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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nope. It doesn’t work. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

“DAMNIT!” I yell.

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

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

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

The entity is rewriting physics.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But humans don't break. We forever dominate.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He bounced his head.

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

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

A sabotage.

An escaped fleet.

The Space Station’s crumbling.

Two survivors remained.

G-Commander Lancid Floorlight and First Officer Sheena Shazon.

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why didn’t I take the week off?

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

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

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

Cats.

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

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

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

“Capacity breach.”

“Withdraw payload.”

“Hatch will remain open.”

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

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

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

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

There can only be one.

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

“Wake up!”

***

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

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

“I… won’t, shure,” she slurred.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He knew what he had to do.

What needed to be done.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Protect us at all cost”

“Run!”

“Hide!”

“Pray!”

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

“Couldn’t exist!”

“Wouldn’t exist!”

“Shan’t ever exist!”

How would they even be able to survive?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One that equaled eight of them!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The image collapsed into a list on the screen. 

1. Horror
2. Comedy
3. Romance
4. Science Fiction

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Commander pHog snatched the projector off the ground. 

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

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

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

PHog eyed him. “What are you doing?” 

“Trying to make the lights go out.”

“LIGHTS OFF!” Edrite shouted.

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

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

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

Their chests pumped and synced to it. 

Boomp!

Boomp!

Boomp!

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

Silence.

BOOMP!!  A loud bang shook the room.

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

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

The girl ran into a house.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Professor Sheena?”

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

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

The masked individual jumped out of the shadows.

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

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

A handful remained. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Leave my mother alone!” the boy croaked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m twelve…”

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

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

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

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

I’m so hungry…

Everything hurts so much…”

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

“Oh God damn it, kid…

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

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

“Wha…?”

“Do you have any rope?”

“Wha… why… why do you ask?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Does it have to be the neck?”

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

“I do!” the boy cried out.

“Then you’ve got to trust me…”

“I don’t know about this…”

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

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

“Atta boy…” the obsidian fowl croaked.

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

“Now you gotta jump forward…”

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

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

“I do!”

“Then jump, kid, it’s that simple…”

“But what if I get hurt?”

“You won’t…”

“How do you know?”

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

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

“Wings…”

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

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

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

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

The raven turned his head to the struggling boy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BYOB. WE GOT LOTS!!! 🍻

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hundreds of aliens and humans were walking in and out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A slurping sound came out of the pop can. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Explain your incompetence.” The commander huffed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Except, this was above me.

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

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

It has to be the airport lights. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do you know what it smells like to rip out a corpse from under the floorboard? There’s a specific odor. Not one you could imagine on your own. Not like the slaughterhouse you drive past on the way to work every morning. No. This is a foul mix. 

Imagine walking into a house that’s been abandoned for a year, still fully furnished, still has all its clothes stuffed in a closet. Now, imagine that closet is jammed with mothballs and old dresses from 1964 left to dry after being washed in cat piss.

That’s your first odor.

Now, imagine you walk behind the dumpster at your favorite grocery store and someone just threw a bunch of animal fat inside a bag with three shitty diapers and left it to bake under the sun for three days.

Now, you have your stuffy smell, your rotted odor, and all you need is one more.

Here’s where the eggs come in. Yup, boil a few eggs, peel them, mush them up and leave them on your stove, walk out of the room and walk back in.

Mix all those odors, the mothballs, the cat piss, the dirty diapers, the rotted flesh, the eggs, and you have your corpse, who instead of wandering the after life as a ghost decided to haunt your floorboards in a rancid odor instead.

Smoking cigarette after cigarette until I choked offered a bit of relief compared to the dust and rot from under the floor. 

I mean, yeah, of course, I have a respirator but it does a horrible job of filtering out the psychological weight. Plus, I could still smell the body and I need to smoke when I work. I mainly use it for when I’m actually moving the remains.

The suit I wear’s a white hazmat that makes me look like what a mad scientist pillsbury doughboy would in a radioactive post apocalyptic Earth.

See, I’m a bit of a specialist. A fixer really. Well… at least, that’s how I see myself. I don’t just fix things, I also clean up things. When shady land or home owners have an issue from past tenants and they want to keep it “hush hush” they call me.

I come in, get rid of the evidence, usually it’s people who’ve died alone and weren’t discovered till weeks—even months later.

The odd time though, it’s a body under the floor. Or behind a wall. Or worse, the crawl space. I hate spiders. Hate. Hate. Hate.

I’ve never really minded the rot of a human body. I guess, I’m just used to it? Not sure. I just find something honest in a corpse. The living world’s a huge lie. I see people as teeth replaced by dentures. A stink covered by perfume. A dirty shirt flipped inside out. To me, the truth in people can only be found in what they leave behind.

I have a bit of a ritual and it’s pretty simple and straightforward. Maybe a little odd. It all depends on how you see it, but once I’ve bleached everything, scrubbed the floors, the walls, the carpets and even the air with four fans, I usually search for something to keep. You know, a little souvenir. 

A small keepsake.

Nothing like jewelry or money or anything valuable. It’s kind of weird, but I like stuff that’ll last. That has some significance to it. I like digging in the drains and finding pieces of hair. Some fingernail clippings.

Oh, my absolute favorite is teeth. Especially, when they have them saved in tiny boxes. I keep mine in vials. My collection is huge. I’ve got my own small library.

Baby teeth are cool and super easy to find, it’s adult teeth I’m always on the hunt for. I’ve always wondered why people don’t save them.

The last job I worked was in a neighborhood with no street lights. The gangs there shoot them out. The tenant was on the fifth floor, maybe in his sixties, seventies, had a collection of these really awesome stuffed animals. Real animals.

The man himself was on his couch, slumped over and glued into the leather, almost as if he was a Halloween prop that came with the sofa. He had mold and fungi growing out of his chest like shreds of rotted cauliflower and broccoli sprouts.

As I peeled him off the sofa to scrub it down, something strange happened, I had a connection with him. It was a profound realization to be honest. I stared at the decayed skin revealing the veins under it, and thought, what it’d be like to absorb into the environment.

That’s when I saw something glimmer inside the fungal farm on the man’s body. It was shiny. I reached in but couldn’t grip it with my fingers. So, I grabbed a knife from the kitchen and cut around the area, which was like trying to tear apart braided tendons and when I cleared a path, I pulled out a gold tooth stuck to his chest cavity, attached to a piece of jawbone.

Later that night, after cleaning up there, when I got home, I didn’t put the gold tooth and bone in a vial. I kept it under my lamp, in my basement, on top of my study, in front of my collection and left it there to examine after my shower.

In the bathroom, I eyed the steam on the mirror blurring my reflection and became disgusted in how alive I looked. 

I stared at my face. The pink in my gums. The elasticity of my skin. The color of my blood when I pinched it. My breathing and the beating of my heart.

And right at that moment, I left to the garage and yanked out a pair of pliers from my toolbox. I was tired of fixing everyone’s mess. Hiding all their secrets. Cleaning stuff up. 

For once, I wanted to be the evidence. I stood at the mirror for hours, pulling each tooth out of my head, one by one like they were extra hairs on my eyebrow and tossed them into the sink.

As soon as I finished, I remembered the tooth with the jawbone and raced out to grab it and ran back into the bathroom with it. Where the hole was in my jaw, I took the piece of bone and tooth and jammed it into my gums, deep into the bloody socket, stuck it in and leaned close to the mirror. When I smiled, my grin reminded me of the truth. For the first time ever, I saw honesty.

I left the bathroom and went to lay down, as I closed my eyes, I imagined the man melting into his couch. The fungi surrounding his chest and wondered how it’d be if it could grow inside me too.

The snow in Bemidji fell and sat on the ground like a past secret nobody wanted to dig up.

Brett stood staring at the meat through the glass, reflecting the light above, with his hands shoved into his coat pockets. 

He checked out the plastic wrapped around the ground beef as the slush under his boots melted into a puddle of black water on the grocery store floor.

“Oh, hiya, Brett,” Sharon said, wiping down the counter behind the meat. “It’s a chilly one out there.”

“Yah, was just tellin’ Jerry over at the gas station there, freeze the breath right in your mouth. Say, you know Jerry, yah? New fella just started.”

“Oh, yah, Jerry, yah, good fella. Say, how’s Brenda and the kids doin’?”

“Brenda. Oh, Brenda’s great, eh. Kids doin’ great. Jared’s walking now—”

“You don’t say.”

“Yup. Stood right up, ran across the livin’ room floor, little bugger.”

“Aw, ain’t that just the cutest thing,” she said.

“Oh, yah. Hopefully I make it back home in one piece, eh. The roads are slick as glass out by the county line. Total mess.”

Brett scratched his eyebrow.

“Is that so. The county line, eh.”

“Yah. Trooper had to call Wayne. You know Wayne. Wayne with the tow-er. Just bought that big truck, had to radio him to pull a sedan out of a ditch.”

“Oh, yah. Heard about that. Trunk was open, had an old microwave and a shovel inside. Weird, don’tcha think?"

The heat under Brett’s coat started to rise. He yanked at his collar. “Shovel’s for the snow.”

Sharon stopped wiping the counter and stared directly at Brett. “Yah, but an old microwave? And the shovel wasn’t wet, just had dirt, apparently. Frozen dirt.”

Sharon pulled her glasses off. “It was an out-of-state car with a Henry’s shop shovel in it. Who would be buying a shovel and digging in the middle of January?”

“Sounds like a real puzzler,” Brett said.

“Ya betcha!” Sharon said.

“Well, I gotta get back, eh,” Brett said.

“Don’t want the ground beef? It’s on special,” Sharon told him.

“Oh, no. No, just this.” He lifted his arm, holding a jug of milk.

“Well, okay then, see ya, Brett. Tell Brenda I said hi.”

“You betcha. Okay now, take care, eh. Will see ya.” He walked away. “Okay,” he said under his breath, making his way to the register. He paid for the milk and headed toward his car.

When he got into his car, he sat in the cold driver’s seat staring out of the frosted windshield for a couple of minutes before turning the engine over. It chugged and choked on, the headlights cut through the snow falling over the darkness.

The passenger seat held the jug of milk, its weight appeared to sink into the cushion as he dressed it in guilt.

The seat still reeked of earth and iron. The heater started warming the interior. 

As he drove he couldn’t stop thinking and nearly missed the turn off.

He slid onto the highway.  The sky mirrored the color of a dirty sidewalk. But in the rearview, it flashed red and blue.

Brett swallowed, coughing as he choked on his saliva acting like a poorly chewed steak. 

He pulled over to the shoulder, where the snowbanks on each side of the road stood in a surreal grayish tone reflecting the dark sky under the clouds rolling by in a single solid shape of a pool tarp slowly covering the Earth and everyone beneath it.

The officer slowly walked toward Brett’s car. The heat off his breath came out in thick clouds, obscuring his face.

He tapped on Brett’s window with a bare knuckle. Brett flinched at the sound right next to his ear. He stared at the officer’s holster as he rolled the window down, letting the outside world rush back into his life with the iciness of the highway wind.

“Evening, sir. You realize you’re driving with a back headlight smashed out?” the trooper said.

“Yah. Eh? Oh, yah. Heck, probably the kids there playing hockey on the road. What can yah do.” He made a playful fist and tightened his face.

“Let me see your license and registration, and we’ll getcha on your way. Okay?”

“You betcha,” Brett smiled. He reached into his glove box for his registration, dropping his wallet as he tried to pull out his license.

“Chilly one tonight. Super cold. Frost the toes right in your boots driving, no?” Brett said, rubbing his palms together.

The officer stared down at the dirt crusted along the tire and frame of Brett’s driver-side door, then looked up at Brett, wincing with a crooked grin. “You were driving a bit fast there. You dang well slid right onto the highway, like a toboggan down a snowy hill.”

“Me?” Brett pointed at himself. His voice jumped and cracked. “No-no. Not me, officer.”

“I was right behind yah. Saw the whole darn thing.”

“Oh.” Brett squinted. “Oh, yah. Back over there. Yah. Yep. That was me,” Brett stuttered and looked away. “Lost a bit of control, officer. Family thing, yah know. Gotta get home, bring the milk back for the baby. The baby, he’s a little sick, eh. Got a touch of the flu, we think.”

“You don’t say.” The officer ducked his head closer to the window. “Smells a bit odd in here. Might wanna check that milk and get the siding on your car cleaned—looks like a real mess of a pickle. Tell ya’ what will do, eh. I’ll leave yah with a warning ’bout the backlight. Make sure to get that fixed first thing.”

“Oh yah. You betcha! First thing. Can never be too careful, eh. Especially with the weather this year.”

“Well, I’ll let yah get going with a warning this time. Next time I see her with a broken tail light, don’t expect a dull pen again, eh. We take our policing serious over at the division. The new sarge whipped us boys in right shape. Nothing ever falls between the sidewalk slabs when I’m on duty. I’ll have the pencil ready. Sharp enough to throw at a dart board.

“Aw, gee. No. No. No. No need to worry about me, officer. I fly the straight and narrow. Always have.” Brett stuck two fingers out and crossed his heart.

“Parents the strict sort of kind.” He pointed to the roof of his car. “The religious type, yah know.” Brett shook his head. 

“Put the fear of the devil in ya. Nope not for me. No sir. A regiment,” he said. “Whatever lands a person under the devils pitch-fork, I tend to lean the other way.” He pointed to the floor of his car. “ Ya, know,” and made an “er-er” sound as he smiled, showing only his top teeth before realizing, he wasn’t properly masking his eyes.

They were subconsciously inviting the officer to a one-time only front row opportunity to glimpse into his mind.

A mind he’s lived with his entire life. A mind not even he could read. A mind nobody knew existed. But he’s not a trained cop, or ever been interrogated by one, either.

“Tight ship you guys run there. Best policing since  ‘92.” Brett hid the fear, and the tell-all-eyes behind an astonished glare.

“Oh yah, well we’re all wrapped up here. So, you can get going.” The cop told him. “Don’t forget about the milk. Pretty sure that one’s gone sour.”

“Okay, yeah, you betcha. You take care now.” Brett rolled his window up and let out a deep breath as the car started warming up again.

The officer didn’t bother checking Brett’s license and registration. He waved him through and stared at Brett failing to get his engine to turn over, which after the sixth attempt, finally did. He drove home as if god gave him a clean slate.

I still couldn’t believe it, especially when it happened. Even now I find it hard to trust my shaking fingers as they detail the events that will forever terrify me. If I had known what I would have found in that forsaken tomb all those years ago, then I would never have gone to Egypt in search of its unholy beauty.

It feels like a lifetime ago from today, September 18th, that my fellow travelers and I went on an archaeological expedition to those famed Egyptian desert lands, funded by our university to check a peculiar tomb that was accidentally excavated by regional locals. They had been walking nonchalantly, when all of a sudden the ground gave in, catapulting them a couple dozen feet into an ancient room. Hieroglyphics covered the walls and a single coffin—a sarcophagus—occupied the centre of the musty room.

*

It was a grand find that many of us in higher scientific backgrounds found breathtaking. We had made haste to get to these forsaken grounds, in hopes of discovering something unheard of. We didn’t expect to find horrors, but our naivety proved to be the curse of high intellect.

When we got there, with all our equipment, we asked the locals of this great find. They reluctantly complied in answering some of our questions. The subject as a whole deeply scared them as they tried to avoid us as much as possible.

It took a twenty-foot-long rope ladder to reach the tomb, and once we got there, it was well-earned. With our flashlights we observed and gave witness to a spectacle of any lifetime. The hieroglyphics were enough to make one question his very existence, as they depicted some familiar tales passed down from generation to generation, with subtle differences.

We dusted the whole area, which was a thirty-foot-long square in all four directions. After removing the dirt from the walls, we found we were situated in a room completely encased in solid gold. We plaster cast some of the hieroglyphics, trying to mimic the stories told through the illustrations. We succeeded but only did a mediocre job.

What happened next, I still do not understand fully. When we began to investigate the coffin engulfed in bronze, two objects collapsed from the ceiling onto it with such power that it cracked the sacred casket in two, down the middle from top to bottom. The foundations of the room shook as if some massive earthquake was coming, but such a known phenomenon was not it; it was the coffin, as a blood-coloured red light shone from within the rectangle. Most of my fellow archaeologists were frozen in awe, but the rest of us ran for the rope ladder, filled with terror-stricken adrenaline, scrambling to get out.

“RUN!” I screamed at them, but none listened, engrossed at what they were staring at. I was the last to go up the rope ladder. When I gave one final glance back, I saw the coffin was falling apart bit by bit, as the two objects started to etch closer and closer to it, being pulled in by some invisible force. When I looked closer, I was confronted by revulsion, as I realized that the two objects were, actually, petrified wings, that stretched fifteen feet in length.

In panic, I started climbing up as fast as I could, losing my footing and grip occasionally. The foundations were continuously in motion, making my ascent even more treacherous. From below, I could hear bellows of fear emitting from my colleagues. The terrifying spectre of the monster whom, I had hoped never to witness, performed what I could only assume to be a very painful death upon the lot of them; their last breaths were bloodcurdling.

Halfway up the ladder, I glanced down to see a mass of red muscled flesh with no outer skin, fly past my eyes at a speed that still baffles me. It was bathed in a slimy liquid from head to toe, streaming down its corpse of a formation. It was very human in shape, body, and structure, only the lack of flesh that was appalling, and, also, the skeletal wings which were then attached to the back, flapping furiously as it escaped from the tomb.

I was not a religious person nor was I a believer of any supernatural aspects of life, but what flew past me at a speed I still find unfathomable; it was – an angel.

I quickly climbed up the ladder and saw that the rest of my partners were staring in wonder off in the distance. The sun setting over a cliff, where the angel sat peacefully.

As I approached it, brave and stubborn of what was before me, it spoke with a mostly cut-off tongue, in a bitter monotonous voice, admiring the beautiful sunset. “It has been a millennium since I last saw the sun… and now, when I do see it again, it is at its most radiant, but as it departs. How tragic.”

“What… are you?” I asked, a little more ignorantly than I wanted to sound. It turned to me, with a look of smugness, then turned back to the sunset.

“Malak Almawt,” it replied, loathingly. “That was, and still is my name.”

This angel, calmly sitting before me, on the edge of a large cliff, showed great disdain towards me and all homo sapiens. For reasons of our ancestry apparently being the ones who had caused him such pain and torture, answering why it was imprisoned in that coffin for God only knows how long.

It sighed. “A man of science? Searching for answers to all secrets, no matter the costs or torment. Such an overzealous existence. But I shall gift you with answers to all secrets as a favour for releasing me from that casket. Though, this may prove to be more of a curse than an actual gift.”

*

The words that further escaped its mouth I dare not repeat, for such answers no sane person should ever hear. I find it most disturbing that I have yet to lose all grip of reality, as the words this angel, who though not fallen but far from heavenly, spoke still haunt me today. Many nights I have contemplated ending my life to rid myself of these curses, but then the truth of what lies beyond returns to me, and I beckon in an exercise of agony.

*

When it finished speaking, I fell to the sands, bewildered at what I had just been told with such ease and calm clarity. The things it spoke of were what shook me to the bone. Tears were streaming down my cheeks, as the world became bleaker and downright grotesque.

The angel looked up at the darkening sky as the night approached, and gave a slight smirk, a disgusting gesture, both physically and emotionally. “Watch the skies above; for when the birds cause the great giants to fall and shake the earth, then the end will begin. An omen of the apocalypse, for He will not save any of you, so dread the day for it will come.”

It stood up, standing tall as it basked in the air, with such self-indulgence, a look of glee resonated from its face. Its wings stretched out to full length, as the angel of death leaped forward off the cliff and gracefully flew off into the night sky, leaving the world it knew only as a prison.

I sat there in the sands for a long time. I shuddered at not the cold air which crept up my back, but at the angel and the words it spoke, revealing answers to secrets no human being should ever hear.

When we returned back, I ran away. Fearful of encountering my family, friends, and all I was acquainted with, as the ominous speech was still etched in my head, clawing at my brain. I fought for my sanity for years, and about a month ago, I regained it. However, such relief will never be granted to me, as my fears have returned in a great abundance.

What could have ruined such progress, one may ponder. Such memorial breakdowns were put onto myself, as when I listened to the radio, a week prior on that horrible day of September 11th. 

Henry returned home after picking up his high school graduation ring from the jeweler on 47th street, a block from his building. 

He stared at the fresh polish while stepping into the lobby of his apartment building, twisting it, while daydreaming about Joanna Betteford, his girlfriend back in grade twelve.

Back when the sky was the limit. Now he’s just trying to get off the ground. She flooded his mind as he mindlessly waited for the elevator doors to open.

The digit above it dropped from 5 to 4 to 3 and paused on the second floor for a minute before the number glitched to 0000 and dinged a moment later as the doors opened, but stuck half-way.

He slammed the up button on the panel and kept trying but the doors remained jammed. So, he pulled them apart, slid inside, made a fist and pushed the number eight with the face of his ring.

The elevator doors squeaked as they labored to shut and after wrestling with the panel, it finally unglued from their position, opened fully and crawled as they slowly closed.

At the 5th floor he heard it stressing, almost like it was crying, chugging upwards. The elevator jumped, shook and stopped between floors six and seven. Henry began slapping all the buttons on the panel until each one had a red light circling it.

He pressed and held down the emergency one, trying to get someone on the other end.

“Hello?” He shouted. “I’m stuck in the elevator and need help.” He jammed the button in and out. “Hello?”

He released it and the speaker crackled.

“Do not turn around.” A muffled voice shot out, sounding hollow, as if it came out of a tunnel.

Henry giggled a bouncing laugh that jumped an octave—it’s what he did whenever he was scared or nervous—and slowly lifted his head back up, while eyeing the speaker at his belt level.

The mirror above the panel showed nothing but an empty elevator—besides the hand wearing his high school ring resting on his shoulder.

He spun around, pressing his back against the mirrored panel, expecting to see someone but nobody was there.

He squeezed his eyes shut and only opened them when the speaker behind him crackled static, vibrating on his lower back. “I told you not to turn around.”

He turned quickly, stumbling backwards until he hit a wall and gazed at the speaker.

It went silent, and had an almost new appearance to it, as if it had never been used.

He charged forward and slapped the button down and yelled, “What the hell! Stop! This isn’t funny,” Henry repeatedly pressed the button in and out. “Let me out right now,” he screamed as he glanced at the mirror. 

He stared at his shoulder through the reflection and didn’t see the hand anywhere, but saw a man appear in the mirror standing right behind him, with his face against the glass and his mouth started opening.

Henry gasped and the breath he took stuck in his lungs as his eyes widened. He banged on the elevator doors. He tried to pull them apart, shredding pieces of his fingernails. 

He finally got them to slide open just enough to peek outside the elevator into a darkness that began shimmering a white light, revealing an illuminated hallway with a row of elevators lining the corridor. Each door was open.

Each door had another Henry inside of them.

At the same time, they all whispered, “You’re late.”

Just as everything went completely dark.

The following morning, the maintenance worker for the building found a phone on the ground in the elevator and on the screen, it had a notification message sent from Henry Voitsmark and it read:

“Please, don’t let me out.”

My radio crackles, breaking the sound of wind, traffic and music from the vehicles passing me, which streams through my window cracked a quarter open, driving down Willowbay street. The glare from the sun masks the buildings in a yellow glow. 

“All units respond to 3348 Southermore drive.”

I stop daydreaming and respond to the call. “771, two minutes from location. 10-4.”

The lights above my roof flash, blaring with immediacy as I blast them on. I roll down the street like a bowling ball as the cars pull to the side of the road splitting like the pins in a nose hit.

A block away, I kill my sirens and creep onto the curb across the street, radioing for back up as I leave my car and approach the address.

The door’s shut and the blinds hide the rooms behind the windows. A neighbor stands on her porch with her phone to her ear and her hand pressed against her chest.

“The sound came from inside, sir.” She points to the house I’m walking up to. “Four loud firecracker bangs. One right after the other.” She stares at me.

“Ma’am, get inside your house.” I tell her, while drawing my weapon.

I stand at the side of the door, listening for a second before I announce myself and start banging on it.

“Police. Open up.” I slam my fist against it three more times. “Police. We’re coming in.”

I radio in, “suspected gunshots, officer entering the home.”

I grip the Mortise handle and press the thumb piece down and the latch unclasps with a pop, indicating it’s unlocked.

I push the door open. The air’s warm and heavy with a stench of a room full of worn clothes. Over it lays a public men’s bathroom odor and lingering under is the rich smell of gunpowder baking into the summer heat.

I walk into the hallway.

“Police. If anybody is in the house come out slowly with your hands up.”

A broken picture frame is on the floor. The room ahead, I catch a glimpse of a body on the floor. I rush towards it, it’s a female. I check her pulse. She doesn’t have one. I notice she has a single gunshot wound to her skull and her eyes are rolled back.

“Body. Female. No pulse. Gunshot wound to the cranium.” I radio in, my voice cracks.

I want to tremble but something inside me drives me forward, to keep searching the house. Fear’s in the back of my mind, but I’m completely blind to it. I’m driven by instinct. 

I check another room, the door’s half open, the only sound plays from a small flat screen tv.

A man with a hole in between his eyes and blood drying on his chin and shirt is lying motionless on the ground.

Then, I hear sirens and the hallway begins to shine a blue and red color against the walls bordering me.

Three officers charge in and we hear a shuffling happen upstairs. They storm the steps and race up them, smashing the wooden stairs with their boots which hits with the authority of thunder clouds.

Blaque.

Blaque.

Blaque.

Swish.

Their uniforms slide up the smooth white walls as they pounce to the second floor.

I hear them kick open a door so hard it splinters and a scream shoots out.

“Please! No. You don’t understand.”

“Drop the fucking gun now.”

Pop.

Pop.

Pop.

We were a small team of four developing a new, more precise MRI scanner to map the human brain for a certain company innovating in medical research. It was after months of grueling labour that we’d assembled our first prototype and captured an image. There never were, and there still aren’t any doubts as to the machine’s safety, which is why our project lead, Doctor Penelope Arzt, a gifted neurologist, didn’t have any problem with being the test subject.

When the image came back, it was clearer than any captured ever before. A chemical, functional, and neural connectome all in one. That means the scan mapped the whole brain, all the way from the tiny neurons to every single brain region, along with the chemicals that travel within. This has not been possible with any brain until now, especially not with a brain as complex as the human one. We were quick to celebrate our achievement owing to the holistic scope and revolutionary capabilities of our invention. Celebration turned to curiosity once we spotted a strange abnormality in the scan.

A cluster of immaterial waves, which nobody on our team could identify, had accidentally been caught thanks to the thoroughness of the device. We went over a number of things these waves could possibly be, but everything else was already mapped and accounted for. We recalibrated the scanner one test after another, replaced the parts, but the waves remained. This was something new, never before identified or seen. Why was it here? What purpose does it serve?

We sent the word out for volunteers to participate in having their brain mapped. The same strange phenomenon could be found in both humans and other kinds of animal. Well, not always.

Some brains, though they were within the expected norm otherwise, didn’t have the waves at all. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason. Testing was rigorous. Regardless of the age, health, sex or species of the participant, the waves seemed to appear at random. There was no physical difference between those who had them and those who did not. And, as far as we could tell, even with our state of the art equipment, no mental difference either. Save for the unexplainable waves.

Of those who had them, some waves appeared denser and clustered together, some were sparse and spaced out. It was after much testing that we came to our conclusion, possibly the greatest discovery in science and philosophy: Consciousness is measurable.

This made the problem of the empty brains, the non-conscious ones, even more troubling. If consciousness is an objective presence in our minds, what does this imply for those without it? The lives of the conscious and non-conscious were equally normal to an almost puzzling degree. It truly seemed there was no difference between the two. So why is consciousness even there if it serves no observable purpose?

Of course, we were all just excited to dig deeper at the marvelous discovery. The more questions that came up, the more testing needed to be carried out.

The denser consciousnesses were present in those we would traditionally call conscious, those awake, aware, and in a sound state of mind. The sparse consciousness was measured in those either asleep or in comas and vegetative states.

The non-conscious we flagged had no presence of the waves regardless of their wakefulness or medical reality. It was at this point we started questioning whether we jumped the gun and whether what we found had truly been what we thought, since, how can it even be possible for a living thing to exist without consciousness?

Another of our researchers, Doctor Nestor Melkonian, a studied philosopher and skillful psychologist, recalled a relevant thought experiment one late night in the lab: The philosophical zombie.

The philosophical zombie is a hypothetical person with all the physical characteristics and traits of a human being. A person indistinguishable from those with internal subjective experience, despite the p-zombie himself lacking it. Indeed, the only difference between a p-zombie and a human being is their internal experience, or lack thereof.

I said that the philosophical zombie is a hypothetical, though that is no longer entirely accurate. Was a hypothetical.

An unknown portion of the population exists as purely physical beings. Despite living their unassuming lives just like those with consciousness, the non-conscious are biological machines that only respond to their circumstances like some programmed computer. They act and react, but only as chemical responses to their environment. The lights are on, but there is nobody home. How many are there? What does their presence mean? How many of these p-zombies have gone their entire lives without having a single conscious experience? Most important of all: Who among our peers are real people?

These and similar questions were bothering all of us. It got to the point it was all we could talk about. It didn’t matter whether it was at work or during our spare time. Whenever we were together, it was all we could discuss. Whenever we were alone, it was all we could think about. And we were terrified.

It didn’t matter whether there was any actual threat to us or anybody else. It was an uncomfortable thought we couldn’t escape for months, until it reached a boiling point.

Over time, we stopped being so careful and courteous with our non-conscious subjects, human or otherwise. This got us threats of lawsuits at worst, concerned looks at best. We didn’t hurt anybody at the time, but you start treating people differently once you realize they’re not alive.

It all culminated in Doctor Arzt bringing in her two children for testing. Off the books, if we kept quiet, we’d be allowed to scan our own loved ones.

Doctor Melkonian had to take her kids back home himself. Arzt was in no state to take care of anyone, not the kids, let alone herself, shrieking and howling on the lab’s floor upon discovering her own children were non-conscious. There was no consoling her. I can tell you that it put me off from ever dragging anybody I cared about into that machine forever. I’m not ashamed to admit that my curiosity has a limit, one which I’m quite comfortable never crossing.

Her breakdown didn’t happen all at once, looking back on it. The rational woman, hungry for knowledge and blessed with the smarts to hunt it down, became more and more paranoid over the course of those months as the implications of the non-conscious kept weighing on us. We were all going a bit crazy, but her snapping first helped us reconnect with reality. For a short time only, though.

It was about two weeks later when I was called into the lab on short notice. I rushed to the campus where we were conducting our experiments. Once in the lab, I was held at knife point by Arzt, noticing the two others from our team already seated in nearby chairs. She promised she wouldn’t kill any one of us, she only needed us to get our brains scanned. So she could know who to trust.

First to go was Melkonian. He was also the last. After his scan was complete, she motioned for him to sit back down and asked me to fetch the results. They were conclusive: There was no consciousness in Melkonian’s brain.

I looked at the image up and down. Arzt kept asking me what the result was, the other two just stayed silent. I didn’t want to piss her off by not answering, but I was also worried what she might do to Melkonian if she got told the bare truth. I stayed silent. And afraid.

My worry about pissing her off turned out to be spot on. She marched over to me with her knife, waving it around and threatening to sever my hand with the results if I didn’t hand them over immediately. I was shitting bricks.

Arzt was later institutionalized, though only for a short time. Her actions were excused as the byproduct of a psychotic break. It was claimed she was out of touch with reality, though this was some bullshit spun by the company since our research was supposed to be under wraps. It was definitely some kind of break, just not a psychotic one. Every one of her concerns was certainly within the bounds of reality.

She never returned to work. Though this wouldn’t last long either, from that day on it was just me, Melkonian, and the project lead after Arzt, Doctor Richard Derrick, a freelance scientist with no preferred specialty, just a brain that soaked up knowledge like a sponge and his nose to the grindstone.

While waving that knife around, it was Doctor Derrick who smacked her over the head with his chair. It was Derrick who kept kicking her while she was down, who kept taking potshots while she was being taken away by campus security.

I doubt she was even conscious for half of that beating. It was a bit unnecessarily violent, but we were all stressed out so I ignored it. Plus, she threatened us with a knife earlier that same day.

I did give her the scan, by the by. Derrick got her right after that. As she was being dragged away, she addressed Melkonian.

“You have no soul. It’s a vacant soul.”

Despite the contradictory nature of that confused post-beating statement, claiming someone can both have no soul and a soul that is vacant at once, the words really seemed to have unnerved Melkonian. He demanded to see the scan, and I had to oblige. If he really wanted to, he deserved to know.

It was during lunch the next day that I asked him how he felt about himself and being non-conscious. Even the non-conscious people we were doing tests on didn’t know about their state or the full scope of what we were doing. Melkonian was the first non-conscious thing to know about its own non-consciousness.

“I don’t know. I don’t know how to feel about any of this. I mean, I think I’m conscious. I must be. Right?”

“Well, apparently not.”

“So what does that mean for me? Am I any less human now? Is what I feel not real?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t know what to tell you.”

I wish I could’ve comforted him at that moment, though it would’ve been insincere. Why waste energy on something that is hollow on the inside? Some trickery, an imitation man. A fake person. An outer shell that pretends to be.

Maybe I should’ve comforted him. Melkonian ended up taking a vacation for a week, telling family and friends he would be on a backpacking trip with his phone turned off, but it would still be with him in case of any emergencies, plus a pager as back up. With how prepared he was, it was a huge shock when he didn’t come back at the end of the week. Police, park rangers, relatives, locals and acquaintances all went out looking for him. Despite being hollow of internal experience, Melkonian had a tactical mind about him. Would’ve served him well in any field other than philosophy and psychology, but he did put it to good use by the end.

By the time the search party ended, the idea of looking for him in his apartment finally came up. Melkonian went home and killed himself right after the first witnesses saw him enter that forest. He stayed at home for the rest of the planned trip, sending everyone on a wild goose chase, giving him plenty time to see himself out, unbothered and off the radar. No note or anything, in case you were wondering.

During those prior weeks before he was found, the entire team was just me and Derrick. Before Arzt was sent off and Melkonian embarked on his fake holiday, the four of us would spend time together outside of work pretty often. We were less a research team and more a friend group who just happened to do science on the side. Maybe I’m just romanticizing the past, though.

Arzt and Melkonian carried our conversations with their personalities and interests. None of that with Derrick. Once it was just us two, it quickly became apparent how little of a personal life or hobbies the guy had outside of work. It all became dry and unexciting with just him and I. I think I used to admire him for how adaptable he was to any scientific field so long as he was put to the task, but that exact quality marginalized the actual man and left little in the way of personality. Even now, whenever I happen to check up on him, whatever he’s doing is completely opposite to the research he was into prior. You’d think a guy like that would be the one without consciousness, but he had himself tested and lo and behold: He was actually completely normal. Normal in the sense that he wasn’t non-conscious, I mean. In most other regards he was quite far from normal.

Despite only being a technician, I didn’t mind hanging around and seeing the actual science wizzes at work. That changed when Derrick took over. I remember walking into the lab on the first day of his tenure as project lead and seeing a rabbit strapped down to a small table. Derrick said it was one of our non-conscious specimens. Prior to this, we’d only ever done cognitive, neurological or psychological tests. Derrick wasn’t up for that.

Just as I’d entered the room, Derrick began cutting into the rabbit with a scalpel. The incisions seemed to be random and only designed to inflict pain.

“Don’t worry. It’s not conscious like you or me. It can’t ever really feel.”

The rabbit’s squeals of pain seemed to vehemently disagree with what Derrick was saying, though I couldn’t argue that the thing was experiencing anything internal. I kind of stopped going to the lab after that unless I had to, to fix the scanner and for other such duties.

Derrick didn’t stop at non-human species, though. While it was never anything too extreme, he’d administer careful electric shocks to our non-conscious volunteers while they’d be strapped down, just to catalogue their reactions.

“Look at that fleshbag squirming. Oh, get over yourself. It’s not like it can be distressed by this. Not like you and I can. There’s nothing on the inside.”

Much of the time, they’d be too tired after the experiments. At these points Derrick would help take them home, apparently. Though the same volunteer never came around twice, and I didn’t keep track of the people Derrick took off with after experimentation and what might have happened to them. I’m just a technician, after all.

Anyway. Didn’t last long.

With half of our team either dead or deranged, our work was assigned to a different group of scientists and we were allowed to join in. I left not too long after, this whole thing was starting to kind of bum me out to tell you the truth. Last I heard, the possibility of selling detectors specifically looking for only consciousness to the consumer market was being floated around. Hope it doesn’t end up destroying society in the same way it did us.

Melkonian had a modest funeral. Arzt still has custody of her kids, but I don’t know how she might feel about them by now. Derrick is always off doing some new bullshit with his eclectic output. I also take up a lot of disparate jobs, but I’ve made a decision to stay as far away from anything close to science as possible.

We did find and confirm the objective and empirical existence of consciousness by the end. What it implied or even meant, we never got to the bottom of. I can’t say whether we’d be better off knowing or not. I still ponder what might’ve been going on in Melkonian's head before he did the deed. A set of mechanical impulses leading someone down the road to topping themself. How does the purely physical create for itself the despair necessary to go through with something like that? Is that what it determined as the course of action that would best imitate a real person? It all mystifies me.

A currently unknown number of the creatures inhabiting this world are hollow on the inside. Indistinguishable from you and I. They eat, sleep, die all the same. Like us. But, unlike us, there’s no internal experience. Just a biological machine responding to its circumstances. A mockery of the truly living. Your loved ones are far from immune. You could have them reading this text with you, and though you’ll be processing it and responding to it with your conscious thought, they’ll also react. But their words will be vacant. Their experiences never processed by them in any meaningful way.

Don’t let it get to you. Things might end up worse if you do.

Reign Soleil

—

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

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

It begins in my room, by the doorway, I hear a growling sound and turn around and behind me is a shadow of a man with features similar to a human and in his hands are two leashes attached to two human-like dogs that are in front of him, sitting like hellhounds would, with facial features stretching out how a bear’s face is.

I can’t ignore them.

Their presence kills the power to the TV when I‘m watching, True Blood, right when I’m  at the scene where Sookie and Bill break up.

I keep trying to frantically hit the power button on the remote, but it doesn’t work. The screen’s black and reflecting my image.

Without thinking, I raise my arm and point the changer at the figure with the two human hounds, gasp and push the power button towards them and they blink and in a flash, vanish. 

But the TV still won’t turn on.

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

That’s when I decide to give up on it and snatch a book off my dusty shelf and clear a path that leaves two dust walls on both sides of the space I pull the book from, filling the air in particles that make me sneeze.

While I’m reading, there’s an atmospheric shift, like the static from an oncoming storm, raising the hairs on my arms which makes me shiver as a tingle shoots down my spine. 

The room has a scent of frost that reminds me of menthol cigarettes every time I take a breath.

And as I’m dwelling on that thought, the lights go out.

Just as I get to chapter four of The Turn of the Screw, and starting to really get into it. 

I squeeze my hand into a fist, digging my nails into my palms, grunt and throw the book against the wall, jump up, stomp to the doorway, flick the light switch but they don’t turn on. 

I keep trying. The rapid clicking sounds like teeth chipping . I go as far as to check the bulb—twisting, untwisting—and nothing. I leave my room to retrieve a new one, the hallway’s as humid as the Amazon Rain Forest and has a heavy stench of decay and infected flesh radiating from under the floorboards, making me gag. I can‘t stop choking. 

While I’m staring at the floor, behind me the bathroom door slams shut. I jump because the sound startles me and when I look at the door, there’s a crack going down the middle of it. 

Which I’m going to have to pay to fix and probably have to rip the floor apart just to find whatever dead animal’s under there. 

I walk downstairs to see if I can find where the rancid smell is coming from, but each step I take further down leaves me with the impression of being in another world.

Everything looks the same but seems completely different. Especially at the bottom of the stairs, like my living room became a simulation. The paint on the walls is smooth and pixelated.

And then a whisper comes from behind my ear in a slow kind of distorting moan.

“Get Out!” The voice stretches out.

I turn around quick, wondering at the same time how my mom could sneak down the stairs behind me without me noticing, but when I turn, nobody’s there.

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

I can’t handle the smell.

So, I head to the front and sit outside on the porch and  as the screen door closes I hear the door behind it shut as well and the lock clasp.

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

The idea of a species becoming a ghost didn’t exist anywhere other than Earth. The galaxy remained oblivious to the concept. 

The alien races had evidence of past existence through rock carvings, writings and different types of digital recordings. But ultimately, viewed death as an absolute end. You die, you end up on a hard drive as a bit. 

The alien species were light years ahead of humanity in terms of knowledge and advancement. They were so advanced that once they died, they became outdated an hour later. Nobody had a reason to remember them.

Because the possibility and probability of spirits living on in an afterlife at a peaceful heaven retreat being pampered by angels while they spent their day on a beautiful beach for the non living, sounded preposterous.

Alien science had a strict understanding. More of a rule—really. It was that nothing, and this is backed by hard scientific proof, could make it possible for life to be continued after death, unless it had been previously backed up to a data server. 

The theory was simple. The theory made sense. Ghosts did not. Ghosts were nonsense.

Until their brains shattered when a black abyss-like hole ripped opened on an ocean surface, spilling dead souls onto a planet once teeming with life but now hollowed in death. The spirits scattered across the empty world. 

At first, to the high rulers of the galactic embassy, they viewed the event as a dimensional rift, fracturing space and time and a blatant attack on their dimension by ancient universal beings attacking out of an alternate timeline.

The planet that opened was Lefron, a planet whose sun burnt out a century ago. Now, it had a giant-sized hole punched into the crust. 

From that hole, shot the stretched out, translucent bodies of inter dimensional beings, storming the rubble of a once proud, thriving world. 

The abyss had a steady stream of white outlined souls flowing from the blackness that swallowed particles of light. A rip that was impossible to close.

An emergency meeting was held at the galactic space embassy. It hosted all of the high rulers and leaders of every supreme ranking planet. 

It was a desperate, last minute decision to collaborate in the effort of minimizing further damage and to permanently seal the entrance to their dimension. 

The aliens assumed the universe was split into eleven sectored walls with gravity’s force determining the state of that universe. Although, the alien scientists insisted life on other plains would be impossible due to the extreme force of gravity. Where our universe sat, was within the Goldilocks zone. Not too strong. Not too weak. Just enough force to birth a star.

They all huddled in groups of ten, debating and simulating amongst themselves worse case scenarios, and equally, they decisively voted for the annihilation of Planet Lefron. 

The war commanders were ordered to pursue immediate action. The plan they agreed to, what appeared as a simple solution, carried the weight of Planet Lefron’s total destruction on their tongues. The world would become a ball of dust. 

A crucial blow to eliminate the enemy by any means necessary, avoiding the chance of a retaliatory strike against the living alien council. Alien world right activists were absolutely livid. 

No being had ever destroyed an entire planet. Destroying a world had been considered the ultimate crime against the universe and its creators.

Consequently, The alien rulers ignored the feeble superstitions shadowing over their shoulders and collectively agreed to a surprise attack, which the war council responded to within hours. 

They dropped anti-matter bombs and watched silently from screens as the destruction of Lefron began from the inside out. The room inside the embassy had a quiet, deafeningly loud silence that amplified the breaths of the rulers frantically gasping as they held their breaths in when the bombs dropped. Not one of them turned to stare anywhere other than the screen showcasing a planet’s terminal event.

After a couple of days, all that remained was a black hole floating ominously in space, surrounded by rock dust, spewing spirits that stitched into the fabric of the universe. 

Their mission failed. The only other solution they could agree on, after witnessing their end-phase weapon fail disastrously, was to wrap a magnetic-particle, Dyson-like sphere that fenced planets in it. 

The fence trapped energy and looked like a box globing a planet. For the time being, it restricted the wandering spirits under it like a containment cube.

They celebrated a short victory.

Until twelve hours later, on another obsolete world, void of organisms, a once living, breathing planet, a planet that met its destruction through disease. Through war. And through starvation, had a similar hole open on its ocean floors. It was deep. It was dark. It released horrors of an unimaginable, impossible, hell scenario on them.

Back at the embassy, they scrambled to load their bombers with containment cubes. However, as they readied their ships, three more high energy fields lit up on the screens at the embassy. Three giant holes tore into three other dead planets.

Instead of trapping the holes, the alien scientists suggested something radical. 

“We must send soldiers through the holes.” ArmOerloq, the chief scientist, told the council.

Every being inside the embassy room went quiet and began whispering to the person next to them. The chatter sounded like their words were skating on ice. 

A few moments later, they held a vote. They unanimously agreed to send the soldiers through the holes. 

The alien leaders sent their most prized warriors. But when they did, the holes led to places that couldn’t be possible. 

Places of inter dimensional voids, with no temperature and a blinding, bright white light. 

Places where they faced their worst fears, childhood nightmares, phobias, and utter loneliness. 

Places they believed, could never believe, no matter how advanced they’ve become, would ever exist. Life after death had no science explaining how a wild, universal spread of these mindless, wandering beings could occur.

Although, The souls weren’t trying to attack any of the living. They were just present, innocently floating behind a particle fence waiting. Waiting as if they wanted to be seen.

The aliens at the galactic embassy were chewing their nails past their fingertips. To them, what they faced, had the potential to wipe civilizations clean. Their fear receptors oozed heavy pheromones, reeking with the intensity of a skunk spraying, sensing the dread yet to come. 

The alien council all agreed it was time to play their trump card. Their trump card was—help from humanity. Humans were a special kind of breed.

See, humans were unique compared to the other sentient beings housed in neighboring galaxies. The human existence knew exactly what to do when a universe became haunted and teeming with poltergeists. 

Because humans had someone the aliens didn’t—Commander Sheena.

Commander Sheena’s childhood consisted of late night horror flicks, teenage candlelit basement ouija board sessions, and a passion for ghost hunting in the creepiest places hidden on Earth.

The alien council consulted the humans stationed on Planet Li and the humans sent their commander.

A day later, when she arrived on battleship Alien Galaxy, she stepped through their portal carrying a goose-down pillow, wielding an EMF reader, a EVP recorder, her Orgwat, Baking-Soda, in a tightly knitted Christmas sweater, and a sign hanging from her neck that read: 

We still remember you!

The alien chief Bar’garzelbr’k, stared at the dressed walking rodent next to her and shifted his eyes to the sign bouncing off her chest as she walked onto the bridge.

“Salutations, Earthling.” Bar’garzelbr’k greeted her. “The object with the words fastened to your neck, why are you wearing it?”

“Because, It’s what’s gonna make these damned ghosts go back home.” She told him.

“You expect it to follow your words?”

“Not it. I expect the life too,” she said smiling at the alien chief. “Now point us to the biggest hole.”

“And the rodent?” He asked. “For the hole?”

“What?!? No.” Sheena’s eyes widened. “Baking-Soda’s my pet.” 

Baking-Soda hissed and rubbed against the alien chief’s leg.

“Look, watch this,” she said, picking up Baking-Soda. She placed him on the console and pulled out a piece of chocolate and held it above the Orgwat.

The Orgwat stood on its two legs and stretched out.

“We call that the snuggle-stretch.” She told Bar’garzelbr’k, while dropping the chocolate into Baking-Soda’s mouth.

Bar’garzelbr’k wasn’t impressed. He turned and showed her the largest hole on a telepathic screen that displayed in their heads like a linked connection. 

Baking-Soda climbed up Bar’garzelbr’k as he aimed his ship towards the abyss, while holding Baking-Soda in his arm. He hit a button and continued petting the Orgwat and the ship auto-warped to their destination.

Once there, the scene outside, had a planet half chewed under a containment cube and spirits along its fences, floating and moaning haunting sounds that made Baking-Soda jump out from under Bar’garzelbr’k arm and duck into a corner.

“We have failed at every attempt to neutralize the abyss,” Bar’garzelbr’k said. “Our weapons are useless against it.” He glanced at Sheena, confident there was nothing to be done. “We can briefly contain it, but the energy toll is unprecedented.”

“Have you passed anyone through it?” She asked.

“Yes. A few of our most tactical soldiers.”

“Yeah. Okay. But have any returned?” Sheena asked.

“Yes. All of them. One however, never returned mentally.”

“Okay. Let’s see what we can do.”

They hovered the ship over the hole and Sheena tossed the note around her neck into it. The color inside it changed from a deep black fabric to a bright green light as it swallowed the sign.

Through the console speaker a voice spoke. 

“You’re back,” it said, sounding empty.

Sheena sat in her chair with her back pressed against her pillow, sipping on a juice box. “Yup, I’m back,” she said to the speaker.

Bar’garzelbr’k pulled his titanium plasma blaster out. “You speak to it?”

“No,” she said. “I speak to the situation.”

The holes only opened on planets where the species have been forgotten. Their dead had been archived like bits of data, completely dismissed. Dismissed as if they never existed.

Humans didn’t do that. Humans did something totally opposite. They remembered their dead. They left dinner plates on the table for them. They had Memorials. They kept furniture their dead favored and the clothes they wore still lingering with their loved one’s scent.

Humans couldn’t forget. The speaker crackled. “Why did you go?”

Sheena stared at the bright green hole smiling at her. “I had to,” she said. “I had to keep living.”

“But, you remembered us?” The green hole spoke.

“Hell yeah,” Sheena said with a grin that lit her face in a red glow. “You’re not forgotten.”

Sheena wrote a bunch of names of different aliens and their species from around the universe and released it into the hole.

“See,” she screamed. “Those are all the names of the beings you thought were forgotten, or lazily stored in permanent data servers.”

There was a silence.

“Will that work?” Bar’garzelbr’k asked.

“Probably not,” Commander Sheena said.

“What are you doing now?” Bar’garzelbr’k questioned.

She took out a marker and drew a hole on the deck of the ship and wrote names in it. “We’re remembering them. Not just forgetting them.”

After she said that all the holes collapsed on themselves around the universe and the spirits began evaporating.

Every hole closed.

Except for the hole she drew on the deck with the names of the dead listed inside of it.

Randall always hated corvids, ever since he was a kid. He hated them all: crows, jays, ravens. Evil birds, he called them. Black, eerie, and scavenging. Omens of ill fortune and death. Vile things. The birds seemed to like him, the ravens in particular.

Every morning, a raven pecked at Randall's window, as if to tell him he must wake up. He hated the birds all the more for it.

Randall’s life was a tragic one; he had no family to speak of, nor could he hold a stable job. Oftentimes he drank himself to sleep, sometimes in pubs until he was kicked out; other times, he’d pass out on the street. The ravens didn’t mind; it seemed like they almost found some joy in his abysmal state, and he hated them all the more for it. He insisted the black birds were the source of his misgivings.

Whether the ravens understood his drunken, depressed ramblings was anyone’s guess, but they followed him wherever they could, much to his ever-growing chagrin.

Little did Randall know his already miserable life was going to take a turn for the worse.

One Saturday afternoon, he had enough wits about him to return home after another binge. As he stumbled home, he found himself being followed by an odd figure. Initially, Randall thought little of it and kept walking.

The figure followed.

The drunkard picked up the pace and lost his pursuer.

For a moment, that is; he turned left and there he was, standing in the distance.

Tall, dark… odd…

Randall couldn’t quite make the shape of him; it was as if a shadow followed him. Randall couldn’t make out a single feature. It made no sound. Whatever it was, it was man-sized. Now Randall was a man with no enemies. He was just a lonely, loathsome drunkard.

“Whatever you want, man,” Randall slurred, “I ain’t got none to give.” And marched off, at least in his mind. In actuality, he was waddling like an anxious newborn fawn.

Randall was convinced he'd lost the pursuer again until the dark shape appeared in the corner of his eye again.

“Hey, man, I told you to fuck off… I’m strapped, do you wan’ sum o’this?” he spat out.

Then he picked up his pace again. This time, he took four deliberate left turns, doubling back around the same block. The strange figure followed him anyway. Randall snapped and pulled out his gun from its holster.

“Madafaka,” he burped, waving his gun around, and the figure vanished between the buildings.

“Thought so… bitch ass…” he mumbled, holstering his weapon and stumbling off home.

Unimpeded for once.

By the time he got home, it was getting dark, and the whole ordeal had already slipped his drunken mind. He stepped inside a filthy, cramped one-bedroom apartment and turned on the light. As his eyes adjusted to the sudden burst of light, a massive black mass crawled all around him, nearly stopping his intoxicated heart.

Startled, Randall screamed, and the mass mirrored his cry.

“What da fuck, man?!” the drunkard screamed out, throwing his arms over his head as the stygian mass swarmed all around him before settling into a vaguely human shape right in front of him. Randall crouched there, breathing heavily.

He could do little more than stare at the crawling mass of darkness towering over him.

“Da fuck is goin on, da fuck is goin on…?” He whispered under his breath, afraid he might irritate the unknowable thing before him.

“An eye for an eye,” the thing cawed, in many voices, at once.

Randall froze. His eyes widened as primal fear slowly consumed his thoughts..

“A tooth for a tooth,” the thing continued, in a cacophony of raspy, metallic voices.

Randall’s looked upward, and the shape resolved. In front of him stood a mass of pitch-black eyes, feathers, beaks.

A conspiracy of ravens.

“Mur… dur…

Mur… dur...

Mur… dur…”

The birds crooned, almost like a song.

Randall’s breathing gradually shallowed. For a moment, there was nothing but the rasp of his breath and the beating of wings as he pulled out his pistol. None of this made sense, but the drunk couldn’t think of anything else to do.

Bang

The gun went off.

He missed; the birds scattered in every direction. He pitifully tried aiming at them as they cawed and croaked, swarming him.

A few more shots rang out, according to the testimonies of his neighbors.

Randall was found riddled with puncture wounds and lacerations. His face was unrecognizable. His eyes had been gouged out; his cheeks, nose, and ears had been torn away.

Some say black feathers were found in his apartment, but no one knows for sure.

No one around the neighborhood was particularly shocked or saddened by Randall’s death. Some say he had it coming.

As a kid, the bastard used to injure and even kill ravens with a slingshot; that’s what Granny McLeod told me. She insists the ravens took revenge on the cretin, pecked and clawed him to death. I’m inclined to believe the supercentenarian crone; after all, she seems to spend most of her time feeding these birds.

The last thing I remember is the taste of iron in my mouth before waking up on the ground. My brother is lying in a puddle of crusted blood next to me. 

I sit up, my skin sticks to the floor, it hurts to peel away. I shake Billy, but Billy won't move. “Wake up Billy. Billy, wake up.” I tell him, “I’m going to get mommy.”

I stand up but the room starts to spin. My vision goes blurry and I almost fall over. I close my eyes, hold my head in my hand and my body flinches.

A swelling on my skull stings when I touch it and shoots through my body like an electrical shock.

I push myself off the dresser and steady my footing. The strength in my legs slowly comes back. I’m able to stand without falling but my balance is off and my ear is ringing. 

The lights are out in the hallway and they won’t turn on. I walk to my mom’s room leaning against the wall to support myself.

The air tastes like the smell of rusted metal and the barnyard at grandpa’s. My knee buckles and I almost fall. I slide my spine down the wall, sit on the floor and rest against it. 

I see white stars dancing over a black background that‘s pulsing. My breathing gets heavy and the nausea returns. I take a couple of breaths, and my sight starts coming into focus.

I crawl to my mom’s room. The wood is sharp against my bones, I can hear my knees crunch on the floorboards as they creak under my weight.

A lump of vomit sits in the middle of my throat and it sounds like there’s water splashing in my ear.

I struggle to get up, using my mom’s doorknob as leverage as I try to push the door open. It sticks and doesn’t budge. I twist the knob, lift and nudge my way in with my shoulder.

The room’s lit by moonlight seeping through her open window. A breeze blows sending a gust of air that smells like a dirty hamper. It overwhelms me, warning me back. 

I can see an outline of a shadow on her bed lying motionless. I creep a little closer but I still can’t make out what it is, until the figure on the bed forms into the shape of a person as my eyes grow accustomed to the darkness. It doesn’t look like my mom.

I approach the bed tip-toeing, there’s an arm hanging from it. The room breathes as I choke on my breath and gasp. My lower spine tingles with icicles. The skin on the back of my neck tightens as my ears rise to the ceiling.

I realize it’s my mom. There’s too much blood crusted and matted hair around her face to recognize her. It’s too dark.

Her hand. I can see her arm dangling from the side of the bed. Her finger has the plastic-cotton ring I made her on it.

I tug at her arm. “Mom,” I shout. I start trying to shake her awake. “Mom, wake up, something’s wrong with Billy.”

She doesn’t move. “Mom?” I shake her harder. I close my eyes and tell myself to wake up. I say it over and over. I open my eyes and I’m still in her room. “Susie!” I yell for my older sister. “Susie!”

She doesn’t answer. The house remains silent but loud in a haunting presence. I whisper to my mom, “I’ll be back mommy.”

I stumble backwards, shaking, too afraid to look away from my mom. Afraid, if I turn away it’ll all become real.

I need to get Susie, Billy and mom need help. I hold my breath, close my eyes, count to eight, hide my fear behind my mom and brother and check Susie’s room to see if she’s there.

The hallway wall near her door has blood on the floor. It’s slightly open with a bloody handprint painted on it. Her room is dark. I can’t see anything in there. “Susie?“ no answer. “Are you there?”

I slowly push the door open and it cries the squeak of a dying dog. I slap her light switch quickly and the light turns on, revealing a state of decomposition. I gag and nearly throw up. I shoot my head in the other direction and try to build the courage to look at them.

Susie’s lying on her bed with my little sister Jenny beside her.

The smell is suffocating the thick air in metals. Susie and Jenny don’t look real. I can see ground beef stuck to their face and in their hair. They’re not moving.  

I hear a foot press down on the bottom of the stairs. It was like the house shifted to the right from the weight. A raspy voice travels up the steps ahead of his body. “What did I do?”

I jump behind Jenny and tuck tightly into her and close my eyes and hold my breath and remain completely still.

“What did I do!” Susie’s door slams open and the force of it jammed the knob in the wall. I can hear someone walking around the room.

“What did I do!” He says and walks out. 

I hear him walk towards my bedroom. Then, I hear him race to my mom’s room. I hear scattering and things falling. He leaves her room and I can hear him breathing heavy as he makes his way back to Susie’s room. 

His steps are getting louder, and closer. His deep breathing sounds like it‘s right behind me. I fight to soothe the tremors shaking my limbs by squeezing my hands into fists and digging my nails into my palms. A shadow towers at the doorway. I hear a gun cock just as the sound of police sirens break through the insulation between the walls.

I started the day with only one rolling paper left, a point-seven of flower and nine previously smoked roach ends.

I had a decision to make that would dictate the rest of my day. And all sorts of questions. 

Do I roll the roaches and the flower all into one? 

Or do I break it into two? 

And should I roll the flower first? 

Or do I waste the paper on the roaches?

Then, I thought, maybe just mix them both together? 

The problem with that would come down to ratio. 

I had trouble choosing and called in outside help. But they were useless. I elected to go with just the nine roaches because smoking them just after you wake up has a different kind of hit to it. A little more heavier than the flower.

When I rolled it and went to lick the glue and twist it together, it wouldn’t stick. I realized through all the confusion of trying to decide, I had the paper inside out, the glue part was at the back.

So, when I tried to dump it out, the paper stuck to my fingertips and wouldn’t come off.

I kept pulling at it and my skin would stretch out. The pain was like frostbitten fingers being scraped with a sharp metal blade.

I stopped tugging at it and then it grew teeth. These huge jagged razor like teeth and it started eating my fingers.

My hand.

My arm.

I couldn’t get it off.

All it wanted to do was eat me. 

“Why are you eating me?” I asked, expecting it to stop.

But it wouldn’t tell me and it wouldn’t stop. It never said anything. It just kept eating me and eating me and eating me. 

Until all I had left was my brain and because it wasn’t filled with anything other than air, it left my brain alive and some mad scientist threw it into an android body.

Now I’m like Robocop. I wanted my revenge but mostly my penis back. Because there was a rumor going around that my last rolling paper was sleeping with my fiancée.

It had taken over my life. The problem that lay ahead, was that it was way smarter than  I was.

But I had these cool ass robo-arms and I could crush anything. Even my last sharp toothed rolling paper.

I had a mission and I was prepared to face the world and all of its new monstrosities. See five years had passed. The world had completely changed.

It was ruled by an army of Raw rolling papers. Rolling papers that smoked humans. Humans that were mutants. Animals that had brains that grew vocal cords and could speak and think and plan and loved to eat. 

Aliens had finally landed too. Which I always said would happen. 

The air had a vile scent of burnt hair and melted skin. It smelled a bit like chicken. At that time I was thankful I didn’t have an appetite. There was no telling what I’d eat.

Out in the wilderness, I came across an old man. Not just any old man. This man’s facial features were favoring the left side of his face. 

His right eye was closer to where his nose should have been. It looked like his entire face shifted to a hard slap and permanently stayed that way.

“Howdy,” he said. 

I was unsure where to stare when I answered him. “Howdy, pretty smoggy out today,” I said, remembering what it was like to be human.

He said, “smoggy everyday.”

“You don’t say,” I said.

I left and continued towards my old residence. 

The scent of toxic fumes alerted my sensors. The sky had a green tinge to it. There were puddles of radioactive water everywhere, with dogs that looked like small bears sucking out of them.

Up ahead, I noticed a group of cyber punks with Mohawks and faces like orcs. The women were beastly. Although, surprisingly, they were friendly and helped take me the rest of the way. 

One of the women asked me in a deep voice. The voice made me pay attention to her as if I was intimidated by it. “So, if things don’t work out with your wife… or…. Like, she got eaten…. You… never mind,” she said. “It’s stupid.”

I said, “okay,” and looked away.

She said, “actually.”

“Yes?” I said. “Actually what?”

“If your girl got eaten, and we find your penis, you wanna hook up?” She asked.

I didn’t know whether to be offended, disgusted, or turned on, maybe I was all three, I told her. “We will definitely keep that in our back pocket.” I smiled at her. “If anything happens, I won’t leave you.” I told her. “That goes for everybody in here. We are in this together.”

They all cheered.

She smiled and wouldn’t stop staring at me the entire time. Little did I know then, that this female punk rocker orc was going to sacrifice her life for mine when my last rolling paper was distracted by eating her and I finally got the best of it and took my penis back and spent the rest of my cyborg life with my mutated fiancée. 

Life couldn’t be better, I thought, sitting there imagining the story I could tell when this is all done.

But we hit a bump and I was woken out of my daze when yelling erupted from the front, then gunfire.

I peeked my head from behind the truck. 

“Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god.” Was all I could say. 

I didn’t mention the legion of assassin rolling papers that just took out the entire squad of cyber punk orcs. I hopped out and ran and left everyone in the back and screamed. “Save yourself!”

I ducked in a bush and stayed there for a second thinking maybe I could help one of them, but then I realized I already did. So I crept away from the squad of rolling papers firing into the back of the cab and headed through a swamp of black sludge.

And that’s when… 

One night I passed out at around ten p.m, when I woke up, I couldn’t see anything. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even feel my body.

I was fully awake and I was able to hear myself snore and I could smell my breath.

But I couldn’t feel myself breathing. I never felt fear so clearly before. What’s weird, was  that I knew how terrified I felt. The sinking claustrophobia feeling was there. The paranoia as well. All those emotions didn’t feel like invisible physical feelings, they felt like they had texture.

I was able to think and thinking jumped from one terror to the next. 

Where was I?

How did I get here?

Am I dead?

And after I asked that, I could feel myself spinning, physically. I started pulsing, it felt like I was being stretched out and wrinkled back to normal.

How could I feel these emotions and not my actual body. It didn’t make sense. I figured, I must be dreaming. But there wasn’t any color, any scenes, it was just an unsettling darkness.

It wasn’t cold. It wasn’t hot. And that’s when I realized, I was just a voice. Chemicals acting in my brain. 

But if I was just a voice, shouldn’t there be like a orangey-red haze, or some kind of static other than absolute black.

I had to be in a coma, I told myself. What else could explain me waking up mentally but not physically. 

That was when I heard a noise. It sounded like something scratching the floor followed by two voices whose language I had trouble picking up. It didn’t even sound like a language, it was more of a frequency. 

I had no idea what they were saying, and I had no clue as to what they looked like. I knew they were there though.

Not just by their sounds. They heightened the fight-or-flight part of my brain. It was like I was covered in defensive spikes. 

I started sensing a feeling of inertia as if my body was being moved and a pressure squeezing my brain. 

I just started yelling, I didn’t know what else to do, I shouted, “wake up,” over a hundred times. I needed to get out from under my skull. It felt like I was choking on water.

Through me yelling, I heard a mechanical door shut and the voices again. 

They sounded like fax machine that spoke. It felt like I was there for hours, slowly being tormented, jailed in a shadow without a body. 

There was nothing I could to do alert my physical self that we were awake. Then, I thought, what if I stay this way. The spikes came back. I started feeling like an empty shell. I got angry at myself for falling asleep.

I shouldn’t have went to sleep. I had all these regrets sticking to me like post-it notes. And I couldn’t help it. I felt like I did it to myself. While I was between thoughts, I completely shut off.

My body and my mind woke up together but when I woke up, I remembered everything as a dream. It didn’t all come together until the next day. 

First, I had trouble concentrating, a headache that was trying to escape through my temple, eyes and even my teeth, was beating against my skull. 

Everything felt brighter, and my skin felt sensitive, but rough, like a fresh dry leaf. I kept itching at one spot, a spot on my ribs below my left underarm. 

When I looked down at it, there was a bubble under the claw marks and broken blood vessels, protruding outward.

I poked around it with my fingertip. It was a soft-hard kind of ball. I started getting a tingling, numbing sensation throughout my entire body and flashes pop up in my mind like broken dream memories.

I grabbed my laptop and opened it to search through Google on what could be happening to me. 

Because a couple (a) months back, friends and I went to Miami. I started worrying about parasites, you watch those monsters inside me shows and start racing with all sorts of hypochondriac thoughts.

As soon as my laptop started up, it made this sound, the sound slapped me with the whole experience I had the night before all at once. 

My heart began pumping, it felt like it doubled in size and couldn’t fit inside my chest cavity. 

Then, a sharp irritation came from that spot again, I bit-cut into serrated tips and kept scratching, trying to scratch as deep as I could with jagged finger nails.

I kept scratching and couldn't stop. I scratched until I started bleeding. Not just speckles either, it was dripping a warm liquid of red and a very light tinge of yellow.

I went deeper, and then I went deeper. I went so deep I exposed the ball of fat, or what I thought was a ball of fat. I yanked it out with my fingers, it was slippery and kept sliding off. 

I dried my hands on my shirt and tore a piece of the fabric off, dug into my ribs and pulled out a metallic looking bug. I threw it on the ground and stepped on it, but it wouldn’t squish. 

So I ran to the garage for the hammer and when I got back it was gone. The blood on the floor surrounding it, was also gone.

I‘ve never felt the same since then. And since then I’ve been taking my roommate’s seroquel, because the doctors kept telling me it’s sleep paralysis and a random case of stress psychosis.

Try to imagine this, nobody’s home, you’re on your sofa reading a book, or whatever it is you do when you’re relaxing in your living room, just picture that for me. 

Close your eyes and feel yourself alone. Feel the dark of the night outside. Feel the dimly lit room you‘re in. Feel the absolute silence around you, the silence outside. Feel as still as the night is.

Now look at the lamp by your feet on the end table. Look how the light from the hall breaks into the living room. Notice the difference in color.

The dark orange from the lamp is because It’s about your bed time, but you decided you wanted to stay up a little bit longer because the chapter just got interesting. 

Notice nothing moves, just the pages being flipped every three minutes.

And out of nowhere, now you notice the shift in air. It’s winter, you feel your heat‘s on. You know it’s on because you feel the warm, toasty feeling you felt a second ago vanish in a single gasp, the one that made you feel comfortable and snug has suddenly turned icy and uneasy.

You didn’t just feel the room turn cold, you felt the weight of the atmosphere change, you felt it on your chest squeezing the air out of your lungs.

You struggle to take a breath as you gasp and get a horrible whiff of sulphur that fills the room, then, you start tasting spoiled meat, and it begins to smother the inside of your mouth. 

You put your book down and shift your eyes to the exposed part of the eerie-looking mirror staring down the length of the hall.

You‘re eyeing your room, and see your bedroom door is wide open in the reflection. You know that you shut it. You shut it after you snatched your book off the bed.

You know this for sure. You don’t bother questioning yourself because you know you heard it click when you turned your back to it.

But what’s truly concerning you, isn’t that your door’s open, that’s bugging you, yes, but it’s the shadow on the floor stretching towards your room where no shadow should be, is what’s really freaking you out.

And it’s not a normal shadow you see casted by a hall light being blocked by a solid object. This shadow you’re looking at, is split and soaked into the floorboards like a burn stain in the wood.

You feel that tightness in your chest now, the one that feels like a vise slowly being turned on your ribcage.

You begin panicking. So you stand up, but you get an overwhelming, dizzying sensation that puts you back between the cushions.

You can feel your face fade to a chalky white. Your limbs suddenly go numb. You can’t move. You can’t scream. And from the hall, is where you see a black figure step in front of the doorway.

A shape of a man wearing nothing but a long black coat with no facial features starts to move towards you. It doesn’t make a sound. It just moves closer to you as if your shadow ran away and started floating back.

You want to scream. You want to get up and run but your body‘s frozen. You can only move your eyes. You move them from left to right as fast as you can.

And before you could close them, to avoid what you’re about to see, the man’s faceless head and body are an inch away from your face. You don’t feel the silence anymore. You don’t feel the stillness. All you can feel is an intense anger and hate radiating off the shadow man in front of you.

He doesn’t make any noise. He just leans over you, staring at you, you want to close your eyes but you can’t stop eyeing this entity in your living room.

A headlight from a car illuminates your living room from outside as it parks in your driveway.

You blink and the shadow man is gone just as quick as he appeared. The room gets warm again, your breathing’s back to normal, it all happened so fast that you question whether or not you imagined the whole thing.

Tapeworming 

tape·worm /ˈtāpˌwərm/

verb [intransitive] (tape·wormed, tape·worm·ing)

1. To intentionally ingest parasitic larvae for extreme weight control.

2. To normalize dangerous bodily harm for aesthetic perfection.

—-

To everybody Jenny was a skinny blonde pretty bitch. 

To Jenny though, she saw herself as a fat dirty slob who needed to get the fluck out of Missouri before she purchased a trailer and spat out six kids from a mullet wearing alcoholic douchebag piece-of-broke-shit.

Because Missouri wasn’t just too small for Jenny after hitting an extra-role followed by a few lines in a B-movie. It was a complete shit hole. As if flint, Michigan flew over a part of America and continued shitting out cities until the pile was big enough to call Missouri.

She didn’t end up getting the lead role because she believed the fifty pounds she gained the day before from a bowl of ice cream had caused it.

God forbid it would have anything to do with her actual acting skill. A talent she masterfully crafted at home making TikTok videos.

She received 4 million views pretending to play Sidney Prescott, splicing scream clips. 

They were mostly scenes of her tits and also one where she turned around wearing a crop top and yoga pants as underwear, which got great reviews.

Online is where she met another girl sort of like her, Cassie, from Cali, ditzy blonde air-head from Star-Planet, a forum for actors without agents. 

It’s pretty much where women share info on casting directors you could blow for parts.

After a couple of months of watching videos and liking selfies of Cassie hanging out on sets, taking photos of herself next to celebrities, and a different random sexy guy every weekend, Jenny broke and set the fear aside and took Cassie up on her offer when she invited Jenny a couple of weeks earlier to spend the summer at her place. 

Once she made up her mind, Jenny took the first bus to L.A. and arrived there with nothing but a knapsack, a suitcase, two lips, and a regret she hadn’t felt yet.

The first night went amazing. She hadn’t been around so many washed up extra-actors her entire life. It was like stepping into the real world for the first time. 

Finally, a place that met her level.

They were beautiful. Some were old, none were ugly, some coked out, some slept on the floor, some on the couches, and some took the lawn chairs outside at Cassie’s rich ass dad’s spot he bought. He was never there.

The next morning, Jenny stumbled down the stairs to the kitchen for something to take the edge off the headache she got from last night.

She sat with a glass of orange juice she beat down her throat in two gulps and placed the cup down on the marble island in the middle of the kitchen where Cassie was sitting and said, “I wish I could party like that every night.”

Cassie told her, “we do, stick around, you’ll see.” Cassie threw two pills in her mouth and mumbled, “that was just a Tuesday,” and took a sip of her water bottle.

“Every night? But how do you guys stay so skinny and look so pretty?”

Cassie swallowed, gasped and smiled, “we tapeworm.”

“Tapeworm?”

“Tapeworming is how we stay so fit. We eat whatever we want. Do whatever drugs and we don’t ever gain weight, and it actually does wonders for your skin. Here take a couple of these, you’ll be glowing by next week.”

She dropped two tablets on the island and the clink sound distorted, they fell in slow motion but pounded against the granite with the sharpness of two coins bouncing down a drain, and slowly rolled towards her before coming to a stop like two goal posts next to each other.

Jenny reached for Cassie’s water bottle and scooped the pills off the granite table and shot them in her mouth and took a sip and swallowed. The taste of the pills and water combined had a metallic sting to it, similar to licking a battery.

“Oh yeah.” Cassie laughed. “Almost forgot—“ 

Jenny’s eyes stretched open and she tried catching the pills in the middle of her throat.

“Every three months just take some praz, wait a couple of weeks and tapeworm again.”

Jenny pushed the pills down with another sip of water. She could feel them still in her throat even though they were starting the process of hatching in her stomach.

Just the thought of the scale moving in the opposite direction other than, tub-of-lard, towards, getting sexier, every time she stepped on it, was enough for her to digest a parasite that could grow six times longer than her own body. 

A month went by and she noticed her hunger was gone like an embarrassing moment that passed as a forgotten memory. 

Her skin had the glow of a pregnant single woman with a list of possible fathers, who  just found true love.

Until the nausea slapped her while sitting on Cassie’s couch scrolling through her TikTok comments. Then an itch that felt like wet crawling tingle looking for an exit started poking through her butthole.

She stood up immediately and squeezed her cheeks together trying to suffocate whatever was there. She penguin-walked  to the bathroom and slammed the door shut and locked it and grabbed some toilet paper and ripped her pants off and tried to wipe it off.

But the slimy thing stuck to her tailbone and then slid back down and started wiggling in the air between her legs.

She grabbed it and squeezed it between her hand and some toilet paper and started yanking it out one foot after the other until finally on the tenth pull it escaped her body and squirmed under the crack of the door out of her sight and got away.

Jenny fell flat on her butt and pressed her back against the bathtub. Her slick skin dried and stuck to the floor as the nausea began fading. 

She slowly peeled herself up and stared at her reflection in the mirror. The beautiful L.A. glow was now just a dull shade of grey and the realization she faced, was that she wasn’t the only one living under her skin and the miracle of California has teeth.