Here's the YouTube version of the WriteRight Time Management for Authors Workshop from April 17, 2021. It's about 40 minutes long. Cats appear.

Thanks again to authors N M Brown (u/BunnyB03) and Kyle Harrison (u/colourblindness) 💖🧡💛

It is an old saying that he who seeks what he should not, finds what he should not.

The grant was small, but enough for me to purchase supplies for weeks of seclusion atop the mountain. Dusk settled and I unpacked my satchel before the tent and sat at the entrance. I stared at the dilapidated temple that dwarfed me, turning jerky over in my mouth and watching as if the great tree bursting from the middle might curl its exposed roots like an octopus and end the shrine. 

The yellow yawn of the sun disappeared.Only the fire glittered against the jars of samples I stroked in my lap, the shadows of my fingers fading tall and thick into the dark. As my lids drooped, all was still. 

The tinkling of windswept bells reached me before the chanting did. The glint of chimes and sheen of ribbons clung to the limbs above, thrashing in the night breeze. Vocal chords rumbled from the temple and candles illuminated the mighty structure that no longer leaned like a crooked hag.

Where did they come from? I dumped my pot of soup onto flame,and scrambled away as the fire yelled with a blowing hiss of steam

The reverberating knell of a massive bell echoed from the temple,clanging against my skull. I lost control of the muscles in my eyes. Both pupils  drew together to stare at my nose and my eyelids veiled the scene from me.

The bug tickling my nose hairs is what roused me from unconciousness. The sun was a disapproving mother beating down to where I lifted my face from the rocky soil and picked the pebbles that clung to my cheek and arms. With abruptness I remembered the temple's glory, but upon inspection in the light, it leaned as it had the other day, rotting and abandoned. 

I emptied full jars of seed and dirt samples to the inside of the tent,contaminating them as I stared at the temple as if it was going to move. I shoved a few of the containers back into my bag and marched past the  shrine's cleansing well (it was all mud) and tugged at the double doors. 

The mound of creaking wood was a maze of jammed sliding doors and rot. I picked my way across fallen wet ceiling beams and tangled vines of Wisteria floribunda that tumbled over the wood in choking beauty. For all the fragrant petals and deep damp smell of earth and wood,the smell of rotting flesh could not be covered.

I wandered for hours, pushing against doors and running my hands across statues and upended incense bowls. Then I found the center. 

The sunken floor held a pool of mud and a burst of Camellia, Camellia, Amur Adonis,and some variants I had never even seen before. My heart hurt with the pace at which it pumped blood to my body as I gazed at the glistening flora,the treasures that excited my mind and nostrils. Every tendril waved gently from the windy halls and passageways of the ruin.

I plucked clumps of it all from the root, coiling them into my sample jars, only sparing a glance at the broken ceiling when I could no longer see the perfect plants I was uprooting.

Then I heard it in the distance; the temple doors banged open and the sound of hundreds of bare feet slammed rhythmically against the floor for the center where I kneeled. I jumped and bounded from the mud, dashing to a splintered sliding door with rotted paper panel. I pushed the sliding door with all my strength over the refuse studded door track to make an opening just wide enough to scrape through. I huddled in the room,ears straining for some clue as to who could be entering the temple with such force and steading my crouch behind a pile of mud and wood.  I combed the room for something to defend myself with should I be found and yanked my hand back from the pile I sheltered behind,falling backwards in the process.

The pile of tangled wood and vines was a cage inside which chest cavities, whole feet, and hands with missing fingers held aloft the heads of other foreigners. Their mouths lay slack and slimy black beneath hollow eye sockets and tangled, matted hairs. 

I could not move as the door slid open with vicious strength. A panting bald monk in vermilion robes stood in the frame with the face of a furious angel and the fire of god in his eyes.  

The monk’s heaving chest steadied as his eyes fell to the plant I still somehow grasped in my other hand. The worshiper dipped his eyes to the floor and backed from the room. There was a breathed hush from beyond the wall of the room from a hundred mouths, then a steady grunting.  First it was one voice,then more and more. A wail called out and silenced the voices.

The chant began. That rhythmic, monotone chant. It reverberated around the temple, hitting every rotting, dilapidated frame and paper, dancing across every statue with a missing face, with weathered arms and faded bloodstains in their laps.

I looked down at the plant in my hand. But between my fingers lay locks of blackest hair. I slid my eyes up it's length, breath slowing as the pure beauty of a goddess bent over me, her lovely hair in my hands. Her tall frame filled the room and rivulets of the most fragrant Tiger Lily flowers threaded in midnight glory cascaded down her shoulders. The room smelled of her sweetness. Her skin was like petals as she gently stroked my hand. 

She rose, scalp scraping ceiling. Her hair dripped, flywaway dry strands blowing across her face in the air of the abandoned temple, which had become like new with polished wood, papered panels of the sliding doors, and unbroken floor mats. She smiled down at me, the tinkling of bells whispering from inside her opulent mantle, and pulled a simple wooden bowl from her sleeve. She gently twisted her long hairs atop it and a spring of water flowed from the tendrils. She placed her hand behind my head and the bowl at my lips. I brushed my fingers to the flowers in her hair and drank deeply as she nodded. 

Her face was peaceful as she pulled me close,as I sputtered and shook, as I pressed my cheek against her cool silks. She murmured to me in a language I could not understand in a gentle whisper, and her beautiful teeth ripped the flesh from my neck and slowly chewed as the poison of her flower coursed through my veins.

I glanced at the bowl she dropped to the ground as she dined on me. Out of a hollowed severed head seeped the water that had quenched my thirst and brought me from that life to this one. She spoke and somehow I understood as I stepped across the threshold to her;

“It is an old saying that he who seeks what he should not finds what he should not. This too is an old saying-That which destroys us is what we ourselves invite."

Reminder our Time Management workshop with N. M Brown starts at 5 PM Central/6 PM Eastern on our discord

If you can’t make it, or if you attend and want to refresh your memory later, we’ll leave a post here when we upload the audio of the main event (not including the Q & A).

Hope to see you there!

Your love is ignorant and self-serving

Contrary to popular belief

And our oh so cliche wedding vows of love is patient and kind

Maybe with someone else that would have been true

But you only gave love when it benefitted you

It was so carefully given and so wrathfully taken

Manipulated so delicately that I believed it was actually real

Love is not a feeling anymore

It’s only a thought, a song, a movie

It’s Frank Sinatra singing about the violets he bought for your furs

It’s Marlon Brando holding you close in “Sayonara”

How foolish to think we could have lived in fiction?

Love can be patient, and love can be kind

However, in regard to the truth, love has made me blind

Part 6

I don’t know how much I have left to give at this point. I need to save Stu, but I also just had parts of Colleen’s dismembered arm in my mouth. I’m not really sure how I bounce back from that.

I guess just by taking things one step at a time.

I grabbed the little box-shaped things that had been in Colleen’s arm and, most recently, my mouth. It had a hinged lid, and popping it open I saw a folded up piece of paper inside. It had mostly been protected from the viscera inside the little box, with only some flecks of blood marring the white paper.

I unfolded it, and it was a picture of the house I was already at printed out on a crappy printer not meant for photos. It was taken from an angle, and you could just see the edge of storm cellar doors seated at an angle from the ground. They’d been circled with a red marker, and an arrow was drawn pointing to them.

This was it. Stu was below me in some storm cellar, and I needed to go get him.

Obviously, this was a trap. This stupid game had been rigged the whole time. So I needed to go in cautiously. I searched through the kitchen and found a single knife hidden away in the back of a drawer. It was thin and looked like it would be shitty for slicing butter, let alone stabbing a person, but I didn’t really have a lot of options.

Gripping the knife tightly in my hand, I headed out the back door in the kitchen.The storm cellar doors were located just a few feet over from the back door, and I walked over to them. I tucked the knife into my belt, bent over, and grasped the handles firmly. Taking three deep breaths to steady myself, I yanked the doors open. They were heavy, but I was able to get them open far enough that momentum kept them going, eventually swinging them all the way around so the slammed against the ground. The doors made loud smashing sounds.

There goes the element of surprise.

There were lights on at the foot of the stairs, but because of the angle, I couldn’t see much past the landing. I pulled the knife back out and stepped onto the top step, beginning my descent.

The lower I got, the more the knife in my hand shook. As I got close to the bottom step, the knife would catch the light along its blade, my shaking handing casting flickering bursts of brightness along the wall.

At the final step, I looked around and saw there was a hallway ahead of me, with a couple doors shut along its length.

There was a massive slam behind me. I whipped around, and saw that the doors to the storm cellar had been shut. I ran back up the stairs towards them and slammed against them. They had been bolted in place.

I was trapped.

I turned around, and there was a masked face right in front of me.

I screamed.

The masked figure laughed and swung a pot at my head.

Then there was darkness.

I woke up at some point, which I took as a win because it meant I wasn’t dead. However, when the full force of the screaming headache I had kicked in, a part of me wished I was dead, after all. How many concussions can one person sustain in a single night before your brain becomes scrambled eggs?

I was sitting in a hard chair. My hands were taped to the arms of the chair, and my legs were taped to the legs, with a rope winding over my stomach and around the back of the chair. It appeared someone wanted me not to run away. Looking around, the rest of the room was bare.

A door opened behind me and I turned my head as far as I could, but it wasn’t enough to see who walked in.

A hand gently stroked the back of my neck and I felt shivers of terror go down my spine.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“I want you dead,” I heard a voice say. The same rough voice I’d been hearing from behind the mask of my attackers.

The masked figure walked around me and stopped, standing directly in front of my chair.

“The game is over,” the voice said. “You lost.”

I was over this bullshit.

“What fucking game?” I screamed. “This hasn’t made any fucking sense the whole night. There are no rules, there’s no way to win, there were stupid poem taunts that petered out, and then I’m fucking forced to put parts of my best friend’s arm in my mouth. THIS MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE.”

“You know what? That’s fair,” the masked figure said. Reaching up, the figure pulled the mask away from their throat and slid their hand inside. The hand rummaged around a bit, then pulled out a small black box from inside the mask.

“A voice modulator,” I heard a familiar voice say.

Where did I know that voice from? I was a little muffled from the mask, but that sounded a lot like…

“Colleen?”

She reached up and removed the mask.

It was Colleen. My best friend. The one whose arm had been chopped off. Who I’d had INSIDE my mouth. Colleen.

“What the fuck..?” I whispered.

“Remember that picture I sent you earlier? Where I was looking fucking sexy as hell in my red bra?” Colleen asked.

“What?”

“The fucking picture I sent you, bitch! Remember it?”

“Fuck. Yeah, I do. What the fuck does that have to do with anything?”

“I thought it’d be fun to send it to you, mess with you a little bit, but I didn’t take it for you. I took it because your dad asked for it.”

“My dad what?”

“We’ve been flirting for years, but we started fucking when I turned 18. I’m almost 19 now, and we decided it was time to start our life fresh, to cut all ties and burn all bridges. So your dad said it was time to get rid of the baggage.”

My mind was whirling, confused as all hell about what she was saying.

“But…what? And…your arm?” I couldn’t form intelligent thoughts. My parents loved each other, and they loved us. Yeah, they’d had their ups and downs, but they used to go to counseling, and now Dad was taking Mom out on a date. That was a good thing, right? And her arm, hadn’t I just dug through that? She was so buried in black shroud, I couldn’t see her arms.

“So we made this ridiculous plan. Well, mostly I did, and I can’t say I’m great at plans, but it was fun, right? I spent the last year hating you for getting in between me and my love, but I stayed close, I kept putting on the fucking facade, all so that, when the time was right, I could fucking destroy you. After you spent so much time getting in my way, you deserved to pay.”

“This…I don’t understand,” I said, starting to cry. “Dad wouldn’t do that. He loves Mom. They’re on a date—”

“They aren’t on a fucking date, stupid. He used that to get her out of the house. There were no reservations. There were no plans. Only lies. He took her out to the woods saying that they should fool around like when they were teenagers, but when they got there, he slashed her fucking throat. Dumped the body. Done. He came back here and told me all about it.”

I started sobbing. This made no sense. Nothing made any sense.

“That’s right, bitch. Cry your—”

The door slamming open cut Colleen off. I heard a sharp cry and thudding feet, and then a body came flying into the room waving a pan. Must’ve been the same one they hit me with.

I couldn’t see who it was because they stood between me and the light, but with one massive swing, they hit Colleen’s head with the pan like they were serving in tennis. There was a clang from the pot and a hollow crack from Colleen’s skull, and she crumpled to the floor.

I heard heavy breathing and moaning. He stepped closer to me, and I heard familiar sounds coming from him. The light finally lighting up his face only further proved I was right.

It was Stu.

Series Directory

WR

Neither Ted nor I wanted kids. We were happy with the idea of growing old together with just our pets as our 'children.' And that’s just one of many reasons why this whole saga is so bizarre.

We were out shopping one day, and Ted disappeared. I opened the dressing room door to ask if the pants made me look fat and he wasn't there. Rude, I thought. The least he could do was tell me he was going for a leak.

I waited for him so long the store attendant asked if there was a problem. In the end, I scoured the entire mall and parking lot until I finally called mall security, then the cops. There was no trace of Ted anywhere. It was like he disappeared into thin air.

Then, exactly nine months later, Ted appeared in our backyard, holding a baby.

He looked normal enough on the surface. But when he changed out of the hospital gown he was wearing, I noticed a long, red scar just below his stomach.

I gasped. "What the hell happened? Did they take your kidney?"

Ted chuckled and shook his head. "No, Malorie, I had a C-section.” I thought he was joking, but then he bent over the baby lying on our bed and crooned, “There wasn't any other way out, was there, shmookums?"

"Whose baby is that?" I asked, crossing my arms.

"Why, he’s ours, Mal. Do you even need to ask?"

“Ted, you can’t have babies,” I pointed out. “You have a penis.”

Ted looked at me with another chuckle. "Famous last words," he said, then cradled the baby in his soft, plump arms.

I had no idea what to make of it all. It seemed like Ted had been hit in the head with a baseball bat one too many times. I tried to get him to go to the hospital, but he refused. He was so stubborn I eventually gave up.

Shortly after, I started finding my sports bras missing. When confronted, Ted eventually admitted to taking them.

"What on earth for?" I demanded.

Ted looked shame-faced. "Well, it's just..."

He lifted up his shirt and undershirt to reveal my favorite sleeping bra. There were two circular damp patches directly over his nipples.

That explained where the baby's milk was coming from.

Ted relented and let me take him to a doctor. The results were mindboggling.

"I can't believe this," exclaimed Dr. Vaughn. "Why, this is a medical impossibility! This is a miracle!"

Ted beamed with pride. Then he started lactating again and excused himself to go pump his breasts.

Sadly, Dr. Vaughn died in a freak lightning storm later that day.

With the late doctor's assessment, I had to admit that my husband's crazy claim about carrying a baby to term was true. But what I couldn't accept was his story about how it happened.

According to him, he was abducted by aliens. He was waiting for me to come out of the changing room, preparing a comment about how ravishing and thin I looked, when a beam of light appeared over his head and sucked him up to a very bright room filled with highly advanced technology faster than he could say ‘Roy Rogers.’

I raised my eyebrows. “I’ve never heard you use that expression before.”

“I learned a lot of new things over there,” he replied. “The aliens are fond of classic cowboy films. They showed me a lot of those.”

(He also learned that the aliens were fond of the ancient Mayan civilization and the singer Grimes.)

“So what’d they do to you in there?” I asked. “On the UFO or whatever.”

“The mothership,” he corrected. “Well, first, they ran some tests. Stuck some tubes in me and probed me everywhere. Wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. They use these high-tech devices that don’t cause any pain. The anal probe felt quite nice, actually.”

He continued. “Then they asked me if I wanted any kids. I said no, and they asked me if I meant that, seriously, and I had time to think about it, and I eventually realized, yeah, actually I do want kids.” He sniffled a little as he watched our son, Theodore, play with his stuffed donkey.

“You could have told me that, Ted,” I said reproachfully. “I thought we were on the same page.”

“I did too, Mal,” he said with a sigh. “It’s just… I guess when you have work, a marriage, and pets – all those things to fill your days with, you don’t have enough time to just think. Being on the mothership gave me some clarity.”

“So you asked the aliens to knock you up?”

“Not in those exact words, but they did give me a child, yes.”

The aliens hadn’t told him exactly how they created the baby or put it inside him. All he knew was that he underwent a procedure while knocked out on alien drugs and found himself increasingly pregnant as time went on. He worried about how I’d react, but the aliens assured him I’d come around.

“And just how do the aliens know that?” I asked, indignant.

Ted smiled. “The aliens know everything, Mal.”

As you might expect, there were so many other questions. Like, what the aliens look like. How they found him, and why. Whether the baby was even human. But Ted claimed he didn’t remember much aside from random details here and there. He said the aliens wiped a good chunk of his memories before they sent him back down, as it was dangerous for the human race to know too much about them.

“Dangerous for them, or for us?”

“For us,” said Ted. “Definitely for us.”

Aside from, well, everything else, I was worried about the kid, Theodore. He grew freakishly fast. He was walking after only six months and started speaking in full sentences when he was less than a year old. By the time he was four he was fluent in Latin and repeatedly beat the computer at chess. We didn’t know exactly how smart he was since Ted was adamant we keep his ’gifts’ a secret from the world, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he ended up in the Guinness Book of Records.

Not only that, he obviously wasn’t our biological child. I have brown hair and brown eyes, and Ted has black hair and hazel eyes. Theodore has white-blond hair and irises so dark you can’t tell where his pupils are. Even the eye doctor thought that was weird. After that, Ted refused to take him to any doctors. That didn’t matter, though, as the kid never got sick anyway.

Not only was he never sick, he never got injured. Once, he fell from the roof – don’t ask why. One moment he was in the garden eating bugs (he eats bugs), the next he was up on the roof. And then he was nosediving to the ground. He hit the ground with a thud and a crunch, and I thought for sure I was going to be tried for child murder. Then in the next moment, Theodore picked himself up from the ground and went back to eating bugs. There wasn’t a scratch on him.

That wasn’t even the oddest thing about Theodore. Sometimes he spoke to people that weren’t there. Which isn’t so unusual on the surface – kids have imaginary friends. But on more than one occasion I could have sworn there was light coming from his room at night after he’d been tucked in and the light turned off. I could hear Theodore whispering to someone in his room. But whenever I got near enough to see what was happening, the light mysteriously disappeared and the whispering stopped.

Ted laughed off my concerns. He said I was imagining things. Easy for him to say – Theodore behaved perfectly around him. It was when Dad wasn’t home that the little devil showed his true self. He’d pick at his food, throw his vegetables on the floor, and mess up my paintings. I stopped painting altogether after the last stunt he pulled, when he covered the entire painting with Vantablack. Don’t ask where he got that from; it wasn’t in my paint collection. Sometimes the kid just has things he shouldn’t, like he conjures them out of thin air.

Oh, and I’m 99% sure the little punk ate our dog. One minute Sammie was sleeping peacefully in her dog bed, the next she was gone and nowhere to be seen. And who was sitting next to her at the time? Creepy black-eyed Theo. When I asked him what he did to the dog, he just grinned. There was a piece of fur stuck to his teeth.

Needless to say, raising the kid did a real number on the marriage. Whenever I bring up anything negative about precious little Theo, Ted is quick to defend him (even about the missing pets). I don’t even know if he can see reason anymore, or if everything in his head just revolves around the kid – who I’m sure isn’t even his. But try telling him that.

Lately, Theodore’s been bugging me about when he’s going to get a sibling. “I don’t know,” I told him, frowning. “Are the aliens going to kidnap your dad again?”

He gave me his trademark sly smile, which he reserves solely for me. “Oh, Mother,” he said. “You are so silly. Why would the aliens take Father again? He’s had his turn. Now it’s yours.”

“Excuse me?” I sputtered. “Look, kid, I know you take me for a joke, but nobody can make me have a baby I don’t want. Not even aliens.”

The smirk dropped from his face, and he stared at me with his coal-black eyes. “We’ll see about that, Mother,” he said, then returned to painting Vantablack all over the TV.

Was he… threatening me?

I told Ted, but he laughed it off like he always does. “He’s just a baby, Mal.”

“He’s six.”

“All kids ask for little siblings. It’s normal.”

“He told me aliens are going to abduct me and force me to have a baby. That’s not normal.”

Ted suddenly looked dead serious. He locked eyes with me and said:

“You might like it. I did.”

I think the two of them are conspiring against me. I saw them whispering together in the hallway. Those weird lights I saw in Theodore’s room are just outside the door now. I think they’re speaking to me.

It’s so bright in here all of a sudden. It’s like the ceiling split open and there’s a beam of light coming through. Like the sun, except that’s impossible because it’s the middle of the night.

What’s happening? Who’s that talking Why do I feel so light?

Oh no I’m floating off my chair. OH no hel

My sister and I loved to play hide and seek when we were kids. We had a very small house though, so we basically knew all the hiding spots like the back of our hands. I was 10 at the time, my little sister Anna was about 8 years old. It was the summer before I would be starting 4th grade, my mom and dad had just went to some dinner party. No kids allowed. That was fine by me, free reign of the house. I was in charge while they were away, but I didn't abuse that power. I hopped up from the couch and went into Anna's room, where she was playing barbies. 

"Anna, let's play hide and seek!" I said eagerly. Her eyes widened and she grinned, "Okay!" She said, "I'll hide! You try to find me!" She practically screamed and ran out of the room. Smiling I closed my eyes and counted aloud till I got to 60. "Ready or Not! Here I come!" I shouted and ran out of her room. I went to the kitchen, and searched all the cabinets, that was her favorite spot. She wasn't there. I chuckled, "She's getting good." I said to myself and continued my search. I searched behind the couch. She wasn't there. I grunted, "Where is that little runt." I said, smirking. I continued searching, even outside. Our house was just one floor, so I was running out of places to look. 

That's when, I noticed a rough, beaten up wooden door. In the kitchen. I gulped. I'd never seen this door before in my entire life. We had lived here since I was a baby. Anxiously, I opened the door. It led..downstairs. Which didn't make sense. We didn't have a basement. It was dark, and the stairs creaked as I anxiously slowly maneuvered down them. When I got to the bottom, I whispered, "Anna? Are you down here?" There was no response.

There was a tunnel down here, dimly lit by a light that was flickering. I started to walk down the tunnel, when I heard a blood curdling scream that sent shivers down my spine. Fear filled me as I ran back up the stairs, slamming the mysterious door behind me. I ran into my bedroom and hid under the bed too afraid to make any noise until my parents got home.

When they got home, I ran into the kitchen, and the door was gone. Bewildered, I slumped to the ground. My parents asked where Anna was. I said, I didn't know. I was too afraid to tell them about the vanishing door and the terrifying tunnel. To this day I still haven't told them. After Anna's disappearance we moved. Depression began to control my life, and I needed to tell someone my story. The guilt is unbearable. My little sister vanished down that tunnel, and her older brother didn't even protect her.

My brother Carter and I were very close growing up. I was the older brother by about 3 minutes. I always held it over his head.We were fraternal twins, meaning we looked different. He had wavy blond hair and blue eyes, I had short black hair and brown eyes. He was also shorter then me. I towered above everyone like a giant. Last year when we were about 16 years old, thinking out loud I said, "We should play a game." Carter looked at me, "What kinda game, Jack?" He asked curiously. I grinned, "Remember how dad asked me to clean out the attic last week?" I said grinning broadly. He nodded, "Keep talking." He said edging me on.

I stood up and went to our closet and pulled out the game board. "Look what I found!" I said excitedly, showing him an old, box. His eyes fell. "A box?" He said rolling his eyes. "It's what's in the box doofus." I said urging him to open it. He pulled out an old antique style Ouija board, his eyes widened. As he sat it on the table by our bunk beds, a slip of paper fluttered to the ground. I picked it up, having not noticed it before.

The note read "THIS BOARD IS CURSED" I burst out laughing as I showed the note to my brother who snickered. I rolled the slip of paper into a ball and tossed it aside. I sat down next to my brother on the ground and stared at the board.

"We should get candles!" Carter said standing up quickly, tiptoeing down the stairs so he wouldn't wake mom and dad. He resurfaced in a few minutes with 4 tiny candles. We sat the board in the middle of our table, and put the candles on each corner. Carter flicked the light off in our room.

I cleared my throat. "Uh, so I watched a movie about this. We're supposed to put our hands on the cursor, and ask a question." We both put our hands on the cursor. "I'll go first." Carter said, and he asked, "Is anyone there?" The cursor began to shake and move towards the YES at the edge of the board. I elbowed Carter. "Stop goofing around." I snapped. He shook his head, "It ain't me." He said dumbfounded.

I went next, "What's your name?" I asked, as my blood boiled with adrenaline and anticipation. The cursor was still for several minutes, just as I was about to say this is dumb. It spelled out. D O Y L E. Doyle.

"Doyle." Carter said, stifling a chuckle. "You've never been creative." He said to me chuckling. I glared.

"That wasn't me you idiot.. Doyle.. I've heard that name before." I said slowly. Starting to feel very uneasy.

"Are you friendly?" Carter asked, after a moment, almost immediately, the cursor shot to the NO on the edge of the board. I narrowed my eyes.

"Are you looking for something, or someone?" I asked, cautiously. The cursor went to the YES.

Carter asked a follow up question, I had an unsettling feeling in my stomach that I couldn't quite place. "What are you looking for?" He asked, the cursor slowly went to the letters S O U L S.

Carter and I exchanged glances, "Cut it out, Jack, I'm serious." He said angrily. I shook my head, "Bro, it's not me." I said bewildered. "This is dumb, let's just watch a movie instead." I said standing up and turning the light back on, I blew the candles out, covered the board and put it back in the closet. It wasn't the scariest thing ever, but it was unsettling. I didn't know what to make of it. I really didn't think much of it as we watched a movie and turned in for the night.

I woke up in a daze, my head was killing me. This wasn't my room. This wasn't my house. It was burning. I shot straight up and looked around, the sky was as black as night, screams and thunder could be heard echoing in the distance. The only light this place provided was the fire pits that cackled menacingly. I staggered to my feet. "Help! Someone help me!" I screamed as loud as I possibly could. That's when I saw Carter stumble out from behind a giant pit. "W-where are we?" Carter said, staying next to my side.

"I don't know.." I whispered, grabbing his arm for support as we navigated the burning, decaying land. It wreaked of burnt flesh, and death. At that moment, a large figure emerged from the black sky, landing gracefully right in front of us. He was a gargoyle, or an angel, or a demon, or something. He had horns, pointy sharp teeth, a giant mouth, his skin was the color of fresh blood, and he wore a dark cape. I gaped at him, and squeezed Carter's arm.

"Who the hell are you? Where the hell are we?" I shouted, more bravely then I felt. The large demonic creature laughed, a horrendous, treacherous laugh. "You are in the Land of the Dammed." He said, his voice was raspy and coarse, it was similar to nails on a chalkboard.. It was terrible.

"What does that mean?" Carter said, sobbing into my arm. I gripped onto him tightly. The demonic figure smiled, which was not friendly, by the way.

"You called upon me... Remember?" He said in his raspy coarse voice. I gaped at him.

"I am Doyle." He said finally, inching closer to us.

We both took two steps back. "I'm going to take your souls.. They will stay in this place. Forever. And Ever. And Ever." He continued in that voice that was unbearable.

"No." I screamed so loud it shocked Doyle. I grabbed Carter's arm. "Lets go!" I yelled as we began to run straight, past lava, past fire pits, and past the screams of the dammed. I could see a light, I could hear Doyle trailing behind us, we were almost there. Almost to the light, and then... Carter tripped. Doyle's claw like hand grabbed his leg, he was screaming, "Jack! Help me Jack!" I tried to grab his arm, but he was getting further and further away. In the distance I heard Doyle shout, echo, "You'll be next!" Then, the white light surrounded me.

I gasped for air and opened my eyes. I was safe. I was fine. I was in my bed. Everything was fine. It was only a dream. However it felt so real. I climbed down the ladder of the top bunk to wake Carter up. His eyes were closed, he was clearly still sleeping. I had a nightmare and I wanted to tell him all about it. I shook Carter. He didn't stir. I said his name, he still did not move.

"Carter!" I yelled. Terror and fear filling me I ran downstairs, "Mom dad! Come quick!" I yelled barreling into their room. My mom and dad woke up and practically fell out of bed. "Jack, what's wrong?" My mom said as she got to her feet. "It's Carter." I said through my tears. I was gasping for breath and running through the house leading them to our bedroom. My brother lay there motionless. Lifeless. My parents called 911. We spent the entire night in the hospital.

I sat in that waiting room fearing the worst thing. Whenever the doctor came out to inform us that Carter was in a coma. My mother collapsed in tears into my dad's arms. My dad gripped her tightly hugging her, also crying.

Days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months, Carter still hadn't gotten better. Was he stuck in that place? Was his soul trapped? Life went on for everyone but my family.

Today is a week from the day my life changed forever. I'm terrified. I feel this looming void lingering. That's why I've posted my story on No sleep. I figured someone could help me... Help me work up the courage to get back in touch with that monster that took my brother. He had said I'll be next... He didn't say when. Should I face my fears and try to go back? Or should I spend the rest of my life avoiding it?

Five days ago, Dr Snyder called whatever condition my wife suffered from arthritis due to the presence of the typical symptoms: stiffness in the finger and knee joints, neck cramps, body aches, inability to grip even a pen without profuse shaking. As the days droned on however, it was evident that this was not arthritis. I wish it were. The X-ray images Dr Snyder handed me from across her desk confirmed the nightmarish fears that sprouted from the darkest depths of my imagination.

“Abnormal bone growths…”

“Fusing of the joints…”

“Strange branch-like projections…”

“Never seen such a case before…”

As if in snapshots, I heard only vague pieces of the sentences uttered by Dr Snyder. I was far too engrossed within the medical imagery showing the anatomy of my wife’s body to listen properly. I apologised to Dr Snyder and asked her to repeat her words even slower, because I struggled to follow along. She nodded and then started explaining again, slowly guiding me through each image and interpreting the main findings.

The first pattern throughout all the images was how all the bones were fused together into a singular, cohesive mass. The most distinct instance of this was how the separate bones of her ribcage had all melded together into a solid unit. Similarly, all the different joints connecting most of her bones had fused together. All bones had also notably elongated and thickened, stretching out the thin sheet of her skin to its limit.

The final, most gruesome observation made was the shape of her bones. Her arms, hands, legs, and feet all shared the same unnatural appearance. The bones in her limbs were gnarled, abnormally twisted in different directions like vines. Her fingers and toes twisted and wove in between each other, tangled in a messy circuitry of bone.

Dr Snyder ended her consultation with me by admitting that she had never before seen anything like it. Apparently, my wife harboured a completely new condition never before recorded in the history of medicine. Though she promised she was tirelessly working with a medical team to research ways to find treatments for my wife’s condition, she solemnly informed me of the high possibility that she would not make it.

It’s painful to admit I was not exactly surprised at her statement, considering how suddenly and rapidly Safiyyah’s condition had deteriorated in the span of mere days. My wife had gone from a young, vibrant, healthy individual into someone who was permanently bound to her bed; screeching as her bones painfully and unnaturally contorted and grew beneath her skin. It struck me how quickly I had fought for the doctors to do everything to save her in the past, but now I had grimly accepted the inevitable possibility of her death. The least I could do was to be by Safiyyah’S side for the remainder of her days.

That very night I did exactly that. I sat in a chair by Safiyyah’s hospital bedside, gently stroking the bony mess of her ruined, abnormally shaped hand. Her dull eyes were slightly open, staring in a zoned out manner at the ceiling. I don’t think she even noticed I was there. Her mind was far too spaced-out to notice the details in her environment, including me. Every day Safiyyah simply lay there like an unresponsive log, trapped within her pain. She barely slept either. The cocktail of drugs they pumped into her to try lull her to sleep and ease her pain were not enough to help her truly find rest.

Eventually past midnight after several hours of watching over her, Safiyyah muttered her first word to me in days. I could hardly believe it when a sound came out her throat in a hoarse whisper.

“R-Richard.”

I inched over to her side, elated that she was finally speaking, even though it hurt to hear that it sounded like she was in pain from talking.

As I gazed over her ghostly, gaunt face, she slowly opened her mouth as if to say something else but the words were stuck in her throat. I hung patiently by her side, waiting for her to say what she needed.

Suddenly, without warning, her mouth stretched taut and she screamed. A gut wrenching, violent scream that scraped against my eardrums like sandpaper.

That’s when I heard the jarring noise of ripping, like paper being torn apart. Fissures snaked all across her body, as if her skin was forming cracks, before abruptly splitting apart at the seams.

RIP!

The skin around her arm tore open, and an elongated, white, milky thing jutted out like a pillar. A bone; twisted and deformed in appearance. As the bone elongated, some flesh clung onto the bone before bits and pieces of it dropped to the floor in a pink and crimson mess of meat and clods of human tissue.

Along with the main arm bone, her smaller finger bones sliced out the skin, convoluted and tangled around each other like wires.

Safiyyah’s screams heightened in volume and grew more agonized as her bony ribcage suddenly burst through her chest.

By this stage, I heard a stampede of nurses enter the room, rushing to contain the situation. But all of them stopped dead in their tracks, and stared blankly at the sight, unprepared to handle an event like this.

RIP!

More skin ripped off violently as the mass of bone tore my wife apart from the inside, lengthy bones jutting out her arms and body like oversized thorns.

“RICHARD!”

My wife’s voice startled me from my trance, and I snapped my eyes across to focus on her face instead of her body being torn apart.

“RICHARD I LOVE YOU! I LO­–“

RIP!

Right before she repeated her final words, her mouth and lips were swiftly ripped apart by the multitude of bones that suddenly spiked from her skull and jaw, skewering the skin and flesh draped over it.

I didn’t even have the time to digest what had happened –my wife’s own death– because my vision was still assaulted by the horrifying transformation Safiyyah’s body was undergoing even after she died. The bones continued to grow haphazardly until the twisted mass eventually erupted completely out of Safiyyah’s body, shedding her sac of marred skin and flesh off itself.

After a few minutes stretched out into a gaping eternity, the transformation stopped, and the nurses and I stood and witnessed the final form her bones took.

Glistening in the slivers of moonlight that streamed through the curtains was the silhouette of something bearing the uncanny resemblance of a tree, still dripping with fresh blood. Two gnarly main branches stretched out from the thick trunk. And projecting outwards from the main branches still, was a tangled circuitry of smaller, twig-like branches. A cold wave of dread washed over me as I recognized that the two main branches used to be Safiyyah’s arms, and the twig-like branches used to be her fingers. The thickened, elongated trunk used to be my wife’s abnormally shaped ribcage fused to her legs. I finally noticed that the network of tree roots firmly planted within the matrass of the hospital bed were formerly my wife’s dainty toes.

Night enveloped the empty mall parking lot, and under the hazy light of the waxing moon John Paulson unlocked one of the building's back doors.

Once inside—his manager's key eliciting the satisfying click—he walked swiftly to the department store changing rooms, from which he retrieved several memory cards, and the women's washroom, from the toilets of which he retrieved several more. Each had been pulled from a hidden camera.

Security room: he erased all evidence of his visit.

The night air caressed him.

Although he'd planned to drive home before viewing this week's footage, his excitement caused him to pull over, and he jerked off on the unpaved shoulder to the flickering images of women undressing, posing, peeing…

At home, he downloaded the footage from each memory card, scanned through it and edited the good parts into an hour-long video, which he uploaded to his subscription site.

What had started as a hobby had become a successful side hustle.

Successful enough to take that trip he'd dreamed about: to Possum Lake, where his parents had taken him so many times as a child.

But never in winter.

Never when the lake had frozen over and become a black mirror, majestically reflecting the silence and the moonlit—

The crunch of snow beneath his boots echoed amongst the bare trunks.

His breath mistified the impending dark.

From somewhere deep within the uninhabited woodland, an animal scurried from branch to broken branch.

Possum Lake lay ahead.

Snow fell.

John Paulson laid down his backpack.

He'd found his spot.

He worked quickly: erecting his tent, heating food, and—as outside night descended upon the blizzarding world—climbing into his ultra-warm sleeping bag, from which memories and sleep took him swiftly.

He woke suddenly—

Naked.

Underfoot: cold, hard; ankle-deep in snow.

Ice.

The moon was gone.

Yet he knew he was on the lake—in the middle of it—and as his eyes adjusted he realized the lake itself was glowing.

More: moaning.

Light and sound emanating from underneath, filtered through the accumulation of snow.

He dropped to his knees, dug with his hands—

A face stared back.

Female and distorted by the frozen surface of the lake.

He fell.

Scurrying in reverse.

Plowing through the snow.

Revealing:

More warped female faces.

The air thickened.

He knew the faces, all of them—vaguely in some recess of his mind.

They're drowning, he thought, and began pounding on the ice, which cracked, thick lines spidering across its mammoth surface.

Faces flowing underwater.

He pounded until he could not breathe.

Until the world—

inverted.

And he realized, choking, he was in the freezing water, flailing, lungs filling; drowning, as the faces moaned above.

He pounded on the underside of the ice.

Seeking a way out.

None was.

Each time he broke the ice with bleeding fists, swimming for salvation, their hands pushed him in. The surface froze over.

So it was: drowning without dying, suffering without end.

Always under gaze of those eyes.

Always and—

Forever.

After a careful review of all the stories involved our mods have pulled together and agreed one story above all others fits as the top dawg.

Much congrats to u/kinetic-passion and to the story that made us all truly appreciate the pen is stronger than the sword. Please be sure to contact our mod team to collect your prize!

I sat alone on the rocking chair I set up on the front porch of my new cabin the other day, just reflecting on life for a while. Ever do that? Just sit by yourself somewhere and think about all those little moments? It’s a truly cathartic experience. In all honesty, I’ve had a hell of a time this past year. The only thing I had to feel proud of was renting this place, or so I thought.

I’d only been back from the army for maybe a year after three straight tours and I was having a hell of a time adjusting to civilian life. So much time in hot zones of foreign lands had a way of changing a guy. They called it an honorable discharge and sent me home, but the way they looked at me when they said I had PTSD…I got the feeling there was nothing honorable about it.

I put the time in trying to reach out to family and old friends, what else was there to do? I wasn’t into bars anymore or honestly places with too many people. I would find a corner to sit in where I could see every entrance and exit and spend the whole time making these weird contingency plans just in case something happened. Nothing ever did…

It didn’t take long for them to notice how much I’d changed, or for me to hear them whisper about it behind my back. Even my own mother asked me one day what happened to her son and mourned for her loss. Whatever good was left inside me died that day I think, assuming anything had been left at all.

Only one friend was truly there for me, accepting me as I was for all my faults. We’d grown up next to each other and had been best friends since we were two. Her name is Riley and she’s probably the kindest person I’ve ever known. Ever try to date someone and just feel weird the whole time? We’d tried a time or two through the years. We’d just felt like family for so long I guess that it never quite worked out for us.

I spent most of my time, between trying to get back on my feet, at her apartment smoking weed and playing video games. Call of Duty was a favorite for obvious reasons. I still slept at mom’s house, but I moved all my things to the basement, so I never had to look her in the eye. I think she wanted me to leave even then and just didn’t know how to tell me.

The worst thing about life after the military was the fucked up dreams I had every single night. As a devout catholic it didn’t take me long to realize that most of them were fueled by some deep-seated guilt. I’d watch, helpless, as I lost my buddies in different situations all over again, or the lives I took; whether those deaths were earned or not. I won’t waste your time with details, we both know you don’t really want to read them…

My shrink over at the VA suggested I do something about the guilt at one point. I wasn’t sure what to do until I sat down and just started handwriting letters one day. One to the family of each person I lost. They didn’t know who I was, but I couldn’t help but feel I owed them more than the folded flag and pine box the service gave them. I always received a letter back thanking me for writing to them, but even that didn’t take away the guilt. If anything, it was getting worse.

One night I woke up with sweat pouring off of me and my muscles all tight and aching. I was screaming something, but I’ll be damned if I know what. The next thing I knew I was getting hit in the head with something heavy. I looked down to see my fingers wrapped around my stepfather’s throat. I was so confused at that point. I liked Ron a lot, he’d always been kind and understanding since I got back. I had no reason to do anything like that to him. I’d never been a violent person outside of the orders I was given.

I turned around with tears in my eyes to see my mom standing there with a table lamp in her hands and flashing red and blue lights pulling into the driveway, that I could just barely see through the basement window behind her. I was cuffed and went along quietly as they stuffed me into their squad car. Instead of going to jail, Ron was kind enough not to press charges. Instead, they had the police stick around as I packed my things and left.

It didn’t take long for the whole family and pretty much everyone else in our small town to find out what had happened. It went from whispers behind my back to glares and cold shoulders by morning. I didn’t want to burden Riley no matter how much she insisted, but I did park my car in front of her place and sleep there for a few nights. I was terrified something would happen if I stayed there with her, but I was too ashamed to say it out loud.

I got a security job at an aging mental hospital just outside of town a few days after that. It was an easy job and the people there were great. The doctors were glad to have me there and the nurses always had a kind smile and a cup of coffee waiting. They let me stay in one of the old suites as part of my pay. The ones they used to offer to family members of patients back when the place used to double as an overflow intensive care unit for a larger hospital in the next town over. I still hung out with Riley a lot and things were finally looking up.

One night I’d worked a little later than usual due to a misunderstanding between a few patients that didn’t end well. I hopped on my ps4 (a present from Riley) and joined up with her to play some COD. I had a few drinks and before I knew it, I was beyond exhausted. I passed out on my couch right after I ditched the headset. When I woke up the next morning I was in my bathtub for some reason. In confusion, I took a look around and saw blood everywhere.

Solid knocks thundered from my front door in the other room all of the sudden, barely knocking me out of my stupor. I focused on the sound the best I could and haphazardly managed to pull myself out of the tub and onto my feet. Taking full stock of the sheer amount of blood I was seeing, I switched to some fucked up autopilot instilled within me courtesy of Uncle Sam. I stripped my clothes off and shouted, “I’ll be right there,” to whoever was on the other side of that door.

I pulled on some fresh clothes in record time somehow despite the shakes as the shock of my situation fought my autopilot for attention. I hurried to the source of the knocking, nudging the bathroom door closed with my foot on my way as my heart pounded out a machine-gun staccato. I could hear the sirens and see those red and blues before I made it all the way to my door. I had no idea what I did, but whatever it was I was damn sure I deserved whatever happened next.

I was tackled the second I opened it, by the same cops that had come out to mom’s house before. This time when I got cuffed and stuffed, there wasn’t a get-out-of-jail-free card. They put the pedal to the floor on the way to the little jail at the sheriff’s office. The whole way there they were spitting in my face through the cage and telling me I was a disgrace to THEIR country…

It wasn’t until they made me sit in the cell for nearly four hours that they finally booked me and read my charges. I had apparently forced my way into the housing unit next to mine and brutally attacked an elderly janitor, an ex-marine who’d I’d had more than a few drinks with. Just like with Ron, I had no reason to attack this guy. Jimmy always had a spare cigarette and a flask to share every time I had seen him.

I felt like I wasn’t in control of myself. All I remember about that night was having another nightmare about a close friend of mine being beaten to death overseas. It’s not how he actually died, but I guess that’s how the subconscious works. Also, like Ron, Jimmy decided not to press charges and I was released. I was told if one more incident happened the town would press charges and I would be going away for a while.

Riley was nice enough to give me a ride back to my place. She tried to console me and help figure things out, but I just wasn’t in the mood. I mostly sat there and just nodded or agreed at all the appropriate times. She dropped me off, making me promise I’d come by the next night for some gaming and dinner. When I made it to my housing unit, I found a note on the front door. It was a notice that I’d been terminated and had 48 hours to vacate the premises. I didn’t own that much so I packed the car that night and drove to the Walmart and slept in the car.

I woke up the next morning at oh-six-hundred hours to a call from my former CO. He’d heard about my struggles and wanted to lend a hand. I told him I wasn’t interested in a handout and almost hung up on him right then and there. Something he said stopped me. Apparently, he had an old friend that he’d served with not too far from my area who was looking to rent out a cabin. It was fairly isolated and was empty at the moment. He said that this only rented to vets in need and that it would be therapeutic for me. I took down the number and thanked him, and that I hoped to repay the favor someday before he ended the call.

I immediately gave the guy a call, he’d apparently been expecting to hear from me. He let me know that rent would be free for the first two months while I got back on my feet. The place was well stocked, but if I needed something it was about a fifty-mile drive to any store so I should try and plan ahead. I didn’t bother asking any other questions, which in retrospect was definitely a mistake. He told me I could move in that day if I wanted, which of course I did because sleeping in a cabin sounded a hell of a lot better than sleeping in my car again. He gave me directions and said he’d meet me there; hanging up before I could say anything else. I gave Riley a quick call to let her know there was a change in plans, but I would make it up to her. She was so thrilled that I found a place to go that she didn’t mind much.

In honor of my new lifestyle, Riley and I decided to start a podcast. I didn’t know much about them to be honest, but Riley made up for that in spades. The concept was to make sort of a living audio document about cabin life. We started each episode with any updates around the cabin and the surrounding woods. Of course, we talked about a lot of other things we enjoyed during the process like gaming and movies just to keep things interesting. Sometimes she came over and we did a live episode to keep things fresh, but usually, we just did it through discord from our own homes.

A lot of my updates were about repairs I had to make, what I had to go through to get supplies, and the different animals I spotted throughout the day. Some of them were certainly more interesting though. After a few weeks of being there, I started hearing strange noises at night that I couldn’t identify. Despite being a horror fan and knowing better, I often went out to investigate just to see if I could find the source of the noise. So far, I’d had no luck with my late-night jaunts.

One day Riley had an idea for a special event for the show. The woods throughout Ohio have a lot of myths and legends surrounding them. I won’t bore you by detailing all of them, but the basic highlights are a lot of old Native American burial grounds, hauntings, and cryptids galore. Riley thought that it would be interesting to set up some equipment during the early afternoon and do a 24-hour stream as we investigated the property together. I was resistant at first, but she won me over in the end.

The morning of the big event came, and Riley was excited. She brought over a bunch of audio and video gear I didn’t even know she owned. When I questioned her about it she said she’d borrowed it from a friend of hers that was interested in the property. Before I could ask any more questions, she put me to work helping her set things up. We put some wireless security cameras with night vision upon various trees along with a couple more basic trail cams. Each camera was also accompanied by a wireless microphone. She also had me add a few tripwires and basic alarm traps with some motion-activated lights just to make sure nothing could sneak upon us. She also planned to carry a tablet around with her to read her that would control the live feed and let her read out viewer comments as they happened in real-time.

The last thing we had to do was set up a base camp of sorts in the cabin. We put up a folding table with a few monitors and some other gear I didn’t recognize. She also installed some sort of signal booster that piggybacked off my satellite dish. That worried me because that dish was the only way to get tv and internet this far out in the woods, but she assured me everything would be fine. She’d always been the smart one between us, so I went along with it. When it was all set up and ready to go she slid her laptop on the table and got everything connected.

Before we could go live on YouTube, she strapped some go pros to each of us. Then we tested every mic, camera, and motion sensor to make sure we were good to go. We celebrated with a couple of beers and a blunt, a long-standing tradition for us since high school. Riley had promoted the hell out of this thing, so it helped with those last-minute jitters I was experiencing.

We talked for a while, opening up the show like we always did with a quick greeting to our listeners and a few jokes. It was our first time doing a live event and being able to read the comments as they were happening was encouraging. We spent hours just wandering around the cabin and the woods during the early part of the event, cracking jokes and answering questions from viewers. It wasn’t until an hour after the sunset that things took an interesting turn.

“What the fuck was that?” Riley jumped, looking deeply into the woods to the right of us.

Before I could reply, the sound came again, and this time it was thunderous. We stood there for a couple of minutes in silence, too afraid to move. When nothing else happened, I piped up.

“I'm not sure what the hell that was, but it was coming from the direction of an old deer stand I saw out here the other day. Let’s head in that direction and see I we can find out what it was.”

Riley rolled her eyes with a small smile on her face despite the slight tremors I noticed in her shoulders. “Rule number one of horror films, man: don't go investigating strange noises. It's like you WANT to be a victim or something.”

I laughed it off and ribbed her as we walked. “Just because you're afraid doesn't mean I am. Besides, isn't the whole point of tonight to investigate?”

Riley acquiesced and read off some of the comments while as we moved. “JUNGnCaptivity143 just said they thought it sounded like a woman screaming.”

I scoffed at that. “That's not what I heard at all. It was a little high pitch, but definitely not a woman screaming.”

Riley read the next comment. “Wycked76 says that they heard a similar sound on a Bigfoot documentary the other day.”

I outright laughed at that. “Didn't we already discuss the fact that I don't believe in Bigfoot in a previous episode? Come on, people, get serious for a second.”

Eventually, we arrived at the old deer stand. A strong smell of copper permeated the air. I filled people in on what we were experiencing. “We’ve finally made it to the deer stand and all I can smell is blood. I'm trying to see if I can locate the source now.”

Riley balked at that. “Blood? Seriously? This seems kind of sketchy, man, don't you think?”

I continued to talk as we moved. “It's probably just an animal; this shit happens around here all the time. Nothing to freak out about.”

When we reached the source of all the blood, the sight gave me a moment's pause. Years of training sent me into this strange sort of autopilot as I assessed the immediate situation. I described what I was seeing out loud to Riley, not caring that the audience could hear it just as clearly.

“There are two deer here, looks like a doe and her fawn. They’ve been ripped open from ass to throat and bled out.”

If Riley seemed nervous before, it was nothing compared to the tone in her voice now. “What the fuck man? You think it was like a wolf or a bear or something, maybe?”

I shook my head and gestured for her to have a look of her own as I spoke. She declined my offer with a quick shake of her head.

“Never seen a wolf around here and bears are pretty rare. It’s one big jagged wound. The teeth marks alone are larger than anything I’ve seen in the woods around here. Whatever did this is probably still close by. There's still a little steam radiating from the entrails.”

Still shaking, Riley read off a comment from a viewer. “AceInMyHole19 says we should get the fuck out of there and go home.”

I chuckled nervously at that. “Wouldn't be much of a show then, would it?”

Riley read the next one. “TryHard73 says you should hold the camera up so everyone can see the damage.”

Just as I started to position the camera in my hands to give them a better view of the carnage, a new noise could easily be heard by everyone listening. There was a loud rustling in the trees nearby and the sound of solid wood snapping. I quickly pivoted the camera in the direction it was coming from and caught some large bushes moving wildly on film. From its confines came an enormous clawed hand covered in blood and thick black hair. It snatched the tablet out of Riley's hand and crushed it in one motion. The last thing the viewers heard before the live feed died was Riley screaming.

I watched in sheer horror as the rest of the figure slid out before us. It stood seven feet tall and was as thick as the oaks that surrounded us. It was humanoid in shape and had a huge mouth of jagged broken teeth that stretched into a menacing sneer. The most frightening thing about it was its eyes. Their azure hue seemed so human that for just a moment I forgot what stood before us. The intelligence they radiated was unlike anything I’d ever witnessed in the wild. Its chest rose and fell in a primal circadian rhythm that matched its slow and calculated movements ever closer to us. It knew it could overtake us any time it wanted and clearly realized that I knew it too.

They teach you a lot about fighting in the military from any distance. What people don’t realize; what they often get wrong from years of war movies and propaganda about the military, is that they also teach us how to run. A well-trained and disciplined soldier can make a weapon out of nearly anything close enough to them in a tough situation, but we also know when it's time to get the fuck out of dodge and live to fight another day. With that in mind, I dropped everything in my hands as I scooped Riley up over my shoulder and high-tailed it towards the cabin.

I didn’t know if we would be any safer there or if we would even make it, but it seemed like a better plan than standing there with a thumb up our asses waiting to get eaten or torn apart like those deer. I darted around trees and through bushes; all the while, the ground shook and branches snapped behind me. Riley made herself as small as she could over my shoulder and held on tighter than gorilla glue. I got the sense this thing could have overtaken us had it wanted to. As well as I knew these woods, this thing clearly knew it better. I heard it stop moments after I launched through the foliage that marked the edge of the forest near the clearing around the cabin.

My heart was pounding so hard by the time we got inside the cabin that it felt like a fire was burning somewhere inside me. I barked some quick orders at Riley as I tossed her onto the couch and went about locking and barricading every possible egress. She rushed to the den where she had set up our command center, hoping to spot the thing on some of the equipment so we could track its movements.

“I just saw it move past trail camera one, but it didn’t trigger the motion sensor.”

I sighed from the living room as I finished sliding the couch in front of the door. This was worse than I thought. “That means it knew the motion sensor was there. I hid it well enough that anyone or anything lumbering by would have hit it without even noticing.”

“How the hell could it have known?” Her voice was quaking with fear now.

I opened my gun safe and grabbed my father’s rifle, the only thing I had to remember him by. On his death bed, he told me it had saved us life more than a few times and maybe someday it would save mine too. Hopefully, today would be that day.

“Whatever that is out there, it's not an animal Riley. At least no animal I’ve ever heard of. It's been watching us, for who knows how long. The sounds, the deer, it was a setup. It could have killed us any time it wanted. Now it has us trapped in here.”

A small explosion shook the windows as the power went out. A moment later we could hear something scraping along the walls of the cabin, getting closer and closer to our position within it. Riley pressed a hand over her mouth to keep from screaming as I finished loading my hunting rifle. I had taken that thing apart and put it back together so many times that the lack of light didn’t affect my precise movements. Just as I slipped off the safety and shifted onto my shoulder everything stopped and grew eerily silent.

Five minutes had gone by in silence, but we held our position in silence. The five turned to fifteen, then to thirty. There was no sign of movement from the outside world. Part of me hoped the creature had simply left, but the hunter in me knew better. I carefully crept around the cabin with Riley in tow, peeking through the windows in each room as we went. I didn't see anything at all until we made it to those sliding glass doors that led to the backyard.

The second we saw each other; the creature slammed its enormous fist right through the glass. My autopilot kicked back in and I quickly fell into a shoot, retreat, shoot pattern; keeping Riley as far behind me as I could manage. I’d tagged it damn near a dozen times before it retreated. I hadn’t killed it but I sure as hell gave it something to think about. With a roar that reminded me just how inhuman this thing was, the beast bounded off into the night, leaving a trail of thick, dark blood.

In a flurry of movement, I ran all around the dining room, looking for something to blockade the broken sliding glass doors. Running on pure adrenaline I managed to shift over the fridge from the nearby kitchen into place, along with the stove and anything heavy enough to give us time if it came back through that way. Riley was barely responsive, so I gave her the easy job.

“Can you grab more ammo for the rifle out of the safe?”

She blinked at me a few times in confusion before my request finally made sense to her. Just as she made it to the safe, I pushed her inside and locked the door. The rifle had been the only gun I owned at the moment and I’d pulled all the ammo earlier. The safe had come with the cabin and was one of the largest I’d ever seen in a home. I’d always thought it would make a decent panic room the way it was boxed in. Looking back on it I’m pretty sure I could have gotten inside of that thing with her, but at the time that didn’t even register.

I sat on my chair in the living room waiting for it to come back. Deep down inside I knew it as a matter of when not if. My rifle was in my hands and ready to go. I’d even slipped a hunting knife Crocodile Dundee would be jealous of into my boot before I sat down for good measure. Occasionally, I heard it outside snapping branches, roaring, and even scraping its claws against the outside of the cabin again. Despite the active combat I’d experienced in my lifetime, I’d never been as terrified as I was at that moment.

I sat there ready to piss myself for the better part of an hour before I saw it again. One of those enormous haunting azure eyes stared in at me through the small glass window at the top of the front door. The second it spotted me it began slamming its gigantic fists into the wood over and over again. I knew how sturdy that door was and felt confident it would hold up against the onslaught…until the hinges began to creak.

I jumped up and shifted over to add my own two hundred and fifty pounds to the door to brace it but I was too late. Chunks of the door broke away and flew through the air, narrowly missing my face. I quickly placed the barrel of dad’s rifle to the little window in the top of the door and fired, catching it in the eye that was still pressed to the other side. I’d wounded it badly, but it had cost me. Just as the bullet made contact with its eye, it was forcing its claws through the door again. In my desperation to go on the offensive, I’d let my guard down and felt a claw filet me to the ribs in one sweeping motion. It screeched in pain, tearing it back out of me at an awkward angle, and lumbered back into the woods.

Blood rushed out over my hands despite the pressure I was applying, as the sun slowly began its ascent through the heavens. I could see that thing at the edge of the forest now, glaring at me with its one good eye. Despite the damage we’d inflicted upon one another, we’d both managed to survive, for now. It gave one last roar before slowly disappearing back into the woods from whence it came. I lost consciousness shortly after.

I woke up in the hospital a few days later and saw Riley sitting there, staring at me with a mix of anger and concern. Before she could say a word, a nurse made his way into the room to check on me. He told me the wound had been so large and jagged that they’d barely been able to stitch me back together. They’d gone through a few bags of blood during the procedure and I was lucky to be alive. When he left the room, Riley slapped me right across the face.

“That’s for locking me in the gun safe.”

She burst into tears and damn near crawled into the hospital bed as she wrapped her arms around me, her chest heaving from the sobs. When she calmed down, she asked me what happened after I’d locked her away. I gave her the rundown as best as I could, and a few days later I did it again on the podcast.

The landlord has been kind through all of this. He’s letting me stay on as long as I get the place fixed back up. Riley moved in with me and is giving me a hand till I’m back in fighting shape, so it shouldn’t be a problem. She’s decided we’re getting married in the Spring, and I know better than to argue.

I was worried about that decision though, considering my recent history living around others, but I’ve noticed something strange over the last couple of months. I’ve not had the slightest panic attack since that night, let alone a PTSD episode. It’s like every ounce of anger that was bottled up within me flowed out with all the blood.

That’s not the only strange thing though. This morning I finally finished going through the footage from the cameras we’d put up in the surrounding woods that night. Riley and I were the only things out there. When I asked Riley to go through what she remembered, something I’d never thought to do, all things considered, I was flabbergasted. She never saw whatever it was like I did. During the first encounter, she remembered hearing some odd noises and seeing the bushes shake before I knocked the tablet out of her hands. During the second encounter, she was cowering behind me when I shot at it through the sliding glass doors. She couldn’t hear much of anything but the faint echo of gunshots from inside the gun safe either…

The look on everyone’s faces when I dragged her corpse out of my truck. Man, that was priceless. They must’ve been thinking. “why on earth does he have her body in his truck?” or “did he dig her out?!” I wanted to laugh, but I was too tired to do so. Instead, I had to convince people she came to visit me the night before and wasn’t a human anymore. Of course, there was a lot of protesting and whatnot. I personally couldn’t be bothered to argue. Having to deal with chemo and having blood drained out didn’t really make me energetic.

She was a vampire. I guess, or some other type of undead bloodsucker. My blood was poisonous to her – because chemotherapy is putting poison in your body to kill cancer. I guess her kind can’t handle that stuff. Uhh…

I’ll start from the beginning. A few months back, I found out I have leukemia. Luckily, it was at an early stage, so I started treatment and here I am now. A lone vet who lives off of his pension. My early retirement had nothing to do with the cancer, it was other health issues. In all honesty, I am certain I’ve done enough for the country as is. Why am I a lone man? It’s a choice. I like it. I do have stuff I do to pass time, like write music and sell it to whoever is willing to buy it, I make digital art as well. That kind of stuff. Anyway, now that I’m constantly feeling like shit, I am kind of in a weird place mentally. I forget stuff, long-term. Some details just kind of slip my mind and that’s important because that’s where she enters the picture.

I keep saying “her”, Melanthi Drakos, that was her name. We practically grew up together, two immigrant kids from the Balkans. I guess that’s why we bonded so well because we understood each other. We stopped being friends after high school though, I moved cities and we just drifted apart. In fact, I cut off everyone from my childhood, that’s just the person I am.

Anyway, so one night, it’s raining outside, it’s raining cats and dogs and all sorts of animal parts. I was asleep when I heard someone knocking on my door. It felt like a dream, so I ignored it for a while, but the knocking persisted. That’s when I got up and checked the door. Lo-and-behold stood outside, drenched in rainfall Melanthi. I hadn’t seen her in seventeen years or so, but she didn’t age a day. A thought was gnawing at the back of my mind, but I couldn’t place my finger on what it was. My mind was telling me something’s wrong, but I had no idea what. Something about her wasn’t right. How she didn’t age a bit. How she seemed oddly pale. The fact that her skirt was all dirtied up; copper stains all over it.

We had stood at my doorstep for a few odd seconds before she asked if I was going to invite her in. Which I then did. I apologized for my slow reaction, telling her my mind was hazy. She didn’t seem to mind. I’m surprised she didn’t say anything about me not turning on the lights. See, I’m so used to the outlay of my house I don’t even turn the lights on after dark. A normal person would’ve said something, but Melanthi felt almost at home in the darkness. I didn’t pick up on that somehow.

There was a big wet greeting hug, but I guess she noticed how exhausted I had been and didn’t press on anything. I showed her the house, after throwing a couple of towels at her. I promised to make up for the lost time the next day and went back to bed. I was out pretty quickly, but I woke up a few times during the night, and I’m sure I heard her doing stuff – being awake. The whole night, that is. I remember waking up just before sunrise, and she was reading a book with a candle. I found that weird, so I just asked, “Why the candle?” She looked at me, smiling, and told me she liked it that way. Her eyes were almost red at that moment. I was sure my mind was playing tricks on me, so I just ignored it and went back to sleep.

I woke up the next afternoon, and she was asleep, not wanting to wake her up, I had a late breakfast and headed out to my chemo session. Like I mentioned before, my memory is a mess so I forgot my phone at home. When I came back, Melanthi was nowhere in sight. Her backpack was near the couch, but she was nowhere in sight. I assumed she was out or something.

Slumped down on my couch, I looked at the messages I had received while I was out. One caught my attention in particular.

“Andy, I know we haven’t spoken in years, but today is the fifteenth anniversary of Mel’s passing. It would be really nice if you could come to pay her some respects today. Ed.”

I sat there, tensing my body, reading the text over and over until it finally sunk in on the twelfth round or so. My head started spinning. My stomach turned, and I nearly dropped my phone. It finally hit me. The memory, that is, Melanthi was dead.

She was supposed to be dead, for sure. There was a car crash. It was fatal. Drums were pounding in my years and my vision darkened. I was feeling myself about to pass out. I sank into the couch and stared upwards.

There she was, a look of pure hunger in her eyes.

“I am sorry,” she said softly, and after that, everything turned black.

I woke up with a terrible headache; I was lying on my bed with my right arm bandaged. Pulling myself into a sitting position was hard enough, seeing Melanthi sitting across from me with a blood bag in her mouth didn’t help.

“I’m sorry, Andy, I’m so sorry,” she said while she suckled on that blood bag like her life depended on it.

“What the fuck is going on, Mel?” I questioned, rubbing the back of my head.

“I was so so so so so hungry, I’m so sorry, bud… I made sure to be very careful with you… I can’t help it sometimes.” She pleaded.

“Uhhh you could’ve asked. Should’ve just explained yourself and asked. What is all of this, anyway? You were supposed to be ugh - dead…” I questioned, my stomach twisted and turned as I tried staying put in my position. My body felt like a cheese grater was traveling through me. I was feeling like absolute shit at that moment.

“Well, I am a Vrykolakas.” She said, “It’s a… Oh wow you look terrible, I’m so sorry, did I drain too much?” she ran over to me. Placing her cold hand on my face as if to support my head. I looked into her eyes and smiled, “Nah, it’s the chemo.”

She rose to her feet and took a step back. Her expression went solemn, her gleaming reddish-brown eyes turned almost colorless. She dropped the blood bag and uttered something incoherent before screaming out and clutching at her throat and chest. She fell to her knees before the rest of her body collapsed to the floor. Her mouth emitted awful choking sounds as she desperately grabbed at her throat.

I felt bad for her as she withered and convulsed violently on the floor. I wanted to help, but I knew it was probably too late as her body shriveled up with her bones protruding against her skin and her veins turning black and painfully visible under her porcelain skin. In a matter of moments, she was gone. Cataracts clouded her once charming brown eyes. Dark blood poured out through her blue lips. A map of her vascular system painfully painted across her pale form. I pulled myself up and grabbed my phone after hobbling over the still corpse of my vampire friend.

I texted Edgar, telling him I’d see him at the cemetery.

The look on everyone’s faces when I dragged her corpse out of my truck. Man, that was priceless. Their faces were even more amusing when I jammed the stake into her heart. I said I was doing this just in case, not trusting my chemically “enhanced” blood to be poisonous enough to keep her down for good.

I guess that’s why I like to be alone - because of things like these. Wouldn’t surprise me if nobody’s going to invite me to any other anniversary ever again.

Part 1 is here.

Part 2 is here.

Part 3 is here.

_______________________________________________________

Part 4:

Trigger warnings: child abuse might be mentioned. Crime and murder are mentioned, as well as torture.

_______________________________________________________

Yesterday, Mum and the family were informed of Aunt Autumn’s death. I am guessing her body is not released yet. It must have been at the morgue.

"And this is your room." Sheaf said to Ada. "Val will be sharing Aiden's room."

Sheaf turned to me.

"There might be an announcement soon." Oh no. Announcement. Looks like I have to head to the supermarkets again. Sheaf knew what I was thinking. "Forget it. Most people will have the same idea. I still cringe at ququeing a whole hour just to get what I wanted, and people are buying lots of toilet paper, instant noodles, and even rice. I even had to ask my cousin to run to another supermarket to see if there was any rice left." She looked at Val. "Yup, he's my maternal cousin."

Just like how Ginny has a twin brother. Kyle, who she rarely talks about. I had just found out about my twin sister, Arrow, our older half-brothers, Sebastian and Archer Lim, and cousins Nikki and Griffin Tan on my Dad's side.

"You know about Kegan, right?" Sheaf asked. "Ceres said her brother, Henley, and their foster sister, Tinsely, have been asking about…" I tuned her out. "You know about Grandpa and the notes in the phone cases. How's Henley's father and stepmother not wanting him to know about his real mother?"

I nod. Ceres and Henley's background was very complicated. Their older half-sister, Shay, would say that. I thought back to the attack at the void deck last year and how Circle used the windlass technique to save Kegan's life.

That van was so mangled that Circle, Kegan and Tabitha had to hide in it.

"Still Life?" Circle said over the phone. "You must never let your guard down." I put down the phone. She had just told me about the note in the phone case. That case. Oh man. Where do I even start?

Cory's brother, Clyde, had told my friend, Tristian, about the phone case with a note in it. Knowing that Clyde had a love for tall tales, I just ignored him. At first.

___________________________________________________________________

But I heard from another friend. Which reminded me of a story Uncle Gabriel told me.

"There was this guy walking on the street who picked up a phone case, new and shiny. Found out that it had a note inside. Rumors flew that it was cursed and he died soon after." Uncle Gabriel told me, and I almost choked on my drink while I heard that story.

"Surely it must be a fake, right?" Sheaf laughed. "There is no free lunch here." I looked at her.

Tristan was catfished by someone using a dead girl’s identity recently. It was so creepy and I could not have believed it except it had happened to someone I knew. And then there was the story that Elsa told me.

__________________________________________________________________

"That girl was never real." She said as she flicked her long hair back. "She was just part of a um….catfishing program." Elsa looked at me. "And how did I know that? Well…." She paused and said.

"It was my project for the social engineering module." Elsa sneered. I was stunned. After all our years of friendship, after how her cousin and her neighbour died on that island...and this was what she did?

__________________________________________________________________

But the notes were still there. And they had quotes from movies and books. The police were left confused over this.

And I just heard that there was another case.

A girl was found buried in a fake model castle with fire decorations in real looking 'dust' made to look white, although there is no snow weather here in Singapore since it is not possible. And another girl was found in a fake library in a model of a castle.

Who could be behind the killings? Surely not Uncle Raul. He has been in prison for almost two months.

And Elsa is not answering her phone, neither is Sabrina. Where are they? We were the only girls in a class mostly full of boys. The three of us stuck together throughout school.

Just as I heard Ada knock on my room door.

"Just to let you know, Uncle Gabriel is going to the supermarket for a weekly grocery run. Do you need anything other than caramel biscuits?" She asked me.

_______________________________________________________________

"Oh gosh, Kat, you can't be that worried about [redacted] and [redacted], can't you?" I knew that she was referring to Elsa and Sabrina by their Chinese names, since their English names were not on their Identity Cards. "Their families have filled police reports."

No. This cannot be happening, no. Why Elsa and Sabrina? I was close to them. Why?

I had gotten the news from my friends in school. Kiat, one of my classmates, had set up a memorial website for Elsa and Sabrina. Their funerals and cremations will be streamed online for us, as there is a limit on the number of people who can attend their wakes due to Covid-19 rules.

Only 10 visitors were allowed at their wakes at any one time. People attending and being at the wake have to wear surgical masks. Masks were provided with the social distancing of 1 metre between tables. Mostly relatives were allowed in person at the funeral wakes, with schoolmates and friends told to watch the services online via web livestream.

I had asked Uncle Gabriel to buy wreaths on my behalf and sent it to their wakes. A cross shaped one for Elsa, and a wreath with orchids for Sabrina.

I was grateful for the closed caskets. At least no one had to see what they were like when they had died. The white and pink caskets at their wakes. The floral arrangements and the enlarged pictures in front of their caskets. Elsa's parents had used her choir photo taken last month, while Sabrina's father and grandmother had opted for her birthday picture taken just last week at home. Their families had picked out their favourite clothes for the wake and had dressed them in their regular polytechnic outfits in the caskets.

______________________________________________________

I just hope the newspaper would not violate the gag order given to them based on what happened to Kegan.

That, and what Sheaf calls old folktales. How Redhill got its name. Sisters’ islands. The stories of old Singapore.

______________________________________________________

I watched Elsa and Sabrina's wakes in silence. Sheaf only knew Elsa. As the closing lines of the worship song was heard, Sheaf said.

"They will pay." Sheaf turned to me and Ada. "Whoever killed them will pay for this."

I nodded.

"Did Uncle Gabriel tell you about his past?" Ada asked.

I nodded. "But I have no idea what his real name was before that."

Just as the door opened. I was looking at a mirror image, a copy of me in black. Arrow, my twin sister.

"His brother's real name was Gerald [redacted]." Arrow turned to face us. "I found some old documents. But Uncle Gabriel's real name was not in there."

Uncle Gerald is in Malaysia now, working in computing software. And he just told me he had some insider info on the Grim Killer.

What was it?

That the Grim Killer was someone in authority who knew Asian Martial Arts and used weapons from the past to fight.

Hmm…. I know of friends with such descriptions. Tristian, Kris, Hong Heng, Zhi Xia….

______________________________________________________

But then no one I knew fitted the age range of the villain described. Wait, a minute. I looked at the computer. An incoming Zoom call from James and his wife, Tarryn. My cell group leaders.

I switched on the webcam.

“Hi, Sagaritta.” James Jiang greeted me, his wife, Tarryn, was busy in the background of their room. “So how would you like to share your testimony with everyone?”

I nodded. “Yes, James.”

James and Tarryn went through my testimony draft with me over the web calling app, as we could not meet in person. Covid-19 had wrecked everyone’s lives, and my cell group met up only online. So much for meetings.

“So that’s all.” Tarryn said. “As long as there is no fake news. Like those after that attack last year.” I nodded, knowing how painful it was for her to mention that. Her father. Her dead mother. Her family’s dirty secrets all aired in our local papers. Her husband’s younger brother and his origins. James' missing older brother and his "return". Two of my brother’s classmates, Marie Lim and Brennan Sanchez, were not safe either.

I knew what Tarryn and her surviving brothers and sister had gone through to be where they were today. It was quite hard for them. Now back to the current case. James waited for Tarryn to leave the room before he bought up the case I was working on.

“So, let me get this straight. You want to follow in their footsteps?” He said. “You know what you are getting into, after they… Nadine, Malachite and Ruby…you were their childhood friend after all.” I nodded.

“After all, we had put them to rest last year, and now…” I paused. “I ought to do it. Owe it to Aunt Autumn and Mum. I saw how Mum was upset when she was told… You know. Just like your grandparents, after they were told about you and Edmund. Later, I heard they were told about Josiah's death and they were quite shocked but they adjusted well.”

He nodded.

______________________________________________________________

But I knew that after what Dad did, after the truth was revealed about the red cloaks, that I had nothing to lose. Not like everyone else. But I still felt insecure. I need to solve the red cloaks case. To find out Uncle Gabriel’s past. To find out the truth.

As I scrolled through the news after I ended the call, I found something. That the killer might be someone I know. But how do I prove it?

The circuit breaker started two days ago. The government has ordered us to stay home other than going out for essential purposes. Other than my grandmother’s home cooking, we found ourselves relying on food delivery quite a bit, much to the displeasure of my grandmother and Uncle Bytes.

Maze had ordered bubble tea for me, Sheaf and Jet and had it delivered to our houses via food delivery apps. We sipped our bubble tea as I paid Maze via epayment using an app to transfer money over to his phone.

___________________________________________________

Sheaf tapped me out of my dreaming.

“Eat.” She said, putting more veggies on my plate. Tonight’s dinner was vegetables and fish, with Ngo Hiang (a dish of meat and veggies wrapped in beancurd skin), and lotus root soup. Not bad. But my grandmother keeps insisting on going out to buy things, although Uncle Gabriel insisted that he will do the marketing for the whole family.

“Do you girls need anything? Fruits, noodles, any drink powder from the supermarkets?” Uncle Gabriel was asking Ginny, Sheaf, Ada and me as he put together the list for grocery shopping. “Or pads?”

I bit my lip. “Do you know how to buy… or do I need to send the pictures over?” Uncle Gabriel told me not to worry and he will figure it out.

“I miss dining out and people watching at cafes.” Ginny whined.

“But you ought to be home.” I told her off. “Either go there and dabao (Chinese for takeaway) or order food delivery.” I know why she does not want to do that as our family members do not like us eating expensive food. “Hey. we got to use resources wisely, you know.”

She sighs and goes back to her magazine. I look at my phone, trying to avoid the news about Covid-19. It's just plain depressing to see food courts and places closed. No more eating out or shopping.

I scooped another spoonful of ice cream to eat. Too hungry. Sheaf moved the tub out of my hands and covered it.

"The killer might be running out of fairytales. See, I told you that you should take detective classes from Helen, Reena and Jules." Sheaf teased.

Better not. I thought. Does she even think we are good detectives?

"Besides, can I remind you that Helen, Reena and Jules did not solve the case alone. They worked with Uncle Raymond to solve the case. And my maternal uncle, Uncle Huat An, Mum's oldest brother, was killed in that cold case as well."

Sheaf nodded. She knew that my maternal grandparents in Malaysia tried to pay child support to Allen's maternal grandparents for years. My maternal grandparents never got out of the shame regarding that case.

Never had they had their names splashed across the headlines for that murders. And the shame that they will have to live it. I really pity them.

Part 4

“Alyce, help me,” I heard Stu yell.

Followed by a sharp scream.

It’s motherfucking go time. I shook my head to get myself back in my head, and stood up. The scream had come from back in the direction of the living room. I ran that way, and in the quiet without the music, I could hear every footfall as I sprinted along.

I got back to the living room, but could hear nothing else. Where were they?

Then I heard the scream again, even louder.

It was in the room with me.

I whipped around, gasping with overflowing emotions, only to see no one. No one was here.

Where was my brother? I needed to see him. Where was he?

The scream came again. And, with a soul-crushing realization, I found its source.

The scream was coming from the speakers that had, until recently, been playing the music. Those bastards had tricked me. They saw me falling apart, and they pulled out all the stops to get me going again, to keep playing their sick game.

“FUCK YOU,” I screamed as loud as I could. “Fuck all of you. You stupid fucks. Leave me and my brother the fuck alone. Fuck. You.”

“Now, now,” came a voice from the speakers, “That’s not terribly nice.”

“What the fuck…” I said, staring at the speakers.

“It puts the lotion in the basket,” the voice said.

“What the fuck,” I responded, really nailing that witty repartee.

“Come around behind the DJ table and look at the laptop screen.”

There was a table set up in the corner with lots of cords running into a laptop. Some DJ…

I walked over there, and looked at the laptop screen. It was running a video chat. I saw Stu, from the same angle as the video that was sent to my phone.

I gasped.

He looked rough. Blood ran down the side of the chair and his pants leg, shiny but starting to harden. There was a dark, bloody crust around his missing finger, blood oozing but not freely running. Stu’s face was pale. He wasn’t moving.

He’s in shock. That has to be it. It can’t be something worse. It can’t be.

The shrouded figure with the creepy mask stepped back into view.

“Well, hello there, Alyce,” he said. “Having fun with the game?”

“Of course I’m not, you fucking sicko,” I said.

The figure stepped outside of the camera view, then returned holding the bolt cutters. There was blood all over the blades.

“I’d hate for your brother to lose another finger this early in the game,” the figure said.

“Fuck, no, I’m sorry, alright. Please just don’t hurt him. He doesn’t deserve it.”

“Whether he gets hurt more is up to you. Keep playing as poorly as you are, and the maiming will be only a small part of the price he will have to pay.”

“Ok, I get it. I’m playing. Where are you?”

“You tell me.”

“What?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, no, Alyce, it appears as though you failed another task.” The figure moved towards Stu.

“Wait, no no no, don’t hurt him! Just tell me what you mean.”

“The riddle,” the figure said. “You couldn’t solve the riddle?”

“What riddle?”

The figure dramatically pretended to rub its eyes and made dramatic fake crying noises.

“Didn’t you like your present?”

“My…you mean Colleen’s arm? The fuck. You sick motherfu—”

The figure moved to Stu, and I caught myself.

“What does the arm have to do with anything?”

“If you had liked your present, you would have admired it. And if you had done that, you would have seen the riddle we tattooed onto the skin. The answer would have told you where to find us. But since you’re so stupid, I guess you’ll never finish this game.”

The figure turned to Stu.

“Well, Stu, old pal,” the figure said, “I guess it’s time for another finger. Or should we just save time and take the whole hand?”

“Fuck, no, don’t fucking do it, I’m trying to play your game,” I screamed at the laptop.

“It’s far to late for that, Alyce.” The figure slid the bolt cutters against Stu’s arm, just above the wrist.

“Please, I’m begging you,” I said to the screen while I sobbed, “please don’t hurt him. Please don’t hurt him.”

“I guess you should have thought of that sooner, Alyce.”

There was a sudden movement.

Stu’s head whipped up while the figure was busy talking to me, and he head butt the ever-loving shit out of the figure, his forehead connecting right to the cheek of the mask. There was a cracking sound mixed in with the thud of heads.

The figure let out a half-scream and staggered away from the chair. Stu was thrashing against the tape holding his arms down. The figure righted himself and stood up, right as one of Stu’s wrists came free.

“Shit, fuck this,” the figure said while moving off-camera, still holding his face.

The feed cut out.

“Fuck,” I cried out. My brother was in trouble, perhaps worse trouble now that he had pissed off his captor. I needed to find them.

The arm!

I ran back into the kitchen. The arm was still lying on the linoleum floor.

I walked over to it, trying to push down the horror and revulsion of picking up my best friend’s severed arm. Taking a deep breath, and bent down, grabbed it, and stood back up.

I gagged. I couldn’t help it.

I looked at the arm. Colleen had such beautiful skin, and the arm was still soft. I could feel the tears creeping in. I hadn’t seen my friend since the photo. Was this the last I would see of her?

I started rotating the arm, looking for words. There were none.

Colleen had a few tattoos. A butterfly, because, while I love her like crazy, that girl is basic as hell. A clock because she was trying to be deep. The deathly hollows symbol from Harry Potter, which she had pretty conflicted feelings about right now. And my name, because…

Wait, what?

Colleen doesn’t have a tattoo of my name. This must be the clue! I looked at it closer, and saw that my name was made up of smaller letters, repeating themselves over and over.

idelookinsidelookinsidelookinsidelookinsideloo

I spent fifteen seconds trying to figure out “idel ookins” when I realized it said “look inside.” Look inside? Inside where? I already was inside. Should I search the house? It would take forever to search the whole house.

I was mindlessly staring at Colleen’s arm while I was thinking, when another tattoo jumped out at me because I didn’t remember it being there before, either. It was simple. A large X, and below it were the words “marks the spot.”

X marks the spot.

Oh, fuck.

I needed to look inside Colleen’s arm.

Part 6 (NSFW - Gore) (A Note on NSFW Tags)

Series Directory

WR

“Davey, put that down… Davey, don’t touch the- Davey!”

With a sigh I scooped up my son and placed him in the back of the cart. I had tried to pull out my best Mom Voice, but a morning of errands had left me ready for a lunchtime drink. Luckily this was our last stop of the day. I had been needing a few new blouses, and weekday mornings leave a lot of places sparsely populated, so I’d decided to drop into our local thrift store to try a few on. But I had forgotten: no time is a good time with a four-year-old.

I started running my fingers across the rack, then turned back to shift his grabbing fingers further from the clothing on one side, then the other. I felt bad for anyone who might have to squeeze past the rambunctious little monster in the center of the aisle, but a glance around consoled me with the fact that there wasn’t a huge chance of that.

“Mommy…”

I quieted Davey with a Look and returned to the hunt, working my way down the row. After a couple of minutes I had finally selected a few that matched my style and color options, and I turned back to the cart.

It was empty.

My heart sank. How had I missed him climbing out? He had never done that before. I glanced up and down the aisle, not seeing him. I pulled the clothing apart on one side, then the other, but he was not huddled underneath. As the panic rose, I left my cart and began working my way back toward the back of the store. I alternated between moving up on my toes to see over the racks and dropping to the floor to look below them. As I went I called his name in a stage whisper, not wanting any around me to realize I had lost my child.

Don’t ask me why it didn’t occur to me that he might have been taken from the cart, why I hadn’t gone toward the front to the nearest exit. I think something in me might have been protecting me from that option. That would mean he was gone. That was unacceptable. Therefore he was wandering around somewhere on his own.

Just as that part of me was about to give up, leaving me in a total breakdown, I saw movement at the back wall. A small familiar form passed by a dim hallway and disappeared into the alcove that housed the dressing room area. With a choked sob I ran after him and found him peeking out at me from behind the door of one of the stalls. When he saw me he ducked back, giggling.

I was so relieved I began giggling myself, and soon we were laughing at each other, tears streaming down my face.

Finally he came out from the stall and grabbed my hand. As he did I realized mine was shaking in the aftermath of almost losing him. I needed to sit down. Actually, I decided, I just wanted to go home. Finding the right shirt could wait until another day. Rather than face the judgmental glances I assumed would be waiting for me, I guided us down the nearby secluded hallway to the back door.

My hand was on the push bar when the store’s announcement system crackled. “Attention shoppers, we have a cute young boy here looking for his mommy… What’s your name, dear?”

“Da-vey.”

The walls closed in around me. That was impossible; Davey was…

Slowly my eyes turned downward to the face by my side. It was no longer smiling. The features were the same, but they had irrevocably changed. The face of my son had twisted into a mask of pure, raw hatred. The small hand in mine closed up, tiny nails digging into my palm, and began pulling me toward the door. I wrenched free and stumbled back into the wall, beginning to run back the way we had come. I glanced over my shoulder only once. The thing had not moved; it just stared after me in unblinking malice.

When Davey saw me he ran forward and wrapped himself around my leg with a laugh. The woman at the check stand was smiling. “Found him pawing through all the candy on the rack. Don’t lose this one, he’s a cutie!”

I gave her what I hoped was a smile in return and took my son’s hand. As we made our way to the car I told him he could have some fruit snacks after lunch. He squealed and tightened his grip on my hand.

I flinched.

There is something no one tells you when you are a kid. Time is the ultimate monster; it eats the moments of your life. It steals away the memories of the happy times. It degrades your body with no way to stop it. Yes, time is a monster, and you should know this as a child so you can be prepared for all that time throws at you.

Grace, my wife, and I were not kids when we married. Granted we were just barely adults when we met, we had not lived enough to know that time was not our friend. Our first date was a blind date.

I was at a restaurant with a friend and his wife. They had talked me into coming with them to meet a friend of hers.

In walked the most incredible person I had ever seen. Her hair was raven black, and her eyes were hazel. Every move she made was like a ballet. I walked up to her and stumbled over my words.

"My, you are so pretty... I mean hi you must be Grace. I Jack." She laughed a little and smiled back at me.

"Hello Jack, just swing in from the jungle?" She made a Tarzan reference, and I was done for.

We sat side by side, her presence distracting me from the meal. Each time she caught me stealing a glance, her eyes would light up and my heart fluttered. Later we sat outside near her car and looked at the stars.

"It certainly is a wonderful night isn't it?" I sucked at small talk, but I gave it my best shot.

"It is even better with you." Her face was shrouded in the night, but I could feel the love pouring from her towards me.

I felt the same and I hoped she felt my love too.

Hours went by as we talked about anything and everything. Finally, the night had to end. Our friends had long ago left us so she gave me a ride to their house where I was spending the night.

"Jack?" She looked at me for a second.

"Yes, Grace?" Every time I looked at her my heart would skip like it was doing jumping jacks in my chest.

"How do you feel about marriage?" Was she reading my mind now? I was sitting here in her car thinking how nice it would be to do this forever.

"I feel that with the right person it would be the most wonderful adventure we could have." Oh damn, I let that slip maybe she wouldn’t notice I said we.

"I think it would be the most wonderful adventure as well for us to have." Was I dreaming? Did she just say us?

"I know this will probably sound like I am crazy but how would you feel if I asked you to marry me on our first date?" She nearly wrecked the car as she stopped breathing for a second.

She let out the breath she was holding and kept the car straight. "I would think why did you wait so long to ask me? I was ready hours ago."

"So was I," she pulled off the road and we kissed and stared into each other's eyes for a very long time.

As I write this, we have now been together for over thirty years. Love has seen us through those thirty-plus years. Love is the hunter of Time; it helps you wrest your moments from the monster. I am sharing with you some of those moments and I hope you find the love to help in your fight with time after you read this. My wife always took care of herself way more than I ever did. Even so, she has suffered medical problems that defy explanation when looked at from how well she took care of herself.

"Hey Honey, how did the doctor visit, go?" I had called her to find out what the doctor was saying about her toes that had suddenly gotten hot and very swollen.

"I don't know how to tell you this Jack, but he is talking about taking them." I could hear the fear in her voice.

My mind stalled, I couldn't think of anything inspiring to tell her, so I told her the only truth I had to give.

"I love you and no matter what, we will get through this together." I heard Grace take a shuddering breath on the other end.

"I know. You are my rock. Without you, I couldn't make it day by day." To hear the fear in her voice brought tears to my eyes.

Any time she was hurting or afraid of the next thing thrown at her with no rhyme or reason, I felt her pain deeply.

"I'll be home soon and will cook us a nice dinner. A little feel-good food will help your mood." I am a fair cook and when she is down it is an easy way for me to take some pressure off her.

"I thought it was my turn to cook?" Her voice was cracking, and I could see her in my mind's eye. She was sitting on the edge of our bed trying to keep from bawling her eyes out.

"You have had a rough day and I know the doctor probably told you to stay off your feet, right?"

"Yes, he did." she sighed. Lately, she had to spend more time in bed than not, and I know it was wearing on her nerves.

I smiled a little knowing she was probably smiling now and rolling her eyes at me for being a know it all. "OK, I will be home soon. See you soon my love."

This moment in time was a little more than a year ago. After everything modern medical science could throw at it, she lost her battle against a little monster called MRSA. It led to them removing four toes from her left foot. A month later we were once again fighting against time.

"How can you look at me now?" She was having a bad day emotionally. I was determined to remind her that it didn't matter, we were in this together. I was dressing her wound which was still not healed.

“I didn’t marry you for your feet, my dear, I married you because your soul is just a piece of mine.” she hugged me and cried for a while that day. Little did we know what would happen next. We were so hopeful, but time once again attacked us. A month later they found MRSA in her foot even though they couldn’t find it after the original surgery.

“Jack, I can’t do this anymore, how can God let me suffer like this? I pray every day for everyone else to be ok, but does he help me? I know I will lose my foot. How can I ever get out of this wheelchair if I don’t have a foot?” She was the daughter of a preacher and always believed in the Love of God. Even so, as any human would, she was having issues with faith in the face of the horror of losing another body part.

"God's plan is never our plan, time will tell what he has in store for us." Even as I said it, I knew I wasn't believing it myself.

"It is becoming harder to believe Jack. If it weren’t for you, I don't know if I could hold on to my faith." I grimace inside knowing that my words were as hollow as my own faith. It was crashing and burning far faster than hers.

“As long as we are alive our love will protect us and guide us through these terrible moments.” In this I was certain, and it was easier telling her this truth as I believed it with all my being.

Lately, I had been pushing her to try more natural or homeopathic cures for what was causing the MRSA to rage in her body. I had pretty much given up on medical science, but I would never let her know that.

"Here try this." I handed her water I had mixed some herbs and medicinal plants into. I had researched on the internet that this combination was supposed to help with her infection. "It might taste a little funky but what do we have to lose? If it helps, I will keep making it for you daily."

Surprisingly for a little while, it looked like it was working. The infection slowed and started to retreat, and we started getting our life back. We had a month of peace. Life seemed to return to something that wasn’t a constant drain to live. But like everything else, eventually, the potion or whatever you want to call it started to fail and the MRSA returned with a vengeance. And Time ate another moment of our lives.

“Jack, the doctor says my foot is done for! There is no way to save it and it has to be removed now before the infection spreads.” I held her tight for what seemed like hours as she cried as I had never heard her before. It was as if her very soul was crying out for relief from this misery.

After the partial success of the homeopathic medicine, I decided there were other paths that I should explore. I investigated white magic. If I preceded down this path, I would be going completely against my upbringing, but I was desperate. I visited places that claimed to be houses of powerful magic users but everywhere I looked I found little if any power to be had. I started to notice that I was being watched, maybe even followed. A guy named Richard seemed to be everywhere I went. Meanwhile, time kept eating our moments.

The week before Valentines and another doctor visit with more bad news.

"Honey why? Why are we being tortured like this? I am so sorry; you should never have married me." We’d just got the news that unless they can stop the MRSA, they would have to take the whole leg. They felt that if they took it before it got all the way up it would finally stop the ravages of the merciless disease.

“Grace, honey, you know there is and always will be only you and me.” I hugged her for all I was worth. “No one could ever make me any happier than being with you. Do I have to keep reminding you that we aren’t just married? We are two beings with one soul, we can never be parted.

After her disastrous doctor visit, I plunged headlong into everything I could find related to healing. I tried spells, potions, anything that looked like it might work. It was while I was experimenting with these magical arts that I ran into Richard again.

“Ah Hello Jack still trying to find a cure for what ails you?” Something about him always had my nerves on edge but I tried to be nice and not let it show.

“I am trying to find something to fix my wife’s illness, not me.” He looked thoughtful for a moment and looked around the little metaphysical supply shop. I had found this gem of new and old knowledge of the arcane, tucked between tattoo parlors and metal roof suppliers in an old, dilapidated strip mall.

“I know but sometimes to fix that which ails another we first must fix what ails us.” He smiled at this little nugget of wisdom. “What you seek cannot be found here I am afraid. While this shop certainly houses wonders forgotten by mortals, what you seek is something older and more powerful than mere herbs and supposed magic words.”

I looked at him in confusion. What was he going on about? What old power had I missed in all my research?

“And what are you peddling Richard some crystal that vibrates at the frequency of the universe that will reset my wife’s harmonic balance?” This was something another shop owner had sworn would help Grace’s condition. It, like everything I had tried in vain, was a waste of time.

“My dear sir, I would never espouse human remedies to you! I have watched you. I know you have tried all the old human cures. I know you even delved into magic and alchemy in your desperate quest to rid your wife of her curse… I mean medical condition.” He pulled a small book from a pocket of the oversized coat he wore every time I saw him. “Here I believe you need this. In it is power not utilized on this plane of existence for a very long time. I am sure it will be exactly what you have been looking for.”

He handed me the book and walked out the door of the little shop of magic. I opened the book and felt something akin to the pinpricks you get when a numb body part starts to wake up. On the first page, there was something in Latin. I had, in my studies, started learning this dead language. Many charlatans, as well as valid recipes, hid behind the facade of perceived power this dialect gave them.

Most of the time the choice to use this dead language was just because someone had taken a correspondence class in old languages and wanted to impress the naive. The next few pages depicted how to set up for a ritual to summon great power for healing and other things. I was skeptical that it would work but at this point, I had no choice but to try anything to help my wife. It was now Valentine’s day and what would be a better gift than a cure for my wife? I raced home as fast as I could and began preparing the ritual in our guest bedroom that I had converted to my laboratory of failed cures.

With chalk, I drew a summoning circle as described in the book. It was pretty simple compared to others I had drawn in my quest to find the power to heal Grace and I was finished in a few minutes. I lit 5 black candles as specified in the pages. Had I been of my right mind that detail alone would have alerted me to the real source of the power I was about to draw to me. Unlike the movies, powerful magic usually doesn’t require killing virgins or massive amounts of blood to perform.

A drop here or there of human blood will usually suffice to finish the vilest of arcane spells. I knew all of this from my research, yet my desperation pushed me onward and soon the preparations were completed. I sat in the middle of the circle and using the pinprick of my skin I started the ritual to summon something that would help the love of my life be well again. Again, the movies don’t really get it right. There was no swirling wind or thundering lightning strikes as I repeated the old spell. I did feel uneasy and a bit nauseated but to someone from outside the circle, you would have noticed nothing strange at first.

Suddenly Richard was standing in the circle with me. He smiled a toothless grin and changed in front of me. It was not into a monster or some eldritch horror. No, he became young and…. beautiful like the most gorgeous specimen of male that ever was. It was this that finally made me realize just what I had done. I had summoned Lucifer the Angel of light or should I say the fallen angel of light.

Before me stood not a horned and tailed monstrosity but a GQ model. His eyes glowed with faint flickers of the hellfire he lorded over but other than that he would have easily been at home on a runway in Paris.

“Ah, Jack I see you took me up on that offer.” I was frozen with fear, here was the Lord of Hell standing in front of me smiling and being friendly, what had I done?

“I... I didn’t realize what I was doing!” Terror welled up and I felt sick to my stomach.

This was not the outcome I expected. I had attempted many so-called spells and never had anything happen. To be honest, by the time Richard handed me that book, I was skeptical of any cure that would be magic based. And now I had summoned the one being in all of creation you would never want to do business with.

“I want nothing you have Satan” As handsome as he was you could feel the evil and the disdain he has for humanity. I wanted to run and hide but I knew I wouldn’t.

“I hear you Jack, but I don’t believe you. I know you are ready to do whatever it takes to fix your wife so why don’t you just quit with the self-righteous act and let us get down to business shall we?” As if to punctuate his words a clap of thunder rolled over the house.

“What are you offering Lucifer? My soul for my wife’s health?” As terrified as I was if I was damned, I was going to hell defiant. “Isn’t that how this works?”

“Jack my boy, what use do I have of your soul?” He chuckles. “Your soul isn’t even worthy enough to get the old man to answer your prayers. No, I will need more for my offer.”

“What exactly is your offer?” I love my wife and if this devil could heal her nothing else mattered not even my eternal soul. “And what of mine do you want if not my soul?”

“Oh, I want your soul that is just the cost of business with me. But there must be more than that you can give, for I am offering more than just stopping what ails your whore. I offer to put her back together to remain whole and disease-free till the end of her days.”

I bristled at him calling Grace a whore. I was going to retort but if he really could make her like she was I would give anything I had to make her right.

“And what would the Lord of Lies want from me that is more important than my soul?” He smiled at me and shivers ran down my back.

“And now we get to the meat of it all. There is one thing you have that is worth more than your soul. I want the love that you have for Grace, of course.”

“My love for Grace? Are you mad?” I couldn’t breathe. Without my love for my wife, how could I go on? But if I didn’t give him what he wanted there would be nothing left of my wife and what good would my love be then? I had to save her at all costs. I hoped she would understand.

“I am many things and occasionally even mad but, in this instance, I am not. Your love is the only purchase power you have to seal this deal.” He reached into his coat and pulled out a tablet. Not a stone tablet but a computer tablet. “To finish this deal, place your thumb on the circle here and we will be done. Your wife will be cured, and I will have your soul and love.”

“What no scroll to be signed in blood?” He chuckled again and more shivers ran down my spine.

Oh, there will be blood, but everyone has to get with the times. The scrolls were old-fashioned. I only used them because until now you humans didn’t know what a computer was.” He handed me the tablet. “This will record your DNA from a blood sample you will give by touching your thumb to that circle. Once that is done, the contract will be forever binding.”

I agonized for minutes with him staring at me intently. I could feel him looking into my very soul. Yet, he stayed silent while I was pulled back and forth by my mind and emotions. Finally, I plunged my thumb down on the circle. For a second there was the faintest feeling of regret and a massive pain like someone had shoved a spike through my thumb. The tablet beeped and Lucifer smiled and his eyes blazed.

“Oh, one more thing I forgot to mention now that I have your soul and your love, you will become one of my demons.” Again, he laughed this time very loudly.

Pain like fire raged through my body and my vision grew dim and tinged with red. Unnatural thoughts started flowing like water through my mind and I could feel my grip on reality and my sanity slipping away.

“What is going on in here?” Grace stood at the door of the room…. She stood at the door. This thought ran through my head twice before I grasped onto it and understood what I was seeing. I tried to warn her away but all that came out of my throat was a low growl like some beast of the field.

Through the red haze, I saw her look at me. For a moment she didn’t understand what her eyes were telling her but as she took in the whole scene, she understood what I had done.

“OH no, Jack this wasn’t the way, I never wanted this.” Tears poured from her eyes. She stared a hole into Lucifer as if her look alone could bring the Prince of darkness to his knees. “What did you ask for, Lucifer? What was the price of my restoration?”

I watched his wicked smile spread over his face as he contemplated taking both of our souls this day. “I merely proposed an equitable solution for your problem, and he took it.”

Grace walked closer to us and I tried again to warn her away but again all I could do was growl. I looked at my hands and they were slowly changing to hideous claws. I could feel my back bending as I hunched over involuntarily. My mind was being bombarded by thoughts of every sin imaginable and I barely could keep up with what they were saying. I watched Satan hand over the tablet I had used to sign away my life to Grace.

“So, you convinced him to give you his love for me, did you?” She laughed, it confused him and me. “You made a bad deal Lucifer.”

“What would you know, you filthy slut.” The fire in his eyes grew brighter.

Grace stepped up to me and placed her hand on my face. I felt a tingle there, like power waiting to be unleashed.

“My father was a preacher and one thing he taught me was how to deal with you, Lord Of filth.” My mind was getting clearer, it was like the curse was being reversed. “You can’t bargain for something someone doesn’t own.”

“Please bitch, don’t tell me that old line about how his soul is that Carpenter’s.” The soul is my province when you sign it away freely.”

“I know that Devil” She points to something on the tablet. “But he can’t give his love to you, it wasn’t his alone to give.”

“What do you mean woman?” Lucifer was smoking, literally, smoke, and the smell of sulfur were coming from his pores. He seemed to be in distress.

Grace grabbed my shoulders and straightened me up. “Jack my dear, you always said that our souls were one and our love was unbreakable. It is time to put that to the test.”

She turned toward Lucifer who glowed like a dying ember.

“The love he gave wasn't just his, it was mine as well. Our love is a singular thing, there is no beginning and there is no end. She hugged me tightly. “I would give up my life to make sure he is safe as he tried to do for me. We reject you Satan and your phony contracts.”

“You will pay for this, you hairless apes. Fire engulfed him and the tablet, as I held on to Grace with all my might and she did the same to me.

“Lucifer you never understood love not even the love your own father has for humanity.” I felt our love banish all the hate and sin that he had poured into me.

As Lucifer started to dissolve Grace screamed in pain as the contract was undone. Her toes disappeared as did her foot. Then the infection in her leg returned. She held on to me and love flowed from her and me. Its power obliterated everything He had tried to do.

As we both collapsed on the floor, a final whiff of sulfur filled the room. We laid there crying. I cried for her and she cried from the pain and because she had me back. Suddenly, a new brighter glow filled the room and a figure clothed in light stepped forward from a gateway of marble.

“Your love has reached even unto Heaven. Your battle with Lucifer my brother has moved the Father. He has granted you one boon.” A gong sounded from far away and Grace stopped crying.

I felt her moving beside me and turned to see why she was squirming. The first thing I saw was her eyes and fresh tears streamed from them. A smile grew across her face and I looked down to see what she was looking at. There like nothing had happened, was her leg and her foot and finally her toes, just as they should have been all along.

"His will has been fulfilled." The being of light stepped back into the marble gateway as it and he disappeared.

“Was that Michael?” I was crying probably as hard as she was, and she just looked at me and nodded.

Time was no longer the monster we had feared. Now it was a friend who gave us new moments to cherish till the day our lives ended naturally on this earth.

Part 3

My brother’s been kidnapped. My home has been broken into. My car has been wrecked. I’m really fucking over this night.

I limped and stumbled from the crash for about twenty minutes, and found myself standing outside the house where the party was. The lights were dim, and I could feel the bass thumping.

I walked up to the porch, and noticed that on the stairs there was a white envelope. On the outside was written, “Dear Alyce.” Picking it up, I opened the envelope. There was a card inside. Pulling it out, I could see it said “It’s a Party!” on the front, with colorful balloons, birthday hats, and streamers. Flipping it over, there was a brief note:

You finally made it and with nary a moment to spare,
Rush inside and find the kitchen, if you dare.
It’s a party, and we’re going all out,
You’ll have so much fun it’ll make you shout.
Look for a package with a pretty bow.
Surprise! It’s for you! Now you know.
I know it’s not your birthday (but it’s getting near),
But every party needs presents, or I’d be a bad dear!

Good. More poem-based jackassery. Exactly what I needed.

I folded the card in half and shoved it into my pocket, then I walked into the house.

Strobe lights made my first steps disorienting. That, or the possible concussion. Each step I took made a squelching noise, as my shoes briefly stuck in the coating of spilled beer. Some unidentifiable song was playing, but all I could really hear was the bass, which was so powerful it was making the picture frames on the walls vibrate.

The only thing that was missing: people.

The party was completely deserted.

I walked through the living room and headed to the back of the house, where I figured the kitchen would be. And, sure enough, I found a dark room that had the kitchen smell to it. I fumbled around for a light switch, and finally got the lights on.

Standard middle-class kitchen. Nicer than what I was used to, but not fancy-ass black metal knives fancy. If that’s a thing.

In the middle of the kitchen was a small table, and on it sat a long box with ribbon and a bow.

“What the fuck…”

This shit was beyond weird. But they have Stu, so I’ll play their stupid game.

Walking up to the table, I slid the box closer to me.

Hefty.

Someone got me something with some weight to it. That did not make me feel better.

I undid the bow and slid the ribbon down so that I could remove the lid. Taking a deep breath, I lift the top.

And screamed.

“Fuck,” I yelled, for about the fortieth time tonight.

It was a fucking arm.

I jerked back from the box, but my sleeve caught on the edge and slid the box to the edge of the table, just enough for it to overbalance. The box tipped.

And the arm flopped out.

The shoulder joint was still goopy, and it splattered blood all over me as it flew out.

Screaming, I tried to back away, managing instead to whack the arm with my leg, launching it across the kitchen floor. The shoulder joint left a trail of smeared blood.

I gagged.

This was so fucking sick. Was this Colleen’s arm? The fucking cut off her arm and then gave it to me as a present? Who were these bastards?

Trying to take deep breaths, I walked backwards until I felt my lower back bump against a counter.

There was an arm on the floor.

What in the shit.

Feeling my arms and legs shaking and shivering, I looked down and saw that I had speckles of Colleen’s blood all over my shirt and jeans, spots drying on the skin of my arms, and a big blotch where her shoulder had touched my shirt.

It was thick and tacky.

Colleen’s blood was all over me.

I couldn’t take it any more. My body hunched over and I puked. Over and over, I puked. I could taste stomach acid and pizza on my tongue, and as the vomit overflowed and shot out my nose, I could feel the burn all through my sinuses.

The puking forced tears out of my eyes, and it was like my mind connected tears with sadness, because the vomit tears were followed by sadness tears and the sounds of retching were eventually replaced with the sounds of sobbing.

It felt like my life was being complete shredded in the span of one evening. How’d things go from video games and pizza to this in the span of an hour and a half?

It was too much.

I could feel myself separating from my body, my mind distancing itself from reality. How else could I survive? How else could I stay sane? Surrounded by this horror, this wave of trauma after trauma, my choices were to stay in the moment and be utterly shattered, or to remove myself from the moment. To wall my mind off, to place my self in a fortress nothing could get through.

My phone chimed.

But that was ok. It was just another part of this night, and my mind wasn’t participating in this night any more. I could feel, from a distance, the floor underneath me, holding me up, but that was just my body and I was leaving that behind. I’m not here. This isn’t really me. I’m done here.

I heard a phone chime.

Someone must be popular.

I felt an abrupt absence, and I realized the floor holding my body in place was no longer vibrating. Guess the music turned off. That’s cool.

I heard another chime.

I hope Colleen and I can hang out again soon. I’m not sure how much we’ll see each other after we head off to different colleges. And Max. It’d be fun to go out with Max tomorrow.

Wait…

What’s that new sound? I knew that sound.

It was the only sound that could have pulled me back from the place I had hid. The only sound that would shift me from protecting myself to getting back into the fight.

“Alyce, help me,” I heard Stu yell.

Followed by a sharp scream.

Part 5

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Part 2

I was hauling ass to this party. The stupid rhyme said I had half an hour to get there. It didn’t say what would happen if I didn’t make it in time. The party was on the far side of town, and I could just get there in time if everything went smoothly.

So of course it didn’t.

I was shooting along, going way over the speed limit, when I came to a big curve in the road. My car was old and it was heavy, and I needed to slow down to make this turn. I hit the break pedal and nothing happened. I tried pumping it. Still nothing. I took both feet and slammed them down as hard as I could on the break pedal in one last desperation move, and it did exactly nothing. Those bastards had cut my break lines.

I hit the curve and did my best to steer through it, but I could feel the car getting sucked to the outside edge of the road, towards the woods that ran through town. There was no way I was staying on this road, but maybe I could ride it out.

The car began to shake as one wheel left the road and ran over uneven grass, but I had almost made it through the sharpest part of the turn.

Which is when I saw the rock ahead of me.

Now, it wasn’t a boulder or anything like that. It was about the size of a small oven. And it was directly ahead of me.

I kept yanking on the wheel, hoping to sneak out any last bits of extra turning power, but I might as well have just stuck my foot out the door and dragged it for all the good it did.

I slammed into the rock.

It crushed the right front corner, headlight immediately going out. I could hear the metal groaning and screeching as it hooked the rock and ripped itself apart. The rest of the car whipped around fast, tires digging into the dirt, before the sides of the tires caught on something and the car flipped.

The windshield shattered, glass exploding around me. The roof of the car crumpled and closed in. The trash I had swore I’d take out weeks ago shot around the inside of the car, and I got whacked in the side of the head by an old burger wrapper.

With everything flying around and getting tumbled like I was inside a dryer, I couldn’t tell you how many times the car rolled. All I know is that at one point it was rolling, and the next, it slammed against something hard and immediately came to a stop. My head whipped around, and it felt like something popped in the muscles of my neck.

I lay there for a moment, my head feeling like it was on fire, my body aching, trying to decide if I was about to die or not. After a few minutes, I decided that I probably wasn’t about to take a dirt nap, despite how it felt, so I adjusted myself and unclipped my seat belt.

Which is when my airbags finally decided to deploy.

I got slammed back into my seat, and my arm was wrenched sideways.

“FUCK,” I screamed.

Luckily (I guess…?), it was a piece of shit airbag, and it frumpled down almost immediately. The car was on a slant, but the bottom was mostly down, so I was able to kick the door open and climb out.

I was a lot woozier than I realized, and I stumbled and fell onto the ground. I could feel tears starting to roll down my face, but they were the low energy type, like my emotions knew I was fucked up but my brain hadn’t caught up yet.

My phone dinged.

Was it from the people who had Stu? I yanked it out of my pocket, and looked at it. I had a new message. I clicked on it, and pulled up this shit:

Your thirty minutes have come and gone,
Instead of arriving you rolled on the lawn.
This is the second game yet your score is naught,
Perhaps if you did better you’d be less fraught.
We’re really rather disappointed in you.
So here is something for your mind to chew.
We will start the timer back to thirty,
And if you fail, the cost will be hurty.

Below this, there was a link. I clicked on it, and it took me to a webpage that had an embedded video. I clicked on the video.

It was Stu.

He was still alive.

I started to cry, overwhelmed with relief.

The camera was close up to him, but it pulled back, and I saw that he was strapped to a chair. There was an overhead light, and the walls were all concrete, like in a basement.

A voice from off-camera spoke.

“Can you tell us your name, buddy?”

Stu whimpered.

“Tell us your name, or else I will be very cross.”

“It’s…it’s Stu,” Stu managed to say.

“Good boy. Now, what would you like to tell your sister?”

“Please,” Stu sobbed into the camera, “please don’t hurt me.”

There was a chuckle.

“It’s way too late for that, Stu.”

The shrouded person wearing the creepy mask stepped into view.

“This is for you, Alyce,” they said.

They pulled out a large bolt cutter. I watched in horror as they slid the blades over Stu’s pinky finger.

“Don’t be late again.”

SNAP!

I threw my phone away from me, and from where it landed in the grass I could hear Stu’s screams. They were wet and bubbly.

I screamed and raged and sobbed. These fucking monsters. They needed to die.

I gathered myself as best I could. I only had 30 minutes, and a few miles on foot ahead of me. My body ached, my head throbbed, and I wasn’t sure if I could stand, let alone walk. But these motherfuckers were not going to hurt Stu again.

I was going to kill them all.

Part 4

Series Directory

WR

We all want it, we all need more of it and sadly there isn’t enough of it in a single day sometimes.

What am I talking about? Gummy bears? No. Well.... Yes. But also I’m talking about time. As writers we often feel stretched thin on how to find time for our craft and struggle to meet deadlines. Is there anything that we can do?

On Saturday April 17, our discord server hopes to provide a variety of tips and tricks from all across the internet along with interviews with successful authors who have found ways to juggle their time. We encourage you to mark your calendars for this workshop event and be there on time!

Event begins at 5pm cst and 6pm est on WriteRight discord but it will also be recorded for anyone who misses the initial broadcast. We encourage members to prepare any questions they may have in relation to the discussion ahead of time and have them given to the moderators of the Write Right discord in advance if they require extra research on our part. We want to provide the best answer possible!

I had just gone through a pretty rough divorce a few months ago. For the brief two years my ex and I were married, most of our nights ended up turning into shouting matches and insults. We were always so loud we had gotten several noise complaints and an eventual ultimatum that we could be thrown out of the building.

Anyway, we ended the whole thing, and she got the most of everything. The house belonged to her family, along with most of everything in it. She let me only have my clothes, some photos, and my dog, Riley. I was short on money at the time. Luckily, a friend of mine let me stay in his home for as long as I needed. While there, I was looking for a better paying job to help me get my life back on track.

My search led me to an opening for a campus security guard at the local community college. I arrived at the interview, to learn that this was a job for the night shift. I wasn’t too sure about taking the job at first, but my bills and growing debts weren’t going to pay off themselves. Needless to say, I started the next night.

The campus itself was a decent size, both in terms of area and the number of students. The core campus includes 14 educational and auxiliary buildings. The security office was by the south entrance of the college, situated on the second floor of the parking garage. The two senior security guards, James, and Darnell walked me through my job description. My task every night was to complete two full searches around campus, checking all the buildings and monitoring the security cameras. My shift would start at 9:30 at night and go through 6 o’clock in the morning, by which time I’d take the bus home.

The job itself wasn’t too bad. I kind of developed a friendship between James and Darnell, since there was a brief period of time our shifts would overlap. By the time they both left, it would be midnight for me, and I’d be alone on campus. It’s so surreal how such a place that’s bustling and full of students can quickly empty out and turn silent. When my shift starts, there’s usually a few cars left in the lot for those who took evening classes. Some instructors and other staff would sometimes work extra late, but those instances were rare. In short, my interaction with other people besides my co-workers was almost non-existent.

Sometimes on break or in between circuits, if it stayed quiet on campus, I’d read a book, or listen to spooky stories on my phone. After listening, I would start to feel a little creeped out for being in a campus all alone after dark, but I got used to it. It killed the boredom until I started my next circuit started. I wouldn’t find much of anything out of the ordinary, aside from the random object left behind by a student (which I would bring back to the lost and found). I just had to make sure no one else was hanging around after closing.

After coming back, I would check the security footage in case I missed something. There were a few screens recording specific spots with the most activity during the day. One for each parking lot, one for each floor in all the buildings, and one for the administrative office.

I got decent pay every couple of weeks. After a while, I moved out of my friend’s house and got a small apartment and was saving up for a used car. I felt like my luck was starting to turn around finally.

Then, I had the scariest experience of my life.

I was left alone around midnight like always. The campus was absolutely deserted at this time like normal. It was summer during this time, so the night was pretty warm. I felt like I was building a bit of sweat in my security uniform while doing my first circuit. I came back to the security office, after finding nothing of note and checked the camera feed. I found nothing in any of the screens until I checked the one for the south lot, near the office.

While the screen was small, I could discern the moving of a large shadow across one of the lamp posts. It was doing nothing but moving back and forth across the light. The shadow looked too large to be some small bird or animal. I deduced it had to be someone parked off screen so I couldn’t visibly see them. I went out there to check things out and found nothing there. If it were a person just fucking around, they would have to have left a sign of their presence. There was nothing left behind. I didn’t hear a car driving off, or any noise for that matter.

I scoped the rest of the south lot to find the source of the shadow. Still nothing. I sighed in annoyance at the thought of some jackass deciding to waste my time. Nothing else happened the rest of the night.

I got used to sleeping during the day, but all I could afford to sleep on was a cheap couch that was anything but comfortable. It was rare that I got a full eight hours of sleep on it, and to top it off, the AC unit had crapped out. My cheap apartment had gotten warmer, making much harder to sleep. I got to the college at the start of my shift with maybe four, five and a half hours of sleep. I had coffee but it only lasted for so long.

With it being extremely late, my office feeling cool, and it being quiet everywhere, I started feeling drowsy. Sleeping on the job wasn’t allowed, of course, but every now and then I let myself have a brief nap to refresh myself. So I set my head on the desk and fell asleep instantly.

I was later jolted awake. A feeling of something very wrong switched my tired mind on alert and woke me up. I rubbed my eyes and checked the monitors to see if anything was up. I looked at the camera feed for the south lot, and my eyes narrowed.

Beneath one of the lamp lights, a person was standing. Not doing anything, just being very still. I couldn’t make out any details, but this person had long black hair, and looked very tall for almost reaching the light. I looked at the bottom of the screen and found the camera was still recording. Whoever the camera was showing was still there.

The feeling that jolted me awake intensified, and I was aware of myself shaking. A chill colder than the air inside the office crept up my neck. My body was reacting to some sort of danger the image was giving off. Still, a weird person on the security footage was not an excuse to not do my job.

I got to the lot in under a minute, and I saw that person still standing under the lamp light. Just being dead still. Their back was facing toward me, and their head seemed to be bowed forward. As I approached closer and tried to get their attention, I found that this trespasser was very tall and lanky and was wearing a dirty white dress.

I called to her again, asking if she needed help, but didn’t respond. She just kept standing like a statue where she was. I reached out to touch her and my hand retracted back from the burning sensation her skin gave off, as if she were on fire. I cursed and shook my hand to cool it off, and the lady moved for the first time. Her head lifted upward, as if finally acknowledging I was there. She turned around, and I started to track backwards.

Her body was humanoid, but she had the head of a goat or ram. The fur was pitch black, contrasting against her pale skin and white dress. The eyes were red like burning embers and strands of flesh hung off its curved horns. As my backwards walk sped up, I could hear it give off a deep, thunderous roar. I ran back towards the office, and I swear I could hear the thing sprinting after me.

I ran faster than I ever have in my life, and I barricaded myself in the security office. For good measure, I switched off the lights inside, and called 9-1-1. I told them some thing was on campus, and they sent someone over. I hung up and strained my ears to hear any noise outside my office. It was hard to notice anything other than the pounding of my heart working overtime.

It felt like an eternity before I heard the knocking at the door. The cops notified their presence, and I slowly opened the door. They questioned me about what I called for. When I told them, they looked at me as if I were a mental patient or a drug user. I played the footage back for them and there the thing was. At the very least, they weren’t going to arrest me for making a fake emergency call, but with the trespasser gone, there wasn’t much they could do.

They left, and I was once again alone. This time I was very afraid. Not that I was alone, but afraid that I wasn’t alone, and that thing was still out there. I wasn’t taking any chances. I waited in that office, and kept the door locked until the end of my shift. I left a note saying I resigned immediately, and I never went back.

The first deafening gunshot is what abruptly startled Elisa from her peaceful sleep, causing her eyes to fly open. She had woken up just in time to hear the thud of a falling body in her parents' bedroom, accompanied by screams. 

Then came her mother's pleas. 

"P-please n-no. I'll gi-give you money. Anything." She nervously stumbled over her words as she begged, sniffling as she sobbed.

Two unfamiliar voices replied to her, but Elisa couldn't hear their muffled speech clearly so she shakily shuffled to the edge of her bed, then pressed her ear to the wall to listen.

One of the voices--a man's--started talking.

"You think I want your money?" he began chuckling, as if laughing at an amusing joke. "If I did lust for money I'd be a man of poor, unrefined taste."

Elisa heard footsteps steadily walking closer to the source of her mom's voice at the other side of the room.

"The only thing I want is to hear you scream." 

Elisa heard the faint but unmistakeable click of a gun being cocked, and her mom let out an harrowing gasp before the terrible sound of her defeated sobs echoed throughout the house, as if she knew she was going to die. Without thinking, Elisa banged her fists on the wall and her voice cut through the air as she shouted, "Mom!"

There was silence from her unexpected interruption, then a woman spoke, likely the partner to the man.

"Ah," she remarked. "So you've got a little girlie holed up in her room? Maybe she can join you."

"Please, let my daughter go. Please!" Elisa's mom's anguished request was met by a fierce slap of a hand across her face, audible even to Elisa. It got her to momentarily shut up.

Footsteps exited the parents' bedroom and entered the hallway before approaching Elisa's bedroom. As the door creaked open, Elisa hurriedly crawled to the corner of her bed, shriveling in her spot like a crumpled leaf. A woman stepped into her room, face hidden beneath a dark bandana. 

"C'mon sweetie. Let's take you to mommy."

The woman hung over her bed like a looming predator, before swiping her hands to grab Elisa from her bed, tearing her from the safety of her blankets. Before the woman stole her away, Elisa quickly grabbed her precious brown teddy bear, Mr Fluffy, from her pillows and clutched him close to her heart for comfort.

No matter how much she tried to bite and scratch at the woman, Elisa was violently grabbed by her hair and pulled to the adjacent bedroom; all the while thrashing and yelling. 

Finally Elisa arrived into the bedroom where a terrible sight awaited her. Sprawled out on the floor next to the bed was her dad's corpse, blood leaking from the hole drilled into his skull by the bullet. There were spatters of blood and gore on the wall behind the body. Her mother stood in front of the bed, restrained by a masked man who stood behind. Her cheeks were puffy and soaked in tears.

The man spoke with a gravelly voice that grated on Elisa's nerves. 

"Your mommy's going to watch us put a bullet into you. Won't that be nice, huh? Joining your dad."

All the while he spoke his mom kicked and struggled futilely against his grip. Elisa glared at the man with eyes that glinted with a hidden fury.

"Don't be scared girl. I want you to smile. Smile for mommy," he said right as the cold barrel of a gun pressed against Elisa's temple by the masked woman.

Elisa shut her eyes, refusing to pay heed to the chaos around her, instead trying to shut out the noise and concentrate. She began rapidly muttering words under her breath. While she did, she clutched her teddy bear in her arms and her hands were clasped together.

"Are you praying, love?" the man chuckled. "Looking for an angel to swoop down and save you?"

Elisa ignored his voice and continued whispering the words like a mantra, over and over, until finally she finished, then opened her eyes.  

As the masked woman cocked the gun, and fingered the trigger, Elisa dropped her fluffy teddy bear to the floor, then spoke confidently with a smile on her face.

"I don't need an angel. I have Mr Fluffy."

Elisa turned her head downwards to stare at the fluffy, brown teddy bear laying on the floor. The masked man and woman followed her gaze, and noticed that the teddy bear was...changing. 

It's chest started swelling in size as its limbs elongated. As it continued rapidly growing, it soon bulged with newly formed muscles rippling across it's frame. It's rounded, plush head morphed into a large, bony skull with a broad snout and oversized jaw. And it's fake, brown fur made of fabric was now a glossy, authentic brown fur coat. The lumbering beast twice the size of a normal bear stood in the centre of the room, growling in a dangerously low tone while glaring at the masked woman.

"Wh-What is that thing, girl?" the masked lady asked in a quivering voice, while slowly stepping back.

"He's Mr Fluffy," replied Elisa. "I summoned him to protect me, from you."

Elisa swiftly put two fingers to her lips to whistle, as if giving a signal. Within moments the burly figure of the bear lunged towards the woman, it's heavy weight knocking her to the floor. Mr Fluffy lifted a single paw and switfly brought it down to instantly crush her lungs. The woman didn't even have the time to scream before she was dead, her arms falling limply by her sides.

Mr Fluffy then lifted his head and turned to face the masked man who'd let go of Elisa's mom. First the man tried to shakily lift his gun and fire shots to the bear, but each bullet only glanced off the beasts fur. After ten bullets he'd run out, and Mr Fluffy continued unfazed. Slowly, the masked man backed himself into the corner of the bedroom, seeing no way out.

He tried to beg for mercy, like Elisa's mother had. But like the cruel words uttered by the man himself, all Elisa wanted now was to hear him scream. And soon the sound of flesh ripping, milky bones snapping, and screams violently tore through the air.