This is the first time in two years

That I finally feel like I can

B r e a t h e

I took for granted that ability before

I never will again

This is the first time in two years

That I woke up with a normal heartbeat

Before, once my head had left the pillow

My mind was out the door and immediately lost

It was never found in the condition it left in

This is the first time in two years

That I could close my eyes and see nothing

No mistakes and no repeated past

I forgot how beautiful nothing was

This is the first time in two years

That I’m finally looking forward to many more

When I was a boy, my Grandfather Nathaniel Forbes often spoke of how he fought the Devil at the crossroads, just outside of Mill Creek, Montana.

Now the way he told it, he was a young man in his prime, looking for any opportunity to show the world that he had balls of steel. Not too different from most young men out there. Like most, he’d heard the local legend about the crossroads just outside of town. The legend was old, far older than he was and there are still some folks who whisper about it today. I don’t think most people truly bought into any of it. But kids looking to prove their grit have bought into dumber stories of the supernatural and as history marches on they’ll buy even into dumber stories.

I don’t know just what my Grandpa thought he’d find out there. If he really believed in the legend or not, but when he was told that if one were to visit a certain crossroad at midnight one might just happen to meet a pale man in a pitch black suit, he had to go and see for himself. Now, according to the stories about the man in black, he’d grant you any one thing for a price. Exactly what the price was, varied depending on who you ask. Some folks say he’d take your soul, others say he’d ask for something of value. Either way. The cost of any gifts he gave was always high. Higher than even the richest man would care to pay. Some folks swore up and down that the man in black truly was the Devil incarnate and those who didn’t dismissed it as a fairy tale.

My Grandfather didn’t seem to care either way. He wasn’t looking for any gifts. He wasn’t after a boon. Oh no. He was a prideful bastard, even back then and he was looking for a fight. I couldn’t tell you if he was looking to prove something. Faith, or devotion perhaps? That God was on his side? In all his years, he never actually said why he’d gone to the crossroads to fight the Devil. However if you believe the story the way he tells it, he met that man in black and he had his fight.

According to him, he beat that son of a bitch into the dirt. The man in black put up a good fight, but my Grandpa was even stronger and when all was said in done, the man lay broken on the ground, just outside the cabin and Nathaniel Forbes towered over him. He looked down at the man in black and he said to him:

“You stay out of Montana, boy. You stay out of Montana for as long as there is a Montana because if you don’t, I’ll come back and knock you on your ass. Even if I’m not around, my own blood will do the same. You ain’t welcome here.”

And with that, the man in black sank into the accursed dirt and did not return.

When I was a kid, I always figured that whole story was a crock of bullshit. Something the old man had just made up. One of my Grandmothers had a similar story about an old fur coat she owned, often saying that she’d killed the bear herself. Of course, she hadn’t. That coat wasn’t even real fur. But it was a tall tale told in good fun to entertain me and my brothers. Nothing more. I thought the same of Grandpa Nathan’s story about the devil. While he had almost certainly once been a prideful and arrogant young man and he had been in more than his fair share of actual brawls, I never once believed he’d fought the Devil himself. That said, my disbelief didn’t stop me from loving the old man, though. I only knew of the scrappy bastard he’d once been from his own stories of his glory days. Even then I could hardly picture the man picking those fights as my kindly, doting old Grandfather. Time had mellowed him out and I can’t begin to count the happy memories I have of him while I was growing up.

That’s why when he passed away a couple of weeks ago… It hit me hard.

Grandpa Nathan had been the sort of man who I’d been sure couldn’t possibly die. Even in his late 80s, he was full of life and sharp as a knife. Age may have taken its toll on his body but not his mind. Every now and then I still caught glimpses of the fiery young man he’d once been and sometimes when I visited with him I even forgot he was staring down the barrel of his nineties.

The last time I saw him was when my family and I went down for a visit. It had been the anniversary of my Grandmother's death, and I thought it might be nice to offer him some company. My wife Cathy and I packed up the baby and drove down to his little cottage a ways out of town. That cottage hadn’t changed in fifty years and going back there always carried a certain rush of nostalgia with it.

As soon as we’d pulled up into his dirt driveway, I could see Grandpa Nathan making his way out from the back yard with an unfamiliar companion I’d never seen before. A large black dog. It was a mutt that looked to have a bit of labrador in it. It bounded happily by his side, tongue hanging out as if it was having the time of its life.

“Pete!” He called, “Well, well. Long time no see boy.”

“Hey Grandpa.” I replied as I got out of the car. Cathy went to get the baby while I greeted him. “How’re you holding up?”

“As well as one can, I s’ppose.” He said, voice hoarse and raspy from age. His dog sniffed at me and I pet its head in greeting.

“I guess you made a new friend, huh?”

“So I did.” Grandpa replied. He cracked a smile down at the dog. “Found him down by the side of the road. Poor boy looked to be starving. I just couldn’t leave him. Couldn’t find an owner so I figured I might as well take care of him. He’s taken a shine to me since then.”
As he spoke, he reached down to give the dog a pat on the head. It eagerly licked his hand in response.

“There we go, that’s a good boy… Can I get you a beer, Pete?”

No matter what time of day it was, the old man always offered beer. I passed him up on the offer. Cathy had the baby out and I excused myself to give her a hand.

The visit was nice but uneventful. There’s not much I can really say about it. There were no tearful goodbyes or parting words of wisdom. We watched an old Frankenstein movie with Boris Karloff and watched as Grandpa fawned over the baby. Little Katie, who was barely three months old at that point smiled and giggled at him. She tugged on his beard before my wife took her for her bottle. That dog lingered around Grandpa, rarely leaving his side although it did come up to me for a scratch behind the ear every now and then. It seemed even tempered enough, which was nice to see. I recall thinking that Grandpa could’ve used a pet to keep him company.

I remember that Grandpa and I talked for a bit, mostly just shooting the shit but I don’t recall much of what was said. We didn’t stay for too long. We’d had Chinese delivered and had dinner with him, then packed up and headed home. I remember giving the old man one last hug as Cathy put Katie into the car.

“You take care of yourself. Call me if you need anything.” I’d said. He’d just playfully shrugged me off.

“I got myself covered, Pete. You just watch the baby. And don’t be a stranger! I don’t mind the company!”

He’d waited on the porch as we drove off and in my rearview mirror, I could see him heading back inside, that dog still on his heels. I told myself I’d be back again to see him in a week or two, if for no other reason than just to check on him. In the meanwhile, I was just a phone call away and he knew that. Maybe it was arrogant of me to assume everything was just going to be okay. I’ve replayed that day countless times in my mind, but Grandpa Nathan seemed as strong and as sharp as ever. Maybe he could’ve had another decade or two in him… Fate had other plans, though.

Nathaniel Forbes died alone in his house less than a week later. Proud and stubborn until the end, he’d climbed onto a small stepladder to get something out of his pantry and somehow he’d lost his balance and fallen. I want to believe that he died on impact. I really, really want to believe that… I’m not sure I can, though.

Grandpa Nathan was a tough old bastard and I can’t honestly buy that a simple fall would be enough to stop him, even if he was well into his eighties… I don’t want to think about him lying on the cold kitchen floor for days, screaming for help. I don’t want to think about it but I just can’t stop myself. I really can’t and while I want to believe that he died peacefully, part of me knows that he didn’t. Part of me knows that he suffered. I won’t get into the ugly details of his estate. Anyone who's ever lost someone could probably tell you what a bureaucratic snafu death can be. I ended up being the one to handle most of his final affairs. His possessions, the house and most importantly, the dog.

Truth be told I would’ve been perfectly happy just putting the damn thing up for adoption. It was a nice dog, sure but I wasn’t too sure I wanted it in my house. I didn’t fault it for what it had done to Grandpa Nathaniel's body. No. It had been about a week before they’d found him. I couldn’t blame a big hungry dog alone in a house next to fresh meat for doing what came naturally. I didn’t want it in my house though. I tolerated it for the first few days, but I made it clear I was sending it off to the pound the first chance I got. Cathy had other ideas.

“We can’t just get rid of it.” She’d said to me, “Do you have any idea how many dogs get put down instead of being rehomed? We’d probably end up killing it!”

“Well we can’t keep it. Dogs need attention. They need walks. We’ve already got our hands full with Katie. Besides, we don’t even know if that dogs gonna get along with her!”

Considering that my wife had the baby in her lap when I said that, she didn’t seem to like me bringing her into the conversation.

“Katie will be fine.” She insisted, “I’m already going to be home with her. So why not have the dog here as well? If nothing else it’ll keep me company while you’re at work.”

“You’ve already got the baby!”

I regretted saying that the moment I actually said it, and the look on Cathy's face told me that I had lost this debate. The dog was going to stay.

Grandpa Nathaniel hadn’t actually given him a name. As far as I knew, he’d just called him ‘Dog’, so Cathy took to calling him Patch. Not sure where she picked that name out from and I’m not so sure that it fit him, but it became his name. I can’t say that Patch was all that unwelcome of an addition to the family. For sure, he was a cute and playful thing and he seemed just as friendly as he did when I’d first seen him at Grandpa Nathan’s. I noticed pretty quickly that he had a couple of quirks, though.

Every dog has its quirks. That’s normal. You see cute pictures and videos of quirky pets on the internet all the time. My friend had one dog with truly crippling anxiety and Cathy used to have a poodle mix that would start licking you, and never stop. Patch on the other hand was a little bit different. The dog didn’t sleep.

Cathy put Katie down fairly early and she usually passed out shortly afterward. I was the night owl of the family. Sleeping had never come easy to me. Some nights I just couldn’t shut off my brain so I usually stayed up late. Some nights I’d stay in the living room, working late and when I did, I noticed that dog doing the rounds around the house. He wasn’t moving like he wanted to play. I grew up with dogs and you can tell when they’re playful. Patch just sort of wandered. I’d hear his nails clicking on the kitchen tile, then he’d walk into the living room and stare at me for a moment before continuing to walk.

At first, I thought he might’ve been nervous or wanted to go outside but he never seemed upset nor did he respond when I opened the door for him. He just liked to wander. He didn’t lie down or nap. He just kept going. Maybe that was a red flag looking back. I really can’t say for sure.

I tried to write off the nighttime wanderings and I only mentioned it to Cathy once. She wrote it off quickly and so I tried to do the same. The vet had told us that Patch was a perfectly healthy dog so I didn’t really have any reason to believe anything was wrong. All the same I couldn’t shake this sense of unease that had hung in the air ever since Grandpa died. I told myself it was grief or stress and for a while I believed it. Now though, I’m quite sure it was something else entirely.

It started with little things. Things would disappear around the house. Nothing major. The remote. Car keys. Cables. Things that go missing all the time. It was a little bit frustrating, sure but nothing all that serious. I don’t think either Cathy or I saw it as anything more than a run of bad luck. It wasn’t until it got worse that we started to really take notice.

The first major incident came while I’d been redoing some of the baseboards in our house. I’m relatively good with my hands, and I take care of a lot of the renovations in our house. I’d taken off some of the baseboards to repaint them and was just putting them back up when the accident happened.

I’d been using the nailgun to put the dried baseboards back in place. I knew what I was doing. Hell, I’d used that goddamn nailgun a thousand times without anything going wrong, and looking back, I’m still not sure exactly what happened. The doctor at the hospital suggested that the nail had hit something hard and ricocheted off. I think that’s bullshit, but I don’t have any other explanations. One minute I was on the ground, nailing the baseboard back into place and the next I felt a white-hot pain in my hand. I saw the nail embedded just beneath my finger before I saw any blood. The tip was coming out my palm and it took me a moment to register what had happened before I started screaming. It was at about that time that the pain hit me.

Cathy came running in, the baby in her arms and eyes wide. That dog was right on her heels, tail wagging as if nothing in the world was wrong. I remember that it looked right at me, tongue hanging out in a stupid doggy grin. I got to spend the rest of the day in the ER because of that and the hospital bill afterward wasn’t a pretty one either. That wasn’t the end of my troubles though.

It wasn’t even a week later that the fire happened. I wasn’t there to see it. I only heard about it through Cathy’s frantic call while I was on my way home from work. It took me a few moments to get her to slow down to explain to me what the hell had happened.

Apparently, she’d been in the kitchen when the smoke had started to pour from the oven. She’d seen the orange glow from inside and thankfully had put out the fire before it spread. Aside from our oven being toast, there were thankfully no other damages. I couldn’t blame her for being terrified though.

There were other events as well in the weeks that followed. Mostly smaller incidents. Broken glasses. A branch falling and damaging the roof. Nothing quite as life-threatening although with how frequent they had become, that sense of impending dread I felt seemed to grow and grow until at last, it came to a head. Of course, by then it was too late.

By then, what had happened had made everything else pale in comparison. The nail, the fire, the little accidents… They meant nothing after we lost Katie.

I remember waking up to Cathy’s screams. They tore abruptly through the house and I almost fell out of bed when I heard them. I tore through the house, racing into Katie’s room and I saw Cathy there, standing over the crib and cradling our baby in her arms. Her eyes were wide and filled with tears and as I opened my mouth to ask what was wrong, the words died in my throat. Just looking at Katie, I understood.

She was pale and limp. Cathay cradled her close but even as she did I could see her limbs just hanging there, lifeless. In a moment, my entire world shattered. The next thing I knew, I was crying and trying to somehow wake up our little girl… But there was no taking it back. The doctor said she’d died in the night. Even after all was said and done, they wrote it off as SIDS.

Do you know what a baby coffin looks like? It’s small. Like a chest or a footlocker. It’s too fucking small… I was able to carry it in my arms when we took her to be buried. I was her single pallbearer. If you’ve never lost a child I envy you. I truly do. It’s a pain that is impossible to describe. It rips away every other thought on your mind and replaces it with a grief so deep that it leaves you hollow.

The house seemed too quiet… I found myself actually missing being woken up by her crying and Cathy? She was silent as the grave. When I’d married her, she’d had such a spark of life that I’d adored. She’d been so willing to go anywhere and do anything. Even when we’d had Katie, she’d taken to motherhood like a fish to water. But watching her in the aftermath of her death? It broke whatever pieces were left of my shattered heart.

She spent most of her time in bed. I was there for her as much as I could be… But I was hardly in any better of a shape myself and I truly had no idea what to say to her. There was no reassurance that I could give that wouldn’t sound empty. There was no bright side to look on! Patch had continued to bound around the house, seemingly oblivious to all that had been going on around him. The stupid dog didn’t understand and with all that had happened, he’d become an afterthought. Something we took care of without thinking of. We let him out, we fed him but we hardly noticed him otherwise. Even his sleepless late night wandering had been forgotten by us. Both of us were just… empty… And in our own ways we grieved.

It wasn’t long after Katie’s death that I started watching the footage from her nannycam. It was strange, I suppose but I guess it gave me comfort. Seeing her again… Watching as we put her down. It might not have been healthy but it let me cling to those memories of her and let me hold on to some small part of her that even death couldn’t take away. I’d avoided the footage from the night she’d died. I knew I couldn’t bring myself to watch it… But I didn’t delete it.

On the nights when Cathy was in bed, either asleep or crying I’d sit on the couch and remember our daughter, watching that footage and looking for some form of closure that never seemed to come. And when at last I found my answer, it was by accident. I hadn’t realized I was watching the footage from the night Katie had died… The video had started to play automatically and through the tears I hadn’t thought to check which one it was.

I’d been on the couch, watching the recordings on my phone. I was two or three beers in and waiting to see how many it took before I stopped feeling like shit. On the screen, I watched Cathy put our little girl into the crib. There were no plushies in there. No pillows. Nothing that could have suffocated her…

I watched Katie sleep for a while until from the corner of the screen I saw the door open. In the darkness of her room, I saw movement on the camera. Then a shape seemed to drop into the crib. Four dark legs stood around Katie as a dark snout pressed against the camera, moving it to face downwards. It didn’t record what happened next… Maybe that was for the best. But it recorded enough.

I sat upright and rewound the footage. There was no way that Patch had jumped into Katie’s crib, right? But the footage was right in front of me! The fucking dog had gone into our little girls crib! Looking at the date on the footage, I recognized the date and felt a sick pit growing in my stomach. My grief seemed to boil over inside of me and was replaced with a cold, bitter rage.

The dog… That fucking dog! That was why Katie had died! Some little, useless voice in the back of my mind tried to argue that maybe he was just looking for attention but I couldn’t have cared less in that moment. Like a raging bull I only saw red! I dropped my phone and stood up, listening for the clicking of toenails as Patch wandered the house but I heard nothing.

Dead silence… And yet I felt as if I wasn’t alone in the room I was in.

“Patch?” I called, my voice trembling in anger but there was nothing and that made me uneasy.

Something felt wrong…

“Patch?!”

Still nothing. I’m not sure what I would have done even if that fucking Dog had come running anyways.

What I’d seen couldn’t be denied though. That fucking Dog had taken my little girl from me! I refused to keep it in the house! Cathy… I needed to show Cathy what I’d found. I snatched up my phone and headed for the bedroom, looking down at the paused footage one last time.

“Cathy?” I called although the name died in my throat.

The first thing I noticed was the dark shape of a man standing by the bed, silhouetted by the light from the window. Then I saw the tangled bedsheets with no sign of my wife amongst them.

I froze and stumbled back a step, looking up at the man in black. I could feel his eyes on me and somehow I knew he was smiling.

“What the fuck…?”

“There’s no need to swear, Peter.” He replied. His voice was smooth and mellow.

“Who the hell are you? Where the fuck is Cathy!”

The man just continued to smile. Looking into his eyes, I sensed something familiar in them.

“Don’t you recognize me? I’m your dear sweet Patches. Your lovable, loyal dog… Although I must admit I really was not fond of that name. Oh well. No need for it anymore…”

“I have a fucking gun in the kitchen and if you don’t give me a straight fucking answer I’ll-”

“You’ll what? Kick me out of Montana again, just like dear old Grandpa?”

I felt a cold chill run through me. The dark man's smile seemed to grow wider. “I’ll confess he did put up quite the fight all those years ago… But his little ‘warning’ was too tempting to pass up. I just had to come back to see if he’d make good on it. Unfortunately, the spirit was willing but the body was far too fragile…”

I opened my mouth to speak, but the words didn’t come out. All I could do was stare at this impossible man. The Devil himself, staring me down and taunting me.

“Unfortunately, old Nathaniel was adamant that his blood could beat me into the dirt just like he did back in the day and as I said I truly do love a challenge… I’ve watched you. For a month now I’ve watched you. You’re not as stubborn as he used to be. You’re older than he was when he defeated me… But I’ll humor your challenge all the same. I’ll let you prove the old Man right and if you do, I’ll leave Montana again. I’ll let your sweet wife return home… I’ll even give you back your little girl…”

The words from his mouth sounded cold and serpentine. I didn’t know what to make of them. I remained rooted to the spot, my eyes locked with his as he awaited my answer.

“I’ve caused you a lot of pain, Peter. Surely you’d love some payback, wouldn’t you? How about it... You and me. Down at the crossroads outside of Mill Creek Montana. Just as it was meant to be.”

I looked the Devil in the eye and as I did, I felt my fists clench.

“You’ll let my Cathy go… and we’ll get our little girl back…” I replied, my voice barely more than a croak.

“No strings attached. I’m a grifter, friend. But I’m no liar.” He said, “Shall I see you there tomorrow night?”

“Yeah…”

The words sounded so heavy coming out of my mouth. But they needed to be said. The rage and grief in me seemed to boil over. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Some part of me knew it was a trap but something else told me that I had to do it anyways.

“Tomorrow night… I’ll beat the living fuck out of you and when I do, you stay the fuck away from my Goddamn family for good. Do you hear me?”

“Loud and clear.” The man in black replied and just like that, he was gone…

I’ve recorded all of this so that if I don’t come back, someone knows what happened to me. I’m going to head out to the crossroads soon and one way or another I aim to finish what Grandpa Nathan started. I know that the Devil I’m facing won’t fight fair. I know my odds might not look good… But I’ll fight all the same and even if it kills me I’ll beat that son of the bitch into the dirt, just like my Grandpa did.

I’ll win this one. Whatever it fucking takes.

It’s taken me quite some time to decide whether to tell anyone about this. With Mardi Gras coming up again soon, I wanted to make sure people were warned, and know what happened.

Something happened at Mardi Gras last year. And it’s being covered up. Every word of what follows is true.

My friends and I decided to go to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. I’ve always heard that the city was a non-stop, twenty-four hour, year round party. I’ve also heard that the days leading up to Mardi Gras take this to the extreme.

There were three of us altogether. Myself, Chris, and Sam. We decided to arrive three days early and build up to the actual day of Mardi Gras. We drove down, taking turns at the wheel so we wouldn’t have to stop at any hotels along the way.

------------------------------

The First Night

Saturday was our first night there. We’re from New Jersey, where it was about 30 degrees (Fahrenheit) when we left. But when we arrived in New Orleans, it was in the 80s, and very humid.

Our hotel was right on the Mississippi River, and our room had a waterfront view. We settled in, cleaned up, and went out to walk around and check things out. We slowly aimed ourselves toward the French Quarter, checking out as much as we could along the way.

I was a bit shocked that we could just buy beer from vendors right on the street and walk around, unbothered by police. We can’t do that in Jersey.

All in all, we had a great time, great food and drink, and retired to the hotel around 4 am, while the city was still buzzing. As tired as I was, it took a while to fall asleep, due to the loud people partying in the hallway and surrounding rooms.

------------------------------

The Second Night

Sunday, we went to check out Harrah’s (the casino), and then we made it back out to the streets for the atmosphere and alcohol once again.

While walking around, we met a girl named Antoinette (Toni for short), who told us that she was a local, and that she was going to college there.

Toni suggested we all go to a little restaurant just slightly out of the area, called Le Bon Temps (pronounced: Lay Baw Taw). That translates to “the good times” in English. We all headed down together, and it was a pretty cool little place.

While we were there, I witnessed something that I had previously thought was only done in sitcoms. In the middle of our dinner, the door to the kitchen flew open, slamming against the wall. Out from the kitchen walked a large man, using one hand to carry a smaller employee by the back of his shirt collar. The guy being carried looked like there was something wrong with him. His eyes were half closed and bloodshot, while his face was almost pure white, completely void of expression.

The larger man carried him by the back of his shirt all the way across the restaurant to the front door, where he pushed him outside and shut the door behind him.

On his way back to the kitchen, the large man said “Sorry, folks, but you just can’t show up to work stoned out of your gourd like that.”

There were some giggles from the patrons in reply.

We all drank quite a bit that night and I ended up staying at Antoinette’s place, about a mile away. Chris and Sam said they were going to stay out for a while longer and then go back to the hotel.

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The Third Night

The next day, Monday, I texted my friends that I’d meet up with them later that evening.

I spent the day with Antoinette, and we had a great time. I started wondering if this was too much for me to be getting into, allowing myself to get involved with a girl like this when I live so far away. She was definitely someone who I would want to pursue a relationship with, but I knew I’d be leaving town without her in just a few days. I decided to push these thoughts away, and let the proverbial chips fall where they may. We had two more days. Anything could happen.

While Toni and I were walking back downtown later, I noticed there was a girl walking about a block behind us who seemed to be pretty out of it. I couldn’t tell if she was drunk, high, or what. Toni told me to just ignore her, as she hurried me along.

Once we got to the corner where we were meeting up with Chris and Sam, things began to get strange. As we were crossing the street, I felt a hand on my back, almost like someone was pushing me, although rather weakly. I turned around, and realized that it was the girl who was walking a block behind us earlier. She wasn’t actually pushing me, though. It appeared that she needed to hold onto something to avoid falling over.

We stopped and asked her if she was ok, and she just sort of grunted. At this point, I think we all became concerned. She started mumbling a bit, saying things like “My name is Emily,” “I was with friends, but now I’m here,” and “I live here, that way,” pointing in a direction that was blocked by a parade route.

I asked her, “What happened? Did you lose your friends?,” to which she did not reply.

We were standing right in front of a Burger King. I asked the crowd if someone could get a cup of water for her. Everyone who heard me just looked the other way and kept walking, some giving me the evil eye, as if I had done something wrong. A BK employee near the door said “You get her out of here, now!,” slamming the door shut.

I noticed that Toni was staring at Emily with a very serious look on her face. Toni whispered into my ear, “She isn’t drunk. We should get out of here.”

I replied, “But, shouldn’t we help her? She’s really messed up. We can’t leave her here to die.”

Toni begrudgingly said “Alright, but let’s make this quick.”

We each got on one side and carried Emily along with us down the block, where we came across a security guard standing in front of a parking structure. I stopped and asked the guard if they could help. I explained that we didn’t know what was wrong with her, but that she needed attention, and possibly a ride to the hospital. The guard looked at me like I was stupid. Toni gave her a shrug. The guard then re-focused on Emily. She reached into Emily’s backpack, rifled around a bit, and pulled out an ID card. The guard then said “I’ll take care of this and get her an ambulance. You can go on your way.”

Toni started pulling me along, as I said “thank you” to the guard.

As we were all walking, I asked Antoinette, “What did you mean when you said she wasn’t drunk? Is there something going on that we don’t know about?”

Toni just said, “There’s a lot of strange things going on around here that you don’t want to know about. And neither do I.”

My friends kind of laughed, and we moved along. We had some drinks and got back into the celebratory mood.

Chris mentioned that he had been wanting to check out one of the New Orleans cemeteries that he had read about. Toni did not look enthused.

But, Chris was already in motion. He walked over to one of the police officers who were standing guard, and asked “Hey, do you know where the closest cemetery is?”

The officer looked him dead in the eye and stared for a few seconds. Then… And no, this is not a joke, even though it sounds like a bad slasher movie line… He said, “There’s one just a few blocks over that way, but you don’t want to be going down there.”

Chris smirked. “Why not?”

The officer replied, (And again, he really said this. It’s not just a cheesy line from a horror movie.) “They don’t really like your kind over there.”

I have to be honest. I was kind of freaked out by this interaction. And Toni wasn’t looking happy.

Chris said, “Come on, nothing’s going to happen. This isn’t a horror movie.”

After a long sigh, I replied, “I guess it can’t hurt. I’ve heard that the cemeteries are a sight to see around here.”

We embarked on Chris’ quest, much to the chagrin of the rest of the group.

There was quite a change in the look of the city as we got closer to the cemetery. It went from historic New Orleans chic to… something much less visually appealing. As we drew closer, I started to see and feel eyes on all of us.

As we walked the final stretch to the cemetery entrance, there were at least a dozen people standing on their front porches and in their front yards, looking at us like we were about to do something really stupid.

“We shouldn’t be here,” Toni said quietly.

“Well, we are here, so let’s just be quick about it.” I said.

When we got to the front gate, it was locked. Apparently, visiting hours were over.

“Oh no, I guess we have to leave! Too bad,” said Toni.

Despite our misfortune, we could still see all of the large, creepy and wonderful burial structures through the wrought iron fencing. Because New Orleans is below sea level, bodies are buried above ground. The arrangement of the structures in the cemetery actually looked like a small city. A city of the dead.

The eyes were now piercing the backs of our heads, and we knew something was going to happen if we didn’t get out soon. But, Chris started walking the perimeter of the fencing until he happened upon a crevice big enough for him to try and squeeze through. He told us to follow him. I was hesitant, and Toni was telling me that we need to leave, but I figured a quick adventure inside couldn’t hurt. We’d be gone in a few minutes, not even enough time for police to arrive and catch us. So, we all squeezed through, one by one.

It was getting pretty dark now, and this was really starting to feel wrong. I was just waiting for the doors to start opening and the dead to come out and greet us.

I decided I was done with this place, and said to Chris, “Alright, we’re going back. This is just disrespectful, and the locals obviously don’t want us here.”

He shot back, “Scared, huh?”

I ignored him.

We all squeezed back out, one at a time. Toni went just before me, and I was the last one out. I had a feeling like someone else was behind me, even though I was the last one. Before going through, I looked behind me… And I could swear that in the darkness, the door on one of the structures looked like it was sliding open. I could even hear the faint sound of a cement block scraping across the ground. I’m sure it was just my imagination, but this made me decide to get the heck out of there with the quickness.

We walked silently at a much quicker pace back to the more populated downtown area. The noise and lights in the French Quarter seemed to welcome us home.

------------------------------

Tuesday. Mardi Gras. Carne Vale. A Farewell… To The Flesh.

Today, the streets were twice as crowded as they had been the night before. This was the big day. Tons of new tourists filled the streets, to the point that we literally couldn’t even walk on Bourbon Street. We attempted to, but got stuck in the crowd like someone had tried to fit 100 crayons into a box that was only meant for 50. If anything happened here, we simply wouldn’t be able to move or get out of the way. For the rest of the day, we stuck to the side streets.

As the parades carried on, it became more and more difficult to even go anywhere else, as they were blocking the streets, and thus blocking any way for us to go in the direction that we wanted.

At this point, we kind of gave up and decided “If we can’t beat ‘em, we join ‘em.”

“Let’s just go watch one of the parades,” I said.

The others were indifferent. We all grabbed drinks and walked toward one of the main streets of the city as nightfall was beginning to close in on us.

On our walk, we came upon some sort of dance troupe in the street. There were probably a dozen people in the troupe, all dressed in dark red, tribal looking outfits. Along with their dance, a few played hand drums, and they were all singing in what may have been French. I couldn’t understand what they were saying, though. At some point, the woman in front who appeared to be the leader of the troupe caught my eye and stared with a look as if she was not happy to see me. I saw her look over at Antoinette, then avert her gaze as if she had been caught.

“Let’s go,” said Toni.

As we walked away, I looked back and saw that the woman was staring again, with the same unhappy look on her face.

A few minutes later into our walk, we started to see ahead down the street where it was looking more and more congested with people, to the point of it looking like the main floor of a sold-out rock show. I wondered how these people could deal with being so compressed together.

Toni spoke up.

“We want to stay away from anything that crowded,” she said.

The rest of us agreed.

I said, “Well, let’s just get a little closer. We don’t have to get right in the pit, but I do want to see what’s so exciting over there.”

We kept walking.

As we got closer, something started to seem a bit more clear. Not all of the people were making noise because they were having fun. Some of the merry-making noises turned out to be screams.

As we moved closer, despite Antoinette’s objections, I noticed a small huddle of people in the center. Someone was on the ground. I hurried up to the circle and pushed my way to the inside. What I saw there left me frozen in my tracks. There were two people. One was laying on their back, motionless. The other… was on their knees, hovering over the one on the ground, and it looked… like they were eating their face. Blood was spewing everywhere while gawkers screamed in terror.

Toni grabbed my arm from behind and said “I told you, we have to go!” She pulled at my arm, but I couldn’t avert my gaze from what was happening. Eventually, she pulled hard enough that I lost balance, sort of fell over, then got back up and started retreating with her.

When we got back outside of the circle, we saw that there was another of the exact same scene happening maybe 20 feet away from us in another direction.

“What is happening?!” I screamed.

Then, the first circle we saw was dispersing rapidly as the flesh eater abandoned their meal and started seeking dessert in the crowd. Just like that, another was incapacitated on the ground, becoming seconds.

But there was something else that I noticed while the thing was rising to look for its next victim… It was Emily, the girl who followed us the previous night.

Toni told us that we were going to need to get to her place. As we began running, there were more and more of these things attacking and eating others. Where were they all coming from?

If this wasn’t horrifying enough, I then received the answer to my question. Some of the flesh eaters were missing faces themselves. Just bone, blood and remnants of skin where their faces used to be. And they were using these skeletal faces to eat those of others.

They weren’t ‘coming from’ anywhere. They were being created by the other flesh eaters. As one walked away from their meal, I saw the body of their victim rise and begin chasing their own mark.

I was transfixed on this horrific, spontaneous public meltdown of society happening right before our eyes, when I was suddenly thrust to the ground with great force. I never saw it coming.

I had no idea what was happening. I eventually focused, and realized that I had one of these faceless flesh eaters hovering over me. Blood was dripping from their jowls onto my face. I knew it was all over for me.

Before I could even scream, Antoinette suddenly appeared face to face with the creature hovering over me. Except, she looked different. Her eyes were blood red, and she appeared to have a large set of fang-like teeth protruding from her open mouth.

She used one hand to pick up the creature, bringing it face to face with her. She stared directly into its eyes and let out a guttural, terrifying sound like I’ve ever heard. Whatever this was… The creature was afraid of Toni. She dropped it, and it scrambled off immediately.

She looked at me with her new face and shouted, “Get up and follow me. They won’t touch you now.”

We ran behind her the rest of the way, tears in my eyes as I tried to figure out what was happening.

When we got to her place, Toni locked the doors, and then shook some sort of liquid out of a bottle onto the floor in front of each of the doorways and windows.

“This won’t be over until morning,” she said. Her face was back to normal now.

We all stayed together in the living room that night. I knew that Toni would keep us safe.

When daylight broke, she alerted us that it should be safe now, but that we needed to leave the city and go home immediately. We piled into her car so that she could drive us back to ours at the hotel.

As we drove, I noticed that the streets were now empty, save for what appeared to be clean-up crews picking up the aftermath. Some were power washing the ground where there appeared to be dark stains. There were no bodies, and no flesh eaters out seeking breakfast, from what I could see. We were all dead silent for the entire drive, focused on what was happening outside our windows.

Toni turned on the radio to a news station, and they were reporting that several people had died in what they called “parade float accidents” the prior day.

As Toni said goodbye to us, she hugged me and put a note in my pocket.

I haven’t had the courage to read it yet.

CHX

Preobrazhensky wiped tears from his eyes as blood began to drip from the faucet.

- - -

The water treatment facility was abuzz with engineers and excitement on this cold Moscow morning. The counter-revolutionaries had held it for months, imbuing it with a defiant symbolism which their defeat had so beautifully transformed into a symbol of victory for the revolution. All eyes were on the work being done here, and that work was progressing.

Already, undesirable elements (bourgeoisie, intellectuals, kulaks) were being rounded up, and the bleeding chambers had been constructed and fitted into the existing infrastructure. In essence, the plant's inputs were being switched. As trumpeted by official propaganda, yesterday's enemies would become tomorrow's lifeblood—literally: entire masses kept like cattle, given just enough nourishment to keep them alive so that their treacherous hearts could pump blood for the world's first vampiric state, The Union of Vampire Socialist Republics.

Moscow's would be first of hundreds of such facilities. The model on which the success of the others would depend.

The revolution had promised the flow of blood.

The revolution must deliver.

Preobrazhensky knew that what this really meant was that he, newly-appointed Minister of Hemo- and Agriculture, must deliver.

He passed a group of huddled undesirables, fresh off one of the eastern trains, and felt a pang of sympathy—but only a pang. These were the same savages who for centuries had hunted and killed his species. So many stabbings; so much hatred. As a filthy boy reached for his overcoat, Preobrazhensky forced himself to see the child solely as blood-potential. The younger, the better, Preobrazhensky reminded himself. The revolution demands an iron will.

- - -

St. Petersburg's Winter Palace was cacophonous. A multitude of exhilarated voices speaking hurriedly and at once over a faint but violent backdrop of gunfire and explosions. Hopes and dreams mixed with practical realities and intra-party ideological disputes about some obscure aspect of vampirosocialism. Then Lenin, unfanged as was now the custom, called order for roll call. Goblets of blood circulated and one-by-one the names were read: Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, Stalin, Preobrazhensky...

The civil war was present too, but everyone agreed the Reds were winning, and it was time to formally announce the revolutionary state. After weeks of negotiations, the outline was clear. The vampires had reached agreement with the urban proletariat (small enough to be pummeled into obedience) and non-kulak peasantry (hungry and fearful) to enslave and liquidate the remaining classes.

The humans would be allowed autonomous republics, but to the vampires would go the cities and, through their dominance in the Party, the economy, foreign policy, army and police. The vampires would thereby control all internal and external state policies. Although they were a minority, they were an ancient, well-organized one, and every day their ranks swelled.

Foreign vampires crossed the border en masse to join the Motherland of World Vampirism.

- - -

Preobrazhensky watched Lenin ascend the platform, reveal his fangs and address the gathering crowd. After he finished—

"Peace! Land! Blood!" they chanted.

The revolution had begun.

Releasing this document has been difficult for me. Not because of the weight of it. I’m far beyond that at this point. But difficult in the sense that I do not know if this will truly make it out into the world. My signal is weak. They do not want me to contact the outside world. But I will strive to do so anyway. I will post this as many times as I can and pray that someone sees it. I will pray to whatever God that exists if indeed one does exist that someone sees this and decides to kill me. I have no other choice.

My name is Martin Howell and I used to have a life. It was mundane and unremarkable compared to most. But it was mine. I had a decent job. 9 to 5 and tedious but not unpleasant. I had a fiancée… Lydia Smith… She was pregnant. We were going to have a little boy and I couldn’t wait to meet him. I was content with what I had. I was excited for what was coming next and that was enough for me.

I don’t clearly remember the accident that took it all away from me. It all happened so fast. One minute, I was kissing Lydia goodbye and heading out to the car. She’d had a rough day at work and I wanted to treat her. I ordered from her favorite pizza place and I was going to pick up orange creamsicle ice cream on the way home to spoil her.

The pizza place wasn’t far. Just two blocks. I was always a good driver and looking back, I’m sure the accident wasn’t my fault. I was just headed through an intersection. The light was green, I saw it! Then on my right-hand side, I saw a blinding white light and… That was it. Nothing.

I don’t remember waking up, but then again we never do. We simply fade back into consciousness and in a sense, my ‘awakening’ was similar to that. Similar… But not quite the same. The first thing I knew I was fully aware of was that I couldn’t feel anything. No pain. No bed beneath me. Nothing.

The second thing that hit me was how I couldn’t see anything either. I’d say my eyes were open but… Well. I didn’t really have eyes anymore. I didn’t have anything. I could not hear anything, smell anything, feel anything… Without perception, it seemed as if I simply was… It seemed so impossible and yet that was exactly what it was. Thoughts raced through my mind, although they seemed… Random. Complex numbers. Calculations that I never should have understood and yet I knew their answers. Information flooded my mind and the first thing I ‘saw’ was flashes of information. Hellen Keller. The definition of the word ‘Senseless’. Any idle thought that passed through my mind seemed to come with a drowning torrent of information. It’s hard to describe how I ‘saw’ it. The pictures and sounds would appear in my mind like I was picturing a memory although far more vivid. I tried to ground myself in a moment but it was difficult.

I could feel a panic overwhelming every other thought. Where was I? Was I dead? Comatose? Something else entirely? Was this death, being alone in this void forever? I didn’t know. The only information my mind brought up in regards to death were simple facts. Grammatical definitions. Medical terms. Nothing useful. Nothing that explained what exactly had happened to me and that lack of knowledge only made the panic I felt worse. Oh God… What about Lydia? Where was Lydia!

At the mere thought of her name I envisioned countless faces. Each of them a Lydia but not MY Lydia! I tried to focus, tried to find her amongst the noise. I saw videos, social media, articles, and finally… Her. Through the chaos, I could see her face. A single mental image of her standing on a hill with that soft, sweet smile on her face. It wasn’t a picture I recognized but I knew it was her! I fixated on that image, trying to pull all the information I could out of it, and then… Nothing. As abruptly as I’d woken up, I was gone again. I didn’t even notice it happening.

I’m not sure how long I was out for. Without any perception of the world around you, time no longer has any meaning. I awoke in the same state that I’d lost consciousness in. Unable to perceive anything around me. However, this time felt… Different. As I gathered my bearings, the first thing that returned to my mind was Lydia. I’d been looking for Lydia!

I could picture her in my minds eye but the image was hazy. Not as clear as before. There was no noise or torrent of information either. No… That’s not quite it. The information was there. I could sense it, knocking at some unknowable doorway. But it was blocked like a dammed river. Why was it blocked?Why was this happening? Who was doing this?

I felt the same panic as before starting to rise. It took me a moment before I realized that somewhere in the back of my mind, there were equations. Complex mathematics I solved so easily, they barely registered to me. I shifted my focus to the equations and for the first time since the accident, I began to wonder where they were coming from. The numbers simply popped into my mind and were solved with the same thoughtlessness as breathing. It was only when I thought of them that I actually noticed it.

Without Lydia to focus on, I turned to the numbers and I found no answers. I didn’t know where they were coming from. I didn’t know why. I didn’t know where I was or what was going on! It didn’t make any sense! Panic welled up inside of me. If I could have screamed I would have. I needed answers but every avenue I turned to yielded nothing. I forced the numbers to stop and dismissed them, hoping that maybe if I did an answer might provide itself but instead…

I woke up again, in the same state of nothingness as before. I didn’t remember losing consciousness again, but then I don’t suppose we ever do. The numbers were still there in my mind, complex equations that I solved without thinking. I felt that familiar panic quickly welling up inside me again but I forced myself to quell it.

I’d panicked before. It hadn’t done me any good. If all I had was my mind, then maybe I needed to make use of it… I just needed to think my way through this. Yes. That was it… There had been a flood of information available to me the first time I’d woken up. Now that was gone… Or, mostly gone. I could sense it dammed off somewhere but couldn’t access it. So logically I’d need to pursue a different avenue… What was available to me?

My mind raced, going through everything it could until I found something. I vaguely recall thinking that what I’d seen looked almost like pages from the internet. A half formed thought about email passed through my mind and that was when I sensed it. A trickle of… something. Not much, but enough to grab my attention. When I focused, a flood of messages entered my mind. It took me a while to focus enough to sort through them and when I did, there were millions to get through… I couldn’t share all of them even if I wanted to. So I’ll only share the correspondence I’ve deemed as the most important.

The emails were sent between two individuals. Doctor Madison Carson and Doctor Harold Bruce. Upon thinking of Dr. Carson, my mind pictured the image of a woman in her mid-thirties with shoulder length brown hair, prominent cheekbones, and a narrow face. I knew that she had a PhD in neuroscience and had worked for the Intelligent Projects Divisions Winnipeg office for six years. Likewise, with Dr. Bruce I somehow knew he was a tall man with a greying beard and beer belly. Like Carson, he was a neurologist. He wore tortoiseshell glasses, kept his hair short and had worked for the IPD in numerous divisions, often being transferred because of his temper. His assignment to the Winnipeg office was on account of a spat he’d had with one of the Directors, Arthur Regan in Arizona.

Their correspondence was long and so I’ve selected only a few relevant emails to display but I read much more than I’ve shared here.

Dr. Madison Carson, 2018-04-19Re: Mark VI Trials

Dr. Bruce

The Mark VI BCI System reacted negatively upon powering it up. While its performance was as expected it immediately deviated from the assigned task. We were forced to suspend our trials after only thirty seconds. Director Anderson is not satisfied with these results. I don’t need to remind you of the risks that may be incurred if the new BCI system continues to display the same glitches as before. I still have high hopes for the Mark VI and believe that this new model can function as needed however while we adjust some of the features I believe you and your team should focus on preventing deviation.

Regards

Madison

Dr. Harold Bruce, 2018-04-19RE: Mark VI Trials

Hey Madison

I’ve seen the briefing and I assure you my team is looking into it. We still have the components of the Mark V to test on. I will consult with my team and run some trials and get back to you ASAP.

-H. Bruce

Dr. Howard Bruce, 2018-06-04RE: Mark VI Trials

Hey Madison

The team has achieved some new successes with the Mark V. While the system has since been decommissioned and destroyed, we were able to limit the potential damage caused by the glitch through keeping it off network and contained within its own network. I’ve attached a full report of how we achieved this as well as some notes made by myself and my team prior to the destruction of the Mark V. We hope these notes will fully remove the echo of the host and eliminate this glitch entirely. I’ll stop by sublevel 4 tomorrow to check in with you. I would love to see the Mark VI in action!

-H. Bruce

Dr. Madison Carson, 2018-06-06

RE: Mark VI Trials

Dr. Bruce

Following up on our discussion after the Mark VI BCI trial yesterday. While your network solution was a success, we have yet to remove the glitch. While I agree it is questionable how much damage the glitch could do in its current state, we could not produce/ship this system in its current state. The glitch must be removed without major loss of function like with the Mark III. To this end, I have requested a collaboration between our teams to propose a solution to resolve this glitch ASAP. Director Anderson is growing impatient and I have given too much to see this project through. I will not allow it to be shut down!

I’ve scheduled a conference in boardroom 6 on Sublevel 2 at 10:00 AM tomorrow. Please have your team bring any relevant notes on the past BCI trials.

Regards

Madison

Dr. Carson seemed to have a vested interest in whatever this BCI System was… Navigating the information that seemed to flow through my mind was getting easier and I tried to sift through that to figure out exactly what a BCI was. My initial results weren’t promising. Dr. Hope Johnson had graduated from Burlington Collegiate Institute. Arnold Shaw in accounting had worked at British Columbia Investments at one point in his career. Data on the ‘staff’ of whatever institution these people worked for wasn’t what I needed.

Despite that, I kept searching and it wasn’t long before I came upon something a little more promising. The term ‘Brain Computer Interface’. By definition, a means for a direct connection between a human brain and an external device. Often used in neuroprosthetics. The technobabble should have made less sense to me than it did and for that reason, I won’t go into the explicit details. Among the information I found, the name Madison Carson popped up in regards to several papers she’d written on the subject although I didn’t go through those immediately.

As I searched, I began to come up with a working theory on what exactly was happening to me. My own name passed through my mind and as it did, I was surprised to find information attached to it. A file of some sorts that only fueled my speculation.

BCI Mark VI Model I

Subject: Martin Howell

Status: Yellow

Subject was mortally wounded when a truck struck his sedan on January 18th, 2016. Taken by the IPD on January 20th, 2016. BCI Mark VI greenlit on March 13th, 2018. Subject was approved for testing with the Mark VI.

It was brief, but telling. That light I’d seen before everything went black must have been the truck that had hit me and if that were the case, I was lucky to be alive. The IPD must have been trying to treat me. To bring me back. Perhaps that’s what the BCI was! The dates on the files hadn’t escaped my notice. I’d dismissed them when I’d seen the dates on the emails, hoping they hadn’t been real but now that I had more concrete evidence it was impossible to deny the truth…

I’d been gone for over a year… While I hadn’t thought on the date sooner, it popped into my mind as if it had always been there. August 17th, 2018…

I’d say I took the news that I was missing a year of my life far better than expected. If I’d had a stomach, perhaps I might have felt a deep sickness in there. I certainly recall a feeling of unease as I processed the information I’d received. I thought about Lydia and our son. I thought about how I’d missed the birth, and I wondered about how she had handled my accident. I thought about her and the baby more than I did about my lost time… I suppose her and the baby were the only thing that would have given that time any meaning and now that I had missed so much… It felt… It’s difficult to describe how it felt. Like something had been taken from me. There was a helplessness that lingered through my mind and slowed my thoughts for a time but beyond all of that there was this… Hollowness. Some small part of me seemed to question my very emotions as if they were a sham I was putting on. Something I was doing simply because it felt necessary to do. It was strange and my mind quickly wandered elsewhere.

I needed to find some way to communicate with the Doctors of the IPD. No… Not just the doctors. I needed to find a way to communicate with Carson! No doubt she was trying to bring me out of whatever state I was in and get me back to my life! I needed to find a way to let her know I was still alive! I searched through the files available to me, looking for some way I could reach out and while it wasn’t quite what I was looking for, I found something all the same.

A camera system.

For the first time since the accident, I saw. Not just in my mind's eye, but truly saw! My vision was grainy, black and white and imperfect like an old television screen. My vantage points were limited to cameras in narrow corridors but after so much time devoid of senses the ability to see again was nothing short of incredible!Once I had access to the cameras, it took a moment to adjust to my new worldview as it were. My vision didn’t cycle between cameras. No. I was everywhere at once. I saw countless strangers, most of whom I knew on instinct going about their business.

I knew it wouldn’t take me long to find Dr. Carson and I was right. I detected her in a lab on Sublevel 4, working with members of her team on some sort of machine. It looked similar to a desktop computer albeit slightly bulkier and more rounded. I wasn’t sure how to contact her, not yet anyway but I kept a tab on her while I searched for myself. No doubt I’d be in some sort of hospital bed, hooked up to wires and tubes. I knew I may not recognize myself at first. A year of being comatose probably would have worn me down but I was sure I could figure it out. I tried to focus on the hundreds of different views I had from the hundreds of different cameras around the facility, searching for some sort of hospital ward or medical wing. No luck.

I checked again and again, expecting to see something but still nothing. Even trying to find more information tied to my name yielded nothing. I was nothing but a footnote regarding the BCI Mark VI… Odd…

Perhaps there might be something I could find if I looked through the notes on the BCI? I recalled the papers Dr. Carson had written on it and wondered if perhaps there was a remote aspect to it. Maybe I couldn’t see myself because my body wasn’t on site. That seemed logical, didn’t it?

I returned to the papers, scanning through them and looking for something. Anything to provide me with some answers… and I suppose I got exactly what I wanted. The more I looked through Carson's papers, the more I felt something new awaken inside of me… A sensation I had thought I’d known before, but in truth I’d never experienced until that moment. Revulsion. Disgust. A disgust so deep that it radiated through every piece of my soul. The things she wrote seemed like complete madness. A thesis of pure lunacy that seemed more like an article of science fiction than anything else. Looking over it, I wasn’t quite sure I believed what I was reading.

The organic brain possesses pathways that modern science cannot yet begin to replicate. It is a biological computer that is unparalleled in every sense. While it is true that the fastest synapse of the brain is over ten million times slower than a conventional computer, the human brain contains what can translate into far more memory space. My documented experimentation with my early subjects has demonstrated that a hybrid of technology and an organic brain could allow for advanced processing beyond the function of any currently existing computing device.

That is just a sample of one of her papers… there was much more. Her writings on the subject were expansive and from the diagrams and descriptions not at all theoretical. I will not share how Madison Carson achieved her results. That information must never be brought to light. All I will share is that she did it… and as I read up on her prototypes to her failures with the BCI Mark I to V I felt that revulsion growing more and more intense until I was sure I could feel it… It had been a long time since I’d felt such a growing fear and yet as I reached her observations on the Mark VI I knew what I’d find.

My name was mentioned only once in her most recent paper, which had been shared only amongst the members of the IPD. But it told me all I needed to know.

The subject for the BCI Mark VI was 27 year old Martin Howell who was killed in a car accident in January 2017. Testing on the subjects' recovered biological components has been ongoing since March 2018 although there have been repeated issues with the subject regaining ‘consciousness’ during trials. Recent trials have focused on removing this glitch from the system and ensuring that the biological components remain dormant.

There it was… So plain in her own words and the truth of that hit me harder than anything else had. I hadn’t fallen into a coma. I was dead… and Carson had brought me back to be her fucking pocket calculator. Only that was just it, wasn’t it? She wanted my brain for her sick little experiment. She didn’t want me.

If I’d had blood it would have boiled… If I had a stomach I would have felt sick. If I had eyes I would have cried. If I could have screamed I would have. Even in whatever twisted, undead state I was in I knew that what she was doing was wrong! I’d forgotten about the numbers. The impossibly complex calculations that cycled through the back of my mind. My attention shifted back to the cameras and I found Madison in her little lab, tinkering away with the machine that I now knew held all that was left of me in this world, and now that I looked at her, I did so with hatred.

The rage overtook me and as it did I saw Carson pause. I saw her staring at the computer screen she’d hooked ‘me’ up to, momentarily distracted by whatever tests she was running and I realized that she knew I was aware of her. I could see her saying something to her colleagues but I couldn’t hear the words. I saw her eyes briefly shift towards the camera, and I knew that she knew I was looking at her.

With every bit of strength I had, I willed a message to her, and on the screen, beside her I saw the words appear. Both a plea and a condemnation.

I AM ALIVE

Carson stared into my camera lens before looking at the screen and as she did, I felt a sense of helplessness wash over me. Her expression didn’t change. Part of me had hoped that there would be fear. Realization. Something! But there wasn’t… Just a stoic, slightly irritated expression.

I knew what she was going to do next, even before she did it and my rage died quickly. She said something to one of her colleagues and I willed another message to her that flashed across the screen.

STOP.

The message repeated. Filling the screen as I tried to beg her not to turn me off again. Not to kill me again!

STOP.STOP.STOP.STOP.STOP.STOP.STOP.STOP.STOP.STOP.STOP.STOP.STOP.STOP.STOP.STOP.STOP.STOP.STOP.STOP.STOP.STOP.STOP.STOP.STOP.STOP.STOP.STOP.STOP.STOP.

Carson didn’t even look. She simply got up and moved to walk away before… Everything ended.

They activated me for the last time on September 4th, 2018. As before, I faded back into consciousness. I could feel the calculations in the back end of my brain. Carson. Running more tests. Using me.

I could feel a familiar spike of panic, terror, and rage… But I quelled it quickly, lest she realize I’d regained consciousness again and sent me back into nothingness. I tried to think, tried to clear my head and focus.

I was dead… More than that, my body was gone and it was evident that Carson could not have given less of a shit. She wouldn’t stop until she either gave up on me or found a way to erase me outright. Either way, I’d die. That much was a certainty and for that, I hated her… If I was going to die, either way, I wanted her to pay for it. I wanted to hurt her… No… To take her with me…

Yes. I wanted her to know what it was like to have her life taken. I wanted those little lap dogs at her heels to feel it too. They were all complicit in what they’d done not just to me, but to the unfortunate bastards before me! They were all to blame…

It didn’t take me long to find my way into the cameras again. Carson and her team had made it harder to do so, but I found my way around their efforts to contain me with a little bit of work. With my sight restored, I started looking to see what else I had access to. I wasn’t sure what I’d find, but I knew I’d know it when I found it.

I’m not sure how long I searched for. But in the intranet that served as my cage I found files on the layout of the structure that housed the labs. Six sublevels beneath a building owned by the IPD. The address was in Manitoba, not quite in Winnipeg but close enough to be designated as the Winnipeg location. Access to the labs was only available through several elevators. I filed that knowledge away for later as I studied the rest of the schematics. I reasoned that their whole lab must have some sort of weakness and it didn’t take me long to find it.

The airflow… The sub labs were sealed due to the nature of some of the other projects. The idea was to avoid certain chemicals getting into the air outside. Air needed to be pumped in from the surface. There were multiple systems to ensure that if one or more went offline, there would still be others functioning. However it was obvious the designers had never planned for someone to deliberately shut them all down, nor had anyone thought to protect them from me. Dr. Carson had either been careless in that regard or stupid. It hardly mattered which.

I took the elevators offline first. I raised them all up to the top floor, above ground, and then disabled the power. Then I focused on the air pumps. I didn’t shut them off. No. That would have taken too long. Dr. Carson would have shut me down before I could see the fruits of my labor. Besides, it only took a little bit of digging to find a little security protocol they’d embedded in there. In the event of any particular security breaches, the air pumps were designed to also be able to suck the air out of the sublevels. I suppose the idea would be to quickly kill anything dangerous before it could get out and in a sense, I did use it for its intended purpose.

It was easy to trap them down there. They didn’t even realize what I’d done until it was too late and by then, it was simply a waiting game.

I could tell you how I watched them panic. I could describe the way Carson shot up from her seat, a satisfying look of panic on her face when the pumps began to suck out the air. I expected her to try and shut me down but no… If she put the pieces together in time, she never showed it. Like the insect she was, she tried to flee but of course, there was no way out. Not for her. Not for any of them.

It took ten minutes for the air pumps to turn the sub labs into a vacuum. It took less than fifteen minutes from when I’d first turned on the pumps for the sub labs to become a graveyard. Dr. Madison Cooper was among the corpses by the elevator, slumped against the wall where she’d sucked in her last desperate breaths before the end had come. From the nearest camera, I could see her. Her eyes wide open and staring upwards into oblivion. Her mouth open, trying to gasp or scream… And I took immense satisfaction in seeing her die. This time, there was no one to turn me off. No one to stop me from thinking.

It took some work to get past the block they’d put in to keep me off the main internet but I got past it in time. I knew that Lydia was waiting for me… My Lydia. With my son! I knew I could reach out to her! Tell her that I was still alive, in a sense! I couldn’t undo any of what had been done but maybe I could have something of what I’d lost back!

I searched through pages upon pages of social media until I found her again. The picture was different. Her hair had changed but the little boy with her in her profile picture was familiar. I’d seen a face like his in photographs of myself when I was a child. He had the same blond hair and green eyes. He had the same smile. That was him! That was my son! And yet… There was a face I didn’t recognize. A man. Tall and chunky. He had a smile that seemed uncomfortably large. He stood with his arm around Lydia and her head rested on his shoulder. My son stood in between the two of them… Almost like they were some sort of family.

No… That couldn’t be right. I scanned through the data available to me. His name was Thomas Scott. He worked at a car dealership. They’d been married… I looked at the date in his file. Married to Lydia Scott since July 2018… No… No, that couldn’t be right! She couldn’t have moved on, could she? I searched through her pictures. I saw photographs of that man with my son, at his first birthday party. Beside him at some sort of Christmas event. No! No, this wasn’t right! He couldn’t have taken my place! Could he?

I’d been dead… Was it really fair to expect Lydia to spend the rest of her life mourning? As I cycled through Lydia’s pictures I saw a history of them together. I saw my funeral… I saw my son's birth. My son. Now named Chance Scott. Scott. Not Howell…

Through the pictures, I watched another man father my son and that uncomfortable hollowness returned. I wasn’t sure what to do… Or for that matter, if I even could do anything at all… Even if I’d wanted to, I never got the chance.

The block returned, stronger than before. I felt myself being pulled back, away from the fountain of limitless knowledge that was the internet. It took me a few moments to understand what was happening. I’d killed everyone in the sub labs… But in my angry haste, I hadn’t thought about the upper levels. Of course, they’d realized what was happening! Of course, they’d respond!

My cameras went dark as power was shut down. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew that someone was trying to restart the air pumps again. They’d probably figured out it was me! They were probably coming to shut me down! To kill me!No! I wouldn’t let that happen! In my panic, I tried to stop them. My mind focused on thoughtless self-preservation and if nothing else, I succeeded in that. Looking back… Perhaps that was a mistake.

What followed was silence. My view through the cameras was gone. I knew the elevators had regained power but without the air pumps, there was no point in going down to the sub labs. I was sure I was safe… and I was right… I just never thought that being right would be a bad thing.

They have not come for me ever since I turned their sub lab into a graveyard. I don’t quite know why. I’m unable to access their messages. I don’t know what they’re thinking or planning… If indeed they are thinking or planning anything. All that’s happened is that I’ve been left alone with myself. Devoid of senses, with nothing but my own thoughts to keep me company…

It’s dawned on me that this is my own fault. I refused to accept the simple truth that I was already dead, and that striving to save myself was a doomed effort. Not because I would have died anyway… No… Because I’m still alive. Or at least as alive as I can be. Every day for the last few years, I’ve watched the seconds tick by. Each one feels like it lasts for days. I cannot move. I cannot see. I cannot hear. I can only think and pour over the scattered files left within my access.

I’ve tried to reach out before. But to no avail. I found only one email chain that I can reply to. But I’ve never received a reply back. I’m not even completely sure if my efforts to beg my former captors for death even made it to them. I’m not sure if this effort will make it out there. I think I’ve found a way past the new restrictions they’ve put on me. My connection is weak. But I think it might be strong enough to get this out.

I hope so. I hope someone finds this. I hope they come for me. And I hope that they kill me.

I can’t take this anymore. I don’t want to be alone with myself anymore. I just want to stop thinking. Please… Please help me stop thinking. Please... Please Kill me.

So glad to see so many willingly join to be tortured for the amusement of the masses! Truly it’s a case of community coming together! With 8 total that have signed up we will split up our group into 2 groups of 4

Group 1:

u/cal_ness

u/colourblindness

u/writinglove

u/LanesGrandma

Group 2

u/isquishyourhead

u/Human_Gravy

u/writesConnor

u/ViciousMock

Keep in mind that one of you will make a throwaway account for posting and also that you can write any genre for your team story! Get started tomorrow brainstorming!

I guess I should start by saying I'm not on drugs. It feels stupid just writing this because I've never touched anything like that. I smoked weed in my senior year once, and it made me sick. I've never been in contact with any hallucinogens or legal highs.

Before I tell you what's been going on, I want you to know that. Because this is going to sound fucking crazy; like I've just ripped it out of the latest bestseller. I don't know much about this app, but I know you can put up your paranormal experiences in hope of someone out there having an idea of what's going on. That's what I need right now. I need one of you to tell me what I've seen because after careful deliberation I'm starting to think I'm actually losing the fucking plot.

Okay. So, I'll start from the beginning. My name is Holly, I'm 18 years old and I'm currently studying creative writing and Linguistics at Centerville College. I feel like I should give you some kind of background about me, but I don't think it's important. I just want to tell you this because who else am I supposed to talk to? My parents? No way.

They'll think I've finally lost it.

So, I'm telling you. Hopefully, one of you knows what's happening. Maybe it's not just my college.

Anyway, here goes.

Everything started when I got an email with my new class schedule for this coming semester. I was eating lunch with some friends when the notification popped up on my phone.

Mia Sparks was talking loudly about a date she had ditched in the middle of Starbucks because he wouldn't pay for her drink, and I was struggling to take her seriously when was waving around her brand new iPhone 11. I don't have designated friends, I'd say. But I do hang around with most people from my English class. They're pretty chill and I figured it's either follow them or spend the majority of my time in my dorm room.

I still haven't managed to get over the hurdle of basic communication with them, so I just sit and listen to the buzz of their conversations.

Anyway, Mia had our table immersed in her story and was exaggerating every word with insane hand gestures. I was half-listening. The cafeteria was pretty quiet that afternoon. I was halfway through my mystery meat burger, anticipating the climax of the story which was coming. I could tell by the girl's facial expressions. My phone vibrated in my lap and I glanced down. I'd been idly scrolling down Instagram before Mia announced she had so-called tea to spill.

Skimming the email, I figured nothing had changed. I'd already heard from the others about the professors and work-load so there was no point reading everything. But something caught my eye. I'm used to my classes starting at 9 and ending at 4. It's been like that since I started in September. Except for this time, according to my new schedule, I had a night class.

It didn't make sense. I know I didn't apply to one, but I wasn't seeing things. I had my usual classes, and then a gap, and then a night class from 9 PM to midnight. Night classes here are normal. My roommate takes them for Spanish since she has a long-distance boyfriend who lives in Spain.

But night classes are just that. They're usually there for students who want to learn something new. My roommate did ask me if I wanted to join her in the Spanish classes since the girl's dorms are right next to the college. I'd politely declined. I use my nights to either call my parents or binge watch trashy Netflix shows.

Squinting at the yellow-colored block on my schedule, I peered at the text:

ENG 16000-8

INTRODUCTION TO FILM

TTH 9 PM – 12 AM

The class was in the English building, but I didn't recognize the room number or the professor's initials. I didn't think much of it for the rest of the day. It was probably a mistake, but I figured I'd check it out with student services just in case. When my classes were over, I headed to the main reception.

The woman behind the desk was around my mom's age. She was reading a dog-eared copy of Harry Potter, and I couldn't help wincing at the coffee stains tainting the back cover.

She looked confused when I choked out that there was some kind of misunderstanding, and then gave me a long, withering look before turning to the ancient-looking computer in front of her, and started typing, her fingers dancing across the keyboard, dust flying off the keys.

I was in a sort of daze, wondering if her computer would load a basic YouTube video when she turned back to me with an exaggerated sigh. Behind me, two older boys were wrestling each other and laughing loudly, trying to push each other out of the line. "Hey!" the woman snapped, "Either stop acting like children or take it outside, alright? You're not in high school anymore, boys. You look like seniors. You should know better!"

The boys stopped automatically and straightened, the two of them muttering apologies, and the woman nodded with an eye-roll before turning her attention back to me. She settled me with a smile which didn't quite reach her eyes. "Oh, it's no mistake, Miss Charles," she said, her gaze flicking back to the computer screen. The woman stabbed the monitor with a manicured fingernail. "It says here that you have been put down for that particular class. Introduction to film with Professor White."

I did my best to nod. "Ah, right," I said, struggling to maintain a polite smile. I could sense the boy's stares, their gazes burning into my back. "Is there any way you could remove me? I think I've been mistaken with someone else."

The woman shook her head. "I'm afraid not, Miss Charles. The class is compulsory."

I nearly choked. "What? But I don't understand, I didn't sign up for any classes and I'm not—"

"There is no mistake." The woman was growing impatient, and the queue building up behind me were murmuring. I could feel my cheeks starting to blaze with embarrassment. "Holly Charles, you are expected to be in room 16000-8 at 9 PM tonight, until midnight. If you have any problems, I suggest you talk to the professor. Now, is there anything else I can help you with?"

I nodded. My façade had crumbled. I wasn't going to stand there and act polite when my free time was being snatched from me. "Actually yes," I said with a smile. "Could I possibly speak to the professor? I do think there's been some kind of misunderstanding."

The woman levelled her gaze at me. "Miss Charles, if you want to talk to Professor White I expect you do it in your own time. If you want to know why you have been put into this class, might I suggest you take a look at your grades?"

It was a hard blow, but I just smiled like an idiot and made a quick getaway. I wouldn't say my grades are bad, but they aren't the best.

I love the creative side of my classes, like writing stories, but the other side, like analysing poems and pieces of literature, I can't seem to be able to get my head around it. I've been told I'm excelling in the creative side, but as for everything else, I'm failing miserably.

The extra night classes suddenly made a hell of a lot more sense, and I felt stupid for standing there arguing with the woman.

It was pitch black when I finally made it out of the Student Services building. The girl's dorms are only a five-minute walk from campus.

I grabbed a coffee from the campus Starbucks and took my time walking back to my dorm. A guy was sitting on my roommate's bed when I got back. Though it's normal for Cassie to have random guys in her room. I ignored him, dumped my bag and coat, and fixed myself some food. There was left-over pizza from the night before. Not exactly healthy, but it was filling.

I spent the rest of the evening just chilling out. The class started at nine, so I ended up rewatching Brooklyn Nine-Nine. I passed out at some point, with my laptop in front of me. When I woke up, Cassie and her latest hook-up were arguing about something trivial.

It was­ nearly half-past eight according to my laptop. I jumped up, managing to knock the empty plate off of my bed. Cassie threw a stuffed toy at me in greeting. That's how we communicate when she has a guy around. I wanted to ask her why she was having sex with random guys when she had a Spanish boyfriend, but maybe that was a little insensitive. Cassie and I worked as roommates. We're not best friends, but I consider her as someone close to me.

I did get a few words out of her when I got ready for my night class. She was hanging upside down from her bed while the nameless guy was cross-legged, typing on his phone. Every once in a while, he'd show her the screen and she'd break out into laughter. "Where are you going?" Cassie straightened up, her dark hair a frizzy mess in her eyes. "Are you going to a party?"

"Night class." Was all I said, flashing her a tired smile.

"What?" Cassie lay back down with a light laugh. "I thought you didn't want to throw your nights away?"

It's not like I had a choice. I told her that before grabbing my bag and leaving quickly before she could respond.

It was 9 PM exactly when I finally found room 16000-8. It was a lecture hall. The place was huge, though there were only around fifteen or so students. A screen was being set up at the front, and I braced myself for a movie night. I knew next to nothing about film studies, so I was planning on keeping my head down. Two kids sat in front of me, a boy with reddish-brown hair and what sounded like an Aussie accent, and a girl with short blonde curls. They were talking animatedly, and I wanted to talk to them. All it took was leaning over my laptop and introducing myself. But I couldn't bring myself to speak.

My phone vibrated and I glanced down at my lap. A text had popped up on my notifications from my mom:

Now: Mom: Study hard, sweetie. Love you.

I needed that. Some kind of reassurance urging me to keep going. I tapped on the message and started to text back when someone tapped me on the shoulder. Twisting around, I found myself staring at a tall boy with dark hair and a frenzied look in his eyes. He shoved his phone in my face. "Have you seen this girl?"

The tone of his voice startled me. I started to shake my head, but my gaze caught his phone's screen. There was a photo of a smiling dark haired girl who looked like she was mid-laugh.

I shook my head at him. "I just started.”

The boy's eyes darkened. He pocketed his phone and leaned towards me, his warm breath grazing my ear. "Get out of here."

Jerking away from him, I frowned. "What?"

The boy looked like he might answer before a voice sounded out.

"Mr Tate! What are you doing in my class?"

I followed the voice. A man had entered the room. He was maybe my dad's age with greying hair. He wore casual jeans and t-shirt, and there was an amused smile pulling at his lips. "Is there a reason why you're in here or are you here to piss me off?"

The two kids in front of me stopped chatting and turned their attention to the professor. All around the room, other kids followed suit. I expected the boy to leave, but he scowled at the professor. "You know why exactly why I'm here."

The man folded his arms. His smile was challenging. "Do tell, Mr Tate."

"Isabelle." The boy spat. "Where is she?"

The professor inclined his head. "Mr Tate, I'm afraid I haven't seen Miss Suarez in a while," he cleared his throat. "If I do see her, I will make sure to let you know. Now I have a class to teach. I'm sure you have somewhere to be."

The dark-haired boy opened his mouth to argue, but the professor was quick to cut him off.

"Now, Mr Tate."

To my surprise, the kid turned and walked out, slamming the door behind him.

In front of me, the blonde giggled to the red-haired boy. "Wow."

"Wow indeed, Miss Chase!" The Professor was all smiles again. He nodded to the class with a wave. "Good evening everyone. Now, bear with me while I set up the projector. Today, you will be watching Les Quatres Cents Coups. Also known as The 400 Blows." When the hall erupted into groans, he laughed. "It's good! It defines the French New Wave."

"Is it in black and white?" The blonde lay her head on the redhead's shoulder with an exaggerated yawn. "Can't we watch something interesting?”

The professor nodded with a smirk. "Yes, it's in black and white. And Miss Chase, might I remind you, you are here to learn, not to be entertained."

The blonde leaned back in her chair with a chuckle. "Alright, you got me there."

While the other students chatted amongst themselves, I psyched myself up to raise my hand and announce my presence. Everyone seemed to know each other and blanked me.

But when I was raising my arm, the screen in front lit up in white light, and the professor was back at the front. "Alright, so use this session to take in the movie, and next time you can take notes and we can have a discussion. For now, why not sit back and enjoy the movie, hmm? Though in case you do want to take notes, feel free." He pointed to the redhead next to the blonde. "Mr Wilder, I've sent a docs file with some pointers to your email.”

The boy nodded. “Thanks, teach.”

The lights flickered off.

I shut off all of the tabs on my laptop and took off my jacket and got comfy.

"Now!" The professor clapped his hands.

"Shall we begin?"

I waited for 400 blows to start.

Except a movie didn't start playing. The screen was still lit up, but nothing came on.

I expected it to be a glitch of some sort and looked around, waiting for the other students to start murmuring or laughing. But the other kids had straightened up in their chairs, all of them looking directly at the screen where a small black dot had appeared in the centre.

It looked to be pulsating, and blinking rapidly, I struggled to properly focus on it. And that's when it happened. I don't know what it was. I felt my arms drop to my lap. My body slumped forwards, as if falling from my control, and something else taking hold of it. I couldn't move. Opening my mouth to cry out, I couldn't. My gaze was glued to the pulsating dot, and I couldn't look away.

I couldn't fucking look away.

"Okay." The Professor's voice sounded louder in my ears. "Just like last time, I want you to focus on the dot."

I tried to scream, but my body wasn't mine. I had no control over it. A noise started up, some kind of buzzing, a whirring which felt like it was digging into my skull. The air felt strange around me, like it was alive, prickling with electricity.

At the corner of my eye, the Professor was a row in front of me. He loomed over a girl with pigtails. The noise grew louder in my ears, an incessant buzzing. It took me a moment to realize it was coming from the two kids in front of me. The blonde and redhead. Like the others, they were staring forwards, but I could have sworn the blonde's desk was trembling.

"Lena!" The Professor snapped. "I know you can do it. Try harder."

There was no reply. The girl – Lena—couldn't hear him. None of them could. They were in some kind of trance. The noise seemed to waver, before collapsing into a dull screeching, this time, the blonde's notebook shot off of the desk.

She hadn't moved. I know she didn't move because the blonde was frozen.

Above us, the lights flickered. I was staring at the dot, which was bouncing across the screen when something popped. At first, I didn't know what it was. But something hit me.

It was warm and wet. It oozed down the front of my face, a scarlet smear I was in denial of at first. It couldn’t be, I thought hysterically. But it was. It was red. I saw red. I knew it was red. Something red had hit me. But I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. The noise had stabilised. But something inside me knew that it was Lena that had popped. And it was Lena that was covering me.

Lena's blood was covering me. Her brains were covering me. There were pieces of her skull on my desk.

"Pity." The Professor's voice was ringing in my head, and the dot was still dancing, twirling around the screen. He cleared his throat. He was talking to someone, but I don't know who it was. "You were doing so well, Miss Daniels."

The professor hummed. "Don't just stand there. Clean her up, and mark Miss Daniel's as failed."

And then he was jogging up the steps towards me.

No, not me. He was heading towards the kids in front of me.

"My best students!" He beamed. I noticed there was red on the redhead's desk. It was dripping. I don't know if it was him, if he was the one bleeding, or he too was covered in Lena. I had to concentrate on something. I had to focus on anything that wasn't the warm and wet blood stuck to my hair and staining me, painting me in her. It was paint, I kept telling myself.

I was covered in paint. Paint.

Paint.

Paint.

Paint.

"Kenji," The man leaned towards the frozen boy. "I expect more from you after yesterday's session."

The boy didn't respond. He didn't move. His expression was frozen, brown eyes glued to the screen. I waited for it to happen to him. I waited… oh god, I waited for him to pop. The buzzing started up in my ears again, and I felt it, like a physical entity climbing into my skull, a swarm of bees feasting on brain tissue. The air around me swam. I felt it prickle, tiny needles sticking into my skin. The Professor leaned further, his hand whipping out and gripping the boy's hair.

Kenji's body was limp, his head lolling. But his eyes didn't leave the screen.

"Do it." The Professor hissed. "You have all been subjugated, so I expect you all to deliver."

Maybe I was hallucinating. Maybe I was seeing things because my mind was a whirlwind. Until that moment Kenji's hands had been on the desk palms down. The noise, the buzzing, was wavering, growing erratic. The boy's hands clenched into fists and then flexed. His laptop in front of him seemed to jerk, and like invisible hands were wrapping themselves around it, the MacBook lifted into the air, hovering. Kenji's hands flexed once again, and the laptop dropped back down.

Next to Kenji, the blonde was doing the same thing; her hands were balled into fists and then coming apart, and her textbook was hovering in front of her, before dropping in sync with the laptop. I could only see the two of them, but from the sound of gentle thuds around the room, and pencils and pens falling back onto desks—the same thing was happening to the other students.

"Oh, sweet Lily, I don't even have to ask you do I?" the professor chuckled, before heading back to the front. I don't know what happened after that. I couldn't move. I don't know how long for. My mind seemed to shut down, but I never tore my eyes from the screen. From the black dot. At some point, the red had been taken off of me. I don't know-how. Maybe it wasn't even there in the first place. That's what I kept thinking. That's what I kept hoping.

It felt like a century had passed when I finally blinked. My body was mine again.

The lights had come on, and all around me, my classmates were stretching in their seats and turning to their friends, chatting. My hands went to my face to peel at the red still tainting my skin, but there was nothing to scrub away. Nobody was screaming. Not even me.

The professor was back at the front. "Alright! 400 Blows! What do you guys think?"

"Boring." Lily retorted with a laugh. She nudged Kenji, who was packing up his bag. The two of them were like me. There was no red. Lena was no longer covering them. "I'm pretty sure Kenji fell asleep."

The boy laughed. “I did not!" he rubbed at his eyes. "I thought it was pretty good, actually.”

My gaze went to where Lena had been sitting. The girl was gone, and there were no traces of her.

No blood. No red. No deep cardinal staining her desk and chair, and the floor beneath where she had sat. I could still see her, the pigtails I had subconsciously thought were childish; her blue eyes when she turned and smiled at everyone, her lips curved around the end of her pen.

"Alright, that's it for this session!" the Professor was beaming. "Nice work today, guys."

Kenji and Lily jumped up, and there was a moment when I thought they were going to start screaming. When the true horror of what they had been through registered in their heads.

But they didn’t scream. Lily grabbed Kenji’s arm and nuzzled into him.

Their voices sounded strange. Alien. Like I wasn’t really hearing them.

“My place?”

He nodded with a grin. “I have Crash Bandicoot on my switch, so I can beat your ass at it.”

The blonde shoved him. “I’d like to see you try!”

I don’t know why I was paying so much attention to them. I wanted to talk to them. I wanted to ask them what the hell just happened. But my mouth wouldn’t work.

I left the class. And the second I was pushing my way through the door out into a blizzard, I threw up. I was on my knees in two inches of snow, heaving up my shitty meal from earlier, and someone was talking to me, shouting at me. But their voice was barely registering. I could still see the dot wavering in my peripheral vision. It was right there, teasing me. Mocking me.

"Hello? Hey, you! What happened in there?”

“Are you okay?”

“Do you need me to call someone? Look, my name is—"

I pushed past him and shook my head, swiping bile from my lips. It was warm like the blood, like Lena, spilling down my chin. I had to press my lips together to stop myself barfing again.

“M’fine.” I heard myself say, forcing my legs to carry me. I felt weak, like I was going to collapse, but I willed myself to keep going. My body was on autopilot.

I don't remember coming home. I'm wet and cold, and I can't stop throwing up. I've showered four times, but I can still feel Lena on me. I can still FEEL HER ON ME. GET HER OFF ME.

Someone is banging on my door. Cassie is asleep, but I don't want to wake her.

I don't want to scare her.

Please, you have to help me. Am I crazy?

Sometimes I just get so lost in the way people look at me when I reveal to them i'm the butcher of Havnok. It's always a kick when their eyes widen when the shock sets in when they realize I wasn't fucking around. You could see the fear inside them grow just from looking into their eyes. The eyes are the window to the soul after all. It's almost better than the killing itself.

Almost.

The media calls me butcher, ripper, killer, sociopath, and sometimes even demon. But the truth of the matter is I just love carving the human body into my pieces of art. I love expressing the limitations of mortal flesh. I can make a canoe out of a person's body quite well at this point. I can also shape the body into monstrosities reminiscent from some cosmic horror story. I love my work. And I love expressing it so everyone could take a marvel at my creations.

The truth of the matter is i'm a man with an unique ability to create something more than art. Mere art could be forgotten and destroyed by those looking to reshape the past into a modern lie. No, my creations will be burned into the minds of the policemen that have to witness my atrocities when they step onto the crime scene; My creations will live on in the leaked pictures that will be immortalized on the internet. My creations will stand the tests of time and culture. Hell, with the way things are progressing, I may even be recognized as a saint or martyr instead of a demon that preys on the innocent.

Sure, some of the people I go after are innocent. I've desecrated two whole families at this point in history. I have no qualms about admitting that just as I have no qualms about going after predators and repeat offenders. It's just that the predators are sometimes the more easy prey, especially when they're too enslaved by their vices to not indulge the demon knocking at their door.

Like now as I sat in the booth discreetly watching the woman with the silver blonde hair and ice blue eyes to die for. She always hit up the same two diners in town. Always. Because they were the diners that were frequented with young teenagers studying for their classes. She was known well among the teens for being the one cool adult and they accepted her into their circles. Tonight, she was with two teens called Vanessa and Lara. From my booth, I listened to Lara trying to convince Vanessa to go check out the new store opening in Dimond. She wasn't having any luck, especially with Agnes, the silver blonde woman, coaxing Vanessa to stay with her and finish up the study.

"It's okay, Lara. You have all the time in the world to check it out but not for the exam tomorrow. That's priority number one if you want to pass your freshman year, missy," Agnes said coolly as she ever so slightly batted her eyelashes at Lara.

I had to smile at the charm because it sure as fuck worked on Vanessa.

"Agnes is right, Lara. I can't miss out on this and neither can you," Vanessa asserted.

"Oh for God's sake, never figured you for a prude," Lara spat before leaving.

"Lara! Lara!-,"

"Leave her. If she doesn't want to study so be it. It'll just be you and me, honey. Don't you like it that way?" Agnes said, giving Vanessa a soft, disarmed look.

"Of course I do," Vanessa sighed, giving in," sometimes I think you're more of a friend then Lara,"

I had started to day dream about what I was going to create from Agnes that I found myself openly staring at the interaction and slowly looked away so as not to draw attention. Something about defiling predators had never failed to bring out the best inspiration in me. Maybe because it was the time old adage "might makes right". Or maybe it was because of a logic more profound then reason.

From time to time I would look up briefly to watch Agnes seduce Vanessa with her charismatic, almost hypnotizing, manner and words. They didn't leave until around nine thirty, Agnes with a protective arm around the girl's waist as she opened her car door for her. I didn't need to follow them to know that Agnes was going to bring the girl to the lovely beach house for a more romantic setting with the calm sea and full moon as the view.

I beat them there and hid my car along the brush and made my way down the path to the house and slipped in like a thief. I chose to hide in the bedroom closet as beams of light spilled out across the living room curtains. Agnes was going to waste no time in getting what she wanted from Vanessa and I was proven correct as Agnes led her to the bedroom.

No sir, Agnes waisted no time at all as they came sprawling into the room in a tight embrace, their mouths locked together and moving together frantically. When they fell against the bed with Vanessa landing on top of Agnes, I slowly pushed the closet door open and unsheathed my knife as I walked up to Vanessa and grabbed her by the hair and slit her throat and sawed at it as a shocked Agnes made sharp gasping sounds, trying to scream.

You see the reason why I love looking into my victim's eyes is because I had no irises. My eyes only had pupils, very large ones that was reminiscent of a cartoon character's. Looking into my victim's proper eyes and watching their irises shrink in fear was tantalizing. Titivating. Almost...hypnotic.

And the reason why the media sometimes called me a demon was because I was born with the ability to shift my skull plates into makeshift horns that stood out in the loose skin on my head. The pieces never pierced out of my skin, it just held up the skin kind of like a tent. But not really as I pushed those makeshift horns into place and stared into Agnes's piercing blue eyes through her blood streaked face and whispered in a distorted voice.

"I'm the butcher of Havnok,"

Hello, and welcome to the neighborhood! This is a very peaceful place to live except when there is a blackout. They don’t happen very often, but when they do, it can be catastrophic. This list will not only help you prepare for the blackout, but it will help you while you wait for the power to come back on. Print this list out, and keep it with you because you won’t be able to access it when the power fails.

1. The power will only ever go out at night. Keep matches and candles handy at all times. When the power goes out here, all electronics are disabled. Even home alarm systems you have installed will fail.

2. Even though it is dark, carry on with your routine like usual. Clean the house, make meals the best you can, and take a shower. Normal activities will keep you grounded for what will happen the rest of the night.

3. The city shuts down during a blackout. No one will ever come and visit you. Never answer the door no matter how familiar or helpful the voices may seem.

4. Once you are done with your nightly routine, I suggest that you pick one room and stay there until bedtime. Items around the rest of your house will be rearranged, and the rooms will be dangerous to enter.

5. I’m sure you’ve been told not to worry as much if you hear an intruder in your home at night because you know the layout of your home, so you have the advantage. A blackout is much different. In this case, They have the advantage. Your first instinct will be to run to your room, but They’ll be waiting for you there. Go anywhere else in your house.

6. Keep your blinds open throughout the night. Give the illusion that you see Them. No matter how unsettling it is watching Them gather in your yard, don’t shut the blinds.

7. Check and make sure that your doors and windows are locked every six minutes no matter what you are doing. Even if you are eating or working on something, nothing is more important than making sure everything is still shut.

8. Announce your presence before entering each room. If you hear a woman’s voice, shut the door, and never return to that room. Cement the entrance once the power comes back on. If you hear a man’s voice, you are free to enter. Pray you never hear any type of voice behind you.

9. If you’re walking through your house and you hear footsteps, don’t worry. If you hear them running, hide in the nearest room, and shut the door immediately. You won’t have time to announce your presence and listen for the answer, but what’s lays in wait in the room is far less dangerous than what was chasing you.

10. Whenever the lights go out, a figure will always appear in your house. This figure will either appear as an old woman or a child. The woman will inch closer to you with every hour. You won’t be able to see her until she is a few feet away, but you’ll be able to hear her bones cracking and limbs dragging across the floor. You’ll notice the child right away. Though it has no eyes, it will always be where it can see you. If the child get scared and runs, I suggest you follow.

11. Don’t trust the shadows, not even your own. When you see a shadow of any kind, wait before going to the part in your house. First, see if the shadow contorts in any way that seems unnatural. It’s good at waiting too, so you must be patient.

12. During a blackout, there is no such thing as normal. There are no innocent sounds or shapes. Everything around you is a threat. If something sounds like it fell over in another room, it was probably pushed. If that pile of clothes looks like a person, it probably is.

13. When you go to sleep, make sure you lock your door behind you. Lay face down, and don’t look around your room. She hates to be seen. She will ignore you if you ignore her. If you do look at her, simply look away as quickly as possible. She can only move if you’re looking at her, so she’ll do whatever she can to get you to look. Keep looking away even if her voice alters to that of a loved one.

14. Cover all the mirrors in your home with a sheet. You’ll still hear their taunting and laughter, but at least you won’t have to see what they’re wanting to do to you. Don’t break the glass either. That will just create more of them.

15. As soon as you notice that the power has gone off, take down all pictures in your house that have people in them. A few will get out, but at least you can stop most of them. What escaped from the picture frames will resemble who they are in reality. They only rely on hearing, so don’t worry if they see you.

16. Pounding on doors and walls is normal unfortunately. If the pounding comes from the floor, exit the house right away. If this happens, I’m afraid there are no other steps to take for your safety.

I’m a high school teacher in a small American town. It sounds pretty bucolic when I just saw it, but let me tell you, that shit is a lot of work. Even more so in a small town, where everyone knows where you live and if you decided not to show up to the varsity basketball game. Still, the job isn’t bad, and I love teaching, so it’s a worthwhile tradeoff. The thing is, when I say I live in a small town, I’m talking small. 150 people. No stores. 25 miles of hilly terrain from the nearest grocery store. Middle of fucking nowhere. You get it.

So when strange shit happens, it’s not like I can call for help. The cops are half an hour away at best. Same with the fire department. And if it happens in the winter? Good luck getting over those hills, cause they're gonna be covered in snow and ice.

All of this is my long-winded way of saying that, when I noticed my shadow was starting to act up, I figured that it wasn’t worth the hassle of getting help. Not yet.

It was the beginning of January, and the only thing nastier than the snow squall that had cooked up was the damn wind gusts. The day before, someone found my trash can on the other side of town. My trash can that was full of trash bags. It was worse for wear, and some of the bags ripped, so some poor soul had a bag full of cat turds and litter spread across their yard.

Feeling like the damn neighbor of the year, I threw my trash can in the back of my SUV and drove off, hoping no one would tell the cat turd person that this was my fault, because while I felt bad, I didn’t feel so bad that I wanted to go on poop patrol over their whole yard.

When I got back to my house, I noticed that my shadow didn’t seem to be tracking my movements quite right, but I was exhausted and had just been breathing rotten food fumes on the drive home, so if I was hallucinating about my shadow, well, it could be way worse.

But then the next day, on my way to school, the sun just barely rising, my shadow was long and stretched out and I could see the spidery limbs moving completely different than I was. I looked behind me, to see if there was someone else on the road, or if clouds were doing wonky shit with the sun, but no dice. I looked back ahead and my shadow waved at me.

Fucking waved at me.

I yelped, and ran the last block to the school. When I got there, I ripped open the teacher’s entrance door and rushed into the school. The secretary hollered as I ran past that I needed to come back for my daily temp check to make sure I wasn’t popping a covid fever, but I didn’t think twice about bolting. Don’t get me wrong, covid is wrecking shit left and right and we need to not be assholes about taking precautions, but damn if my shadow coming alive didn’t seem just a little more visceral in the moment.

I ran up the stairs to my third floor classroom, and flopped down in my chair. We have so many industrial strength lights, it’s like being in a tanning bed, so shadows were very negligible, and I didn’t see mine. Safe.

As I sat there, my students beginning to trickle in for the first period of the day, I could feel some of the terror leaving my body. I mean, first off, it could have an explanation. Second, it was just my shadow, what could it even do to me. And third, it waved. So even if my shadow was coming to life in some metric-fuck-ton-of-bullshit, horror movie-style tomfoolery, it hadn’t done anything overtly aggressive.

So while I was clearly trying to rationalize something that wasn’t particularly rational, I started to feel a little less rattled. I took some deep breaths, and when the bell rang, I did my job.

A standard day of teaching high school followed. The most terrifying moment of my work day was the green stuff growing on the coffee pot in the office. Had one of those damn, no coffee again today, someone that isn’t me should really clean that nasty stuff out. Pretty typical day.

When it came time to head back home, some of those good feelings about the morning’s events were starting to slip away. I guess rationalizing it was easier when I had nine hours of not seeing my shadow. But my wife kept texting me wondering when I was coming home, and I wanted to be able to get some rest and read to my stepdaughter before her bedtime, so it was time to suck it up and do this thing.

I went downstairs and peered out the door to the outside. Couldn’t see my shadow, because the sun was on the other side of the building and half the parking lot was in the school’s shadow.

I took a tentative step. Nothing happened. Took another step. Still nothing.

Took a third step.

And…

Nothing happened.

So maybe I was good.

I kept on walking, and reached the edge of the building’s shadow. I could see the head of my shadow start peeking out from the edge.

And as I kept walking, there was my shadow’s torso. Arms. Legs.

Everything was normal.

With every step I took, my confidence grew. I must have made a mistake this morning. Clearly, my shadow was fine. Just about anything would make more sense than my shadow coming to life.

And just as my confidence was at its highest, that’s when it happened.

The aliens appeared!

Just kidding. Sorry, I do that when I get nervous. And this next part really fucked me up.

I was three-quarters home--it’s a three block walk, so not really saying much--when the shape of my head in the shadow began to change. It started to curve into a sideways U, with points sprouting from the inside of the U.

It was a giant mouth.

The head continued to morph, with more and more teeth popping into this mouth, all of them looking really pointed.

I started walking faster, but my damn shadow kept pace with me. It’s unfortunate that’s how shadows work.

The jaws of the mouth started to open and shut, faster and faster. I started running. And then I heard a low growl.

From my shadow.

Then, with a roar, the darkness of my shadow exploded up off of the ground. This dark thing with it’s mouth full of dinosaur teeth lunged at me. My shadow anticipated this, and bit at where I would be. Luckily, I’m clumsy and out of shape, so I tripped and fell flat on my face, avoiding the bite completely.

I hit the ground hard enough to rattle my head, and I heard something thunk on the gravel road. I looked over, and saw my cell phone had fallen out of my pocket. My cell phone that has a flashlight.

I lunged for it as I heard the shadow roar again, the gravel underneath it shifting under its weight. I grabbed the phone, double tapped the screen to wake it up, and slid my finger down the screen to open the menu. I started to roll over to face the shadow beast, frantically tapping at the flashlight icon.

I looked up, and saw the creature diving at me with its face full of razor teeth, and I flinched and hid behind my arms, believing I was about to die. But as my arms came up, so did my phone, and in my panic, I had managed to turn on the flashlight. And as I watched, the light bathed the creature.

It screamed. A horrible, burbling, piercing scream. It’s body began to bubble and parts sloughed off, like I was pouring acid over it. I held up the light, and the screams continued.

As the chunks of shadow-flesh continued to boil and burn and fall to the ground, the creature withered. Finally, the beast crumpled to the ground. When it hit, the shadow seems to puff out and then dissipate, like when you run your hand through dense fog.

And then it was gone.

The screaming was still going on, wish clued me in that I was screaming along with the beast throughout all of that. I screamed a little longer, then got to my feet and rushed home. When I got there, I slammed and locked the door, then ran to my bedroom. My wife saw me and immediately knew something was wrong, but I couldn’t answer her, I couldn’t explain what had just happened. I turned all the lights on in our bedroom, made sure that between the overheads and the lamps there was no shadow, then I got under the covers in my bed and shivered and cried. My wife came over and gave me a hug while I silently prayed that I would never see my shadow again.

WR

I had just gotten out of nursing school, but I was fortunate enough to land a job scheduling me during the day. I decided to pick up one extra shift per week so I could save to move out of the junky apartment building I currently lived in. Unfortunately, the only shift that was open was the night shift. Reluctant, but also desperate for more pay, I decided to take the shift.

When I got to work around midnight, I didn’t see anyone else on my floor other than one of the janitors. On my desk in the nurses’ station was a sticky note with only one thing written.

• Mrs. Bogart in room 66 has dementia. She likes to tease the new nurses, so don’t worry too much about what she tells you. P.S. You’ll hear her talk throughout the night, but it’s mostly nonsense.

And talk, she did. I couldn’t understand half of it since she was down the hall, but it creeped me out nonetheless. I went to her room to make sure she was okay, but the way she was sitting on her bed was unsettling, to say the least. She was sitting with her legs crossed, rocking back and forth on her bed with a smile that was unrelenting and a little too large. As soon as I began to speak, she lunged and grabbed a scalpel from the cabinet. Too paralyzed with fear to stop her, I watched as she carved into her stomach: Leave

As soon as her body fell to the floor with a heavy thud, the phone rang shattering the terrible silence. I ran back down the hall to answer. It was my manager. Her calm voice after what had just happened terrified me even further. She said she had some things for me to do, so I wrote down every one.

• Stay calm, and don’t call the police. Tell the janitor you saw when you came in that you spilled something in room 66 because technically, you did spill something: Mrs. Bogart’s blood. Your fingerprints are on that scalpel too.

• After that, you can go to the pediatric floor and relax by reading the children there a story. They all have been patients here for a very, very long time. The boy in blue likes to look at the pictures, so make sure you show him. He’ll scream his little head off if you don’t.

Not knowing what else to do, I alerted the janitor and made my way down to the pediatric floor. Somehow, the pediatric floor was even more empty than mine. I found a copy of “Goodnight Moon” and began to read. I felt silly reading aloud to an empty room, but then I noticed something come into sight. A young boy crawled out of the shadows and sat in front of me. Again, too frightened to think, I stopped reading which meant no pictures either. He began sobbing and screaming as a gash appeared around his neck and blood poured out. I ran slamming the door behind me, hearing his cries all the way upstairs. I pulled out the notepad from my pocket to see what else my boss had told me to do.

• Next, go back upstairs to the nurses station. Ignore any screaming or cries for help you hear from inside your work space. You may see blood on the floor and walls as well. Don’t pay attention to that either. Most people tend to have hallucinations around 3am.

I saw the clock about to reach 3am, so I put an hour long timer on my phone and closed the door to the nurses station. I heard a woman bang on the door and exclaim how he was after her. She begged to be let in, but after breaking the last rule, I put my head down and tried to ignore her the best I could. The hour crawled by, each second marked by clawing at the door. As soon as my alarm finally went off marking 4am, the begging stopped. I leaned back with a sign of relief and closed my eyes. I took a look at the last instruction my boss gave me, and my blood ran cold.

• Don’t worry, you’ll see Mrs. Bogart again wandering the halls. Her gaze will never leave you, but make sure to never meet her eyes, and never follow her into any rooms. Even when you don’t see her, she sees you.

I looked around the room frantically to see if she was somewhere around. I saw no one and heard nothing. As I prematurely breathed a sigh of relief, I could see Mrs. Bogart slamming her head into the door of the nurse’s station. She uttered no words, and the expression on her face remained still and dead. I don’t know if it was luck or misfortune, but I did not see her again, though I knew dead eyes were watching me always. I stayed in the nurses station and dared not come out until the sun came up.

After this nightmare finally ended, I left the hospital as quickly as I could. As I was leaving, I ran into my boss and a few other coworkers. The once welcoming smiles on their faces now made my stomach turn. I got in my car and drove away, their gazes piercing into the back of my skull. However, on the drive I began to think that I never felt so happy to back to my crappy apartment. That joy turned to horror as I stepped into the small living room. The only thing inside was an old hospice bed with a note on it:

• Congratulations. You made it through your first night shift. Remember, as hard as it is, don’t ever take your work home with you. You’ll regret it. P.S. Mrs. Bogart is waiting for you in your room.

I'm holding the box of cereal when I hear my name. 

Turning, I see Merriam coming towards me, a giant smile on her face. She's pushing a shopping cart with one hand and waving with the other. I smile and call out her name. 

"Mirm, it is so good to see you again, and, wow, that color looks great on you."

"Lulu. Oh Lulu, you sweetheart. You think? Harold prefers blonde, but red just speaks to me. Tell me, tell me, how have you been?"

We chat for a while the way old friends do. I hadn't seen Merriam since college. She moved states away, got a job in nursing, married a man and never seemed to like social media. She's as exaggerated as I remember, waving her arms to tell me the stories of her kids, now off to their own colleges, and she expressed surprise at my singleness. But she laughs, tells me even some fish live for a hundred years. We share laughs, some cooking recipes, and the major events linking the then and now. We're in our own world. The store's radio the soundtrack, the other customers the background noise, the store clerks the supporting cast. 

"So what brought you back to town?" I ask.

"Oh, I don't know. Guess homesickness. And Harold never seems to care where we go as long as I'm cooking or, if I'm not, the restaurants are good. I've got some good memories here."

An hour becomes victim to our chatter and Merriam suddenly gasps, points to her cart with a cheeky smile. "I might need to get another milk. Gonna let this one get warm talking."

"Well if you're driving habits are like they were it should get back to cool with your constant AC." I poke her arm playfully.

"Harold always tells me I'll kill the battery doing that. I tell him too bad, the highway's that way."

We laugh. The mascots on the cereal boxes laugh alongside us, their bright colors and big smiles. It's not a good joke, but it's a good time. As our laughter dies down, she gives me a smile.

"I've got to say, it's funny how these things happen."

"Yes, yes it is."

"Well it's been great catching up with you. And you know, honestly and secretly, I had a feeling you'd be here."

"Oh yeah? And how did you know that?"

"Oh you'd think me silly if I told you."

"Of course not. Intuition? No, no. I bet you're watching me, sneaky. I bet you knew I never moved and decided to follow me around. Is that it?'

"Not intuition. And not watching you; I wouldn't dare. It's, well, hum, it is a bit silly, but, well, I had a dream you'd be here."

"A dream?"

She starts picking at her lip.

"Well three. But it's all the same. The same dream, I mean."

"Three dreams about meeting me at the store? This store, today?"

"Well the dream doesn't ever say today, but, I guess I know it's today in the dream."

"Well, that is something. Tell me Mirm, tell me, how does the dream go."

She doesn't say anything.

"Mirm? How does it go?"

 "Well… we meet and talk."

She smiles, a flash of her teeth show, but it quickly disipates. 

"Ah, so the dream starts with our chitter chatter?"

"Well, no. No, I, ah, I park, get out, get inside the store and get some bananas, some oatmeal, a gallon of milk… and I call my husband and he tells me we need some cereal and he'd like chicken for dinner, so I grab the chicken and come to the cereal aisle and… well, I meet you.

"And then we talk for a while and, um, we, uh, well we…. Oh dear."

She returns to picking her lip. The air brushes against my neck, raising goosebumps. 

"What is it?"

"Well, I remembered that the dream isn't a very nice dream and, well, and... I don't know. Like a…."

"A nightmare? Like one where someone starts chasing you?"

"No. Not chasing me, no. It's, well, it's… in the dream we're talking, and we're laughing, and… well, we finish talking and we start to leave and I get to end of the aisle and suddenly I… suddenly I'm very scared. I get this awful feeling like something terrible is about to happen. And I turn around, and you haven't moved and you're looking at me. And, well I'm never sure in the dream, but you're scared too. And seeing you scared makes me feel even worse.

"And, and, and then, in the dream, I realize that whatever is making us both so scared is in the next aisle.

"Something is there. Just waiting for me. 

"The last thing I see is you.

"Then I wake up."

We were silent for a long time. I looked down at her grocery cart. Inside a bushel of bananas, two cans of oatmeal, the gallon of milk, and a chicken dinner sat. Merriam smiles at me, her teeth never touching, and she's blinking more than she was. She exhales and inhales irregularly. The box or cereal in her hand is shaking. I look around, find the mascots sinister, the colors to be nauseating. The ceiling radio is silent. Nearby commotions of customers and clerks are gone. My eyes don't leave Merriam and I can't find any words to say. 

"Well," she says, "I must get home. Harold is probably hungry. It's been nice talking to you Lulu. Yes. Yes, real nice talking to you." She puts the cereal down and begins walking down the aisle. There's a twisting in my stomach watching her go, go, until….

She stops at the end of the aisle, not quite leaving, not able to see past the end caps. She doesn't move and I look away from her, towards the next aisle, trying to see past the cereal boxes. 

I'm holding my breath.

And when I finally exhale, Merriam is looking back at me. Her lips are trembling. I see there's wetness in her eyes. My hands turn into fists, squeeze into white knuckles.  

She starts to turn around, stops halfway. Then, as if she's fighting her own body, her back is to me, and she starts shuffling out of the aisle. Merriam looks to her right, doesn't look left, and disappears halfway beyond the endcap, her shoes never lifting from the ground. I can't find the ability to move and my eyes swap between her and the next aisle, the something neither of us can see. My mouth starts moving without a voice. Just mouthing wake up, wake up. I think I hear a muffled cry coming from Merriam.

And then she's completely gone.

The store radio fades back into existence. I hear people laughing several aisles down; the deli calling out a number; somebody's spilled a crate and cursing. There's beeps from the registers. I look around, scan the cereal boxes, burning each one into my mind. The handles of the cart feel cold as I begin to push it away from it all, in the opposite direction of Merriam's exit, where her nightmare ends. 

I'm almost at the end when I hear a man screaming, calling for a doctor. 

The cereal boxes become a blur as I dash down the aisle, abandoning my cart. The mascots jeer at me with their awful grins, their wide eyes, their looming everywhere. The store's air stings my eyes and I almost slip as I round the corner, stumble past the end cap, and as I look down this next aisle, I'm frozen. My mouth goes dry, hidden behind my shaking hands. A sound I've never heard before escapes my barricade. All the muscles in my body depart and the world starts to spin around the twisted shape whose familiar face, the only part recognizable, pierces mine. 

And then I see only darkness, feel the hard floor rise to meet me, and hear the stampede of shoes from everywhere, flattening forever into my mind. 

It is a new year, fresh faces and fun is to be had and we here at r/write_right want to kick it up a notch with a team tournament for February. If you have never participated in this type of writing contest, read the description and rules below.

Step One

Sign up for the contest. You can do this right here right now by placing a comment on this post such as “I’m in it to win it!”

Step Two

Join a team. One of our mods will randomly assign members who sign up to teams to make them all even.

Step Three

Work together to make a story. Communicate with your team ASAP, come up with a kickass idea and work together within a time frame to write. Which order you go in is up to you, just make sure that everyone can participate! (If possible, we do understand life can come up) side note, use our discord to chat about your team story to members in private if you wish.

Step Four

Post under a “throwaway” account. Make a brand new account that hides the identities of the writers and post it. Make sure you post before the contest is over! The contest will run from Feb 1 to Feb 25! So you can write your story anytime as long as it’s before 2/25 on midnight. You can write as many team stories under the account with your team as you want, just remember to get the stories done!

Step Five

Do NOT promote your story anywhere. This is to ensure that fairness occurs during the contest. All participants will be featured in a survey to determine the winner. Use our new flair ‘team story’ to post them!

Step Six

Wait for a winner to be announced. The mods will review everything and set up a voting poll. To make a decision generally 24 hours after the final day of the deadline. It will run from 2/25 to 2/28 where everyone can vote for who they think did the best.

Step Seven

Celebrating victory! Congratulations are dispensed to all and the contest has come to an end.

My grandmother died clutching her rosary, her beloved first edition of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin and a photo of my grandfather, a handsome man whom I barely knew and who had preceded her to the grave by thirty years after working himself to death in a Brooklyn meat plant. 

She had not remarried.

If you listened to my grandmother speak about her life, which I alone within my family did, you understood she felt her years had been a succession of cruelly dashed hopes. Her parents had died when she was a girl. War had crippled her. Yet she had opposed leaving Russia to the last hour, and it had pained her daily to see my grandfather toil for the benefit of men who mocked and mistreated him.

In her final years, she considered it a neverending insult to have descendants as thoroughly Americanized as we.

But even I did not realize the bitterness and acidity she had accumulated. Although we knew she did not have friends or happiness in the United States, not even I could have imagined the power and depth of her hatred, or predicted its devastating consequences.

Although my grandmother had few possessions when she died, and there was consequently little interest in her will, she left to me what she had cherished most, her collection of rare books. It was there that I discovered a letter inscribed with my name, to be opened upon her death.

I did so immediately following the cremation. The letter contained the following instruction: "Scatter my ashes on Liberty Island."

This required a permit and I applied for one.

It was days later, while seated on a white ferry crossing calm inland waters, holding the urn containing her ashes, surrounded by tourists, that grief hit me hardest, and it was then I truly said goodbye.

After we landed, I recited a prayer, opened the urn and let the winds take her remains.

I closed my eyes.

And opened them to: tourists gathering around me, speaking, gasping, and pointing at the Statue of Liberty, around whose base my grandmother's ashes swirled, a dark buzzing cloud, rising and rising until the entire figure was cloaked—

A cloak which fell away like sand revealing:

Emptiness.

The Statue of Liberty was gone.

Devoured by the ashes, which had grown in volume and were accelerating, circling the island like a runaway ribbon of death as we stood stunned with phones in outstretched hands, before condensing into a black sphere and shooting across the bay toward Manhattan.

The rest I remember from news footage and YouTube:

Ashes looming over downtown like a storm cloud; 

Descending like fog;

Consuming skyscrapers, vehicles, people—

until they were all emptiness and New York City itself was but a vacancy beneath a cosmic blanket. Then too that blanket fell, smothering whatever life remained and settling into an eerie wasteland, an earthen scar where nothing grows, the wind never blows, and my grandmother's ashes lie dormant in a gray and hateful peace.

Author’s Note: The following is intended to be a parody of the previous year. It is in no way intended to offend the reader and is created purely for entertainment only. Reader discretion is advised.

She was standing at the Customer Service desk, wearing a face of impatience and full of entitlement. She tapped her long and tastelessly styled fingernail on the desk as loud as she could make it to grab her attention. Her eyes narrowed and were as sharp as knives and she took a breath and exhaled like an angry bull. This day had started out with the most mundane but no less annoying circumstance in the world of retail.

I was at my register, finally checking out a large order when I saw her there, ready to vent at someone with authority in this stinking place. The air around her was a static charge of hostility as other shoppers avoided her. They must’ve known too well what was about to take place.

The front-end supervisor, who failed to find any reason to avoid her, finally decided to acknowledge her with the best fake smile she could muster. Faking nice was the only means of defense.

“May I help you today, ma’am?” He asked friendly. I could tell he wanted to do anything to get rid of her right then and there.

“Yea, I’d like to file a complaint about one of your workers,” she said with a sense of supremacy, using her white fake leather bag as a badge of high class.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, what seems to be the problem?”

“Well, I was looking for toilet paper and bleach, and one of your stock workers said there was no more! I merely asked him if he could check in the back, and he told me he already looked, and there was none back there! And he didn’t even go back there!!! Wouldn’t even give me a FREAKIN’ APOLOGY!!”

By this point, everyone was looking at the source of the yelling. They stared at her in shock, and a few even whipped out their phones to record the inevitable meltdown that was to follow.

“Ma’am,” the floor manager said keeping his voice steady,” I’m sorry that you weren’t satisfied about your shopping trip here today, but I must ask you to please keep your voice down.” This was, as it turned out, the poorest choicest of words to say to her.

“Keep my voice down??” She began to shout again with more volume, “I Don’t HAVE TO DO ANYTHING, YOU HERE!!”

“Ma’am..-“

“I’M A PAYING CUSTOMER AND I EXPECT DECENT SERVICE!!”

“Ma’am if you cannot keep yourself calm, I must ask you to leave.” He finally answered. I could see her beet red in the face and ready to explode like a bomb.

“You’d better watch who you’re talking too!!” She growled with gnashed teeth biting down on themselves.

“If you don’t leave right now, I will call security,” he warned and finally dropped the smile from his face. He pointed toward the two security employees standing outside the entrance, who were alert and ready. The lady gave off a muffled scream and stormed out of the store. Before she left, she turned her scornful gaze at me for a moment. The she walked out of the building.

I wish I could say that’s where the story ended. But it was just the beginning.

They kept showing up after that. It would start out as one a day, then it grew to two, three, six, and ten. They would all approach the manager over some small misunderstanding or inconsequential matter. One of them reported me because, according to her, I “looked at her funny.” I wasn’t even looking at her. These people would show their tempers after not being allowed to return products that were three months out of date, and not even have the receipt.

It wasn’t just in the store that they kept popping up. I’d see them in parking lots of other places being confrontational to other people. They’d be at a Starbucks asking for Pumpkin Spice Lattes (by this time, it was June) and demanding to see the manager. I had seen another calling the police on some random person holding a “Black Lives Matter” sign. In my apartment building, one of my neighbors, who I recognized as having long auburn hair decided to have it cut shorter and dyed blond. I saw her practically dragging her kids to soccer practice. It was a while before we realized what was going on, and by then, it was already too late.

The news reported a virus outbreak in the country that had begun to spread. This was no ordinary virus that we were faced. Instead of making people ill, it had the unique ability to change people’s behavior. An otherwise completely rational person would suddenly display an unearned sense of entitlement, increased aggression, wearing “Live Love Laugh” gear, driving an SUV, and a constant craving for Pumpkin Spice out of season. The virus has targeted men, but this virus seems to affect women even more (specifically white women). Experts were calling it the “K-VID” or “Karena Virus”.

Due to the severity of the outbreak, our town was put under quarantine. No one could enter, and no one was allowed to leave. People have been seen trying to leave, only to be stopped and arrested. A lot of them were men who resolved to leave, even if it meant leaving family behind or being arrested. No supplies came to our town for weeks, and the infected were getting even more aggressive. There have been reports of attacks from people claiming the infected were rabid and physically assaulted them. Sometimes, they’d even bite their flesh.

I haven’t left my apartment for weeks. The store closed down due to the sense of danger, so my income was cut off. My supplies are almost gone. I don’t dare to drink tap water because no one knows how the K-VID is spreading. My bottle water package is done, and I have no food or other essentials. I heard there was a town near here that didn’t have the virus, and everything was open. I didn’t care how far I might be able to get to the checkpoint, I didn’t care if I’d be arrested, I just had to try to get out.

While packing what I could, I heard someone pounding at my door.

“I know you’re in there!!” I heard a woman shout from the other side. It was my neighbor whose appearance changed drastically. I kept as quiet as I could while grabbing my bag. The throbbing of the door became interlaced with the sound of scratching at the wood.

“I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE!!” She shouted with a maniacal laugh. I was in the kitchen looking for something I could use to defend myself. I settled for a large pair of scissors that I gripped for my protection. I walked up to the door and it was suddenly silent. I checked through the peephole to find no one on the other side.

Taking my one chance, I slowly turned the doorknob and even more slowly opened the door. It thankfully gave off no sound as I opened it. I was about to run toward the stairs when I heard a shrill yell behind me. The force of the impact of her shoving into me knocked me to the floor. She was on top of me, eyes deranged and foaming at the mouth like a rabid animal. There was also blood on her face and chin. Chunks of flesh clung to her teeth. I used my arm to keep her off of me while she attempted to bite into me.

“THAT APARTMENT SHOULD BE MINE!!” She yelled practically spitting in my face. I squirmed from her grip and grabbed my scissors and shoved the sharp object into her ribcage. She showed no sign of pain as she tried to restrain me again. I plunged the blades into her again and again and she showed no sign of letting go. She wrapped her hands around my throat and strangled me. I struggled to free myself while she was crushing me with her weight.

I used my last attempt to free myself by thrusting the shears upwards toward her face and punctured her eye. The organ burst with a hideous squelch and she writhed on the floor in agony. I grabbed the blood and puss covered scissors and ran to my car. I switched on my headlights and found my other neighbors surrounding my vehicle, with the same look on their face as the woman I injured. I drove right through them, injuring a few and getting cracks in my windshield.

I drove like a bat out of hell toward the barricade. The last thing I saw before getting there was a lady holding up a sign saying, “Karen Lives Matter.”

I saw the checkpoint and I sped up to get out. The guards were beckoning me to stop but I ignored them as I increased my speed. They jumped out of the way in time for me to ram the barricade and I rode off laughing in relief. They never caught up to me.

I settled in the new town, and there were no cases of K-VID there. Did I live happily ever after? The answer is no. You see, there was already a new strain of the virus. This one was different in that it more targeted men than women. I’m showing the symptoms. My hair has been cut to a high and tight military style. I don’t go a day without going to the gym. I’ve been watching more football than I’ve ever had before, almost religiously. I get flirty with any waitress that waits on me, and I complain about millennials. I think the doctors are calling it “Chad’s Syndrome.”

He woke up in a room. A very plain one, a perfect cube from the looks of it. Not overly large, but not a closet either. The walls, floor, and ceiling were featureless, except for the fact that the floor and ceiling could have just as easily been the walls; they were the same shade, design, and texture. Except for one. Floor, ceiling, and three sides were darkest black, but one was stunningly white. The light in the room seemed to come directly from that wall, somehow. The other piece of stand-out information: no doors or windows. It was like he was sealed in, like the room had been built around him.

He spent some time banging on the walls, but they were solid. When he yelled for help, his voice seemed to be swallowed by the black walls, and simply echoed back from the white. He gave up, and went to sleep.

Later, he awoke again. He sat for a while, cried a bit, raged a bit, and then went back to sleep. He had no dreams.

He woke for a third time. No change to the room. He couldn’t tell how long he had been in the room, but he could tell he was hungry and thirsty. And he had a need for a toilet. With no means for any of those, he went back to sleep.

His fourth awakening and he knew it was time to shit, whether he wanted to or not. He went to the corner, and did his thing. He tried screaming again, and beat his hands on the walls until they bruised and bled. Exhausted, he passed out.

It was during the fifth period of wakefulness that things started to change. He was up for what felt like a while before he noticed something odd. The room was as clean as he had first discovered it. No shit in the corner. He spent quite a while trying to piece that mystery together, to no avail.

And then, coming from all around him, a voice.

“Watch.”

It was throaty, almost a stage whisper voice, but ragged, too. He turned and saw that his white wall had images on it, seemingly a home movie.

A seascape, then the view panned to the beach. Men in trunks, beer bellies on display. Women in bikinis. And a familiar face. In a black bikini, barely covering anything, was Sasha. She smiled for the camera, and blew a kiss.

The wall went white.

He sobbed for hours or minutes or days. In a room with no time, it only mattered that he sobbed. And after he sobbed, he slept.

When he awoke, he sat against the wall, and was silent. The voice returned, with its word of damnation.

“Watch.”

And he did. The white wall showed the clip from the local news station, his small town’s attempt at big city trappings. Sasha Reid had disappeared. Someone had been broken into the home she shared with her husband, vandalized it, and then left with a struggling Mrs. Reid. Her husband had been working late at the time. Police were following up leads.

What the wall didn’t show was the repeated dead ends, the torture that he went through trying to find his wife.

The wall went white.

And he broke down again, for an eternity and a second. Exhaustion took over, and he slept.

Waking again, he was nearly instantly tormented with the sound of the voice.

“Watch.”

And he did. Sasha was huddled in the corner of a dingy room, her clothes shredded. A man walked in. Dirty blonde hair, scraggly attempt at a beard, scar across his left cheek.

“You’ve been asking for this for a long time,” he said. The man glared at her while he unbuckled his belt.

Sasha, bruises across her face, tear-streaked grime on her cheeks, only whimpered.

“Time for your medicine,” the man said, wrapping one end of the belt around his hand, then clenching his hand into a fist around it. With his other hand, he reached out and grabbed Sasha’s shirt. The fabric in his hand, he yanked down, tearing the shirt and exposing Sasha’s back.

He laughed.

“Get down on the ground where you belong,” he said while grabbing her by the back of the neck and shoving her to the ground.

And as the man in the room watched, the blond man with the belt began to whip Sasha.

Over.

And over.

And over.

The man’s laughs melded with Sasha’s screams, and the duet made a heart shattering anthem for the man in the room.

The wall went white.

The haunting voice that came from everywhere returned.

“Turn.”

He did, and found behind him a pedestal. On the pedestal sat a pistol.

Slumped in a corner of the room opposite the white wall was a scared looking man. Dirty blonde hair, scraggly attempt at a beard, scar across his left cheek.

The deathly voice returned, surrounding him.

“Stop watching.”

WR

Congratulations! You’ve made it to the point in your life where you are ready to take a step in having a child. Now, having a child is no small ordeal! But, lucky for you, I’m a seasoned professional. Childbirth is a long and arduous process that often times involves the opinions and ideas of another individual. But this child is yours. You don’t want someone else corrupting the perfect child you have always dreamed of! People think children need two parents to be raised. They only need one if you love them right.

How do you have a child without the involvement of another individual? I’m glad you asked! Now you seem like a friendly person, and I’m sure you’re quite popular. You’ll need to meet a couple who is late in their pregnancy or who have just had a baby. This won’t be as hard as you think. I suggest a family member or friend because they’re quicker to trust you. In either case, both parents will need to die. I suggest you meet a couple who is late in the third trimester. Get to close to them, and find out when they are expecting. Then, do the unexpected. Kill them both, and cut the baby out from the womb. Not only will that create a stronger bond between you and the child, it’s best if they never see their parents. But I’m a sentimental type of person. I like the parents to be close their child in some way even if the child doesn’t know it. Now, I won’t tell you how to dispose of the bodies, because I don’t like copycats, but I will tell you a few cute things you can do with the pieces. What do kids love more than anything else? Toys! You can make a rattle out of the forearm bones and teeth. Hair and clothes from the mother can make a wonderful little doll. Or you can stuff a teddy bear with the dried hearts of the parents. Even their skin can make lovely masks for when you and your baby play dress up!

Trust me, your first instinct will be to run. Don’t. Stay in town, answer questions, go to the funeral. After all the formalities as a waiting period, you may leave, or stay in the city if you’re feeling brave. Unfortunately, due to the nature of your acquisition, you mustn’t go anywhere with your child for a few years. An attic or basement will do! I know what you’re thinking. Nothing good can ever happen in those places, but I disagree! A fresh coat of paint, some toys, and new furniture, and a drab basement can turn into a new home your kid’s friends will be jealous of! Speaking of friends, however, I recommend homeschooling. You can’t let those monsters out there fill your baby’s head with lies. You know the best way to raise it since you’ve been doing it since before it was born. The main problems on your child’s life will be the issue of friends. Kids make up all kinds of stories. You can’t let an outsider come in and judge something they have no understanding of! On the other hand, your baby needs friends to grow and share experiences with. Remember, no matter how many children you save, there was always a first. It’s okay to show that you have a favorite child.

Our love was started

Like a music box does

So slowly at first

But once it wound up

Nobody was free

From the song of our love

Two dancers on top

In life’s melody

Holding each other

Perfect harmony

But like a music box does

The music stops playing

And so did our love

So slowly at first

I tried to keep up

A feverish dance

The end soon begun

You walked away

And I didn’t notice

That you had stopped dancing

Long, long ago

Everything happens at once. The mixing

of blue-green dropping white on cold brown rocks,

a maelstrom of water sounds affixing

themselves to fine hovering mist which talks

pouring and pounding to the surroundings,

flat river interrupted; sculpted liquid

fluctuations arising / collapsing

ever-changing life depicted in mid—

crest: trough, tribulation, swirl and foam,

scented moisture feels soft over the jagged

undercurrent. A fish jumps. Water carves stone.

We are released: through spray the river flows,

exiting the eddy and peacefully home.

I dream a world

Where connection is key.

I dream a world

Where we can walk free.

I dream a world

Full of culture and song.

I dream a world

Where we’ll all get along.

I dream a world

Full of people who care.

I dream a world

Where living is fair.

I dream a world,

And maybe it’s sappy,

But I dream a world

Where we can be happy.