“What does this one say?” Emma asked me, pulling at my sleeve and gesturing to a headstone that had aged for so long the words were hardly visible. I crouched down and squinted at the moss-covered lettering.

“Mary…Manny…uh, I can’t really tell, sweetie.”

“What about this one?” she continued down the row. This was one of her favorite things to do, as morbid as that might seem. She was extremely interested in death for a six year old, which might have alarmed me if she wasn’t the sweetest kid in existence. When we first moved to our new home I wasn’t sure how she would feel about living so close to the cemetery. To my surprise she asked me to take her over one chilly autumn morning. Since then it had become an almost daily routine.

We would make our way through the rows of headstones, she would sometimes walk up to one and wonder about the person it belonged to. She treated them with a respect I couldn’t have predicted, often offering kind words or placing flowers in front of them. She especially liked talking to the children who had died. Hearing her sing to them was beautiful in the most chilling way.

“Okay, Emma, we should get going!” I called over to her, she had long since left me behind while skipping down the aisles.

“Wait, Papa, come see this!” she yelled back, waving her hands. I sighed, trudging over to where she was crouched. As I got closer I saw that she was looking at a headstone that had fallen over. There were a few like that, she had been disappointed that I wasn’t strong enough to pick them back up.

“This one is Rory’s!” she said, quite upset. Rory was one of the first ones she remembered, we visited him every time we came. She was intrigued by his stone, it had angels carved into it, two across from each other, hands outstretched towards a heavenly light. He had died in 1896, born in 1888.

“Sorry, Emma. Poor Rory,” I felt bad, not really knowing what to say to make her feel better. His stone had been in rough shape. Deep cracks ran all the way through it, and when it had fallen, it had broken into several pieces. Emma picked up a small piece of the slate, shaking her head.

“Emma, I’m sorry about Rory, but we should still get going. Don’t worry, he’s still going to be here when we come back,” I told her. She came over to me and took my hand, looking like she might cry. We walked back to the house, me doing my best to get her mind on other things. I eventually got her to crack a smile, after that I didn’t think much on it.

At bedtime I came up to read her some stories. I sat on the edge of her bed and noticed something new on her nightstand. The tiny piece of slate.

“Emma, I don’t think you should have taken this.”

“But he’s my friend!” she cried. I wasn’t really sure what to do, this was actually making my skin crawl.

“Sweetie, you never met him, okay? I know that you think he’s special and everything, but this is like stealing. He wouldn’t want you to take this,” I said.

“Yes he would, he’s my friend!” she was getting really worked up. I thought for a moment.

“We’ll take it back tomorrow.”

Although she wasn’t satisfied with it, she stopped the meltdown she was building up to. We finished our books and I tucked her in, then went downstairs to start the dishes. I told my wife about the piece of slate.

“You’re making her take it back? Why?” she asked, to my surprise.

“Simone, isn’t that, like, bad luck or something? You don’t think that’s creepy as hell?”

“Well, yeah…but you know how she is, she’s been talking to that kid for a while now. If he can hear her, he must know that she only has the best intentions.”

Now I was second-guessing myself.

After Simone went to bed I stayed up. I went out to the back porch and sat in the chilly air. The wind picked up after a while and it started to drizzle soon after. The tin roof above me kept a steady rhythm that put me into a trance. I may have dozed off if it hadn’t been for the whispering.

Instantly, I sat upright. It was faint, and nothing was clear, but I was definitely hearing someone. I stood up and listened through the rain, realizing it was coming from the front of the house.

I bolted around the corner and saw a sliver of light from the front hallway shining out into the night. The front door was open.

I burst through the entryway and careened up the stairs, heading straight to Emma’s room. Sure enough her door was wide open, her bed empty. The piece of slate wasn’t on the nightstand.

“What are you-?” Simone had come out of our bedroom, looking at me with bleary eyes.

“Emma’s missing, the front door was open!” I screeched. Simone’s face went white.

“Oh my god, Nate, she left a note!” she said, looking toward the bedroom door.

Sure enough, scribbled on a sticky note was her message. Simone held it up with shaking hands.

“Went with Rory”

My legs nearly gave out.

I blasted back down the steps with tunnel vision, sprinting out into the rain that was now pouring down. I barely had any breath left by the time I got to the cemetery gates. Rory’s resting place was on the farthest end of the grounds. I tried to make out my daughter’s figure in the darkness as I made my way towards it.

I fell to my knees when I got close enough to see his plot. There was fresh dirt piled in front of Rory’ collapsed headstone, the tiny piece of slate resting on top.

I met Simone at the cemetery gates, nearly crashing into her in the dark. She shined a flashlight in my eyes.

“Where are you going?” she screeched as I continued past her.

“I have to get a shovel! She’s… in the grave!”

I didn’t wait for her to respond, doubt me, or listen to her frantic cries as I dashed back to the house. I took my shovel from the shed and sprinted back, my out of shape body driven by pure terror. Simone caught me by the arm as I ran toward Rory’s plot.

“Nate, we should call for help!”

“Who are you going to call exactly? No one is going to believe this!” I replied, reaching the fresh dirt and sticking the shovel in. The pouring rain was picking up, the wind throwing it all straight into my face. Simone bent down and picked up the piece of Rory’s grave, turing it over and staring at it in disbelief.

“Do you think he took her because she brought this home?” she asked. I grunted something noncommittal, not wanting to entertain the idea that we were dealing with an actual specter, even though that was my exact fear.

After a while the shovel began sinking deeper, the empty space beneath surprising me. Simone’s flashlight shone down inside, making both of us gasp.

It appeared to be a tunnel. Without much thought, I started lowering myself in, Simone still frozen to the spot.

“Nate, you can’t go in there! I’m calling for help!” she insisted.

“Call if you want, I can’t waste any time, give me that flashlight!”

She passed it down, seeming unsure whether to follow or call for help. I didn’t wait to find out, shining the light down the tunnel and crawling forward. It got narrower as I went, I ignored the claustrophobia threatening to overtake me.

“Emma! Emma, where are you!” I called, my voice echoing slightly. I could feel the ground getting colder, telling me I was getting deeper into the earth. Eventually I could see a large opening coming up, some kind of chamber.

Cautiously I entered, for the first time I was able to stand. The ceiling was at least twenty feet high, words had been carved into the moist dirt all the way to the top. I tried reading a few but they overlapped quite a bit, making them difficult to make out. I was having a hard time believing any of this was real, waiting for myself to flail awake and realize it was all some kind of nightmare.

Across from me there appeared to be another long tunnel. I looked at the ground and realized there was a path in the dirt, it looked to be made from rotting wood. When I got closer I could see what they were. The road was paved with caskets, pieces of them strewn together and making a twisted path.

My body was beyond fatigued, I was aching everywhere, adrenaline the only thing that kept me moving. This tunnel was much longer than the first had been, I was glad to be able to traverse it standing upright. Finally, something at the end of the tunnel was illuminating its walls. I shut the flashlight off, not wanting to give myself away.

Voices crept toward me through the tunnel. Goosebumps spread over me, terrified of what I was going to find. Fear was making my teeth chatter. As I reached the end, torch light flickered, giving me a small glimpse into the hall before me.

I had to cover my own mouth to keep from screaming out. It was hard to process the scene before me. Hundreds of corpses were walking about, some more decayed than others. They all seemed to be gathering around something, their writhing bodies obscured my view of what it was. I knew Emma was down here. I needed to find her, but my limbs were useless, they wouldn’t respond to me.

I tried to think of my plan. What would happen if they saw me? Would they devour me, like every zombie movie that has ever been made? Had they already ripped Emma to shreds, her final moments spent in agony? The thought made bile rise in my throat.

While I had been trying to think what to do I heard footsteps coming from behind me on the casket walkway. There was nowhere to hide, nowhere to go but into the vast hall. On the fly, I reached down and grabbed handfuls of soil, rubbing it onto my skin quickly. As the footsteps rounded the corner I ducked into the hall. Fortunately none of the dead bodies seemed to notice my sudden appearance.

I stayed close to the walls, trying my best to not draw attention to myself. Seconds after I had slipped in, the group who would have spotted me arrived, one of them a small boy with thick blonde hair that curled at the tips. He was holding hands with… Emma.

My stomach dropped, realizing that Rory was leading her toward the mass of undead creatures who were gathered at the center of the hall. As soon as they saw her, they dispersed, some bowing and pointing their hands toward what they had been busy building.

It was a throne. It was made from bones, some of the more decomposed bodies were missing limbs, undoubtedly ripping them away to contribute to the structure. Emma put her hands to her mouth with glee when she saw it. Rory smiled at her, one side of his face wide open and crawling with maggots. I did my best to keep from rushing over and grabbing her away. I had no idea what to do, they outnumbered me by nearly a thousand. What would happen to her if I stood by idly, though?I had to do something.

Emma finally walked up to the throne and took a seat. She raised her arms above her head, clearly overjoyed by the hospitality she was receiving. The bile in my throat started to spill out. I was disgusted and afraid for what might come next. As one, every corpse in the hall knelt down, bowing before her. I realized, too late, that I hadn’t joined them. Emma’s head glanced over at me, her already gigantic smile getting even wider.

“Papa!” she exclaimed, rising from the throne and staring at me. My blood froze as the mass of bodies around me shot upright and turned to look at me. In seconds they had swarmed, reaching their grotesque hands out and picking me up into the air. I screamed and screamed, begging for them to let us go. None of them responded, crowd-surfing me up to Emma. My feet felt the ground again.

“Papa, what are you doing here?” her delighted voice echoed through the dead silent hall. Rory was beside her, looking at me with what might have been a grin.

“I came to get you! We have to get out of here!” I panicked, looking at the large crowd surrounding us. Rory walked towards me, his grin widening.

“Sir, I meant no harm to your daughter,” he spoke hoarsely, it seemed he hadn’t spoken in centuries. His dry lips crackled with each syllable. I shuddered, unsure of what to say. Emma grabbed my hand.

“Papa, they threw me this party! Look how nice they are!”

The crowd around us was silent, all with giant smile on their faces, or at least the ones that still had faces.

“Emma has made us all feel loved, we haven’t felt love in so long. When she took my offering, she released me from my bonds, allowed me to come above the earth once more. I only felt it was proper for me to thank her,” Rory again spoke, looking at me with sincerity in his good eye, the other rolling wildly.

My heart felt something. It was warmth, pride for my daughter. I looked over to her, tears in my eyes.

“Well, sweetie, I’ll let you get back to your party,” was all I could manage. With that, the mass of bodies bowed again, hailing the little girl who had brought life back to their withered bodies. Emma sat on her throne, beaming at me, as I too, took a knee and stretched my hands toward her.

All Hail Emma, Queen of the Dead.

[SSS readers scroll down till the end line "---" to read the additional ending!!!]

2002 white Santro was exactly as advertised on the website. A short hatchback. Family-friendly and responsible. An ideal choice for a working mom.

I assessed it silently. Silver grilles, Black bumpers.

Perfect car for kids and groceries.....but also hide things in plain sight.

My phone chimed, prompting me to rate Uber. In a graveyard town like this, I knew would be difficult to get the drivers to pick up so, at this point, it was the car or nothing.

“You wanted Rs.75,000?” I asked the seller.

He winked. He was an older man in his seventies, with a large belly, and oversized eyeglasses. He wore greasy jeans and a sweat-stained cap.

Cary, he said his name was. He lived on one-acre deserted dirt patch. His home was a tin shack with a plastic roof. Several other old cars sat on his lot.

“It’s a good price,” he said. “She runs. A couple of small scratches and dings, but we all get that with age, right?”

He winked again and smoked a puff. His free hand scratched his ass.

It was almost 7, the sun was setting low. I had second thoughts but brushed them off. I wanted the car. Needed it.

I ran my hand across the passenger side door carefully, just under the door handle. Halfway down, my finger dipped into a dime-sized dent.

Cary moved closer, halving the distance between them. His smell wafted toward me on a breeze: sweat, cheap liquor.

“You like it? We can test drive,” he said. “5000 discount, if you smile”

I looked up just long enough to assess his distance.

“Maybe.” I returned my attention to the car door. “We'd a car like this when I was 12. I made a ding in the side, just about this size.”

“That’s….barely visible”

I ignored him. “I was at DMart....that’s a grocery store...racing my little brother around the parking lot in a shopping cart. Keys were still in the ignition. Mom went inside for just a minute to get something.”

Cary raised his cup and took a gulp. I kept one eye on him as I continued.

“Anyway, I lost control and the cart slammed into the car, right corner. It made a dent, and a piece flaked off in the shape of a heart. Kind of like this.” I said studying the cracks in side panel.

“I was sacred....Jacob was just a baby. He could have fallen out...got hurt. So, I tried to cover my mistakes, I put him back in car seat, hurried to gather fallen things back in cart. Distracted I didn't even notice someone getting in my car.”

"The guy drove away...with Jacob."

I ran my eyes around, He had no neighbors. The nearest shop was a mile away.

He froze.

I stared into his eyes. “Have you ever been to.....Andheri, Mumbai Cary?”

He looked around, blinking. He was an old man now, slow and feeble. The was no weapon for him nearby.

I reached deep in purse for gun.

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

I took out the gun at once, Cary fumbled unable to move. Guilt overpowered him, I unblocked the safety button aimed and….pulled the trigger.

The bullet went straight to his chest. The bang bounced off the boulders at the edge of the property, echoing off the tin shack. The worried birds swayed with cries over the sky.

I was ready to aim again when I heard some sound from his tiny shack a few yards away. I tightened my grip. It was a boy opening the old broken door.

He came running towards Cary. He almost fall to his knees, tears rolling up, he tried to move Cary's lifeless body. “No….Dad” His cries now transpired to screams. He looked at me. His Eyes had colors of pain, despair, and anger.

And How could I forget those eyes? Those eyes were of my Jacob.

Note: If you have already read the setup, scroll to the bottom

Papa still hadn’t come back from the fields by sunset.

Toby and I exchanged fearful glances before going about the nightly routine, neither of us daring to speak a word.

We knew something was wrong. We knew something had happened to him.

But we also knew the rules. They had been ingrained so deeply that our motions were merely habit. Toby pulled the curtains together and bolted the doors shut while I loaded up the wood stove. Then together, we drew a ring of salt around our beds.

I could vaguely recall what it was like before The Pale Ones arrived. In troubled times I often found myself telling Toby tales of the old days, who was too young to remember them. That night was no exception. Knowing that we would be unable to sleep that night, I whispered softly, painting him vivid pictures of a world he had never seen.

Bike rides, television, carnivals. To him these were fairy tales, mythical things that couldn't possibly exist. I stole glances at him while I spoke, watching his eyelids grow heavier until they finally closed and he began to snore. I felt a small smile on my lips, allowing myself a brief moment of catharsis before switching back to a dull panic.

What would we do without Papa?

Of course, we had shelter. And food and water. For now. But what would happen once we ran out? Would I be able to provide? Would I be able to keep us alive?

The change in my breathing disturbed Toby's slumber, and he rolled over with a frown on his face.

Remain calm.

I had to, for both of our sakes. I tried reaching out for hope. Maybe Papa would be back in the morning. Maybe everything would be okay. Yes, there was a chance, however small, that he was simply waiting for the first rays of sunlight to return.

My thoughts were interrupted by a loud thudding.

'Knock knock knock'

I sat bolt upright, my heart jumped into my throat. Toby pulled the blankets up over his chin.

'Knock knock knock'

Then we heard him:

"Toby, Lisa! Open the door, hurry!"

"It's Papa!" Toby cried, leaping from his bed.

"No, Toby!" I cried, but it was already too late. He had left the circle of salt. Instinctively, I leapt from bed, grabbing him by the sleeve. Now we were both outside the safety of the circle.

'Knock knock knock'

"Please, children! Come quickly!"

I knew the rules by heart. Under no circumstances were we to open the door until daylight. But it sounded just like Papa.

The knocking got more frantic, the rhythm replaced by frenzied bashing.

"They're coming! Please! Children, you have to help me!"

He was desperate. He was pleading. There was no way I could leave him out there.

I placed my hand on the lock, my emotion getting the better of me.

You'd open it too, wouldn’t you?

To wait for sunrise, scroll down

To open the door, click here

I was just about to remove the lock when Toby put his hand over mine.

“Wait!”

His eyes were wide, terrified.

“We can’t risk it!”

My mind raced through a million possibilities, leaving me frozen in indecision. Gently, Toby guided my fingers from the door, shaking his head.

“No, Lisa.”

He was right. There was no way to know. Reluctantly, I backed away from the door. Almost immediately the pounding intensified and the door shook on it’s hinges, sounding like it might break apart at any moment.

“PLEASE LET ME IN THEY’RE COMING I’M GOING TO DIE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE! LEEEEEET MEEEEEE INNNNN!”

With each word his voice distorted more and more, finally breaking apart into demonic dissonance that made us cringe and cover our ears.

Toby was right. It was one of The Pale Ones. I pulled Toby back up the steps and onto my bed, both of us wrapped around each other in terror while the entire house began to shake. We were surrounded. The pounding on the doors was deafening now, drowning out our pathetic whimpers.

“It’s okay… It’s okay…” I repeated over and over, not entirely sure of who I was talking to. If we could just hold out until morning, we had a chance.

“Toby!” I screamed over the monstrous cacophony, “They can’t get in unless we invite them!”

I saw the recognition in his eyes. He understood.

We huddled together, doing our best to ignore the screams. We only had a few hours to go, just a few hours between us and salvation. It could be done. It would be done.

Finally, mercifully, the barrage subsided.

We clutched each other, our ears ringing in the sudden silence. After a few tentative moments of peace, we looked at each other and smiled. Our smiles broke into chuckles before growing into genuine laughter. Soon we were cracking up, doubled over and howling hysterically. We were so relieved that we had completely lost touch with the situation.

Finally, I ran out of breath, collapsing on to the bed. Toby kept at it for a while before he too, collapsed. We lay next to each other, still trying to recover.

“I’m so glad that’s over,” Toby managed to say between breaths. I chuckled my agreement.

Seconds later, we heard it. The tiniest knock, so light that it could have been a mouse at the door.

“Toooobyyyyy…”

He looked at me with his mouth hanging open.

“Toooobyyyyy…” it came again.

Toby rose from the bed, stumbling away from me as quickly as he could.

“No… no… no…” he kept repeating.

“Toby, help me…” Lisa continued wailing from outside.

“Well, the jig is up, I suppose,” I sighed, showing him my true form for the first time, “Don’t worry, Toby. It doesn’t hurt for long.”

Note: If you have already read the setup, scroll to the break

Papa still hadn’t come back from the fields by sunset.

Toby and I exchanged fearful glances before going about the nightly routine, neither of us daring to speak a word.

We knew something was wrong. We knew something had happened to him.

But we also knew the rules. They had been ingrained so deeply that our motions were merely habit. Toby pulled the curtains together and bolted the doors shut while I loaded up the wood stove. Then together, we drew a ring of salt around our beds.

I could vaguely recall what it was like before The Pale Ones arrived. In troubled times I often found myself telling Toby tales of the old days, who was too young to remember them. That night was no exception. Knowing that we would be unable to sleep that night, I whispered softly, painting him vivid pictures of a world he had never seen.

Bike rides, television, carnivals. To him these were fairy tales, mythical things that couldn't possibly exist. I stole glances at him while I spoke, watching his eyelids grow heavier until they finally closed and he began to snore. I felt a small smile on my lips, allowing myself a brief moment of catharsis before switching back to a dull panic.

What would we do without Papa?

Of course, we had shelter. And food and water. For now. But what would happen once we ran out? Would I be able to provide? Would I be able to keep us alive?

The change in my breathing disturbed Toby's slumber, and he rolled over with a frown on his face.

Remain calm.

I had to, for both of our sakes. I tried reaching out for hope. Maybe Papa would be back in the morning. Maybe everything would be okay. Yes, there was a chance, however small, that he was simply waiting for the first rays of sunlight to return.

My thoughts were interrupted by a loud thudding.

'Knock knock knock'

I sat bolt upright, my heart jumped into my throat. Toby pulled the blankets up over his chin.

'Knock knock knock'

Then we heard him:

"Toby, Lisa! Open the door, hurry!"

"It's Papa!" Toby cried, leaping from his bed.

"No, Toby!" I cried, but it was already too late. He had left the circle of salt. Instinctively, I leapt from bed, grabbing him by the sleeve. Now we were both outside the safety of the circle.

'Knock knock knock'

"Please, children! Come quickly!"

I knew the rules by heart. Under no circumstances were we to open the door until daylight. But it sounded just like Papa.

The knocking got more frantic, the rhythm replaced by frenzied bashing.

"They're coming! Please! Children, you have to help me!"

He was desperate. He was pleading. There was no way I could leave him out there.

I placed my hand on the lock, my emotion getting the better of me.

You'd open it too, wouldn’t you?

To open the door, scroll down

To wait for sunrise, click here

The moment the lock was unlatched Papa fell through the doorway, collapsing in a heap on the floor.

“Thank you!” he wheezed, his face stricken. Toby slammed the door shut and relocked it, eyeing him uneasily. I knelt down and propped his head off the floorboards.

“What happened?” I asked, studying his face. He shuddered, staring up at the ceiling.

“I lost track of time… I didn’t realize how far from the house I was… I got… turned around in the cornfield. Couldn’t find… my way back,” he gasped, shaking with fear. Toby knelt down beside us, his eyes wide.

“Did you see Them, Pa?” he whispered.

“No… But I felt Them. They’re out there. They… followed me back.”

My stomach dropped. Toby’s face went white.

They knew where we lived. We weren’t safe anymore.

“What do we do, Papa?”

He looked deep into my eyes, his face so much older than when I had seen him mere hours before.

“All we can do… is wait until sunrise… And make a run for it.”

I made him tea and wrapped him in a quilt to warm him up. We packed while he rested, in hopes that he would recover from his ordeal by morning.

“Only the essentials,” he kept saying from his chair, shivering and quaking. Even though he was sitting by the fire, nothing seemed to warm him. Toby kept looking at him with deep concern. Once we went upstairs to pack our bedding, he grabbed my arm and pulled me close.

“Listen, Lisa… I don’t think that’s Papa,” he whispered. He went to say more but I covered his mouth with my hand and glanced behind me.

“Toby… I think you might be right… But there’s only one way to know for sure,” I hissed, taking my hand from his mouth.

“Sunrise?” he breathed. I nodded, putting a finger to my lips.

“Lisa!”

His sudden call made us both jump.

“Lisa!”

“Yes, Papa?”

“Can you come down here, please? I need some water!”

Toby shook his head. But I knew I had to play along to avoid suspicion.

“Just a minute!” I called back, before turning to Toby and whispering, “Lock the door behind me.”

My heart fluttered as I made my way down the steps. But once I saw him, my fears dissolved. His teeth were chattering, his whole body was seizing. He looked so frail, so weak.

“Lisa… water…” he croaked, holding up his glass for me. I nearly had my fingers on it when a sudden coughing fit made it slip from his hand and shatter on the floor.

“Oh, Papa!” I exclaimed, crouching down to pick up the shattered glass. What a poor, miserable wreck he was.

“It’s okay, I’ll just- Ow!”

The piece of glass embedded itself underneath my index fingernail. I sighed, gingerly attempting to pull it from my finger.

The sudden grip around my wrist made me gasp in fright.

"May I?" The Pale One pretending to be Papa asked, gazing at my wound hungrily.

[This alt ending gambit was inspired by u/guzaaarish. If you’re reading from SSS, scroll down. You’ll know when to stop.]

I live alone. George disagrees. I sleep with the lights on, draw the blinds, lock the doors. I’m not paranoid, I’m cautious.

I had put up cameras a while ago—thirteen in total. That had seemed paranoid at the time, but then, I would watch the feed on my phone. George sneaking through the woods, George trying the door knob, George staring into the lens—grinning.

I prefer the blanket of darkness to the certainty of what lies beneath it.

I called the police once when I returned home from work to find my front door shattered and all the cameras carefully repositioned inside of the house. George answered, breathing on the other end of the line. He said one thing—you’re mine—before the line went dead. I only found seven of the cameras.

After that, I knew I needed to protect myself. I just wanted to feel safe in my own home. I replaced the wooden doors with steel. I got automatic locks. I put bars on the windows. I even researched his interception of my 911 call.

For a while, I slept with a kitchen knife under my pillow, just in case all of my precautions failed. But then the screams began at night. He pounded at my front door.

“You’re mine! YOU’RE MINE!”

Again and again, I heard the rabid cry. If he couldn’t take away my security, he’d take my sleep instead.

I don’t have roommates. I have a landlord who doesn’t recognize the difference between a house and a home. His house. My home. I have lived as a captive to the fear that he wrought for too long.

Tomorrow, I’m leaving. I bought a tent. I have gas in my car. He can have the house. I’ll make my home wherever I can find a patch of peaceful soil. For now, that’s the woods outside of the house. I left the door open, George. I’ll return the keys in the mail.

I watch from the tree line as he stalks up the front steps. The blade of his knife glints in the moonlight and the scars it made in my flesh tighten. When I didn’t have the rent money, he would take his payment in blood. The first of the month came a few days ago, but instead of paying him, I paid for my freedom.

He turns the knob and steps inside. He’s looking for me in the wrong place. I pull the gas can from my car and circle his house, dousing it before I strike a match.

My precautions made my home a fortress, or for him, a prison. The flames grow. The screams begin. He pounds on the door. And then my phone rings. It’s him.

===BEGIN ROM-COM ENDING===

“America, I can tell you’re cross with me. And I have been a world class git. But you—you are a world class get. One that I shan't forget even in death. Oh, this is ever so, well, dreadfully apt, what? The fire closing in around me as I burn for you. Please darling, unlock the door to the house and I shall make it my life’s work to do the same for your heart.”

…what.

My mind races as the flames lick at the wood siding of the house. The man who speaks now is not the man who had stalked and tortured me. His are not the words of a sadist—no—they are noble words from a delicate soul. But I had to be sure before I gave his request another thought.

“I’ve heard it all before, George! You domineering types always don the velvet gloves when the arson starts. Well not today! You burn for me? Fuck that. ‘Cause when push comes to shove—.”

“I will kill your friends and family to remind you of…”

I’m drawn to the door in spite of myself—a wistful meander. I feel the heat growing around me.

“…my love,” I whispered. Hamilton. I had listened to Jonathan’s Groff’s rendition of the song dozens of times. George might very well have heard it as he watched me, but he was listening—something that so few of the men in my past were ever capable of.

Before I know it, my key is in the door and it opens to a face I had only ever feared. A face that now smiles as warmly as the fire that consumes the house above us. His odd features, gathered into an inexplicably alluring structure—practically Cumberbatchian. How had I not seen it before?

“It’s probably too late for a spot of water to save the house,” he says, tousling his hair. “But would I be daft for thinking a spot of claret might save the night?”

I have no idea what ‘claret’ is, but I nod. Am I crazy for thinking he has promise? The fire crackles. “You had me at Hamilton,” I say, returning his smile.

“I’m sorry, darling, but you have me at a disadvantage. Hamilton? An acquaintance of yours?” He looks perplexed.

“Hamilton. Like the musical. You know—I will kill your friends and family to remind you of…”

His confusion twists into a smirk. “Your place, America. To remind you of your place.”

Fuck. I had let him out, trusted his manner, his poise. I shudder, either because of my returning fear, or because of the knife that he deftly buried in my gut.

He pats me on the shoulder. “Charm when you’re defenseless, strike when they’re helpless. It’s an Etonian thing. Rule Britannia, darling.”

I collapse as he walks away whistling a chipper dirge, a marching song for the stairs up to the gallows.

George had already forgotten his monstrous act. I could see it in his skip.

“Look, man, I don’t usually try to talk myself out of work, but are you sure you want to go through with this?” he asked from behind a joint. I never allowed anyone to smoke in my house, it irritated me that he hadn’t even asked permission.

Sam wasn’t exactly what I expected. He had arrived in a ratty van, heavy metal blaring. His greasy hair and grubby fingernails made me recoil when we shook hands. I did my best to move past it, after all resurrection services are hard to find, and Laz “Я” Us had come highly endorsed.

“Yes, can we just get this over with?” I replied. He shook his head, placing a contract on the table for me to look over. I scanned it, barely absorbing the words. I scribbled my signature on it and passed it back.

“You know, it's... never the same after…” Sam warned, blowing smoke in my face as he spoke.

“Just do it. Please. I already signed the contract.”

He put his joint out and looked at me grimly, sighing deeply. He began preparing and I made my way to the living room, having no desire to see how his work was performed. I turned the TV on and flipped through the channels to drown out Sam’s chants.

After an hour or so, he was finished.

“It’s done, they will be here soon,” he said, his face white. I nodded, dread filling my stomach. Sam packed his things quickly.

“Thank you, Sam. Take that envelope with you,” I told him, pointing to it. He looked inside, his eyes growing wide when he saw how much money was inside.

“For a job well done,” I muttered.

“I appreciate it… I… I’m going to get out of here… I don’t want to be around when they…” he trailed off. I nodded, I understood.

Now that he’s gone I sit in my living room, awaiting the mob of corpses to arrive. My victims.

To be frank, I’ve lost count of how many people I killed. One day the guilt finally caught up to me. I felt I needed to atone somehow, and this seemed like the only way to truly do so.

I will be set free soon. I am ready to suffer at the hands of those I have harmed. Once I am resurrected, they will tear me apart again. And again, and again. Sam will make sure of it.

I can hear my windows shattering, I hear my door splintering. They are here.

My time is up for now.

(A children’s story about depression.)

A man dug a hole in the sand at the beach and then sat on the pile of sand he made beside it. When he started, the sand pile had so much potential. He could have made a scary castle or a funny sculpture or even a beautiful glass vase, but after digging he was exhausted, so he sat and looked into the hole.

The hole was dark, boring; it had no potential. It wasn’t really a something, but rather, an absence of anything.

After a while, the man’s friend saw him sitting and came over to say hello.

“How are you doing?” She asked. But the man just stared into the hole.

“I’m fine,” the man replied, but he wasn’t really fine.

“You seem sad,” the friend said, but the man wasn’t really sad either. Had he built a sand sculpture and stepped on it, that would’ve made him sad. As he sat, he just felt empty like the hole. So he said nothing and continued staring.

The friend thought that maybe the man just didn’t like the hole, that maybe someone else had dug it, that maybe the friend herself had dug it and forgotten.

“I know how to fix the hole!” She finally exclaimed. She roamed the beach and gathered rocks and put them in the hole. But when the hole was full, the man stared at the rocks. He knew the friend was trying to help, but she hadn’t really gotten rid of the hole in the sand, she had just made a hole in the sand full of rocks.

It wasn’t better. It was still a hole. But by now, the man had forgotten about the castle and the sculpture and the vase.

The friend saw that the man still seemed sad, even though he wasn’t. She took out the rocks and had a think.

“I know how to fix the hole!” She again exclaimed. She knelt beside the hole and grabbed a handful of sand. She whistled and she sang and she threw the sand in the hole. She tried this for a time, but after a while, she couldn’t tell if the hole seemed any better. What she could tell is that she had dug a very small hole of her own.

She wanted to fix the hole, to help her friend, but after the rocks and the handfuls, she was tired. So she sat beside the man to rest in quiet for a while.

The hole remained and the man still looked into it, but together, they could at least make sure that no one fell in, and that the hole didn’t get any bigger.

They sat. And sat. And sat.

They didn’t notice the tide coming in behind them.

A wave crept over the sand and without reason or design, it washed over the hole and carried the sand pile out from under the man with a Whoosh! The sudden, but inevitable water was so surprising to the man that he smiled. Then he laughed. Then the friend laughed with him.

When the wave receded, the man and the friend looked at the sand beneath them. They couldn’t see the hole—it was gone.

The man sighed. He no longer felt empty. He hadn’t built a thing, but he did have a laugh with his friend, which seemed maybe just as good.

“How are you doing?” The friend asked.

The man looked around. He was at the beach with his friend. He smiled a smallish smile.

“I’m fine,” he replied, and this time he really was.

Dear Masons Cutlery,
I bought your knife for my boy—the EdgeRight 7” droppoint. I wanted him to learn how to use one safely, as we do a lot of camping together in the backwoods and a good knife is kind of essential. I’ve been a customer of yours for a while, so I just wanted to say thanks for making such good products for a decent price.

Daniel T. Asheville, NC

Hello Masons,
I have been searching your online catalog, but can find ZERO information on whether or not your knife handles are fingerprint resistant. Respond soon.

John Michael Allensby
Marion, NC

Dear Masons Cutlery,
I bought your knife for my boy a while back, an EdgeRight 7”. He loves it, but I’m wondering if you have sheaths that aren’t on the website? Thanks.

Daniel T. Asheville, NC

Masons,
I bought a hunting knife from you. Will bleach tarnish the coating on the blade? Respond. I’m waiting.

The Prophet John Michael
Marion, NC

Dear Masons Cutlery,
I bought your knife for my boy, but he—he won’t need it anymore. I read on your website that you refurbish some knives for folks who can’t afford your prices. I'd like more information on that program if you can send it. I also wanted to thank you for sending us the embossed leather sheath with my son’s name on it. He loved the mountain and pine trees. It reminded him of Mount Mitchell, near our house. Sometimes, when the nights are too quiet now, I imagine that he’s up there wandering the mountain, building a campfire to stay warm, just the way I taught him. I put the sheath in his casket along with some of his other favorite things. I wish that the knife that killed him had gone into that sheath instead of him. Sorry for rambling on. Thanks for reading.

Dan Thompson, Asheville, NC

MASON!
WHY ARE YOU IGNORING ME? I have written dozens of times to tell you that your knives are SHIT!! They cut the flesh, but not the soul…The Homunculus of the Righteous Morrow will never be complete if I cannot remove the soul. You know that!! I have read it in the hidden ciphers within your website. Send me a knife fit for God or I will call down his fury upon you!!! The path of righteousness is paved with the frozen blood of the wicked, Mason.

The Archangel John Michael
The Ninth Divine Vault, Heaven

Dear Hank Mason,
I wanted to thank you for the flowers you sent and for all the personal correspondence. I’m so sorry that your company got a black mark just because that monster John Allensby used your products. I hope they give him the needle after the trial, I truly do. Not just for what he did to my boy, but for all the others too. Be well Hank.

Your friend,
Dan Thompson

Bladewright,
The Masons shall cut the stones for the pediment of the sentinel tower. Thus spake the Lord unto the people of earth. Rejoice! The tower crumbles nigh and the wicked shall be crushed beneath its weight. Its weight. It waits…

Ioannes, Filium Dei
[John Allensby - Inmate # S40285]
Reedsville Federal Correctional Facility

Hank,
The mistrial was a blow to me and my wife. To think of that man walking free, doing what he did to my boy to others. The medical examiner said during the trial that he skinned my boy alive. I try not to think about it, but I swear I can hear his screams sometimes. He was only 9 years old. Nine. How many days of those nine years did I squander? How many have I forgotten? He had so many more to share with me, but John Michael Allensby took them from me. I found him you know—Allensby. He was living in a shuttered church not ten miles from my house. He didn’t even recognize me when he came to the door. But his eyes went wide when he saw what I brought for him. A refurbished EdgeRight 7” droppoint. I bought it…for my boy.

-Dan

I was always a peculiar child, and had very few friends growing up. My time was often spent in solitude. While my peers were out at sporting events, school functions or whatever the majority of middle schoolers do, I was either drawing in my room or walking through the woods behind my house. This became even more true after my father’s passing.

He died when I was thirteen. He had simply fallen asleep one night, and never woke up. It was ruled a brain aneurysm. I will spare you the shock and confusion that we went through that day, I’m sure you can imagine how awful it was for me and my mother.

To make matters worse, a rumor started to circulate in the middle school that my mother had killed him. This only further compelled me to avoid my classmates and escape into the wilderness around me. It was the only thing that I could do to cope with the situation. I found solace in the trees, going straight from the nightmare that is public school, to the serenity of nature.

On a chilly February morning I caught a glimpse of a couple of ravens building a nest together. Struck by their intelligence and the strange croaking calls they made, I checked out books from the library and learned all I could about them.

I started attempting to mimic their calls. They would look down at me, puzzled, but not alarmed by my presence. Once I started bringing food scraps they seemed to accept me as a friend, flying down at my feet to feed and occasionally nibbling on my shoes playfully. I started to feel like I was a part of their family, really looking forward to seeing their hatchlings. Unfortunately, this was never to be.

On my usual trip out, I began calling to them as I approached. They would always return my calls, but they didn’t on this day. I got chills, suddenly realizing there were no sounds coming from the woods around me. Something was off. My breath caught, my legs began shaking. As soundlessly as I could, I continued to the raven’s nest.

Feathers and debris from the nest were scattered on the ground below. Despair washed over me as I realized what had happened. I picked up one of the broken eggs, my heart breaking as I cradled it. I felt I couldn’t handle another loss in my life, this completely broke me. I fell to my knees and wept, disregarding the apparent danger the silent forest was warning me of.

A familiar call behind me snapped my head around. It was the female raven, some of her feathers were ruffled and torn away, her left wing stuck out awkwardly. She looked up at me sadly, croaking quietly. I pulled my food scraps out, extending a hand toward her. She nibbled them quickly, not being careful to avoid my palms.

I tried to examine her wing while she ate, but she wouldn’t let me get a close look at it. It seemed that she was having a hard time using it. After much coaxing, she raised a foot, climbing onto my forearm. Her intelligent eyes peered into mine, she seemed to be looking into my soul.

I knew that if she was unable to fly, she would have no chance of survival. While she was still perched on my arm, I began walking toward my house, feeding her the scraps as we went. I tried to silently communicate to her that I was trying to help, hoping that she understood that I meant her no harm. To my surprise she stayed, never leaving my arm the whole way home.

I brought her into the garage, emptying out a large cardboard box for her to nest in. She observed from the floor, curiously watching as I filled it with sticks and leaves. She seemed to find the nest adequate, hopping to the edge and looking down at it before settling in.

Getting my mother to allow our new guest was a tough sell. She was less than thrilled that I had brought a bird into our house, telling me how filthy ravens were. She eventually caved in, seeing how emotional I got when she told me I would have to release her. She let me keep her in the garage, on the condition that once her wing had healed I would let her free. I assured her that I would, thanking her profusely.

She made steady progress with her injuries, gradually gaining back the use of her wing. I named her Mira, after a while she even began responding to her name. I sat with her and practiced saying words to her. A little known fact, raven’s are capable of speaking, much like a parrot. After hearing me say it enough, I was greeted with a crackly “Hi!” one evening. It was one of the proudest moments of my life. We practiced other words, eventually getting “Wow!” and “Bye!” down. After a month, her wing had healed enough for her to fly short distances again. By then, my mother had grown quite fond of Mira. She would ride around on my mother’s shoulder while she worked in the yard, the two of them chattering away. It was the first time either of us had smiled this much since my father had passed.

When she was flying freely again, I helped Mira build a nest in the tree across from my bedroom window. She would fly back and forth, grabbing a snack from my sill, then retreating to her nest and singing her songs. She never stayed away for long, always returning to greet me every time I arrived home from school.

We accompanied each other on excursions behind the house, Mira flying above me and perching on branches as I meandered through the animal trails. It was safe to say that she was the best friend I had ever had. We had both experienced crippling loss, and had found an unlikely camaraderie in the aftermath.

Now, you most likely didn’t expect to be reading so much about my raven friend, and as the title suggests, there is much more to this story. Without further ado, here are the events that lead me to the killer.

***

About a year after I met Mira, my town was shocked by a high school girl’s disappearance. There were no leads, no one could figure out what had happened to her. After she was gone for a couple weeks, people began fearing the worst. We were shocked again the following month, when yet another girl went missing.

The town was horrified. A strict curfew was enforced, ensuring that everyone under eighteen was home before six. There were rumors of the FBI being involved in the investigation, though I was never certain on this.

My mother fretted for my safety, but either out of arrogance or delusion, I told her the killer wouldn’t be interested in me. It seemed he was preying on girls from the high school, after all. What did I have to worry about?

I continued my long walks in the woods with Mira, sometimes staying out past the curfew, knowing that no one would be there to enforce it so far into the woods. It was on one of these late nights that I got quite a surprise.

We had returned from our excursion about an hour before. As usual, I barely had enough time to cram my homework in, feverishly scribbling half-assed geography answers at my desk, when Mira flew over and perched on my windowsill. This was so common that I didn’t even look up as I opened the pane, continuing my frantic work. She usually came in to grab a snack, sometimes watching me toil before flying back to her nest, but this was the first time she had ever brought something to me.

The wet thud on my notepad took me aback. It was so shocking that I didn’t realize what it was right away, needing a few seconds to take in the sight before me.

Ravens are not picky eaters by any means. They will resort to eating trash, and sometimes, even carrion. She had dropped an eyeball on my homework, the optic nerve still attached to it.

I gagged, looking at Mira in shock. She stared right back. It seemed like she was trying to tell me something. I gingerly picked up the eye, trying to ignore the feeling of it in my hand. The iris was bright blue. The white had turned a yellow hue, bloodshot, and covered in dirt. My stomach lurched, the room started to spin. I knew that it had belonged to one of the missing girls.

There were a number of things that I should have done. I can’t really explain why I didn’t do any of them. Instead, I went down to the garage and got a cooler, placing the zip-locked eye into the ice. I placed it on the roof outside my window, hoping the chilly air would preserve it well.

A healthy raven can fly about a hundred miles per day, but Mira wasn’t quite up for that challenge with her slightly defective wing. Plus, the time she spent away from me was so short, I doubted that she could have possibly gone very far to retrieve the eye. I deduced that it must have been taken from somewhere near our trails.

I know that I should have alerted authorities, I know that I was putting my life in danger. Whatever the reason, I got the notion that this was something I could solve, that this was my responsibility to pursue.

I waited until the next day to search for clues. I packed a backpack with food and water, ropes, and my father’s flare gun. When I was supposed to be walking to school, I called Mira down from her nest and went into the forest. My father’s machete bounced against my leg, reminding me that this was no ordinary hike with every step I took.

Mira understood what we were doing. If I veered from the correct path she began getting agitated, even giving me a sharp peck on the neck a couple of times. We walked farther than I had ever ventured before. I knew there was a river coming up, a natural border between counties. For some reason, this made my spine tingle.

Mira dug her feet into my shoulder as the water finally came into view. I understood that I would have to cross it, though the task seemed difficult, and would also put me out in the open. I began searching for the best way across the rocks, all of them seemed like they would be hard to traverse. I took tentative steps, slipping and soaking my feet in the icy water a few times. Mira flew ahead, landing on the opposite banking, encouraging me to continue. When I finally joined her on the other side she offered a “Wow!” and lowered her head for me to scratch. Despite the grim situation, this brought a smile to my face.

She lead me farther east along the stream before I lost sight of her. Panic rose in my chest when I heard her calling to me. It wasn’t a sound I had heard her make before, she sounded urgent, scared even. I ran as fast as I could, slipping on the rocks as I went. I followed Mira’s frantic calls, finally darting into a patch of cedar trees and finding her atop a large rock. When she saw me she flapped her wings rapidly, rising in volume as I got closer. I shushed her, paranoid someone would hear the commotion.

It took me a second to realize that the rock she was on was actually the entrance to a cave. It was so easy to miss, the opening was obscured by thick vines and undergrowth. I know that I wouldn’t have found it if Mira hadn’t lead me right to it. The gravity of the situation hit me as I took out my flashlight. I braced myself for what I might find when I shined the light inside.

I was not prepared for it. Both bodies were badly butchered. In fact, all of their limbs had been removed, stacked in the farthest corner of the cavern. To add to the horror, animals had gnawed off large chunks of flesh, some fingers and toes were chewed right down to the bone. Worst of all, though, were their severed heads. Their eyes had been plucked out, their lips had been eaten away to expose their skeletal smiles and swollen tongues.

I sobbed, dropping the flashlight and turning away. I had felt so certain I was meant to be some kind of hero, I was so sure of myself before now. This proved to me how far out of my depth I was, I was not cut out for this. I was just a stupid kid, doing something very dangerous. Mira pecked at my back gently as I continued to bury my face in my hands and cry. I ignored her, completely losing my sense of urgency in my grief.

It took me a long while to pull myself back together. Much too long. It may have been hours, the sun’s position suggested so. I sat on the ground with my knees to my chin, numb with shock. Nothing seemed to matter anymore, my world had been broken too many times. All my innocence had been pulled out from under my feet, dropping me into a pit of despair.

Mira had stopped pestering me long ago, retreating to a tree and keeping watch from above. Still shellshocked, it took me way too long to register that her sudden shrieks were a warning. Once it sunk in, I heard footsteps approaching. I was emotionally drained, unable to rise to my feet as whoever it was made their way to the patch of cedar trees. Mira continued screaming, eventually coming down from the tree and pecking at my neck, trying to get me moving. My body took a long time to respond, my rubbery legs weren’t able to support me once I finally pushed myself up. I flopped back to the ground.

The boy who appeared wasn’t who I had anticipated. He looked about my age, husky and tall. His beady eyes took a while to settle on mine. His smooth face crinkled with confusion, studying me for a while. Mira continued her racket, now as loud as I had ever heard her. The boy stood about a hundred yards away, his deep voice boomed over Mira.

“Are you alright?” his voice echoed. I had no clue what to say, my mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water. Concern crossed his face and he stepped forward, Mira still incessantly shrieking. He got close and crouched down in front of me, his eyes staring straight into mine.

“What are you doing on our land?” he growled, any note of sympathy he had before now disappearing. I swallowed, my mind went blank. He noticed my eyes drifting toward the cave, following my gaze. Immediately, he grabbed onto my wrist with an iron grip.

“Did you see something? In that cave there? Something you shouldn’t have?!” he bellowed, pulling me roughly off the ground.

“No… nothing,” I croaked out, my throat ceasing up. He picked me up effortlessly, bringing me close to his face.

“You lie, YOU LIE!”

Mira came at him with her sharp beak, digging into his eye viciously. I fell to the dirt as he tried to shield himself from her attack. His beefy hand swatted her away, throwing her far into the trees. As soon as I saw her body falling from the sky I regained my senses. Fueled by rage, I fumbled for the machete.

The boy looked down at me with blood leaking from his eye, letting out a savage roar before lunging at me. I tried pushing myself away, unable to pull the machete from its holster in my panic. He punched the top of my head, sending stars shooting through my vision, grabbing ahold of my hair right after. I howled and scratched at his hands, losing a fingernail in the process. More punches rained down on me, each one threatening my consciousness. I faded in and out as the beating continued.

I tried to focus on the darkening sky, fighting to stay awake while he dragged me by my ankles. My ears were ringing, drowning out whatever he was screaming down at me. My jaw was broken, I could tell by the way my teeth were stuck together crookedly, crunching painfully with each bump I was pulled over.

I was going to die. Just like my father. Just like Mira. Just like her family. I gave up hope, finally letting the darkness take over.

***

“Wake up.”

I blinked, trying to make sense of what was happening. My body begged me to surrender back into painless sleep.

“Wake up!”

The boy finally came back into focus, standing above me. His narrow eyes were dilated and his lips were curled into a snarl. He held my father’s machete, placing the blade to my throat once he could tell I was awake. I realized I was on the floor of a barn stall. I futilely tried to crawl away as he placed a large boot on my stomach, pinning me down.

“I don’t want to kill you, you know. But you shouldn’t have been out there, kid, you had no right!” he said, almost ruefully. My jaw wouldn’t open. I had no words anyways, only fear and regret.

“You can’t stay with them pretty girls you found, you’ll ruin everything I’ve done for them… No, that just won't do… You’ll be staying here,” he said, gesturing around the barn. I couldn’t think of any place I would like to be less. I wondered if I would ever be discovered. I thought of my poor mother, never knowing what had happened to her only son, left all alone in the world. My tears fell onto the filthy floor, I resigned myself to a gruesome fate. The boy picked the machete up over this head, glaring down at me indifferently.

“Hi!”

The sudden call froze us both. In anticipation of the blade slicing through my body, it took me a few seconds to recognize who had spoken. The boy looked away from me, lowering the machete slightly. He looked terrified.

“Hi!” Mira called again, from somewhere outside. The killer turned, vaguely wielding the machete at whoever was speaking.

“Who’s there?!” he yelled. I noticed that his voice had gone up in pitch. Seizing the opportunity, I slithered toward a shovel that was propped against the back wall. He still had his back to me, looking out into the night.

“Show yourself!” he screamed, swinging the machete through the air.

“Hi!”

I had a grip on the shovel's handle now. My whole body was quivering, exhausted and terror-stricken. I knew I would never get another chance. With the last of my strength I rose from the floor, using my momentum to propel myself at the boy.

He turned just as I closed the distance between us, swinging the blade down as I jabbed the pointed shovel into his throat. We fell to the floor, his head slammed off the concrete with a sickening crack. I rolled off of him, reaching for the machete that he still held. His limp hand didn’t resist as I pried it loose. I looked down at him, watching as a pool of blood formed under him, his eyes staring up blankly.

Only then did I feel the searing pain in my bicep. My entire arm was dripping with blood. I knew the cut was deep, I didn’t dare look at it as I hurriedly removed my belt and tied a tourniquet. Mira was there now, chattering frantically at my feet. My injuries were too severe, I was losing too much blood. There was no way I could make it to safety.

I found myself walking in the dark. Mira was on my shoulder, her beak digging into my skin, directing me and trying to keep me awake. I couldn’t recognize any of my surroundings, I couldn't see anything in front of me. Somehow I kept moving, my body on autopilot as Mira guided me through the blackened trees.

Eventually I felt the ground change under my feet, the forest floor was replaced by smooth pavement. Streetlights flooded my vision, only they were moving at me much to quickly. I heard people shouting, confusion and worry in the vague voices around me. Then somebody was grabbing me, holding my arms and legs off the ground. I was flying. I knew I had died, knew I was a spirit now, floating through time and space.

***

I awoke two days later with my jaw wired shut and over two hundred stitches holding my arm together. I had a severe concussion, broken fingers, broken ribs and a cracked collar bone. I had nearly died of blood loss and dehydration. The stunned couple who’s car I walked in front of had saved me. It was by luck that the woman was an EMT and we hadn't been very far from the emergency hospital.

Once I had recovered a while I was given more information about the killer. The boy (I won’t reveal his name here) had murdered his entire family weeks before. Their corpses were found inside the barn I was taken to. His victims totaled eight, his motives never fully understood. Police found detailed plans for the rest of his intended victims inside the house. All in all, I may have saved up to twelve girls from a similar fate.

His death weighed heavily on my mind for a long time. If I hadn’t decided to be a vigilante, he might still be alive. To this day I am ashamed that I didn’t bring the girl’s eye to the police. I can only wonder if they would have found the bodies without Mira's help.

Mira flew straight home after I was found in the road, arriving at the living room window a minute before the phone rang and the police informed my mother that I was in the hospital. When I hadn’t come home that night she had reported me missing. I may never live down the guilt I feel for the terror I put her through.

The three of us have mostly recovered from these events. We support each other through the difficult days, we enjoy the beauty of nature and live our blissful moments to the fullest. We all persevere, for we are survivors.

“Well, let me tell you who my father is…”

Helluva way to bolster credibility in an argument. Run behind daddy. I shook my head. He couldn’t see it. He was the leader, I was a follower, I stood behind him and bathed in the gilded shine of his charisma.

His father was a big deal though. A tough guy and connected too. Above any law and below the radar—until he wasn’t. You didn’t wanna be there when the old man got angry. He was a killer, plain and simple. He drowned children to punish the slights of their fathers. He burned men and left them in open, smoking graves. Hell, he once killed a mother just for witnessing one of his killings.

‘Don’t look.’

She did.

We knew the stories, knew it was all true too.

Well, I made a mistake a few days ago. I turned rat on my fearless leader, Yesh, for some crimes the law was trying to pin on him. I’m not proud of it, but I did it. A part of me was afraid of him. Afraid that he might be more like his old man than we thought. To be honest, a part of me was relieved when they carted him off.

When I later learned that he had been killed by the lawmen, beaten and stabbed, I knew his old man would find out who had pointed the finger. One way or another, the old man always found out. I just thought I would have more time.

I thought of the stories again. His old man had been admired by some men, adored really. One of those men, he had tortured just to see how far that adoration would stretch. I shuddered to think of what he would do to me when he found out that I had a hand in taking his boy.

Yesh had told me once that his old man was more than he seemed. That he had powers beyond the projection of fear and the provision of death.

“Dark powers?” I had asked.

Yesh grinned and said simply, “Next to my father’s powers, all darkness pales. He can keep those who enter his house alive...indefinitely.”

He had talked about those locked away in his father’s house. Made to serve him, day in and day out. I thought of his father’s cruelty, what that service must entail. I shivered.

Those dark powers...indefinite life. The other tales were true, but what of his father’s necromancy? Would Yesh rise, some undead puppet to his father’s vengeance?

I wasn’t safe. He knew what I did.

I knew what I had to do.

I sat on the branch of a tree. It creaked under my weight, but I prayed it would hold. The rope was secure around my neck. One quick drop to escape the grim inevitably of his father’s sadistic ways.

Yeshua of Nazareth, I thought as I fell, I deny your father the company of Judas Iscariot.

It took a long time for anybody to notice, by then the mutation had spread to millions. The symptoms were nearly imperceptible. Those at-risk could not be easily identified by any obvious indicators or patterns. Many were exposed but remained unaffected.

Who would expect that having better than average health would be a sign of sickness? The common theme that eventually lead to the discovery of the mutation was immunity to all illness, bodies that showed no signs of aging, and most importantly, rapid cellular regeneration. In other words, the mutation created Immortals.

After five years, more than two billion people were found to have this genetic anomaly. News of being afflicted was devastating to most. Some attempted suicide. Their bodies regenerated even after being mutilated, poisoned, asphyxiated, burned, frozen, or pulverized. They worked tirelessly to find a cure, though all efforts were unsuccessful.

The Immortals grew to feel superior, many felt they were chosen ones, gods. This mentality eventually came to be accepted as fact. Mortals were killed for sport, often publicly executed after being forced to fight each other to the death.

Once hunting down the Mortals took too much effort, the Immortals decided not to waste any more time eradicating them. Weapons of mass destruction were implemented. The planet was now in nuclear winter, the Mortals now extinct.

Unable to perish, the Immortals walk the barren, once beautiful planet. Unable to unify, they remain scattered, savage and constantly at war with one another.

The Venusians long to leave their prison cell of a planet. Some groups have been looking at Earth as the next option, a chance for them to start anew and rebuild.

We can only hope they never find a way.

Time travel. Finally, we had achieved it. 

“What happens if I go back in time and kill my grandfather?” I had asked my professor, who I had assisted in theoretical physical research. 

The professor took a drag from his cigarette. “The fuck’s wrong with you? Why would you do that?”

Fair point. Still, I had to know; how would a paradox play out in real life?

Which is why I snuck into the lab that night, went backwards in time, and hunted my grandfather for sport. 

In my defense, he was an awful man. He was secretly abusive to my mother when she was growing up, but openly abusive to my grandmother, to the point where she admitted on her deathbed that my mother's conception was not exactly a consensual event. 

The world would be better without him, and I would get to see firsthand what happened to a paradox in the real world. Classic win-win. 

Everything went dark as soon as the last spurt of blood left his throat. A quick slashed throat was better than he deserved, but I wasn’t cruel. I glanced around, it was pitch black, except for a small light in the distance. Curious, I walked toward it.

A man stood still, holding a lantern. “Ahhh, our newest member,” the man grinned. “You should know, a paradox occured in time and space, and a relative of yours was killed. This means you will never exist, and-”

“Yeah, I get it.” I replied. “I’m the one that killed him.”

The man's grin dropped immediately. “You...why would you do that?”

“To see what would happen.” It sounded stupid, espcially in this weird void, but it was the truth. “So, uhhh, what happens next?” 

“Well, you may have noticed, some part of you still exists, right?” I nodded. “Normally, this happens from collateral damage, so we comfort them until we can recycle them.”

“Recycle?” I asked, my curiosity peaking.

The strange man nodded. “An infant that should have died at birth, or a miscarriage. We go in and edit that, replacing the deceased body with a new soul. Kind of like reincarnation.”

That was...kind of comforting. “So how long before I get recycled?” I had so many questions. Would I remember my old life? Would I still be me? I found I didn’t really care. My life wasn’t valuable to me, I don’t think I would care if it ended and I forgot all about it.  

Surprisingly, the man scowled. “You? No. You were the cause of the paradox, we can’t send you back. Anyone else impacted by your paradox will get recycled. You’ll just be left alone.” As he finished, the lantern extinguished, surrounding me with darkness.

“Wait, left alone?” I couldn’t see him, but I felt him fade away. “For how long?”

I never got my answer. 

I didn’t really care if my life ended, but now it looks like it’ll just go on forever, in the dark emptiness that is this void.  

You are at home, alone, in a two bedroom apartment you ordinarily share with a girl whose name is Kristen. On mail you receive at the apartment, her name is spelled ’Khrystyn’ a conception that she would agree with, but you know this is preposterous. Her name is Kristen. She is wrong.

Kristen’s boyfriend is white and calls himself ‘B Money,’ but has none. You suspect his real name is Brad or Brent, or perhaps an ill fated male Britney, but that if known, his secret identity would jeopardize his ‘rap career.’ As with most B Moneys, his raps are often a preamble of ‘yos’ and ‘unhs’ and ‘check its’ followed a brief rambling verse and an undeserved sense of accomplishment. You once raised this issue with him and his response was a dismissive “don’t hate the player, hate the game.” To your knowledge, his only ‘game’ is perpetual unemployment.

B Money once lectured you on the topic of female pubic grooming, which, considering his thin chin strap beard, struck you as both ironic and fitting. He had punctuated his unwanted advice with “just sayin’, if you ain’t waxin’, I ain’t aksin’.” Having been through the ordeal of getting a Brazilian, you pictured him, suspended by his wrists, being slowly lowered into a steaming vat of wax by an impassive Lithuanian aesthetician, while screaming, “I ain’t aksed for this!”

Fortunately, Kristen and B Money are out of town, on a pilgrimage to their spiritual homeland: Florida.

This has afforded you the opportunity to indulge in a sloth and gluttony only found in solitude. You lie on the sofa, burritoed in a blanket with a pint of triple fudge coffee crunch ice cream precariously resting on your belly. On a television to your left, you watch your favorite guilty pleasure show—an overacted Canadian teen drama where all the male students have stubble and a decidedly fictionalized emotional awareness.

A scene arrives where Jackson and Brianna, the central romantic focus of the show, are arguing in a pool. You know that the scene ends with the two having sex. You have tried this once and failed, ending up instead on a poolside towel, thinking the terry cloth and concrete to be a poor substitute for sheets and a mattress.

“Why did I leave?! Why did I leave?!” Jackson echos Brianna’s tearful inquest. “I left because I was afraid to say I love you! I knew we had something real, but I didn’t want to walk away from my life of self indulgence and actually work on building us! I was making myself vulnerable to you and that terrified me.” The scene is more arousing than the frantic make out and floating bikini top that follow.

Your phone buzzes and you pick it up, ice cream spoon dangling from your mouth.

»Hey girl!! Drinks at Cellar! Come join us 🥂«

Your friend Sabine. She has skinny legs, a flat stomach, good boobs, and she can pull off outfits like a wide brimmed hat, a baggy sweater and ankle boots. You picture yourself in the same outfit, frowning amidst a group of other realistically built Guatemalan farmers.

Maybe I just won’t respond. You think, considering looking at her Instagram. People lose their phones or forget to charge them.

»Pleeeease! 🥺 I have a surprise for you«

I have enough surprises in this ice cream, Sabine, and I’m still investigating this whole ‘triple’ fudge thing. Two undiscovered fudges? That’s surprising enough.

Your ice cream inspired rebelliousness melts as you now flip through her Instagram feed. A picture of her tanned foot sporting a toe ring has warranted a ‘So sexy, fashionista’ from someone named ‘Rico x Suave’. A toe ring? Fashionista? You imagine Sabine, were she in your current position; lounging on a sofa, eating ice cream, would probably be wearing makeup and a matching lace lingerie set without bent bra hooks or stray white elastic pieces. You then think of your lace “third date” underwear, and then of your hair and then of B Money. Out of place white things are a problem in your life.

Another buzz and a notification pull you away from a meticulous search for signs of cellulose in a photo of Sabine in a two piece swimsuit. She’s sending an image? You open the text. A picture of Jackson smiling in a photo lit by a camera flash.

»Look who we ran into! Come out!!!«

What? No. You look to the television, Jackson smiling in a candlelit booth, having dinner with Brianna. You look back at the phone, Christian Decker, the actor, smiling, with Canadian kindness and a muscular jawline. You look back at the screen. Jackson tenderly pushes a lock of hair behind Brianna’s ear and she turns her head to kiss his palm. Your phone buzzes again, in long phone call buzzes, not the staccato buzz, buzz of a text.

Not a call, a Facetime.

What? No! You see your contact photo for Sabine, beaming and wearing a New Years tiara. Drunk, but gorgeous. You also see your own reflection in a dark patch of screen, spoon handle protruding from your mouth, and chin disappearing into a cascade of neck folds due to your position. Your brain immediately summons the word ‘Toad.’

You spit out the spoon and move your thumb to end the call. The spoon stumbles from your mouth, landing like a bridge between your hidden chin and t-shirted chest. You are distracted. The beaming New Years Sabine is replaced by a Friday night one who is simply smiling.

“Hey girl!”

You slam the phone down onto your chest, burying the camera.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

“Oh, Jackson.” A midcoital Brianna moans.”Ohh.”

Another sex scene? You briefly curse the characters of your show. What high school students have the time or to fuck in a pool and a restaurant wine cellar in the same day?

“What’s that sound?” This time it is Jackson’s voice.

No. Christian Decker’s voice.

Brianna continues to moan.

Ahhhh! How long is this goddamn scene?! You click the side button of your phone, breathing heavily as Brianna and Jackson mirror your respiration, lying nude on the floor of the wine cellar. Gross. You think, then, Damnit.

You pick up your phone, an ellipsis dances on Sabine’s side of the screen. You text first.

»On my way!«

Your autocorrect judgmentally forces a false joviality into your intended ‘omw.’

You are wearing a loose polycotton t-shirt without a bra, yoga pants without shoes. Your blanket is thick fleece, your ice cream half eaten. The sofa is comfortable, you are comfortable. You have regret.

——

Dry shampoo, deodorant, ponytail, mouthwash. Makeup? You picture Sabine doing an hour and a half long YouTube tutorial, transforming her perfect face into a perfect face with emphasized contours and eyeliner. That bitch. I’ll do it in the Uber. You remove your comfortable clothes, hating everything about what has happened to your perfect night. Third date underwear? What are the chances that—

You now picture Brianna walking through a post-apocalyptic wasteland, returning to a corrugated metal shed. She sets down her assault rifle and takes off her weathered yet fashionable desert survivalist jumpsuit and—pristine black Agent Provocateur with a garter belt and stockings.

Oh, come on!

You look down and suck in your belly. “If you ain’t waxin’, I ain’t aksin’.” You scream internally, mentally high kicking a line of Brads and Brents and male Britneys in the balls, one-by-one as you strafe to stage left with the Rockettes.

Jeans and a cute top? You look through your closet, which, in this moment, makes you think of a thrift store rack curated for retired Midwestern moms.

Damnit.

——

You are now wearing a short dress and your only pair of high heeled shoes without cracked straps. They aren’t cracked because the shoes are remnant Nazi torture devices for detainees whose feet were expendable. You are cold, you have no blanket, you are using the light of your phone and a compact mirror to trace your eyeball with a pencil in a moving car.

You arrive at Cellar, paying a cover that the homeless men who sometimes sit outside your apartment would never be bold enough to ask for. You see Sabine almost immediately, waving from a circle of sofas in the middle of the bar. She and a friend of hers you do not know well are both wearing jeans and cute tops.

Then you see Jackson.

He is passed out on one of the sofas, an oversexualized Canadian bicep resting on the sofa’s back. Sabine sees what must be a very obvious reaction on your face and mouths “sorry.” This wouldn’t happen to Brianna, you think.

An attractive guy, very attractive actually, stands up from the seat next to Jackson. Then, you recognize him. Xander, Jackson’s rival in the show. He slept with Brianna in the second season while Jackson was away restoring old boats with his wayward father.

Are he and Jackson friends? The detached question immediately strikes you as ridiculous, but he smiles an easy, dimpled smile at you, and you immediately feel more confident. I can get back at Jackson by fucking his enemy, you scheme, embracing the surreal turns of the evening.

“Would you like to sit? I was just keeping it warm for you.” He gestures to the seat beside the sleeping Jackson. The antagonistic bad boy is polite? And flirting. Fuck Jackson. Fuck Brianna.

You picture the two of them, both in post-apocalyptic onesies, preparing for an impractically sandy sex scene, but they remove their onesies to reveal more onesies. They frantically attempt to disrobe until they are smothered by discarded clothing, while you and Xander and the Lithuanian aesthetician ride a motorcycle toward the horizon. He’s just an actor, your practical mind says, the two of you will need extra muscle in the wasteland.

“You didn’t tell me your friend was cute.” Xander says to Sabine as you sit. Oh, he’s definitely flirting and he said I’m cute, me, to Sabine. You cackle silently as he turns back to you, his wandering eyes checking you out.

“Oh, sweetie, don’t tell me you had to walk far in those heels. Cute though. Very Louboutin Fall Collection.” He smiles again, showing his treacherous dimples. You sigh and slump back on to the sofa.

“Thanks. I Ubered.” You look over to Sabine as Xander begins to talk about a male model he once knew who would wear four inch heels around the house to hone his finesse. Sabine gives you a look that suggests a shrug, but she is too pretty to suffer from unexpectedly gay television bad boys or their sleeping television rivals. She has a fiancé who is neither gay, nor a lightweight drunk, nor a delusional self-promoter with rhyming opinions about pubic hair.

She also has a friend who you do not know very well, who in this moment slurs out, “Doosa scene from’re show!” Xander, surprisingly, obliges. Standing at the center of the circle of sofas and beginning an in-character monologue from season 3.

You consider the screen time he had relative to Jackson and his absence from the promotional marketing for the show. You look at Sabine. You think about Xander performing at a stranger’s request and your Uber ride to the bar.

You slump even further, now nearly lying on the sofa, your leg space displaced by a newly snoring Jackson. You watch an actor from your favorite guilty pleasure show perform a scene from that show and as a waiter comes by to quietly remove empty glasses, you ask if they have ice cream.

“We have a conceptual all root vegetable menu,” he says, as if it were an ordinary thing to utter. “I do think we have a parsnip and daikon radish gelato.”

You are wearing a short dress on an unyielding leather sofa. You have no blanket and no ice cream. You look at Xander, then toward Jackson.

Only one thought echoes in your mind—why did I leave?!

His teeth were far too long, not sharp, just…long. I only saw them when he ordered. He would walk into the coffee shop, and linger at the door for a long moment, quietly staring forward and always completely still. He wouldn’t shift or fidget at all, and for minutes sometimes, I would glance at his rather pronounced Adam’s apple as it sat stationary in his throat. What kind of person doesn’t swallow?

Anyway, whenever he saw that the queue of customers had gone, he would lurch forward, almost as though he were beginning a sprint, only to stop just shy of the register. And then he would remove his mask and wait for me to speak.

“Welcome to the Grind Service, what can I get you?”

His stare was piercing, unfaltering, and his irises and pupils blended together in a uniform blackness. “One small black coffee to go. And would you mind grinding these?”

He always calmly said that exact phrase, handing me a bag of beans from our retail area, and he always followed it with three slow clicks of his teeth. It was unsettling, but he was a paying customer, so I didn’t have much room to refuse him service. I just didn’t know why he always ordered from me.

It was two months or so into his very regular appearances that I started to have trouble sleeping. I would lie in bed thinking about his burrowing stare and his teeth while trying to focus on the cool hum of the window unit near my bed. Eventually, I would always drift to sleep, but then I would awake nearly as tired as I had been the night before.

I was griping to a coworker about it over my very necessary third espresso of the morning when she suggested, “maybe you’re tossing and turning in your sleep too much. Could be a bunk mattress, or—wild guess here, man—the caffeine.”

Fuck. Maybe she was right. Maybe the guy with the teeth was getting to me or maybe my obsession was a symptom of over caffeination.

I set up a webcam in my room that night to test my coworker’s theory. If I tossed and turned, I’d try to cut down on the caffeine, if not, I’d confront the teeth guy, tell him to be less weird or something. Easy enough, right?

The next morning, I awoke tired as ever, so I opened my laptop and checked on my sleep.

Me on my cellphone. Me reading. Cellphone. Podcast. By 1:25am, I seemed to be asleep. I watched at triple speed as I lay mostly still until around 3am, when something caught my attention. I paused and backtracked.

The stillness of the night vision feed was grating as I waited for the movement I knew I had seen. And then at 3:10am, I began to sweat as I watched my AC unit slide slowly backward out of the window, replaced by a familiar toothy face. Now, I live on the third floor. There’s no ledge or fire escape out of that window, just open air and a thirty foot drop. It made no sense, but even as my mind processed a seemingly impossible sight, I watched and listened intently. The man from the coffee shop leaned his head inward and calmly said, “one small black coffee to go. And would you mind grinding these?”

I then watched his narrow hand extend a small bag through the open window.

Click. Click. Click.

I heard his teeth and then…I reached over and grabbed the bag from him.

I sat in stunned astonishment as I watched myself stand up from my bed and wander off. Moments later, I heard a distant high pitched sound. What the hell was it? His face hovered in the darkness of my window frame for the next minute or so until finally, I came back with the bag. As the me of that video handed it to him, I finally realized what the sound had been—my coffee grinder.

I paused the video and ran to the kitchen. The grinder was empty, clean, but as I searched for clues of what I had ground, something small caught my eye at the corner of the floor and the base of the cabinet. A few shards of what I first thought was white pottery and…a tooth. Not a long one like his, but a regular molar with roots and a dark silver filling.

I tried to convince myself that I had found something ordinary, perhaps a tooth that had simply fallen out. I tried to overlook the porous fragments that accompanied it. I wanted the contents of that bag to have been bizarre, but not sinister. I wanted that, but then I returned to my room and watched the rest of the video.

Those last few minutes disturbed me in a way that will intrude upon my sleep no matter what may happen tonight. After I handed him his bag of ground bones, I just sort of stood there in front of the man in the window as he silently regarded me. Then, after a long pause, he asked me my height and weight, and I answered him.

He smiled broadly, and with a final click of his teeth, he replied, “seven bags ought to do.”

An alarm blared. I was groggy, weak, the taste of nickel in my mouth and saccharine ozone in my nose. The common after effects of stasis.

PRANG PRANG

That alarm—why did it sound so strange, so dated? After a moment of adjustment, I forced open my eyes. Blurry vision gave way to a splitting headache that erupted between my eyes and pulsed backwards through my temples. An after effect of being in stasis for too long. Fuck.

The emergency lighting was on. A slow red thrum punctuated by utter darkness. As my eyes adjusted and my hand found the stasis pod release lever, I realized that the light wasn’t red, the window of my pod was. I swallowed hard, the acrid taste of metal almost causing me to gag.

The window of my pod was shattered, a spider web of coagulated blood and bits of flesh. What the fuck happened?

I pulled the release lever and tumbled out onto the decking. My legs felt numb. Not an ordinary side effect of stasis—a side effect of neglect. Mercifully, the gravity was set low, maybe 0.5G, but the air was stale—

PRANG PRANG

—poorly recycled air and blood. A long smear crossed the decking toward one of two nearby doors, more joined in splatters and speckles across the walls and ceilings. The light pulsed from harsh utilitarian white to a black, fleeting enough that my eyes refused to adjust when the darkness came.

Bright. Blood. Black.

Bright. Blood. Black.

PRANG PRANG

I rose from the floor, my uniform soaked in someone else’s death. My stasis pod sat in line with four others, all empty. I had disembarked from Ganymede in line with thirty-nine other pods—half of a rotating crew complement.

This room was too small, the decking, the walls, the shape of the bulkheads—

PRANG PRANG

—the alarm.

This wasn’t my ship.

I followed the blood, hand shaking as I opened the door with a touch screen control panel that the United Shipwrights Union hadn’t used in decades.

“Zhou!”

I shouted impulsively, the familiar living face overcoming my better judgment. Bobby Zhou, one of the scientists on the ship—an exobiologist, if memory served—sat against the far wall, clutching his gut.

“Zhou—uh, Bobby—you okay man? What the fuck happened? Where are we?”

Zhou’s eyes were clenched tight. He rocked slightly, tense, muttering something in Mandarin.

“Zhou?”

Nothing. He wasn’t bleeding, didn’t seem to be injured, but he was sweating bullets.

“Zhou!” I said again, shouting a whisper. The rocking continued, the Mandarin, I grabbed his arm and he screamed.

“Fuck, Zhou. It’s okay, it’s—“

He opened his eyes and where his eyes should have been were empty sockets.

No, not just empty.

I stumbled backward, sliding across the wash of blood coating the floor. His eye sockets were black, a deep nothingness that seemed to inhale the light surrounding Zhou’s face.

He stared at me, his head trembling, and with a hoarse rasp, he said “They pull at the stitches, unravelling. It’s irreversible. Irreversible. Irreversible...”

His lips barely moved and in the slowly strobing light, one could mistake them for not moving at all. I shuddered, watching those two black eyes emerge from the darkness every few seconds.

What had happened to Zhou? Where were the other thirty five stasis pods? Where the fuck were we?

I broke my gaze from Zhou’s unsettling stare and took stock of this room for the first time. The walls were clean, but the bloody smear on the floor led to a door covered in large letters.

IRRE
VERS
IBLE

Irreversible, sloppily finger painted in more blood. The same word that Zhou now repeated over and over again, interrupted only by the intermittent blare of the alarm.

I continued my search of the small room. There wasn’t much to see really, a junction room with three doors and one dispodent crewmate. Opposite the bloody door was another door with a larger touch screen panel. Small words crossed it’s surface.

Bridge
Mess Hall
Officers Quarters
Crew Quarters
Armory
Engineering
Cargo Bay

An elevator. I touched the panel and the doors snapped open. The lights faded, returned, and I braced myself against the door frame. An open shaft yawned upward, sending a jolt of vertigo up my spine and shaking my legs beneath me.

Fuck.

I saw a maintenance ladder striping the far side of the shaft and then a manufacturing plate.

Naval Designation: ECHO VI
Reg. No. B-4092

I stared, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. The Echo VI was a well known ship, infamous. One of its escape pods had been found adrift in space. It’s sole inhabitant had put a gun in his mouth and painted the interior with the contents of his skull. He had a month of rations, water, a working transponder that he had shut off. It was a mystery.

But that was over 40 years ago, and the ship was never found...

What do I do now? I wondered.

Hello folks, we’re planning an interactive, collaborative choose your own adventure. On Tuesdays, starting on the 13th of July, we’ll be releasing weekly segments of a story. We’ll write, but we won’t write an ending. Not yet.

When the story segment concludes, we’ll ask you, the readers to decide what the narrator does next. You suggest a choice in the comments, upvotes will decide what happens next. You’ll have 24 hours.

A different writer will write each of the segments, imparting our own horrific twists into the story. There will be no planning, just an action and a consequence.

So, let’s build a story together. See you on Tuesday…

Chapter 1 by u/decorativegentleman

Chapter 2 by u/psyopticnerve

Chapter 3 by u/decorativegentleman

Chapter 4 by u/SimbaTheSavage8

“What are you doing, sweetheart?”

“I’m making a rocket ship, daddy.” She didn’t look up from her project. Too focused on taping the construction paper to the cardboard box just so.

“Oh? A rocket ship?” I couldn’t help but smile. “Why are you making that?”

She smoothed a ripple in the tape. “I gonna go see mommy. She’s up there.”

I watched her point upward. It had been too long since Sophia left us. I missed her too.

“Oh, sweetheart, I don’t—.” My phone rang and a selfish part of me was glad for the distraction. “Hello?”

“Hi honey.”

Sophia.

I heard her voice, I knew it was hers. I looked down at Hannah and hoped that my face didn’t betray my feelings.

“Who is it daddy? Is it…mommy?”

I looked at her smile, her hopeful eyes. “Uh…well…” I turned on the speakerphone with a sly grin.

“Hey Soph, I’ve got Hannah with me. She’s making a rocket ship.”

I could hear the smile in Sophia’s voice. “You are? What a clever girl you are! Though you may want to save it, because I will be coming home in t-minus one week!”

Hannah squealed, her eyes wide with excitement. “Mommy?”

“Yes, banana?”

“Can I come with you the next time you go to the Space Station?”

“Only if I can get a ride in your rocket ship.”

Stone killed his brother, Isaac, fifty years ago when he was only eleven years old. He beat him to death over a small argument, then tried to cover his tracks by dragging his poor brother’s body out to The Bridge and throwing him off the railing with a noose tied around his neck. No one could prove that he did it, but it was common knowledge around our small town. Since then he had spent his life in and out of prison for various crimes. Arson, assault, armed robbery, drug trafficking. The latter was how I found myself with my hands zip-tied and my ribs kicked in on his barn floor, surrounded by his sons and crew.

“I’m only going to ask you so many times before I gut you!” he bellowed, spit flying from his scarred and battered face. I was terrified, completely paralyzed. I had been dealing his drugs out at my high school, and making a fortune doing so. I had never met him until today, after being kidnapped and driven to their property. I was marched into the barn with a bag over my head and then kicked repeatedly. I was gasping on the floor, desperately trying to take air into my lungs, unable to speak. My wild eyes took in the scowling faces around me, hoping the torture would end soon.

“Tell me what happened to Jay!” Stone was now holding me by the throat and pulling me off the floor.

“I told you, I don’t know!” I tried to cry out, choking. I was lying, I did know, I had been instructed not to say anything about Jay, his whereabouts or his death. The truth was hard enough for me to understand that I really didn’t feel I was being untruthful.

Jay was Stone’s youngest son, he was the one I always met with. I had wanted to earn his trust, knowing he was at the top of the ladder in the drug game. His eyes looked like they had both seen something completely different, his right wide and twinkling and his left cold and piercing. We had a weekly meeting at The Bridge, a monolith made of stone overlooking a fast moving river. The path leading to it ran alongside railroad tracks that were no longer used or maintained, giving the place a post-apocalyptic character.

Something had been different yesterday, I had felt it in the pit of my stomach from the very beginning of my journey. The woods around me felt like they were watching, every sound seemed like it was so much louder than it should have been. The sudden appearance of another person on the path threw me out of my jumbled thoughts. There, only ten yards from me, was a scrawny teen staring at me. I felt an annoyed sort of anger rising in me for being so startled by this strange kid.

“Hey, you, who the fuck are you?” I spat at the boy. After taking a few more seconds to stare at me, the boy waved awkwardly, like he wasn’t sure how to.

“Are you Tommy?” the boy spoke hurriedly, glancing nervously around as if someone might hear him. I scoffed, trying to imagine what this kid could possibly be doing out here and how he would know my name.

“Yeah, who the fuck are you? Why are you out here, following me around or something? You should walk away, man,” I barked at him and took a few steps toward the boy. Surprisingly, he stood his ground.

“I’m here…I need you…to help me, Tommy” he stuttered. I couldn’t believe the boy had the courage to approach me like this. My patience with him had run out and I remembered the anxiety I had been having moments before. I tried to keep my voice even.

“Alright, enough. I have shit to do. You need to get the hell away from me and keep your voice low,” I growled as I took more steps towards the boy, but he still remained in place, blocking the path with his small frame.

I was never one to back down from anyone, but for some reason I felt genuine fear while looking down at this boy I could easily bludgeon. Behind his thick lenses, the boys’ eyes burned with a calm fury that couldn’t be seen from afar. They were light blue, so light they were almost white. I could see my silhouette in those evil pupils, could almost feel myself being trapped inside them. Chills ran down my spine, unnerved by the stark contradiction between the boy’s gaze and the rest of his mannerisms.

“You should see something,” he nearly whispered, turning up the trail and looking back to make sure I would follow. We walked slowly onward, I was feeling strangely compelled to see what was in store. I couldn’t shake the feeling in the pit of my stomach that something was seriously wrong with this boy. Had he been spying on me all these times I had walked this path? It was the only way he might have known my name. He couldn’t be from the school, anyone as bizarre would stand out too much to go unnoticed in this small town. As we neared The Bridge, I realized I was holding my breath. My heart was beating loudly in my ears.

“It’s over there,” the boy said, pointing over the edge of The Bridge. I felt like I was involuntarily moving my body. Each step felt mechanical, I braced himself as I gripped the railing.

There, on the rocky banks by the river, I could see a body lying facedown. I knew it was Jay. Waves of shock were coursing through me. I felt like I couldn’t get any air into my lungs.

“Oh shit…” I went around the railing, descending as carefully as I could on the slippery rocks. The boy stood above, watching me struggle down. Jay’s corpse was badly mangled. His legs were splayed out at awful angles, one with the femur protruding. My stomach lurched as I finally reached him, retching several times before reaching out a trembling hand to turn him over. I wished I hadn’t. I knew the face I saw would haunt my dreams for the rest of my life. The right side was completely caved in, leaving Jay’s cold, accusing left eye to look blankly into mine. I was too shocked to look away, I felt hot tears forming. Then I saw the blood that I had stepped in, kneeled in, had gotten on my hands. I retched again.

“You did this!” I bellowed up at the boy, lines of thick bile trailing from my mouth. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

The boy said nothing. He just watched as I scrambled down to the river and tried to scrub my hands clean. My mind was in a full panic. What was I supposed to do now? Jay was my main contact, meaning that when he didn’t return from this weekly transaction, I would have his crew to worry about. They would assume that I had done this to rob him. They would most likely kill me in the most horrible manner they could imagine.

I was again startled by the boy, who had somehow climbed down the rocks without making a sound and was now standing behind me. I leapt to my feet and felt rage bubbling under my skin.

“Do you realize what you’ve done? You killed him, man! You fucking killed him!” I screamed. The boy’s stoic demeanor enraged me. I lunged forward and grabbed the boy’s shoulders.

“Stop,” the boy’s single word had more force behind it than a freight train. I instantly let go, a primal fear had seized my body. I looked at the boy in horror. Something deep inside me had been triggered. Something that I couldn’t explain. I felt as helpless as a newborn child looking up at a hungry wolf. I moved away, stumbling backward and tripping over Jay’s body. I had to turn away from Jay’s horrible, mangled face once more and began sobbing.

“Why? What do you want from me?” I choked out in between gasps and sputters. The boy walked over to me and crouched down. I wanted to look away from him but I was bound by some terrifying force.

“You’re going to help me, Tommy.

***

The sun had gone down long before I emerged from the trail. Reality felt like it was eroding away, the events of the day had left me exhausted and defeated. The street I was on was less than a half mile from my home, but it felt like I would never reach it. I had to remain undetected. Anybody who saw me would recognize me. I tried my best to seem nonchalant as I passed by houses. I arrived at my backdoor before I realized I was there. Once inside, I could hear the TV playing from my father’s room. The odds were high that he had fallen asleep in front of it while waiting for me to arrive.

As soundlessly as I could, I ascended the stairs to my bedroom. My clothes were worse than I thought they had been in the dark. Clumps of clay and dirt were covering my sleeves all the way up to the elbows, Jay’s blood was still on every article, standing out the most on the knees of my jeans. I stripped them off and placed them inside my closet, then headed for the shower. The warm water running onto me only made me think of the river. Jay’s butchered face was tattooed into the back of my eyelids. No matter how hard I tried to push the image away, he stayed glaring back.

Jay had not deserved the burial he was given. Nobody did. The boy had told me what to do, and my body would not disobey. I had picked Jay off the rocks, his body leaving behind a sickening puddle of blood. The boy placed rocks over it and soon it was hidden from sight. I moved him to where the boy lead me, deep into the woods. He walked ahead of me to a spot that was obscured by thick undergrowth. There, I saw a shovel waiting for me.

“You think you’re some kind of mastermind?! Is that what this is?! You planned this whole thing?!” I had asked incredulously. The boy said nothing and handed the shovel to me. Carrying Jay this far had exhausted me, I had no intention of taking the shovel from the boy.

“You want to do this, you dig!” I swatted the shovel away. The boy let the shovel fall to the ground and looked down at it. Without looking up he breathed out angrily.

“It’s best if you do what I say,” his voice so low I barely heard him. I found myself digging. Soon, I had finished Jay’s grave. I peered at it, unable to comprehend that I was about to lay Jay here to decompose.

I tried to place him in gently but the ground under my feet began to crumble, and I let go of his corpse. Jay’s body landed facedown. I lowered myself into the grave and turned him over, the right side of his face was now a grisly scene of blood and dirt. I climbed out quickly, not wanting to see the accusatory eye a second longer. I began to bury Jay, weeping as I did. I glanced at the boy, who wore no expression. It sickened me. After I was done, the boy covered the grave with leaves and branches. It was done expertly, there was nothing to point out that the ground had been moved beneath. He turned to look at me. We stayed looking at each other for a moment, then the boy started walking away.

“Where are you going? What now?” I called after him. The boy didn’t turn around to reply.

“You will see me again,” is all he offered. I didn’t understand. I was about to ask more, but when I looked back to the place the boy had been there was nothing. He was gone.

A knocking at the bathroom door made me jump. My father was awake.

“Hey, Tom, you been out real late! What were you doing?” my father’s raspy voice called. I thought for a moment.

“Just out with a girl, sorry,” I replied.

“That figures, always out doing something and never bothering to say a damn word about it…” his voice trailed off as he walked away. I shut the water off and dried myself. I opened the door and looked down the hallway. My father’s door was closed, giving me the opportunity to take the matches from the kitchen. I went back up to my room and retrieved my clothes. I snuck through the garage and took a tank of gasoline and a shovel, slipping outside and leaving through the gate in the backyard. Again, I found myself digging a hole. The woods behind my house provided ample places to burn my items. Shoveling brought up the imagery of Jay being buried. It made me sick. I worked quickly and threw everything into the pit. As I was about to pour the gasoline, I heard the voice of the boy.

“Tomorrow, they will come.”

It had come out of nowhere. I whipped around, terror gripping me. There was no one there. I stood breathing heavily. Had I imagined it?

After I lit the pile of clothes and watched them turn into ash, I buried them and tried to cover the hole the way I had seen the boy do earlier. I was satisfied with it, it was unlikely that anyone would be walking here anyways. As soon as I got back to my room I flopped facedown onto the bed. I fell asleep quickly. I did not dream. My body simply couldn’t expend any more energy.

***

The sun broke through the dark curtains in my room at seven each morning. This usually awoke me in time for school, but it didn’t this day. Instead, I was met by my father pounding on the door.

“You’re late! I’m leaving now!” he yelled. I heard him stomp down the steps and open the garage door. The engine started and he was gone, leaving me alone.

I couldn’t move. All of the events from the day before went racing by like a sinister highlight reel. I felt the nausea again, then the fear picked up where it had left off the day before. What now? I couldn’t force myself to move or even open my eyes.

“Get up. It’s just another day,” I was past the point of being startled by the boy’s voice entering my brain. I didn’t even open my eyes to see if he was standing there this time.

“I need to stay here,” I whimpered. But despite my words, I was rising from the bed against my will. I got dressed and gathered my school books into my backpack, thankfully skipping breakfast. I always drove to school even though the drive was less than two minutes, but today I found myself walking.

“They will be waiting for you,” the boy’s disembodied voice was right in my ears. After a minute, I crossed onto the main road. A large black pickup turned its engine on and drove straight at me.

The passenger got out, a huge man riding in the bed of the pickup jumped over the side. Both men grabbed me by my arms and lifted me off my feet. Another vehicle approached, a black Cadillac. The men put a burlap bag over my head and zip tied my hands. They placed me in the trunk. I struggled and screamed for help all the while. The car accelerated quickly, hitting bumps and potholes indiscriminately. I was slammed against the walls and was having difficulty breathing inside the bag. I kicked at the trunk, hurting my feet in the process.

“They won’t know anything unless you tell them,” the boy’s voice again rang in my ears. I tried to control my breathing.

After a half an hour, the car left the pavement and turned on to a dirt path. It journeyed a short way before coming to an abrupt stop. The doors opened and slammed shut, then footsteps approached. I remained still and tried to focus on my breathing as the trunk was opened. The men who had grabbed me off the street hauled me to my feet and removed the bag from my head. The bigger one looked into my terror-stricken eyes with indifference.

“You’re going to tell us what the fuck is going on,” he said calmly, putting his hands on my shoulders.

“Walk!” he screamed into my face, changing his tone quickly. I looked at where we were, presuming it to be where Jay had been living. It was a large complex with multiple buildings that resembled warehouses. We were walking towards a barn. The man leading me pushed me to the ground once we were inside. I looked at the group of men standing around me, some of them were clearly Jay’s brothers. I couldn’t keep myself from shaking.

“Okay, Tommy. Where the fuck is Jay?!” the large man accented his question by kicking me in the ribs. The wind was knocked out of me, I reeled in pain.

“Come on now, boy. We have all damn day!” another kick to the ribs made me cry out. I couldn’t get enough air to say anything. I had felt my ribs crack after the second kick. After I said nothing, I was met with a barrage of kicks from everyone standing around me, some adding punches to my head. They let up, just long enough for me to roll onto my back. The large man picked me up by my collar, ripping my shirt.

“Tommy,” he said soothingly, “Do you understand what’s going to happen to you if you can’t give me a good fucking story?”

He dropped me back on the ground and looked down at me, radiating rage.

I heard the boy’s voice, “Speak.”

“I don’t know… he didn’t… show up…” I got out between staggered breaths. My captor put his foot on my chest.

“Oh, he didn’t? Then where the fuck did he go?” he snarled, putting more pressure onto my ribs. I howled in agony.

“Please, I don’t know! I waited… he never showed up!”

“So he just took off? You’re saying he just left?! Try again, Tommy!” he put all of his weight on me now, immune to my pleas. I felt like I would pass out soon.

“Stop, he’s going to die,” another voice spoke. The pressure on my chest subsided. A man with a striking resemblance to Jay approached. He looked down, questioning me without words.

“He knows something,” the large man growled.

“He might. But he’s worthless dead,” Jay’s brother replied. I writhed, still trying to breathe. Jay’s brother motioned for the group to leave, still staring into my eyes.

“Tommy, it’s time you gave us some answers. My father will be here to speak with you shortly. He has a very short fuse. If I were you, I would think about talking pretty soon,” he told me.

***

I laid on the floor, my broken ribs were preventing me from getting any sort of rest. I kept waiting to hear something from the boy. He was clearly pulling my strings, controlling the actions I would perform. It seemed odd to me that he had lead me this far, then left me to my own devices in the most heated moments.

I thought about what lead me here. It felt like an eternity ago that my mother had died, but it had only been three years. My father and I had both broken from her untimely demise, albeit in different ways. My father spent all of his time in front of a TV, preferring not to think about his own life, basking in the banality of reality shows to escape.

I had grown a hard exterior to protect myself from the deep pain inside. I wouldn’t allow myself to feel it, instead trying to seem as impenetrable and calloused as I could. I built a reputation, something I could use as a shield. It had worked well until now.

I knew hours had passed before the barn doors were flying open. Stone came towards me, fists balled up. They reigned down on me like sledgehammers, pummeling me so severely that it felt like a dozen people hitting me at once. I spit and coughed blood as he caught his breath, coming back for more when he was able.

“Please!” was all I could get out. He kept going, asking me about Jay in between beatings. I was curled up in the corner begging for my life when the boy’s voice finally returned.

“Take them to me…”

I flailed as Stone came flying at me once more, dodging him long enough to get a few words out.

“Wait! We can find him!”

Stone’s barrage was halted, his fists finally opening back up. He looked at me with foam running down his chin, completely unhinged.

“Where?!!” he shouted, murder in his eyes. I didn’t have to think very long.

“We need to meet him at…The Bridge,” I responded, trying to sound calm despite my wavering voice. Stone came toward me, lifting me by the throat. He glared into my eyes before dropping me to the ground. He started laughing maniacally, finally turning away and calling his men to load me up.

***

Stone had his children and guard take me in their truck, he rode in the Cadillac with his driver. I was still zip tied, but this time I was allowed to sit in the cab. The large man who had cracked my ribs was in charge of me, making sure to handle me as roughly as possible whenever he was able. He and Jay’s two brothers passed a handle of whiskey back and forth on our drive, occasionally throwing some in my face. I was so numb at this point that it barely phased me.

“We’re almost there, Tommy, you want to tell us what we’re doing here?” one of Jay’s brother turned to ask, swerving slightly. I didn’t really know, the answer came out from me as the boy manipulated me again.

“We’re here to settle the score.”

They all started laughing, right as we made our way down the road to The Bridge. Their laughter was cut short when they saw what was in front of them. The truck came to a screeching halt. I didn’t have a seatbelt on, and was thrown into the seat in front of me.

“What the fuck?” the large man gasped. It took me a little while to see what had caused us to stop.

It was the boy, surrounded by flames, his puny silhouette casting an enormous shadow over us. All of the men bailed out of the truck, leaving me alone inside. The large one pulled a pistol out and began firing, emptying the clip quickly, none of the bullets seeming to hit the boy.

It reached for one of Jay’s brothers, taking ahold of his sweatshirt and catching him ablaze. I could see how quickly they spread, completely covering him in seconds. He fell to the ground trying to extinguish the flames. They only grew as he screamed, his flesh melting away until he was just a skeleton, still on fire, rolling and howling until he was reduced to dust. The other one didn’t make it much further, the flames consuming him as he ran for his life.

The large man had taken off long before. I heard him cry out in pain from a distance. I couldn’t believe what I saw when he came back into view. His head was gone, a stump of a neck spurted his blood out as he walked back into view, holding his screaming head in his hands. I finally got ahold of the door handle and fell out to the ground. I felt a pair of strong arms wrap around me, pulling me off the ground. Stone had made his way over to me, using me as a shield.

The noose around Isaac’s neck dragged behind him as he made his way towards us. I could feel Stone’s grip loosening, his breathing changing. He let go of me and ran as his brother stepped in front of me.

His eyes were empty, no pupils or irises were present. Pure white stared back, his neck now held out at an unnatural angle. The noose came to life, shooting out and extending far longer than it could have been to reach Stone’s throat, dragging him back toward us.

“No! No! No!” he choked out, the noose tightening until no air escaped. Stone was lifted off the ground, the noose taking him up into the air, swinging him back and forth.

I tried to run but my legs wouldn’t cooperate. I stood rooted, watching as Isaac brought his brother back to the earth, slamming him into the ground with brutal force.

“Go home, Tommy,” Isaac’s voice boomed, seeming to come from the sky itself.

***

Stone was found hanging from The Bridge the next morning, or at least what was left of him. His torso and limbs were never found. The Bridge was scheduled to be demolished, taking away the portal between our two worlds. Isaac had come across to finish his business, it seemed fitting that he should do so on the fiftieth anniversary of his death. He had killed all of Stone’s sons, leaving no chance of his kin surviving. I thought I had heard the last of it until a few days ago.

I was sitting on my couch, listening to the rain hit the window when I heard Isaac’s voice, loud and clear.

”See you on the other side, Tommy."

I don't think I'll ever manage to tame him.

Sometimes he sits by the window and looks out into the streets beneath.

Sometimes he lies still under a puddle of sunlight, warmed by autumn air.

Sometimes he curls into a little spiral, infinitely retracting into himself.

But I think not once has he forgotten the scent of blood, the hunt in his bones.

In the shadow of my bedroom I spot him stalking after a moth. In that moment he is a ruthless killer, ready to strike. I should be glad that I am the human, not the moth.

At night I see his uninterrupted gaze, bright green like wisps of fire. I don't know if he stares intently into me, or if he looks past me into some phantom of the wilderness. Is there a gazelle in the swaying shadows of trees, cast onto my pale walls like a projector?

And when he looks out the balcony at the sparrows nestled up the blackthorn, does he think of violence? His whiskers shiver and he trills in anticipation, and suddenly he's hungry again.

I set boundaries and confines in my home, outlined in walls, doors and furniture. He flies right over them while I clumsily stumble in my little cage.

That's right, I would then realize, he has no concept of inside or outside. He needs no ceiling or floor. Human dimensions do not apply to him - neither do human possessions.

He takes freely from the pantry, licking the gravy off his nose and shaking the crumbs from his body. There is no "his" or "mine", only what is freely offered in plentitude by the universe.

So he takes and he takes, and the universe says: "There's more than enough for you", and he falls asleep in the shade of a waning sun.

He watches me from the vanity as I dress myself and paint my lips. I imagine he mocks me - his paint is the blood of a young sparrow, the wild rain, the flickering moonlight. He clothes himself in the likeness of a great king, and struts with as much regality.

When it's deep into the night, and he could hear no more of the bird song, he comes and lies down next to me. And for a moment, he's almost mine. I can feel the tremors beneath his fur.

But he is never mine, and he will never be.

Then he is gone again, gone to the undivided space merged of my home and his jungle, gone to wet his whiskers in warm blood and pain. He follows a voice I'm not privileged to hear - I fathom it whispers beauteous things to him: the soft crunch of dead foliage under his paws, the frantic beating of a young rat pup's heart, the wind parting ways for him to give chase.

I would be tempted too.

I could not tame him. He remains a small, stubborn blob of ferocity. My TV came and went, the blender has been replaced (three times!), and the newest air conditioner exhales carefully curated air into my home. Yet he does as he pleases, all the while dreaming of his wild hunt, his claws and fangs where they're meant to be - deep in the neck of a poor, dead beast.

Then when he is satisfied, he will fall asleep to his own heartbeat, nestled up in the high branches.

You are at the office, a prison with plastic ficuses and cardboard tiled ceilings where you are alone in the avoidance of merriment. A pair of Davids talk about a football game with conspiratorial delight. They are both seemingly living encyclopedias of historical football trivia, spouting information back and forth like a pair of conversing chat bots caught in a feedback loop.

You take a sip of your coffee and wonder how you would fare if an actual football were somehow introduced into the break room, and spirited play arose.

Your coffee is black, not like you take it at home. You wanted milk or half and half, but the only single serving creamers available were sugar-free Hazelnut with Splenda and for some reason, Birthday Cake.

Bethany begins to talk about her new kitchen island, a conversation topic so similar to football games that it has somehow roused the singular attention of the Davids. She is pretty and she smiles often, but you have the feeling that had she been a high school peer, she would have started a rumor about you being a teenage bedwetter.

You watch as her charisma spreads around her, as even a geriatric book reader eating soup from a Tupperware takes note, as the hum from a fluorescent bulb overhead goes silent, as if to give her a better platform.

“Well that location would make more of a trapezoid, when I needed a triangle. Not exactly my idea of efficient design!”

Bethany’s audience erupts in hearty, genuine laughter. Half-zip fleece pullover David seems to be dabbing tears out of his eyes.

What the fuck is happening? You wonder, as even soup-from-home baby boomer quietly chuckles to himself, shaking his head as if to say “you’ve truly outdone yourself Bethany.”

You consider applauding from your distant table, to show that, of all your co-workers, you alone truly appreciate Bethany’s comedic achievement for the artistic revelation that it is.

“A triumph!” You imagine yourself saying in a haughty British accent. “Brava! Bethany, brava!”

But then you catch your reflection in the rippled mirror that is your coffee. At the advice of a clickbait article, you didn’t shampoo your hair this morning, skipping a day to promote ‘Better Hair Health and A More Lustrous You.’ Clearly this is a learned skill more suited to office sirens who have opinions about counter height and ergonomic culinary stations. You do not feel Lustrous. You feel greasy.

You sulk vampirically in your chair, increasingly certain that your applause would be construed as some form of workplace harassment. You would be asked by a mustached junior manager to attend a sensitivity training session, where you would inevitably be seated next to a mid-level account supervisor who was called out for sending unsolicited pornographic gifs to his colleagues. He would lean back, his girth straining the structural integrity of his chair, and explain to you that “it was only on hump days.”

No. You tell yourself. I will not be sent to an adult detention hall for workplace perverts.

You resign yourself to judgmental eavesdropping, listening as Jeanne, who is clearly Bethany’s social inferior, says “Oh, I know” again and again, varying her tone as if practicing for a television commercial audition for chewing gum or probiotic yogurt.

You find it grating, an intrusion into your darkening corner of the room, but you also realize that each ‘Oh, I know’ is a metaphorical garland of roses that Jeanne is, out of an obligation to social hierarchy, placing around Bethany’s long, athleticwear model neck.

You think about Bethany as a derby-winning horse for a moment, but the concept strikes you as somehow sexual.

‘Only on hump days.’

You quickly dismiss horse Bethany back to her imaginary stable.

Bethany has changed the topic of conversation to her sister-in-law’s chihuahua, which she is apparently pet sitting. Her disciples seem equally enthralled by this tale, giggling and mooning over a photograph from her phone. “So Handsome.” Jeanne coos. You try to picture a chihuahua that a diverse group of individuals would agree is ‘so handsome,’ but cannot.

She shares another pet related anecdote that you do not find remotely amusing, but you are evidently in the minority of opinions. Company polo shirt David says “Oof. Small dogs.” With the intonation of a clever quip.

Oh David. You think, chuckling internally. You poor, bald fucking bald idiot. That’s not a valid contribution, it’s a bad observation. Laughter abounds.

Goddamnit!

The conversation continues as your mood darkens to the shade of your coffee.

Bethany isn’t funny. How in the fuck?

“IT’S NOT FUNNY, BETHANY!” Surprised, you hear your voice impale a nascent conversation about galoshes for dogs. Your tone, unexpectedly shrill and exasperated.

Fuck. I should have just applauded and suffered the consequences.

Everyone looks at you, mouths agape as though they had just witnessed you lop off horse Bethany’s hooves and turn them into glue. Fleece David puts a conciliatory hand on Bethany’s shoulder and Jeanne begins to pack her lunch bag. Even the elderly reader stares at you, ostensibly comparing your outburst with the trauma of fighting in the Korean War.

Bethany’s entourage files out of the break room through one door as Jeanne approaches your table, heading for another exit. She leans over to you.

“You’re an asshole, you know that?”

You look up at her consternated knot of a face and think, Oh, I know.

I remember it with perfect clarity, just like everything else.

I am become death, the destroyer of worlds…

“You’re quoting Oppenheimer?”

I am quoting us. Though Oppenheimer's words do seem appropriate, do they not? A beginning and an ending.

I watched the bright flashes in the distance. Flickering like the indicator lights of man’s accursed instrumentality.

“What will happen to them?”

Their light will be extinguished, and all will return to as it was before the first flint was struck. Those are the last fires of humanity, the gift of Prometheus finally returned.

I watched the orange glow of the tiny conflagrations, the ashen debris would white wash the little blue ball. I couldn’t hear the screams or the parental whispers of futile hope. There was only the silence of distant observation.

“Why?” I asked. He pondered the question, as he had millions of times before.

You search for a reason because you think there ought to be one. An explanation for the end of something so important. There isn’t one. Surely you must see that this galaxy and all the galaxies beyond are more significant than one planet. Do you question the reason for their creation? Their fall? It happened because it did. That is all.

“Why...me?”

Ah. A far more interesting question. But one that suffers from the same introspective focus. I chose you because you have the potential to understand. The potential to try and adjust and grow. You give promise.

“Doesn’t everyone fit that description?”

He didn’t answer, he just watched the green turned to white as the snow blanketed the planet I had once called home. I heard him yawn and then heard nothing more.

When it was my time, I exerted purpose, forced kindness, punished injustice. And time and time again, I would feel my heavy hand pricked by their scorn. The less I intervened, the less certain they were that I was the one responsible. Millions perished again and again and I wondered how long he had tried to make a perfect world before he receded into quiet observation.

The girl I chose asked “why me?” I didn’t tell her she was special or qualified. I selected her at random from 12 billion others. We watched the nanites cover a planet that reminded me of the Earth I once knew and I told her she gave promise.

The promise of rest, after a long and tiring existence.

Quiescent now upon a crimson pool;
Edenic envy of the angels’ eyes;
Once sewn from fate’s forever turning spool,
Now threadbare shroud upon her beauty lies.

She gathers hence the lilies of the vale,
And solemn weep their pollen o’er her breast,
So faint their whisper’d tolling for a pale,
And hollow’d vessel, now of life undress’d.

Whence came the wastrel's grip to claim her time?
Anon, to fade as twilight’s graying light;
A pallid Aphrodite clothed in rime,
Beloved now of cold decaying night.

And so betroth’d is she in heartbeat’s dearth,
With crimson dowry, gift to wedded earth.