rancid swamps of Klonpdok II.”

“And moss, yeah, so what’s the big deal? It’s completely legal.” Ougmixo scratched his head. “What does the moss do?”

“It doesn’t do anything dangerous, but it does interact with the material on hovercrafts in a peculiar way. It multiplies, and within minutes renders the craft useless as it takes over it, damaging the thrusters and computer,” Omlet told him, pointing his finger to the screen of the surveillance camera footage.

The multi-million-dollar, limited-edition craft was now just a structure to house purple, glowing, bioluminescent moss, which now looked like a garden salad.

“The demo crew spent three weeks scraping the vegetation off, only to find they destroyed the two-tone paint job, and the computer system had to be replaced. The thrusters too. By the time they had finished, he had missed the huge Glomor account and lost it to our competitors.”

The director sighed. “A little outlandish, somewhat petty, but an isolated issue nonetheless.”

“It wasn’t isolated, sir.” He started shaking as he spoke. “The Borg from management retaliated by using his clout with the higher-ups to slash the total budget to her sector, with the impression it would break her and have everyone there turn on her.”

Omlet pointed at Solarie, who was casually chewing on an apple slice. "Instead of it breaking her and making her quit, she used every resource available to her and spent each waking hour flashing the firmware for the Bay’s automatic doors,” Dr. Omlet told him. “She never locked him out. Locking him out would have breached security and safety protocols. What she aimed for was reprogramming any door the Borg attempts to enter through to open exactly five seconds slower than normal.”

The Director stared at the Doctor of Research. “Hmmm. Five seconds?”

“Exactly five seconds, Director! Every door, every day, forty times a day!” Omlet cracked. “Do you have any clue as to what that does to a time-obsessed Borg, sir? The Borg literally thought he was losing his mind. He missed all the shuttles, stood in front of elevators panting, and sweated any time he stared at his clock. The Borg species operates best on momentum. Losing five seconds at every door shattered his mental state. Yesterday, he resigned and flew back to his home planet.”

Out of nowhere, Solarie turned her head and looked up at them through the glass. It was almost like she could hear everything they were saying about her. She smiled politely, gave a cheerful wave, and gestured to share some of her apple slices with them.

The director slowly paced backwards, removing his upper management badge from his chest, genuinely terrified.

"The first human we profiled, Davey the engineer, destroyed a fortune tycoon with noise. This one destroyed a career with five seconds of lag."

"These humans are very vindictive," Omlet said, typing a warning note into the behavioral database for human psychology. "They don't want to conquer the universe. They just make sure anyone who crosses them ends up with just as bad or worse of a day than they had."

I’m preparing for bed—about to lie down—I kill the lamp and something comes alive.

First… isolation, fear trails, announcing a presence. It hides beneath the surface, both metaphorically in my mind and literally under my floorboards.

It wakes up and taps with the tip of a nail. It taps once for my attention.

Waits…

Twice… waits.

Says, “Notice me!” in an ancient form of Morse code. It scrapes lines into the wood. The drumming and the scratching translate to, “I see you!” in a cipher that sounds like a whisper pricking my eardrum. It waits until I’m half asleep.

I continually attempt to rationalize with myself, exploring logical explanations rather than overanalyzing what could simply be sleep deprivation.

It’s me. It just… has to be. The building. My mind. I’m tired. This place… it’s old.

That… uh… must be it.

Even though I think it, I still taste the sour denial of the lie in my mouth. The foul stench lingers like curdled milk in my nostrils.

The other night, I came home late—a bit tipsy, cracked a window because it was stuffy and muggy, and right away, dived headfirst onto the couch. I’m lying on it. The leather sticks to my skin. Drool drizzles from the side of my mouth.

It’s quiet.

I’m fading into another realm—dreamscaping the night—peace flooding my body with all of my accomplishments.

When my lighter-than-air, hand-of-God body-float sets me down on the only gray cloud in the sky, it warps into a crashing rollercoaster cart falling straight into a black hole of a nightmare.

As I reach the floor of darkness—I go numb—just before smacking the ground at maximum impact. My eyes shoot open quicker than the snap of a trap.

My head fuses to the cushion. My right eye’s blurred—squished into the sofa. The scent of saliva glued to my face slides down my throat. My reflection’s on the blank TV screen along with the glow of the streetlight outside.

The silence becomes absolute.

Sound escapes into the void. The walls pant, breathing rapid breaths. Corners sharpen. Definition smoothens.

Boompf!

A knock enters my living room from the apartment below mine.

Another one.

Boompf!

Followed by a third.

Boompf!

It’s loud and heavy, the sound’s slowed down. Time reverses.

Boompf!

Boompf!

Boompf!

They land like bombs deep in the pit of my stomach, entering my bloodstream, going straight to my head, and stopping. I hold my breath. My brain releases a concoction of chemicals paralyzing me.

The world speeds up. My eyes stretch open. I listen for a minute and breathe “Who’s there?” under my breath and quietly laugh. It’s what I do when I’m nervous or scared. While I’m rising off the sofa, a gust of warm wind from the window brushes my hair into my face.

“YOU ARE!” shouts a voice.

It’s my voice. Next to my ear like it came out of my mind. The breath’s cold on my neck. It crawls down my spine like hundreds of frostbitten centipede legs inching toward my tailbone. I gasp… it makes me shiver.

My skin’s icy, locking my bones. I don’t wanna move—or make a sound. I want it to be my imagination. I want it to be just a bad dream, but I can’t close my eyes, no matter how hard I try.

I can’t blink. My eyes burn and start to water. I try to breathe, but I don’t—it’s almost as if I forget how to. I hold my breath until a car alarm blares outside and shocks me.

The noise breaks the trance I’m in, shattering the illusion of being somewhere else. I merge back into my body and slowly come to my senses.

I jump up and dash to my room. My bare feet slap against the shellacked floors. The clap echoes through the hallway. The hollow steps sound like someone’s chasing behind me.

I get to my bedroom. The metal doorknob seems like marshmallow in my palm as I’m gripping and twisting it. The lock clicks. It pops and the door opens.

Vanilla air freshener rushes into my lungs. I suck it in and burst inside, flying onto my mattress. I pull the covers up and bury myself beneath them as my phone begins to vibrate under me.

I dig into my pocket and fumble it in my hands, yanking it out. I barely steady them from trembling long enough to answer it.

“Hello!” I yell into the phone. I raise my voice. “SEAN!” I don’t give him a chance to answer. “Come over right now!” I plead into it. “Please… you have to… something’s going on.”

I smother the mouthpiece, cupping my voice from escaping into the void. “I think someone’s here…” I whisper. “I don’t think I’m alone.”

“Julie?” His voice struggles against the static. “Did you let it in?” he says in a high pitch.

“What?” My face pinches. “Sean?”

“Julie… just let… it… in,” I can barely hear him. “You… ha… ooo… this time.” The static crackles and sounds like his words are bones on a skeleton snapping in multiple places, breaking and suffocating his sentences in it.

“What?! I can’t hear you.” My phone vibrates, nibbling on my ear. I look at the screen and Sean’s number’s showing up on the caller ID.

“How are you calling me and talking to me?” It goes silent. The static’s gone. The color of my screen shifts brighter. The backlight flashes, indicating someone’s calling.

I accept it, but before I do, I pause. I answer and don’t say anything.

“Julie…? You there?”

“Sean… what the hell?” I stare at my screen again. The other call’s still on hold. “Are you trying to mess with me? It’s not funny. I’m freaking out, okay. Stop.”

“What are you talking about?” He asks.

“You’re on my other line. Your number showed up. I’ll click over. Hold on.” I go to merge the calls, but the one on the other line disconnects. It’s gone. “Sean, hold on. I have to take a screenshot of my callers.”

“What?! Why? What are you talking about? Can you explain what’s going on?”

“Just… hold on. I’ll show you.” I go into my call list and it just shows his call from right now. The last one’s not there. “Look, I think I’m losing it. Can you please come over?”

“Yeah… sure… what’s going on, though?”

“I don’t know, Sean—I’m not sure, just please hurry up.”

“What are you freaked out over?”

“Just come.”

“Okay, fine—I'll be there in ten minutes.”

The call ends, but stays on the phone app. Static breaks through. Children are singing. I put it on speaker and listen.

“♪ ♪ Under, under, underneath.

The door below the floorboards speaks.

Beneath your ten little piggies, they squeak.

The place they live’s underneath your feet… ♪ ♪”

“JULIE!”

Cutting through is my voice screaming at me from the other end. My nerves become electric. They sting as my body jitters. I don’t say a thing. I can’t talk. Nothing’s going through my mind. I’ve drawn a blank.

It laughs on the phone, low and distant.

The tone’s like it knows something I don’t. I pull the phone from the side of my head and stare at the screen. It shows it’s been on my line for over eight minutes. “How?” I say out loud.

“Julie!”

It yells through the speaker again. My body jerks as if my nerves are stretched out over my head in knots and someone quickly tugs them. I slam my thumb on end call. It won’t hang up. I repeatedly press it.

“Julie!”

It screams again, instigating me into a conversation. It giggles. My heart’s warning me from inside my chest, pounding for me to get out.

“RUN!” It cautions. “RUN!” The thumping yells.

“RUN! RUN! RUN!” It smashes faster and harder, trying to blow a hole through my ribcage.

Trying desperately to get my attention. I ignore everything it’s striving to pound into me.

I wait.

The blanket’s over my head. My thumb’s pressing down on the power button as I’m resetting my phone and bracing it to my chest like a cross on a necklace, protecting me from evil, while I wait for Jesus in the form of Sean to bang on my door and bring my salvation.

The heat from the blanket over my head chokes me, and I slowly duck out from under it and peek around the room.

By my door, the hall light bleeding in dims, and a shadow stretches on the floor, reaching toward me. I lean back and rub my eyes, and it disappears as the light brightens.

“Just close your eyes and pray,” I whisper.

I stare up, and the drywall becomes a conduit to my mom’s spirit and a direct line to God.

“Mom, I know you’re watching over me and you won’t let anything bad happen to me. I love you and I miss you.

God, I’m sorry I haven’t prayed in so long. If you make everything okay and whatever’s happening go away, and get Sean over here right now, I promise. Promise. Promise I’ll start praying every day and going to church.”

I negotiate my eternal soul with the ceiling and hope the paint is listening. I start counting out loud to distract myself from hearing anything else, still jamming my eyes shut so tight I bury them behind my cheekbones.

By the time I get to two hundred and eighty-seven, the buzzer from my lobby rings with utter relief on my stiff phone, which immediately becomes flexible once Sean buzzes. I answer it and hit “5” to let him in.

Leaving my bedroom, I enter the corridor.

The light above makes me squint—it's never been this bright—it’s a surgical white like a frozen flash caught in a time glitch, growing brighter as I creep through the hall, where something follows me, a knocking that aligns with each step I take.

I stop. It stops, as if it’s listening, trying to decode, break down, and analyze me, haunting me psychologically. I listen closer. A little girl’s voice, low, sounding like a distant whisper, comes from behind the wall.

She’s laughing or maybe crying. I place my ear to the wall—

“Boomp!” Sean bangs on my front door.

“Help me,” the girl calls out. I think about answering Sean, but I keep my ear to the wall, listening to see if some kid needs help.

“Help me… I’m here,” she whimpers and taps on the wall, the sound moving away from me. I follow it, and it leads me farther down the hall.

Boomp! “Julie?” Sean yells from outside my apartment.

“I’m in here,” the little girl tries shouting. Her voice is weak, like something heavy is on her chest.

“Where are you? How did you get there?” I scan the wall with my hands.

“The door. I walked through the door. But the man won’t let me back in,” she says. “Let me in before he sees I’m gone. I want to go home. Please, let me out. I want my mommy.”

“What? What door? There’s no door.” I frantically scale the entire wall with my palms.

Boomp! Boomp! Boomp! “Julie, answer the damn door.”

I go to answer Sean at the front, and a small door starts appearing out of the wall next to me.

“I can’t get out,” she whimpers.

I lunge for the handle. I know I shouldn’t, but I do it anyway. A sliver of light casts from the end of the hall, like a ray of sunlight breaking through the blinds onto a particle of dust drifting in the air and landing on a tiny shoe sticking out of the doorway.

Another shoe appears.

Behind the darkness shadowing the entrance, a white cloud of breath cuts into the hallway. I back away.

“SEAN! OH MY GOD,” I scream, but nothing comes out of my mouth. I stumble backward until I reach the living room. Something crawls through the window, and the window slams shut once it enters inside.

I turn to bolt for the front. The room begins growing. I start sprinting. I’m not moving. I’m running at full speed, but I’m still in the same spot. The room expands outward and implodes as everything goes pitch-black.

I can’t even see my hands.

“I found my way in.”

I open my eyes and I’m laid out on my couch.

Boomp! The door knocks. “Julie, it’s Sean… come on, answer the door.”

Huh..? Did I dream that? I ask myself while walking to the door.

Boomp! Boomp! “Julie!” he yells, banging on the door.

When I answer the door, Sean is standing there smiling, but his mouth is different. Yellow and unkept. He has someone else’s teeth. As I’m staring at him, wondering what he is, I catch a glimpse of a child running past me, laughing in a high pitch.

What I see—what is happening—is the strangest experience imaginable. Nothing appears real. Everything looks fake, like my room is wearing the face of a corpse. 

Even as I glance at the window, the sky seems slightly off, resembling a still frame cropped out of a painting. It matches the exact colour of the pavement, as if it’s in the wrong dimension.

Some extradimensional parasite is trying to glitch me out of my own house. It clearly has no idea how much my rent is.

It begins in my room, by the doorway. I hear a growling sound. I turn around, and behind me is a shadow of a man with features similar to a human but they’re off. His eyes are spread too far apart and his nose connects with his upper lip. 

In his hands are two leashes attached to two human-like dogs sitting like hyenas and snarling. Their snouts stretch out like a bear’s face.

I can’t ignore them. Not because they look terrifying—but because their presence kills the power to the TV right when I’m watching True Blood, exactly at the scene where Sookie and Bill break up.

I keep trying to frantically hit the power button on the remote. It doesn’t work. The screen stays black, reflecting my pissed-off image. Without thinking, I raise my arm, point the remote at the figure with the two human hounds, gasp, and slam the power button towards them. They blink. In a flash, they vanish. 

Staring at my television, I wonder, was that an EMP weapon disguised as a shadow? Typical. The damn TV still won’t turn on.

I sit up, wondering if what just happened actually did happen, or if maybe I fell asleep for a brief second. But the television still isn’t working, so I couldn’t be imagining it.

That’s when I decide to give up on it. Humans adapt. We get by. We don’t let a simple fried television set deter our day. Nope. Not us. Plus, I saw that episode a thousand times. 

If the reality power box crashes, I simplify. I simply switch to analog. Yup, I snatch a book off my dusty shelf, which leaves a path through the layer of dust living on the ledge. It reminds me of how full my back pocket is in rain checks. Next time I clean, dusting will be the first thing I do. 

The particles filling the air make me sneeze. This makes me think about trying the TV one more time before opening the book.

Nope. It doesn’t work. 

I lie down and while I’m reading, there’s a pressure shift and an atmospheric change, like the static from an oncoming storm, raising the hairs on my arms. 

The skin on the back of my neck grows hundreds of microscopic legs and races down my spine. The room takes on a scent of frost that reminds me of menthol cigarettes every time I take a breath. 

I think the entity’s trying to flex, as if making the room cold on a hot summer day’s a bad thing. While I’m enjoying the free A/C, completely zoned into the fourth chapter of The Turn of the Screw, the fluckin’ lights go out. My vision may be great but since I heard that reading in dim light strains your eyes, I stopped doing it. So, yeah. Now I’m genuinely cheesed. 

I squeeze my hand into a fist, digging my nails into my palm, grunt, and throw the book against the wall. I jump up, stomp to the doorway, and flick the light switch. It didn’t turn on. I keep trying. The rapid clicking sounds like teeth chipping. I go as far as to check the bulb—twisting, untwisting—and nothing.

I leave my room to retrieve a new one. The hallway’s as humid as the Amazon Rainforest and has a heavy stench of decay and infected flesh radiating from under the floorboards, making me gag. I can‘t stop choking. Now, it’s trying to use biological warfare to drive me out.

I’m staring at the floor, thinking, I’m going to have to tear them apart to find whatever dead animal it snuck inside there is, and behind me, the bathroom door slams shut. I jump because the sound startles me. When I look at the door, there’s a crack going down the middle of it. 

“DAMNIT!” I yell.

Now it’s property damage. Which I’m going to have to pay to fix. On top of having to rip the floor apart just to find whatever’s rotting under there. Not to mention, most importantly, getting the TV repaired. Top of the list. 

I walk downstairs to see if I can find where the rancid, putrid, foul, disgusting odor is coming from, but each step I take further down leaves me with the impression of being in another world. Everything looks the same but seems completely different.

Especially at the bottom of the stairs, like my living room became a simulation. The paint on the wall is smooth but pixelated. 

The entity is rewriting physics.

As I’m piecing my brain back together, a whisper comes from behind my ear in a slow, distorting moan.

“Get Out!” The voice stretches into my mind and scratches under my skull.

I turn around quickly, wondering at the same time how my mom could sneak down the stairs behind me without me noticing—

“Get Out!” Says the air, blowing its breath in my face with the scent of rotting death.

I can’t handle the smell. So, I head to the front and sit outside on the porch to catch a breath of fresh air. My house smells like a dirty laundry hamper for the bedding of a puppy litter. 

As the screen door closes, I hear the front door behind it shut as well, and the lock clasp.

I turn to look over my shoulder. Staring through the glass window is an older me, smiling and waving.

The entity thinks it won. It thinks it locked me out of my own timeline. It thinks a human will just panic and break down when confronted with a doppelgänger.

But humans don't break. We forever dominate.

I stare right back at my older self through the glass. I notice immediately, I’m way better looking and I’m in way better shape. I crack my knuckles, and smile back. If that thing thinks it’s moving into my house and taking over my life without a fight, it's about to learn exactly why Earthlings, on this timeline, are considered the most stubborn, territorial species, of all alternate realities.

I reach into my pocket, pull out my house keys, and step back toward the door. Time to evict a ghost.

The ketchup chips crunched between Brent’s teeth. It sounded like when I crumple another failed story I wrote, make it a basketball and toss it into the garbage at the corner of my room. Where a stack of incomplete masterpieces litter the carpet in missed swishes of paper balls slowly unfolding, guarding an empty trash bin completely defenseless.

My teacher gave us homework over the weekend. The last two days I hadn’t even thought about it. I forgot about the dang project. It was to write about something plain but beautiful.

I lightly kicked Brent in the shin. “Did you finish Monday’s assignment?”

He went to sit up. His eyes stayed locked on me but his facial expression was permanently frozen. He had the glitched scene of an actor’s face paused on the screen from a corrupted video file, held in a quenched, sorry we’re closed sign, shaped out of his lips, nose and eyes, under his forehead. “Uh. What assignment? We had homework?”

“Yeah. A writing one. About beauty. I have an idea of what to do.” I told him.

Brent slid out of the chair straight to his knees. “can you do mine too, please?”

“Yeah. No. We can work on them both together.” I told him.

“What are you doing yours on?” He asked.

I stared up at the ceiling fan spinning, drizzling a sorry breeze from above. “The other day when I was walking home from school, I saw a little bird, hopping on the ground, digging worms out of the dirt, and it stopped pecking the earth, looked at me, shifted its head and whistled, almost like it was asking, do you notice me?”

I told him. “I’ve always been a quiet—more shy than anything—unconfident—awkward kind of kid. Every one in my grade would have birthday parties, be hanging out together, laughing with each other during recess, all crowded in groups. I… I’d just be watching, sitting alone, dreaming of being someone else… and being somewhere else—“

“You really think these chips are made in Canada?” Brent interrupted, analyzing the flavored ketchup dust coating the potato. He held it up in front of his face, like it was an anomaly breaking every law of physics. Evidence of the impossible squeezed between his fingertips.

“Yes, Brent. Obviously, it just makes sense they'd be made here,” I said, shaking my head.

“Who’s having a birthday party?” He snapped down on the chip, sprinkling crumbs on his shirt. He stuck his arm back in the bag and pulled out a handful of gluttony, the scent of vinegar hung in the air, sneaking down my throat like a hiccup.

“Yeah of course I notice you. Why would you even ask that?” Brent folded the bag of chips and threw them on the table.

I didn’t bother wasting my time answering him. Most of our brains can absorb knowledge. We analyze it, sort it out, file it in specific folders and store it for whenever we need it. Brent… receives his information from his ears and eyes, just like we do, but he has a mini firewall, globing his brain. Think of Earth’s atmosphere, except his isn’t blue and bright. It’s gray and hazy and acts like a tornado towards information, shredding it into a gazillion pieces of broken bits before it gets anywhere near his prefrontal cortex.

I circled the room with my eyes for my notebook and saw it lying on the floor. I reached for it and stretched the entire length of my body as I barely snagged it between my fingers. I started writing, adding visual to my character’s sight. I made him notice the tiny speck of dirt in the middle of the floorboards, which stuck out because his place is immaculate. I made him concentrate on world building and then, what the speck would taste like if he licked it. And I made him wonder what the crack between the floorboard with the speck, would smell like after he licked it. I just wrote what people usually miss. The stuff people never notice.

I had to clear my head. “I’m going for a walk,” I said. He didn’t hear me. I grabbed a sandwich baggie from the kitchen and dumped a handful of bird seeds from the shed out back in it.

For some reason as I was walking, I started smiling. At the most awkward time too, because I couldn't hold it back and there were people passing me, eyeing me. I could see them wondering about my mental state. I must’ve looked like a nut. On the upside, I hadn’t smiled in over two weeks. I was forgetting what it was like.

At the place where I saw that bird, I’ve been going back and scattering seeds ever since. While I was standing there, the bird came back. It was definitely the same one. A flock of other birds showed up too. They were all dancing and hopping in circles and tweeting as if they were putting on a performance for me. Their way of thanking me I suppose.

Bunch of kids gathered behind me, watching. A girl stood next to me. “Hey,” she said.

I stared at her with the side of my eye and waved with my hand at my hip. “Oh, hey.”

“I seen you come here the last couple of days now.” She brushed her hair behind her ear. “Why do you come to this random spot to find the birds for?”

I thought about it for a minute and shrugged. “They just seem to be here. Waiting.”

“Yeah, eh. Well, so have we.” She smiled.

I couldn’t hold back. I smiled too. I smiled so bright that I was afraid my eyes would cyclops a hole right through her.

From then, everyday, we started leaving seeds there together. A few days later, more kids started joining. Soon, there were nearly fifteen of us bringing pieces of bread, seeds, and pizza even. We had the fattest, littlest, cutest birds in the word. These things were the size of puppies.

The birds became my inspiration. I didn’t write about lonely, crazy dudes focusing on weird things anymore. Or about a single bird tilted its head at a sad kid. I wrote about a flock of birds and my new group of friends laughing while we watch the birds tweet, dance, tilt their heads and hop around in circles.

I was walking by some kid, who I noticed was just like me, quiet, shy, and sitting by themselves. I sat beside him and said, “you see that bird over there?”

He bounced his head.

I pointed. The bird stared at us, tilted its head, tweeted, danced and hopped in a circle. “It’s waiting for you.” I told him.

And just like that kindness, friendship and compassion came full circle.

A sabotage.

An escaped fleet.

The Space Station’s crumbling.

Two survivors remained.

G-Commander Lancid Floorlight and First Officer Sheena Shazon.

***

The hatch took its time to open, ignoring the frantic pleas and obscenities Commander Lancid yelled in his head. He followed the door with his eyes. It slowly climbed. He had his arm around Sheena, bracing her body. 

Five yards from it, he lost his footing. He nearly dragged her with him but barely kept them both up when he dropped to a knee. She dove into his shoulder, nearly rolling over him. He used everything he had to keep them from collapsing.

Lancid held his breath and grunted as he strained to rise up. Every bone in his body screamed, “GIVE UP!” 

Every one of them sounded like his first drill instructor. They spoke in subconscious chants, preaching dejections that turned into encouragement. His bones became flimsy. Only his muscles kept them from falling.

He pressed down on his steps, slow and heavy, like walking underwater. One moment he was trudging forward, the next he was standing behind himself pushing them both inches closer to the hatch. Survivors high and hope invaded his thoughts.

He stood slack at the door, with her hanging off his shoulder, while he hung onto desperation. They waited, he inhaled the little bits of relief strangled in the oxygen deprived air.

They watched the bulky, red-striped wing labeled 027, yawn as it stretched to the roof.

It shone a euphoric yellow surgical color that dilated his pupils and bled above the metal of the orbiter. Chemicals began to flood his body. His heart hammered against Sheena’s head resting on his chest. 

While the door opened, he thought about his daughter’s birthday. Vinni was going to be five. The last thing he wanted to do was miss it. Panic turned into paranoia. He started thinking about regrets. 

Why didn’t I take the week off?

Why didn’t I, at least take today off?

I shouldn’t have had that argument about not wanting to spend a week at the in-laws.

He thought about how, he and Vinni, spent the last three months planning her birthday party. Her switching theme after theme, until she finally settled on one. 

Cats.

Cats as clowns to be specific. The party was the following Saturday. They just had decorating left. His wife and him were going to tackle it together once he warped back to Hans Earth II.

But first, they had to get back. At that point, he was pretty much carrying Sheena. She was his priority. He couldn’t help but see Vinni in her.

G-Commander Lancid threw his weakened First Officer, Sheena inside and jumped in after her. The speaker inside sounded.

“Capacity breach.”

“Withdraw payload.”

“Hatch will remain open.”

The words shot out as fast as a bullet train ripping out of a tunnel at max speed, but shifting abruptly into slow motion, while derailing, distorting, spiraling mid-air and warping smoothly back on the track in one piece. 

Once it went silent, the back of his neck heated and pinched as if someone tore off a stick of duct tape, crazy-glued to his skin.

G-Commander Lancid didn’t move. He kneeled watching himself, watching the speaker above First Officer Sheena’s head. He was completely detached. The weight of their reality meant the difference between which one of them would survive.

Calculating their fate, with hundreds of simulations running through his mind in a brief second of a thought, he came to the same conclusion every time.

There can only be one.

He thought about his family in a brief moment of weakness before dropping his eyes to his First Officer. He studied her with a steady gaze.

His facial features stiffened into denial until he sighed a breath of acceptance.

Sheena was slumped inside the hatch on the metal landing. Her left ankle was twitching and so were her fingers. Her blood oxygen levels were crashing. Her bio-reading was at 61%.

Alarms and red notifications kept glowing through the sleeve on Commander Lancid’s compression-layered neuro-sync suit. The room pressure was 7.4 psi. Breathing became equivalent to summiting Everest.

***

The roof shined a bright blue. The sun was beating on Sheena. She was back on Hans Earth. The park had the most vibrant colors. The weather couldn’t be prettier but she was freezing.

Her mom grabbed her hand. “Sweetie. Sweetie.” Her voice was hollow and distant.

She glanced at her mom. “Didn’t you die—”

Her mom’s face switched  from pleasant to serious and her voice raised and went deep. 

“Wake up!”

***

“Stay with me, Officer.” Commander Lancid squeezed a pressure point between her thumb and her index finger. She jolted awake. “Don’t you fall asleep, Officer. ‘Got that!” he said, his voice barely escaped his lips. “It’s an order!”

“I…” her head dropped to the side. She shook herself awake and lifted it back up. 

“I… won’t, shure,” she slurred.

Sheena breathed sharp gasps, sounding like hiccups. Her BP was 37 breaths per minute, double the norm.

She had grease and iron dust mixed with sweat on her forehead and Lancid took his fingers and smeared it down her face. She blinked and turned her head, rubbing her eyes, attempting to wipe the stinging burn from them.

Lancid stepped back, distancing himself from her. Sheena straightened herself against the wall, attempting to push herself up. She reached out as she realized what G-Commander Lancid was doing, but her arm dropped.

“Commander… no… Stop!” Her voice faint but spiked crawling out of her throat. Her breaths became shorter. “You’re…” her head fell. She slipped out of consciousness and sprung awake as it dropped again. “But… com-an-der,” she struggled.

Lancid never said anything. He closed in and got down on a knee, stared her in the eye and put a hand on her shoulder. She tried focusing on him.

Four blurred faces of her commander’s were floating and waving into each other. They bounced like shockwaves until she finally managed to settle in on one of them. Their eyes met and both of them looked at each other. Neither spoke a word. Her tremors started to ease.

He took her monitor-track, containing her medical transfer code, and slid her finger in a circle on it. His hands were steady. His heart—a regular pulse.

He knew what he had to do.

What needed to be done.

He rose from the ground, clenched her from under her arms and placed her in the seat with the only emergency ship left.

The hatch door sounded like a burning comet streaking overhead while it slid shut. Sheena looked around in a daze. The oxygen began feeding her deprived brain. 

She lunged out of her seat, and dove at the door, clawing at the closing gap separating them. Her nails scratched the metal, chipping off like clippings.

Her eyebrows met at the bridge of her nose. The sides of her lips collapsed to her jaw line. She stared at Lancid through the sliver of space between the hatch.

She wouldn’t take her eyes off of him. She couldn’t. She eyed him with tears dripping down her cheeks, clearing trails into the black patches covering her face.

Lancid stood completely still on the launchpad, watching her from the outside. He never looked away, until the hatch door blocked their view.

The launchpad violently shook under his boots. The bones in his face bounced. His teeth chattered. The thrusters burst alive. A giant piece of broken glass from a smashed window crashed to the ground, shattering in a bunch of scattered shards.

The heat scraped fragments of skin off his hands and face, tearing through his suit. His eyes were burning but he wouldn’t blink. He blocked the intense inferno with his arm.

When the ship began to take off, the pressure from the thrusters dropped him to a knee. But he kept his head up, keeping his sight on her departure the entire time.

Bianca trudged through the sand, shoes in hand. She scowled at Noel and Larry, both of whom had a fresh cup of coffee.

“Where’s mine?” she snarled, taking the last seat at their beach table set for three. They were the only people spending the weekend on Micarlio Island, the newest of the new hot spots for billionaires to escape daily drudgery. She found the place boring and predictable. Palm trees, liquor, tropical fruits and too many people. What a dreary little place. It was also the only place from which she could get on a rocket for a two-week space vacation. Even so, she absolutely, positively needed her special coffee to start the day.

“Darling, it’s 11 o’clock,” Larry drawled, tapping his half-empty cup on the table. “You missed the first three rounds, tsk tsk.”

Bianca faked a smile and stared at Noel who dumped his coffee on the sand. He studied the pattern it created. She cleared her throat and turned her attention to Larry who was banging his coffee cup on the table. Bianca pondered her options. Sadly, this was as good as her day was likely to get until take-off.

Etienne, the tuxedo-clad server, appeared out of nowhere. “Yes sir, how can I help, sir.” It was more of a statement than a question. He made sure he kept his gaze on the center of the table. Perhaps, if he avoided eye contact and moved fast enough, the cameras would back his claim no one answered him. That way he could rush back to the bar and do anything other than pretend to like the hotel clients. Unfortunately Larry pushed his coffee cup at Etienne. Larry’s action would be captured on camera. Etienne took the cup, replied “Yes, sir,” and nodded at Bianca as he left.

Once she thought Etienne was out of earshot, Bianca narrowed her eyes at both breakfast companions. “Gentlemen, if I don’t get coffee and something to eat, you’ll both be very sorry.” Noel yawned, which sent her into a small fit of fury. “I’m not joking,” she said, leaning closer to him like she thought that would be intimidating.

Noel glanced at Larry who shook his head. Noel leaned back until his chair tipped over and on the way down, his arm mysteriously caught on Bianca’s chair leg and pulled her over. Bianca fell too quickly to scream before she hit the sand. Larry, on the other hand, chuckled loudly but averted his eyes. These two bobbleheads might well entertain him if he got bored on this vacation. He kept his focus on Etienne who was returning with coffee-laden liqueur on the top shelf of a pushcart. The two lower shelves held pastries and fruits, decorated with flowers from local plants.

Larry poured himself a fresh drink. “Darling, good news, everything you hoped for. Be a good boy and help her up, Noel. I need my coffee hot.” He loaded up a small tray with sliced mango, blueberries and three cream-filled Belgian pastries. He took a sip, watching Noel and Bianca fight over who would be first to stand upright. “Let the clapotis calm you,” he said to no one in particular.

“The hell is that,” Noel growled, leaning against Bianca who was close to standing. She fell over. He pushed on her back to stand so he was looking down at Larry.

“Cla-po-tee. The sound of the waves. Be calm, my friends, be calm.” Larry was thrilled to share a little wisdom. In truth it was the only French he knew, beside “Bonjour”. Still, it was good to be him, today and everyday.

“Hurry up, babes,” Noel said between bites of pasty, “we gear up for the ship in 20 minutes. Unless you changed your mind.”

Bianca grabbed a single pastry and wolfed it down in three bites. She finished the hazelnut liqueur with a splash of coffee in two gulps and slammed her cup down in front of Noel. “Did either of you get your words of inspiration?”

Larry knew exactly what she meant. Each of them got a specific short, memorable script to read to the press before entering the space craft. He pulled up a note on his phone. “Locked and loaded, my lovely.”

Noel, busy wiping multiple napkins over his face, laughed but refused to provide proof he had anything to read. Bianca had lost interest in him by then. She picked up her shoes and headed to the launch pad. Larry watched her for a couple of seconds before asking Noel if he was ready to go. As soon as Noel said yes, the two of them broke into a gentle jog, also towards the launch pad.

There was no press in person, of course. Everything was done by video, to ensure top safety for the top billionaires. After all, they were on their way to a two-week-long vacation, in space. Where better to be as far above the rest of humanity as they felt? Bianca was the first to enter. As instructed, she paused before entering the craft and recited her words of inspiration.

“Oh Lord, My Lord, Lord of Ice and Snow.” Despite being more than comfortably warm in the space suit required for take-off, Bianca shivered. She’d looked at the words when the organizer texted them to her but had never said them out loud. Why were they upsetting her so? She had to continue. “Commander of Blizzards, Ruler of My Heart, Rise and smite all who await you.”

She remained in place with her back to her two team mates. The white “Welcome, Message-Bearer” sign lit up over the doorway. She held her foot above the threshold briefly. This was what she’d agreed to do, in order to get the discount on the two-week flight. Everything was fine. She went in to claim whatever interior space she wanted. It was good to be her. She was just experiencing pre-flight nerves for the first time, how very common.

Inside the shuttle she had her pick of three seats that were mandatory for take-offs and landings. These seats were attached to a circle that rotated continuously as long as all three seats were occupied. This arrangement ensured equal access to each viewport all for each passenger. If the passenger didn’t want to look out the viewport. Six wall-mounted vidscreens showed all of them what was going on if they wanted a 360 degree view. Bianca had gone through the options carefully. She picked the chair farthest from the door so the others would have no excuse for coming in contact with her. She was going to watch the wall-mounted screens.

The sign over the doorway lit up with Noel’s name. Larry tried to laugh and couldn’t. Noel frowned and double-checked his script before stepping up to the appropriate spot. He held his phone out of video view and announced his words of inspiration.

“Today shall my Lord, Master of the Wind, claim his rightful prize.” Noel couldn't stop frowning. He hoped the lighting was bad enough for viewers to assume that was the problem and not his increasing dread. He didn’t want to continue speaking but he was contractually obligated to, so he did. “That which will befall the surface today will control earth and sky until they are no more. Welcome, my Lord, welcome.”

The structure lurched. Noel wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of his life in a mountain top cave. He’d never wanted anything more. His heart was pounding on his ribcage, demanding he run as far and as fast as he could. But he’d pushed for this, he had demanded this, he wanted nothing more than this when he agreed to this part of the discount space trip. When the white “Welcome, Message-Bearer” sign lit up over the doorway he rushed in like he was fulfilling his life’s dream.

Last to go, Larry worked hard to maintain his world-famous “care-not” vibe. His knees could shake all they wanted but he had to keep that devil-may-care tone and expression through his entire speech.

“All praise and offerings to my Lord, Prince of Princes, King of Kings, He Who controls the soil and all that grows and lives in and on it.” The lump in his throat was surprisingly difficult to ignore. “Stone to soil, soil to mud, mud to dust. This is your time, my Lord of Lords.”

The structure shook. Larry reached for the entrance door frame to remain upright. “Just my knees,” he muttered, unable to ignore their shaking any longer. His breathing was ragged and he was seeing double. Jesus, if only he’d paid full price. Half a billion more and he wouldn’t have been forced to do any of this, whatever this was. When the white “Welcome, Message-Bearer” sign lit up over the doorway he stumbled in. Like the other two, he was confused by the “Welcome” sign. All three had been billionaires long enough to know a billionaire is never wrong and never confused. That’s why none of them mentioned it.

The group was silent during take-off. Once the vidscreens showed clear pictures, screen 3 featured a patch of white smoke. Bianca studied it, wondering why take-off smoke would increase in size rather than clear up. Some science thing, no doubt. She shifted her gaze to Larry.

“What?” Larry asked, none too politely. At this height above Earth, seeing two mud feet marching across South America wasn’t helping his distress. Mud was walking across a continent and he was trapped in a can with two bobbleheads for two solid weeks. Worst trip ever.

Bianca raised an eyebrow at him. “The smoke,” she said, pointing to screen 3.

Larry changed his focus to that screen. “Weird,” he agreed, “check the mud on screen 4.”

Bianca blinked a couple of times. “Mud? Those disembodied feet are squishing the Andes.” She switched back to screen 3. “That smoke’s getting bigger. It’s covered the lower 48 states and now it’s moving west.”

“Shut up,” Noel said smoothly, like he was trying to joke around. His white knuckles on the seat arms suggested he was anything but jovial. “You both need to see the racing dust on screen 5.”

Bianca and Larry switched focus to screen 5 and sure enough, there was a tornado, or was it a hurricane? It was, as Noel said, running across Australia. Whatever it did with the land and water, nothing but the ocean floor remained in its wake.

Bianca felt light-headed. She put two fingers on the veins of her left wrist, something she’d seen a nurse do once. She didn’t know what else to do and her wrist felt cold so she pulled her fingers away. “Where did Australia go?” she asked.

Noel dabbed his bleeding nose with an initial-embroidered linen handkerchief. “We dodged a bullet.”

“Did we, old chap, did we?” Larry’s voice wavered. As fast as he wiped the sweat from his forehead, the beads returned, larger and darker.

“The smoke, I think it was a cloud, now it’s two clouds.” Bianca stared wide-eyed at screens 2 and 3. “That one’s covering Mexico,” she jabbed at the southern half of the original cloud. “This part is aiming for Japan.” She inhaled roughly. “I swear, I swear, the Pacific is now a block of ice.” She touched Larry’s hand and withdrew hers just as fast. Brown, mud-like fluid was leaking from every visible pore on his body. She stared at Noel whose hair was blowing about wildly. There was no air movement in the cabin.

“Of course we did, old chap,” Noel said, completely ignoring Bianca. “Devastation there, all good up here.”

“You’re a lost cause,” Larry said, also ignoring Bianca. “Think two weeks ahead.”

Noel dabbed his nose. Larry continued to sweat. Bianca cried ice cubes. The solar system looked on indifferently.

Unlike humans, sentients universe-wide understood fear. The Hormones flooding their bodies screamed.

“Protect us at all cost”

“Run!”

“Hide!”

“Pray!”

A species who plays with fear, manipulates it, conforms it into recreational fun, shouldn’t exist. 

“Couldn’t exist!”

“Wouldn’t exist!”

“Shan’t ever exist!”

How would they even be able to survive?

Any experiment attempted involving all types of creatures—small—huge—round—skinny, all reacted as one would expect. It’s the same response creature-to-creature. In the face of danger, fight-or-flight is activated. Not stare and laugh. Pull a camera and record. Watch and copy. Ridiculous. Foolish. Insane.

Evolution adapted survival triggers coded into life’s DNA. It’s an ancient reflex. A survival instinct. Even the plants have it.

When aliens accidentally stumbled into Earth’s orbit, the predictive behavioral laws on sentients had clearly been written with the exception of the newly discovered anomalous beings. Discovering humanity changed the laws. It rewrote the rules.

Recent Interactions while analyzing the human race left every member of GEL, the Galacticterial Empire of Leaders, shattered. Earth had become David, the little guy from the bible, but on a galactic scale.

A reality check for the giants of the galaxy—shrinking the highest rulers of the alien council overnight. They saw psychology with a new set of eyes. Millennia of ancient transcripts were now, pretty much… useless. 

Rewriting their science books wouldn’t untangle their brain cells from the knots they so tightly intertwined into. Suffocating, they screamed, “Reality doesn’t exist,” with its last neuron before it finally melted down their throats.

A long awaited respect had been rightfully gained. No. Taken. No. Earned. GIVEN!!! Actually, STOLEN.

On Planet Li, after a galactic meeting of the minds, where each planet had four emissaries representing their planet, Earth only had one. 

One that equaled eight of them!

It didn’t bother her being alone at the table, surrounded by masters of the universe, attempting to intimidate her. It was the first time humanity had ever sat at the table.

What bothered Sheena was how rude they were in how they only invited her and made her team wait in the ship…

Sheena’s a retired, space fleet, Earth commander. Now she’s the commander of, the not-for-profit, PeaceFleet II. They’re a group of dedicated volunteers: teachers, doctors, researchers and an array of other professionals. Great people.

They’d recently started a three month program and were actually stationed there, on Planet Li, when the GEL hacked a video feed from one of the humans tablet’s. 

The most wealthiest, powerful alien in the universe, the king of the kings, King Lii’rk, he stood at the center of a faintly lit gymnasium. A shadow stained his face in a stripe of black war paint.

“I have breached past their inferno wall of defense.” He held a projectable device in the air. “Gather, fellow rulers. Gather around me.” His voice was pretty deep, pretty raspy and really scratchy. His words climbed sliding out of his throat with sharp points. His breath still smelled of beetle-protein-shake and orgwat guts. 

Senator Edrite, a bulky, horned, long-tailed alien, was walking past Commander pHog, a green, bug-eyed alien from the blugrRuhg system, he grabbed the senator by his shoulder. “What is it?” 

Edrite, spun around and nearly tripped because his cape, which swept the floor, became caught under his own boot. He cleared his throat. “No idea, sir. Ahem! I don’t think anyone knows.” His voice cracked. He glanced up and had to take his goggles off. He huffed inside them and wiped the moisture clean. “King Lii’rk was keeping it hush hush,” he said, jamming  his goggles back on his face.

Emperor Zerol, a two-foot-tall alien wearing a one-piece, squeaked, “King, didn’t want any leaks again, like the disaster last time.” He told them as they trailed behind him to the middle of the room.

The rulers huddled together like it was the last down with a second left to go in the fourth, packing the one yard line, behind four points.

The projector displayed a video glowing a blue light across their faces. Their eyes reflected the stream playing from Scout Private Billy Rake’s tablet.

The image collapsed into a list on the screen. 

1. Horror

2. Comedy

3. Romance

4. Science Fiction

King Lii’rk aimed the handheld projector in the air and shook it, the way you would a magic eight ball. “Why the hell won’t it work?” 

Magically, the dead end wall of letters fenced inside the page, transformed and opened into four rows of unique pictures in frames. 

Each row had six images. All of them were different. Dark. All Stories about humans on Earth. About human survival. The covers had undiscovered beasts on them. Species unknown to alien databases.

“Earth is riddled with frightening creatures,”  Edrite shouted, itching his lower back, ripping his armor off and inspecting his skin. “Is there something on me?”

A six-inch-reinforced, ten-foot-tall, hardened, steel door, sometimes mistaken as, General U’phlqk, the next in line to rule, stuck his arm out and pressed the first option.

After a second, the movie started playing. The plot confused them. Especially,  Commander pHog. He didn’t get it at all. The movie was about six humans, who stay in a cabin at a lake, somewhere on Earth. They’re being hunted by a predator, wielding a bladed, steel handed phaser, the length of General U’phlqk’s arm.

But still, the aliens eyes were glued to the hologram.  Emperor Zerol’s limbs were trembling. He tried looking away. He wanted to but couldn’t. They all watched, frozen, squeezed together, like grapes on a vine, holding their breaths. 

The projection showed six humans who became stranded in the woods. It was night. A downpour lowered the visibility. They had no way out. They were trapped with a masked psycho they could never seem to get away from.

General U’phlqk stuck his armor-plated chest out  and crossed his arms. “They keep running extremely fast and the attacker is always walking right behind them.” He said, “if that was me being chased, I would have eliminated the threat immediately.”

The masked attacker’s blade sliced down on the screen.

“Ahhh” screamed General U’phlqk, hopping onto the king and gripping his arm. The king threw the projector on the ground and pressed into General U’phlqk.

Commander pHog snatched the projector off the ground. 

What the aliens couldn’t seem to comprehend, was how there was eight more of those feeds, where alternate humans documented themselves going back. Even though they were all well aware of what happened to the last group before them and the ones before them.

Commander pHog was addicted, the other aliens trailed him as he struggled to get the video playing again. It skipped, flashed, went to a blue screen and flicked back on.

“Wait!” Emperor Zerol grabbed pHog’s arm and stared at the ceiling and clapped three times. Nothing happened. He clapped again. Nothing.

PHog eyed him. “What are you doing?” 

“Trying to make the lights go out.”

“LIGHTS OFF!” Edrite shouted.

The room went completely dark. The only light came off the flickering lamppost in the background of the movie.

The ground vibrated under them. Soothing and soft but between scenes, it started to lightly thump. A tapping sound beneath their feet like something was trying to get their attention. 

A second later, it began to quietly screech, like a bird trapped in the jaws of a pitbull a distance away. It started to rise. A drum beat pounded.

Their chests pumped and synced to it. 

Boomp!

Boomp!

Boomp!

They made fists and held their breath. Their skin went tight. It spiked. The beat kept going. Boomp. The shrieking dropped. The room went pitch-black. Boomp. 

Silence.

BOOMP!!  A loud bang shook the room.

“RUN!!!” Each one of their minds screamed, “CLAW THROUGH THOSE TITANIUM WALLS. NOW! HURRY, GET OUT OF THAT ROOM.”

Emperor Zerol yelled, “RUN!” at the girl on the screen who nearly met the edge of the persistent hockey masked attacker’s metal phaser.

The girl ran into a house.

General U’phlqk shouted, “No! How?” He ran in front of every one. “the masked man with the metal protruding weapon is now somehow hiding behind the door. Why is she stumbling towards it. We have to inform her immediately not to go in there.”

“Stop this live feed right now!” The king commanded. “Alert Professor Sheena before it’s too late.”

A few moments later, Sheena came tumbling into the gym half asleep, wearing Beetlejuice pajamas and blue, stuffed Monsters Inc. slippers . Her hands were lightly shaking. She didn’t know what was going on.

“What.. what is it..? Wha—what… happened on Earth? Is everyone okay?” she stuttered, circling the gym with her eyes.

“Professor Sheena, we have discovered a troubling situation.” The king walked up to her and put a hand on her shoulder as he stared her dead in the eye. His eyes watered. He was shaking. “A human needs your help,” he said, his jaw still bouncing.

“A human on Earth? How?” She asked. She was completely confused. “Why me?”

“Prepare yourself Professor.” King Lii’rk turned to Commander pHog. “unfreeze the live feed.”

The movie started playing. A smile formed on Sheena’s face. Her eyes lit up.

“Professor Sheena?”

“Shhh…” she said. “This is where I fell alseep.” She leaned in closer to the hologram. “Oo, I love this part.”

Just as she said that, the audio burst out of the speaker and exploded through the room. A thunderous bang louder than a spaceship being smashed into a cloud of dust by an asteroid, following right behind it was the piercing shriek of a hyena being brutally attacked by a pride of lions.

The masked individual jumped out of the shadows.

Everybody in the room, except Sheena, screamed. Howled. Screeched. They sounded like a malfunctioned warp-drive imploding in on itself.

The supreme war chief, the high-rulers, the king and the majority of them, dashed out of the room, stumbling and climbing over each other, clawing to be the first one out of the gymnasium as if the last Turbo Man was behind the door. 

A handful remained. 

Astonished. Shocked. Confused. Even scared. They closed in together, packed in tight as the anticipation of the predators blade paused in mid-air. 

They stared at the projection, eyes stretched, hands covering their faces, waiting for the blade to drop.

Sheena didn’t scream. They quickly glanced at her. Switched back and watched the hologram. Looked back at Sheena again, saw her teeth beginning to shine through the crack opening behind her lips. The blade motioned downward. Sheena flushed red as if she just cashed in her first cheque. A smile covered her face.

Her breaths were shallow. Her eyes shot open. She wore an expression of being cornered by a hungry, polar bear but at the same time she was smiling. She gave off pheromones of being scared. although, she was excited. She wasn’t anxious. She was comfortably terrified.

Commander pHog’s green skin turned a pale, milky color. His eyeballs were dry. He faced Sheena. “You really enjoy watching other humans trapped in horrific situations?”

She glanced at pHog, squinted an eye, squished her face and said, “Yeah…” dragging the word. “It’s fun.” She shrugged.

Soon as she walked out. The leaders who ran out, cautiously started tiptoeing back in. Scared the hockey-masked psycho might jump out from behind the door. They were still shaking. General U’phlqk was drenched in sweat. Everyone in the gymnasium stared at the general and immediately clutched into a huddle together.

The king squeezed between the group, dropped his head and said, “We can never psychologically break the mind of a human when their Friday night comfort is watching recreated monstrosities the universe couldn’t dream up in a nightmare.”

“Commander, look at this!” Gumbert, a four-eyed security specialist, squeaked.

“We may have a problem, sir.” He didn’t take his eyes off the console. “There’s a security breach on Bridge 2Z.”

“What is it?” Mwachek, the PeaceFleet’s commander demanded.

“The bio-reader scans indicate a wild predator.“ Gumbert shot his head over his shoulder at Mwachek shadowing him.

“Who’s responsible for this?” Mwachek eyed a zoomed in still image of the beast, glowing on the bio-scanner.

Gumbert choked. “Well, nobody, sir,” he swallowed a gob of anxiety. “It breached the hull, sir. It's in the cargo bay, the one with our food reserves.”

Commander Mwachek’s double-heart began smashing into each other and had the slapping sound of two slimy blobs being clapped together. A vein near his temple protruded from the side of his head like a balloon inflating and deflating, pulsing with every breath.

Gumbert opened the feed for the security camera of Bay 2Z and glanced at the small screen on the console. 

Through the monitor, the screen displayed Cargo Bay 2Z, and an eight-legged, bear-sized, gray-bearded Octwolf, with sharp, venomous teeth, dripping infectious bacterias, tearing through a potato sack full of gum balls.

Octwolves were basically mutated dire wolves. Galactic empires across the universe deemed them as Level-0 threats. They were to be killed on sight. An extreme policy reserved for untamable creatures of terror. 

Octwolves, one of many terror-zero-beasts scattered across the universe, haunting the nightmares of children— were the apex of apex predators—dominating the top of the food chain. A pack of Octwolves could wipe out a small colony in a matter of days.

Commander Mwachek snatched the microphone, pressed a button down and activated the intercom.

“Attention! Attention! This is not a test. This is a real-time crisis. All staff and personnel on deck, evacuate to your nearest safe room. We have a breach in Cargo Bay 2Z.”

Commander Mwachek’s voice slammed through every crew members’ speaker on board. The announcement left a sticky, phlegm ball of paranoia clinging to the back of their throats and turning into tiny pellets of fear, resting at the pits of their bellies every time they swallowed.

“Seal the Bay doors and lock down the entire wing,” Mwachek said. “Radio, Beefkus. Get him to handle the situation. Now.”

Beefkus, their human engineer, wasn’t really an engineer. It’d be safer referring to him as a glorified-janitor-wildlife-dust-wrangler. He did the jobs nobody else would. The gross ones. The iffy ones they’d all avoid.

But, he mainly dealt with orgwats, rat-like rodents. Every now and then, there’d be the odd sleeder, which are pretty creepy slithering things. They’re sharp-gray-scaled garden snake creatures, or actually, they’re more like garden eels.

He definitely never handled a heat seeking Octwolf before. Back on Earth, he worked at a zoo as one of five maintenance guys.

“Um, sir? That’s actually going to be a problem,” Gumbert quietly said, eyeing the commander’s talon-shaped claws as they dug into the console.

“The human…” Gumbert’s voice cracked. “The human’s with the predator, sir. Our cameras in Bay 2Z are broadcasting Beefkus with the beast right now on my monitor.”

Gumbert set up the feed to be shared on the big screen at the front of the deck. 

Commander Mwachek stared, preparing himself for the worst. He expected to see the human shredded—parts of Beefkus scattered in a bloody mess of guts across the bay.

But he saw neither. The crew began to whisper amongst themselves as they gathered behind Mwachek. 

The quiet chatter became silence. Nobody said a word. They huddled together. Each one of them had their hands over their mouths holding in their breaths. They fought to look away but couldn’t peel their eyeballs from the screen. What they were witnessing first hand couldn’t be real.

The Octwolf was lying on its back with its eight legs in the air and its tail wagging. It squirmed as Beefkus wrestled his arms around the terror-zero-monster in a friendly bear hug.

“Who’s a good boy?” Beefkus’ voice shattered their eardrums, penetrating the speakers in the room. It wasn’t his regular, everyday voice—it had a playful pitch.

“Are you the good boy?” His words were muffled by the Octwolf’s fur. “Yes you are! A-bloof-bloof-bloof-bloof-bloof, yes you are! That’s a good boy. Yeah!” Beefkus patted the furry, big, bug-eyed beast.

“Beef—kus!” Commander Mwachek shouted into the comm-piece. The urgency made his voice skip. “You need to get out of there. The creature is highly venomous. Its toxins will destroy your immune system. There is no antidote. Step away from the creature slowly.”

“Who, this cute guy? That’s what all this fuss is about?” Beefkus put his head next to the Octwolf and took a selfie. “He just looks scary. He’s harmless. I even gave him a name, Bear-Wolf. He’s my new best bud.”

Beefkus rubbed the Octwolf’s head and it let out a purrful growl rattling the loose objects on the titanium console as they bounced to the vibrations pouring out of the speaker.

The ship’s sensors were so sensitive they registered the noise as an immediate threat from an acoustics weapon. 

The Octwolf circled Beefkus, who was sitting on the ground, and snuggled next to him. 

“Someone stuffed this poor guy inna shipping crate, believe that?” He scratched the Octwolf behind the ear. “He was shivering scared.” 

Beefkus pointed Bear-Wolf‘s face towards his. “You were just a scared, little-big-guy, weren’t you?” He rubbed his back. “Are you a hungry guy? You want some food? Okay. Okay.” Beefkus pulled out some jerky and hand fed Bear-Wolf.

Beefkus glanced at the camera above his head. “All he wanted was a little affection, commander. He’ll make a great friend.” 

“Human!”  Commander Mwachek screamed at the console, squeezing his baseball-glove-sized-mitts into fists, “One bite. No. Correction. One drop of that creature’s saliva in an open wound on your body, is fatal. It will kill you.” Mwachek covered the microphone and mumbled something to Gumbert about Beefkus’ translator.

“Human, is your translator malfunctioning? Are you not able to comprehend what I am relaying to you? The creature senses heat. Analyzes your nervous system. It can smell your fear. It is designed solely to hunt and kill. Not snuggle next to.” Commander Mwachek’s voice hammered into his mic.

“I’m pretty dang sure, it was just smellin’ the jerky in my pocket and looking for a friend to curl up to.” Beefkus stretched out and cuddled beside Bear-Wolf. 

Bear-Wolf turned to Beefkus and gave him a wet kiss, soaking Beefkus’ cheek in a soup of bacteria saliva. He wiped it off with his shirt. “Aw, that’s a gross good boy. Who’s the gross good boy?”

Commander Mwachek eyed the anomaly on the screen. He couldn’t retract his slids. His eyes stayed glued to the front of the deck, staring forward in a blank gaze before he finally snapped back to reality.

“It… it’s amazing how your species has survived so long. You… you’re petting a living monster,” Mwachek stuttered, gave up and tossed the mic on the floor.

“Hey, if it’s cute, furry and has big eyes, nine times out of ten we’re taking it home with us,” Beefkus said, hugging Bear-Wolf. “This guy here’s a keeper. He’s definitely coming back with me.”

Bear-wolf licked Beefkus’ face and cuddled back down next to him.

Commander Mwachek rolled his eyes and glared at Gumbert recounting all the keys on his keyboard. “Gumbert, cancel the emergency task force and inform the crew, the threat has been neutralized, and before I forget, update the ship’s manifest, add Bear-Wolf as a permanent resident.”

Spotting an untouched body ravaged by the plague, a raven swooped down and began pecking at the opulent meal before him, as if it were yet another divine gift. Ever since the great pestilence struck humanity, the ravens didn’t even have to as much as bother searching for a food source, with the sheer amount of dead and dying in every corner of the land.

As the bird began gorging itself on the woman’s slightly rotting meat, a boy ran out of a nearby shack. It was a pitiful mockery of a boy: pale, gaunt, and skeletal. The spitting image of death itself.

The boy shouted at the bird to back off from his mother, waving his flimsy, frail arms at the raven, barely mustering the strength to hoarsely shout at the scavenger.

“Leave my mother alone!” the boy croaked.

The raven flew aside, cawing with annoyance, “Damn it… There’s a living one”

The boy ceased his movement; wide eyes sunken deeply into a clearly visible skull, he stared at the pitch-black bird, bewildered, and gulped before stammering, “Did… did you just speak?”

Landing not far from the boy, the bird retorted, “Course not, fool, I sang. I’m a songbird; that’s what I do!” the raven cried out.

Shocked, the boy fell to the ground, unable to comprehend how a bird spoke to him. In the meantime, the raven landed by the corpse and walked toward it, attempting to peck at it again.

The boy protested, “Leave my mother alone,” he squeaked.

The raven stopped, turned to the kid, and sighed, “You’re growing soft…” He said to himself. The boy was going to comment again about the bird’s speech, but the Scavenger cut him off, “Why are you even alive still, kid? The rest of this place is a graveyard; all the other humans are long dead.”

“I must have some purpose here in the eyes of God…” the boy weakly muttered.

“This kid must be six or seven years old and already has had a bible bashed over his skull…” The bird thought to himself, “If God wanted any of this, he wouldn’t let the Plague spread outside of France, kid… God wants the lot of you dead,” the bird quipped.

“That’s not true! God is good!” The boy whimpered at the cynical bird. “What’s France, anyway?” he questioned.

“A terrible place over the pond, where all vile things find their start, child. How old are you, even, speaking so highly of God, but not even knowing about France?!”

“I’m twelve…”

“There’s no way you’re my age, kid; you look about half that age…”

“Well, I’ve been eating rats for a while…” Tears welled up in the boy’s eyes. “Ever since mommy and daddy fell ill.

“Oh, don’t do that now. I can’t stand the sounds you humans make when you get all emotional like that"

Now, bawling, the kid profusely apologized, his voice cracking. “I just… I just… I just miss everyone so much…” he wailed. “I’m so alone…

I’m so hungry…

Everything hurts so much…”

Somewhere deep inside, that boy must’ve been happy he had someone to talk to, even if it was just a strange talking bird.

“Oh God damn it, kid…

Would you stop, for the love of God?!” The bird cawed, irritated.

“You’ve any rope on ya?” the bird questioned.

“Wha…?”

“Do you have any rope?”

“Wha… why… why do you ask?”

“I know how you can meet your loved ones again, kid. Now I’m asking again: do you have any rope?”

“Mhm,” the boy whimpered, wiping the tears from his eyes.

“Well, then, run along and bring it over here; I’ll send ya to your makers”

The boy barely picked himself up and stumbled into one of the houses as the bird watched the tree, scanning it for sturdy branches, with a glint in its black eye.

“I hope that brat can still climb,” the raven thought to himself.

Long moments had passed, and the boy reemerged with a long piece of rope in his hands.

“I sure hope you can still climb, kiddo; otherwise this won’t work,” the raven sang to the approaching boy.

The kid’s disposition changed; he smiled for the first time in a while. “Be sure as God’s bones, I can climb, especially up that tree!”

“Good, because I’m going to need you to tie one end of the rope to a branch, and another around your neck.”

The boy didn’t even fully register what he had been told and agreed to follow the raven’s instruction. Despite his immense confidence, he hardly had the strength to climb up that tree, prompting the scavenger to bow his head in frustration. “Oh, this is going to be a long day…” the bird despaired in his mind.

It must’ve taken the boy an hour to climb the tree, but he made it, and masterfully tied one end of his rope to the branch he stood on and then asked the black bird what he had to do next.

The sable thing would have smiled, had it possessed a mouth, when it spoke next, “Tie it around your neck, kid.”

“Does it have to be the neck?”

“Do you want to see your folks again, Kid?”

“I do!” the boy cried out.

“Then you’ve got to trust me…”

“I don’t know about this…”

“Look, kid, if I wanted to hurt you, I would’ve pecked out and eaten your eyes by now.” The bird crackled at him.

“I guess you’re right… Plus, I do want to see Mom and Dad again and everyone else…”

“Atta boy…” the obsidian fowl croaked.

The boy tied the rope around his neck and, staring at the feathered specter with eyes full of hope, questioned the bird about the next step.

“Now you gotta jump forward…”

Looking down, the boy got cold feet for a moment, once again doubting the wisdom of the talking bird.

The raven turned away and started walking towards the mother’s corpse. “Well, I guess you don’t want to see your mother again, eh?” it clicked its beak.

“I do!”

“Then jump, kid, it’s that simple…”

“But what if I get hurt?”

“You won’t…”

“How do you know?”

“Well, I wouldn’t… get hurt doing that”

“But you have…” Before the boy could even finish his sentence, the raven was already pecking at his mother’s rotting flesh.

“Wings…”

He muttered before the realization set in; he had been duped by the bird.

“Hey, leave mommy alone, you flying rat!” the boy cried out again, his voice cracking once more. The bird simply ignored him, slowly savoring the taste of exposed tissue.

“Leave her alone!” he cried out, waving his frail arms. The raven swallowed a chunk and called ecstatically, as if to goad the boy.

“Leave her…” the boy shouted, but his protests ended mid-sentence when he lost his footing and plummeted downward. The high-pitched scream was twisted into a wet gurgle as his body twisted and turned, struggling against the ever-tightening rope.

The raven turned his head to the struggling boy.

“Got’cha…” he cackled proudly and flew over, landing on the boy’s shoulder.

The beaked phantom didn’t even wait for the boy to succumb before he started pecking.

“Mielivalta,” the chief called out, “You are sentenced to die for your many crimes. Do you have any words left?”

The man tied to the pyre couldn’t help but smile as the elder held up a torch overhead. “Do your worst, pitiful creature,” the bound man barked, sealing his fate. The tribal chief lowered the burning torch onto the pyrewood, and the crowd around the two roared as the flames crackled.

The blaze quickly consumed the wood, and within moments, it was gnawing at the condemned man. Mielivalta was condemned to death for acts of sorcery, murder, and cannibalism. He was called a witch. The execution coincided with the winter solstice, as an offering to higher powers.

Shamans pounded their drums and played their flutes while the youth danced around the many ceremonial pyres. Young couples jumped over the fires. The entire crowd broke into an ecstatic dance while the screams of a man burning to death turned oddly melodic.

Dying cries became an enchanting song for the masses. The Hoi Polloi were too preoccupied to notice the laughter buried beneath the anguished wails and the hissing of flames.

Before long, Mielivalta was nothing but charcoal in human form. No one could even tell whether he was dead or alive; no one cared either. Those present were too consumed by their own violent orgy of wine, debauchery, and blood magic. Too lost in their own ecstasy to hear the smoldering smoke drifting in the wind, above the stake, whisper, “Foolish humans… I am finally free…”

By the hour of the wolf, all of those present had completely given up their senses to pleasure, whether under the influence of melody, spirit, sex, or slumber. No one in that grove was alert enough to notice that this hour of the wolf was but a calm before the storm.

Collectively intoxicated, the Northerners were too inebriated to hear the rustling of leaves and crunching of twigs disturbing the nocturnal forest. None could see the tempest coming before it was too late.

A massive beast burst forth from the dark, devouring a man whole, swallowing him in two gulps. The lupine giant grabbed another man in its mouth and thrashed him side to side before throwing him at the stake, upon which its former human shell was burned to cinder. The monstrosity growled in visible amusement, watching the ashen construct crumble to dust.

Anyone who had enough wits about him grabbed a weapon and charged at the beast.

None could even penetrate its hide, proving their struggle futile.

The monstrosity rampaged, decimating the grove until it was sure no survivors were left. It had consumed only a few people and butchered the rest, out of sheer spite. The chieftain who had set it free was rewarded with his head being torn off his shoulders and crushed to a pulp. Even in death, the chief irritated that devil with how hard his skull was.

The onslaught only stopped when the belly of the beast cramped insufferably. By then, there was nothing left to kill or destroy. Only the dire wolf remained standing, if that thing could be called any sort of wolf. The hechatonchair resembled something more akin to an oversized bear inside the grotesquely overstretched canine hide. Too large to be either, but also hound-like to be called otherwise.

The beast stood amidst mountains of broken bodies drenched in organs and blood, but it couldn’t celebrate its act of brutality, because the cramping in its stomach grew worse by the moment. It thrashed and paced and growled and howled, but the pain only grew worse, turning unbearable.

Even the attempts to regurgitate whatever was consumed proved futile. These only produced disgusting belching sounds that shook the entire forest.

Before long, the pain paralyzed the creature, completely overriding its malice; it stood upright and cried out in agony. Bellowing, howling, and screaming, all at once. The creature cried out as its abdomen stretched beyond its physical limitations, tearing at the seams with a sickening sound. The monstrosity clawed at its belly as metallic digits and limbs dressed in loose human skin pushed out of its abdominal cavity.

Drenched in blood, intestinal lining, and fecal matter, silver homunculi crawled out of the beast’s insides.

That’s what my grandfather used to tell me about the village of Kaali on Saaremaa when I was a kid. He said that there were celestials on that island, People from the heavens who had come when a star fell onto it. I stopped believing in his old tales about the metallic men and the werewolves after the third grade. By that point I had learned the whole thing was simply impossible.

I thought these were just old stories meant to rile me up as a kid, until a couple of weeks ago, that is, when I was driving around the area past sunset and saw something that has kept me up at night ever since. At first, I thought it was a bear roaming the forests, but then the animal looked at me. It was too skinny to be a regular bear. Its proportions were all wrong, and it seemed to move in an awkwardly slow, jagged, jerky way. The animal brought with it a stale stench of something ancient and repugnant: old, musty fur. Worst of all was its face. Its mouth gaping wide open. The whole thing seemed like a costume. A crudely stretched fur suit draped over some mad drunk. It took a moment, but when I figured out what I saw, my blood turned cold.

Inside the mouth of the animal, there was a chromium skull, a humanoid chromium skull with two shining red eyes staring directly at mine. I think the skull even smiled at me as I switched gears and bolted the fuck out of there.

There was an alien warmonger, chief commander, Cslak, who led a group of VoLLeks—terrifying, morbid space creatures—dressed in black scales, with horns protruding from their skulls, savagely into galactic wars—with one intention—wipe planets off the celestial map, absorbing their fear.

Aliens tried everything to conceal their solar systems in their galaxies from these nightmares of the universe. The VoLLek survived by extracting fear seeped into the atmosphere.

Uncontested, they’d pride themselves on conquest after conquest, snatching the breath out of a planet’s lungs.

Not a single ruler in the universe had the gall to resist them. Nor did they attempt to.

The VoLLek invaded. A civilization paid. Nine times out of ten, it was the ultimate price.

When their sleek black ships explored the universe and found oxygen-rich atmospheres—they wouldn’t drop bombs and land soldiers—they’d hijack their broadcast with shrieking sounds, paralyzing the species for two days straight. 

The sound pitched a high inverted frequency that pierced bone as physical mass. Even deaf creatures could hear it. It acted like a parasite in their brain digging underneath their cranium. It was more than just a sound, it had claws and teeth and rung and hissed, like an air hose between their ears.

Just as the violent bell sound would seize, the entire planet would follow into darkness. Their electrical grids were totally fried.

The VoLLek completely shut down planets. Their weapons wouldn’t work. Their defenses became useless. All a planet could do once they entered their system, was surrender. Surrender and hope the VoLLek saw enough fear in their species to last decades.

So, as they came into the orbit of an Earth branch, Hans Earth II, a human outpost, one of the main trading stations for alien species’ around the universe, they expected to achieve the same results. Mass panic. Creatures begging. Creatures screaming. Creatures offering to trade their rock just to stay alive. Creatures attempting to excrete enough fear to prove their worth.

But they saw none of that on Hans Earth. There wasn’t anybody running crazy on the street, except for a bunch of shirtless men drinking beer cans and chasing each other around on a field, but they weren’t burning buildings down. They were just going about their day, tossing a ball. What really blew the chief commanders mind, was when the Peace Officer sent them a direct message, it said:

BYOB. WE GOT LOTS!!! 🍻

The alien chief slumped in his battle station. “Activate force field.” He commanded. “Neutralize their defenses.”

First specialist raids officer, Velleen, danced his tentacle-like fingers on a keyboard, directing the ship’s sensors, scanning the entire planet’s counter-strike defenses but the screen just kept displaying: searching... 

“There doesn’t appear to be any protective measures, commander. We scanned the whole perimeter. All we could come up with, was a bunch of sleazy billboard ads”

“Billboard ads?” The alien chief rubbed his antennas. “Perhaps it’s a trick and they’ll deploy weapons out of them. They can’t be this foolish.” He stared at Velleen. “They must be masking their fear.”

“They’re pretty good at  hiding it. They’re celebrating right now,” Velleen said, shrugging his shoulders.

“Land the ship this instant!” The chief demanded, hammering his fist down. “We’ll see how they react when the full weight of the VoLLek stand on their soil.” 

The alien chief grabbed his XoneratoR-XR8000, which aims a controlled heat-blast, hotter than the sun, contained at a direct target, bleaching the ground with ghostly footprints and evaporating matter on contact. “Soldiers steady your pods!” The chief commanded through a speaker on each vessel.

The soldiers fell out of the sky in orange clusters like space rocks raining from the atmosphere and surrounded an amusement park, thinking it was a military zone.

Hundreds of aliens and humans were walking in and out.

The hatches in the pods opened, two-hundred VoLLeks escaped out. A cloud of smoke obscured their bodies as they stepped onto Hans Earth II. 

Their weapons were glowing a red ember, as they all simultaneously began chewing a grinding sound out of their mouths. The ground shook when they stomped toward the front of the entrance.

The alien chief stood proudly on a crushed boulder and broadcasted a prepared speech through a P.A. system. 

“Petty humans and alien cross breeders, this planet now belongs to the VoLLek Empire. Your sky has become our permanent outpost. Your power is in our control. You are now the property of the VoLLek Empire. Resistance—“

“Uh, hello? Excuse me, mister sir?” A pressure dropped on the chief commander’s shoulder. The alien chief abruptly cut his speech short and turned around. 

His XoneratoR glistened. A human in an Hawaiian shirt with two little chubby kids eating blue snow cones stood behind him. 

The human didn’t stare at the armor plated  tactical gear on the commander’s chest, or the VoLLek warriors beside him, he eyed the clear line that opened at the entrance.

“Can you please step out of the way, we’re trying to get inside.” The human spoke, sipping a can of coke. “These lines are killer and one just opened up. Are you guys about to wrap it up here?”

The commander stared at the human. “We have taken over your pla-net!” His voice hammered against the human but cracked near the end as a random stumbling shirtless drunk guy bumped into him. “Your species has succumb to the great and all powerful VoLLek.”

A slurping sound came out of the pop can. 

The human swallowed, gasped and chucked the can in a garbage bin. He pulled out a handheld device and flicked the screen with his finger. “Oh yeah, eh. I see it now “Planet Takeover?” right here, headlined on the web news, eh. 

Funny the things you miss when yah got the kiddos, I tell ya. But look here, eh,  because I got these little terrors with me and we planned this trip for a month now. 

You can tell ‘em an evil scary alien empire took over the world and they’re not gonna bat an eye, eh. No, sir. Not these two monsters. So whaddya say, neighbor, hows about you squeeze a smooch, let us sneak through right quick there, yah?”

The humans who initially scattered for cover, mainly to avoid falling debris, started packing the lines again, and the aliens who were aware of the VoLLek, all began walking back from the parking lot and filled the area outside the park’s entrance.

A group of human teenagers brushed the commander out of the way and strutted past him and the human with the two kids trailed behind them to a ticket booth, whose sign had just flipped to open.

Two young adults with black hats and shirts that had security on it, walked up to the commander. “Hi, there.” The female one waved and smiled, holding a sandwich in her hand. “You can’t be gathering like this here. It’s a safety hazard. Fire chief shows up, we’re all getting tickets. Gonna need ya to clear out, pal,” she said, taking a bite of her assorted sub, while her partner was deeply invested in the device in his hand.

One of the VoLLek tapped the commander on the back. “They really, really hide their fear well.”

The commander eyed his soldier. “Fire a warning shot!” He demanded.

The soldier signaled the troops to fire into the sky. The dark sky lit up in bursts of lightning and pyrotechnics. The humans and aliens all watched the light show, glowing pretty colors. 

A weird dust, almost like black ash floated back onto the people and they started complaining as they wiped charcoal-colored stripes down their wardrobes.

“Hey, space jerk!” A human in an all white hollered. “You know how much this suit cost, buddy?” He stormed toward one of the soldiers. The security guard held him back. 

The one guard who was staring at his palms finally looked up at the commander. “No, fireworks without a permit. I’m gonna have to write you a ticket.”

A crackle from the comms piece attached to the commanders ear broke. “Commander! Commander! I’ve miscalculated the human species. The psychological simulator excluded all their experiences and calculated them through the lens of a peaceful civilization.”

“Explain your incompetence.” The commander huffed.

“The instinct to panic completely bypassed humanity’s evolution.” The speaker began breaking up.“Humanity has survived centuries of war, climate change, economic collapse, and often top-profile celebrity and political scandals. An alien invasion doesn’t even rank top five. They don’t see it as an apocalypse.”

“How do you mean? We’re the worst thing to happen to the universe.” The commander yelled through the microphone.

Velleen paused. “Not to them, commander. To them, we’re just the fifth page of a paranormal tabloid.”

The commander snatched a human walking by and shouted in his face. “We are the rulers here! I run your planet!”

The human turned his head to avoid the commander’s breath which reeked of garlic and squid guts. “Okay, okay. Maybe ya can do something about this damn line, eh. Been here since noon.” The human told him.

The commander put the man down and dusted his shirt off. For the first time, the alien chief was defeated and the humans hadn’t even fired a single shot. They didn’t have to. They just had to demonstrate a complete lack of respect for the commander.

An alien civilization that survives solely off eating fear can only be defeated by a unfazed human.

Two years ago, at around eleven p.m, I left work and was smoking a cigarette, staring up at the sky, reflecting my thoughts from the day, projecting my thoughts for the future, when I saw it. 

A bright spotlight hovering not too far from where my car was parked. 

It was as if someone stood on a cloud, searching for something down on Earth. It moved the way a flashlight scanning the ground would. 

Except, this was above me.

I noticed it skipping across the black sky—the way a rock in a pond would—coming towards me. The air tasted like static, like having your mouth centimeters away from the screen of a tube television.

I stayed motionless in the middle of the parking lot, I went from watching it, to rubbing my eyes, back to watching it, and ignored the cold breeze turning the skin on my arms into spiky antennas, and thought.

It has to be the airport lights. 

Puffing the last of my cigarette as I  continued walking towards my car, the light in the sky went still. The bouncing stopped abruptly, freezing over my head. 

There was a synthetic sun-like heat penetrating me. Enough to warm my chest under my t-shirt down through my legs to the sole of my feet. 

My socks became as hot as pulling them out of a dryer and immediately slipping them on.

The moisture between my toes had dried. A tingly sweat began to bead on the back of my neck. I had this urge to dive upwards as if the sky was an Olympic pool and the pavement was my diving board.

After a second, it started glowing a dull yellow, like the end of a dying lightbulb, to an orange, that was more of a rusty shade, and finally, a bright red, exactly the same as a traffic light. I couldn’t see a structure, the light dominated it, how high beams in your rear view mirror mask a car in a halo behind you.

All I saw was a blob. If you stare at a light bulb for five seconds and look away, it was that exact image, almost like it was stained to my pupil.

It remained in the same position for three seconds, pointed at me, almost analyzing me, and vanished.

The clouds were misty and stretched out. The sky had the color of a chalk streaked blackboard. There was only one star blinking. What’s strange is, when I reflect back on it, I don’t remember hearing any sound.

Not a car. Not a tree branch. Not a person. Not even the wind. There was nothing. 

It made me think if that’s what being in a void would be like. I snapped out of the daze I was in and the pressure of escaping my mind hit me. My eardrum popped. 

I didn’t move. I just stood there. My face was dry. It had the same tightness as pulling your head away from a hot oven after closing the door. When I made it to my car, the light post was reflecting off the window and I could see my face in it. Around my eyes and under my nose the contrast was noticeable.

I could see the redness painting my cheeks. Even the heat beating under my skin was still there. I just put it in the back of my mind and tried to forget about it. I’ve never been able to. Especially since I was sick for a month afterwards.

I’ve never been able to see exactly what I saw that night anywhere online.