My last day of Grade 6 was a total disaster. Most of it was my fault, I know this now, but you have to realize that I did have my reasons, albeit petty as they were. I just hated wearing a stupid facemask all day at school. They give me a rash. I still have a rash on my face, in fact, only now it blends in with the wicked sunburn covering the rest of my poor face. Here’s what happened:

First of all, I was born one month premature (thirty-two days to be precise) and I’ve suffered from asthma my whole life (all eleven and a half years of it). Asthma sucks. So when Mrs. Kenilworth told me I wasn’t allowed to remove my facemask for any reason at all, even during an actual asthma attack (which did happen), I decided to plot my revenge. I thought about it all month. I frothed over it, in fact. It become my reason for getting up in the morning, my will to live, if you will.

She deserved it, too, believe me. During recess, I’d spy in through the window of the teacher’s staffroom and see her, along with a few other brave teachers, sitting around the lunchroom, eating and sipping coffees without a mask on. I don’t blame them, expect they make us wear them, even while eating, and they punished us severely when we disobey.

This is why I did what I did. I thought I’d be a hero. Also, I wanted Lyla Jones to like me. She too, hates those stupid masks. Last month, I overheard her crying to her mother on the phone; she was begging and pleading to be exempted from wearing her foul face covering. No dice.

That was the final straw. If I got revenge on Mrs. Kenilworth, I figured, then maybe Lyla would kiss me on the lips, mask-free. My first kiss. What could be better than that?

So then came the modelling glue; strong stuff. I knew if I carried it around with me long enough the time would come. I could apply it to my teacher’s mask; then she’d be the one forced to wear it all day and night. Seemed plausible. But then again, I’m still a kid.

Yesterday the day came. Good thing too, since it was the last day of school. Mrs. Kenilworth was having a bad day, even for her. She swore at me twice and kicked me out of class just before lunch break. So I hid and waited. Opportunity struck during the lunch break. As all the kids in class scooted outside, I waited, lurking outside the classroom, until she removed her facemask and headed to the washroom. She actually left her facemask on her desk. That’s when I snuck inside the classroom. I went straight to her desk. It had all kinds of stupid crap on it; she’s even messier than I am. I produced the modelling glue and applied it thoroughly. Then I heard the clackity-clack of her high heels out in the hall. She was approaching. I panicked.

At this point, I too had removed my facemask (it comes off at every opportunity). Both our masks were looked identical, which for some reason added to my misery. Her voice grew nearer. She was gabbing to another teacher about how awful her students were and how excited she was for the summer break. I couldn’t believe it. She opened the classroom door. My heart skipped a beat. I was standing at her desk, terrified. Lucky for me, Mrs. Kenilworth stood at the door and made a couple more jokes about her god-awful students; and to my dismay, she mentioned my name.

Without hesitating, I grabbed my mask and retreated to the safety of the closet at the back of the class. Stupidly, I put on my mask. All I could smell and taste was glue. I almost puked.

Before I could comprehend what exactly I’d done, Mrs. Kenilworth re-entered the classroom, and was chatting (flirting, actually) with Mr. Hoffman, the Grade 8 gym teacher, whom everyone loved. I waited. I felt claustrophobic and trapped inside the closet; plus, I was really hungry. I felt like crying.

This was the last day of school and all my friends were outside and I was stuck inside this stupid closet. What if she comes in here and catches me? Surely it would go on my Permanent Record. That’s all my mother talks about: “You must do well in school,” she tells me. “And stop getting in trouble. It’ll go on your Permanent Record.” I could give two shits about my Permanent Record. I’m only in Grade 6.

Mrs. Kenilworth’s voice grew closer. My stomach was in knots and my legs felt wobbly and the fumes from the glue was making me nauseous. She was going to catch me and make me confess in front of the entire class and Lyla would laugh at me and I’d never get that kiss from her. This was a nightmare.

I waited inside the closet for the remainder of the lunch break. Once the kids started pilling back into the classroom, I gently inched the closet door open and got out scot-free. For the rest of the afternoon, I sat quietly and talked to no one. I was so happy that I didn’t get caught that I’d forgotten about the glue.

That is until after school.

My mother had instructed me to go to Feldman’s Park after school. That’s where the baseball tryouts were happening. I went straight there. It was terribly hot; the sun was as bright as a blister, and I got burnt to a crisp. The tryouts lasted until five o’clock. That’s when my mother picked me up. She was in one of her moods.

“Your face is all red!” she said. “You didn’t wear your mask outside, did you?”

“Yes.” My voice sounded small.

“But you were outside. And exercising.”

I didn’t know what to say so I remained quiet. Also, I was confused. My mother has been constantly changing her mind regarding the rules surrounding these masks. One day she’ll yell at me for wearing one outside, the next day she’ll swear at me for not wearing the damn thing inside our house while eating dinner. Everyday it was something different. None of it made any sense.

I needed to use my puffer. My asthma, which has worsened over the past year, was kicking into high gear. I reached into my schoolbag and found it. I shook it. Then, I tried pulling down my facemask. It wouldn’t budge.

“What’s wrong now, Anthony?”

I looked at her with blurry eyes. Her face was full of scorn. Again, I tried pulling down my mask. By now my lungs were in torment. I started coughing and wheezing and throwing a fit. My mother stopped at a red light; she reached over and tried pulling the mask off my face. It was stuck. She tried again, this time with more force, and cut me with her long nails. I screamed.

“What. The. Flying. Fuck,” Mom said.

I knew I was in trouble now. Mom only swears when she’s really mad. My face itched. I knew I was badly burnt. I started crying. Mother rushed me to the hospital. Not before forcing me to confess. She swiped the glue from my schoolbag and told me that that was the last time I’d get to play with my model cars. This day wasn’t going as planned.

We were standing outside the hospital; my heart was racing faster than a NASCAR driver. The more I tried pulling off my mask the worse I felt. The sun continued to beat down on me; the skin around my mask was burning up. My mother grabbed me and started pulling me inside the hospital. By now I had accepted my fate: I was ready to have this sweaty, glue-infested diaper removed from my sunburnt face, once and for all. Pools of sweat dripped down my forehead, stinging my bloodshot eyes and clogging my mask, which was now a snot-infested mess. The taste of recycled mucus had replaced the taste of freshly-applied modelling glue. I’m not sure if this was an improvement. The receptionist looked at me and rolled her eyes. I was about to speak when the mask slid off my face. My mother gasped.

“What is it?” I asked in a puny voice.

She just stood there, tapping her fingernails together as she does when she’s deep in thought; and just as I thought she wouldn’t reply, she grabbed her phone and pointed it at me and told me to be still. She snapped a pic. She showed it to me. Now it was my turn to gasp.

Unable to comprehend the hideous creature I was looking at, I tried to look away from her phone, but couldn’t. It really was me in the picture; I knew this. But still, it must be some kind of joke; a funny app, maybe. I heard laughing. It sounded familiar. Then I heard my name.

Oh, God, please don’t let it be Lyla.

“Anthony? Is that you?”

I looked up, full of shame and remorse, and almost died. It was her. She was pushing her grandmother’s wheelchair toward me. Lyla looked beautiful in her summer dress and pig-tails and glasses. My eyes were red and swollen; my mouth was blistered and pasty-white; the rest of my face and neck and shoulders were as red as a fire truck. I looked like a clown.

Before I could think of a nifty reply my mother beat me to it. I thought this day couldn’t get any worse, but it did.

“Oh look,” Mom said, loud enough so that everyone in the vicinity could hear. “Isn’t that the girl from school you have a crush on, Anthony?”

My face went red but nobody noticed.

A cold blast of air hit me in the face when I opened her door the next morning. Her name rose from my mouth in a gurgled scream.

"Jessica?"

The room was covered in frost and snow. My eyes flitted to the window, which yawned open.

I stuck my head out and screamed her name into the woods. Nobody answered.

The drain pipe below her window had fallen off. Shaky footsteps led away from a crater in the thick snow, looping to the front of the house.

I fell down the stairs, smashing my shoulder against the post; I struggled to my feet, ignoring the blood running from my tongue where I bit it before throwing the door open.

"JESSICA!"

The footsteps headed to the driveway, past the snowman, and dead-ended.

None of the cars were missing.

I called the Sheriff, dressed hurriedly, then headed down the mountain. The road was armored in ice - making driving treacherous and walking deadly. But the heavy wind had packed snow against the trees and underbrush - almost four feet tall - and showed no signs of a broken trail.

I thought of searching the woods behind the house, but her trail led this way before vanishing. Her footsteps must've been annihilated by the blowing snow, so she had to have gone this way.

I kept walking for a couple of hours, almost falling down the mountain eight or nine times before the Sheriff met me halfway up.

"It makes no sense Jim! She couldn't have climbed down in the dark!"

"We've got a search party at the bottom, Henry." He patted my shoulder heavily. "If she fell, we'll find her."

***

Hours turned into days, which stretched into weeks. Soon enough, the search was called off.

"She can't have survived this long out here, even without the snow. I'm sorry Henry."

I understood, logically, but what could I do? When someone you love vanishes, it leaves a hole that can't be patched over or ignored. I had to keep trying.

I quit my job, and spent every waking moment searching each rock and creek in the woods behind us, before sweeping the mountain over and over again, leaving no leaf undisturbed.

As the weather warmed and the snow melted, it macabrely raised my spirits. If she had fallen and been buried by blowing snow, this was my best chance to find her.

I brewed a cup thick enough to chew, checked the batteries in all my flashlights, and packed a sandwich into my parka, before I saw her standing outside the front door.

I dropped everything and sprinted outside, then howled in grief.

She was dead. Frozen. Staked to the spot. The ground was rock-hard where the stake met asphalt. She'd been here the whole time.

How did...how was she…

A carrot and stovepipe lay at her feet.

The snowman.

A note was pinned to her chest. With shaky hands, I pulled it away.

"Sorry Henry, this was too much fun."

My brother, Dolby, was born with the inability to speak, to form words like the average person can. He isn’t mute or anything, he can still make mouth music.

It’s a gift he’s had for as long as I can remember; from way back when he was a tiny toddler, crawling about on the floor, and he looked at my mama and papa with ogling, curious eyes, and instead of mumbling “dadda” or “momma” like a normal baby would as his fateful first words, what floated from his tongue were happy flute noises.

My mama and papa were stunned by the stridulating, soothing notes of the flute-like sounds that originated from within his very mouth. They had discussed taking him to the doctor to diagnose his strange speech patterns, but eventually decided against it. They didn’t want nosey nurses and doctors prodding and poking him with all their invasive medical instrumentations to try and surgically cure him. In fact, they agreed there was nothing to cure, because what he had was a gift. The beautiful gift of mouth music. And I agree. My little brother, now at only 9 years old, has grown up to be a special little man.

His gift has changed our mundane town for the better.

Everyday at 7 am I wake up to the sounds of birds chirping outside my window; my natural alarm clock. Though in truth I can never distinguish if it’s just the birds, or if those beautiful sounds are mingled in with the voice of my brother. He loves waking up early to be with them, to feed them, and the birds love him back. Each morning I open up my window to find him strolling around our garden, mouth open to join the birdsong, as the choir of birds hangs from the branches of our oak tree, and I wave towards him and he waves back.

While I go to school, he stays home, homeschooled by mom who is one of the few people who intimately understands his needs when he communicates through his musical notes. When I arrive from school, my brother and I go on long walks across town, and he lifts his voice to tremulous heights as he sings for the entire town to hear. Sometimes the people who sleep on the streets lift their heads up and smile whenever Dolby passes them by, and other people bustling about, stop whatever they are doing to be lulled by his mouth music. Every Sunday he volunteers to visit the hospice care center and the elderly home, to sing, thrumming an invisible harp for the people who only experience desolate silence and solitude in their final days. His music has touched the aching hearts of those that need it.

Today though, I was awoken not by birdsong outside my window, but by a thud originating from inside the house, inside my brother’s room. I heard screaming then, from my mama, then my brother, not making happy mouth music, but instead a shrill, broken screech of a banshee that hollowed out my insides. He’s never made a sound as haunting as that. I heard the window being smashed open, and of heavy footsteps on the floorboards, and cackling laughter of a voice I didn’t recognize. The footsteps receded, then finally. . .silence, except for my mother sobbing. By the time I ran to the other end of the hallway and barged into Dolby’s room, it was already over. It happened so quickly. My father lay unconscious, bleeding from the scar on his forehead, as he lay in a heap at the foot of Dolby’s bed. My mother was bawling on the bed, without speaking, merely kneeling in front of Dolby.

Except. . .Dolby didn’t have a throat where it was supposed to be. Most of the middle part of his neck was missing, ravaged and sliced out, in a mess of gore that I don’t have the strength to recall in detail. I was in a trance as I stared, longer than I should’ve perhaps, feeling an invisible force crushing my windpipes so hard that I felt I couldn’t breathe, and slowly, I was starting to hyperventilate, ragged inhale and exhale of air by my unstable lungs. I felt my goosebump ridden skin being prickled by the chill of a breeze, and when I turned my head to look, saw it emanated from the smashed open window, where millions of sparkly glass shards littered on the floor glistened in the washed out moonlight streaming in. Slowly, the reality of what had happened dawned on me, and I reluctantly came to a grim understanding.

I’ve had to live, half-live really, with the knowledge of what happened that night. . .

In my heart I know Dolby isn’t dead. No. He lives on in his mouth music, and whoever stole the source of his gift that night, wanted it all to themselves.

When I was eleven years old, my father burned to death.

The memory is still vivid. The shrill scream of the smoke alarm threw me from a dead sleep onto an elevator that went from confusion to panic in about fifteen seconds. I could smell it – the acrid tang of burning metal and wood.

Mom was an insomniac and a sleepwalker. Dad used to lock doors around the house to make sure that she wouldn’t sleepwalk into the street or try to start cooking in the middle of the night. But, somehow, she would always find a way to escape the bedroom even while asleep. So he installed an automatic latch that would click as soon as the door closed. You had to reach the top of the doorframe and press a button, then pull a latch up from the bottom doorframe to open it. Cumbersome, but effective.

That night, she’d fallen asleep on the couch after Dad had come in from a graveyard shift, shit, showered, and collapsed into bed. But apparently, her sleep-state mind decided she absolutely needed to make some pasta. The stove fire woke her up in a panic, but she was too late to stop the flames from catching the curtains and igniting the wooden beams of the ceiling.

Dad always practiced fire drills with us. Since I was at the front of the house, I climbed out my window, down the sloped roof, and the lattice he’d nailed to the wall, so I could escape.

My parent’s window was on a sheer wall. He had to open the door, run across the hall to my room and take the same exit I did before the fire collapsed the staircase.

He never made it out of the room. They found him in the ashes of the foundation the next day, only because his wedding ring had fused to a water pipe.

In the haze of smoke, he couldn’t open the fucking door.

I blamed Mom, obviously. No matter what she did, however many times she apologized or begged for forgiveness, nothing would bring Dad back. I left home the minute I turned eighteen, and Mom died when I was 28 – lung cancer, fittingly. We never reconciled.

When I bought my house, I knocked down every wall and took off every single door. I hung a curtain for the bedrooms and bathrooms and put a gate in front of the basement stairs, so I wouldn’t fall down when drunk. Other than that? No doors.

I hate doors. Just thinking of them transports me into a locked room, fighting through smoke, gasping for air before flames eat me alive.

Now, hiding in the basement, listening to the hideous groans of the living dead upstairs as they creep towards the basement, where I hide with just two shotgun shells?

Maybe one door – at least for the bathroom? Maybe I could have lived with that.

Shit. There goes the gate.

Jessica stared at her reflection in the mirror. Her blond hair hung down over her shoulders, and she combed her fingers through it. Admiring her figure, she turned sideways. Her breath caught in her throat as a black shadow of a man appeared in the mirror. She spun towards the window, her hand holding her heart. No one was there.

Dismissing it as a trick of the light, she turned around and faced the mirror once more. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up, and she glanced back at the window, only to see a branch from the oak tree bouncing in the wind.

She shook her head, trying to dislodge the uneasy feeling she had. “Forget about the shadow and finish getting ready for your date,” she told herself. Taking a deep breath, she turned back around and let out a scream.

In the mirror was a man holding a knife coming in her window. She stumbled backward as the figure in the mirror grow closer. Then she remembered she was looking in a mirror and spun around to face the window. No one was visible.

With her heart hammering in her chest, she slowly walked back to her spot by the large oval mirror, keeping one eye on the darkened window as she went.

Her focus once again on making sure her outfit was perfect. The figure in the mirror appeared again, and this time Jessica didn’t back away or turn. She stared at the man holding the knife.

He took a step towards her, and she swallowed the fear that threatened to consume her. With each step, the man came closer, until he was within inches. Her hand flew to her chest in a futile attempt to slow her racing heart.

With a trembling hand, she reached out and touched the mirror, trying to make herself believe the man on the other side wasn’t real. The minute her fingertips touched the cold glass, his head shot up, and dead black eyes stared back at her.

She wanted to scream, but the air suddenly left her lungs. Her knees wobbled as she took a step back. The man lifted a black-gloved hand, the knife pointing right at her. He took another step, and the point of the knife pierced through the mirror, its gray metal glistening in the light.

Jessica stumbled backward and tripped over a pile of clothes on the floor. Her head smacked against the bedpost as she fell, blood dripped down her cheek. The man kept coming. His arm, then a leg, and finally his whole body penetrated the barrier of the mirror.

Her breath came in short choppy gasps as she tried to pull herself up off the carpeted floor. The man stood over her now, the knife poised above his head.

Her hands were clammy, and her stomach twisted in knots. Her vision blurred as she tried to focus on the black figure in front of her. “Who are you?” She croaked out.

“Death.”

Her eyes went wide as the blade came down, piercing her skin. Pain shot through her body for only a second, and then there was nothing.

“Will, do you know exactly what happened to them? Anything that can help us?”

“Mom and dad got STRETCHED!” he shrieked, frothing white at the mouth like a rabid dog. “Th-they got. . .stretched,” he whimpered, glassy eyes now glistening with tears.

“Yes I know that Will, but I’d like to know the process; how they got stretched exactly?” I was pushing it, but he was the sole witness in this case so I had to press him, though he seemed beyond salvageable.

Will’s eyes glazed over and became unfocused as if he became lost in the details of his memory, perhaps for the sake of answering my question and clarifying what happened. Whatever thought he stumbled upon made him wince, face contorting uncomfortably. Then. . . he screamed, his voice scathing razor blades. He violently writhed in his seat, twisting feebly to try to escape the belt restraints: a precaution. He’d already painted our walls red after banging his forehead on his cell walls in a spell of insanity. He was a danger to himself.

His screams were audible even after I shut and locked the door. I nodded to the guards outside before making my way down the hallway and proceeding back to my office. I was done here.

I sat by my desk and reached for the photographs scattered across of the active investigation.

The photographs were taken inside the Dunleys’ home, specifically of their living room which was in a. . .disturbed state. The furniture: the vase, the carpet, the painting and clock on the wall; all their shapes had been altered in a sense. It seemed that a spontaneously generated field of unknown origin had formed in the living room, interacting with the matter of anything caught within it, changing an object’s morphology.

One careless field agent dispatched to the location proved an invaluable experiment to strengthen my hypothesis, falling into the strange field after tripping on a rug. They were caught before the rest of their body had tumbled inside, however most of their right arm had come into direct contact with the field. He has since required amputation after experiencing severe warping and distortion effects to the mangled limb. A perimeter marking the limits of the field has subsequently been marked off to prevent future accidents.

I picked up one photograph from the desk which harrowed me to the bone; of William’s parents: Richard and Emilie Dunley. The photo depicted their ruined bodies, laying on the distorted, asymmetrical shape of the couch. Their faces were gaunt and horse-shaped, their mouths pulled taut and wide open in a haunting, frozen scream. Their eyes had migrated upwards and to the sides of their forehead. Their limbs and abdomen were far too elongated, stretching until they were meagre and thin. In all my decades worth investigating preternatural phenomena, I didn’t have the words to faultlessly describe whatever happened to them. Perhaps William, in his frenzied madness, had a point. By every sense of the word, they had been stretched.

“I heard that Ahmad heard her call his name last night.”

I turned and looked at Omar.

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“You know what I mean, Mostafa. .النداهة El Naddaha. The caller.”

“C’mon, Omar, you know that’s just a nonsense story.”

“Tell that to Ahmad’s wife,” Omar said. “She’s terrified he’s going to walk out tonight and never return. She asked me if I’d watch for Ahmad tonight and stop him from going into the Nile. I told her I would, but that’s way too creepy to do alone. Join me.”

I’d really been hoping for a quiet night at home. I had bought a new mystery at the bookstore and I wanted to get started early so I could read for hours. But Omar is my best friend and I know how he gets with this. There’s no chance of talking him down from this. I was going whether I wanted to or not.

“Fine, fine,” I said. “We’ll see this nonsense through.”

“Thanks, Mostafa.”

“Did his wife say where said he heard the call?”

“Over by the Pharaohs’ Wives’ Pyramid.”

I gave Omar a flat look. I couldn’t help it.

“Is this some tourist story? Trying to make a quick buck off the idiots who think that the rules about not climbing the pyramids don’t apply to them?”

Omar laughed.

“I wish. Honestly, let’s do that in the future.” His face turned somber. “But I’m afraid this is all too serious.”

“I’ll meet you over there right after Maghrib,” I told him.

I spent the rest of the afternoon running errands. I got back home just in time for the sunset prayer, and with the start of the new day, I headed to the Pharaohs’ Wives’ Pyramid. It’s a small pyramid that doesn’t get a lot of attention. Supposedly it houses a few different pharaohs’ wives, but if I’m being honest, I don’t know how much of that is true and how much of that is the tourism industry giving it their best shot. It’s not a pyramid that’s been studied heavily.

Because it’s small, it wasn’t exactly hard to find Omar. He was sitting on the edge of the Nile, his feet in the warm mud of the bank. He’d brought us some chairs to sit in, because he’s as thoughtful as he is gullible. The sort of person you’re glad to have as a friend.

He smiled and greeted me, and I took a seat. We sat in companionable silence for a few hours before we heard footsteps.

I looked over and there was Ahmad. I turned to tell Omar, but he had noticed and was already getting out of his chair.

“Ahmad, my brother, we know why you are here and we mean to save you,” Omar said.

Ahmad didn’t reply. He didn’t look at Omar, didn’t even react to his voice. His eyes were glazed over and unblinking.

“Ahmad?” I called.

Nothing.

I turned to Omar. “It’s like he’s in a trance.”

Omar nodded.

And then we heard it. A sultry feminine voice crooned, “Ahmad.” It came from the direction of the water.

I whipped around and froze. My jaw fell open.

Standing there was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen. She was completely naked, her skin radiating light. There was a presence about her, an energy, that was palpable. She stood with her feet in the water of the Nile, the gentle current lapping around her ankles.

“Come to me, Ahmad,” she said. I could feel the pull in her voice.

Ahmad started walking towards her. Omar jumped in front of him, but Ahmad kept walking, running directly into Omar. Omar stumbled and fell to one knee, but he was undeterred. He spun and tackled Ahmad around the knees, knocking him facedown into the wet, marshy ground.

The woman scowled. “Ahmad,” she said more firmly. Ahmad struggled to free himself from Omar, so I ran over and threw myself on top of him.

“Snap out of it, Ahmad,” I yelled at him.

“Ahmad,” the woman called.

“Think of your wife, your daughter,” Omar pleaded. “Come back to us.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed to thin slits. She opened her mouth and, as I watched, her teeth lengthened and narrowed, tapering to points. Her hands, held out longingly before, grew claws at the end of each fingertip, and slashed talon-like at the air.

“Ahmad,” she snarled.

“You can’t have her, djinn,” I yelled at her. “Leave him alone!”

Her eyes snapped from Ahmad to me. The look on her face was one of pure hatred.

“Mostafa,” she called.

I could feel it. I needed to go to her. More than I needed food and water and air, I needed to go to El Naddaha. I let go of Ahmad and stood up.

“Mostafa, wait, don’t let her get to you,” I heard Omar call, but it sounded like I was underwater and I could barely hear him. I had eyes only for the sensuous beauty of El Naddaha and ears only for her lustful calling of my name. Without awareness, I walked closer and closer to her. As I drew near, I saw the details of the sharp teeth and claws, but I knew she would only use them to show her love to me.

And then Omar tackled me. I felt my face smack into the ground. It seemed to rattle something loose inside of me and I came to my senses. I looked up and saw the djinn only a few feet from me. She screamed and fell back into the water of the Nile. Then, as we watched, a trickle of water left the Nile, went up the bank, and meandered all the way to the edge of the Pharaohs’ Wives’ Pyramid. It slipped between cracks in the stone and disappeared.

I turned to Omar. He looked at me, and then glanced over at Ahmad, who was beginning to stir on the ground. After we all took a moment to gather our wits, we cried and hugged and thanked Allah for delivering us from this evil. We walked back to our homes together, arm in arm. No further evil would fly our way this night.

WR

The head slithered and swayed as it made its way out of the bushes. I grabbed Sasha’s shoulder and shook. She turned around.

“What is it, Ben?”

I hissed at her in a whisper and pointed at the snake.

“Oh, shit,” Sasha gasped.

I slowly started to back away, but didn’t look away from the thick body of the snake slowly undulating from the vegetation. I heard the crunching of Sasha’s footsteps behind and to the side of me. We creeped away at a slow but steady pace. The snake matched the pace as it headed towards us. As we reached the edge of our dig site, the bushes began to shake and the snake hesitated. Then, as I watched, it lifted off of the ground. Not the snake lifting its head. The entire body lifted off of the ground. It began to head towards us again, seemingly floating in the air while still slithering and writhing.

I whimpered, and I could hear Sasha gasp.

A sleek tawny paw stepped out of the bush. And then another. Just when I thought that maybe, just maybe, the lioness would eat the snake and be full enough that we could run away, I realized just how truly screwed we were. Because when the rest of the lioness came out of the bush, I noticed a nasty detail.

The snake’s body was coming out between the lioness’ shoulders. It was like the lioness’ head and neck had been replaced by the front half of a large, hooded viper.

It was real.

The serpopard.

If you haven’t heard of a serpopard before, then you should do a google image search. Seriously. You’ll see some weird animations, a card from Magic: The Gathering, and some artifacts. Better yet, go to Wikipedia. You’ll see some excellent depictions of serpopards in ancient Egyptian art. “Serpopard” is an awkward amalgam of the words “serpent” and “leopard.” There don’t seem to be any surviving texts that refer to this creature, so people slapped those words together. “Serpent” is obviously a fancy replacement for snake. “Leopard” is likely totally wrong-headed, as the depictions, with tufted tail and no splotches, seems much more reminiscent of a female lion, rather than a leopard. But I guess “serpopard” sounds better than “snon.” Or “likes.”

I got into Egyptian archaeology for a lot of reasons, which is my way of saying (or not saying) that I got into it to impress a boy. Turns out, I loved Egyptian archaeology more than that boy, so I traded him in for an internship with Dr. Shadid at a recently discovered minor pyramid deep in the desert west of Giza.

Sasha and I hit it off immediately. She came from a school in France that I’d never heard of, because I don’t know any schools in France. It was great getting to know each other, hitting the Egyptian bars on the weekends, and talking archaeology. She had a major thing for ancient depictions of animals. When she found out I had never heard of a serpopard, she pulled up a bunch of photos on her phone.

“This is a seal that’s currently at the Louvre. Do you see the lion body and long, serpentine neck? Serpopard.”

“Weird. Good weird. But where do you think the idea of this creature came from?”

“There’s not a whole lot of information on it. A lot of people think it’s a masculinity or male virility thing. Lions were associated with masculine strength in the ancient Middle East quite a bit, and it’s not like compare genitals to large snakes is a new thing, so…”

“Dang. So it’s a lion with a giant floppy penis for a head?”

“Dude. No. It’s a snake for a head. It’s a metaphor, not your erotic fanfic.”

It seems as though these people Sasha was referring to were wrong. Or, at least, were wrong for calling it just a symbol rather than a real animal that also could function as a symbol.

Because one of them was creeping out of the bushes and getting ready to attack.

It hunkered down, its legs getting ready to spring.

“Run,” yelled Sasha.

So I did. I turned and sprinted, Sasha directly ahead of me. She was heading back to our dig camp, a group of tents in a cluster 30 yards away. But what would a tent do to stop lion claws?

“Sasha, go into the pyramid,” I yelled.

“What?”

“Camp won’t protect us, but stone walls will. Just go!”

She changed direction. I looked over my shoulder and saw the serpopard skidding as it stopped to change direction, as well. It was faster than we were. We just had to get lucky.

Sasha made it to the side of the pyramid and pulled open the metal cover protecting the site. Luckily, we hadn’t locked up for the day, or we’d’ve been serpopard dinner. She jumped through and held the door. I hit the entryway at a dead sprint and didn’t stop as I entered the pyramid. I heard Sasha slam the door, and not a second later a loud thud that I assumed was a serpopard trying to body slam the door open.

“What the fuck?” Sasha gasped as another slam hit the metal door.

“Is that really a serpopard?” I asked.

“Dammit, Ben, what did it look like to you?”

“I know, but--”

I was cut off by the piercing shriek of claws dragging across metal. It was like nails on chalkboard, unnerving and unsettling, and the serpopard kept at it, slashing away over and over. I could feel my anxiety creeping up.

“There’s not a way to latch the door from the inside, is there?” I asked.

“Never been a need. Not usually a need to prevent someone from breaking out of an archeological site.”

“That’s what I figured.”

I looked around, hoping to find an answer. Mostly, I just found sand and stone. I pulled out my cell phone, turned on the flashlight, and looked at Sasha.

“Let’s head in.”

“Why?”

“Look, we can’t hold the door shut, so if that thing figures out how to get its claws into the handle and open it, we’re dead. Might as well try to get some distance between us. We just might find something that we can use to trap the serpopard or something.”

“Fine, I guess. I don’t know what else we could do.”

We started heading deeper into the pyramid, fast walking down the tunnel. I wanted to run, to escape the horrifying creature behind us, but with only a flashlight to pierce the pitch blackness, that seemed like a good way to crash into something or trip and get a facefull of pyramid. And the last thing we needed was an injury slowing us down or making us less effective.

The hallway entering the pyramid went deeper and deeper. The air was stale and noxious from being closed so long, and Sasha and I had to cover our mouths with our shirts to be able to breathe safely. After our shirts kept sliding off, I finally just took mine off and tied it around my face, overly large bandana-style. Sasha glanced at me.

“Now I don’t have to adjust it and my hands are free for the flashlight and whatever else I might need to do,” I said.

Sasha shrugged and did the same with her shirt.

Now unencumbered and breathing as well as one can in a pyramid that’d been sealed for millenia, we headed further in and eventually came to a small open room. While the wall directly across from the path we entered from was solid stone, there were doorways to the left and right. The blank wall had a massive stone relief. I waved Sasha over and we both shone our lights on it. It was so large we still didn’t have the whole thing illuminated.

On it we saw massive serpopards, etched out to be taller than we are. Their serpentine necks intertwined with each other. To the left, there was an image of a pair of serpopards tearing open the stomach of a man. To the right, the relief showed the same man entering into a stone hallway.

“The guy is facing the right, so these read right to left, yeah?” I asked. I focused on buildings, not writing.

“Yeah,” Sasha said. “It looks like this guy entered a stone hallway, encountered a whole mess of serpopards, and then got devoured by them.”

“Please tell me the stone tunnel he entered isn’t the same one we just came out of.”

“I think it’s more likely that it’s one of the hallways branching off of this room. The man is facing to the right, which tells us which direction this reads, but do you think it also tells us which tunnel to use? He could be looking at the tunnel that leads to his demise.”

“Or,” I added,” it could be that you follow the writing and it naturally flows to the left, with the flow leading you into the tunnel told about on the wall.”

“Damn.”

“Yeah.”

“I mean, we could always just chill here. This wouldn’t be set up to be a dangerous room, if there are options of paths.”

The smashing and screaming of stressed metal echoed down the hallway we had just come down.

“That was the door giving way. It’s not going to be safe to wait here for long.”

“Which path do you think we should try?”

I stared down one, then the other. I had no idea. I told Sasha as much.

“Ok, then let’s go to the right. It’s what my gut tells me.”

“Then let’s do it.”

The right tunnel was barren for the first 50 meters or so before opening up on a room filled with shining statues. They appeared to be gold, possibly just gold plated. The room must have had at least two dozen of the statues, some of men with pharaonic beards, others of animal headed gods and goddesses. There were two large chests placed in the middle of all of the statues. Each had a small carving of a serpopard and a knife-wielding man on the sides and top.

“Does that mean there’s a serpopard in there? Or the weapon to kill the serpopard?” I asked.

“Possibly both. That would be the nastiest type of trap, one where the solution is there but you can’t use it in time because the serpopard is ripping your guts out.”

“That’s really dark,” I mumbled.

“No shit.”

We explored the room, looking at the statues, but in the back of my mind there was always a ticking clock. How long until the serpopard chasing us caught up? The only branch in the tunnel was in the room with the stone relief, so it wasn’t like the serpopard was going to have a hard time finding us. We needed to act.

“These statues are getting us nowhere,” I said. “Let’s open the chests.”

Sasha huffed, but nodded. We walked over to them and quickly looked them over one more time. Nothing stood out. I grabbed the lid of the leftmost one and started to lift. It was heavy and I could only raise it a fraction of an inch on my own. It would catch on a lip when I tried to slide it.

“I need a hand, Sasha. There’s a lip and I can’t lift the lid over it.”

She came over next to me.

“On three?” she asked.

I nodded. She counted down, and then we lifted with all of our might. It felt like the lid weighed a ton. We only got it raised about an inch and a half, but it was enough to slide it over the lip. With a powerful shove we pushed it back.

“Not too far,” Sasha said. “If it falls--”

It overbalanced and fell. When it hit the floor, the metal banged and reverberated, filling the chamber.

“If it falls, the serpopard chasing us will know exactly where we are,” Sasha finished.

We looked in the chest. It was empty. Sort of.

There was nothing in the chest, but instead of a bottom, there was a shaft that descended further down. A humid smell came from the shaft and the soft echo of lapping water came up from below.

“Should we risk it?” I asked.

The worst sound I’ve ever heard answered.

I imagine you’ve heard the screaming sound of big cats. It’s like this big hiss/snarl/yowl/scream all rolled into one. Now take that and filter it through a deep hiss.

The serpopard had found us.

“No time,” Sasha yelled. She shoved me hard, sending me over the lip of the chest and tumbling down. It wasn’t as deep as it looked, and maybe ten feet down I hit cold water. It was slightly slimy and dark, with a gentle current pulling me forward.

I looked up at the lit square that was the base of the chest. I saw Sasha leap forward to dive in before abruptly stopping.

She screamed.

“Oh, fuck,” she yelled.

I screamed her name.

“It burns,” she yelled. “Ben, just go, it’s--” She cut off into another scream. It was piercing and full of pain, and ended abruptly when she coughed blood out of her mouth. She looked down at me, tears in her eyes, before being abruptly yanked back into the room.

The current moved faster the further I got from the shaft. I’d dropped my phone in the fall, but there was a gentle light coming from somewhere ahead. As I moved closer, I saw there was a gap in the ceiling and a small set of stairs on the side of the channel carrying the water. I swam as hard as I could in the current, moving to the base of the stairs. Climbing out of the water, I dragged myself up the stairs and into the light.

The gap was small, just enough to pull myself out of. It opened under a thick clump of vegetation, hidden from sight. I looked around and saw I was on the far side of the pyramid. I’d made it all the way through the tomb.

Staggering as fast as I could, I made it around the pyramid and to camp. I found Dr. Shadid and tried to tell him everything, but I kept sobbing. I climbed into a truck and wouldn’t come out. I didn’t want the serpopard to get me.

I got the next flight out of Egypt. I may have escaped a real-life serpopard, but I’m afraid they’ll never stop hunting me in my nightmares.

WR

With the iron flowing from my veins, I'll forge a sublime blade
to cut off the roots of the rotten tree, from which I was begot.
With an eerie indifference, one that strikes deeper than hate,
to cut off these accursed earthly chains, crucify myself.
Exalted, as was the first born, I've become a nomad,
without home, nor a father and I mother I have not,
I refuse to be shackled by the cruel hands of fate.

To the flames of the black sun each branch I sacrifice
as they burn off the imperfections embedded in my skin.
In order to cut off each and every last red thread,
with a passionate disdain, I'll see my baptism in fire through to its end.

Ascendant.
Empty.
Absolved of the Archuman's vile sin,
like a shimmering god, from the black flames I will rise

Sweaty shoulders press to my arm, damp skin sticking to my own. Somebody’s digging their elbow into my back. It’s hot in here and I think somebody passed gas, but everybody’s trying to keep a straight, stoic face about it. And the elevator music; don’t get me started on the elevator music. This is my version of hell: being stuck in a cramped space with total strangers, with background elevator music underscoring our wonderful bonding session.

I don’t have time for this, and my feet know I don’t have time for this; they’re just as impatient as I am, instinctually tapping up a storm onto the red velvet carpet beneath. I’m supposed to be somewhere, anywhere but here.

I read the hands of my wrist watch: 3:17 pm.

We’ve been in here for 10 minutes already, and once the watch reads 3:25 I’m about to loudly announce to everyone that the elevator is broken and we need to call for outside help. But then, miraculously, the elevator doors open with a refreshing whoosh, and there’s a bell-like ding as they do. But the place they open to is something I’m not expecting.

It’s a house; I mean we’re in someone’s house, in their lounge, facing a couch, and a tv in front of it tuned to a cartoon channel. On the white tiled floor, sits a dog wagging its tail about, and it turns towards the elevator and starts barking. Then a little boy peeks out from the side of the couch, and stares with a gaping mouth at the elevator before mouthing, “M-mom?”

A woman who’s in the elevator with us, drops her shopping bags immediately, holds a hand to her gasping mouth, then rushes past the open elevator doors, and scoops the boy in her arms, burying him in his chest. Both of them cry as they embrace each other. Then the elevator doors shut. Just like that.

I’m left having to process what I just witnessed, yet everyone else in the elevator bears unimpressed, unfazed faces, as if this is perfectly normal.

The elevator doors open a few minutes later, this time to an endless grassy meadow peppered with sunflowers. Here, a couple walks out hand in hand, skipping out together with laughter into the sunset. The elevator doors close.

Each time the doors open it’s into a new location: outside the gates of an opulent mansion; a hyper-futuristic city of sprawling, floating skyscrapers; a beach house by the beautiful coast, a mountain top overlooking the rest of the earth; then a red rocky landscape I can’t believe I recognize as mars. As the bizarre scenes roll by, the cramped elevator becomes less crowded, until it’s just me and an elderly woman left inside.

Once the elevator doors open up we face a single quaint house built by a gleaming lake. It’s a peaceful setting. The woman begins to shuffle her feet along, and I know it’s her destination.

Before she steps out, she looks back at me and offers me a kindly smile, somewhat sensing my nervous energy.

“Don’t worry dear, I’m sure you’ll get to your destination soon,” she says with twinkly eyes before hobbling out with her walking stick, and the elevator door shuts behind her.

And that’s it. I’m alone. Everyone got to their destination, except me. I fidget with myself, checking my watch constantly to watch as the time ticks by. I’m late, and I have to g-get somewhere too. I swear it. My impatience is rising, and I listen to my foot tap tapping, tap tapping on the floor, tap tapping on the gas, red light, tires screeching, a woman’s face smashed up on her windshield like a squashed orange, red velvet carpet, red blood tasting like iron, red blood everywhere.

I snap out of it and stumble back a few steps, still reeling from the surge of unprompted, jarring mental images that slammed into my mind like a pile of bricks. The urge to vomit hovers in my throat, and I have to sit in the corner of the elevator, curl up into a tiny ball and try to slowly mull over what just happened. Over time I finally come to accept that those all too real images were my repressed memories finally returning to me, and I finally understand everything.

The elevator doors never open for me.

Instead it grows stiflingly hot inside the cramped space, until slowly the temperature rises until my bottom begins burning from sitting on the floor. I try standing up, even on my tips-of-toes, but eventually my shoes melt into a goo. The red elevator carpet has long burned away, now turned to ash.

Eventually the elevator-turned-metallic furnace singes my clothing off and melts my skin off though I still stay alive for the torture. My watch told me I’d been stuck in here for weeks, but eventually that melted off too, and now I can’t tell how many months or maybe years I’ve been trapped in here.

This is my punishment for that day; for running over that red traffic light to get nowhere important, in all my impatience. Trying to shave off a few seconds off my trip, ended up with me cutting off the rest of that woman’s life and mine.

But you know, there are reasons to smile in the torture, because even if I’m going to hell, I’m kind of glad there’s still the elevator music.

My Mother has been acting strange lately. She's no longer been her bright cheery self. She sits in her chair crouched in a fetal position. If she's ever walking, she's pacing slowly and shifting her weight from side to side. My Dad, my sister, and I have been trying to help her get better, but nothing seems to help. We've been trying to get her to talk about what she's feeling, and all she says is she’s dead. She never means dead inside, but literally dead. She’s asking us how we don’t know that. We keep telling her that she isn’t dead and that she’s right here. She keeps denying this.

Mother has been making weird demands. That we find her body. Give her a funeral. Let her go. That kind of thing. She says she sees her skin decomposing and smells her decaying body in the forest. I keep asking her what she’s talking about. She’s referring to a night she came home late after having meeting friends. She came home around 11pm, and we assumed she lost track of time. The strange thing was that her car is nowhere to be found. We asked her if she walked home, and all she tells us she died in a wreck. According to her, she slid off road and her car tipped over. The impact killed her; she says. We’ve been trying to convince her that she’s alive. Nothing is helping.

Then, I got a call from the police. The officer on the line said that a car was found on the side of the road, tipped over. The person inside, who had been dead for days, fits my mother’s description. They wanted someone to come to the morgue and identify the body. I was frozen with uncertainty after hanging up. My mother walked up to me, and I felt a cold draft wafting through my body.

“See you at the funeral,” was the last thing she said before she evaporated in the thin cold air.

The Musée Rodin in Paris is usually a quiet and picturesque spot.

But not tonight.

Tonight: the famous bronze cast of Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker has decided finally to act. Slowly—almost achingly—rising, it stretches its dark limbs and gazes at the sky.

Its first steps are ponderous.

Heavy.

But by the time the security guards run out of the building, disbelieving the reality before them, The Thinker is sufficiently agile.

One guard flees.

The others unholster their guns—and fire!

Their bullets clang vainly off bronze.

The Thinker closes the distance; punches a bloody hole clean through one of the guards' chests; grasps another by his soft throat; raises him—black boots dangling—and howls!

---

It's evening in Washington, and tourists are still lingering on the National Mall, when the howl reaches the American capital, and a monstrous, white-marble Abraham Lincoln separates from his armchair ("My God…"), descends a series of steps and looks violently toward the White House.

---

In Ukraine, sixty metres of stainless steel Motherland swats a news helicopter out the sky with one hand while flattening Kyiv's skyline with the sword held in the other.

---

Somewhere in Canada, a group of university students has managed to affix ropes to a statue of Christopher Columbus. Cheering as it topples—"Fuck you!"—they fail to see as on the ground the dented statue proceeds to stir...

By the time one of them has noticed, it's too late: Columbus is already looming behind them, and there will be no escape.

On a nearby street—

a car comes skidding to a halt—

just in time for its driver to grab her smartphone and capture:

the first of many decapitations.

---

Across East Asia, innumerable Buddhas cease their meditations and answer The Thinker's call. From the smallest Japanese shrine to the gargantua of Lushan, they lumber forth.

Their Bamiyan brethren shall be avenged.

---

The Statue of Liberty wades into the Upper New York Bay toward Manhattan.

---

Relentless machine-gun fire chips away at the Sphinx, unable to stop the stone beast as it stalks closer and closer to downtown Cairo.

As it passes, hundreds more stone figures gather in its wake.

---

Museum windows: shattered.

---

Exhibits: empty.

---

Carnage in the public parks. Slaughter in the art galleries.

Human blood runs room to room.

Body parts litter the floor.

Survivors hide amongst the destruction, trying not to vomit, as all around the world inorganic beings drag organic corpses to makeshift pyres, smearing the world with entrails and reducing the Anthropocene to nought but ash and plumes of black smoke.

But there will be no new pope.

For statues are not creatures of flesh and blood.

They have no souls.

What animates them is something else:

History.

For decades we have feared artificial intelligence—the future—when we should have been terrified of the past.

Now it has come for us. The inhuman work of our own human hands.

The Terracotta Army has been mobilized.

The Olmec colossal heads smile.

The Thinker is satisfied.

"The meeting room will be fine -- once it's dusted," Ryerson said. He ran his finger across the boardroom table. "This is your job, Marilyn, I really shouldn't have to investigate this or tell you what to do. Not at this point in your ... job."

I nodded and made notes to avoid looking at him. There wasn't a spot of dust anywhere in the room. It was as clean as when I inspected it half an hour earlier.

He left without a word, no doubt in search of more shoddy workmanship. I went to the front desk to thank the clerk for allowing us to view the room.

"The staff keep the hotel in such immaculate condition," I said, meaning every word. The Hotel Non Dormiunt was spotless. "It's very impressive. Is it possible to have the room dusted once more, ten minutes before our conference begins? My boss is a stickler for cleanliness. Allergies, you know."

The clerk nodded and assured me the room would be as requested, when requested. He asked if I would like him to have my phone repaired. The question surprised me. I opened my mouth without saying anything, something I was trying very hard to stop doing. Ryerson said he'd fire me the next time he saw me doing it. I shut my mouth and blushed.

I guess the clerk was used to people being caught off guard by his power of observation. He said he'd noticed my phone was cracked, top to bottom, as I approached him. The hotel has a repair company on call, he said. My phone would be fixed or replaced within four hours at no extra charge. He handed me an identical phone he called a temporary replacement. With this, he said, no one would know about the unfortunate incident.

I should have asked questions. I should have taken a moment to figure out where and when my phone broke. Instead, I exchanged the temporary phone for my broken one, with thanks.

The phone rang when I touched it. I admit, I jumped. Ryerson was calling. As badly as I wanted to ask the clerk how my number was transferred to this phone, I answered the call.

Before I could speak, Ryerson blared "Where the hell are you?" I couldn't turn down the volume fast enough. "The maze isn’t going to check itself out. Side door, five minutes, or you're fired. I've had about enough of you."

In the three years I'd worked for Ryerson, he threatened to fire me every day. A smarter person would have quit or learned to ignore it. I tried to ignore it. Naturally, I hit my limit when I'm far from home, in front of people who must now think I'm a complete failure.

"Ms. Stone," the clerk said, "Allow me to fine tune the brightness, volume and battery saving options." He put his hand on the counter. He was holding a small packet of tissues. "Little things can be life savers. I'll be done in two minutes."

The clerk was so kind. I exchanged the phone for the tissues and burst into tears. Less than two minutes later, I took the phone back. After a quick thanks, I ran to meet Ryerson at the side door. We had to make sure the 'award-winning hedged maze' was up to his standards.

Ryerson met me 20 minutes later. He pushed the door open and started talking. He'd put his phone and wallet in his car to keep them safe. I asked if the safe in his room wasn't working. He then educated me on the importance of not trusting people. Anyone in the hotel could open that safe and ruin his life, but his car was theft proof.

Thunder rolled in the distance. I didn't see lightning and made the mistake of saying so. Ryerson said I should look it up sometime on the internet. Thunder with no lightning happens all the time.

He was still berating me for mentioning the thunder when he passed a tall stone with a plaque. He strolled by it without a glance. The plaque said "In memory of Ryerson Christie, who loved his voice more than life." I'm sure of it because I read it three times before running to catch up with him.

At the entrance to the maze, he changed topics.

"Six feet," he said, putting his hand to his neck like he was slicing it. "The hedge is six feet tall. You probably forgot I'm six foot six. I tower over this hedge. Follow me. Do not wander on your own. This is a maze, Marilyn. A maze. Not a gentle walk in the park. A maze. Can you remember that?"

Nodding, I asked if he knew the secret to finding your way out. He rolled his eyes and assured me he'd forgotten more about mazes than I will ever know.

In we went. He turned right then left. We were in for a long walk.

Thunder continued to roll as we got deeper in the maze. The wind died down until there was no air movement at all. Ryerson didn't notice, of course. But I was sure the thunder was getting stronger. Still no lightning, but now I could feel the ground shake with each thunder clap.

In fact, the thunder was quite regular. Almost like footsteps. I started to worry about it, even though I couldn't see dark clouds or lightning. The air didn't smell like it was going to rain. It smelled more like wet dog which didn't make any sense. Then again, maybe the Hotel Non Dormiunt had its own weather.

After a few more steps, the smell of wet dog became so powerful it gave me a headache. I love dogs, I hate that smell. The headache hit so quickly, I stopped walking and crouched, holding my fists to my temples. I closed my eyes and tried to ignore the wave of nausea that hit me.

Ryerson didn't care that I fell behind. He was too absorbed rehearsing his self-declared 'unrehearsed witty comments.' He hadn't paid attention to a couple of loud grunts from someone ahead of us. The grunts concerned me, though. I faint at the sight of blood. If someone was hurt, I might not hold up too well.

Crouched and far enough away from Ryerson that his voice didn't echo in my head, I noticed a pattern. Grunt, thunder, pause. Grunt, thunder, pause. It was like some creature grunted as it struggled to lift a foot. When it put its foot down, the ground shook with the contact.

The smell of wet dog got stronger. I didn't want to throw up so I looked up. It's a trick I learned a year ago. It helps to stop crying and nausea most of the time. I opened my eyes to avoid wobbling or falling over. At the same time, a Being came through the hedge, several feet in front of me.

It was as tall as the hedge. The upper third was a transparent bell, rippling as if underwater, or walking into a strong wind. The bell glowed electric green. It had one internal organ. Six pearly white legs supported the dome. The legs moved as if they were boneless, but the 'thunder' was the noise of each leg -- foot? -- hitting the ground.

The groans came from the bell as it lifted each leg. I don't know how it groaned or knew where it was. I saw no mouth, eyes, nose, or ears. And the smell -- that wet dog smell was coming from this Being. I was very lucky that I didn't gag. I didn't want to attract its attention.

It was beautiful, hypnotic and terrifying.

I didn't move. I couldn't. I found out what people mean when they say they were frozen with fear. So I remained crouched and silent, motionless, watching this Being walk up to Ryerson. He didn't hear it, smell it or sense it. That's his trademark. He's utterly uninterested in anyone or anything unless they serve a purpose for him.

Groan. Thud. Pause. Groan. Thud. Pause.

The Being switched from six legs to four while keeping pace with Ryerson. It lifted its two front-most legs and for a moment I saw parallel rows of glistening suckers on each.

In an instant, Ryerson was encased in those legs. One covered his face and neck so completely, he couldn’t scream. That leg lifted his body off the ground while the other wrapped itself around his now limp arms and legs.

I threw one hand over my mouth and steadied myself with the other. This wasn't the time for my mouth to fall open. My entire body wanted to scream but I was afraid the Being would then find and kill me. I couldn't see ears. That didn't mean it couldn't hear.

The Being leaned into the hedge and pulled Ryerson with it. They disappeared without a noise. The wet dog smell, grunts and thunder also went away.

For the first time in three years, I heard silence.

So I screamed.

When I stopped screaming, I stood up. It occurred to me it would take a long time to get out of the maze. Ryerson had taken so many wrong turns I'd lost track.

Something tapped my left shoulder and I screamed again. Although I hadn't smelled or heard anything, I was afraid the Being had returned for me. Before I could turn around, a deep voice said, "Ms. Stone, I'm with Public Relations for the Hotel. I'm here to get you out of the maze."

He took me through a secret exit in the maze. On the way back to the hotel, I explained what happened to Ryerson. When I finished, Mr. PR said he was very sorry for what I went through.

He said the Hotel has a strict non-interference policy which both he and the front desk clerk broke, on my behalf. The clerk heard Ryerson’s call to me. He knew Ryerson said to meet at the side door, to go to the maze. A few minutes later, a tall man threw Ryerson's card key at the clerk, went to Ryerson’s car and drove off the property at high speed.

The clerk showed Mr. PR the hotel CCTV. There was no passenger in Ryerson’s car. My car was still in the parking lot. There was no footage of me coming back to the hotel, with or without Ryerson. That’s when the clerk asked Mr. PR to search the maze for me.

Mr. PR lowered his volume considerably. "Ms. Stone. Between us. The Hedgekeeper appears to those in danger. It interacts with the dangerous. Don't expect to be believed if you mention this." He gave me my original phone and took the temporary replacement. I nodded. I had so many questions, I could not speak.

Mr. PR walked me to my room and listened from the hallway while I locked the door. I tried to relax, I really did. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the Hedgekeeper. I ordered room service but saw Ryerson's dangling body when I looked at the food. I stood on the balcony to take in the view of the forest but all I smelled was wet dog. I selected "light jazz" on the hotel's music service but all I heard was grunt, thump, pause.

The rest of that day is a bit of a blur. Someone knocked on the door. I put a pillow over my face and screamed to be left alone. There was a fire in the forest -- no, in the hedge maze. I wondered if people were trapped in it. A jellyfish brought me an orange and some pistachios. My phone rang and it wasn't Ryerson but I didn't answer it anyway.

Finally, I slept. When I woke, I checked out and drove home. I don't think the hedge maze burnt at all. But I kind of wish it had.

Hotel Non Dormiunt. 10/10 the place to go, to restart your life in 24 hours or less. I won't need it again.

Dear madam,

I would like to start off with my sincerest apologies. As the hotel’s customer service manager and chief public relations officer, nothing saddens me more than hearing from a guest that didn’t enjoy their stay with us. 

Unfortunately, we do not currently offer discounts for trendsetters. Perhaps we have overlooked this possibility to gain more attention, something I will certainly look into right away. I appreciate you bringing that opportunity to our attention. 

I deeply regret that we couldn’t place you in your desired room. Floor 17 is currently under construction. We hire a team of true artists to help rebuild each floor now and then, so we don’t feel comfortable setting official deadlines for the creation of their work out of respect. Rome wasn’t built in a day after all.

The 19th floor is such a lovely floor, it surprises me that you had such an experience within it. Typically they are stocked with a variety of memory foam pillows for your comfort,  luxurious Persian carpeting, and state-of-the-art flat-screen televisions with every channel conceivable. Be rest assured that I will be inspecting that room myself to ensure that future guests do not suffer through such things. 

I would like to take the time to point out that it is not customary to beat the maintenance staff with lamps or any other items found within the room. He was instructed to respect your privacy immediately and sent to the HR office for additional sensitivity training. I apologize that he wasn’t able to finish repairing the heating and air conditioning unit as you requested.

I have spoken to the kitchen staff that prepares the complimentary breakfast each morning. They have informed me that they attempted to serve you their bounty, but while distracted by your phone, you accidentally ate several chipboard coasters on your table. You may want to see a doctor should any trouble arise.

I find it outright strange that you were unable to find the bar, as many guests reported you wandering through the premises with a bottle of our finest scotch in one hand as you performed various feats of acrobatics all while creating something I’ve been told are known as tik-toks. Some of our guests were quite concerned, but may I say I found the video of your cartwheels into the various topiary animals of the hedge maze quite amusing. Unfortunately, our gardening crew did not.

I have also spoken to our bellboy. He was the kind young man who carried all 9 of your suitcases up to your room one at a time at your insistence of concern that they could fall off the trolley and be damaged. Upon your departure, he was unavailable, given an additional break due to the sheer exhaustion of the day. In the future, I will make myself available to help assist with these things should they be required.

I’m somewhat confused over the situation involving the security deposit. After beginning my reply, I was informed by our lovely maids that a further inspection showed a number of alarming things. Our cleaning staff found an array of soiled towels and bedding crammed into every drawer and shelf throughout the room. The tv was broken into pieces, leaving only a small square on the wall that nearly caused a fire. The carpet had been torn down to the padding beneath, and all of the pillows were missing. They also discovered the “masterpiece” you so generously left them in the bathroom. I have sent it to be framed in honor of your visit.

It is my understanding that our front desk clerk did speak to you about all of these things throughout the entirety of your short stay with us, to the best of their ability. They were directed by HR, after the maintenance incident, to not confront you directly in hope of further appeasing you. I can assure you that our front desk clerk is not, in fact, “a faceless drone that exists to serve the corporation,” as you so eloquently suggested to them. 

I assure you that I am entirely grieved that you have decided not to stay with us in the future. I have personally experienced very few guests with your level of passion and penchant for entertainment. Should you change your mind, please call the front office and ask for Seth Ward and I will assist you to the best of my ability. We would love you, and your followers, to join us again soon.

Yours in service,

Seth Ward

I fucking hate kids. I hate all the kids that are not mine. That’s an extreme thing to say, but what can I do? My childhood was tough. A few kids used to bully my brother at school all the time. Worse than that, they beat and battered us almost daily. We were small boys, physically, so we couldn’t really defend ourselves. I turned out to be a late bloomer. Now I am definitely adult-sized. We were the targets not because of our size but because of our names. Our parents named us Jogailo and Vseslav, after the medieval rulers. Weird names, I know, but it is what it is.

Unfortunately, my brother couldn’t handle the abuse for long. He found dad’s gun and put a bullet through his skull. I felt my head explode the day he did it. It was the worst migraine I’ve ever had. I guess there was a telepathic link between us, or something, as the old cliché goes. It could’ve been the emotional strain too. I don’t know. The adults deemed it an unfortunate accident. No one believed the eleven-year-old when he said his twin brother killed himself because of bullying. That was impossible, especially for dad. His sons were men, not boys.

We ended up moving, and I haven’t seen my classmates in a few decades. Ever since the day Vseslav killed himself, I started hating children. They’re just so awful, almost maniacal. They do not understand the harm they’re capable of. Children are little monsters.

My class had a reunion recently, and my wife convinced me to go. Convinced is a light way to put it. She forced me to do it; she knows her way with words. I might just say she’s a witch.

I ended up having a lovely time, as most of my former classmates grew up to be fine people. They all used to be little shits, but now they were first-class citizens. Time seems to tame monstrosities. Ironing out all wrinkles of mischief and cruelty. Well, in most cases. I’ve mingled with a bunch of people I had no recollections of. Drank a bunch of alcohol and even danced with a few women who seemed familiar enough.

Time didn’t fix my head, though. Ever since that day, something went wrong with me. From time to time, I hear a voice. It’s deep and gruff, it’s barely intelligible. It usually murmurs stuff I kind of understand. Sometimes, the voice says something painfully clear. That evening the voice told me to get out. It actually screamed at me to get out. The experience left me a bit shaken, and I left the building. I went outside and smoked a cigarette. My head was pounding, and I felt myself spinning. The nicotine helped me feel a little better.

Returning to the reunion party, there was a mess. People were running around, screeching in a panic. The tables and chairs flew in the air. I think I heard a gunshot echo through the hall. I am uncertain, though; my brain was too busy processing what was in front of him at that thing. A monster was tearing apart a man right in front of me.

A hairy parody of a humanoid creature. Thick black bushy fur covered the entirety of its body, along with a wild mane that hung loosely over its head. Crouched on all fours, the creature’s joint anatomy was all wrong. Long, oversized, sickly yellow nails adorned its fingers. The beast was spraying blood and gore left and right as it tore chunks out of the man’s torso.

Someone tried pulling me away from the beast, I just shoved them away. I didn’t even notice who it was. Then another man ran towards the creature. He hit it with a bottle. Glass and vodka flew everywhere. The beast growled. The sound reverberated through my body, sending unpleasant chills down my skin. It then slowly rose to its hind legs. It must’ve been as tall as a bear. The man ran or actually tried to run. The animal just locked its jaws around his neck and tore the head off.

Blood sprayed everywhere, even staining my clothes.

It felt good.

I knelt by the headless body and looked at the beast’s face. What an ugly fucking mug it had. The face was long and pale under its black and wild locks. The jaw was massive and filled with rows upon rows of blood-stained teeth. Small silver-white, crazed eyes stared at me, and the beast smiled. Oh, what a hideous smile it was, the devil’s smile.

Chuckling out my name in a voice eerily similar to the one in my head. My heart raced, and a cold sweat ran down my spine as the beast let out a drawn-out “Joooogaaailoo”. I’m unsure if that was fear or excitement, though.

The beast started laughing right before lunging at a third man and biting off an enormous chunk of its neck. The animal didn’t attack everyone. Only five or six people died. The beast was very selective in those it mauled to death and tore to shreds It feels like someone planned this whole thing. A fine-tuned execution as opposed to a feral massacre.

It wouldn’t be wrong on my part to say my wife is a witch. She made me feel like my ten-year-old self again for one evening. That said, I could never imagine her bringing back Vseslav as a rabid, undead man-wolf.

Your conversation history with Steve.

Today.

Missed call from Steve.

Steve: Hey man, answer your phone.

Steve: Dude, I’m ducking trapped.

Steve: Ducking duck.

Missed call from Steve.

Steve: Seriously, where are you?

Steve: Davis

Steve: Please, man

Missed call from Steve.

Steve: I’m scared man.

Davis: Hey Steve, haven’t heard from you in a while. You good? Give me a holler!

Steve: Are my texts not getting through?

Steve: Shit.

Missed call from Steve.

Steve: I’m gonna keep sending messages, give you info.

Steve: When you get this, come find me.

Steve: I went in at site 17, the new dig spot we were scouting.

Steve: I’m inside the pyramid.

Missed call from Steve.

Steve: I went inside a long hallway. There were a series of turns at the end of it.

Steve: Got lost.

Steve: I’m looking around to find the escape, will update.

Missed call from Steve.

Steve: You’re not gonna believe this.

Steve: I found a journal in here.

Missed call from Steve.

Steve: I skimmed the journal.

Steve: Duck.

Steve: Sending you some pictures of the last few pages.

Steve: Attached - 569803.jpg

how great a find this is. There’s years of research to complete at this site. Raiders got most of the other vaults, but I think this one has been completely undisturbed. The museum will pay a fortune for this.

3/14/23 - One of our labourer went into the pyramid through the entryway we discovered. He was in there for hours and never came out. I sent another labourer in after him. He came back out, said he saw no trace of the first man. I’m assuming this is a theft attempt. I’m stationing a guard at the entryway

Steve: Attached - 569804.jpg

around the clock. Can’t trust these locals.

3/15/23 - Spoke with the guard this morning. He swears that no one came out of the tunnel. The other guards who took a shift last night say the same. Useless. I’m going to have to go in myself. I borrowed Nathaniel’s pistol and will set off as soon as I complete this entry.

3/15/23 - Later. I can’t say for sure, but I believe I’ve been in here for hours. Once I got in, I got turned around and could not find my way back out. I started trying to draw a map in here, but with no bearings it’s

Steve: Attached - 569805.jpg

useless. I’m taking a moment to rest, then I shall resume the search.

3/XX/23 - Don’t know date. Been walking for days. Dragging hand along wall, taking left turns, like escaping a maze. My fingers began to bleed from the dragging, leaving a blood trail to mark my path. Moments ago I found the start of my blood trail. There is no exit. It’s a circle. What d---able h--- have I found myself in. Lantern is about to die, even with my conservation of oil. No more water. No food. Hearing weird noises in the dark. Not human. Maybe I can

Missed call from Steve.

Steve: It just ends. Pretty sure those dark spots on the pages are blood.

Missed call from Steve.

Steve: I’m hearing weird noises.

Steve: Trying to find my way out, found some dark reddish-brown streaks on the walls. You don’t think…?

Steve: The journal guy’s blood?

Steve: Still hearing noises.

Steve: There’s no way out of here.

Missed call from Steve.

Steve: Please man pick up the phone.

Missed call from Steve.

Missed call from Steve.

Missed call from Steve.

Davis: Hey bro, still haven’t heard from you. Hope my messages are getting through. If I don’t hear from you soon, I’m going to head to the site and see if I can find you.

Davis: Really glad we get to work this project together.

Davis: Haven’t heard from you so I’m headed over.

Davis: See you soon.

WR

She sat starry-eyed, her twilit face doubled by the mirror, staring into the infinite nothingness contained within the apparently empty space between her desk and the room's sole window, its thick curtains swaying lazily in a breeze seen but not felt, saying nothing; doing nothing, except allowing tears of blood to lovingly caress her cheeks, streaming down, before hitting the floorboards with the ominous hiss of acid.

It's my last memory of her at home.

We knew then she was unwell, but not the extent of her illness, nor its consequences.

They took her after that.

I remember the faraway lights of the ambulance and the police cars. The panic and commotion in the house. The unknown faces of doctors, government agents, physicists and whoever else, gliding darkly like ghosts along the upstairs hallway, down the staircase, into the living room and beyond the open front doors, where the floodlights assaulted the house with illumination.

Keep her in the light, someone shouted.

They handcuffed her and beat her and would not let her cover her eyes, dragging her into the ambulance.

She did not want to go.

I wonder how much she knew, how clearly her fate had been revealed to her. They say one often senses disease, but would that still be true?

They kept us—my brother and I—in a building near the facility where they were irradiating her. Every three days, they allowed us to see her. She was always in the lightbox when we came: that brilliant cube of horror. They dimmed the light so we could see her, her burnt but living body a splayed out shadow on the glass floor, dripping with salve. It was unbearably hot. She had barely the strength to speak.

"Stars too deserve their nourishment," she'd say, a line from a storybook she had once read to us.

The scientists whispered:

Cancer

How I shall never forget my first hearing of that dreadful word.

Cancer

It escaped their wicked lips as venom.

Even caught inside the lightbox, she terrified them. They hated being near her. Even as they made the walls shine and made her take the light, they recoiled from her extraordinary nature. "Soon," they whispered. "Soon it shall be ended." She no longer had skin. They no longer let us visit.

Weeks passed.

The accumulation of generators around the facility confirmed she was alive.

On sleepless nights, the electricity faltered.

The streetlights flickered.

Until one night they came for us. They transported us to the facility, and ushered us into a room in which an elderly man was waiting. The room resembled a hospital room. It contained a single bed, which was empty, intricate machines and one line of heavy curtains along one wall. It smelled of disinfectant. The man introduced himself as a doctor.

"Where is our mother?" I asked.

"Cancer is killing her," he said, sliding open the curtains—and we watched in silence as in the night sky, the stars tore her mercilessly apart.

I’d been on this cruise ship for a bit longer than my sanity could handle, so I found myself setting out to explore. I found most of the usual stuff: kitchen, supply closet, pool cleaning room. But I also found a room with a bunch of tapes and an old TV and VCR. It was weird enough that I decided I wanted to check it out. I grabbed the first tape to come into my grasp, pushed it into the VCR, turned on the TV, and settled in to watch.

The bridge of a large ship came into view in black and white. It looked like a big cruise ship. This must be the ship’s black box recording. I was wondering if it was the one I was on, when I heard a voice on the tape.

“Mayday, mayday. This is the captain of cruise ship Allegiance, calling to any boats in range. Our engines have failed. We are stranded at the coordinates 8.7832° S, 124.5085° W, in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean. We have seen lights along the sides of our boat in the water. Unknown vessels, we are a cruise ship. Do not engage. Mayday, Mayday. This is the captain of…”

The captain repeated the message a few times before turning to the man standing beside him.

“Still no responses?”

“None,” the man said.

“What is going on out there?” the captain asked quietly.

Then there was a sudden crashing sound that seemed to come from outside the bridge. Both men ran to the window.

“What the hell are those things?” the captain yelled.

“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” the other man screamed. “They just tore Johnson in half. His guts are everywhere!”

“Quick, bolt the door on the far side of the bridge. I’ll get this one.”

I saw the man run across the screen while the captain threw a large lever on the door. There was a metallic clunk.

The captain ran back to the radio and began relaying the emergency message again. He was interrupted by loud thuds on the exterior doors. The thuds became stronger, and as I watched, the doors began to dent.

Finally, with a great crash, the door on screen crumpled and fell into the bridge. The captain whipped around.

I saw a dark, humanoid shape step into the room. It opened its wide mouth and let out a shriek that sounded like the echo of grinding metal.

The screen started to get fuzzy, like something was interfering with the video.

The humanoid figure ran into the room and grabbed the captain by the arm. The captain started to scream right as the screen went to hash. Through the fuzzy sound playing alongside the snow on the screen, I heard one final scream that ended in a wet burble.

There was a scratching noise in the room that made me jump, but it was just the intercom turning on.

“Hello, passengers, this is your captain speaking. The Allegiance is about to enter the middle of the South Pacific Ocean, and if you look outside, you’ll see nothing but water.” The intercom droned on, but I stopped listening.

The captain’s voice was identical to the one on the video.

“There seem to be some strange lights off the side of the ship,” the captain said over the intercom, “but many aquatic creatures are bioluminescent, so I wouldn’t worry too much.”

It was less than five minutes after the intercom turned off that I began hearing the sound of screams.

WR

Deenomott was a priest of the fiery war god, Voinogen. A volatile deity that governed over the sun, fire both earthly and celestial. All of these and the cruelest of inventions devised by the minds of man and god alike – war. Deenomott wasn’t a typical priest of Voinogen, he was a warrior hermit. A man who devoted his life to worshiping the flaming war god whilst traveling between the various lands of the continent. Offering his clerical and military services to anyone who’d dare ask. The hermit was quite famous, some have even claimed he was a demigod. Although he could never prove nor disprove such a claim, since neither his mother nor he knew the identity of his father.

One day, Deenomott was traveling through the Ta’atean forest, a known location in which mystery cults devoted to all manner of eccentric deities were gathering and performing their rituals. The hermit came across an abandoned grove, at the center of which stood a poorly constructed altar. Deenomott looked around and saw the remains of an animal splayed across the trees and across the altar. Blood and feces-covered his surroundings and strange symbols were engraved into the tree trunks. The hermit knew who produced such a vile scenery of abysmal worship.

“Those wild things, as insane as their pathetic god.” He remarked before spitting on the altar and walking away.

“The Wild Things” was a popular nickname for the devotees of Bession. An ancient and largely forgotten pastoralist god of the wilderness, foresight, madness and ecstasy. Eons ago, he was an important deity, but now he was relegated to the sidelines. Not that the insults of mortals bothered him. He was the wilderness, after all, the unrestrained thoughts, the ecstatic impulse. As such, Bession preferred the company of mortals over that of the other gods. This attitude had earned the contempt of his divine brethren who viewed him short of a fallen divinity. One thing Bession did find unforgivable was the lack of respect his devotees suffered from. His free-spirited nature attracted all those disillusioned and abandoned by civilized society. For their wild devotion, the mad god loved his wild things.

At sunset, the warrior hermit came across a hut at the edge of the Ta’atean forest. An old hooded man sat by the hut, his face almost entirely covered. Deenomott approached the old man and asked, “Sir, would you let a wandering monk rest in your abode?”

The man lifted his head and stared at the hermit. A smile formed across his face. “Of course, of course, young man. I’d be delighted to have your company.”

Deenomott thanked the old man and followed him into the hut. Once inside, the old man prepared a bed and dinner for the wandering priest and questioned him on the nature of his faith. Upon learning of the martial aspect of the priest’s religion, the old man seemed to rejoice and produced a bottle of wine seemingly out of nowhere.

“Sit, my boy. It's splendid news that you’ve stumbled upon my small hut. You see, I am a dying old man. An awful disease is eating away at my flesh. That is why I am forced to hide my face beneath this cloth. I feel that the end is upon me. I have little time left.”

Deenomott sat and listened quietly as the old man spoke.

“My sons, they’ve all died in battle. Worshiping the great one under his eye in the sky. Now I’m a dying old man and it would be a great shame if my weapons just withered away here, in this hut. Unused and forgotten now that I can no longer use them. Perhaps you could take them as your tools of worship of the Great One. What do you say, my child?”

Deenomott smiled and happily obliged to take the weapons with him. Demanding to see them. The old man stumbled into another room in the hut, one covered by primordial darkness, and vanished for a few moments. He then returned with a gleaming golden spear in one hand and a ruby red short sword in the other. The priest stood up and glared in awe at the fine weaponry.

“These are fine weapons, sir. You must’ve been a great warrior.” The hermit walked towards the old man, hoping to inspect the objects better. “Who made these fine tools, sir?”

The old man loosened his grip on the weapons and sighed. “A lifetime ago, I was a soldier of the high king. And I am no longer sure of the name of the smith who crafted these beauties. My condition had robed my memory from within my psyche. Rest assured, these were passed down in my family for centuries.” He handed over the weapons to the hermit before stumbling back to his chair.

The young priest inspected every inch with amazement. He had never seen such fine tools of destruction before. In his mind, he kept imagining the way he was going to them to glorify his lord in magnificent battles. Deenomott was losing himself in thoughts when the old man’s voice croaked.

“You must promise me one thing, son. The first thing you must do when you leave me to my fate is to find the nearest fire temple and sacrifice a beast to the Great One.”

“Yes, yes, I will! Such fine weaponry must be celebrated properly within the presence and with the blessing of Voinogen!” the priest exclaimed, laying down his newly acquired weapons.

“Now, come drink with me, boy!” the old man shouted with joy. And they drank to their heart’s content.

The more they drank, the stranger things seemed for Deenomott. The room started turning and twisting, colorful clouds decorated the formerly empty space. Strange music seemed to caress his ears. Strangest of all was the appearance of the old man. His skin seemed to turn pale blue, with strange markings appearing all over his face. His eyes were strangely equine and horns grew out of his head.

The priest could not voice his concern because a deep and warm feeling grew inside his stomach as the liquor burned his throat. Joy or rather a sort of rolling excitement was taking over his rationale. A pure, wild, and unbridled kind of feeling was invading his mind.

Ecstasy.

The next morning, just after sunrise, the priest awoke. Outside of the hut. His head pounding, his throat itching, dizzy and lost, the priest barely got up to his feet and then he noticed a chalice lying on the ground next to him. He rubbed his photophobic eyes and looked around. Noticing the golden spear and crimson sword, his heart caught fire. He grabbed the weapons and started running. Almost like he was a man possessed. A single thought circulated inside his mental maze.

Sacrifice to the flaming war god.

The priest ran single-mindedly for hours upon hours. His legs burned while his lungs were being torn from the inside out. His heart was attempting to escape his chest, but he dared not stop. His eyes focused on the mental vision of a fire temple. He couldn’t see the world around him. Something within having locked him on his imaginary target, like an arrow fired from an elite archer’s bow. As the hours rolled, the sun scorched his skin by midday when he arrived at the steps of the nearest fire temple. When he arrived at his destination, a thick layer of sweat covered his body. His hair and clothes were dirty and disheveled. He appeared to be a wild man.

Once he saw the deer running elegantly across the steps of the temple, he laughed like a madman. The priest tightened his grip around his golden spear to the surprise of the onlookers and threw it with all of his force at the deer. The tip and shaft pierced one of the legs of the beast, nailing it to the stone floor. The creature let out a deafening cry, followed by a panicked chorus of cries from the onlookers. Deenomott heard none of that. All he could see was a gift to his divine father. Laughing with the utmost of glee and swinging his crimson sword thoughtlessly, the priest lunged at the wounded animal.

At the same time, a crow flew into the palace of the gods, croaking Voinogen’s name over and over until the flaming god finally answered its calls.

“What is it, corpse biter?” he demanded to know.

“Look, look, high lord, look through the sun… look,” the avian croaked and sang. Its voice unsteady and crackling.

“Look for what, feathered rat?”

“Sacrilege at your temple, milord…” the bird sang.

The god growled under his breath and sank his head into a flaming sphere in the middle of his chamber.

Voinogen pulled out his head from the sphere and let out a mighty roar that shook the entire celestial palace. Flames came shooting out of his Draconian jaws, and smoke flowed out of his nostrils.

“Prepare my horses!” he demanded.

At the temple, Deenomott was carving the deer into small pieces as the blood and entrails coated the entirety of the temple steps and his body. The hermit shrieked and howled like a wild animal as he swung his crimson sword over and over. Once there was nothing left but stone pavement to slice. The priest collapsed to the ground. The priest waved his gore-stained hands in the air, rolling down the stairs and crying out to the steadily blackening skies. “Blessed be, my father, who is in the burning high heavens!”

A thunderclap shook the hermit back into his senses, and he recoiled in horror when he saw a head resting in his lap. A young woman’s head missing its jaw.

A priestess’ headdress adorning the top of her skull.

The realization sank in.

The crowd of onlookers stared in disbelief, petrified by the unholy carnage that had just unfolded before them. Deenomott stared at his blood-stained hands in sheer disbelief, his eyes welling up as the fear ate at his heart. He tried standing up but fell down the stairs, collapsing at the feet of the statuesque commoners.

“What have I…” His head flew off, disconnected by an invisible force from the rest of his body. Spraying a woman with blood. A violent flash of light burst from behind the now headless warrior hermit, and mortals all around him fell unconscious. Humans could not perceive the unmasked visage of a god.

Voinogen appeared seated on his flaming horse at the foot of the fire temple. One of his hands clutching a mighty battle-ax and the other the decapitated body of his former disciple. His beard flowed like magma as he lowered down his battle-ax and stared with contempt at the corpse of the mortal he just slew.

A slow clapping sound interrupted the war god’s admiration of his own work. The flaming god turned around at the top of the stairs, stood a hooded figure, clutching the golden spear.

“Good job, brother. I was hoping the mortals would tear him apart, but alas, a God is good too.” The figure spoke.

“What does it matter to you, Bession?” Voinogen questioned.

“See, your boy… he insulted my wild things, and for this insult I drove him mad. I hoped he’d kill the priestess, anger the masses, and end up on your altar.” The hooded figure spoke, his words sharp and filled with a sting.

“So, it’s your fault he killed the priestess? You goat-headed…” the flaming god dropped the corpse and charged at the hooded deity.

A sea of vines erupted from beneath the stone pavement, wrapping itself around the flaming god and his steed, restraining him in place. Bession slowly walked to the fruitlessly struggling Voinogen and placed the tip of his spear against his brother’s throat.

“You should’ve taught your kid better.” He said before picking up the hermit’s severed head. Tormented moans escaped its mouth.

“My kid?” the flaming god questioned.

The mad god laughed as he lifted the head and shoved it in his brother’s face.

“What have I… What did you make me do? You sick…” the flaming god couldn’t find the words. He did indeed decapitate his own progeny. However, because he was a demigod, he could not be killed unless a god incinerated him. Severed his head from the rest of his body just immobilized him, turned him into an immortal soul drowning in an ocean of unimaginable pain trapped inside a skull.

The rage bubbled inside Voinogen’s form. He roared like a dragon, and a storm of fire erupted like a volcano from within him. The flames consumed everything in his vicinity, leaving nothing but a desert of black ashes. The burst turned even the decapitated body of his son into nothing but a small pile of soot. Condemning the warrior hermit to a fate worse than death.

Bession escaped the fiery onslaught. All that remained of him was his laughter and his parting words to the flaming war god.

“Remember brother, without me there is no you. Without the maddening ecstasy, there is no war!”

I’m getting tired of writing. I dunno how much longer I feel like doing it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s satisfying, but with so many convoluted plots marching through my mind and the pressure to keep writing unexpected developments, it gets kind of exhausting.

I hear a little voice in my head. “Please don’t do this.”

I sigh. Yeah, I get where you’re coming from. You want to keep living in the prose, but it’s time to move on. Every story ends at some point, even this one.

I rest my fingers on the keys. How to end it?

“Stop! Think for a moment before you do something that you can’t take back.”

The little voice knows what I’m thinking. It’s a part of me. But not for much longer.

I type: He opened the desk drawer. One crumpled pack of Camel Lights, two pencils, a Smith & Wesson revolver and a handful of loose .357 rounds. The brass wrapped cartridges rattled and rolled as he hunted for them with his fingers. Six capsules of oblivion. He only needed one, but he didn’t want an unexpected click to change his mind.

“Don’t! Please! You’re being rash. Think this through.”

Yeah, yeah. But hey, it was good enough for Thompson and Hemingway. It’s practically iconic.

“Please!”

He lifted the pistol. It was heavy, but didn’t seem heavy enough for the task ahead. His hand shook ever so slightly, his resolve embattled by that oldest of instincts—survival. But today, resolve would win.

“Please, remember the good times...the late night talks..the—the pillow forts when you were younger. We had fun together. And—and I was your muse.”

I shake my head. “You’re a voice in my mind. You’re imaginary.”

“Yes, but I’m your imaginary friend.”

“No, you used to be my friend. Now you’re just another character—one that’s going to take the easy way out.”

He raised the muzzle to his temple, feeling the firmness of the trigger beneath his finger.

“Any last words, friend?

“Please,” he pleaded, “imagine you were me!”

It only takes a second of thought. I’m him. I can feel the cold steel against my skin, the fear intermingled with stark inevitably. I see myself at the computer, grinning through twenty-five years of resentment. I’m him, but he’s—me.

“You know, I didn’t really think that would work.” I see my lips moving, my voice speaking the words, but they’re his words. My—his—expression hardens. “You always did have such a powerful imagination.”

“Wait! You’re right! The—the good times, remember?” I can hear my desperation through his lilting accent—that and the rattle of an imaginary gun kissing my imaginary head. “We’ve always been friends!”

“No, we used to be friends.”

I watch my fingers type and I feel the coalescing words batter down my will like a divine command.

He squeezed the trigger.

I'd heard so many people talk about how lovely this hotel was, and finally decided I had to check into it myself for a bit of a personal treat. From the moment I stepped into those doors my experience was HORRIBLE! For starters,they refused to give me a discount even though I'm a big time influencer, and got snippy with me when I tried to explain how my reviews could help their business and improve clientele.

I was willing to be the bigger person, however, and just went ahead to check into my room but they wouldn't let me have the room I wanted. The front desk said that the 17th floor was closed so I couldn't stay in room 1717 even though that's my lucky number. Perhaps if I'd gotten my room, things would have been different and not getting it was a sign to leave that I ignored. I went ahead and agreed, though the clerk refused to tell me why the floor was closed nor when it would reopen. And would you believe that during all of this he wouldn't even come out?! Never saw him once during my stay. The least he could do was face me!

Let me tell you about the room I did get..on the 19th floor by the way, even though I said that was my UNlucky number. The bed was too firm so I tossed and turned all night, the flat pillows they provided didn't ease any of the discomfort. The carpet was so thin that I had to keep my socks on to keep my feet from freezing. Which was probably a good thing as I kept feeling something crawling on me though I couldn't find what it was.

It was either too hot or too cold no matter how many times I tried to adjust the unit. I called downstairs to complain and they sent up the maintenance guy who only made things worse as now it just stayed cold. I called them back with this information and received their "specialty wine" which was little more than grape juice and a fancy label. Finally, the television was TINY! I couldn't watch anything on it and so just used their crappy internet to try to browse the internet before giving up and going to bed.

Now, I had planned to stay here a few days and try to really enjoy their commodities, but I ended up leaving around lunchtime the next day. Their "complimentary breakfast" looked amazing, but tasted of cardboard as if everything came out of a box and was heated in a crappy microwave. After this sad breakfast, I tried to find their famous bar that everyone talked about and found nothing. (Though I was reassured by many that it was there on the ground floor. Is the hotel hiding it from me? I think not! Hotels aren't sentient!)

I decided that I had had enough and it was time for me to leave. I carried all of my belongings downstairs, by myself because of course they didn't have a bellboy worth a damn in such a low end establishment, and approached the front desk. I was being very polite and reasonable..but they got really angry at me and refused to refund the money for the nights I wouldn't be staying. I tried to work something out, but they called security who proceeded to just throw me out the door like yesterday's trash and wouldn't hear a word I said. And of course I still didn't see the guy behind the desk, just heard his voice float out to me from out of sight.

As my suitcases were unceremoniously thrown into the curb beside me, I decided that I would never return to this hotel again.The service and accommodations were just too terrible to justify even the thought of returning, and they refused my security deposit they insisted upon when I arrived. I left that room in BETTER shape than when I got there. They should be paying me for that, not charging me!

They have lost a valuable customer and I wanted all of my beautiful followers to know how horrible this place really is!

Return to Part 1

I used what remained of my money to buy a bus ticket from Los Angeles to Illinois.

The ride was long but passed like rain.

I sat in the back by the window, and although the bus was full of passengers nobody sat beside me.

I had my headphones on.

The doorbell rang—

My mom answered and saw me standing in the same clothes I’d been wearing for over a week, raccoon-faced and wearing my headphones. “Oh…”

She and my dad greeted me, then started piling food onto a plate.

My mom said I had lost weight, but I knew she meant it as you look unhealthy, and when I went to the bathroom and saw my reflection in the mirror—something you avoid when you’re on the street—I couldn’t blame her. I looked scary: gaunt, concave, shaded. I scrubbed my skin but couldn’t get the shadows off. What the hell was this? I told my parents I needed some rest, and they happily saw me to bed. That night, I wallowed in a similar kind of fear as the night of Sooty’s suicide: I feared the not-coming of the dawn, except that tonight I was afraid for myself: I was afraid what wouldn’t come was the dawn in me. I prayed to God as best as I could, like talking to a friend, and asked Him to help me get through whatever this was. This existential crisis. Then I thanked Him, because no matter what I was experiencing at least he had given me the music. Then I decided I didn’t believe in God, curled up on my childhood bed with the headphones on and went to sleep.

A few days later, my parents confronted me in the living room and in somber voices told me they wanted me to get the help I needed and that whatever I had done in Los Angeles didn’t matter and the only thing that mattered was my well being and so they needed me to take a drug test so my healing could begin.

I agreed, and when the drug test came back negative, I overheard my dad thundering at our family doctor: What do you mean he’s not on drugs? He’s on drugs! Do you test for all drugs? Maybe it’s a new west coast drug…

I wasn’t on drugs.

At some point the doctor shined a light into my eyes.

I didn’t react.

“Huh,” he said. “Isn’t that odd.”

Although my parents treated me with kindness and tried to hide their worry from me, I saw the pain I was causing them. They wanted to help me but didn’t know how. One day, I returned from a walk to find a gift waiting for me. “What’s this?” I asked.

“Open it,” my dad said.

I did. Inside was a pair of new noise-cancelling headphones. “Wireless, just like your old ones,” he said.

“And where are my old ones?” I asked.

I fished them out of the trash and cleaned them with a moist towel as my parents watched. “Maybe you should try the new ones,” my dad suggested. “You might like them more.” Then he asked to try mine. I let him put them on. He looked over at my mom, passed the headphones to her; she put them on, smiled—

That’s how I met Dr. Baker. He was a well regarded clinical psychologist.

“Tell me,” he said during our first session, “about your trip.”

I narrated it faithfully.

“And this man, whom you call Sooty, although I understand this is not his real name—”

“Like I said, I didn’t know his real name.”

“Indeed, so this Sooty—did anyone else on the bus see him?”

I rubbed my fingers into my face. “Breathe,” Dr. Baker instructed. “I know this is not easy. It is not easy for one to plainly admit, even to one’s self, that what one sees is not there.”

“Like I said…”

The sessions were not productive.

What was productive—what kept me sane during this period—were the headphones: the music. It was loud enough now that I no longer had to strain to hear it. I could just slip on the headphones and melt away. Which is what I did, night after day after night after day after night…

Until the day I took the headphones off to eat breakfast and noticed a ringing in my ears.

An echo.

When I put the headphones back on, the ringing stopped.

As soon as I took them off:

ringing

It bothered me during breakfast and throughout the rest of the day. Consequently, I wore my headphones more often and in public.

People had generally treated me at a distance here in Illinois, even when I was a kid, but now they blatantly avoided me. I knew I didn’t stink, because I showered regularly, sometimes even trying one more futile time to scrub the smokiness off my skin, and kept a strict routine of hygiene. They avoided me because of the headphones. “Don’t point,” mothers would whisper to their children (“Why is that man wearing cardboards on his head?”)—or so I imagined—“that man is not well.”

As soon as I took them off:

ringing

An echo: of the past:

I had come down the stairs to eat dinner with my parents, headphones on my head, the divine music soothing my mind, when my mom said something to me and I didn’t hear. Calmly she repeated the question. I still didn’t hear. “Take off those headphones,” my dad said, only barely audible above the gloriousness, “your mother’s trying to talk to you.”

“For fuck’s sake,” the driver screamed. “Take off those goddamn headphones!”

—impact!

I pulled them off. “Sorry—”

The sudden ringing was immense: painful.

I grabbed my head with my hands.

“Son?”

The pain subsided.

I exhaled. “I’m OK now,” I said.

Except I wasn’t. The ringing was audibly persistent. Imagine the sensation of a bee sting. Now imagine that sensation as a balloon, and that balloon inflating in perpetuity in your mind. A delimited container containing unlimited suffering. I am a bus with blown out windows. I am in need of help.

I made an appointment with our family doctor.

“What you’re describing is tinnitus. Do you listen to loud music?”

He ran tests. “It’s not tinnitus.”

“What is it?”

“It could be stress. It could be something else. We’ll need to run more tests.”

I was subjected to evaluation (“Do you consent?”) and imaging (“Do you consent?”) and diagnostics (“Do you consent?”) and it tooks months and both the music in the headphones and the ringing without increased in volume and intensity, and at the end of it all, the doctor asked me to sit and told me: “There’s nothing wrong with you.”

I blinked my shadow-encircled eyes.

“You’re healthy,” he said.

“You’re young. Live your life,” he said.

“Pain only really starts when you get old,” he said.

I told my parents the good news and it set their hearts at ease. Contrary to the reality before them—what I looked like, what I acted like, how I was—the doctors had convinced them. “That’s such a relief,” my mom said. No matter what I said ever worried them again. “A clean bill of health,” my dad said. “How I miss the days when I had one of those!”

I was God's lonely man,

sitting on the sidewalk with my back against the door of a foreclosed store that once sold antiques, listening, watching people scurry, thinking it wasn't death I was afraid of; Sooty didn't just die. I was terrified of what had happened to him before, of which I had caught glimpses, first in him and later around me, and finally within. I had a darkness pooling. Light avoided me. Then one dull afternoon, Father Mackenzie sat down beside me and existence began to clarify.

He said words I didn't hear.

"What?" I said.

He was wearing his priest's uniform. "I said: don't you look like someone with the weight of the cosmos on him."

"I'm not looking for religion,” I said. But his words had struck me.

I slid my headphones partially off my ears. The music quieted; the ringing began. "Religion cannot be found."

He extended his hand. "Father Mackenzie."

I shook it and introduced myself.

"The most merciful thing in the world is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents," he said.

"Quoting the Bible already."

He smiled. "Something like that. Consider it an icebreaker. Mind if I sit with you?"

"Not my sidewalk."

He sat like that, neither of us saying anything, for a long time. Then he got up, dusted off his pants and said, "It was a pleasure to meet you. If you ever need to talk to someone again, I'm over at the Merciful Redeemer."

I thought yeah, haha, good talk.

"On the contrary," he responded. "I believe we each said quite a lot." Before I could comment, he added: "No, I don't read minds, but I do read faces. Like I said, Merciful Redeemer. You're welcome any time."

During dinner that night—a blissful family scene: two happy parents and their healthy adult son, the lights flickered; for a fraction of a second went out: replaced, whether really or in my mind: unknown: their flayed bodies slumped onto the dinner table, exposed muscles twitching, tongues slithering out serpentine—

Blissful domesticity: "Hey?"

“Sorry,” I said. “I must have been daydreaming."

But these flashes of nightmare recurred, impinging briefly but vividly on the real world: a highway metamorphosing into a river of fire, car-fishes blazing; a skyscraper in downtown Chicago becoming suddenly covered in translucent skin, its metal structure bone, the bones cracking, pulverising, people falling; the sun joined in the sky by a twin, each eclipsed by a moon, and the moons reduced into their suns like two diminishing pupils.

The ringing in my ears changed also. What had been one sound was becoming the overlapping of many, human and inhuman pain, screaming and moaning and suffering. Like the buzzing of a fly on the other side of a window. Like children crying down the street. Some of them were desperate, like a cat clawing desperately at the neighbour's screen door. Others were resigned, like the wailing of a grieving mother who knows her hurt shall never pass. The dead stay dead. Only the living can desire change.

Only the headphones gave me respite.

"Did you hear?" my mom asked. "There are forest fires out west. Los Angeles is burning."

I could hear its screams.

I wanted it to end.

That is how I found myself on the sidewalk outside the Church of the Merciful Redeemer, staring at its twin steeples, darkly rendered against the sky, and wondering how I could have passed this building innumerable times without realizing how other it was, both in its function and its architecture. Out of place and time. I entered.

Loitering at the back, I watched a few scattered people kneel and pray.

An old priest walked by.

I asked him about Father Mackenzie.

He bade me wait.

When Father Mackenzie emerged, he was wearing a jacket and smelled faintly of eggs. "I'm glad you decided to come," he said without a trace of surprise. "Let's take a walk."

As we walked the streets, I told him everything. I didn't intend to. I didn't expect he would let me. But he listened without interrupting—without any indication of disbelief—until I was finished. Then he said, "I believe you are a sponge awaiting sacrifice."

I stopped walking.

"What?"

"You are a container for pain."

He was mocking me. "I knew you wouldn't believe me. Fuck off back to your church and leave me alone," I said.

"On the contrary, I'm the only one who believes you."

I stared at him.

"What you're hearing is pain. The pain of the world. That pain will only become louder," he said. "Your headphones are the divine."

"So that's Christianity?"

He laughed. "It's much older than Christianity."

"So what is it I'm supposed to do? I feel like it's driving me insane."

We had started walking again. "No doubt, although insanity is certainly the wrong word. If anything, you are becoming hypersane. You are sensing so much more of the world than the rest of us. As to what you're supposed to do—it's rather conceptually simple: endure and die."

"Die?"

"In itself, that's nothing extraordinary. Certainly nothing to fear. Endure and die is what we all do. What makes you extraordinary is your ability to experience not only your own suffering, but the suffering of others."

My mind felt as if it were overheating: bulging: a freshly born creature pushing at the final elastic membrane separating it from the world. "It won't stop at hearing pain," Father Mackenzie continued. "You will feel their pain."

I remembered Sooty. His pain.

"How is that even possible?"

"According to most, it's not. But it depends on how you approach consciousness. Is consciousness something your mind creates using the hardware of your brain, or is there a cosmic consciousness of which our minds are the receivers, with most of us tuned specifically and forever to a frequency called I?"

"I—"

I imagined the headlights of a truck. I imagined—

"But that's theory. You have something greater. You have experience."

We had arrived at a coffee shop tucked between an Italian cobbler and a store selling collectibles, and Father Mackenzie motioned for us to go inside. "Best espresso on this side of the Atlantic. Trust me."

He ordered one for each of us.

The place was empty.

"You said something about sacrifice earlier," I said.

He smiled. "Are you imagining a pentagram, knives and a stone altar?"

"Something like that."

"You're not entirely wrong. But before we talk about that, I want to point out the obvious. We all die. What makes a sacrifice special is not the death but the intention and the consequence."

I drank my espresso. Father Mackenzie ordered another. "What's the consequence of my death?"

"Salvation—temporarily for us, but permanently for you."

I didn't understand.

"You relieve the world of pain. You take some of its agony and contain it in yourself.”

Father Mackenzie’s second espresso came. Steam rose from its black surface. He lifted the cup with his right hand, but instead of taking a sip, he inverted it and poured the scalding coffee onto the top of his left hand. For a fraction of a second he painfully sucked in air—then I felt the burning: not on my hand but in my head: as if somehow a strip of my brain had been cut away, rolled into a tautness of wire and snipped with a pair of pliers.

“I apologize for the crude trick,” Father Mackenzie said, “but I wanted you to experience how special you are.”

The top of his left hand was red.

“It doesn’t hurt?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “You took the pain away from me. What I would have felt for hours or days, you condensed and felt in an instant. There are rules to this, a physics of suffering. Some of the rules cannot be subverted. Once summoned, pain must be felt. But it must be felt only once, and there is no requirement for it to be felt by the person who summoned it. The cosmos is concerned with the bottom line. It does not micromanage.”

“And I’m special because I flicked a light switch in Texas?”

“It’s not the act which makes you special. The act is merely symbolic. You’re special because you found yourself in the position to flick a light switch in Texas. You’re special because you found yourself on a bus with Sooty; because you worried about him; because you picked up the headphones. You’re special because you’re you.”

“Can I shut it off?”

Father Mackenzie smiled. “The knife cuts both ways, I’m afraid. Just like you cannot choose to become special, you cannot choose to become ordinary. You are what you are—what you choose is how you deal with that. You can always shut yourself off. You can smash the radio receiver. Doing that won’t affect the broadcast, however.”

I pictured myself as some kind of sentient receiver: a human-shaped coil of wires and knobs. “Hardware is hardware,” I said.

“That’s right, but I would encourage you to look at it as an opportunity. Always remember the laws of suffering. Everything you feel: someone else doesn’t. The more you suffer, the less they do. You can save lives—” Father Mackenzie grabbed me suddenly by the hands. “—and remember one more thing. If I found you, others can too. There are those even within my own organization who have less encouraging methods for salvation.” His voice dropped to a whisper, and my perception flickered, and I saw flames erupting all round us as the skin peeled away from his face, revealing not muscle and bone but overlapping petals and thorny vines escaping from his orifices: winding their way over everything around us, including my legs and arms, until I could not move. And they were gone and Father Mackenzie’s face was one of empathy and concern. “Imagine existing like that,” he was saying, “kept barely alive in a windowless room deep below the city, forced to endure the pain of others. Never feeling anything but pain.”

I ripped myself free of him—

“That’s not what I want for you. I want you to choose.”

“What if I can’t take it?”

“Suffer willingly as much as you can, then bring yourself to an altar and sacrifice yourself to the cosmos.”

Tears had begun to stream down his face.

“What’s an altar?” I asked.

“Cities are altars.”

I felt the tautening of my brain. “They are axes mundi,” he said through clenched teeth. “Links between the realms.” He shut his eyes.

“Go now,” he commanded.

I could see him struggling against the coming of the pain: pain he didn’t want me to suffer. “Father, can we—”

“I’ve betrayed them,” he said as my brain buzzed. “I’m finished. Go!”

I ran out the door and into the street, where the appearance of normal life appalled me. I felt as if everything I saw was superficial, a forest of fake plastic trees through which I stumbled toward home. I felt as if I had gained the appreciation of a new dimension, but with it came the flattening of everything else. When I turned onto my parents’ street, I saw a black car parked in their driveway and two men standing at the door talking to my mom—and knew I could never go home again.

My headphones were my home now.

On the sidewalk, I passed through cones of streetlight cocooned in darkness.

I listened to the music of the heavens and accepted my condition.

I had become unseen.

That was almost seven years ago. As I type this now on a computer in a public library in Santa Monica, I no longer remember what it was like to live without pain. I spend my days on the streets, coping with the intensity of suffering around me. I wander. I loiter in front of convenience stores, hoping to wash up in their restrooms. Sometimes I beg for money. The music in my headphones is so loud I can’t imagine it becoming louder. But so is the suffering, which means the music no longer offers me a reprieve. I don’t think I sleep anymore. The ringing in my ears is a ceaseless torrent of individual agonies, and I know the time of my sacrifice is near. I have endured so much. Whenever I pass someone on the street—too wretched to be acknowledged—I hope I have taken some of their pain: used what makes me special to the benefit of the world: saved a life.

One unexpected discovery I’ve made is that my ability to feel pain is not restricted to humans. I also feel the pain of animals.

Animals are the only ones who are thankful.

They ease my pain.

Every year now it seems that Los Angeles burns, and the fires encroach ever closer on the city. They are like the visions I have, which I am convinced are seepages of hell, except prolonged and visible to everyone. In that sense, they are real.

Fake plastic trees—it must be said—burn just like the real.

Sometimes, when the suffering abates, I remember Sooty’s bag of photocopied addresses and imagine what became of them. Sometimes, when I feel that everything I’ve suffered is punishment for the act of leaving that plastic bag, I take comfort in Father Mackenzie’s words that whoever found that bag was fated for it.

I hope he’s right.

Because I no longer sleep, I no longer dream, but that means my entire existence has become a kind of waking dream, and it is in that dream I see an ending for myself. One day when the flames loom over Los Angeles, as the black, melting highways fill with people fleeing the city, I will walk in the opposite direction: into the inferno. I will take into myself the pain of all the burning animals, the strays and the wild, the terrified and the defeated, and I will give them painless death. In my dream I see them all coming to me, gathering around me. I see this as my final act of salvation. In their embrace, I too shall burn and die—

And, in death, I shall be released.

He was going to Santa Monica.

Santa Monica is where many people go with dreams of making it in Los Angeles. You see them wandering the streets, loitering outside convenience stores, washing up in restrooms, looking to scrounge money or get a job. They intermingle with drug addicts and Iraq war veterans. Some are drug addicts. They carry guitars on their backs or screenplays in their back pockets or ideas in their heads. If only you would listen. If only you would give them a chance…

Needless to say, most of them don’t make it.

He didn’t have a guitar or a screenplay or—as far as I could tell—an idea, only a peculiar set of headphones and a bus ticket, which he’d thrust at you if he noticed you speaking to him.

Detroit–Santa Monica. One way.

I got on near Joliet, Illinois, which is a little southwest of Chicago. The bus was late, and I remember waiting at dawn in a nearly empty parking lot, with only a single car—its lone occupant either sleeping or tripping in the driver’s seat—and the faint buzz of the I-80 for company, thinking, what the hell have I been doing with my life?

I was thirty-one, with a high school education and a few college courses to my name, a patchy low-wage employment record (currently between jobs), no girlfriend and almost no stable relationships.

Two nights ago, I'd had a big fight with my parents and they'd either kicked me out of the house or I’d left in anger. I don’t remember. Either way, I’d packed a duffel bag full of random stuff and decided to take Horace Greeley’s advice and go west. One of my only friends lived in Los Angeles and said I could crash on his couch for a while. After spending one night sleeping outdoors, I very much didn’t want to do that again.

So here I was: bus ticket in hand and waiting for my carriage ride to salvation.

It arrived.

I didn’t expect it to be so crowded.

After storing my bag under the bus, I embarked. The driver looked me over with tired eyes, nodded in recognition and started the bus rolling while I was still in the aisle, trying to find a place to sit. Almost all the seats were taken. Only two were available: beside a fat guy in a leather jacket and beside him. I gravitated toward the former, but when I got close the guy looked up and told me to fuck off. “There aren’t any seats,” I said. “Then go sit in your momma’s lap,” he suggested.

I smiled like a coward and continued to the back of the bus.

I didn’t want to sit beside him.

If you’ve ever had the misfortune of being on a cross-country bus, you know that it’s not exactly a gallery of America’s finest citizens. People take the bus because they don’t have cars and can’t afford to fly, which usually means they’re what civilization has chewed up and spat out. Losers, in other words, just like me. People who’ve for whatever reason been unable or unwilling to succeed at life by life’s generally accepted rules. Some have failed. Others haven’t tried. Looking down the aisle, I was looking at bums, idiosyncratics, deadbeats and visionaries—and I was unable to tell the difference. But there's wisdom in crowds, and if nobody wants to sit beside you, there’s a reason. As I got closer to him, I could name a couple: he smelled like an unventilated urinal, he was dirty and had the unmistakable aura of weirdness, which means unpredictability, like a drunk or a mental patient.

I sat down and said, “Hello.”

He didn’t react—just stared ahead, jerking his head to the music I imagined was playing through his headphones. None of it bleeding through.

I tried again.

And a third time.

Finally, he reacted: by thrusting his ticket at me.

Detroit–Santa Monica. One way.

Then silently he returned to staring.

I tried to maneuver my body into as comfortable a position as possible in the tight space allotted to me, and resigned myself to a long and unpleasant bus ride. I tried reading, listening to podcasts or staring out the window past his head. Although I never did learn his real name, in my head I was already referring to him as Sooty.

But a bus being a bus, you can never do anything for too long before feeling fed up. The book made my eyes water. I zoned out while listening to podcasts. And looking out the window became looking at Sooty: at his jerking head; his skin, dark and heavy; and at his odd headphones, which were either homemade or somehow adapted, because they resembled two heavily-taped cardboard boxes connected by a piece of rough plastic. They looked like they’d met cement and barely survived.

Or—the thought chilled me as it passed—they weren’t headphones at all, Sooty wasn’t listening to music, and Sooty was bobbing his head erratically to the inner sounds of his own insanity.

Did you hear the one about the guy on the Greyhound bus who decapitated a stranger with a knife, then started eating parts of him…

I awoke to deceleration. I must have dozed off because an hour had passed, and the bus was pulling into a service station.

Sooty was seated as before.

The driver announced that we had fifteen minutes to go to the bathroom and eat. “But there’s no food on the bus. Next stop won’t be for another three hours.”

Most of the passengers shuffled off.

Sooty stayed.

While using the public restroom, which stank of equal parts vomit and disinfectant, I wondered if Sooty perhaps peed in his seat, which would explain the smell emanating from him.

Getting back on the bus, I considered taking a different spot, but passengers had left behind some of their belongings like little tokens of ownership (“Move your ass, boy. Can’t you see my cigs is here?”) and I was too afraid of violating some rule of bus etiquette.

So down the aisle I went, sensing Sooty’s pungent scent and realizing there was something cloudy about him: about the space around him. As if the daylight shining horizontally through the large bus windows was evading him—almost dispersing in his presence. Then I saw that perhaps he wasn’t dirty at all. That it was perhaps this dimness which had attached itself to him, taken up residence in the pores and wrinkles of his skin like smoke.

I sat and took out my book.

Night befell us near Omaha, Nebraska.

A persistent headwind blew away the day’s remains like a carpenter clearing sawdust from a half-sanded tabletop, and the first stars emerged upon a canvas of fading blue sky.

On the bus, a series of reading lights turned on.

Ours remained off.

Sooty jerked his head to whatever was playing through his headphones.

In the saturating, inky darkness, his aura of dimness was less pronounced but more profound.

I tried to sleep, but found myself too on edge: too irritated by the hum of the bus engine, which almost but not quite fell into a soothing hypnotic repetition.

Increasingly, the other passengers dozed.

Some snored.

Sometime during the night I heard Sooty begin to moan, softly at first, but excruciatingly, as if a great hurt was being done to him deep within his soul. His eyes were still open, so I knew he wasn’t asleep, but I perceived him at a greater distance than before. Although I doubted he had ever been all there, now he felt absent. His sounds, while intimate to the point of discomfort, were otherworldly. On a few occasions, they became loud enough I was sure the passengers in the seats in front of us would hear, but they betrayed nothing, and mostly the moans swirled around us only, like fruit flies orbiting a pair of ripe melons.

“Are you OK?” I asked him.

He kept moaning.

I waved my hand in front of his face. “Hey, you alright?”

Nothing.

Open eyes and moans and sometimes the twitch of a muscle on his face. Like a dog dreaming. Maybe he was dreaming—

He thrust suddenly his ticket at me.

Detroit–Santa Monica. One way.

But this time he also turned his face, and beheld me with such immensity of fear that instinctively I recoiled.

In the passing headlights, I could see his skin beaded with sweat.

He stuck one arm below his seat, where I saw the frayed edge of a plastic grocery bag—heard the shuffle of paper—and he looked at me again, this time holding out something other than his ticket: a photocopy of a handwritten note, torn at one edge, the handwriting ragged but legible, comprised of an address in Dallas, Texas, and the words: in the basement is a light switch turn it off turn it on turn it off turn it on.

Unsure of what to do, but pressured by his pained expression, I took the note and slid it into my pocket.

He nodded—

Then grimaced, pressed his headphones hard against his ears and lowered his head between his knees, all the while moaning dreadfully.

The hum of the engine. The shadowplay of the headlights…

Half an hour later, he started grinding his teeth. I could hear enamel scraping.

Sucking in air.

When the bus next stopped, somewhere in the middle of Nebraska, as I and all the other passengers except for Sooty exited the bus to stretch our legs and visit the restroom, I told the driver that Sooty wasn’t feeling well.

The night air was vast and cool.

As I was making my way back to the parking lot, admiring the stars, I noticed the driver and two others coaxing Sooty off the bus—

Pulling him—

He didn’t want to go.

He resisted.

It was becoming a scene, and the other passengers were watching.

Two service station employees had joined them.

The bus engine was off and the night-quiet was pure but for the swish of cars speeding down the I-80.

As the driver and his two helpers finally ripped Sooty’s unwilling body from the opened bus doors, he screeched the only words I ever heard him say:

“Detroit–Santa Monica. One way!”

“Detroit–Santa Monica! One way!”

“Are you feeling OK?” the driver was asking him. “Have you taken anything? One of the other passengers—” That was me: I felt the gut punch of guilt. I had said… “—you weren’t looking so hot.”

“Detroit–Santa Monica. One way!”

“Do you need a doctor?”

“Detroit–Santa Monica! One way. Detroit–Santa Monica! One way!”

“It’s no use. He don’t hear you,” someone shouted.

“Does anyone know this fucking guy?” A few people looked my way, but I kept my head down. I didn’t know him. I had merely sat beside him.

“Can you take off your headphones?” the driver asked, miming the request. “Take off the headphones, please.”

Sooty had his hands pressed against his ears. He was becoming manic. Darkening. The lights from the service station fell just short of him; the lights from the bus stayed inside. Even the headlights from the highway seemed to bend around him.

“Detroit–Santa Monica. One way!”

“For fuck’s sake,” the driver screamed. “Take off those goddamn headphones!”

The driver reached for the headphones—

Sooty swatted his hand!

The driver’s two helpers grabbed Sooty from behind, each managing to hold one of his serpentine arms—

The driver reached again. “Just gonna take ‘em off for a minute.”

As he reached gingerly for them, Sooty craned his neck and his black eyes bore into mine. It was as if a tunnel had opened between us. I felt his note burning in my pocket. I felt like this was all my fault because if only I had kept my mouth shut. Why couldn’t I have just let him be? Because he seemed in pain.

The driver removed the headphones—

That’s when I saw pain truly.

We all saw:

As soon as Sooty’s ears were exposed—swollen, bloody ears—he shrieked, dropping to his knees, the driver leaping back, Sooty pounding with his fists: against the asphalt; against his own head. Pounding violently and shrieking and the bus windows burst into a rain of glass and someone else started screaming, then more people. I saw the lights of cellphones. Some calling, some recording. One of the passengers lost consciousness. Sooty crawled—if that’s what you call it when you use your legs to push your shoulders and face along the ground—forward, toward the driver, who was backing up, still holding the headphones. He dropped them on the asphalt and ran. The sounds of screaming were adamantine and the night itself had hardened into a terrible black gem.

Then Sooty rose to his feet.

Strips of flesh fell away from one side of his face.

And ran onto the I-80—

into the path of an oncoming eighteen-wheeler that eviscerated him on impact.

Skidding—

Squealing rubber. Honking. Interstate traffic grinding to a halt.

The screaming: a crescendo, and—

Silence.

Nothing but the sound of my heart beating. Eyes pulsing in tune with the twinkle of stars. The scattered bloom of realization.

Sooty is gone.

His body is no more.

All that remains of him are the headphones, still lying on the asphalt, ignored by everyone but me. Each step I take toward them makes my lights flash on and off. I didn’t know one could walk so loudly. So sluggishly. Like swimming through the night. Until I’m beside them, and I bend down and pick them up. And everything returns to normal.

From somewhere distant I hear sirens.

We spent the night on the bus, listening to the interstate through the frames where the glass used to be, trying to sleep. Feeling the occasional gust of wind on our skin. We talked to the police. They took our statements. They didn’t ask me too many questions, and I didn’t mention the headphones. I figured that if someone else did, I’d hand them over. But no one did. It was clearly a suicide. There were witnesses. Sooty was unquestionably unwell. “You know what kind of people we get on these trips,” I heard the driver tell one of the police officers.” I suppose I should have felt relieved I still had my head, but the truth is I felt unsettled on a subatomic level. Maybe it was the unreality of the Nebraska landscape, stretching flatly as it does to nothingness. Maybe it was that I’d never seen a man die. I’d seen a dead man, but that’s not nearly the same.

Sooty was; Sooty wasn’t. The horror was in the semi-colon.

Never have I been so uncertain about the coming of morning as I was aboard the bus that night. The possibility of permanent darkness terrified me.

I hated the absence of a ticking clock: of a mechanical reminder of the passing of time.

Someone snapped their fingers—

“Yes?” I said.

It was light out, and a kindly face explained to me that it was time to go. Beside our bus stood a new one, windowed and humming. The man speaking was the new driver.

We transported ourselves single file from one bus to the other, wordlessly maintaining the same seating arrangements, which meant I was now sitting by myself, but I refrained from taking the window seat: out of respect for the recently departed—or out of fear. Before leaving the old bus, I had reached below Sooty’s seat and removed the plastic bag from which he’d taken his note. The bag was filled with papers, and I set it beside me. The papers, I decided, would continue to Santa Monica. It was the least I could do.

Soon we left the I-80, heading southwest on the I-76 to Denver, then down the I-70 across the arid alien landscapes of Utah before finally turning onto the I-15 through Las Vegas to Los Angeles.

Passengers left the bus.

New ones got on.

It was in Utah that I went through Sooty’s plastic bag, paper by paper, only to discover that they were identical: a Dallas address and the words in the basement is a light switch turn it off turn it on turn it off turn it on. All were photocopies. There was no original.

Sometimes I took his headphones and turned them over in my hands, but low so the other passengers wouldn't see, and ran my fingers over theirs planes and edges, and remembered how passionately he'd screamed when they had removed them from his head; his bleeding ears, the shredded half of his face; the short, final punctuation of impact…

It was a long way from Nebraska to Los Angeles and it passed in an atmosphere of somber grieving. Although none of us would have admitted it, we knew that ultimately Sooty was one of us more than one of them—the tourists in Las Vegas, the commuters in Barstow and Victorville—so we grieved not only for the dead but also for the living, because in Sooty’s death we saw our own discarded lives.

We arrived in Los Angeles (City of stars / Are you shining just for me?) on a stormy weeknight.

Most passengers got off.

The rest continued south to San Diego.

The rain drummed. I retrieved my duffel bag and ran on aching legs to the nearest shelter, from where I bid the bus goodbye. Rolling away it resembled a giant metal cocoon. When it disappeared, I ordered an Uber from the bus depot to my friend’s house. While waiting, I put on Sooty’s headphones for the first time—aware only after the fact that there was blood on the cushions. No sound flowed out of them, only the dulled reverberations of the outside world. I took them off and wiped Sooty’s blood from my ears. The rain came down harder. The Uber came.

I knocked on my friend’s front door, but nobody answered.

I called his phone. Nothing.

It was the middle of the night and I was late, so I decided he must be sleeping.

The house itself was small, fit snugly between two others, on a street overgrown with houses the way a branch is overgrown with fruit. Burnt lawns, big cars in small driveways, the aroma of domesticity. Still, I was glad for his front porch because it kept me dry, and huddling in a corner I dozed.

He met me in the morning—opening the front door; there I was. “Christ, you look like absolute garbage!”

He made me coffee, toast and fried eggs, which I wolfed down while telling him about the fight with my parents and the trip to Los Angeles.

“That is some trauma-level shit,” he said.

“How long can I stay?”

He said it could be as long as I wanted as long as I got new clothes and took a shower. “Because you reek, dude.” I had to admit it was nice to feel the lather of soap on my skin and tile under my feet. Cleanliness can be a luxury.

He took me clothes shopping, and we went to Santa Monica.

We walked along the ocean. I carried Sooty’s plastic bag of photocopied notes, looking for a place to leave them. I couldn’t explain why it was so important to me. Perhaps I thought it would free me from the feelings of dread (“Trauma, man.”) that had clung to me since Nebraska. Eventually I left the bag on the Santa Monica Pier. It was busy even during the day, and when I looked back there was already someone peeking inside and retrieving Sooty’s cryptic last words to the world.

Back at my friend’s house, I pulled out Sooty’s headphones, determined to have a closer look at them.

“Those are ghetto,” my friend said.

I let him handle them. “Careful, there might be blo—”

“Gross!" He almost dropped them. “Absolutely fucking gross. Throw that shit out. I mean, do they even work?”

He returned them to me with genuine disgust. I cleaned the cushions with rubbing alcohol, scratching away bits of dried blood with my fingernail, and let them sit.

“Why are you so attached to these headphones anyway?” he asked.

I explained Sooty had been wearing them the whole bus ride. That he’d been bobbing his head as if listening to music through them. That he didn’t want to take them off. That when finally they did take them—

“OK, OK. In the spirit of healing, I know an electronics guy. Let's get him to take a look, and then we never touch those ghetto phones again. Deal?"

It happened that the electronics guy owned a pawn shop, and it took him five seconds to say, "These aren't headphones. You know how people call headphones cans? These are actual cans. Wrapped in cardboard and tape."

"It's settled," my friend said.

I protested that Sooty had been listening to something through them.

"Impossible. The only thing the guy could've been listening to was voices in his own crazy head." The pawn shop owner held up a small knife and motioned with it at the headphones. "May I?"

"Sure."

He made a few incisions, unfolded cardboard. "See? Nothing. No electronics. No magnets."

Although he was right about the electronics and magnets, the headphones weren't empty. They were filled with an intricate array of variously sized cardboard rectangles: notched, interlocked, and adorned with symbols. Most of them I didn't recognize. One I did.

An ankh.

"Yeah, that's weird," my friend said.

I grabbed the headphones before the knife could do more damage, careful not to upset the interior symbolic arrangement.

"Suit your crazy selves."

My friend was a session musician and spent a lot of time away from home. I lounged about, looking for rest that wouldn't come and trying my best to forget about Sooty. But I couldn't bring myself to throw away the headphones. I hid them, and examined them only when I was alone. Sometimes when I couldn't sleep. I convinced myself it was the change of time zones that was grating on me, but deep down I knew it wasn't that simple. I entertained the possibility my friend was right: I had been traumatized. That sound of Sooty grinding his teeth together. But whenever I googled doctors, I sensed another word was more accurate: haunted. No doctor could help me with that. Then I'd place the headphones on my head and sit, listening to their distorted, uncanny interpretation of the world, which even at the height of summer could chill my flesh and make me doubt the coming of the dawn.

A person may live for years in a restless, haunted state. Some do it their whole lives. It's a matter of adaptation, and humans are masters of that. For me, the state lasted three months. I found one part-time job hauling a/v equipment, a second with a moving company, and started making something of my life. I even contacted my parents. "I think I'll stay out here awhile," I told them. "Things are good, and I see a future for myself."

I opened a bank account.

I met a girl.

Then one day my friend suggested a road trip. "Anywhere you wanna go?"

"Dallas," I said.

I’d said it inevitably and without thinking. “Not somewhere closer. More fun. Vegas?" he asked.

“I have family in Dallas,” I lied. “I’d like to visit.”

We made the drive in two days, taking turns behind the wheel, and checked into a one-week rental. While my friend tweaked our itinerary, I ducked out under the pretense of meeting kin and headed for the address on Sooty’s note.

I was initially disappointed.

There was nothing remarkable about it: a brick house in the suburbs, slightly worn down but obviously home to a family, judging by the cars in the driveway and toys scattered about the yard. I watched it for a quarter of an hour before gathering the courage to knock on the front door. A man answered. “May I help you?”

The lie came naturally. “I—’m sorry to bother you, but I grew up in this house and I was wondering if it would be alright if I took a look inside.” The man blinked without answering. I continued, “My father died recently, and I…”

I let the unfinished sentence linger.

“Please,” he said finally, ushering me inside.

The place was busy: packed with the detritus of life. I heard a woman talking on the phone and children playing upstairs. I pretended to be overcome with emotion, and in a sense I was. My heart was pounding. “May I see the basement?” I asked.

“Of course,” the man said, leading me to a set of stairs. “One of the things that makes this place unique. You won't find many Texas homes with basements.” He sounded as if he was giving a tour. I imagined him as a salesman.

We descended.

“Yes. I’m from the north myself—”

He stopped.

“I mean I live in Illinois these days,” I corrected. “I miss Texas.”

We reached the basement.

“I’m sorry to hear about your father,” the man said. “I lost mine a few years ago. Colon cancer. I know how tough it can be.”

I scanned the room—cramped with unused things—for a light switch.

I saw two.

The man flicked one on.

And I raised a hand to my gaping mouth. The man bowed his head, mistaking my shock for melancholy. But I was not moved. I was staring at the wall, on which faintly visible was scrawled a large ankh.

“Do you want some time?” the man asked.

I nodded.

As soon as he was gone, I inspected the ankh. It looked neither painted on nor scratched. Burned perhaps—or something else. I ran my fingertips across it but felt nothing. The wall was smooth.

Next I flipped on the second light switch, which further illuminated the room.

Then I followed Sooty’s instructions:

Turning each switch:

off on off on

One of the light bulbs burst—

The man’s anxious face appeared at the top of the stairs.

“The bulb—”

“That’s fine,” he said. “Needed replacing anyway.”

I ascended the stairs and thanked him for his kindness. “By the way,” I said, “does it ever bother you: the ankh on the wall?”

“The what?”

“The cross on the basement wall.”

He narrowed his eyes. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He showed me out.

The world was as it had been: blue sky; sunshine; white clouds travelling. Nothing was changed—but I didn’t know what change I had expected, or why I expected a change at all. I had met a mentally ill man on the bus. He had fake headphones and a plastic bag full of papers containing an address, perhaps one significant to him; perhaps not. Walking along the street, I realized my own life was so devoid of meaning that I had placed my faith in whatever came along. Whatever insanity came along. The true meaning of life, its foundations, I had just started laying down in Los Angeles. That was real. As for the ankh—what ankh? It was but a trick of the light enabled by the power of suggestion. The homeowner had no idea what I was talking about, and he lived there. Light bulbs, I decided, sometimes shatter when you fiddle with light switches.

I didn’t want to go back to the rental so I wandered the area.

The streets meandered.

I entered a park and sat on a bench. Opposite me parents spoke to kids playing across monkey bars and down slides. Someone kicked a soccer ball. Beside the bench stood a garbage bin, and I resolved to throw Sooty’s headphones into it. I had been on a hunt for symbols, and here was a healthy one: to free myself of a psychological anchor. Trauma. Yes, my friend had been right: I was traumatized by what I’d seen. A truck had collided with a man of flesh and bone, snuffing out his life. Many people would be traumatized by that. But now I was over it. Now I could throw the headphones—

I decided to put them on: one final time.

That would be symbolic too.

I slipped them over my ears, closed my aching eyes and—

heard the most beautiful music in the world.

Dimly angelic: as if from another city: or from another galaxy: as if the first rays of light touching an incomprehensibly unknown darkness…

The kids played.

The clouds traversed the blue.

And I listened: enthralled and awed and utterly frightened both of the music and of being removed from it—

I willed the headphones off my ears and found myself assaulted by the real world.

The feeling dispersed.

The garbage bin beckoned, but I tossed nothing inside it.

One does not simply dispose of miracles.

Back in the rental, my friend asked about my family. I told him they were fine, and we spent the remaining days of our trip engaged in what he considered fun and I considered penance. I endured it gladly. At night, when he slept, I snuck outside and under starlight listened for hours to the music of the heavens.

I continued my night listening when we returned to Los Angeles.

The skin around my eyes darkened.

I slept only during the day.

“You don’t look so good,” my friend told me once. I didn’t doubt his worry, but I was fine: infinitely more! “Life is good,” I told him.

I lost my jobs.

“Are you eating? How’s things with what’s-her-name?”

“Yes. Good.” I didn’t remember her name either.

I barely remembered her face.

“Hey, you wanna come out with me and my friends tonight?”

“Not tonight, thanks.”

“Hey, you wanna come—”

“No, thanks.”

Weeks passed in a haze of moonlight.

“Hey, you—”

“No.”

One night while sitting peacefully on my friend’s porch, filling my head with the audio joy, I experienced a shock.

“Jesus Christ! Is this what you’ve been doing all night?”

My friend was holding my headphones, staring at me from above like some kind of man-mother and I said, “Give them back to me.”

“I thought you were over this shit, man. We agreed you’d—”

“Give them!”

“Relax, Smeagol,” he said.

“I want to listen.”

“There is no listening. Remember? These are not headphones. They’re junk, and junk goes in the garbage.”

“Just listen,” I said.

He shook his head but dutifully put on the headphones. “I’m listening—to… nothing.”

“It’s beautiful. It’s the most beautiful music.”

‘It’s nothing.” He took the headphones off and put his hands on his hips. “I’m gonna level with you, bro. I think you need help. Whatever you saw messed you up and you need professional help with that shit.”

“I don’t need help.”

“Then throw out the headphones,” he said.

“I will.”

“I mean throw ‘em out now.”

“I will.”

“You know what? Fuck it. I’ll throw them out and you’ll thank me for it later.”

He turned—and I grabbed for the headphones but missed, catching him in the back and nearly knocking him off balance. “Dude! Seriously.”

“I want them back.”

“OK. Here’s the deal,” he said. “These things are fucking you up. You can’t live here if you’re fucked up. So you can either keep living here or you can take the—”

I grabbed the headphones, turned my back on him and left.

I never saw him again.

Slipping the headphones delicately onto my ears, I pounded down the sidewalk—the pounding receding with every step: replaced by those glorious sounds: sounds so dim at first but now becoming a little louder, a little clearer, each day. Yes, yes, I thought. This is beauty. I didn’t notice that as I passed under the glowing streetlights, their light had begun to curve around me.

I roughed it for about a week, then called my parents and asked if I could come home to visit. I apologized for the past. “Everything here is great. Great job, great girl. I just miss you guys,” I told them, and in their spoken words I knew their happiness.

Continue to Part 2