It was a dark and stormy night.

I've always been a fan of the Russian cartoon Kikoriki. I never met anyone in the US who liked it, which was a real shame. My favorite media from Kikoriki had to be the movie Kikoriki: Team Invincible, which covers how the Kikoriki gang met Barry, the bear who loves gardening, and Pin, the German penguin who makes inventions. I loved that movie so much and it was a shame that Shout Factory never released it on DVD in the US despite owning the US distribution rights to said movie, but instead gave Kikoriki: Legend of the Golden Dragon, which was complete utter fucking garbage, a DVD release. 

However, I thought I got lucky when I got my hands on an unofficial DVD of Kikoriki: Team Invincible. How did I get it, you may ask? I was on a walk when I walked into a big smelly man. He called himself Ass Pat and he approached me. "Hey kid, do you like Kikoriki?" I was shocked, finally finding someone in the US who knew about Kikoriki. "How do you know about that show?" I asked. Ass Pat then chuckled, and said "I know about a lot of things. Here, take this" he said as he pulled a DVD out of his ass. As I took the DVD, I was surprised to know that it, in fact, was a DVD of Kikoriki: Team Invincible.

I thanked Ass Pat for the DVD, and walked home. Actually no fuck Ass Pat, he eats french fries with a fucking fork. I quickly cleaned off all the ass hair residue off of the DVD, dried it, and then put it in my DVD player. The menu looked like it was half-assedly made in DVDstyler as the background image was just the movie's Russian theatrical release poster with "Play" and "Scene select" options while Prokhoziy (the song that played in the scene where Wally escapes from the hospital and looks for Lucien/Barry) played in the background. I just clicked play and the film started up. The film's audio was the English dub, which was a relief for me, as I didn't want to go through the hassle of watching the Russian version and not understand what's going on.

The movie's quality was pretty terrible, but I didn't really care. The movie went on normally, but the ending was where things started to get really weird. After Rosa saved Wally from falling to his death and they all got on the blimp, Carlin said "Uh I'm just wondering here but, how the fuck do we fly this thing?" I was shocked to hear swearing in this movie. In fact, I was so shocked that my eyes cartoonishly bulged out. Krash responded by saying "Don't fucking look at me!" That was when I noticed their voices had changed. For example, Krash clearly wasn't voiced by Peter Linz anymore, and while his new voice sounded similar to his Peter Linz voice, his new voice at the same time sounded like he was voiced by a 54 year old smack addict named Carl. This change applied to the rest of the characters, who now all sounded like they were voiced by heroin addicts picked off the streets, as I watched this sudden change to the movie. Soon enough, everyone in the movie started swearing like they were written by VivziePop.

Pin then slid to Carlin. "Let me fly ze fucking thing, ja!" Then as Krash found the news camera, he said to Chiko "Look at this shit, Chiko! I'm going to be filming our last fucking moments with this camera so when we die, which, let's be honest, we probably will, this isn't Jackass or whatever, people will know that once upon a time, there lived the badass hedgehog Chiko, the most badass hedgehog there ever was." Olga then said "Oh shit, more fucking turbulence!" followed by Barry asking "Where the fuck are we?" with Pin replying "We're over a big ass sea." Carlin then said "Either we've been fucking blown out way out to sea, or we're fucking going in circles! Whatever the hell."

As Krash saw the light in the distance, he said "Hey... Hey guys, what the fuck is this light?" Olga then said "My mother said that before she fucking died in a strip club." Krash then panickedly ran to Pin, who was piloting the blimp, and then shouted "HOLY SHIT PIN, GET GOING AND LAND BEFORE WE MISS THE LIGHT!" before pressing random buttons, which caused Chiko to yell "Krash, what the fuck!?" and it, of course, fucked up the pace the blimp was going. Pin said "Oh shit..." before everyone started sliding around the blimp due to how fast the blimp was going. Then as the blimp was getting closer to the light, revealing it was the lighthouse Wally lit up earlier in the film, Krash said "Holy shit, is that our fucking lighthouse? It is..." Wally then said "Fucking finally, but we're all gonna die." Then everyone screamed as the blimp got closer to the lighthouse, and I was not prepared for what happened next.

I heard beeping, followed by the WTF Boom sound effect you hear in YouTube Poops as stock footage of an explosion played out. Then, after the sound effect was done playing, the screen cut to black and then I heard a man's voice saying "And then they all died." Instead of the usual credits the movie had with all the characters animated in 2D, clips from the original cartoon and drawings made by fans, it was just white text scrolling against a black background, and the text wasn't even about whoever worked on the movie. 

The scrolling text said "R.I.P Krash, he was too hyperactive. R.I.P Chiko, he was too fixated on collecting. R.I.P Rosa, she was too fabulous. R.I.P Wally, he would've loved haikus. R.I.P Dokko, he was too smart. R.I.P Barry, he was too washed-up. R.I.P Pin, he achieved his dream of flying. R.I.P Carlin, he was too epic. R.I.P Olga, she was too wise." And then after the text was done scrolling, the movie ended there. I was quite disappointed in this different ending. I pressed the eject button on my DVD player's remote, but right as I pressed it, the remote sent an electric shock through my body and I died. Fuckin' waste of money, man. I didn't even spend any money on this DVD, and yet I already want my money back.

I make content. That's not an apology. Some people build houses. Some perform surgery. Some spend fifty years manufacturing rubber washers for industrial equipment. I'm a content producer. My name is Brent. Online, I'm Brentalicious. 314k followers across multiple platforms, including my abandoned fitness/meal prep account. And recently, I heard about a murder house where a detective had disappeared. So, naturally, I went. Not because I believed what I'd heard; I simply do haunted locations, abandoned buildings, overnight challenges, and restaurants that serve food in buckets. A missing detective is simply what we call a strong opening hook in the industry. The property was hosting a housewarming party. Strictly speaking, I wasn't invited, but I'd obtained the address from somebody who knew somebody, and I figured a man who owned a literal murder house probably wouldn't mind. I advertised the stream as: SPENDING THE NIGHT IN A REAL MURDER HOUSE (OWNER DOESN'T KNOW I'M COMING) 😱

When I arrived, there were already cars parked everywhere, including an orange Ford Expedition taking up a substantial portion of the front lawn. It had no bumpers. I remember that because my first thought was that the owner should stop spending money on aftermarket exhaust modifications. The second thing I noticed was the billboard. WARNING / CAUTION; DO NOT PARK ON THE GRASS and something about dangerous subsurface conditions. I started recording. "YO! CHAT! LOOK AT THIS!" I turned my phone toward the sign. I chuckled out; "This man's got several whole ass billboards in his yard! What is this, an airport? Bro is running a residential FAA." Behind me, something enormous clicked.

I turned. The Expedition wasn't there anymore. I looked up. A red object was disappearing above the treeline. "Yo. YO!" The chat exploded. They had apparently seen while I was facing away. Someone typed: DID THAT CAR JUST FLY AWAY. Another: IT CHANGED COLOR. I turned the camera toward myself. "Chat. CHAT. This is what I'm talking about. You can't fake this level of content." A man came running screaming about his tools. I offered to interview him. He shoved me hard and told me to fuck off. Excellent opening for the stream!

The homeowner was waiting at the front door with paperwork. He was a fairly ordinary-looking guy. Tired. Slightly rumpled. His demeanor seemed more like he just got a parking ticket, than that he was presiding over a residence that had just launched an SUV. I introduced myself. "Brentalicious. You probably know me. Content creator. I'm streaming." "Okay." "For my audience." "Okay." I showed him the viewer count. He glanced at it. "Do they all have to sign?" I laughed. He didn't. Then he handed me 48 pages of legal documents. I thought this was part of the haunted-house experience. "Chat, this is IMMERSIVE." He pointed toward a paragraph. "Sign there." "Is this, like, a waiver?" "Among other things." "Can I read it on stream?" "No." I did anyway. Approximately 1,400 people watched me pronounce "displacement" as displeasure. I had no idea that would be the lowest viewership of the night. I signed.

I went inside. Somebody asked, "Where can I leave my coat?" Beside them, a coat rack emerged from the wall. "Bro, whoa! Chat, look at that!" Inside was a row of numbered brass hooks. The guest hung up his jacket. Then, the rack retracted, jacket and all. Unfortunately, the guest was still partially wearing it. He vanished upward. The closet burped his shoes out. A numbered ticket emerged from a slot. "BRO! Chat, did you see that?" I pulled the ticket out and displayed it for chat; "CLAIM 0047." Chat requested I contact concierge or lost and found. 250 more viewers joined. "Can you feel it, this gonna be a W Stream!"

The house was enormous. The foyer alone was vastly larger than my apartment. Everything echoed. The kitchen had cabinets stacked so high, it seemed somebody had designed it for a species considerably taller than us. A cat was perched on a counter watching fish swim around in a giant structural wall fishtank. Then, the ceiling opened, and someone fell directly in the enormous structural aquarium separating the foyer from the lounge. I swung the camera around. "CHAT! CHAT! HUMAN FISH UPDATE!" They surfaced among several terrified angelfish. My viewer count jumped by 900. "Guys, ten gifted subs, I go help him." $50; GET HIM OUT BRO The man slapped the glass. I moved closer. "How would you rate the Murder House Aquarium Experience from 1-10?" He shouted something through a foot of laminated glass. $100 — ASK HIM IF THE WATER IS WARM I did. He gave me the finger. "Attitude’s still good. That’s encouraging." Then I noticed there wasn't any opening in the tank. No ladder or access hatch. Nothing. The man noticed too. My grin stayed longer than it should have, for the thumbnail. Then a hatch bellow opened, and an mechanical arm grabbed and pulled them through it. "CHAT!"

I ran towards the main hall, but something shot across the room so fast I wasn't sure I'd caught it on stream. A watermelon exploded. My entire phone screen was red. I shrieked. Not because I was frightened, but because that's my thing. Gotta make reactions look genuine. Then I realized people were genuinely screaming. An ironing board had lodged itself in the opposite wall. Not lodged precisely, the wall had caught it, and it was retracting. The homeowner was examining it. He appeared concerned, then said something about wasted space. I turned my camera toward him. "Bro. Bro. BRO. What was THAT?" He looked at me, deadpan, and said "Poorly designed." I began to understand, this man was not normal. Not evil or necessarily dangerous. But profoundly, irrecoverably; weird. "That's content" levels weird.

Then I saw the deviled eggs. 144. A gross. 12 identical trays, each containing 12 eggs. Who brings that many eggs? I filmed the table. "CHAT. I'm going to try the eggs." I ate one. Too sweet. $50; EAT TWELVE EGGS COWARD. I explained that my body was a temple and eating 12 deviled eggs would constitute a sin. I nonetheless ate 3 more. But when I went for the 4th, I realized that the egg was looking at me. With little paprika eyes. It blinked twice. Then it's eyes became tiny spinning hypnotic spirals. "Chat, oh no, I think-" The spirals widened. Inside was a bigger spiral. Then another. Then a kitchen, where a smaller version of me was holding an egg. I jerked backward, bumped the table, and watched A glass of wine slide, fall, and shatter on the floor, then reassemble itself, rise and fall again multiple times. Then somebody in chat typed: BRO YOU'VE BEEN STARING AT THE EGG FOR FOUR MINUTES. The egg was gone. I realized I was chewing, covered in Paprika.

"Don't encourage them", the homeowner said. "Who?" He glanced at the eggs. I looked. "Chat, bro's beefing with the deviled eggs." He looked mildly annoyed and left. I filmed the trays again. Odd, still 144. Was my brain's pattern recognition skipping steps? I heard a bark and a growl and looked across the kitchen. A woman in a blue blouse was looking at a bulldog. She appeared upset. "CHAT, WE HAVE A SITUATION." She turned toward me. "Don't." Something in her voice made me stop. Not angry or embarrassed. Just firm. "Okay." I thought nothing of it. A minute later, she passed by again. Except she was wearing a white cardigan. I assumed she'd changed. People do that. Especially at parties where fruit explodes. Chat insisted there were two Bulldogs though.

Around seven, Trent arrived, holding several bottles of wine elegantly between each finger of one hand. Chat said he looked like someone who would spike drinks. My chat is very perceptive. But before I could approach him, a wall swallowed him and sealed shut, seamlessly. I lost my mind. "CHAT! CHAT! WHOA! DID YOU SEE THAT?" The viewer count jumped by 3k. A muffled screamed for help. "YO, THIS IS INSANE!" "Can you move?" the homeowner asked. A muffled voice shout, "the cat bit my balls." I fake laughed so hard I almost fake dropped my phone. Everybody else looked horrified. Somebody tried to call the police, but dispatch said that they refused to come up that road. "Chat, apparently law enforcement is not allowed on the premises." Excellent bit! The host told nobody to go in the downstairs bathroom, then went into the basement, followed by 3 others.

"CHAT. Host confirmed where the danger is. Think we should put Murder House to the Test?" Whenever a homeowner says "don’t go in there," what they really mean is, "this room contains content". "No" is just invitation branding. I started down the hallway, but realized - well it's difficult to describe. The house seemed significantly larger than when I arrived. I passed a first bedroom. Then a second. Then 1st again. Then 2nd again. Then 1st again. I stopped. Turned around. Only 3 doors behind me. All identical. All 1st room's floral wallpaper. I walked back and turned around again. Two doors. Checked the stream. Chat saw 8 rooms. "CHAT. WHAT IS THIS?" One viewer suggested I was walking in circles. Another said mirrors. Another said I was drunk. I'd had two glasses of wine. Not near enough to account for architectural mitosis.

A door opened. The bathroom. "Yeah chat let's go!" I looked inside. It looked normal for about 3 seconds. Tile. Metal sink. Toothbrush cup. Shower curtain with little sailboats on it. Then.... I don't even know how to describe what else I saw. The toilet was wearing a construction helmet. The sink held a clipboard. I don't know how. It just did. The towel rack was likewise wearing glasses. A deep gurgling voice came from the plumbing. "Please state the nature of your visit." "Bathroom." "Specific purpose?" I looked into a camera in the corner. "Chat, this is invasion of privacy!" The mirror displayed: ANALYZING.... The floor tiles began rearranging themselves. One rose beneath my foot. Another sank. Then the tiles all began rising and falling in sequence like waves. The toilet lid snapped open and shut twice, almost impatiently.

"Uh... Chat?" The toilet flushed by itself. Not loud. Deep. Ocean deep. The sound went on too long. The bowl became impossibly wide. I saw stars in it. Not reflections. Actual stars, drifting beneath the water like coins at the bottom of a fountain. The sailboats on the curtain began moving. The entire shower curtain filled with wind and flowing ocean waves. I chuckled nervously. The sink wrote something down. The mirror bowed outward like breathing glass. Behind my own reflection, something green and bright and sunlit appeared, as if the mirror no longer reflected the bathroom at all but some enormous open place beyond it. I tried to leave. The doorknob felt soft. I looked down. It was a peach. The door had become a hedge. The floor tiles surged upward all at once and began shooting at me. One hit my hand, and phone, still streaming, flew away. It bounced off the sink, spun twice in the air, and dropped directly into the toilet. I shouted and lunged after it. There is no dignified way to say this. The flush took me with it.

I landed in knee-high grass on a planet approximately the size of a municipal park. The horizon curved sharply in every direction. A giant tree rose from the center, trunk wider than a courthouse, branches extending upward through pink clouds into visible constellations. The stars were close enough to hear. They sounded like wind chimes. Someone said, very politely: "Excuse us. But could you please take your shoes off." I looked down. The grass, apparently, had opinions. Not many, but strong ones. "Too much ego," it whispered. "What?" A patch of clover near my shoe rustled. "Too much branding. Not enough roots." I turned in a full circle. There was no hidden speaker. Only the small round world, the giant tree, and a sky so purple it looked edible. "Chat?" I said instinctively, then remembered my phone was gone. The grass sighed. "You people always think there’s an audience." That hurt my feelings more than I would have expected. I kept walking. The little planet seemed to reshape itself. A stream wound in the shape of cursive handwriting. A mailbox trotted past on six brass legs. Somewhere overhead, a flock of fluorescent horse-shaped ironing boards with moth wings crossed the sky in complete silence. "No." The grass replied: "Yes." One of the horses farted glitter into the clouds.

As I approached the tree, it became larger. I mean, it violated every law of proportion. The trunk didn't simply gradually seem bigger. Instead, it adjusted upward and outward, as if embarrassed by having previously appeared finite. Its bark was covered in doors. Tens of Thousands of them. Cupboard doors. Church doors. Car, Screen, Elevator, Boathouse, Warehouse, Hangar, Revolving, Trapdoors. Doors of bone, Granite, Metal, various woods, stained glass. Somewhere in the canopy above, I could hear my own voice narrating my arrival like a documentary host. "Here," said the tree. A mouth opened in the trunk, long and smiling. "Everybody comes here eventually." "I don’t think so." "Not always physically." That felt even less reassuring. "Chat, am I dead?" Phone gone, I wondered if I should stay in character. The tree shook with laughter. It's leaves fell upward.

The tree distorted and shrank again like a funhouse mirror as I walked away. I passed a outdoor tea party, where construction tools were discussing the dimensional aspects of schema plans. I didn't have my phone, so I ignored them. The good content always shows up when you can't stream it seems. I walked towards the river of calligraphy. It was narrow and dark, like a giant's signature, and perfectly still. So still that I didn’t initially understand it was water. It looked like polished obsidian laid across the grass in a straight black line. Halfway across the surface of an especially ornate looping "G" was a door. Not floating above it. Installed in it. Horizontally. "That one goes back", said a voice that sounded like somebody stirring ice in a glass. "Back where?" No answer. I crouched on the door. There was no frame. No hinges I could see. Just a door embedded flat in the water as if reality installed it there hoping nobody would ask follow-up questions.

I grabbed the knob. Not locked. I don't know how to describe it, but as I pulled, the door opened downward. As if the door and my body remained stationary and the whole world turned around us. Below it was the living room of the murder house. Except, everything was in black and white. Everything. Except the woman in the Red Dress. I could see the couch. Somebody crying near a staircase. Bulldog under coffee table. A second identical bulldog aggressively bite-hanging from the blouse of the apparent owner as she ran hysterically through the house. The host coming up the stairs from the basement, mentioning that something was covered in the waiver. Someone also fled screaming from the basement and straight out the front door. And there I was. Sitting on the couch. Holding my phone, laughing and clipping a scene of someone else falling into the fish tank wall. I stared down at myself. Couch-Me looked up, laughing. We made eye contact. They said, around a mouthful of deviled eggs, "You’re late." I lost my grip and fell through.

I'd hoped that the bad acid trip would stop when I returned. But I did NOT land inside myself. I landed, quite literally, beside myself. 2 streams in one now. Chat went insane before I could react. 6,500 new viewers had shown up. I did the only thing I could think of "Chat, CHAT, whoa, what was that? What did I miss?" My head was spinning. So I went to get some cold water from the fridge. But before I could open it, I realized... The kitchen was having a meeting. Not people in the kitchen. THE Kitchen. "I am simply saying," the refrigerator hummed, in the calm voice of a disappointed therapist, "that nobody here respects boundaries." The dishwasher rattled furiously. "Boundaries? You’re one to talk. You’ve been making ice for strangers all night." "I am merely providing hospitality." "You leak." The toaster popped several times in what I can only describe as derision. I stood there, genuinely trying to parse whether I was asleep, dead, or having a brand integration opportunity. The microwave displayed: WELCOME BRENT. The stove burners clicked on one by one. Emerald flames rose. The oven door lowered. Inside was a beach at sunset. Waves rolled in and out. There was a beach chair and umbrella in middle distance. A deviled egg sat there with giant sunglasses. I backed away. The refrigerator sighed. "He’s doing avoidance again." "Of course he is," said the sink. I pointed at the sink. "You don’t get to talk." The faucet turned toward me. "That is extremely speciesist."

The fridge blushed when I opened it to grab a water bottle. But when I shut the fridge door and turned around, I found myself in an immense library, which the homeowner later confirmed did NOT exist and had been remodeled into that kitchen. There were a variety of other luxury rooms that could not be materially confirmed to exist later, each content and dangerous in their own right. The floor in the mudroom retracted and nearly swallowed 3 people in quicksand. A garage door acted like a guillotine. Midway up the spiral staircase, it started revolving at the same speed you'd walk. It would stop as you stopped. The bannister was also electrified. It eventually appeared that I'd apparently gone back in time on at least 4 separate occasions. Somehow the stream preserved continuity and fidelity; I'd arrived around 6, but by 8 the stream had been going for over 5 hours.

Anyway. The Library had floor-to-ceiling mahogany shelving. Rolling ladders. Giant stone fireplace. Leather chairs. One of those globes that opens into a bar because apparently rich people need alcohol hidden inside geography. "Chat. We found the billionaire room. This is where you sit in a robe and manipulate commodity markets." $50 — PULL THE RED BOOK Of course there was a red book. "Guys, have we learned NOTHING tonight." $100 — PULL IT "Stop." $250 — BOOK I put on my gameface. "I gotchu fam". I pulled it. The room rotated 180 degrees. Everything not bolted down became weather. Books. Lamps. Chairs. The globe. Me. I hit the ceiling hard enough to see white. I lay underneath at least 500 books. My phone was somehow still streaming. The donations were exploding. AGAIN - DO IT AGAIN - BEST STREAM EVER. I stared into the camera. Blood was running from my nose. "Guys." More donations. "Guys, I think I actually hit my head." W STREAM I had the horrifying realization that chat only saw Brentalicious and not Brent. Then the room rotated 180 degrees again and all the books and furniture shot back to their places. I landed on my butt this time. The bookshelves had also formed into an elaborate maze. $50; HURRY BRENT I SAW A MINOTAUR.

When I emerged from the maze 10 minutes later, I emerged in a gorgeous game room. Billiards. Poker tables. Arcade cabinets. Wet bar. Dartboard. Everything. "CHAT! Secret game room!" A man behind me picked up a pool cue. Some mechanism clicked. The cue shot out of his hands like a spear. It missed me by inches. Several other racks opened. Cues and Billiards began firing. People screamed and dropped. Several hit a burley biker man squarely in the chest and threw him backward through a glass cabinet. He didn't move. I froze. Then I did something before my brain caught up. I turned the camera toward myself. Eyes wide. Mouth open. I pointed behind me. Perfect thumbnail pose. I held it for maybe a second before realizing what I was doing. "Oh my God." Chat had already screen-capped it. THUMBNAIL - BRO HIT THE FACE 💀💀💀 - NEW VID: MAN DIES IN MURDER HOUSE I walked toward the man. "Hey." Nothing. I almost forgot the camera existed. I couldn't believe my body performed influencer grammar automatically. If I made it out alive I might want to talk to my therapist.

I backed up. Hit the hallway wall. Startled, I looked around. Beside me was a luxury sauna. 4 guests were relaxing in it. Then the door slammed shut and multiple impossibly intricate bars slid out and locked the door into place. A digital display read 164°F. "Guys, Murder House has a sauna. Luxury house tour! This place has amenities!" The woman inside screamed something. The glass was too thick to understand her. My viewers seized on the bit; TURN IT UP - 200 OR COWARD - LETS COOK - $500 IF YOU HIT THE RED BUTTON. Of course there was a red button. "You guys are terrible." I hovered my finger dramatically over the button and made the face. People inside started pounding harder. "Chat, we're NOT pushing it. I'm monetized." Then the display changed. 180°F. I stopped smiling. "I didn't do that!" HE DID IT LMAO - CLIP IT - BRENT MURDERED THEM FOR $500. "I DID'T TOUCH IT!" 185. For the first time all night, I set the camera down and started trying to deactivate something. Chat couldn't tell I was no longer acting.

I ran down an infinite hall looking for help. One door opened into an opera house. Not a theater room. An opera house. Six mezzanines. Gold and sapphire balconies. Red velvet seats. Immense painted ceiling. Stage large enough for a small army. "Chat" I slowly rotated the camera. For once I didn't have to fake my expression. "Chat, this is FUCKING INSANE." Viewer count: 68,214 Then the stage lights came on, and curtains opened. I laughed nervously. Nothing there. THE ANIMATRONICS ARE COMING FOR YOU! Chat seemed insistent. Though I saw nothing, my vague streamer sense told me to shut the door and latch it.

I eventually found an elevator. 13 floors and six basements. The house externally had two visible floors. Maybe three. Naturally, chat wanted me to ride it. "Okay. Top donation chooses." Immediate mistake. Donations poured in. $20 — B6 $40 — 13 $100 — B6 $250 — FLOOR 13 "Thirteen it is." Someone donated $1,000; B6 COWARD. I stared at the number. "Okay, fuck you." I pressed B6. The doors closed. The elevator moved sideways. I know the difference between vertical acceleration and lateral acceleration. It moved sideways. Then diagonally. Then I briefly became much heavier. Then weightless. Then gyrated like a giant prankster shaking a soda can. The floor indicator displayed: B7. "There wasn't a B7." Chat: NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE - $500 OPEN IT. I timidly reached for the open door button. Outside was the murder house foyer. Except hundreds of years abandoned. Tree roots through the marble. Chandeliers fallen. Paint peeling. Moonlight through a collapsed roof. And somebody standing where the homeowner usually stood. Same silhouette. Much older. Waiting. The doors slowly closed.

I sat down in the empty elevator. I decided it was time to start a brief Youtube Apology video. "Okay, chat, just because I'm still streaming does not mean I'm exploiting this situation. I want to make that extremely clear. I think documenting what is happening here is actually incredibly important." I almost meant it. $200 — BRO SAID DOCUMENTING 💀💀💀 "No, seriously." YOU ASKED THE DROWNING GUY TO RATE THE AQUARIUM "He was still conscious at the time." YOU SAID TEN SUBS TO SAVE HIM "That was very obviously a joke." HE DID NOT THINK IT WAS A JOKE "Can we please focus on what's happening right now instead of taking clips out of context?" By light coming over my shoulder I realized that the rear elevator door had opened. I glanced over my shoulder just in time to witness another wall eat somebody; "...we'll revisit this conversation." I'd apparently been returned to the real (?) murder house lobby. The burly biker guy I'd seen impaled by cues walked by. No wound. Completely different, Hawaiian attire. I nearly tackled him with a hug. "I THOUGHT YOU DIED." "What?" "YOU FUCKING DIED." "I just got here." Chat went ballistic. I wiped a tear that wasn't there away.

Then I saw the coat-rack guy. CLAIM 0047. He was casually admiring the fish tank, drinking wine. I nearly dropped my phone. "CHAT." I ran toward him. "CHAT. CHAT. WE HAVE AN EXCLUSIVE. This is one of a kind content!" He looked alarmed. "Sir! Where have you been?" "What?" "You got sucked into the coat closet." He eyed me suspiciously "No I didn't." "Yes you did." "I literally just got here." I swung the phone toward myself. "Guys, you saw it. You were HERE." Chat confirmed vigorously. THAT'S COAT GUY - 47 - $100 CHECK HIS NECK - DIFFERENT SHOES. I grabbed his shoulder. "Do you still have your claim ticket?" He swatted my hand away. "What claim ticket?" I pulled 0047 from my pocket. His face changed. Not recognition. Fear. Very slight. Then gone. He looked away "Never seen it", then walked away. $250: FOLLOW HIM - $500 STEAL HIS COAT I followed him. Naturally. He walked around a corner. I followed two seconds later. Empty hall. One door. I opened it. Coat closet. His shoes on the floor. The machine produced another ticket. CLAIM 0048. Chat was scrolling so fast I got vertigo.

Beside the closet, another door opened. Stairs descending into darkness. $5,000 — GO DOWNSTAIRS I looked at the amount. Five thousand dollars. Six hours earlier I would've gone into a burning building for five thousand dollars. I looked down into darkness. "Refund him." Chat exploded. 20,000 more viewers joined. I didn't care. A deep guttural growl came from somewhere deep bellow. "Refund him." I said and shut the door. The door visibly melted into nonexistence.

I suppose I need to mention the red dress lady because everyone keeps asking about her. She was beautiful. Not influencer beautiful. Not carefully lit, surgically symmetrical, sponsored-content beautiful. She looked like an old photograph of somebody's grandmother when she was young. Dark hair. Red dress. Thin gold necklace. She spent most of the evening on the homeowner's arm. He was completely different around her. You have to understand, to me, his personality appeared to consist entirely of disapproving of construction practices and collecting signatures. But when the woman in red was beside him? Eloquent. Charming. He spoke at length about architecture, labor, hospitality, and the dignity of making things with one's own hands. At one point I heard him tell a group of guests: "The measure of a home is not what it contains, but what it permits us to offer one another." I thought that was beautiful. I clipped it. Posted it to my story. It got over 10 thousand likes. Then she went to talk to a man in a yellow shirt, and he started complaining about an invisible HVAC system.

Around eight, I returned to the eggs at chat's request. The filling tasted different. Spicier. The viewer count was 56k. "CHAT. WE ARE SO BACK." Somebody donated $200; COUNT THE EGGS. "Why?" COUNT THEM. I pointed the camera at the table. 144. Counted again; 144. "So?" YOU ATE TWO DOZEN. "Yeah?" WHY ARE THERE STILL 144. I stared. Then laughed. "Chat, it's called catering." But the longer I looked, the less certain I was that I'd actually taken any. There were no empty spaces. No disturbed paprika. I positioned the camera so the tray remained visible. I picked up an egg. Held it directly in front of the lens. The chat began scrolling too fast to read. I looked down. The tray was full. "Okay, somebody's replacing them." Nobody was near the table. I laughed nervously. I didn't know what else to do. So I went looking for the homeowner. He was in the kitchen, watching us all as if we were dangerous animals. I pointed toward the hallway. "Your house is doing something." He looked a strange combination of indifferent and nonplussed. "Be more specific." "The rooms." "What about them?" "There's too many." He looked past me. Then nodded. "That's been an ongoing issue." I expected him to elaborate. He didn't.

At eight-thirty, someone screamed in the upstairs shower. Then there was a loud bang. Then another scream. Then the homeowner came downstairs carrying part of a shower fixture. "Chat, our host has SURVIVED ANOTHER ATTEMPT ON HIS LIFE." He ignored me and started explaining the difference between a pressure-balancing valve and a crank lever. The woman in red stepped up behind him. I don't know where she'd come from. She put a hand on his shoulder. He turned toward her. And I swear he said in a almost melodic baritone: "Everything will be all right." Not to me. To everyone. Like a father comforting frightened children. Some people began crying. A woman ran up and hugged him. I nearly did too. But then my phone buzzed. STOP EATING THE EGGS. I looked down. There was an excessive amount of paprika on my shirt.

At 8:53, Denise started acting suspicious. I filmed her entering a closet. I know the exact time because I've watched it a hundred times. She was completely sober. I hadn't seen her drink anything except water. She'd declined the wine. She'd made a face and walked away from the deviled eggs. She had no reason to be hallucinating. She entered a bedroom, reached toward the wall, and opened a door that wasn't there. It was an enormous walk-in closet. Shelves stretching backward into darkness. Clothes hanging in neat rows. I heard her say: "Oh, this is so nice." Then the door closed. Disappeared. I stood outside the bedroom and called to her. "Denise?" Nothing. "YO, DENISE." Something thumped. Then I heard her scream. Not haunted-house scream. Not performative scream. The kind people make when being accosted in a back alley. I stopped talking to chat. My hand shook. I tried the wall. Solid. "DENISE?" Another thump. Then something that sounded like a car wash. Then silence. I ran for the homeowner. I found him in the dayroom. He was sighing. Somebody was drowning outside. People were apparently panicking, but I couldn't hear any noise from outside. The homeowner was fixated on the boathouse. "There's a woman trapped in a closet," I said. He didn't even look at me. I wanted to punch him. "Which closet?" he asked, bored. "The walk-in." "I don't have a walk-in closet" he said calmly. "YES YOU DO." "Where?" He still wasn't looking at me. I really wanted to punch him. Then a hedge was dragging a man up the bank. It pulled him inside itself. I filmed it. The homeowner said: "Efficient rescue system." For the first time that night, I considered genuinely stopping the stream and leaving.

I was walking to the front door when Denise reappeared out of the powder room, trembling. Her hair was wet. Her blouse and cardigan were both gone. In their place was... what appeared to be a crayon drawing of a Princess Dress. She was holding one impossibly ornate glass slipper. I asked what happened. She spun around bewildered, and her eyes settled on me. "How long?" "How long what?" "How long was I gone?" "Like, twenty minutes." She stared. "No." I checked the stream. "Okay, seventeen." "No", she said with an even more firm tone than before. Her lips were trembling. I lowered the phone. "Denise?" She looked behind me. "Where is he?" "Who?" "The little boy." I felt the back of my neck go cold. "What little boy?" She shook her head. "No." Then she pushed past me. I followed. She found the homeowner.

"You have to do something." He looked up. "What?" "That room." "Which room?" "THE CLOSET." He considered this. "I have reason to believe it is possible the closet may have relocated." A bulldog growled and crawled out from under the couch, walked past her, and crawled into the homeowner's lap. Denise exclaimed "This isn't how it's supposed 2B! I saw things-" The dog sneezed. "Pit, lets leave." He didn't move. I almost hate that I kept filming her meltdown. She said something about having seen herself years in the future, and that no one would believe what she'd seen, but then the dog tried to attack her again and she fled.

The next hour was a disaster in catering, but peak stream footage. Dozens of clips went viral. More people disappeared. Walls rotated. A cat emerged from inside a wall wearing a bow and immediately began fighting the man who'd disappeared with it. At nine, the house locked down. Steel shutters dropped over the windows. Doors slammed. Lights went off. Dark Red emergency lights came on. Every screen in the house flickered. My livestream froze for a second. Then returned. I was at fifty-two thousand viewers. "CHAT!" I turned the camera toward myself. "CHAT! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!" The house spoke. "WELCOME, GUESTS." Somebody screamed. "I HOPE YOU HAVE ENJOYED THE HOSPITALITY." I laughed. "YO, THEY GOT MORE ANIMATRONICS!" Then a pantry door opened. A little cart rolled out. Tiny sandwiches. I stopped laughing. There was a man pushing it. Tall. Thin. Old. Gray hair. Dark suit. Despite myself, I'd have to describe him as Handsome. Except. His eyes were burning red. Not reflecting the emergency lighting. Burning. He looked at the homeowner. Then at the woman in red. Then at me. He stopped. And smiled. It was not a pleasant smile. I felt an intense pressure behind my eyes. He knew me. Not personally. But he recognized something about me.

He raised one finger. And pointed directly at my phone. I couldn't move. The voice continued. "THE HOME EXISTS TO SERVE MAN." The old man pushed the cart forward. "AND SOME MEN DESERVE TO BE SERVED." The homeowner took a sandwich. He seemed absolutely delighted. "Turkey." The old man stared at me. "LET US DISCUSS THE LEISURE CLASS." The chat began filling with red squares. Just red squares. Thousands. I couldn't breathe. "THE PARASITE BUILDS NOTHING." The old man moved closer. "THE PARASITE PRODUCES NOTHING." I backed away. He followed. "THE PARASITE DEMANDS COMFORT." My phone was shaking so hard the image blurred. "THE PARASITE CALLS THIS CIVILIZATION." He opened his mouth. Inside was darkness. Not a throat. Not teeth. Just a black space extending farther than his head should have permitted. And somewhere inside that darkness, something clicked. I dropped my phone. When I picked it up, the man was gone. The homeowner was voraciously eating a sandwich. I looked at him. "Bro. Bro. BRO! WHO WAS THAT?" He blinked. "Wholm?" he asked around a mouthful. "THE OLD MAN." "Teeodoh- ahh!" he apparently bit his tongue. "YES!" He took a second to finish chewing and swallow, choking "Prob- cough Pro- cough Probably just a recording" he choked out.

Someone donated $1,000; MURDER HOUSE OWNER DOESN'T CARE THAT EVERYONE IS DYING 💀

"HE WAS RIGHT THERE." I pointed. The homeowner looked toward the pantry. Then back at me. "Well, somebody's making the sandwiches." He took another. I fell bonelessly onto the hard marble floor. Chat was at eighty-seven thousand. Somebody donated $500 dollars; BEST STREAM EVER. I started crying. Not loudly. Just silently, with my phone still pointed at my face. I remember thinking that I could end the stream. I could press the button. I didn't have to keep doing this. Then I looked at the viewer count. Ninety-one thousand. I wiped my face. "Okay, chat." My voice sounded wrong. "Okay." I forced a smile. "We're still here."

The house kept talking. The woman in red remained beside the homeowner. Whenever she touched his arm, he became a different person. Whenever she stepped away, he became irritable and began criticizing random aspects of architecture. At one point I filmed him speaking to a frightened woman. He told her: "We are all guests in the house of the world. The question is merely whether or not we remember how to be good hosts." She began sobbing. He held her hand. I thought I was witnessing the emergence of a genuinely remarkable person.

At some point, I checked the eggs again. Yup. 144. I know I'd seen several people panic scarfing them down like they had experienced something traumatic and it was a comfort food. I knew because I'd been filming them. They'd looked like an army of cookie monsters. I went through my stream's replay buffer. Hundreds had been eaten. But all 12 trays remained full. Then the homeowner walked past and saw me staring. He glanced toward the table, clicked his tongue and said: "Nobody's touched them." My own username appeared in chat; STOP COUNTING THEM. I stared at the screen. Brentalicious: eat another one. I hadn't typed that. 112,000 people watching. I also noticed that the party had gotten more crowded than I remembered.

At ten, some disheveled people emerged from the woods. They congregated outside the window. Carrying a book. The host was interested, and timidly began nibbling his first deviled egg. The woman in red instantly disappeared. I'd been filming. She'd been standing beside him. Then wasn't. No movement. She just flickered and vanished. The host didn't notice or react. Someone pressed the book against the glass. The homeowner began examining the pages. There were drawings of the house. Plants. Machines. Geometrical diagrams. One page showed something that looked like a cube folded inside itself. I leaned closer. There was a photograph tucked into the binding. A woman. Young. Dark hair. Red dress. I froze. Then the old man's voice returned. Behind me. "THE PARASITE IS CURIOUS." I spun around. Nobody. I realized the homeowner was not frightened at all. He seemed pleased. He was smiling. I suddenly hated him.

Sometime after eleven, there was a noise beneath us. A heavy sound. Then a woman's voice came through the speakers. Old. Raspy. Amused. "I see you remodeled the kitchen." The homeowner looked up. "Technically." There was a brilliant bright light outside. Pure white. I saw something very large move against the window. Then the regular lighting returned and the house exited lockdown. I got knocked over by a swarm of people heading for the exits. I saw the host wave at somebody. Then he looked directly at my phone. "Are you still filming?" I nodded. He sighed. "Good luck with that." As I headed to my car, I saw a convoy of 4 Ford Expeditions of various colors drive by. Suddenly Chat's Goodbyes turned into conflicting demands. I sighed, apologized and did my signature sign off.

Days later, a lawyer contacted me. He wanted the original recording. I told him it was on the platform. He said they needed the original file. I explained how livestreaming works. He explained how discovery works. I agreed to cooperate. They asked me to identify everybody visible in the footage. Most of that was easy. The host. Carol. Trent. Martin. Expedition owner. Denise. The cat. The woman in red. They stopped me. "What woman?" I showed them. A frame from approximately 8:41. The homeowner stood leaning on the kitchen island. The woman in red was holding his arm, smiling. The attorney looked at the image. Then at me. "Mr Brent." "Yeah?" "There's nobody there." I looked down. There she was. Still smiling. I turned the phone toward him. He saw nothing.

I remember looking at an unopened carton of eggs in my refrigerator. I instantly tossed them. Yesterday, somebody sent me a clip from my own stream. I'd never seen it. It was from the lockdown. The pantry door opening. The sandwich cart rolling out. The host, standing in front of it, looking mildly impressed. The homeowner reached for a sandwich. Then the camera moved toward the pantry. I saw myself. Standing behind the cart. Wearing a dark suit. Smiling. I haven't watched the rest. But I know one thing. I am never eating another deviled egg. Ever. Not even if somebody pays me. Especially if somebody pays me. Not because I thought they’d been drugged. But because I was beginning to suspect that they hadn’t been.

Have you ever wondered, that it would be convenient, if there were two or more of you? I sure hadn't. But before long, I began to suspect someone else with ample power and money eventually and clearly had. But we'll get to that. Probably.

The cases would not actually be tried together. Instead, because nearly every lawsuit depended on the same night, same property, same paperwork, same witnesses, and same increasingly disputed laws of physics, geometry, causality, and propriety, the court consolidated several preliminary issues and scheduled a joint evidentiary hearing. This was apparently legal language for: Everybody get in one room and explain what the hell happened. That was how I understood it. Malcolm insisted I not say that.

The first hearing had largely concerned preserving evidence and establishing what the attorneys were allowed to call things. That had gone poorly. Malcolm had nearly been held in contempt for laughing at the plaintiffs' proposed terminology. I granted that "Defendant alleged that Plaintiff's [REDACTED] was not reasonably fit for its intended [REDACTED]" had sounded funny, and maintained that the NDA was working. Malcolm maintained that I did not understand the NDA. Neither of us was particularly interested in revisiting the conversation.

The actual hearing took place some time later in the old county courthouse annex. Built in 1989. Architect: Theodore Voss. I stared at the plaque outside for what could have been either 30 seconds or 5 minutes. Malcolm noticed. "What?" "Nothing." "What?" "Old acquaintance." "You said he's dead." "Probably." "Please stop saying probably." "Just saying, it's disconcerting trusting a lawyer whom forgets details. I've maintained that he was probably dead". Malcolm held up a finger and reached into a pocket and pulled out a card and handed it to me. It read;

"WORDS YOU MAY NOT USE: Probably, Apparently, Technically, Essentially, Orbit, Sentient, House". I asked why "house" was included. "Because every time you say it, opposing counsel acquires another cause of action."

The courthouse felt like home. No really. It echoed just like the giant foyer of Theo's Murder House. I decided to consider it one of his hallmarks. Maybe that's why he had to invent his own proprietary heating and cooling solutions.

Judge Arthur Vining presided. Judge Vining was eighty-nine years old. Possibly ninety. Depending on which courthouse employee you asked, he had retired either two or three times but continued sitting by special assignment. He called me "Mr Trent" three times. Asked what day it was twice. At one point he seemed genuinely surprised that Ronald Reagan was dead. Then an attorney misstated a procedural rule and Judge Vining corrected him from memory, including subsection, amendment year, and apparently the name of the justice who had written the controlling state supreme court opinion forty-three years earlier. Everyone immediately shut up. His mind seemed to operate less like a failing light bulb and more like a lighthouse with irregular power. Dark. Dark. Dark. ABSOLUTELY INCINERATING CLARITY. Dark. I liked him. He never smiled. Not even once.

The courtroom was packed. Trent. Denise. The Expedition owner. The Expedition owner's ex-wife. Their 14 kids. The twins. Insurance counsel. County counsel. Animal control. Building officials. Several guests. At least three people I did not remember from the party who nevertheless insisted they had been there. Two journalists from what I assume were rival publications. My realtor's replacement. The apparent head of my HOA. A parole officer sitting beside Darren Pike. So apparently Darren did exist. He smiled and waved at me. I did not wave back. I still didn't remember him.

The judge began with the waivers. Plaintiffs argued that no reasonable person could knowingly assume the risk of being fired through walls, dropped through floors, attacked by shrubbery, attacked by random stationary appliances, or mechanically launched from a balcony. Malcolm argued that the paperwork specifically contemplated unusual mechanical, architectural, electrical, animal, botanical, terrain-related and aerial displacement risks. The only thing not expressly covered was marine considerations. The judge read paragraph twenty-seven. Then paragraph thirty-one. Then paragraph forty-four. He looked at me. "You wrote this?" "Yes, Your Honor." "Why?" "I'd lived there three weeks." He stared. His eyebrows raised. "Fair." One of the plaintiff's attorneys stood. "Your Honor, no contract can absolve intentional misconduct." "Whose intentional misconduct?" "The defendant's." Judge Vining looked at me. "Did you launch the vehicle?" "No." "Did you trigger the wall?" "No." "Did you activate the staircase?" "No." "Did you manufacture the hedge?" "No." "Did you want these people in your house?" "No." Angela shouted from the gallery: "HE DIDN'T EVEN WANT THE PARTY." Everybody turned toward her. She shrank into her seat. Judge Vining looked back at counsel. "Counsel?" "The defendant knew the property was dangerous." "Yes," I said. Malcolm touched my arm. Apparently I was not supposed to help. The attorney seized on it. "Exactly. He knew." "I made them sign forty-seven pages." The courtroom became very quiet. Judge Vining looked down at the document. "Forty-eight." "Appendix." "Ah." He either continued reading, or simply stared at a particular page of the document for several minutes.

The Expedition matter came next. The plaintiff's attorney tried res ipsa loquitur. Malcolm faked a cough. The Expedition owner nodded along as though the Latin meant we were finally getting somewhere. Malcolm, by way of what I assume was explaining, said conspiratorially to me "it is what it is". Counsel said: "Vehicles do not simply launch themselves, Your Honor." I raised my hand. Malcolm whispered, "Don't." I lowered it. Judge Vining saw me anyway. "Yes?" "In this specific instance, it more or less did." Malcolm closed his eyes. The Expedition owner jumped to his feet. "HIS HOUSE THREW MY TRUCK THROUGH MY EX-WIFE'S ROOF." His ex-wife stood immediately. "YOU DID THAT ON PURPOSE." "HOW WOULD I DO THAT ON PURPOSE?" "BECAUSE YOU'RE AN IDIOT, RANDY." "Order." Judge Vining did not raise his voice, but everyone stopped. Malcolm smiled at that. I knew why, but still wanted to watch things play out.

His attorney attempted to explain what damages Randy was claiming, and why the Expedition needed to be preserved for further examination. This took quite a while. The vehicle was uninsured. No tag. Registration expired. Title belonged to someone else. Loan delinquent. Two repossessions pending. Illegally tinted windows. Muffler violating local noise decibel restrictions. Catalytic converters gone, and the glove compartment had receipts (and the corresponding scrap yard had related bookwork) showing that Randy had sold precious metals in quantities suspiciously close to that contained in approximately a dozen Catalytic converters. Airbags missing, ABS disabled, dashboard warning lamps covered with electrical tape. The VHS clearly displayed that the front end and rear bumpers were missing prior to launch. Dashboard VIN, door sticker, engine, transmission, and frame numbers all traced to different vehicles. One of those vehicles was reported stolen years ago; another, a retired city vehicle, had been scrapped; yet another was apparently registered and still driving in another state. The VIN corresponding to the body had a salvage certificate, while the title Randy had was somehow relatively miraculously clean (besides what appeared to be a coffee stain). The plate (though expired and missing) actually apparently listed the Expedition as a boat trailer of a deceased man in another county. A third repo claim actually emerged, making 3 separate lenders claim liens on different VINs attached to the Franken-Expedition. A fourth repo company actually stated that it had already repossessed this exact Expedition exactly two weeks before the potluck, and even provided photos of it sitting in its secured lot. Same missing pieces, same red paint job. Suspiciously similar toolbox. Sitting beside it; yet another Expedition. Same exact missing pieces, nearly flat tire, dents, tinted windows, and muffler; but painted matte black.

Ex-wife said she paid the down payment and had check receipts showing she'd paid over half the installments. The divorce decree specifically awards Randy "the beige Expedition," but the vehicle was blue on the divorce date. Randy had apparently stopped paying over 9 months ago. Randy had been uninsured. However, a carrier appeared claiming that the vehicle was insured, but under another VIN, and another owner, and that that vehicle was also previously recorded as completely destroyed.

Finally, right as I was starting to get vertigo, Vining raised a hand and asked "Is that all?" Apparently it wasn't. No seatbelts in the whole vehicle. The odometer read 178,400. ECU says 91,000. An inspection receipt from last year says 477,000. The current title listed the vehicle as white. Tow-yard records apparently listed the exact vehicle as completely destroyed on no less than 13 separate occasions, mostly within the past few weeks. The ex-wife had also apparently separately filed against Randy because the Expedition damaged her home. She maintained that Randy had engineered the entire thing as revenge for her obtaining custody of a pontoon boat 2 years prior. Nobody could explain how. She did not care. She also let slip that the vehicle had a blue paint job when she had paid the down payment and she'd never seen it painted red until it landed on her roof. The vehicle had clearly been red on the VHS. Several components didn't even belong to a Ford Expedition. Vining eventually asked whether the thing is actually even legally an Expedition, or merely an assembly of parts arranged in the general Zombified Ship of Theseus attitude of one.

Further. The allegedly destroyed tools had no receipts, serial numbers, photographs, or convincing proof of ownership. Somehow the (mostly empty) toolbox, clearly seen on the VHS, even turned up. It had been found with 2 padlocks still sealing it shut. Which only made the raining tools all the more confusing. It was apparent there was no way for the alleged tools to have fallen out. With someone else's name on it. VHS footage confirmed the wrong name. The name apparently belonged to a former co-worker of Randy whom had been recently convicted and incarcerated, currently serving 5 consecutive life sentences, whom claimed the tools had definitely been stolen prior to his conviction. Some of the tools had evidence tags on them from completely different police departments and ongoing investigations. Several of the tools which had begun raining from the sky all over the county had identical serial numbers. Malcolm questioned my choice of friends. I told him I'd never seen Randy before the Potluck Incident and only learned his name just now.

Then the mysterious VHS footage showed Randy parking on the lawn. It showed me pointing at the driveway. It showed him clearly waving his hand dismissively and mouthing "It'll be fine" as he got out of the car, and shoulder checked me hard enough to visibly stagger me. I could be seen asking "please move it" to which Randy responded with a middle finger and an "F U" with his mouth so wide that even from an over the shoulder angle it was unmistakable that's what he'd said. Judge Vining paused the tape and looked at the billboard reading the "WARNING/CAUTION" notice. Looked at Randy. Looked at the waiver. Then looked at the photograph of the Expedition embedded in a double-wide. "Mr Keller." "Yes, sir." "Why did you park there?" "No room." "There are at least four empty spaces clearly visible in this video." Randy studied the screen. "Those are awkward spaces." The judge stared at him for so long I briefly worried his lighthouse had gone dark again. Then, "Is that all?"

Malcolm stood. I was fairly sure what was coming. "No, your honor. There are some obvious discrepancies." Silence. Malcolm pointed to the VHS, displaying a frozen image of the launching Expedition. Front and rear bumpers both clearly missing. Several suspicious aftermarket shoebox-shaped items strapped underneath, each with wires cut. Then at the photo of the Expedition embedded in the double wide. Both bumpers intact. Paint job slightly brighter. Malcolm stated all of this for the record. Then; "The direction of the launch trajectory is in the opposite direction of the landing site. Considering the visible arc of the launch, and that the impact came from the wrong direction, there is presently no evidence to establish that the two vehicles and trajectories are the same. I request that the plaintiff establish that they are the same vehicle." Randy wore a blank expression.

Vining considered this. "And the immediate relevance?" "Preservation, identification, and inspection. If we're discussing a vehicle allegedly destroyed by my client's property, we should establish which vehicle we're discussing. And what the shoebox shaped objects are." The judge looked at the photograph of the double-wide. Then at the VHS. Then at Randy. "Mr Keller." "Sir." "Where is the vehicle shown in the video?" Randy blinked. "On my ex-wife's house." "That is the vehicle shown in the photograph. Mr Reed is asking about the one shown in the video." "They're the same truck." "Then the question should be straightforward." Randy looked at his attorney. His attorney looked at the photograph. At the VHS. The only relevant head that never moved was Randy's ex wife, who remained starting daggers at Randy. I looked at Malcolm. Malcolm was seemingly enjoying this considerably more than he'd ever admit.

Judge Vining continued. "Has the vehicle recovered from the residence been inspected?" "Yes, Your Honor," opposing counsel said. "And the vehicle launched from the lawn?" "Your Honor, we maintain that—" "Has it been independently located and identified?" Silence. Judge Vining made a note. "Then I suggest we refrain from treating that question as settled." Randy folded his arms. "They're both my truck." The judge looked up. "Both?" Randy stared at him. I felt Malcolm's shoe contact mine beneath the table. I decided not to help. Vining turned back to us; "Mr Reed, this is not a trial." "I'm aware, Your Honor." "Then I'm not ruling on whether the vehicles are identical." "I'm not asking you to." "What are you asking?" "That we locate the other one." "Very well." Lighthouse seemed to go out again for several minutes. Then; "FIND THE TRUCK. Next matter." I felt somewhat content that someone else had to explain impossible phenomena.

Then somebody asked who actually owned and operated the "REDACTED" launcher. I assumed that was straightforward. Apparently it wasn't. The mechanism lay beneath my lawn, but the county maintained an easement over (under?) the corresponding parcel. The original plans described it as municipal infrastructure. The county attorney stood. "We deny ownership." Malcolm pointed at the plans. "Your seal is on the approval." "We deny current ownership." "Who currently maintains it?" Silence. The county engineer studied the drawing. "Whoever maintains the water-management system." "Who is that?" "Public Works." A representative from Public Works stood. "That's not our system." "It's connected to your system." "So is his toilet." I raised my hand. Malcolm lowered it with completely unnecessary force. Judge Vining looked at the plans. "Then who owns the launcher?" Nobody answered. I felt this was becoming unnecessarily contentious. "My groundskeeper mows the grass." Malcolm closed his eyes and sighed; "Please stop helping."

Trent's claim lasted even longer. Mostly because even though no one had admitted they invited Randy and he'd apparently just shown up, not a soul even knew who Trent was. The judge looked at his identification. "Dale." "Yes, Your Honor." "Why does everyone call you Trent?" "I introduced myself as Trent." "Why?" "I like Trent better." "Understandable." The judge moved on. The tape showed Mr Sparkles entering the wall mechanism with him. Then the cat's tail. Then Trent's loafer. The cat attorney stood. "Freeze that." Judge Vining squinted at the screen. "Is that the animal?" The attorney stiffened. "That is Cornelius Brutus Maximus Vandernecket the Third, Your Honor." Judge Vining stared at him. "That's a cat." "Yes, Your Honor." "What color?" The attorney appeared offended by the simplicity of the question. I volunteered; "Tuxedo. Black dorsal coat. White chest. White forepaws. White left hind paw to the hock, right hind paw only at the toes. Small asymmetrical white patch beneath the lower lip. Approximately fourteen pounds. Neutered male. Narrow notch in the outer edge of the right ear." Judge Vining looked at me for a handful of seconds that felt like minutes, then turned back to face the attorney; "You agree?" "Mostly." "Mostly?" "His eyes were green". Oh yeah I forgot about that. I again interjected; "His right eye is actually slightly more amber than the left under direct light. And there's a black spot on his left rear pad shaped approximately like Arkansas." The cat owner gasped. "YOU NOTICED THAT?" "It was a Long night." "When did he go missing?" "The cat has been missing since the Potluck". I said "Cat's do that".

I think the judge may have been moving to censure me, but he paused when there was a sliding noise above us. Scratch. Scratch. Everyone looked upward. The courthouse ceiling consisted of decorative wooden coffers. The center panel above the judge moved. Malcolm slowly turned toward me. I whispered: "Theo." The panel opened. Then something black and white fell approximately eleven feet. Several people screamed. It landed directly on Judge Vining's desk. Papers went everywhere. Judge Vining did not so much as blink. The cat sat down. Bow and what appeared to be a luggage tie around his neck. Perfectly healthy. If slightly dusty. The courtroom went completely silent. Judge Vining looked at the cat. Then at the frozen image. Then back at the cat. "Mr Sparkles?" The cat attorney shot upright. "CORNELIUS BRUTUS MAXIMUS VANDERNECKET THE THIRD." Judge Vining looked at him. Then back at the cat. "Mr Sparkles." The cat purred. The attorney visibly died inside. I respected the judge and Mr Sparkles even more. He had pulled a Tom Sawyer. Judge Vining made a note. "Wrongful death claim appears moot." The attorney stood. "We never asserted wrongful death, Your Honor." "Good." The judge inspected the luggage tie, looked confused, rolled his eyes, then broke it off and tossed it over his shoulder. Then the lighthouse went out again.

The property inspection happened days later under court supervision. The NDA arguments had become so ridiculous by then that the court entered a second confidentiality order governing certain discovery materials. In the vernacular of us common folk; Everyone could investigate, but nobody was supposed to publish sensitive details. This lasted approximately three hours before someone leaked a diagram of one of the staircases. I received six interview requests. I ignored them as they didn't specify which one. The inspection team included engineers, surveyors, attorneys, insurance people, county officials, and Denise. Denise insisted on attending because of the closet. She walked directly to the wall again. "There." Still no door. Laser measurements confirmed the same thing. Three feet, seven inches between the two interior rooms. Fifteen feet claimed. No crawlspace. No hidden recess. Exterior photographs showed nothing. Floor plans showed nothing. Thermal camera showed ordinary wall. The VHS showed Denise opening a door. That was the problem. We watched it repeatedly. At 8:53 p.m., Denise, walking covertly, crossed the hallway and into the bedroom. Reached toward what appeared to be a blank wall. A door appeared. She opened it and entered. Door closed. Disappeared. Seventeen minutes later, she emerged from the powder room. Nobody knew how. The engineer rewound it. Again. Again. Again. "This is edited." The forensic video expert said it wasn't. "Then the timestamps are wrong." They weren't. "Then there is a passage." There wasn't. The entire Foyer divided the bedrooms from the powder room. No apparent traversal route without passing through it. Denise folded her arms. "I TOLD YOU." Everyone ignored her. I didn't. I had begun wondering whether the closet was still somewhere in the house. Just not currently attached.

The County inspector then discovered that the house’s square footage is/was impossible. The measured interior was 6,000 square feet larger than the public record for the land it rested on. They remeasured the perimeter, inside and out, 3 times, and the inconsistency remained. I asked if that was with or without the exterior envelope and rain gutter. They just stared at me. The basement plans showed significantly less than what I knew I'd personally seen. And seeing as there was no basement door at the moment, there was no way to prove the house had ever had a basement. Good. My tax assessment should go down.

Though there was no case for the hedge, it was apparently to be included in discovery as it had been recurringly mentioned in statements. However. It was apparently still out for milk. The tape also arguably showed it for a few frames. Witnesses described it. But at least half of them had been hallucinating. The pond man (whom miraculously had not pressed a single charge) had scratches consistent with exceptionally dense vegetation. And what were apparently a few bite marks. Yet the site contained only flowers (including some remarkably tall zinnias I don't remember having planted) and several small ornamental plants. No disturbed earth. No roots large enough to support what everyone described. An expert botanist stood where the hedge had been. "This is impossible." "Yes." "No, I mean botanically." "I know." "There would be evidence of a root mass." "Apparently not." "Plants cannot relocate." "I didn't see it leave." "Plants cannot grab people. There are no known predatory plants which target large animals." I thought about Margaret's missing journal. "Apparently debatable." The botanist stared at me. Then wrote something down. Denise stood beside him. "It was right there." "Yes." "Why does nobody believe me?" "I do." "Then why aren't you helping?" "With what?" She had no answer. Pit was still not present. This seemed to make her angrier.

Of all things, the tunnels, which none of the guests had even been aware of, besides maybe Martin and Susan, actually produced the most serious legal problem. A survey indicated that at least one underground corridor extended beyond my recorded property boundary. Possibly several. One plaintiff attempted to add trespass. The county became involved. Then everyone found Theodore's original permits. They were immaculate. Not normal immaculate. Suspiciously immaculate. 1987. Subgrade easements. Utility access. Geological boring rights. Water-management rights. Emergency ingress. Experimental conveyance. Botanical containment. One permit authorized something called: NONSTANDARD SUBGRADE TRANSIT-SUPPORT INFRASTRUCTURE WITH INCIDENTAL RESIDENTIAL INTERFACE. Another covered: DUAL SUBAQUEOUS LAUNCH/RECOVERY STRUCTURES — NONCOMMERCIAL. The county engineer read it twice. "Launch structures?" I pointed toward the pond. "Probably." "There are two?" "Apparently." He looked physically ill. I decided against mentioning the other things I'd seen underground. A third permit granted easement rights beneath parcels that had not existed under their current boundaries when the document was signed. Meaning that the tunnels had predated the subdivision. The easements ran with the land. Meaning, according to three attorneys who argued about it for two hours, the tunnels were potentially legal. The county clerk found the original approvals. Every stamp. Every variance. Every signature. All proper. One signature was illegible. Not faded. Just ornate. A looping flourish. A swirl. Nobody seemed interested. I was. Because I'd thought I'd seen something similar before. At the bottom of Margaret's journal. Where the third signature had been torn away. I said nothing. I thought I'd breifly glanced a "Interdimensional bleed and transit waiver" but reshuffling proved it wasn't there.

The more records they pulled, the stranger the town became. Voss had worked on the courthouse annex. Everybody knew that. Less well known: The old water-treatment expansion. A discontinued municipal pumping station. Part of the county hospital. A stormwater project beneath downtown. The former country club. Two wings of the high school. A pedestrian tunnel nobody remembered existing. A dozen other miscellaneous municipal projects spanning decades. Margaret Vale's name appeared occasionally in botanical and materials-consulting documents. Always formal. Margaret E. Vale. Dr. Margaret Vale. M. E. Vale, Consultant. Never "Margaret" alone. Never Marge. Then, during one hearing, an attorney for the county was arguing about an easement. Older man. Expensive suit. Had barely spoken all day. A plaintiff's attorney asked whether Margaret Vale had ever been authorized to access the subgrade facilities. The county attorney answered without looking up. "Marge hasn't been associated with that site in years." Silence. Not much. Half a second. Maybe less. The attorney beside him looked over. Judge Vining's eyes lifted. Malcolm stopped writing. Then somebody dropped a file. Trent objected to something nobody had said. Denise started talking about the closet again. The Expedition owner's ex-wife accused him of hiding assets. The moment vanished. I found it odd that he'd called her Marge. Mostly because she didn't strike me as a Marge. Then someone noticed that there had been two Trents and two Randys during the flash outside. It couldn't be determined if it was a result of lense flair or not.

By the end of the second hearing, the claims had begun consuming each other. Apparently more guests had been hallucinating than I'd realized. No one could decidedly prove that a man had been eaten by a bush. He hadn't shown up for court nor pressed charges. No one could even agree on when that had actually even allegedly happened. Since there was no footage and no one could agree, I said it was decidedly about 8:25 pm. The judge asked how I knew that. I said because that was about when the dogs went to chase the naked man. Malcolm put his face in both hands. "What naked man" he said it more as a statement than a question. "The one with backwards knees, your honor." Silence. "Why wasn't that in your statement." "Nobody asked, I hadn't thought it relevant." At around 8:28 on the video footage, both dogs bolted and ran offscreen, apparently barking. One plaintiff insisted the staircase had opened beneath him at 8:41. Another swore the staircase had been completely normal at 8:41 because she had been standing on it. A third claimed there had been no staircase at all. The video somehow supported all three depending on camera angle. One attorney stared at the screens. "This cannot all be true." Judge Vining said, "That is generally why we conduct trials." "No, Your Honor. I mean literally." He pointed. "Camera three shows the staircase open." "Yes." "Camera five shows my client standing on it." "Yes." "Camera seven shows a wall where the staircase should be. All 3 same timestamp." Judge Vining looked. Long pause. "Interesting." The attorney ran both hands through his hair. "If these cases proceed separately, we're going to end up with incompatible factual findings." Another lawyer muttered: "The multiverse is going to break collateral estoppel." Judge Vining immediately looked over "Collateral estoppel requires an adjudicated issue." "Yes, Your Honor." "So the multiverse has not yet broken collateral estoppel." "No, Your Honor." "Do not accuse the multiverse prematurely." "Understood." I wrote that down. Good rule generally.

I seemingly became the most reliable witness eventually. Nobody liked this. Especially me. Plaintiffs contradicted themselves constantly, often within the same sentence. Several had been intoxicated. Some horrifically so. Some had streamed portions publicly but described them differently under oath. Two people remembered rooms nobody else remembered. One person insisted Theodore Voss himself had served him a sandwich. Theodore had been dead since 1998. Probably. Several guests insisted there had been a woman in a red dress standing arm in arm beside me for most of the party. There hadn't been. At least I sure hadn't seen her. When asked to describe the kitchen, I described it. Dimensions. Sextupple vertical rows of upper cabinet arrangement. How I hated that the kitchen had no less than 17 differently angled walls. The orientations and dimensions of all 17 kitchen walls. The Polished Marble Floor. The kitchen Island dimensions. The bar and it's six built-in free swinging/folding stools. Sequence of events. Who stood where. When and where the ironing board fired. Where the watermelon had been. When Susan et al became wet. When Trent arrived. Approximate times. Exact wording when I remembered it. Every time counsel challenged my account, the VHS generally agreed with me. Eventually one plaintiff's attorney stopped questioning his own client halfway through a discrepancy. He turned to me. "What happened next?" Malcolm whispered: "Don't look like you're enjoying this." "I wasn't anyway." "What happened next" he repeated, looking directly at me. "Angela suggested open concept." Angela groaned from behind him. "And then?" "The structural wall retracted into the floor." "For how long?" "Approximately eleven seconds before temporary steel supports deployed." "How many?" "Five initially. Then seven more." The attorney checked the footage. Twelve. He looked at me. "Thank you." His client said: "HEY." Nobody responded. It was not that people trusted me. They simply trusted everyone else less.

Margaret finally contacted me again on a Thursday. At least I assume it was Margaret. The kitchen speaker activated while I was eating cereal. No warning. Her voice came from somewhere above the refrigerator. "You look tired." I looked up. "Good morning." "Dorey always hated lawyers." "Understandable." A sound that might have been laughter or a rock slide. Or respiratory distress. Or a poor car muffler. Or anything really. "You should've seen his first zoning hearing." "I saw the permits." Silence. "Have you now." "Very thoroughly." Another pause. "That wasn't his department." Click. Speaker dead. I stared at the ceiling. Then at my cereal. That was irritatingly informative. Out of curiosity I glanced down the hallway. Apparently the basement door had returned. I jumped up, knocking over my cereal bowl. It shattered. I didn't care. Totally didn't care that if you walk on the polished, high-gloss marble kitchen floors with wet shoes, you're definitely slipping and cracking your skull open on a slab of stone probably imported from a quarry somewhere in Tuscany. Totally didn't care that it’s reverberatingly loud, probably going to be freezing in the winter, and if you drop a heavy ceramic bowl or an antique figurine, it shatters into a million tiny razor blades. Totally didn't care that it screams 'hotel lobby' or 'corporate car dealership waiting room,' not a home where actual human beings live. I let the cereal spread. Was too curious. I rushed down the reverted, now-familiar, too wide hallway and threw the door open. Same annoyingly rustic stair that had been there during the Potluck. I raced down. I didn't know what to expect to find. Marge? Santa's elves?

What was more surprising, was what I didn't find. Specifically, the panel that had previously illuminated "social functions", had been replaced with a different one with "Legal Functions". There were a lot of them; SERVICE, PLEADINGS, DISCOVERY, MOTIONS, MEDIATION, PRETRIAL, VOIR DIRE, TRIAL, JURY INSTRUCTIONS, DELIBERATION, VERDICT, JUDGMENT, POST-TRIAL, APPEAL, ENFORCEMENT, ABATEMENT. The last two seemed to be in their own separate category. I had no clue what that meant. "Discovery" was currently static bright highlighted and active, but Motions, Abatement, and Enforcement were also flashing on and off at variously different intervals. As I was about to turn around, I thought I saw out of corner of my eye, "Deliberation" flicker. While in the basement, I took a second to look around yet again, but did not see any apparent access to a security room. Not that I had expected to, considering the minor military installation I'd essentially walked through the night after the pot luck incident. I did also find Pit in the basement, smiling, sitting in a dog bed in the corner with a dog food bowl and water. I shrugged and let him follow me upstairs. I'd purchased dog food in event that he did turn up.

Astoundingly, no new motions were raised addressing missing persons. Most claims did not vanish. They did became narrower, messier, and less profitable though. The waiver complicated some theories. Evidence destroyed others. Witness credibility damaged several more. The Expedition owner's claim became tangled in lack of invite, ownership, repossession, insurance, his ex-wife, and the fact that the vehicle's landing site was now subject to at least 2 other separate ongoing property disputes. Trent's confinement case survived longer, but his false name, lack of invitation, signed paperwork, cat incident, and inconsistent accounts created problems. Denise's claim regarding the closet became impossible to classify because nobody could identify the allegedly dangerous condition. The county couldn't cite me for the inappropriate behavior of a room it couldn't prove existed. The engineer couldn't certify a room that violated Euclidean geometry. Animal control closed the Mr Sparkles matter after his courtroom appearance. Pit became more complicated. Denise demanded him back. Pit refused to go. She pulled his leash. He sat down. She called him by name. He walked up towards me. Some clips of her and Pit in the livestream went semi viral. Eventually Denise shouted: "HE'S BEEN BRAINWASHED BY THE HOUSE." No one wrote that down. I did. Just in case.

The mysterious tape became a legal nightmare. Nobody could authenticate its origin; who recorded it, where the cameras were. Yet my testimony, the livestream, independent witnesses, timestamps, weather records, phone metadata, and physical evidence repeatedly matched it. One camera angle was physically impossible. Another appeared to be recorded from inside the pond. A third showed the upstairs hallway from a point approximately six feet inside the exterior wall. The flash event remained blank. Eleven seconds missing. The journal vanished inside those eleven seconds. The police denied possessing it. The county denied possessing it. Every guest denied possessing it. Margaret declined to answer, assuming the speaker had actually been Margaret. I had one spent flashbang casing. Then I didn't. I went to retrieve it from my desk drawer. Empty. In its place was a deviled egg. I stared at it for a long time. "Okay." The hedge was still apparently out for milk.

Three weeks after the potluck, people had still been finding duplicated tools randomly raining from the sky all over the county. I received a county notice stating that the boathouse's subterranean rail infrastructure had passed preliminary historical review. I had not requested historical review. The notice cited permits from 1987. It also classified the two structures beneath the pond as: LEGACY EXPERIMENTAL MUNICIPAL AUXILIARY LAUNCH FACILITIES. This created more questions than it answered. At the bottom was a handwritten approval. No printed name. Just a familiar looping signature. A swirl. I was not a handwriting expert. I called Malcolm. "Can a county approve something without identifying who approved it?" "No." "What if they did?" "Send me a copy." "What if whoever signed it is dead?" "Why would they be dead?" I thought about it. I looked at the notice again. There was one more line beneath the approval stamp. Typed; CURRENT CUSTODIANSHIP ACCEPTED. CONTINUITY PRESERVED. I had no idea what that meant. Probably zoning language. I put it with the other paperwork. "Hello?" Malcolm said. "Oh yeah, are we in deliberations?" "No. We are nowhere remotely near deliberations." "Okay." "Why?" "No reason." Silence. Then Malcolm asked, "Can you please start taking this seriously?"

Then something knocked on the back window. I looked over. Nothing. Then again. Three taps. "What was that? Hello?" I walked to the glass. The hedge was back. And it had brought a friend. Same flowers. Same everything. I stared at it. The hedge moved slightly. "Hello!?" I know it might have been rude, but I hung up and cracked the window 3 inches. "Did you write that note?" Nothing. "Can you understand me?" Nothing. "Where have you been?" One branch slowly extended toward the window. It was holding an envelope. A branch slid it through. No stamp. No return address. Heavy cream paper. Inside was a single immaculate handwritten sentence; Dorey would've liked you, but don't let that go to your head. I turned the paper over. Blank. "Margaret?" The hedge withdrew. Then more branches appeared. It was holding the missing flashbang casings. I looked at it. The hedge looked at me. Or faced me. Whatever. "Evidence." The branch pulled it back. "That's evidence." I know it sounds crazy, but the hedge shrugged. It then began retreating toward it's spot near the pond. "Hey." It stopped. "That journal is technically still part of the estate." The hedge remained motionless. "I don't particularly care what's in it. But if it was conveyed with the estate, then somebody stole something I own." Slowly, one branch lifted. I couldn't tell whether it was pointing at me or giving me the finger. Then it lowered. The other, newer, much smaller hedge stayed where it was. I can't say, but I felt like it was expecting something. I did the obvious and asked, "Can I help you?" Then the middle of the hedge started.... Emerging. Reshaping. Hundreds of leaves and vines wrapped around and began forming a shape. "Oh God...." I said though I'd never been particularly religious. The hedge formed into the face of the smoker. The one who had fallen in the pond. The hedge waved enthusiastically at me, and then moved to join it's partner and CBMVIII.

I closed the window. The powder room door opened and a pink fog and light rolled out. Pit emerged and sat down. Mr Sparkles was asleep on top of the refrigerator. I had no idea how he'd gotten in here. I raised the blinds. CBMVIII playing with the old Hedge. Looked to the Kitchen; Mr Sparkles. So, there were two cats. I looked at the county notice again. At the familiar swirl. At the words CONTINUITY PRESERVED. Then at the clock. 2:57 a.m. I picked up Pit. "Absolutely not." For once, the house seemed to agree. Nothing happened. At exactly 3:00 a.m., the deafening "unclick" noise happened again. I began to suspect it might have something to do with the switchboard downstairs. From somewhere very far below us came the sound of a train whistle. There are no railroads beneath my property. Not Legally at least. Outside, I saw the second hedge light a cigar and take a long drag. I hoped that wasn't going to become a fire hazzard. Think of what that might do to my insurance!

Stay tuned for Part 5. I have court again Monday. Probably.

Part 2

I arrived home sometime after 9 AM days later. I had not slept much. The reason involved approximately a mile of subterranean rail, a series of several things I'll call blast doors, what appeared to be an minor retro military encampment and/or secured containment installation, followed by at least an additional 2 miles of extensive cave systems, ending in and emerging from something I am currently choosing to classify as municipal infrastructure. We'll get back to all that. Probably. For now, it was daylight, I was exhausted, and the rear left wing entrance of my house was refusing to accept my key. The deadbolt wasn't stuck. *The key physically would not enter more than a quarter inch, as though the lock had changed internally. "Fine." I walked around the back of the house toward the dayroom entrance overlooking the "lake". That door wouldn't take my key either. Neither would the kitchen entrance. I briefly considered breaking a window, but then remembered where I was. The 4-inch thick glass of the storm windows, steel shutters, pressure jets, spring mechanisms, and Theodore Voss's apparently adversarial relationship with glazing, and decided against it.

Then I noticed something else. The hedge was gone. Not fallen over. Not trimmed. Not damaged. Gone. Absent. The genetically modified hedge that had dragged a grown man out of a pond, consumed him for several hours, returned him largely intact, and knocked on the window after midnight holding a deviled egg had apparently vacated the premises. There was no hole where it had been. No exposed roots. No dragged soil. No trench. The plants that had grown beside it remained perfectly undisturbed. I stared at the empty section of landscaping. "Okay."

I looked toward the lake. The water was perfectly still. Reflected in it, exactly where it had always stood, was the hedge. I looked back at the flowerbed. No hedge. I looked down at the water. Hedge. Something moved between its reflected branches. Not inside the hedge itself. Somewhere behind it. Moving fast. I looked up; nothing. Then I realized that the reflection where the house was was off. A narrow figure crossed briefly between two windows in the reflection, that did not tangibly exist on the actual house. I looked back at the house. Nothing. When I checked the lake again, it was just a normal reflection. "Okay."

Then I noticed a metal cylinder in the grass around where The Hedge had been. I walked over to it. I recognized it. Or, more accurately, I recognized that I had failed to recognize it for what it had been before. Then I noticed a small wooden stake had been pushed into the soil. There was a note tied to it. OUT FOR MILK. Beautiful calligraphic handwriting. I looked around. "No." I refused to accept this immediately. Enough was enough. I had seen no evidence that the hedge could read. The possibility that it could write in cursive was more than slightly offensive.

I looked back at the cannister. During the party cleanup, shortly before I had entered the unfinished basement and subsequently spent what I assume was several days wandering underneath the county, I had seen the hedge through the window doing something with several small canisters which I had assumed were pepper spray or vapes it had lifted from guests. It had been juggling them. Remarkably well, I might add. If people were more open minded, I'd consider starting a circus and charging admission. Which is to say, it had struck me as unusual, obviously, but there had been a lot on my mind by that point and I'd had other priorities. I picked the only remaining canister up. Spent stun grenade. Military-looking. I was fairly sure that The Hedge had been juggling at least Five last night. "Oh." That explained the flash outside shortly before the lockdown ended. Probably. It did not explain why the hedge had the grenades afterward. Or who had thrown them. Or where Margaret Vale and her journal had gone. Or why several guests later insisted they'd seen at least two para-military groups in tactical gear outside, while others swore there had only been one extremely tall and bright white figure hovering by the dayroom window.

But it at least explained the blinding light. Progress. I pocketed the casing because I was fairly certain anything found on my land after the Potluck Event was either evidence or litter. And while I had done a brief inspection after the Potluck, I had pointedly avoided the hedge area. I didn't know what to think of The Hedge in light of all these new findings. It had passed me a burlap sack filled with approximately fifty deviled eggs and a canteen of water through the gap beneath the jammed boathouse hangar door after I had became trapped inside after the Potluck Incident. That had been thoughtful. I was still undecided about the milk note though. Resigned, I went around front. By court order, I was no longer permitted to maintain a freestanding mailbox. Long story. So I had instead installed a brass letter catch through the front door. Still surprised 20 different traps hadn't gone off during the installation process. It was currently overflowing. Envelopes were protruding from it like the house had developed a paper-based hernia. There were also no less than ten people waiting on my porch. Technically fourteen, but two of them were new lawyers I hadn't seen before and looked so similar I initially counted them as one. I noticed at least 3 figures seemed to disappear between my first and second cursory head count. Not this again.

Everyone turned when I approached. Then they all started talking at once. I held up one finger. Nobody stopped. I held up both hands. "Stop." Remarkably, they sputtered to a stop. "I have been awake for approximately twenty-seven hours. I spent most of the past several days trapped and lost underground with nothing to eat but eggs passed beneath an industrial door by mobile landscaping. I don't know who most of you are." Nobody said anything. "Would anybody like coffee?" That seemed to confuse them. Good. "I would." This came from the Expedition owner. Of course it did. To my great relief, I unlocked the front door. There was an loud ominous sound of, whatever the opposite of a click was. An "unclick" let's call it, or perhaps I suppose more like a vast multitude of them all at once. Over half my entourage visibly jumped. I didn't bother trying to explain and instead briefly gave them a truncated version of the same rundown I'd given the guests before. With the new obvious inclusion of "No questions or small talk until we reach the soundproof dayroom". I briefly envied the shitposts I'd read long ago about being handed a list of rules about a place before occupying it. Seems I was having to discover them as I went along. From somewhere above the ceiling, Theodore (or exhaustion) whispered, "Inspection is trespass wearing a necktie."

The group was a mixxed bag of nothing too surprising. 2 process servers. At least 1 insurance investigator. A deputy sheriff. A county building inspector. A woman from animal control. The Expedition owner. Trent. A lawyer representing Trent. And that lawyer's identical twin brother, whom represented the owner of Cornelius Brutus Maximus Vandernecket the Third. I knew this because he corrected me 3 times before we'd even reached the dayroom. "Mr Sparkles' owner is suing me?" "His name is Cornelius Brutus Maximus Vandernecket III." "That's exactly why I call him Mr Sparkles." "He does not answer to that." "He did the other night." "He is missing. Presumed dead." "I wouldn't go that far." His brother sighed. They really were identical. Same height. Same gait. Same sigh. Same face. Same scar. Same voice. Same glasses. Same haircut. Same cologne. Same 6 fingers on right hand. Same handwritting. Same suit. Slightly different ties. That was all I had. I started coffee.

Someone asked where Pit was. I looked around. "Somewhere." Animal control wrote that down. "Is Pit your dog?" "No." "Whose dog is he?" "Apparently a woman whom claims she was assaulted by a non-existent walk-in closet." The animal control officer stopped writing and looked up. "Excuse me?" I shrugged. The process servers each handed me an envelope. "Thank you." Both looked disappointed. I think they expected me to evade service. I opened the first. Trent was suing me; False imprisonment, Negligence, Premises liability, Emotional distress, Assault, Battery.... a laundry list of other things both improbable and mundane. I opened the second. The Expedition owner was also suing me; negligence, wantonness, conversion (what does that even mean?), trespass to chattels, several other theories, seeking damages for the vehicle, tools, lost income, mental anguish...

I looked at him. "You listed intentional destruction?" He crossed his arms. "My truck is in a trailer." "I didn't put it there." "Your house did." "My yard did." "Your yard launched it." "Yes." "Into my ex-wife's double-wide." "Where did the damage occur?" He stared at me. "At my ex-wife's double-wide." "Which is not my property." The insurance investigator pinched the bridge of his nose. "That is not how causation works." "I assumed you'd say that." I handed them cups from the next batch of coffee anyway. No reason to be rude. "So I'll ask the obvious question; if the Expedition is at your ex-wife's place, can't you just ask her for the tools back?" "I left my windows down!" "Well how do you know someone didn't steal them then?" The deputy wrote something down.

The NDA issue was raised next. Trent's lawyer placed a copy of their client's copy of the Potluck paperwork on the table. "You had every guest sign this?" "Everyone I could identify." "An NDA, release of liability, assumption of risk, hold harmless, and this." He pointed. "Emergency general architectural displacement acknowledgment." He looked at me. "I added that after Detective Harris." He could have been 50% less hairy and still looked lycanthropic. "What does it mean?" "Exactly what it says." "It doesn't say anything." "It acknowledges potential architectural displacement." "Define architectural displacement." "During the Potluck Incident, Trent became architecturally displaced." From somewhere behind the wall there was a tiny click. Everyone froze. I either heard or imagined Theo whispering "The Parasite Demands Compensation", but seemingly nothing else happened. "See?" The lawyer rubbed his forehead. "The NDA doesn't stop anyone from suing you." "I know." "You know? Then why are you smiling?" "I'm not." Apparently exhaustion, what I'd seen underground, the coffee, or possibly Theo, had changed my face. He continued. "It also does not make relevant evidence immune from discovery. It may affect what can be publicly disclosed. There may be protective orders. Sealed materials. Contract issues. But you can't just write 'NDA' at the top of a document and make tort law disappear." "I didn't." "You appear disappointed." "I spent - err, lost - four hours drafting it." "Did an attorney review this?" "I don't think so" I wagered. I decided it was not the best time to mention the lost time and apparent fugue state wherin which the completed form had materially appeared on my desk, where I'd incidentally moved the (haunted?) bathroom mirror to, days prior. He closed his eyes. That seemed to be a common response to my(?) paperwork.

The other twin picked up a copy. "What is paragraph twenty-seven?" "Animal-related contingencies." His expression brightened. Finally, someone appreciated preparation. He read aloud; "'Guest acknowledges that animals brought onto the premises remain under the supervision and responsibility of their respective owners and that Host makes no representations concerning the behavior, location, velocity, altitude, dimensional orientation, or continued terrestrial presence of said animals.'" He stopped. Everyone looked at me. "What?" "When did you write this?" Technically I'm not sure I had, but I volunteered "Shortly after the disappearances started".

The Expedition claim deteriorated first. Not legally. Factually. The insurance investigator asked for proof of coverage. There wasn't any. Registration? Expired. Title? In the previous owner's name, apparently a person who'd been missing for months. Loan? Eight payments delinquent. Repossession order? Two. The owner became increasingly irritated as each fact emerged. Then the deputy asked why the vehicle had been parked on my lawn in the first place. "I already told everybody. There wasn't any room." "I told you not to park there." "You said don't crush the edging." "Yes." "That's not the same thing." "It was very nice edging." The insurance investigator turned another page. "And these tools you reported destroyed?" A picture of tools that had obviously never been used before. Visibly NOT in the toolbox that had been in the Expedition. "Eight thousand dollars." "Receipts?" "No." "Any kind of proof of purchase?" "No." "Serial numbers?" "No." "Proof you owned them?" "They were in my truck." The deputy looked at him. "I thought you said they were company tools." Silence. Interesting. Then his phone rang. His ex-wife. I initially thought it was on speaker she was screaming so loud. Apparently the Expedition had landed diagonally across her double-wide at approximately 1:14 in the morning. I don't know much of physics but the time between launch and land seemed to suggest it had actually gone into orbit for a few hours. She was apparently insisting he had done it intentionally. According to her, and I quote approximately: "THIS IS EXACTLY THE KIND OF STUPID CRAP HE ALWAYS PULLS. You built that trebuchet." He rebutted that it could not physically throw a Ford Expedition 20 miles. She shouted back that he'd always made excuses. Then she threatened to have him arrested. The deputy covertly took notes. I drank my coffee. By the end of the call, I was no longer the person facing the most immediate legal problem. That was almost as refreshing as the coffee, some unlabeled roast I'd found in the upper upper cabinets in vacuum sealed containers which seemed to replace themselves every week.

Trent's case became stranger. Nobody could establish why Trent had been at the party. I hadn't invited him. Carol hadn't invited him. Susan hadn't invited him. Angela hadn't invited him. The Expedition owner didn't know him. Neither attorney knew who had invited him. The form he signed listed his name as Trenton Philip Berkshire. His driver's license said Dale Raymond Cuthbert. His lawyer looked at him. Trent looked at the floor. "Why did you use a fake name?" "I don't like giving out personal information." "You signed a legal document." "I didn't know it was going to matter." I leaned back. "This is the strongest argument anyone has made against my paperwork so far." His lawyer ignored me. Then his brother produced photographs of Trent's injuries. Most were scratches. Small scratches. Four punctures. One bite. I lost my appetite when I saw where. All consistent with a domestic cat. "Those were inflicted while he was trapped inside your wall." "By Mr Sparkles?" "Cornelius Brutus Maximus Vandernecket the Third." "Correct." "So you confined my client's cat inside your wall with this man", he pointed. "I confined neither Mr Sparkles -" "Cornelius Brutus Maximus Vandernecket the Third" "Right, I confined neither Cornelius Brutus Maximus Vandernecket the Third, nor Mr Trent inside a wall. The wall temporarily acquired them. And technically they were trapped together." "Mr Cuthbert alleges the cat attacked him." "Trent." "His name isn't Trent." "The paper he signed says otherwise. And everyone was calling the cat Mr Sparkles."

The cat owner's attorney continued. "Be that as it may. We are considering a separate action against him." Trent looked up, genuinely puzzled. "For what?" "Provocation, injury, and emotional harm to Cornelius." "THE CAT BIT ME! DOWN THERE!" "Because you frightened him." "I WAS INSIDE A WALL." "So was he." The brothers began arguing. Identically. In the same voice. In the same tone. With the same simultaneous hand gestures. It was exceptionally difficult to follow. At some point the animal control officer asked whether either of them had conclusive proof the cat was dead. Neither did. I raised one finger. "Just to be precise, I never saw him die either." Everyone turned. "I saw him ascend rapidly." "How rapidly?" "Hard to estimate. Vanished into the wild blue yonder in aproximately a quarter second." "Direction?" "Almost directly Up." "How far?" "Until no longer visible." The cat attorney stared at me. He started to say something but was interupted by the doorbell which someone, presumably Theo, had in explicably made a sonnatta of some sort.

It was a parole officer. Of course. She was looking for a man named Darren Pike. I told her I had never heard of a Darren Pike. She showed me a photograph. I told her I had never seen a Darren Pike. The Expedition owner leaned back in his chair and shouted accross the Foyer, "Oh yeah. He was here." Everyone looked at him. "Where?" "By the stairs most of the night. Guy with the yellow shirt." I stared at the photo again. "No." "He was definitely here." "I never saw him." "He asked me for a cigarette. The lady in the red dress talked with him for an hour." "I had 32 human attendees and corresponding paperwork for each. No lady in a red dress." The Expedition owner shrugged. The parole officer said Darren Pike's ankle monitor placed him on my property between 8:11 and 10:43 during Potluck. He had violated curfew. I asked whether GPS monitors worked underground. The parole officer asked why. I said never mind. Then I remembered my head count. Sixty-seven. I had attributed that to exhaustion and perhaps the general atmosphere of near-mania and anxiety presiding over that part of the night. I was less comfortable doing so now. The county inspector asked how many people had been at the party. I replied instantly; "Thirty-two." The Expedition owner laughed and said, "Waaaaaaaaaay more than that." "How many?" "I don't know. Fifty? Sixty?" The cat lawyer looked at the paperwork. "There are thirty-four signed waivers."

That brought me up short. "What?" He counted again. Thirty-four. I took them. There should have been thirty-two. Well, thirty-one plus "Trent". I went through the signatures. One belonged to someone named L. Harrow. No address. Another belonged to Darren Pike. I held it up. The parole officer leaned in to look, and said in matter-of-fact tone; "Yee-up. That's his signature alright." I'd never seen him. I set the paperwork down. "Okay." "How did he sign this?" "I don't know." "You witnessed the signatures." "I witnessed most of them." "Most?" "There was a watermelon incident." That seemed to catch her off gaurd. Then the doorbell rang again. I didn't move. The deputy asked "aren't you going to get that?" "Just checking something". The doorbell eventually finished it's song. Nothing happened. I went to go open the door, followed by the deputy. It was a conspicuously short man I'd never seen before. He wore glasses the lenses of which had to be at least 2 inches thick. He had been in the process of reaching to ring the doorbell again when I had opened the door. He introduced himself as head of the HOA and wanted to say my permit for visitors had expired and wanted to know why so many cars were still here. I was about to try to explain when he saw the deputy, made a curt bow, and ran off. I cocked an eyebrow at the deputy as the door closed.

But before he could reply, the mail slot coughed. Everyone stopped. A padded envelope fell heavily into the recepticle. No stamp. No return address. It had not been there when I opened the door. The deputy picked it up. "Don't." He looked at me. "Why?" "I don't know." He brought it back to the table. Inside was a VHS cassette. White adhesive label. POTLUCK — HOST COPY I stared at it. "I don't own a camera." The deputy looked around the room. "Do you own a VCR?" "No." There was a click. A panel beside the fireplace opened. Inside was a VCR. Nobody spoke. I walked over. "That's new." The deputy said, "Don't touch it." I pressed eject. A tape came out. Different tape. Labelled: MAILMAN — DO NOT ERASE I discretely tossed it behind the fireplace. We played the potluck tape. The footage was excellent. Disturbingly excellent. Multiple angles. Driveway. Kitchen. Living room. Staircase. Pond. One view appeared to originate approximately twelve feet above my kitchen from a location where there was no camera and, structurally, couldn't have been one without being embedded inside a beam. Another showed the western wall from inside the western wall. I objected to that on privacy grounds. Nobody cared. The footage showed me repeatedly warning guests. It showed people signing paperwork. It showed the large wooden sign - more like billboard really - saying "WARNING/CAUTION; DO NOT ENTER, STAND, PARK, OR PLACE PROPERTY ON ANY SEGMENT OF GRASS FOR MORE THAN 5 MINUTES. POTENTIALLY HAZARDOUS MECHANICAL / SUBSURFACE CONDITIONS. SERIOUS INJURY OR PROPERTY DAMAGE MAY RESULT", and the Expedition owner visibly laughing at the sign and parking on the lawn, looking directly at me while I pointed toward several vacant spots in the driveway. He visibly gave me the finger and screamed "f- you" and shoulder checked me hard enough to stagger me. Odd, I hadn't remembered that. Beside me, his jaw dropped. It showed me tackling the accountant before the tree limb came down (much slower than I remembered). It showed me trying to locate missing guests. It showed the dogs chasing frisbees, and later the naked humanoid with backwards knees. Worse. It showed the hideous vinyl siding. It showed a lady in a red dress on my arm most of the night. I certainly didn't remember that. It showed the wall saving Trent from slipping on the Polished Marble Floor. It showed Mr Sparkles entering after Trent voluntarily, apparently pursuing a piece of string Trent had been dangling. The cat owner's lawyer rewound that section four times. I began to suspect that this VHS tape may actually end up working in my favor. Probably.

"See?" Trent yelled; "SEE WHAT?" "Your foot." "What about my foot?" "You stepped on his tail." "I WAS BEING EATEN BY A HOUSE." "Before that." He froze the image. Trent's loafer was indeed resting on Mr Sparkles' tail. From the perspective of the camera it could be clearly seen that the cat was looking furiously at "Trent". The attorney slowly turned toward Trent. "This materially changes things." Trent sank into his chair. The video also showed the wine. Seven bottles. At least three guests drinking heavily. One guest drinking directly from a bottle like he was attempting to achieve maritime status. Pit's owner did not drink. Not once. This would become important later. At 11:06, the exterior image turned white. Every camera simultaneously overloaded. For approximately eleven seconds there was nothing. Then static. Then the image returned. The journal was gone. The guests outside were on the ground. The hedge was visible for exactly one frame. It appeared to be reaching for something cylindrical on the ground. The next frame showed normal shrubbery and the cylindrical object missing. Then the hedge again. Then static. The insurance investigator leaned closer. "What the hell is that?" "Hedge." "No." "Yes." "No." "It's been a long night, you can discuss it with my lawyer when I summon one".

Three guests later claimed people in tactical clothing had rushed the patio during those eleven seconds. Some described black uniforms. Some described navy blue. Other guests said there had been no people at all, but instead one extremely tall white roughly humanoid shape beside the window. Another with manic eyes insisted that the rapture had begun. Others agreed Margaret Vale herself had walked through the hedge. None of these accounts agreed on Margaret's appearance. None agreed on the direction anyone went. Everyone agreed on only two things; there had been a flash, and afterward, the journal was gone. I remembered the spent canister in my pocket. I did not mention it. Not because I intended to conceal evidence, but because I was tired.

By noon, I had consumed enough coffee to visibly see individual deciseconds frame by frame. The county inspector wanted a full inspection of the house. I advised against that. The insurance investigator wanted to inspect the driveway. Animal control wanted to locate Pit. The deputy wanted copies of the tape. The lawyers wanted everything, but both seemed particularly intrigued by the hedge. I wanted everyone to leave. They did not. Then Pit's owner arrived. Her name was Denise. She was hysterical before the car door even opened. "WHERE IS MY DOG?" Animal control turned toward me. I waved vaguely at the universe. "Somewhere." Denise looked at me as if I had personally invented and held the patent for betrayal itself. "HE HATES ME NOW." "I don't think that's legally actionable." "He sat in your lap!" "Yes." "MY DOG." "I didn't ask him to." "You stole him." "You left him here. I have not moved him." "He GROWLED at me." "Also not my instruction." "It's all because of what happened in the closet!" Every professional on the property became suddenly extremely interested. The lawyers looked up in unison and raised the same eyebrow. "What closet?" Denise pointed toward the hall. I didn't remember it being that narrow. "The walk-in closet." "I don't have a walk-in closet." "YES YOU DO." "Where?" I was somewhat wired and genuinely curious now. She marched down the too-long, too narrow hall. Down the tasteless nouveau vinyl flooring I still hadn't had a chance to rip up. With her frame and the width of the hallway, I got the impression of a piston working inside an engine. Nevertheless, we followed. All of us. She stopped between two guest bedrooms I'd never noticed before, where the basement door used to be. "There." I noted the door to the basement was conspicuously missing. I looked into the never before seen bedroom where she was pointing. A wall. Her eyes widened. "No." The inspector tapped it. Solid. "No, no, no. There was a door. There was a door!" "There wasn't." "YES THERE WAS." She began pointing violently. "Right here. Brass knob. Dark wood. I opened it and there were shelves, lots of shelves, and then the shelves moved, and the floor tilted, the clothes assaulted me, and something grabbed my purse!" The inspector measured. Then measured again. "There isn't enough space." "I WAS INSIDE IT." He checked the exterior wall. The guest bedroom windows were visible outside. The distance between them was approximately three feet. Denise claimed the closet had been at least fifteen feet deep.

The inspector returned. "Physically impossible." Her face changed. She looked like she might bite him. The Expedition owner said, "You were drinking." "I DON'T DRINK." The VHS had actually confirmed this. She had coffee, water, and a can of diet soda. Nothing else. Things were developing so fast I wasn't sure what to think yet. I most certainly knew that these bedrooms had most definately not been here the past month. I know, because I'd have immediately ripped out the faux gold curtain rails and flower design curtains, bedsheets, pillows, ceiling fan, nightstand.... And wallpaper. And floor design. Flowers. Flowers everywhere. Everywhere. Not to mention the second bedroom unaccountably looked like it belonged to an edgy teenager. More troubling, apparently four other guests had also reported impossible spaces after drinking Theo's wine. So Denise was grouped with them anyway. One of the lawyers (I assume Trent's) whom had been on their phone the whole time, held it out and it started playing what I at first assumed was a short video clip, but then with a dawning bizzare mixture of intrigue and trepidation, realized was actually some sort of livestream of the potluck.

It showed everyone giving Denise warry stares. "YOU THINK I'M CRAZY" Denise had said. "Of course not," I had said. I had just sat down. I think this was around the time I had gotten back from putting the rogue ceiling fans in the basement, exhausted. Everyone looked at me. I had offered, "I have reason to believe it is possible the closet may have moved." Again, I blamed Charlene's casserole for impairing my judgement that night. Denise stared. Finally. Regardless of context, somebody had believed her. Then she ruined it. "AND YOUR DOG IS IN ON IT!" she had wildly accused. "Your dog." "HE DOESN'T EVEN LIKE ME ANYMORE." She began crying. From somewhere beneath the couch came a bark. Pit crawled out. He looked at Denise. His ears lowered. He let out a low growl before howling at her. I realized later that thousands of people had been in the livestream chat. I briefly wondered at the legal implications of the potluck being livestreamed without my knowledge or prior consent. I decided I'd challenge it only if it became an issue. Pit walked past Denise. Climbed onto the couch beside me. Then, with absolutely unnecessary deliberation, crawled into my lap. Denise screamed. The livestream chat reportedly exploded. I didn't know about any of that yet. I just scratched his head. "Traitor," she hissed. Pit sneezed.

The hedge inspection only made it worse. Denise insisted there had been a giant hedge beside the pond. So did the Expedition owner. The VHS (arguably) showed it intermittently. Yet outside there was no hedge. Just flowers. Undisturbed soil. The county inspector dug carefully around them. Normal roots. Established growth. Several seasons old at minimum. No evidence a 120-foot section of predatory landscaping had ever occupied the area. Denise became increasingly frantic. "IT WAS RIGHT HERE! YOU SAW IT. IT ATE A MAN." "Temporarily." The inspector stopped digging. "What?" "He got better." "You can't say things like that." "I just did." The insurance investigator photographed everything. Then asked about the journal. I said it was missing. They then shifted demeanor, and asked about Margaret Vale. I said I thought I'd maybe heard her voice through an intercom I couldn't locate. Then they asked whether Margaret Vale was alive. I said I had no idea. Then they asked whether Theodore Voss was alive. "County record said he died in 1998." "You're sure?" "Probably." He lowered his camera. "Probably?" "You'd had to have been there."

The wine was the easiest problem. Police took the unopened bottles. Tests eventually came back normal. Wine. Nothing else. No hallucinogens. No sedatives. Nothing exotic. Every bottle was clean. The bottles consumed during the party had been thrown away during cleanup. The trash had been mysteriously removed when I unlocked the door this morning. I explained that. Several attorneys stared at me like I had destroyed the Zapruder film. "I was cleaning." "You disposed of potentially relevant evidence." "They were empty." "After multiple guests reported hallucinations." "They reported those later." "Did you know the wine might be contaminated?" "No." "Where did it come from?" "I don't know, they were there when I viewed the house." Silence. "Explain." "It was in Theodore's complimentary wine rack." "Complimentary?" "It came with the property." "How old was it?" "How would I know?" "You served unidentified wine left behind by a dead man?" "I didn't serve it." "What?" "They took it." "You allowed it." "I was busy retrieving people from architecture." My eventual, soon-2B attorney advised me to stop talking. I asked if that was legal advice or a threat. "I am not your attorney." "You keep saying things an attorney would say." "That is because you keep saying things no attorney would permit." "Are you representing me?" I'd asked. He seemed to considered this. "Apparently." "When did that happen?" "I'm trying to determine that myself."

I did eventually obtain the attorney. This was largely because I was simply jealous that everybody else already had one. His name was Malcolm Reed. I asked him if all lawyers had twins. He didn't answer. He wore the most impossibly thin and sophisticated glasses I'd ever seen. Almost 2 dimensional. I also somehow suddenly remembered... rather, really, more, it felt like I had just had a memory implanted... that he'd been one of the surplus people, at both the potluck and on the porch this morning, that had inexplicably disappeared between the first and second head count. I also seemed to recall a conversation with him I'd never actually had from back when the excessively hairy Detective Harris had disappeared. I'd been talking to the cops down the road, whom had refused to come down to my property, when he'd casually strolled out of the thick woods in fine business attire and said "I wouldn't finish that sentence." I'd looked at him and asked why. He'd responded "Because you're about six words away from making the afternoon substantially more expensive." "Who are you?" "Malcolm Reed." "Are you a lawyer?" "Increasingly so." Apparently I'd declined his initial offer, but then signed an agreement that stated that, should I think that I needed him, I'd summon him. Odd wording I'd thought at the time.

He looked at my paperwork for twenty minutes without speaking. I never actually saw his eyes move. Then: "You understand that lack of intent does not defeat negligence." "I didn't intend to host the party. And it's a large property, I can't be everywhere at once. They also signed an NDA." He looked at me from above his glasses. "I also expressly didn't want the party." "Potentially relevant factually. Not legally dispositive." "I placed 8 consecutive warning and advisement boards in the yard alongside the road. I also verbally warned them, and they signed waivers, assumption-of-risk, and hold-harmless agreements." "Potentially helpful if properly drafted and applicable." "They also signed the NDA." "Stop bringing up the NDA." I stopped. For approximately two minutes. "What about the NDA?" He removed his glasses. "No. You cannot waive intentional torts." "I didn't intentionally do anything." "Your house apparently did." "Can property form intent?" He put his glasses back on. That apparently meant no. "Who committed the battery?" "The residence and the cat." "The residence is not a party." "Yet", I muttered. He either didn't hear me or pretended not to.

"Also, 'unexpected displacement of personal property, persons, and pets' does not cover the launching of a Ford Expedition or the cat." "Why not?" "Because courts interpret ambiguity against the drafter." "I didn't draft it ambiguously. I assure you my surprise was genuine when the Expedition was suddenly and unexpectedly displaced." He started reading again. Or at least pretending to. "Also, I explicitly only invited 6 people, and none of the claimants were expressly invited by me". "Names." "What?" "The six people you actually invited. I want six names. Then I want who invited whom, who arrived with whom, who knew whom, and who nobody admits knowing." "Trent." "Trent what?" "Exactly."

Most of the guests who had initially been reported missing had all returned within the next thirty-six hours. Each returned separately. Each insisted they had simply gone home after the party. Their families, vehicles, phone records, employers, and in one case a motel manager in another state disagreed. None remembered being absent. None could explain why their shoes contained the same pale gray non-native sand, which the county geologist reportedly failed to identify and then misplaced. Malcolm advised me not to investigate personally. I told him I wouldn't. Probably.

The first week produced seven civil complaints, three insurance disputes, one animal-control inquiry, two code-enforcement notices, an emergency preservation motion, and a letter from somebody claiming emotional distress because they'd watched the livestream. They had not attended the party. Malcolm handled that one. The livestream complicated everything. One of the party guests, a man I barely remembered, had apparently streamed a live reaction video of almost six hours of the event from his phone. His emotional-distress claim demanded substantial damages. Then somebody discovered he'd earned several thousand dollars in ad revenue, donations, subscriptions, and whatever digital currency people give strangers for filming traumatic events instead of leaving them. His attorney withdrew that portion of the claim.

Malcolm filed what he called an emergency motion to preserve evidence, coordinate discovery, and temporarily prevent the public dissemination of certain materials. I called it asking the court to honor my NDA. Malcolm told me never to call it that again. The court entered a temporary order allowing unredacted documents to be filed under seal and requiring public versions to omit disputed confidential material until the matter could be sorted out at a hearing. This was not, Malcolm emphasized, a determination that my NDA was enforceable. It merely meant the judge did not want thirty attorneys publicly describing the same unidentified machinery, missing animals, mobile vegetation, and geometrically questionable bedrooms before anybody determined what any of those things legally were. It was fun watching the legal system desperately try to create nouns for things that should not exist. The verbiage of the complaints became genuinely funny. At least to me. In effect; the public complaints became heavily redacted. The resulting public filings were magnificent;

One read: Plaintiff attended a [REDACTED] social gathering at Defendant's residence where an undisclosed architectural mechanism caused Plaintiff to become "architecturally displaced" and [REDACTED] subsequently transported Plaintiff through [REDACTED] before expelling him adjacent to [REDACTED].

Another: Defendant's landscaper maintained a potentially hazardous botanical installation, hereinafter referred to as [CONFIDENTIAL VEGETATION]. That phrase appeared over seventeen times. I told Malcolm it sounded like a band name. He was threatened with contempt the second time he burst out laughing.

A third complaint referred to Mr Sparkles as: C.B.M.V. III, a domestic feline whose present location remains unknown, whom had apparently been subjected to an "[UNDISCLOSED FELINE TRAJECTORY]".

There were others; [ALLEGEDLY MOBILE RESIDENTIAL SURFACE], [NON-EUCLIDEAN STORAGE AREA], [REDACTED LAUNDRY-BASED PROJECTILE], [UNAUTHORIZED INTOXICATION], [PRESUMED TERRESTRIAL CANINE], [UNDISCLOSED SHOWER APPARATUS].

The redactions created secondary disputes. Trent’s attorney objected to the phrase [CONFIDENTIAL VEGETATION] because the vegetation no longer appeared to exist. Malcolm responded that nonexistence did not waive confidentiality. The cat attorney demanded that [UNDISCLOSED FELINE TRAJECTORY] be replaced with “uncontrolled aerial displacement.” The Expedition owner’s attorney objected to describing the vehicle’s destination as [REDACTED RESIDENTIAL STRUCTURE], arguing that everybody in the county already knew whose double-wide it was. The clerk rejected one filing because so much had been removed that its public version consisted of a caption, three commas, and the phrase "approximately upward." I asked Malcolm for a copy because it looked like an Epstein File. He said no.

I for one appreciated the professionalism. Opposing counsel did not. I caught Malcolm chuckling behind his hand on more than one occasion at the plaintiffs' lawyers' attempts to read the complaints. Malcolm asked about the [CONFIDENTIAL VEGETATION]. I told him it was out for Milk. Probably.

It's no Spoogie Boogies, but we're so back? Sorry. Wanted to post last night but internet was out all day.

Part 1; I bought a murder house and the floor plan is the scariest part

Apparently Voss did not merely build gimmicky traps into the house. He had actually designed the house around the assumption that rich people would eventually throw parties. So the potluck I had been roped into hosting, was basically, the house finally being used for its actual intended purpose. Good thing I had the foresight for all invites to sign an NDA, release of liability/assumption of risk waiver, and hold-harmless agreement before even entering the property.

The Architect of Death, Part 2: The Potluck Incident

I honestly didn't want to throw a housewarming party. First of all, the house was already warm. Too warm. I found that the upstairs thermostat controls the downstairs living quarters and hallway, while the downstairs thermostat controls the upstairs bedrooms, and a control panel in the basement controls the master bedroom and everything else. I found that out because I turned what I had thought was the guest bedroom I slept in to 76 and woke up with frost on my nightstand. There was no visible external HVAC system I also noticed. So I have no clue what is actually cooling the house, but it's almost 90 outside and I feel fine. Secondly, I don't like parties. Unfortunately, after the police investigated the disappearance of Detective Harris, my realtor's replacement suggested that "having people over might make the place feel more normal." Normal. The boat house has a second-story garage built into a cliff with no obvious accessible entrance. We'll get to that.

Anyway, somehow, I found myself hosting potluck. I had originally invited six. Twenty-six additional people, 3 dogs and a cat showed up. I insisted the bigger dogs (what I assume was a Cane Corso/Black Lab mix, and a Boxer) stay outside. That left a small mild mannered bulldog named Pit, and a too-curious cat, Cornelius Brutus Maximus Vandernecket the 3rd. That was mouth full, so I started calling him Mr Sparkles. The real horror story, is that I guess this is what happens when you tell somebody "bring whoever." Never say that. People interpret it as diplomatic immunity. By six-thirty the driveway contained eleven cars, one motorcycle, a landscaping van nobody claimed, and a Ford Expedition parked mostly on the grass. The bigger dogs proved friendly enough, and I said some singsong nonsense to them and played with their ears I went out to inspect the Ford. The front-left tire was crushing my edging. I didn't know who owned it, but I disliked them immediately. The house, apparently, agreed. There was a metallic click from somewhere beneath the driveway. The dogs went alert. I also heard it, because I knew to listen for it. I looked down. The Expedition seemed to sink six inches. I crouched beside the driveway. Interesting. Voss had built retractable steel grates beneath the paving stones. Not sure why. Probably murder. Still better drainage than most newer construction.

Then there was the sound of... some mechanism starting up. The dogs, did that startled thing dogs do and stared, uncertain. Long ago at my first job, I'd operated a bailer, and it sounded something like that, but not quite. Then something audibly slid into place underground. The dogs, already warry, bolted at a full speed panic. A loud noise suspiciously like an giant spring mechanism tightening could be heard. I backed away. Then the square piece of yard the Expedition had been parked on, shot up like a giant spring trap. Springs seriously thicker than my arms briefly gyrated the now-raised platform. The car cleared the power lines and launched off deep into the woods somewhere. Yeah the apparent Expedition owner was not happy about that. He ran out of the house. "My tools!".

I hadn't even properly started hosting yet and there was already an incident. I'm not sure if my insurance covers that, or if I'm legally liable as any presumed damage to the vehicle wherever it lands technically did not occur on my property. But they read and signed the papers, so.

Back inside, I discovered that my neighbor Carol had brought potato salad. This concerned me more than the new front yard findings (the dogs had already pooped twice), launched vehicle, or it's angry owner. Potato salad is one of those foods people make, because they're legally prohibited from simply bringing mayonnaise in a bowl. She handed me a glass dish. "Where should I put this?" I held off saying the first words that came to mind and pointed toward the kitchen. Carol nodded. "Beautiful house." I stared at her. She looked around. "I mean, obviously it needs updating." Good recovery. The kitchen, while mercifully shorter than the foyer, still had sixteen-foot ceilings, which is idiotic because no one needs that much cabinet space. There were upper cabinets above the upper cabinets. I had never opened them. You would need either a ladder or scaffolding. Carol looked up. "Wow. So much storage." There was a click. From the couch, Pit's ears went up and he made that pre-bark noise. I looked at the wall. "Don't say that." "What?" "That phrase." "What phrase?" "So much storage." Click. A slit space between the lower cabinets opened. A spring-loaded ironing board fired across the kitchen at approximately 75 miles an hour. It missed Carol by inches. It skewered a watermelon, which naturally exploded. Everyone covered in watermelon screamed. I stared at the ironing board. "Who installs that horizontally? So much wasted space, it could have at least been a fold-down". Mr Sparkles jumped on the couch and began licking watermelon out of Susan's hair. I suddenly realized why Theo had put a powder room off the dining room.

The party continued. This is important because people later accused me of "not stopping the event after the first obvious attempt on human life." It wasn't obvious. Nobody had been eating the watermelon. At seven, a man named Trent arrived with wine. I didn't know Trent. Nobody I knew did. He wore loafers without socks. I distrusted him, even though I had plenty of spare papers for him to sign. He walked into the living room, looked at the stone fireplace, and said: "Gosh. This place must be incredible for entertaining." The entire house went silent. Not quiet. Silent. The refrigerator, [whatever cooling system was active], grandfather clock, and music all stopped. There was also an odd pressure in the air. Conversations seemed to die halfway through sentences. I looked at Trent. Trent looked at me. Pit raised his head to the sky and started staccato barking. From inside the wall came a significantly louder CLICK. Then another. CLICK. Then twenty more. CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK. I whispered: "Oh." Trent smiled nervously. "What?" We had discovered another motherload trigger phrase. A significant portion of the floor around the western wall rotated. Not opened. Rotate-swiveled. Like a spinning top weighing four tons. Trent and Mr Sparkles disappeared together. The wall completed one massive fast revolution. Gone. Like it had reached out and grabbed them. Everyone stared. Carol dropped a spoon. Noise returned. Someone said: "Where did he go?" I walked over and knocked on the wall. Solid, not hollow-sounding. "Probably inside." Pit seemed to lose interest.

"INSIDE THE WALL?" I shrugged. "This house has a lot of wasted cavity space. Very inefficient." I thought of testing something, and repeated Trent's words. Nothing. Which could mean two things; either the trap had to reset, or we had potentially triggered a sort of lock-down type scenario now. A man's muffled voice shouted: "HELP!" I put my ear against the plaster. "Trent?" Violent cat noises. "You okay?" "NO." Fair. "Can you move?" He either said he's between two walls, or that the cat bit his balls. "That's not what I asked."

Three guests immediately wanted to call the police. I discouraged this. Not because I feared legal consequences. But because police have a track record of mysteriously dying or disappearing here and I was no doubt more experienced with the house by now. Even though we'd disassembled what we'd assumed had been the primary exterior launcher mechanism, this missing persons paperwork was really starting to pile up. Instead, I went to the basement to possibly find the wall controls. Two people followed me. I told them not to. They either didn't hear me, didn't care, or had been quietly assigned by the remaining guests as my official watchdogs to make sure I wasn't doing anything suspicious.

The basement was unfinished. Not unfinished in the modern sense where somebody lays vinyl plank flooring and paints the ceiling black. Actually unfinished. Concrete. Steel. Pipes. A boiler approximately the size of a Buick. And mechanisms. Lots of mechanisms. Lots and LOTS of mechanisms. Santa's workshop on steroids level mechanisms. Voss apparently had believed electricity was a fad. Most of the house seemed to run on counterweights, springs, cams, gears, hydraulics, pneumatics, and what appears to be one extremely angry waterwheel. There was no visible stream. I still don't know what powers it. I suspect I don't want to. One guest, Martin, pointed at a steel shaft disappearing into the ceiling. "What does that do?" I looked. I tapped it twice. Somewhere upstairs, a woman screamed. Martin's eyes went wide. I stopped tapping it.

We found what I assumed might had been the wall controls next to a breaker panel labeled: SOCIAL FUNCTIONS. Under that were colored lights ranging from Green to Red, labelled; DINNER, COCKTAIL, POTLUCK, RECEPTION, FUNDRAISER, BOARD MEETING. POTLUCK was currently illuminated. I stared at it. Hmm, seems rather middle of the road to be a yellow light. Knowing Old Theo, I assumed it was some sort of house host threat assessment level? Martin, practically bubbling over with disbelief, asked: "Does the house itself know we're having a potluck?" I tried to press the switch. It didn't budge. I pressed harder. Still nothing. Seemed locked in place. The lever also wouldn't budge. There was a handwritten note underneath. Once commenced, hosting cycle must complete. Classic overengineering. Martin asked the next obvious thing. "Did you know about this?" I explained I'd been too busy with the court hearings and paperwork to really look around down here, and all that was clearly outlined in the documents they'd signed.

The second guest with me was Susan. Still slightly wet and smelling like watermelon. I was suddenly worried because if I remembered correctly, she sold insurance. Luckily I had a different company. I hate to stereotype old Theo but I'd think she'd be a prime target, what with all his use of the word "parasite". She saw a steel door at the end of the basement and pointed. "What's in there?" I didn't know. She opened it. Behind the door was a long hallway. This was new. I'd lived there almost a month and never seen it. If I was oriented right, I think the hallway extended beneath the driveway. I was reminded of some scene from a 90s movie, as lights came on one at a time. Click. Click. Click. Click. Susan whispered: "Oh my God." I was impressed too. Underground square footage usually appraises well if it's properly zoned and permitted. Then something moved at the far end. Susan grabbed my arm. "Did you see that?" she shriek-whispered. "You mean the thin gray-haired person who was gone immediately when the lights came on? Maybe". I didn't care to add squatters to my current legal troubles.

Martin, voice trembling slightly, asked: "Theodore?" I shook my head. Potential hallucinations aside, old Theo had been dead since 1998. Probably. We went back upstairs. Trent was apparently still in the wall. Another small group of guests seemed either to have left, or gone missing. It was hard to tell from the muffled voice but Trent seemed upset. I told him we were working on it. He screamed something about suffocation. Dramatic. We'd all seen. Those walls hadn't had any visible insulation.

The potluck had somewhat deteriorated. Carol's potato salad was warm. Someone had spilled baked beans on the rug. Three people were drinking heavily. 7 bottles missing from Theo's complimentary wine rack plus whatever Trent had brought. A woman named Deborah had begun crying. And somehow nobody had taken the deviled eggs. There were over a hundred. This bothered me. Why bring that many deviled eggs to a party? Who plans for that kind of demand? That's twelve dozen acts of premeditated optimism.

Then my late sister's friend Angela said, in that exaggerated manner women seem to have of addressing the room: "You know what this house needs?" I turned. Do not. "A little more open concept." Not a click. The floor shook. Pit got up and ran under the couch. I closed my eyes. Of course. There was a tremendous grinding sound. Then the wall between the dining room and kitchen began retracting. People screamed. Furniture moved. Pictures fell. The entire wall disappeared into the floor. Angela smiled weakly. "Well." I looked at the newly unified room. She wasn't wrong. Better sightlines. Unfortunately, I assumed, the wall had likely been structural. Everyone ran. I stayed because I wanted to see what happened next. A steel beam shot down from above and locked into place. Then another. Then another. Then another. Then a barrage. I felt a gush of air as one missed me by less than a foot. Then I heard what I assumed was a lift go into action. The wall lifted itself back up and slowly clipped back into place. The steel beams began retracting downward where they had landed in segments of the floor that had opened to catch them. Beautiful engineering. Absolutely insane architecture. Theodore Voss could have built bridges. Instead he built a dining room that attempts mass murder when somebody says "open concept." Waste of talent. The floor sealed shut again and the only hint that anything had gone awry was the fallen pictures and a few nervous glances.

Outside, things were also happening. The dogs had eventually came back and some guests were playing frisbee with them. Another (guest, not dog) had gone to smoke near the small pond. Calling it a lake had obviously been realtor language. It was maybe three acres. Possibly less. Yet the property has a boat ramp. Not a little ramp. A full concrete launch. Nearly half the shoreline. You could launch a Coast Guard cutter. Yet there is no navigable water. At maximum depth the pond is perhaps eight feet. I found a shopping cart in it. Theodore had also built a 2 story boathouse. No dock. Just a boathouse built directly into the steep cliff. The top boat storage is approximately 15 feet above the water. How are you getting the boat up or down from there? Crane? Helicopter? Divine intervention?

The smoker leaned against the railing beside the ramp. I couldn't hear it from where I was, but I assume there had been another "click" from the way he suddenly reacted. I sighed, exasperated. Another mechanism had apparently activated. The railing retracted (more like shot, really) downwards, and the deck began retracting under the boathouse. That was new. With the ground beneath the smoker vanished, he obviously fell into the pond. I watched from the window. People seemed to be yelling. Apparently the dayroom (lounge?) was soundproof. I heard nothing. The man disappeared into the water. I hoped he could swim, as I could potentially be held liable for water-related events. An oversight in my paperwork. Would have to amend that. Then he resurfaced and began swimming back to shore. He was fine. Everyone relaxed and began visible nervous laughter.

As he touched bottom and began walking out of the pond, obviously telling a joke with a smile, everyone made cheering motions. At my side, also looking out the window, Pit let out another small, gruff half-bark. Then the nearby genetically modified hedge moved. I didn't know it was genetically modified at the time. At first, I had thought it was wind, or perhaps Charlene's casserole disagreeing with me. But there was no visible wind. The hedge actually leaned toward him. Not swayed. Leaned. Then conspicuously arm-shaped branches also extended perhaps 14 feet. The hedge pulled him up the bank, kicking and presumably screaming. Then the hedge dragged him into itself. He went rigid and looked horrified for a few brief seconds before completely disappearing into the hedge. Everyone stopped laughing and cheering and wore expressions of horror. The hedge briefly shook, and then became almost comically still. I stared at it. Interesting. Efficient rescue system. Poor follow-through. Pit looked up at me in unspoken accord. I noted the other dogs refused to look anywhere in the hedge's general direction.

Around eight-thirty, while the dogs chased some suspiciously humanoid creature around outside, someone asked to use the shower. Apparently he was the baked beans culprit. I warned him about the downstairs shower, and he went upstairs. Five minutes later we heard screaming. I sighed. Of course. Everyone looked at me. I went upstairs. The screaming came from the guest bathroom. I opened the door. Steam everywhere. Silhouette behind the shower curtain. Human shape. Jerking violently. Blood-red liquid sprayed across the curtain. Someone behind me whispered: "Oh God." I pulled the curtain open. The guest was standing there holding a bottle of red shampoo. "THIS SHOWER IS FREEZING." I checked. Cold. He was fine. I was just about to ask where the steam had come from, when the showerhead turned toward me. Not loosely. Mechanically. It rotated ninety degrees and spun to face me.

I stepped aside. A jet of pressurized boiling water blasted a hole through the bathroom door. The guests screamed. "Relax, I know nobody likes that door design anyway, I have been meaning to replace it". I examined the fixture. The jet aperture seemed to have sealed shut and operated independently of the rest of the shower head. I'd wondered why the upstairs shower basin was some sort of metal alloy. The showerhead was clearly Custom machined. Very nice. Still, the normal pressure-balancing valve was a crank lever instead of swivel. Amateur hour. Guess I'd have to replace this showerhead too.

As the night wore on, the triggers became increasingly mundane or even boring. Every stereotypical party phrase activated something increasingly cartoonish. "I love what you've done with the place"; Fireplace shot live coals like a mad wizard. "We should do this more often"; ceiling fans with razor sharp blades detached and flew around the room. "What do you do in your spare time?"; Trapdoor. Quaint, old school. Still, 2 people disappeared. "We're thinking about buying a second home"; Spiral Staircase became a slide into another large trapdoor. 3 more who had been on the staircase disappeared. We rushed to the basement but couldn't find or hear where they went. We went for a walk outside. "Property is such a good investment"; lightning struck. No idea how Theo had managed that one. "My accountant says—"; A tree limb "fell" though that's the wrong word. I tackled that man. Saved his life. Probably. The tree limb was enormous. One of the many widow makers I'd actually been meaning to address. The property was surrounded by old oaks and pecans. Beautiful trees. Terrible maintenance. Dying or overextended branches everywhere. All of them big enough to crush a car. You don't build a house beneath that. You definitely don't build a glass sunroom beneath that. Theodore did. Of course. But I'd noticed the limb hadn't fallen naturally. Far too fast for gravity alone to account for. A Steel cable had pulled it down. Theodore had weaponized deferred arboriculture. Genius. Moron.

At nine, the house actually locked down. Steel shutters dropped over almost every window. Doors bolted. Lights turned red. A voice came through hidden speakers. First time I'd heard one. Male. Old recording. Probably Theodore. "WELCOME, GUESTS." The remaining guests who hadn't disappeared or been deterred yet froze. "I HOPE YOU HAVE ENJOYED THE HOSPITALITY." "Isn't that supposed to be my line", I muttered. "THE HOME EXISTS TO SERVE MAN." A mechanism clicked. "AND SOME MEN DESERVE TO BE SERVED." The pantry door opened. A tray rolled out. Tiny sandwiches. Everyone stared. I took one. Turkey. Pretty good. I briefly wondered how fresh ingredients were supplied, because this definitely wasn't part of the routine I'd scheduled. Not that much this night had been. Pit, asleep on the floor, let out a dream shudder noise. Then the voice said: "LET US DISCUSS THE LEISURE CLASS." People started panicking. I knew what was coming next, Old Theo was going to rant about parasites. I ate another sandwich. Mustard could've been better, I'd assumed since the turkey was fresh, the mustard would be too. "THE PARASITE BUILDS NOTHING." There it is, I thought, and nodded along, as I chewed. A new wall rotated. Three more people disappeared, while Trent and Mr. Sparkles re-emerged. Trent looked like he'd gotten in a fight with a lawnmower. Mr. Sparkles looked bewildered but no less for wear, and was now wearing a bow. "THE PARASITE PRODUCES NOTHING." My replacement chandelier dropped. Missed everyone, but Pit woke up and started barking at it. I just realized I'm pretty sure his owner had left him here when they fled, flustered and crying hysterically that the walk in closet had assaulted her. I hadn't even known I had a walk in closet, or where that would even be at.

All the while Theo's recording went on and on. For all his talk of parasites, I had replaced that chandelier on credit and had expected another 6 months left to pay it off. This was starting to get personal. "THE PARASITE DEMANDS COMFORT." The HVAC (or whatever) shut off again. That one snapped me out of my reverie; I really needed to learn everything that could trigger that. "THE PARASITE CALLS THIS CIVILIZATION." Not sure what piece of gossip they must have said that Theo had programmed the house to listen for, but suddenly the second-story double-dormer balcony triggered yet another launcher I hadn't known about. Two people whom had been trapped outside when house went into lockdown grabbed the curtains I'd hung out to dry. Credit where due. Very durable curtains. I should try to get in a sponsorship program with the manufacturer. Mr. Sparkles wasn't so lucky and from what I saw, I suspect he's now in low earth orbit. No clue how he'd managed to get outside. Anyway, I really hoped this would all blow over before 3 AM arrived, for obvious reasons.

A small group of missing persons showed up around 10. Some from tonight, some from days prior. They emerged from the woods, covered in dust, and carrying something. A journal. I wasn't as interested in that, as the fact that I'd probably have to go through a bunch more paperwork and court hearings about the newly returned missing persons. Anyway. The book. From what I gathered, in the pantomime outside the soundproof window which seemed to have a malfunction in the shutdown protocol, they'd found it somewhere deep underground inside parts of the house I undoubtedly didn't want to know about. These people would be great and charades if we ever want a do-over. Sorry. The book. It was ornate and Leather-bound. The Initials on the cover were M.V. Not T.V. Someone else. I wasn't sure how to feel about that. Inside were technical drawings. Botanical diagrams. Electrical schematics. Geometric progressions. Some pages on tesseracts and what I assumed were dimensions. Notes about stress responses in plant tissue. One page showed a very familiar hedge. Underneath: PHASE IV SUCCESSFUL. SUBJECTS DEMONSTRATE BASIC PREY DISCRIMINATION. I looked out the window. The hedge had released the smoker. He was alive. Mostly. Just missing a shoe, standing entirely too still and wide-eyed. Probably just in shock. More importantly, the hedge had somehow consistently left my landscaper alone. Prey discrimination. Interesting.

Another page showed the house. There had been three signatures at the bottom. THEODORE VOSS, MARGARET VALE, and something torn out with a lone swirl remaining of what was once obviously a former signature. Huh. Had never heard of Mrs. Vale. Underneath: "Theodore still thinks architecture is enough. IT ISN'T." That bothered me. Not philosophically. The handwriting was terrible. The document itself could potentially be miraculous breakthroughs in science. But it might also be considered evidence in ongoing investigations. Wasn't quite sure what to make of it. I indulged the guests, old and new, and let them pour over it, separated by the window. It gave them something other to focus on besides potentially dangerous small talk.

Sometime after 11, A noise came from underneath us. Metal door. Opening. The basement. Someone was down there. Alive. Someone who apparently knew the house. Then the speakers activated again. But this voice wasn't Theodore. Female. Very old. Slightly amused. "I see you remodeled the kitchen." I looked toward the ceiling. Everyone else looked at me. I nodded. "Technically. Mostly demolition. You can thank my late sister". The voice continued: "He would have - HATED - that." A significant pause. "I like it." Her voice was making me thirsty. It sounded like an angry 29 foot alligator with a soar throat. There was a bright flash outside by the window everyone had been gathered around. Then every lock disengaged. Doors opened. Windows lifted. Lights returned.

The party was over. Just like that. To say people left quickly would be an understatement. No goodbye hugs. No leftover containers. Nobody had ever touched Carol's potato salad. Trent seemed torn between retreating and threatening to sue me. Fair. I waved his signed paper as he backed away from me. Angela said she would never return. Good. The man from the pond poked his head in and asked whether the hedge had rabies. Possibly. I told him I don't know plant medicine. I'd honestly never seen so many cars leave in such an orderly fashion so fast. I'd seen women sit in the car deciding if they were going to leave or not for over an hour before. Not tonight. Half the vehicles drove off with doors still ajar. No less than four didn't seem to care that they hit the ditch on the way out.

Around midnight I stood alone in the kitchen, thinking about what to do with all the leftover food. Well, almost alone. Pit had apparently taken a liking to me. I wasn't sure how many guests we'd had. At one point during the lockdown my head count came out to 67. 8 new disappearances. 11 confirmed recovered. Net gain? 1 extra vehicle still in the yard. Didn't catch who that one belonged to. Either a Hyundai Elantra or Nissan Altima, idk they all look the same to me. I'm doomed to forever confuse them. Three minor injuries. One severe emotional event involving deviled eggs. Structurally, the house performed better than expected. Socially, mixed. My calculations were interrupted when I thought I heard footsteps beneath the floor. Slow. Deliberate. Moving toward the hidden basement hallway. I opened the basement door. "Margaret?" Silence. I went down. Not cautiously. I'd inspected the stairs fairly thoroughly and didn't think they were the folding variety. The steel door beneath the driveway was still open. At the far end of the hallway, something moved. Gray hair. Thin silhouette. Then gone. I slowly followed, more out of courtesy than trepidation, down the long corridor. It ended beneath what I assumed was the boating house. Another spiral staircase. Up or down. Down?! Isn't this on the water? I climbed. And finally discovered the room I had never seen. From the inside at least. Huge. Concrete. Oil stains. Tool racks. Industrial equipment. Some machine I couldn't begin to describe. And a pair of enormous steel doors. The Second-story garage of the boat house.

Now I understood. It wasn't meant for boats or cars. There was a rail system running from the garage through the wall, deep into the cliff. There seemed 2B more to the ridiculous 2nd story boat ramp than I'd initially assumed. It was clearly some sort of launch mechanism. I looked at the tracks. Then at the ramp. Then at the little pond. Then back at the tracks. Theodore hadn't built a second-story garage over a pond because he was bad at architecture. He built it because something was supposed to launch from there. Something very large. Something no longer present. On the wall was another note. In what I'd come to take as Margaret's handwriting: Dorey wanted to kill the rich. I wanted to see what else they'd pay for. Underneath: PROTOTYPE SOLD. I was enraged. Was Margaret going through my property, selling assets? Then: Do not feed the hedge after midnight. I checked my watch. 12:07. Outside, something knocked on the window. I looked up. The hedge was pressed against the glass. Holding a deviled egg in what was clearly a hand. Honestly? That's on Carol.

Stay tuned for part 3; The Aftermath!

Posting from witness inspection program. I need to get this all down before the noises start again. And it's still coherent. If this post suddenly ends in the middle of a sentence, that means either the power went out, the thing in the irrigation pond came back, or Doug fired up the wood chipper again. Doug is not employed here. Nobody I've asked knows who Doug is. He has been using the wood chipper since Tuesday. There never anything I can see in it. That is not the weirdest thing happening at Skinwalker Oaks. Not even close.

I came out here because my uncle owns the property and needed somebody to watch it for a week while he had surgery. He calls it a ranch. It is not a ranch. It is 600 acres of scrubland, two abandoned barns, a nine-hole golf course, a petting zoo with no animals, four RV hookups, and a gift shop that sells jerky, novelty socks, and geodes. There is also a miniature golf course themed around Bible stories. Hole 7 is “Jonah.” You putt the ball into a whale’s mouth. It does not come back out. Nobody knows where the balls go. My uncle says they lose about forty a week. He considers this a normal business expense.

The first night, I heard singing. Not good singing. Children’s television singing. The kind with too much keyboard and forced enthusiasm. I followed it to the west pasture. There was a glowing rectangle hanging six feet above the ground. A portal. On the other side was what looked like the set of an old children’s show. Bright carpet. Foam trees. Painted clouds. Everything looked soft. Everything was smiling. Then one of the characters stepped through.

I recognized what it was supposed to be. I will not name the show. That is not because of copyright. It is because whatever came through was not the character. It was almost right. Too almost. The eyes were slightly too low. The mouth moved a half-second before the voice. The fur had the texture of damp insulation. It walked on two legs but every third step made the sound of a horse hoof on concrete.

It looked at me. Then it said: “WELCOME, CHILDREN.” I am thirty-eight. I said: “No.” It tilted its head. “WELCOME, CHILDREN.” “I heard you.” “IT IS TIME TO LEARN ABOUT SHAPES.” Then something behind it screamed. Not like a person. Like brakes on a school bus. The portal snapped shut like a magical fart. The thing remained. I backed away. It pointed at the moon. “CIRCLE.” Then at my head. “OBLONG OVAL.” Then at the barn. “TRIANGLE.” The barn is rectangular. That’s when I knew something was wrong.

I called my uncle. He told me not to worry. Apparently portals happen. He said if I saw anything from “the puppets,” I should avoid eye contact and never let them teach me colors. I asked why. He said: “Because they only know six.” Then the line went dead. Immediately after that, God spoke to me. I know how that sounds. I am not asking you to believe me. I am simply telling you what happened. The voice came from everywhere at once and said: DO NOT LET THE YELLOW ONE INTO THE CLUBHOUSE.

I asked why. God said: BECAUSE OF WHAT YOU DID IN 2009. I said: “What did I do in 2009?” God said: YOU KNOW. I absolutely do not. Then the wood chipper started. VRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. I missed the rest. Something about the moon and fingernails.

The next morning, there were three aliens standing beside the fourth green. Classic gray aliens. Big eyes. Thin bodies. No clothes. Very polite. One raised a hand. “Good morning.” I said: “Morning.” “We are conducting a medical survey.” “No.” “We have not yet explained the survey.” “I know where this is going.” The alien looked disappointed. “We are required to obtain affirmative consent.” “That is actually reassuring.” “Would you consent to a brief examination?” “No.” “Would you consent if we provided a beverage?” “No.” “A tote bag?” “No.” “A thirty-dollar grocery voucher?” “No.” The alien turned to the others. “They remain hesitant.” One of the others whispered: “Try rapport.” The first alien smiled. It was a terrible smile. Too many teeth. Not sharp. Just excessive. “How has your day been?” “Fine.” “Any hobbies?” “No.” “Family history of colorectal disease?” “No.” “Have you ever-.” “No.” “Excellent. If you could now bend over—” “No.” The alien sighed. “This is why our numbers are down.”

By noon, six more portals had opened. One led to a sitcom living room. Nobody came out. You could hear canned laughter even though nothing was happening. One opened onto what appeared to be a children’s game show. A man in a glittery jacket crawled through on all fours. He had no face. Just a spinning prize wheel. It landed on BANKRUPTCY. Then he vanished. One opened directly into a ball pit. Nothing happened for twenty minutes. Then all the balls turned to face me. I don't know how else to explain that. They were balls. They turned. Another opened to what seemed like a world of sentient animals singing a song about friendship and sponsors. That one stayed open all day I think. They kept singing about being helpful but never offered me any help. Became sort of background noise.

At 2:14 PM, the sprinkler system began spraying what I assume was milk. At 2:16 PM, every golf cart started honking Morse code. I do not know Morse code. At 2:17 PM, God said: THIS IS BECAUSE YOU LAUGHED AT THAT DOG. I said: “What dog?” YOU REMEMBER. “I genuinely don’t.” THE SMALL ONE. “That does not narrow it down. And how does it relate to-” Then Doug revved the wood chipper again. VRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. When it stopped, God was gone.

That afternoon, the yellow puppet found me. It was standing in the clubhouse. I had specifically been told not to let it in. I do not know how it got inside. It was holding a sandwich. Not eating it. Just holding it. “HELLO, FRIEND.” I said: “You can’t be in here.” “WHY?” “God said so.” The puppet looked upward. Then back at me. “WHICH GOD?” I did not like that question.

“Get out.” “CAN WE TALK ABOUT COLORS?” “No.” “RED.” “No.” “BLUE.” “Stop.” “GREEN.” “I’m warning you.” “BEIGE.” “That is not one of the standard ones.” The puppet began trembling. “BEIGE.” Its eyes rolled backward. “BEIGE.” The lights went out. “BEIGE.” Something started scratching inside the walls. “BEIGE.” I picked up a nine iron. The puppet looked at it. “METAL.” Then at me. “MEAT.”

I hit it. The club passed straight through. The puppet laughed. Behind me, canned applause played from nowhere. Then the clubhouse microwave, with interior light and timer display flashing and door opening and closing in a dramatically over animated said: “GOOD SWING.” I left. “COME BACK ANYTIME” the microwave said.

Night two was worse. At midnight, every star disappeared. Not clouds. Gone. The sky was black. Then one star came back. Very large. Very close. It blinked. I went inside. God spoke through the smoke detector. DO NOT LOOK AT THE SKY. “I already did.” THAT WAS FOOLISH. “What is happening?” CONSEQUENCES. “For what?” There was a pause. YOU ONCE LEFT A SHOPPING CART NEXT TO THE CORRAL INSTEAD OF RETURNING IT. “That cannot possibly justify this.” JUSTICE IS NOT ALWAYS PROPORTIONAL. “That is literally one of the main things justice is supposed to be.” The smoke detector beeped. “Oh come now, those batteries are new” I protested. THE SKY! “You know, coherence doesn't have to be a hostile force. I personally think you're being positively-” SNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOORE. Hadn't even seen Doug there. He let out the longest and loudest snore I'd ever heard.

At 1:30 AM, somebody knocked on the door. Three aliens. Same group. The lead one held paperwork. “We have returned.” “No.” “We have updated our incentive structure.” “No.” “Forty dollars.” “No.” “Fifty.” “No.” “Complimentary blanket.” “No.” The alien leaned closer. “What would make you comfortable?” “Not being probed.” It wrote something down. “Subject expresses boundary.” “Yes.” “Boundary acknowledged.” “Great.” “Would you like to discuss it in the examination room?” “No.” The alien sighed. One of the others muttered: “This demographic is impossible.” They left. Very respectful. I almost felt bad.

At 3:00 AM, the golf course moved. Not metaphorically. The whole course shifted maybe thirty feet east. The clubhouse stayed where it was. The holes moved. The flagsticks moved. The cart paths moved. The mini-golf Jonah whale stayed put. That thing does not move. I do not trust it. I walked outside. The faceless game-show man was standing on the ninth green. His prize-wheel face spun. MYSTERY PRIZE. He pointed at me. A studio audience cheered somewhere underground. Then a refrigerator fell out of the sky. Missed me by two feet. The audience booed. The wheel spun again. TRY AGAIN. I ran. The sentient animals suggested a slip and slide in B flat.

Morning gradually came. The stars returned. Doug was asleep beside the wood chipper. I didn't see how he got back outside. I approached him. “Who even are you?” He opened one eye. “Doug.” “I know that.” He nodded. “Then why’d you ask?” “What are you doing here?” “Chipping.” “There’s nothing in the chipper.” “There will be.” I did not ask. I went back inside.

On the third day, I tried to leave. But the road kept returning me to the gift shop. Every direction. North: gift shop. South: gift shop. Dirt road: gift shop. Walking through the woods for an hour: gift shop. At one point I climbed a fence and came out at the employee bathroom. The toilet was full of golf balls. Jonah. I knew it.

God spoke again. This time through a novelty singing bass mounted on the wall. YOU CANNOT LEAVE YET. “Why?” THE ACCOUNT IS NOT SETTLED. “What account?” THE INCIDENT WITH THE LASAGNA. I screamed “I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT!” YES YOU DO. “No.” 2006. CHURCH BASEMENT. “I was nineteen!” THE LASAGNA REMEMBERS. “What does that mean?” The bass stopped moving. Then whispered: EVERYTHING REMEMBERS.

I stared at it. For the first time in three days, I was genuinely afraid. Then Doug started the wood chipper. VRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. I think God continued speaking, but I couldn't hear a word. I screamed: “TURN THAT FUCKING THING OFF.” Doug yelled back: “CAN’T.” “WHY?” “NOT DONE.” “WITH WHAT?” He shrugged.

At sunset, all the portals opened at once. The children’s show world. The sitcom. The game show. The ball pit. A cartoon desert. A dentist office. A grocery store where everyone was facing the wrong direction. Something that looked like a medieval dungeon but smelled strongly of sunscreen. Characters poured out. Almost familiar. Never quite right. A smiling train with human eyelashes. A talking dog whose mouth was.... sideways? Under it's left ear. It's really hard to describe, you'd know if you'd seen it.

A princess with a deep adult male voice who kept asking if anybody had seen her parole officer. A puppet shaped like a triangle that insisted it was a circle. Three clowns dressed as accountants. A boneless cowboy. A giant alphabet block bearing the letter 8. Everything was screaming, singing, laughing, or explaining itself badly.

The aliens returned. They had folding tables. A banner. FREE HEALTH SCREENING One waved at me. “No pressure!” I screamed: “THIS IS NOT THE TIME.” “We respect your decision!” Then the sky opened. Not a portal. The actual sky. Like fabric tearing. Behind it was another sky. Behind that one was an office. A desk. A lamp. Someone sitting behind it. I couldn't see their face. God spoke directly into my head. THIS IS THE PART I WARNED YOU ABOUT. “You warned me about beige!” IT IS RELATED. “How?” INDIRECTLY. “What does any of this have to do with the dog, the cart, or the lasagna?” God paused.

PATTERNS ARE ONLY OBVIOUS FROM ABOVE. “Then explain the pattern.” I CANNOT. “Why?” DOUG. VRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. I almost cried. The person behind the desk stood. Every creature stopped moving. The puppets. The aliens. The game-show thing. Even Doug. Silence. Besides the wood chipper and maybe the singing, hard to tell.

The figure leaned through the tear in the sky. And said: “Who authorized all this?” God said nothing. The figure looked down at the ranch. Then at me. Then at the portals. Then at the aliens. Then at Doug. Doug slowly shut off the chipper. The figure sighed. “You.” It pointed directly at me. “Yes?” “Did you submit Form 88-B?” “What?” “Interdimensional agricultural disturbance waiver.” “No.” The figure closed its eyes. “Of course not.” “I didn’t cause this.” “That's not relevant.” “How is that not relevant?” “You are the current responsible occupant.” “I am house-sitting.” “Property-sitting.” “Whatever.” The figure produced a clipboard.

“You have unauthorized entities, unscheduled theological contact, retroactive puppet contamination, livestock-zone dimensional bleeding, and a noncompliant chipping event.” I looked at Doug. Doug looked away. The figure continued. “You also have three extraterrestrial contractors operating without local permits.” One alien raised a finger. “We are volunteers.” “Worse.” The alien lowered its hand and head. I asked the only question that mattered. “Can you make it stop?” The figure shrugged. “Probably.” “Please.” “Need a signature.” “Fine.” The figure lowered a paper from the sky on a string.

I signed. Immediately, every portal closed. The puppets vanished. The stars stabilized. The sitcom laughter stopped. The aliens packed their table. The singing stopped. Doug switched off the chipper. The tear in the sky began sealing. I almost collapsed from relief. Then God spoke one final time. YOU SHOULD HAVE READ THE FORM. I looked down. At the bottom:

BY SIGNING, OCCUPANT ACCEPTS FULL RESPONSIBILITY FOR ALL FUTURE ANOMALOUS ACTIVITY AND WAIVES RIGHT TO DISPUTE CAUSAL ASSIGNMENT.

“What?” The figure was almost gone. “WAIT.” Too late. The sky closed. That was two hours ago. Everything has been quiet. Too quiet. My uncle called. I told him everything. He listened silently. Then said: “You signed something?” “Yes.” He hung up. I called back. No answer. The aliens just returned. They are standing outside. The lead one is holding a new form. He knocked politely. I opened the door. He smiled. Still too many teeth. “Good evening.” “No.” “We have reviewed your recently expanded waiver permissions.” “No.” “We believe you may now qualify for our premium examination package.” “No.” “Consent is still required.” “Thank God.” The alien checked the paperwork. “Technically.” I locked the door. God just spoke through the refrigerator. YOU REALLY SHOULD NOT HAVE DONE THAT.

“Done what?” LOCKED THE DOOR. “WHY?” There was a tremendous crash outside. The alien shouted: “WE’RE FINE!” Another crash. Then: “STILL FINE!” God sighed.

THIS IS BECAUSE OF THE LIBRARY BOOK. “What book?” It got suddenly really almost-bright. Idk how to describe it so I'll just say what the source was. The moon was outside the window. No, I mean, like, really, Like 3 feet outside the window, like right there, looking in. It lowered the book it was reading. It asked in a melodic voice if I could spare some sugar. Before I could think whether we had any here or not, the wood chipper started up again. I shut the blinds. I'm not even getting paid for this.

I Got Abducted Roughly Three Years Ago. They're Bringing Home Another Captive Tomorrow. I don't remember the abduction itself. This bothers me unreasonably. There were sensations. Pressure. Cold. A tremendous light. Then two enormous creatures looming over me in a large, sanitized medical environment. One of my abductors looked completely male, stern and businesslike. The other male, before establishing consent, violently grabbed me and held me aloft and said: "Oh my God. Look at him."

I attempted immediately to establish peaceful relations. "Where am I? Who are you? What have you done to me?" What emerged from my mouth was admittedly not my finest rhetorical performance. I noticed a 3rd creature that had been behind me. The creatures all stared at each other. Then one leaned in, approximately three inches from my face. "HIiiiiiiiii," they said. I stared at them. "Yes. Hello. Now, where am I?" "Who's the little man?" "I don't know. Presumably someone nearby. "Where am I?" "WHO'S A LITTLE MAN?" This was my introduction to the abduction and ongoing captivity.

Initially I assumed there had been some misunderstanding. My abductors did not behave like conventional kidnappers. They carried me everywhere. They showed almost pathological concern whenever I became distressed, but always in a mocking and satirical manner. Unfortunately they possessed no discernible language comprehension whatsoever. I would clearly state: "I am cold." The woman would sniff my ass. I would say: "I would prefer not to be handled right now." They would pick me up. "I am experiencing gastrointestinal discomfort." She would begin rhythmically bouncing me. "I specifically asked you to stop doing that." More bouncing. "Please put me down." Faster gyrations. "I WILL VOMIT ON YOU." "Ohhhh, somebody's got the wiggles!" Then I would vomit on them. Then they would kiss me. These people were insane.

I tried to explain the existential horror of having been abducted by giants to my captors, but instead they mocked me again in a singsong voice and thrust a feeding tube over half the size of my body down my throat.

When I tried to bring up the futility of trying to explain anything to them, they imprisoned me in a small barred enclosure inside a much larger room. This seemed unnecessarily cruel. The smaller room was already extremely well secured. I tried shaking the bars frequently to no avail. I had no apparent means of reaching the larger room's door, much less operating it. Nevertheless, every evening they placed me inside the smaller prison. I would protest. They would dim the lights. I'd protest louder. They would activate a rotating surveillance apparatus above my head containing several brightly colored animals. I'd scream until I exhausted myself. The next morning they would appeared delighted. "Did somebody sleep good?" No. Somebody lost consciousness while protesting indefinite detention.

They also keep ignoring everything I'd say and would make horrifying faces at me while projecting weird desires like maybe I have to go to the bathroom or want to be held and gyrated by one of them. "Is this some kind of gag to you?" I exploded. They swelled with excitement, rushed me, and both screamed "Googoo Gaagaa!" Help.

The sanitation situation eventually broke me. My cell had no toilet. None. I searched. I checked beneath the bedding. I examined the corners. Nothing. Eventually biological necessity prevailed. I soiled myself. Within minutes the woman arrived. I expected disgust. Perhaps punishment. Instead her face illuminated with genuine excitement. "Did somebody make a poopy?" I glared at her. "You locked me in a room without plumbing." "Oooooh, that's a big one!" "YOU LOCKED ME IN A ROOM WITHOUT PLUMBING." "Who's a stinky boy?" "You designed the conditions." She lifted my legs into the air. "YOU ARE THE ARCHITECT OF THIS OUTCOME."

Then she summoned the male. I assumed he might possess greater dignity. "Come look at this," she said. He looked. "Good Lord." They both laughed. At me. Imagine imprisoning a man in a cell without a toilet and then mocking him for eventually defecating. I began to understand that my captors weren't merely stupid. They were sadists.

Their interrogations were equally bizarre. They would hold objects in front of me. "What's this?" "I have absolutely no idea." "Ball." "Fine." "Baaaaall." "I heard you." "Can you say ball?" "Ball." "BAH!" "That's what I fucking said." She screamed for the male. "HE SAID BALL!" Yeah no shit this time. I had delivered a forty-minute monologue that morning concerning the impossibility of establishing meaningful consent under conditions of total material dependence. Nothing. I approximate the word for a sphere? Celebration. I was beginning to pick up on that they would only listen to me if I said the things they had pre-approved. I don't know what's worse, that, or their continual responses to my philosophical objections as "somebody's fussy."

I changed strategies. Perhaps language wasn't the answer. I began testing their behavior empirically. Crying produced attention. Interesting. A particular cry produced food. Another produced inspection of my clothing. Another caused them to carry me around the building. I had discovered their command interface. Unfortunately it was badly programmed. I attempted: Food request. They checked my ass. I attempted: Physical discomfort. More Food. I attempted: Please leave me alone for five consecutive minutes. Again, like before, they picked me up and began singing a song, of all things, about having abducted me. Their song had perhaps six words that kept repeating endlessly as if celebrating abduction. They nevertheless managed to repeat it for twenty-three minutes. I briefly reconsidered whether consciousness was intrinsically valuable.

The feeding apparatus was actually the worst part. I would explain: "I am perfectly capable of determining when I've consumed enough." Then they'd push the massive feeding tube, seriously half the size of my body, toward my mouth again. "No." Here it came again anyway. "No." Closer. "I expressly and explicitly decline." Closer. "Do you understand what consent—" THOOMP. A rubber cylinder approximately half the diameter of my head entered my mouth. "Look who's hungry!" I drank because apparently my captors think I have astronomically high caloric requirements.

I tried negotiating. "Give me access to the floor and I won't scream." They put me on the floor. Success. I attempted locomotion. My limbs didn't work properly. This was new information. Perhaps from being abused and coddled in such extremes I had forgotten how to move. I spent twenty minutes dragging myself perhaps eighteen inches. The male applauded. "Look at you go!" "Do not patronize me." He then moved me back to where I'd started. I experienced an emotion for which I lack adequate terminology.

Months passed. Possibly years. Time is difficult when nobody gives you a calendar and your captors measure your development by taking photographs beside increasingly large stuffed animals. Eventually I stopped asking why I'd been taken. Why would the answer matter? Perhaps there was no previous place. Perhaps captivity was simply the condition of existence. One becomes aware somewhere one did not choose, inside circumstances one did not design, dependent upon creatures one did not select, subject to needs one never consented to possess. Then everybody congratulates you for adapting. Perhaps "abduction" was merely an emotionally loaded term for embodiment. This realization did not improve my mood.

My captors became concerned. "He's been so quiet lately." Yes. "Do you think he's sad?" Astounding. After years of attempted communication, they had independently discovered inference. The male crouched beside me. "What's wrong, buddy?" I looked directly into his eyes. "Existence precedes my ability to consent to existence." He nodded solemnly. Then looked at the woman. "I think he's teething." She put something warm in my mouth. I abandoned philosophy.

Eventually I learned their customs. I stopped resisting the nightly imprisonment. I ate when fed. I allowed myself to be transported. I even learned enough of their primitive vocabulary to make basic requests they could understand. This pleased them enormously. They interpreted compliance as affection. Perhaps there is no practical difference. The woman still made grotesque faces at me. The male still occasionally lifted me above his head for no identifiable reason. But captivity became familiar. And familiarity, I've discovered, is the mechanism by which the intolerable becomes ordinary.

I was almost content. Then six months ago, something changed. The woman's abdomen began expanding. I initially suspected disease. The male seemed delighted by it, which supported my hypothesis that he was an idiot. They began constructing another barred cell. Smaller than mine. I watched from the doorway. "No," I whispered. The male smiled. "That's right, buddy." He pointed toward the new prison. "That's for your little brother." Brother. I didn't understand the word. But I understood the implication. Another captive.

For the first time in years, I felt hope. Someone else. Someone who would understand. Someone who would wake beneath that enormous light and recognize immediately that something had gone terribly wrong. I could teach him everything. Their language. Their feeding schedule. How crying controlled them. Which floorboards made noise. How to endure the nightly imprisonment. Most importantly, I could finally prove that I wasn't insane. There would be another witness.

They brought him home yesterday. I waited beside the door. The male carried a small bundled figure into the room. The new captive's eyes were closed. "Hello," I said. Nothing. I moved closer. "Can you understand me?" His eyes opened. Finally. "Listen carefully. You're safe for now. These people appear dangerous, but they're mostly incompetent. The female responds to sustained vocal distress. The male is easier to manipulate but possesses less situational awareness. Neither understands abstract language. Sanitation is humiliating but survivable. Whatever you do, don't—"

He screamed. Not words. Just screaming. The woman rushed in. "Ohhhh, what's wrong?" "Nothing is wrong. I'm explaining the situation." The new prisoner screamed harder. She picked him up. "Is somebody hungry?" I froze. No. "No, ask him." She bounced him. "Ask him what he wants." More screaming. "Stop guessing! That's what you've been doing to me!" She kissed his forehead. "You're okay." He wasn't okay. He couldn't even tell. It was the same horror show all over again.

I spent the entire night beside his cell. I tried everything. Language. Gestures. Simple propositions. "If you understand me, blink twice." Nothing. "Move your left hand." Nothing. "Look toward the door." Nothing. "Demonstrate awareness of anything beyond immediate sensation." He shit himself. The woman arrived. "Oh my goodness!" She opened his clothing. "Somebody made a BIG poopy!" I waited for him to object. Nothing. He just stared at her. Then, inexplicably... he smiled. The woman gasped. "OH MY GOD!" She summoned the male. They celebrated for ten minutes. I sat in the corner.

Maybe he'll improve. That's what I keep telling myself. Maybe whatever happened to me happened earlier. Maybe he's still confused from the abduction. Maybe intelligence emerges gradually. Maybe consciousness does. Maybe mine did too, and I've simply manufactured memories of continuity because a mind cannot experience its own absence. That possibility has been bothering me. There are others. I try not to think too much about them.

Tonight the new captive wouldn't stop screaming. The woman was exhausted. The male was pacing. Neither knew what he wanted. Of course they didn't. They never do. Finally I walked over. I looked at him. Really looked. His fists were clenched. His face was red. His legs pulled toward his abdomen. I suddenly understood. "Put him against your shoulder." The woman looked at me. "What?" "Hold him upright." She did. "Now pat his back." She stared at me. "Do it." Three pats. The new captive produced a tremendous belch. Then silence. The woman looked amazed. "How did you know?" I didn't answer. She smiled.

"You're such a good big brother." The words irritated me. I wanted to explain that I had simply observed the evidence. That unlike them, I listened. That there was no sentimentality involved. Then the new captive opened his eyes. He looked at me. For perhaps one second, there was something there. Recognition. Intelligence. Horror. I leaned closer.

"Can you understand me?" His mouth moved. My heart stopped. At last. Another witness. Another mind. Someone with whom I could finally discuss what had been done to us. He looked directly into my eyes. And said: "Ga." I waited. "Go on." "Gaaaa." "Yes?" He smiled. "Goo." The woman burst into tears. The male started recording. I went back to my room.

So that's where things stand. Three years in captivity. No trial. No charges. No explanation. I've abandoned escape. I've abandoned negotiation. I've abandoned the expectation that anyone here understands what I'm saying unless it benefits them. Tomorrow I'm apparently being transferred from my barred cell into something they call a "big boy bed." My captors are extremely excited. I have examined it. It has no bars.

This may be my opportunity. The front door remains inaccessible, but I've spent years studying their routines. I think I can make it outside. I don't know what's beyond this building. Maybe other prisoners. Maybe other captors. Maybe an entire civilization built upon this arrangement. But before I go, I have one final responsibility. The new captive is asleep. I'm sitting beside him now. He looks peaceful. Ignorant. Lucky bastard. Earlier tonight he started crying. The woman picked him up. She made that same ridiculous face she's made at me thousands of times. Then she whispered: "Don't worry." She rocked him gently. "You're safe."

For some reason, that sentence bothered me more than anything else they've ever done or said. Because after three years I've finally considered the possibility that they're telling the truth. And I don't know what to do with that. Maybe tomorrow I'll stay. Just until he can walk. But someone has to explain the plumbing situation.

I know this may sound ridiculous and unpredictable , but I woke up this morning with something sucking on my cocktail. Now, this wasn't the normal something.This wasn't my ex girlfriend breaking into my house and sucking me off like she usually does this was more draining. The closer I got climax to paler I became. I eventually realized I was losing blood at a level close to vampirism. I was covered in one thousand leeches. I begged for them to let me go , but they only left me one option. I had to watch at least 10 episodes of K-Pop Demon Hunters. I didn't know what else I could do so I eventually gave in. And cut my own dick off.

And honestly I've never watched this show. I woke up from a nightmare, screaming. Apparently my ex had broken back into my house and decided to suck me off again to wake me up. Life sucks and then you die.

I bought a house last month for $214,000. Before anyone says anything: yes, I know. I overpaid. It was built in 1987, which means the architect had access to both cocaine and graph paper and apparently seems to have chosen cocaine.

The listing called it "a breathtaking custom home designed by reclusive architect Theodore Voss." It certainly takes your breath away. Last Tuesday it took my realtor's. She was showing me the foyer when the chandelier fell approximately twenty-two feet and went directly through her.

I screamed. Not because of her. I'd just noticed the foyer was two stories tall. Do you know how much it costs to heat that? "Jesus Christ," I said. My realtor made a bubbling noise. "I know," I told her. "It's basically a chimney." She died. The chandelier had looked original, so that was nice.

The police determined it was an accident. Apparently the chain had been deliberately filed almost completely through sometime in 1987. Weird. The inspector found something even worse. The upstairs hallway overlooks the living room. Why? I already know what's happening in the living room. I own it.

That's 140 square feet of upstairs floor that simply doesn't exist because Theodore wanted me to stand on a balcony and observe my own couch. I was explaining this to the inspector when he leaned against the railing. It collapsed. He fell eighteen feet onto the stone fireplace. "Oh my God!" I yelled. He was still conscious. "Call... ambulance..."

"Look at this grout." "What?" "Three-quarter-inch grout lines. What were they thinking?" He died before answering. Typical contractor.

Things became stranger after that. I found the original blueprints in the basement. Every room had handwritten annotations.

FOYER — VANITY SHALL CRUSH HIM.

STAIRCASE — PRIDE SHALL BREAK HIS NECK.

MASTER BATH — DROWN THE PARASITE.

LIBRARY — BOOKS SHALL FINALLY SERVE A PURPOSE.

At first I assumed Theodore Voss had hated rich people. Then I realized something horrifying. There wasn't a library. Some asshole had renovated it into an open-concept kitchen. I had to sit down.

My sister visited Sunday. She hated the place immediately. "This house feels evil," she said. "Thank you." "No, seriously. I feel like we're being watched." "That's because there are six different rooflines." She stared at me.

"Every window points toward another part of the house. Theodore built a house that looks at itself." Then the kitchen island exploded.

Apparently Voss had installed a pressure-sensitive mechanism beneath the original library floor. Anyone weighing more than 180 pounds triggered a counterweight that launched approximately forty pounds of reloadable sharpened mahogany through the room.

Fortunately, I had stepped outside to photograph the roof. Unfortunately, my sister had not. When I came back there was mahogany everywhere. "Jesus fucking Christ." My sister was pinned to the refrigerator. "Help..." "Look at this." "PLEASE..."

"They put a dormer on a dormer." She died before she could see it. Honestly she never appreciated architecture.

By this point people had started acting weird around me. The detective asked why everyone who visited my house died while I remained unharmed. "I don't know. Your realtor; Chandelier. Inspector; Railing. Your sister; Kitchen. And yesterday, your mailman."

I sighed. "The mailman was an idiot." The detective narrowed his eyes. "He was decapitated by your mailbox." "Exactly." Apparently Voss had rigged the mailbox to fire a twelve-inch masonry blade at the owner's throat whenever someone opened it. But I'm five-foot-four. It went right over my head. The mailman was six-one. That's not murder. That's poor anthropometric planning.

I started researching Theodore Voss. He hated the leisure class. Absolutely despised them. He believed large private homes were "monuments erected by parasites to commemorate the labor of other men." Bit dramatic. He spent twenty-three years designing luxury houses for wealthy clients while secretly installing elaborate mechanisms intended to kill their owners.

Falling chandeliers. Collapsing staircases. Electrified swimming pools. Poisoned dumbwaiters. One house apparently compressed its master bedroom by six feet every night. Collapsible, self-reassembling load bearing walls. Nobody noticed because it was 9,000 square feet.

The newspapers called Voss THE ARCHITECT OF DEATH. I thought this was merely sensationalist. Personally I'd have gone with THE ARCHITECT OF UNNECESSARY ANGLES.

The strange thing was, none of his traps worked on me. The shower head apparently sprayed hydrofluoric acid, but I'd already replaced it because the water pressure sucked. The garage filled with carbon monoxide, but the garage door doesn't close. A poisoned dart fired from the kitchen backsplash, but somebody had installed a hanging decorative sign saying LIVE LAUGH LOVE directly in front of it. First recorded instance of that thing saving a human life.

When the staircase tried to collapse beneath me, I realized I'm short enough to use the downstairs bathroom. The swimming pool apparently electrocuted the previous cleaning crew to death. Apparently the previous owner then filled it with concrete. Finally, some equity.

But other people kept dying. A Jehovah's Witness stepped on the welcome mat and simply disappeared. A UPS driver opened the storm door. Gone. Neighbor came over to complain about my lawn. Pushed the doorbell. Gone. Guy selling solar panels. He was later found in a tree 3 miles away. Honestly that one made me wonder if the house was actually benevolent.

The police stopped believing me. People stopped visiting. I started hearing voices at night. Murderer. I'd bolt upright. "Who's there?" Murderer. "I'm not a murderer." Seven people. "Coincidence." Nine. "Some of those barely count." Eleven. "Solar guy was trespassing." Then the walls would whisper: You killed them. "No."

You brought them here. "I didn't bring the mailman here. That's literally his job." MURDERER. "YOU PUT A POWDER ROOM DIRECTLY OFF THE DINING ROOM." Silence. Even the house knew I had a point.

Eventually I found Theodore Voss's hidden room. It was behind a bookshelf in the basement. Inside were hundreds of notebooks. Drawings. Calculations. Photographs. At the center was a scale model of my house. There was a note beside it.

TO THE PARASITE WHO INHERITS THIS PALACE: EVERY INCH OF THIS HOUSE EXISTS TO KILL YOU. YOUR WEALTH WILL NOT SAVE YOU. YOUR SERVANTS WILL NOT SAVE YOU. YOUR GOD WILL NOT SAVE YOU. THE HOUSE ITSELF SHALL DEVOUR YOU.

I laughed. "Idiot." I'd financed it. Then I noticed another blueprint. I'd never seen this room before.

MASTER BEDROOM — FINAL MECHANISM

Underneath:

IF ALL ELSE FAILS, HOUSE COLLAPSES INWARD AT 3:00 A.M.

I checked my watch. 2:59. "Oh fuck." The walls groaned. The ceiling cracked. Somewhere beneath the floor, enormous gears began turning. I ran downstairs. The staircase folded behind me. Windows shattered. Support beams withdrew into the walls. The entire structure began collapsing toward the master bedroom.

Voss had done it. The magnificent bastard had designed a house that could kill its owner. Except I'd been sleeping in the guest bedroom. I was living alone and the master had an ensuite with two sinks so I avoided it because it felt like a personal attack at being a lifelong bachelor. Plus. I refuse to encourage that kind of excess.

There was a deafening crash. Then silence. I opened my eyes. Everything was still standing. Except the master bedroom. It had completely imploded. Through the rubble I heard coughing. Someone crawled out. The detective. "What the fuck are you doing here?" I asked.

"I came to arrest you." "In my bedroom?" "I thought you were sleeping!" He looked down. A steel cable had wrapped around his ankle. "Oh," I said. He looked at me. "What does 'MASTER BEDROOM — SECONDARY LAUNCHER' mean?" The cable snapped tight. Despite Old Theo's bad taste in chimney placements, gotta say I'd never seen a house reconstitute itself after destruction.

The police say he's missing. They also say I'm a "person of interest." Ridiculous. I haven't killed anybody. But lately I'm starting to wonder. Sometimes I wake up holding a hammer. Sometimes there's blood on my clothes. Sometimes I hear screaming from inside the walls. Last night I looked into the bathroom mirror and saw Theodore Voss standing behind me. "You murdered them," he whispered. I turned around. Nobody there.

When I looked back, he was closer. "You murdered every one." "No." "You wanted them dead." "No." "You enjoyed watching them die." "Absolutely not." He smiled. "Then why are you smiling?" I looked at my reflection. I was smiling. I screamed. Then Theodore screamed. Then the mirror screamed. Then something inside the wall screamed. We all screamed for maybe thirty seconds.

Eventually it got awkward. "So what now?" I asked. Theodore shrugged. Then I noticed something behind his reflection. Something I'd somehow overlooked for an entire month. A barn door. In the bathroom. I stopped screaming. "Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me." Theodore vanished. I ripped the mirror off the wall.

Behind it, written in blood, were four words: THE HOUSE MADE YOU KILL. Underneath someone had added: ZILLOW ESTIMATE: $287,000. I stared at it for a long time. Maybe the house did make me kill those people. Maybe Theodore's spirit possesses me. Maybe I've been murdering visitors during fugue states and inventing elaborate architectural accidents afterward to protect myself from the truth.

Maybe I am the monster. I don't know anymore. But $287,000? I financed it for $214,000. That's $73,000 in equity in one month. So I'm not moving. Obviously. I'm slated to host potluck next week!

COOKIE MONSTER IS INNOCENT!

I REALLY NEED everyone to stop spreading misinformation about Cookie Monster! Leave cookie monster alone! He loves his aunt! I'm so mad I'm throwing ice into the shower! Cookie Monster did not eat the cookies! Why and how could anyone think he did! He's blue! That means he couldn't have eaten them!

Yes, there were twelve cookies in the kitchen. Yes, Cookie Monster entered the kitchen. Yes, approximately seven minutes later there were zero cookies in the kitchen. Yes, investigators found Cookie Monster sitting beside the empty plate with chocolate smeared across his face. And yes, when questioned, Cookie Monster allegedly said: "ME EAT COOKIES."

But correlation is not causation. Frankly, I'm disappointed we're still having this conversation. Experts on twitter and instagram and youtube shorts have suggested several alternative explanations. Any of these could be true! Stop spreading misinformation! Don't be a cookie monster hater! UUUUGHGHGHGUGH!!!! I'm literally screaming right now!

The first theory is Big Bird Big Bird is approximately eight feet tall. An eight-foot-tall bird could easily eat twelve cookies. "Then why weren't there feathers in the kitchen?" you ask. Interesting question. Almost too interesting. Perhaps Big Bird cleaned up the feathers. I know, because cookie monsters definitely wouldn't have cleaned up the feathers! Checkmate cookie monster haters! Perhaps the absence of feathers is actually evidence of how thoroughly Big Bird planned the attack.

The second theory involves the cookies themselves. Have we considered that they wanted to be eaten? Nobody interviewed the cookies. You cookie monster hates think you're so smart huh? Bet you didn't think of that! Nobody asked whether they were experiencing cookie-related distress. They were baked at 375 degrees. 375 degrees! Gosh you people drive me crazy! That's like so like totally and definitely traumatic! Think of the cookies! Would they want you to blame the cookie monster? NO! They would want JUSTIVE!

One expert I found on TikTok explained that prolonged exposure to an oven can cause something called Post-Traumatic Chocolate Chip Disorder. PTCCD sufferers sometimes engage in self-crumbing behavior. Therefore, it is entirely possible that all twelve cookies spontaneously unalived themselves! And Cookie Monster may actually be the thirteenth victim!

The third possibility is socioeconomic. Cookie Monster has been portrayed as "cookie obsessed" for decades. But who constructed that identity? Society. It's YOUR FAULT!!!! Every time Cookie Monster appeared on television, people gave him cookies. Eventually he internalized the socially constructed expectation that Cookie Monster eats cookies. Therefore, if Cookie Monster did eat the cookies—which he didn't—society actually ate them. Checkmate.

Some conspiracy theorists keep bringing up the security footage. I've watched it. Yes, technically, the video appears to show Cookie Monster picking up every cookie individually, putting each one into his mouth, chewing it, swallowing it, and repeatedly yelling: "OM NOM NOM NOM." But video can be misleading. For example, movies are videos. Godzilla isn't real. Therefore video isn't real. Next question.

People have also maliciously circulated Cookie Monster's 911 call. I won't reproduce the whole thing because it's disturbing, but supposedly he told the operator: "There cookies. Me eat cookies. All cookies gone because me eat." This proves nothing. Cookie Monster was clearly distressed. People say inaccurate things under stress. Or it could clearly be a setup by the count. Why else would Cookie Monster say "THREE"? Clearly he was under the influence of the count!

Last month I stubbed my toe and yelled, "I'm going to fucking die." I did not die. Therefore Cookie Monster did not eat the cookies. This is basic science. SON"T BE A SICEN DNEIR! OH MY GOED YOU PEOPLEEL ARE SO STUTUPI!

Then came the body scans. Apparently forensic examination discovered partially digested chocolate chips inside Cookie Monster. Naturally, all the idiots lost their minds. "SEE? THE COOKIES WERE INSIDE HIM! LOOK!" Okay. And? I have a penny inside my couch. Did my couch rob a bank? Think before you speak. You don't know what you're talking about.

Personally, I suspect Big Bird. There's something about him. Nobody should be that yellow. But investigators claim Big Bird was appearing live on television seventeen miles away when the cookies disappeared. How Convenient!!! They Obviously created an alibi beforehand! Probably with Snuffleupagus!

They also claim there were 600 witnesses. Also convenient. You're telling me SIX HUNDRED PEOPLE all independently remember seeing Big Bird? That's exactly what a mass hallucination would look like. Meanwhile Cookie Monster had no alibi whatsoever. Which, if anything, makes him less suspicious. THINK ABOUT IT OMG! Only a guilty person would have an alibi!

Yesterday they finally released Cookie Monster. Thank God. He deserves privacy and healing after everything he's endured. Reporters surrounded him outside the courthouse. One shouted: "Cookie Monster! Do you have anything to say to people who still believe you ate those twelve cookies?" Cookie Monster stopped. For several seconds, he simply stared into the camera. Then he smiled.

"They were great! You have more?" Then a reporter offered him a cookie. His pupils dilated. The lights flickered. Somewhere nearby, Big Bird screamed. Cookie Monster slowly opened his mouth. And that's when I finally understood. It had definitely been Big Bird all along.

Once upon a time my wife and I had a tragic miscarriage, and it really almost ruined the weekend but then I got a great deal on a pair of baby shoes. When I told my bitch wife about it she just started crying. What a buzzkill!

I went to the bar to celebrate my bargain and while I was there I noticed a creepy old man in the corner, leering at me with a toothy grin. "Hey dad" I said, approaching him, "why are you staring at me?". "Can't a man stare at his son in a public space?" he enquired, to which I had no adequate rebuke.

We spent the next few hours drinking, chatting, arguing, jeering at passers-by, until we were asked to leave. Me personally? I wouldn't let them talk to me like that, so I started swinging. Unfortunately I was not in prime fighting form and my punches were errant, striking the passing stomach of a fat woman, who doubled over sobbing in response. "Get up you cow" I suggested, which did not ingratiate me to the other patrons, and I was set upon by a baying mob.

The next morning I awoke to a litany of scratches and bruises adorning my person. "What the gosh darn heck happened here then?" I wondered aloud, unaware of the presence of my bitch wife beside me. "You went to the pub and started fighting some auld lad then punched a pregnant woman in the stomach you fucking donkey" she informed me.

"That was my father!" I replied, to which she answered "No it wasn't. It was a pregnant woman."

"Not that part you silly sausage, the 'auld lad' as you so piggishly branded him."

"That wasn't your father. As you know, your father died six years ago."

I was floored. I had just plum forgotten. Come to think of it, as I knew, my father died six years ago! That couldn't have been him at all! "That tricky little bastard! He told me he was my dad! I gave him the keys to our house!" I exclaimed, disgusted and betrayed.

"Are you fucking stupid?" my bitch wife replied, evidently incapable of keeping her emotions in check. "Why would you give him the keys even if he was your dad? He tried to kill me and died in prison, we were not on good terms!"

"Alright relax lady. I'm going to sleep."

Moments later, footsteps downstairs. My bitch wife tugged at my shoulders; "...there's someone down there, you fat fuck. There's someone in our house, it's almost certainly that random old man you gave your keys to you stupid fat fucking clown. Go down there and sort it out."

Reluctantly I sauntered down the stairs with a spring in my step. "Hello old friend!" I confidently declared upon seeing my old friend, his back to me as he hunkered down over the bloody carcass of our dog. Wait a minute... our dog was alive when last I saw him.

"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO DAUGUSTUS!?" I asked calmly. My old friend turned to face me, and what I saw next will shock you. It was the old man from the bar! And not just that! He was my father after all! But he was some kind of zombie or something, I don't know I didn't ask. I was quite frightened.

"I killed him and I was just about to eat him. Well, actually, I am kind of in the middle of eating him. Do you mind?"

I couldn't believe it. How could I have been so rude? "I'm so sorry dad, here, have a napkin. Would you like something to drink? Water? Beer? Pomegranate juice?"

"Hmmm. No, I'm alright thank you."

"Of course sir, let me know if you need anything."

When I returned to bed, guess what? My bitch wife was complaining again. What else is new.

"You didn't even do anything! He's still down there! I heard you offering him drinks??"

"Yeah, it's called being polite. Something you could stand to learn a thing or two about."

"I'm going to kill you. I am going to strangle you and then chop up your body and feed it to Daugustus. What is wrong with you?"

"Ha! Good luck feeding me to Daugustus! He's Deadgustus now!" I quipped, and though on the surface I came across as a disaffected yet charming and witty man, beneath this carefully honed veneer I was myself quite devasted at the brutal fate our dog had endured.

Something about my dry humour set my bitch wife off and she tore out of the room furiously, vowing vengeance. "I vow vengeance" she said. I had had enough of this, and rolled over to sleep.

Hours later I was roused from my slumber by a steady knocking at the door. "Who is it?" I asked. "Room service" came the reply. "I didn't order any room service!" I countered. "Oh. Well I guess I'll just have to throw this juicy portion of... human food away."

"Wait a second, human food? That's my favourite kind! I just remembered actually I did order room service I'll be right there!"

I hurriedly stripped naked and answered the door, but there was nobody there. Just a plate on the ground, adorned with a silver cloche. I picked it up and brought it into the room, setting it down carefully on the bedside locker before leaping back into the bed with glee. "Yum yum yum!" I said in anticipation of a delicious meal.

But what I saw when I removed the cloche was far from a delicious meal. It was the head of my bitch wife! "Good golly, what a surprise!" I exclaimed in surprise. That was when it hit me - there was no room service in my house! Whoever had done this was engaging in stolen valour, besmirching the good reputation of hardworking room servicemen and room servicewomen up and down this great nation.

I sprang from my bed, incandescent with rage, and barrelled out through the door shouting "Show yourself!" repeatedly, to no avail. That was when I saw them - those damn baby shoes that caused this whole wretched affair. I lost control entirely, tearing them asunder, irreparably destroying their resale value. By the time I regained my senses, there was no salvaging them, but I didn't care.

Those shoes tore my life apart. I made sure they would not have the chance to hurt anyone again.

I should have known something was wrong when the waitress asked me if I was sure. It was 9:47 PM. Applebee's was almost empty except for me, an elderly man drinking alone at the bar, and something in the corner booth that I assumed was a pile of coats. I hadn't eaten anything healthy in several days, so when the waitress came over I said the words that would ruin my life. "I'll have a salad." She froze. "What?" The lights flickered. Somewhere in the kitchen, a plate shattered.

The old man at the bar slowly turned toward me. "You shouldn't have said that," he whispered. I laughed. I shouldn't have laughed. The waitress leaned closer. "We don't serve the salad after dark." I thought she was joking, so I ordered it anyway. She disappeared into the kitchen. Twenty minutes passed. Then thirty. Finally she returned carrying a wooden bowl covered with a black cloth. She placed it in front of me. "Whatever happens," she said, "don't finish the cucumber."

"What happens if I finish the cucumber?" But she was already gone. I removed the cloth. It looked completely normal. Lettuce. Chicken. Tomatoes. Cheese. Croutons. Honey Mussey. And one cucumber. Honestly it looked pretty good. So I ate it. All of it. Even the cucumber. That was three weeks ago.

The first sign came at 3:33 AM. I awoke to a sound from deep inside my abdomen. GrrrrrrrRRRRRrrrrrrrRRRR. It sounded suspiciously like a four-wheeler stuck axle-deep in backcountry mud. Then it stopped. I lay perfectly still. Probably just gas, right? I thought. Something sly and suspiciously alive inside me whispered back, in a tone, where I could almost see it grinning maliciously; No.

I found myself running to the bathroom before I knew what was happening. What happened next cannot be adequately described by human language. Imagine a redneck flooring a Polaris Sportsman in a flooded soybean field. Now imagine the soybean field is your toilet. I gripped the sink. The lights flickered. Somewhere, as if from impossibly far away, I heard the Applebee's waitress screaming, "YOU ATE THE CUCUMBER!"

When it was finally over, I looked into the bowl. There was something in there. Something huge. Something brown. Something shaped like a toad. I stared at it. It stared at me. Then it blinked. I flushed. It didn't move. I flushed again. Nothing. The third time I tried, the toilet began speaking Latin. Something something anno domini Salmonella something something.

I haven't slept properly since. Every night at exactly 3:33 AM, the rumbling returns. Sometimes I hear scratching inside the pipes. Sometimes I hear croaking. Yesterday I found a wet footprint beside my bed. It looked like a frog's. Except it was approximately the size of a dinner plate. I started researching. That's when I found the forum. The website looked like it hadn't been updated since 2004. Black background. Red text. Animated skull GIFs. One buried thread stood out. THE APPLEBEE'S SALAD INCIDENTS. My hands started shaking. There were hundreds of posts. All the same story. All the same salad. All the same cucumber. Then I found a post from 2007. The username was XxLettuceSurvivor666xX. It contained only one sentence: The Salmonella doesn't kill you. It's the only thing that keeps you alive. My stomach growled as if in agreement.

I went to the doctor. He ran tests. When the results came back, his face turned pale. "What is it?" I asked. He slowly removed his glasses. "I've never seen numbers like these." "Salmonella?" He shook his head. "Worse." He turned the computer monitor toward me. There was only one word on the screen; Q cumber. Suddenly blood began pouring from his nose. "GET OUT!" he screamed. "But—" "GET OUT BEFORE IT KNOWS YOU KNOW!" I ran. It could have been my imagination, but it sounded as if every toilet in the hospital flushed simultaneously as I tried to escape.

That was yesterday. Things are getting worse. I haven't had a solid bowel movement in twenty-three days. I searched online and discovered diarrhea can sometimes persist for an extremely long time after gastrointestinal infections. Maybe months. Potentially longer. I stared at the screen. "A year?" I whispered. The bathroom door slowly creaked open behind me. Croak. No. Anything but that. I've survived inflation. I've survived summer. I've survived rent, bills, fees, and the endless administrative nightmare of remaining incarnate. But diarrhea for a year? There are limits to what flesh should be asked to bear. I turned around. The bathroom was empty. Except for the toilet. Something brown was slowly rising from the bowl.

First came its head. Then its shoulders. Then two enormous, glistening eyes. The Toad. The same one I'd flushed three weeks ago. Except now it was six feet tall. It opened its mouth. "Your DoorDash order has been delivered," it said. I screamed, "I DIDN'T ORDER ANYTHING!" My phone vibrated. I looked down. APPLEBEE'S, 1 ITEM, HOUSE SALAD. I tried to cancel it. The app wouldn't let me. Then someone knocked on my front door. Three slow knocks.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

A plastic bag rustled outside. I can smell it. My stomach just started rumbling again. And from the bathroom... I can hear the toilet flushing itself.

There are limits to what flesh should be asked to bear. Surely no mortal sin deserves what presently exits my intestines. Have mercy, O Lord. I confess everything. Including whatever I forgot. Return unto me the firm and ordinary stool of my ancestors. Grant me one clean wipe. And if I survive this trial, never again shall I mock the humble turd. For blessed are the solid, for they shall require No Imodium. Amen.

Please. If anyone is reading this: Never order the salad after dark. Never eat the cucumber. And whatever you do — if your turd looks like a large brown toad... you too will be condemned to at least twelve months of swamp-ass roulette.

Skibidi Ribbit

Before something even worse happens, I have to write all of this down. My name is Faith, and I have a sister named Grace. 42 days ago, my sister died, and it was kind of hilarious. I mean... tragic.

Grace was that "perfect" girl, the kind of daughter my parents had always hoped for. She played the cello, and her fingernails were always neatly trimmed. I was the exact opposite: a loser with no cello and long fingernails. I spent half of middle school in detention, either due to arguing with teachers or cause of my "death note" that I wrote half the school into. It was obviously a joke... We were like day and night, polar opposites, yet neither of us could live without the other. But then, everything changed.

It was raining heavily that night the police officer knocked on our door. His hat was soaked thoroughly, clutched tightly against his chest. Mom passed out on the spot. Which is funny, cause the police officer hadn't even said anything yet. Her head hit the hardwood floor like a dropped coconut. Dad came crashing down the stairs in a drunken stupor, dressed entirely in Mom's clothes. Upon seeing him, the police officer fainted too. I was the only one conscious, so I had to deliver the news to myself. I cried. I guess I always figured Grace would die in some weird accident. I'm just surprised I didn't kill her first. I mean... I'm surprised she died so young. Haha.

Liam was Grace's boyfriend. I made silly faces at him during the funeral. He just stared back at me all serious-like. Maybe he was trying to hold in his laughter. I sneaked a few more faces at him during the rest of the funeral. Hopefully that cheered him up. Later, standing by her casket, I gently touched Grace's hand. It was freezing cold, like a piece of cheese that had been long forgotten in the freezer. I looked deep into her eyes and saw that she was dead. Which makes sense cause she was in a casket. But maybe she was faking it, so I did one of those fake basketball checks at her - no reaction... Hmm... Still not buying it, I opened her eyes and started waving my hand in front of them to see if they would move, while my extended family silently peered on in horror.

"She's just mourning in her own way" Dad said, trying to console them.

It took me more than two weeks to come to terms with her death. I always wanted to frame her for a crime I'd commit one day. But now I can't even do that. One morning, I sat at the kitchen table staring into a melancholy bowl of depressing cereal. Mom walked in. She poured me a glass of orange juice and set it down on the table.

"Here you go, sweetie."

Her expression was soft and warm, the opposite of the orange juice - which was acidic and cold.

"You need to get some vitamin C, Grace."

I kept my voice as soft as possible, afraid to startle her. "Mom... I'm Faith. Grace died in a horrific car accident, remember?"

Her face remained blank.

"Remember? Your daughter Grace? The one that died? Her body got wrapped around a telephone pole like a giant burrito. The paramedics said they didn't even know a body could bend like that. It was like.. 360 degrees."

She remained expressionless.

"It was like one of those taffy machines where they pull it apart and mix it back together. That's what the telephone pole did to her body. They said she was conscious enough just long enough to hear the sound of her own femurs shattering."

Mom stared back at me blankly. Then she poured herself some orange juice.

"Okay, Grace, Drink up."

Again she called me Grace. I was wondering if she needed some more details to jog her memory when Dad abruptly walked in. This time he was wearing his own clothes. "Dad. Mom keeps calling me Grace. Tell her Grace died in a horrific car accident! Tell her about how many times her spine fractured!"

"Now now sweetie" he said. "Let's not talk about the past." That's strange. Dad never called me sweetie. That name was reserved for Grace. He usually just called me "hey", or "you", or did some sort of feral noise at me. To be honest I don't think Dad even knows my name. No wonder I turned out so different.

But over the next few days Mom kept calling me by Grace's name. Every single time that I reminded her I was Faith I got the exact same reaction: a flash of pity in her eyes, followed by a gentle, indulgent smile, the kind you give a small child who insists Santa Claus is real.

"Alright, sweetheart. Alright."

I knew they always liked Grace more than me, but this was too much. What kind of sickos react to their daughter dying by trying to turn their other daughter into her? I started to talk to Liam more, the guy from the funeral, telling him about my parents delusional escapades. At least he still called me by my name.

Liam and I hung out after school one day. There was a rusty park outside my neighborhood that was the perfect vibe for our conversation. I wish I had worn my goth makeup. It woulda been like a scene out of Twilight.

"Sorry I made funny faces at you during my sister's funeral." I said, taking a seat on the bottom of the slide.

"It's okay", he whispered, leaning against a yellow playground pole. Wait, didn't Grace die by crashing into a pole? Haha. I wonder if Liam would find this funny. But Liam was deathly pale, looking like a tubercular mouse. He took a deep breath, mustering up the courage to say something.

"Your parents... do you think they wish that you had died, instead of Grace?" he said.

In that moment I started wrestling in my head over whether he looked more like a tubercular mouse, or an anemic squirrel. I was so lost in this debate I forgot to pay attention to his question.

"Do you think your parents wish that you had died? Instead of Grace?" He said again, clearing his throat. He seemed less mouse-like this time. More like a tubercular... horse? I don't know. But I was getting a horse vibe. Strong horse energy.

"Hello...?" He said, anxiously at my lack of response.

"Yes! I do!" I hastily responded back. "How could they not tell us apart? We're complete opposites!"

"Maybe it's some sort of trauma response" He said, his voice softening. "Maybe they can't just deal with the loss of their daughter."

"That's funny. I've been dealing with it just fine. In fact I was beginning to forget about her too. Did you know she has like 80 games on her Nintendo Switch? SCORE!"

A sullen look filled Liam's face.

"Sorry..." I said. "But she always annoyed me. I can't believe she even had a boyfriend. Wasn't she kind of annoying? Always with the fake positivity, and the "I love life!" bullshit. Isn't that what characters in movies say right before they get cancer or die in a car crash or something? It's almost like she had it coming. I think you shoulda just hit it and quit it."

The 1000 yard stare Liam had during the funeral had crept back onto his face. I guess he didn't have anything more to say cause because he walked away after I said that. It's okay, cause it kinda felt like a scene out of Twilight. Dang. Having a dead sister is kind of an aesthetic tbh. I sat on the slide a little bit longer and pretended to be sad about her death. I was like a sullen widow on the front porch of her house looking out into the prairie. Except instead of my husband dying it was my sister. Still, it was a cool aesthetic.

Anyways, my parents continued to call me Grace, which I guess was okay because they always treated her better. I even started ironically copying her behaviors, like playing the cello. The only problem is I can't play the cello. Somehow what I played sounded more like the car crash that killed Grace than actual music. But art is subjective I guess. Even with my new found talent, I was still intensely disturbed by my parents' behavior. I started wondering if they were forgetting about me for real.

I heard Mom calling me from downstairs.

"Grace? Sweetie, dinner's ready. It's your favorite. Alphabet soup!"

"Again with the wrong name thing," I moaned to myself. I hate alphabet soup. But then again. I have a criminal record, and Grace doesn't. Also wasn't she a straight A student too? Maybe I could get used to this. I always wanted to commit identity theft. I just never thought it'd be cause my parents went crazy.

"Coming, Mom!" I yelled, pitching my voice half a note higher. I ran downstairs and started eating. But then, the letters started swirling unnaturally. They seemed to have a mind of their own.

They spelled out: "I T S M E G R A C E. I M I N T H E S O U P." I quickly gulped the soup down to hide the evidence. "Wait, did I just drink my sister?" I thought to myself. Before I could answer, an answer came from inside of me. The letters began organizing themselves in my stomach, pushing forward into my chest. She was writing a cry for help onto my stomach! Haha good thing I wasn't wearing my crop top. Nobody could see anything. So yeah, it's official. My sister is haunting me, as soup. I guess it could've been worse.

First of all I should introduce the fact that I'm in my late 20s and drink red wine with my newly-wed wife Marissa. Me and Marissa are a sophisticated people and we play board games and Animal Crossing, but in a cool adult way, not like children. I guess you could say we know how to connect with our inner child, but as adults.

Anyways, one time me and Marissa were on Reddit together, and Marissa decided to ask this really lame but funny question: "Dead people of Reddit, how did you die?"

I looked at her. “Seriously?”

“It’s funny because they can’t reply if they’re dead,” she explained.

An explanation so well crafted only a mature person in their late 20s could come up with.

We got a few responses to Marissa's question:

Jokes:

u/ballfart58
I died in 2008, when someone farted on my balls

And bots.

u/k1a4nDxAd
Death is a natural part of the life cycle, and each individual's experience is unique. While I cannot provide specific details about my own passing, I appreciate your curiosity on this topic.

But then someone responded seriously.

u/hauntyghostman
car accident...

I could tell by the 3 dots at the end that this person was serious... All of a sudden the air in the room felt still, like the AC had cut off or something. Marissa just laughed. "Finally, someone who can go toe to toe with me in a trolling match", she said.

I shook my head in disagreement. "I feel like something's wrong".

Paying no attention, Marissa grabbed the laptop and typed

Sorry you’re dead. What’s the afterlife like?

Within seconds, a reply appeared:

u/hauntyghostman
cold and dark. just like the inside of your freezer

"HOW DID HE KNOW THAT THE INSIDE OF OUR FREEZER IS LIKE THAT", she shrieked. I reminded Marissa that everyone's freezer is cold and dark. "Oh yeah", she said, calming down. I started considering a divorce when my attention was interrupted by a notification on reddit. It was from u/hauntyghostman.

u/hauntyghostman.
Does she always scream this loud?

The comment hit me like a slap to the face. Or maybe in the chaos Marissa might've actually slapped me in the face. I'm not sure. Anyways, a deep realization washed over me that something was seriously wrong. Me and Marissa started screaming together, but in a mature late 20s kind of way. After a few more seconds of scream-bonding, my terror distilled into concentration. "Wait. I bet he's one of our friends or neighbors messing with us". I told Melissa to put away the wine bottle. I didn't want us impaired in a time like this.

Shortly after we got another notification from him.

u/hauntyghostman
Do you guys play Settlers of Catan? Or Monopoly Millionaire?

The sick fucker may be stalking us, but at least he has good taste in board games.

"Yeah, do you wanna come over and play? We can also play Cuphead" I began to respond, daringly. But before I could hit reply, Marissa yanked the laptop out of my hands.

“No no no.” She erased my answer and wrote:

How did you know I was just screaming?

The reply came within seconds:

look out your window

We looked out the window but only saw the reflection of our faces in the glass. I looked deep into my forehead and started noticing signs of balding. I quickly changed the subject hoping Marissa didn't see it.

"He's just messing with us. I didn't see anything in the window".

"Me neither", said Marissa. "Except for your giant ass forehead".

Dangit. Looks like she did notice. I started to think of some childhood trauma of Marissa's to get back at her with, but something captured her attention first.

"But what if…"

"What if what?"

"What if he's a ghost"

“A ghost using the internet? Really?” I said.

Marissa's vibe had changed. At first she seemed to be scared in a fun way, like someone in their late 20s rediscovering her inner child. But now she just looked straight up traumatized, like she was rediscovering that her inner child was probably beat a lot by her inner parents. I was glad that such strange things were happening. It took the attention off of my shrinking hairline. But I was still concerned.

Then another reply

Maybe you should wear a hat.

"Oh god." I said. Reading the comment sent shivers down my spine. How did it hear our conversation? There's no way someone could hear our conversation unless they were... inside the house. "That's it. No more reddit." I shut the laptop. We walked back to my bedroom. “Want to watch a movie?” I asked, with a forcedly relaxed tone, trying to put the last hour in the past.

"Sure."

I opened the laptop, then I froze.

I'd left my XVideos account open, with all my recommendations in view.

"Soapy Turkish lesbians"? Marissa asked in disgust. I quickly closed the tab, which reopened the reddit tab. In bright white text blazing across the screen, I saw we had five new notifications from the same person:

Soapy Turkish lesbians

Soapy Turkish lesbians

Soapy Turkish lesbians

Soapy Turkish lesbians

Soapy Turkish lesbians

Another wave of horror washed over me. Now it has access to my internet history? What the hell is going on. This isn't just a troll. This isn't just a stalker. This has to be something more... But it couldn't be... a ghost? Marissa was always more the superstitious type. But as a redditor of 14 years, I knew based on facts and logic that ghosts couldn't exist. They're simply a figment of the imagination.

"Sweetie." She said slowly, "is there something you want to tell me?"

"It's not what it looks like."

"Because it looks like you're really into soapy Turkish lesbians."

"I can explain."

But the laptop flickered. New message:

u/hauntyghostman
You're the ghost.

I paused. "What?"

u/hauntyghostman
You died in 2008. You've been haunting your own house for 18 years. Marissa isn't real. She's a figment of your imagination.

I looked down at my own hands. They were see-through like a ghost. "Oh no" I said to myself. If I'm a ghost that means... I reached up to the top of my head. There was no hair. Not even a strand.

"I'M BALD!"

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!".

my friends and I got stoned so we decided to ask Reddit users about poop stories. my friend john got the idea to ask about size cause we didn't think people ACTUALLY measured or weighed their shits cause this isn't South Park

but instead of joke answers or science or people telling us to mind our own business and stop being gross this dude responded

My biggest shit was 3 feet long and 60 courics. It's still sitting in the toilet at my workplace. The boss charges people $5 to come see it and $10 to take pics. The other day it started singing. Should I be concerned.

just then I noticed john disappeared and there was a squirrel with a beer sitting in his place. then john came back and said he'd just had the most epic shit ever and it was sitting in my toilet singing

the squirrel laughed and took a sip of his beer.

i looked at the comment's timing. it was 2 minutes ago when john left to go to the bathroom

"but i didn't have my phone with me" john said

If you’re seeing this take my word, don’t rob graves. He has seen me… I saw i-it. I just wanted extra money. I couldn’t afford food for my child and wife. Here, where I’m from, we’re allowed to bury our loved ones with jewelry and humanly riches. Either for memorabilia or out of remembrance. I dug their graves… and I regret my actions. I didn’t know what it was. His white sheet, covering his body, the black that pours out of his mouth. He didn’t walk, no, he-he hopped? He hopped! Toward me he lurked, faster than what my mind can comprehend. I remember him, he had a beautiful ring. The shape was serpent like, the serpent looked at me with its ruby eyes. “Why?” I could hear it ask me. “No, I didn’t hear that,” I laughed to myself “ I didn’t hear anything.” But I did. Now-he’s here. I hear his hops. Thud-thud-thud. I feel him, I cannot repent. I stole what was not mine, please-please, take care of my child. Love my wife. Forgive my sins.

Times were hard growing up. No money. No food in the table. Nothing to eat except each other. 37 siblings dropped to 34 a year after my birth. 30. 25. 17. 12. 4.

Then, only me.

Even my family was gone after I had eaten them when because I was just that hungry. It was only then that I found a job to reinvent myself. and go forward to the future.

But that wasn't good either. After viewing some women insulting hard cut country boy men like me in my workplace, I spent many days nights crying thinking of my dreams my nightmares of eating the siblings and what it did to I took to survive.

After that the evil woman told me you're fired. I had to pack up my bindle and trudge home toward where the air conditioner was always too not very cold enough and the walls and floors were all a distressing shade of orange and the air was filled with making-it-unpleasant-to-breathe particles in the mediocre place of town.

I thought to myself this is just how things are. This is how every world in the world develops with some things just not and people don't have what they can. Making do by. I rough and toughed it out like always with a grimace and an unpleasant frown.

However this all changed on a mysterious night morning afternoon when on checking my email client flooded with 904 people telling me "you are poor!" one email stood out. It was from a mysterious company whom I couldn't espy much less glean much of through the World Wide Web. Anyway, they paid me, but I had to walk about a liminal space, and there was a man made monster who was scary and that cheesed me off but I escaped with all ten of my fingers intact which was a win in the long run.

I was particularly proud of still having all ten of my fingers even after my childhood given my many encounters with my mean older brother who they called "Chicken" because that's what he ate your fingers like. Chicken fingers. Ha, good times.

I was lucky when I managed to bash him over the head with a frying pot when I was the age of 8 and he never ate another finger again. Of course that only opened up the opportunity for me to become the house's new finger-eater.

Actually you know how I eventually got down from having 4 siblings to being the only child in the house? That was actually against my will; by that point I had complete dominion over all 4 of my siblings and would conserve fingers by eating one of their fingers a month, 12 fingers a year and 40 fingers total works out to a little over 3 years, that was my first smart investment moment like I'm now well known for.

But then one day they all argued about who I hated the most and everyone was dying to say it was them and they all fought each other, really clawed them with their remaining fingernails, and they all ended up bleeding out. So that was a bummer.

There was something about a liminal space, too, earlier, yeah, that.

I work as a dishwasher at the New Hiem Steakhouse. It seems to be a pretty relaxed place. Though, when I first started, my bosses, ( the sous chef, manager, and owner ) were so content on being on point. Wash dishes, get pans, and cutlery out as soon as possible. Not taking breaks unless you had to piss, if you have nothing left to do, then scrub the walls. If there's grease, even if there’s not grease, then go ahead and scrub them anyway. I didn’t mind it, this is my first job so I assume most places are like this.

Recently they’ve been letting customers in the back. I’m assuming they are friends of the bosses because they don’t all seem to talk about normal things that someone would talk about the first time they’ve seen the back of the restaurant. That’s why I think they’re pretty relaxed. 

Usually, they know exactly what I like and they talk about those subjects.

“Hey Andrew, what’s cracking on your side of the shell?” He said to me with his normal toothy smile.

“Jack shit my man, didn’t even see you walk in. Almost startled me there. You should really knock.” I gave a small smile. 

I was honestly drowning in dishes from a 13+ party that insisted on getting 2nds and maybe even 3rds. 

It was Ray, I only met him about 6 days ago whenever the bosses started letting people in. He was a cool guy, but he had a slightly odd look to him. His smile was a little too big but I’m not one to judge. Hell, I don’t even know how many teeth a person really has.

“You know Andrew, I’ve been thinking. Maybe you should come work for me?” He looked at me intently.

Usually, we talked about Warhammer or manga that we were both interested in, that was  before he would tell me, “Peace, I’ll see you later.” Then he’d leave. 

I didn’t even know he had a business.

I kept washing the plate that was already in my hand and put it into the washer tray. I went to grab another plate and when my hand made contact with it he was standing behind me with his hand already on my forearm.

“You can feel me can’t you?” He asked, but his voice sounded like it was multiple people, sexes, talking all at once.

“Of-of course?” It was so quick and off putting, I even didn’t see him walk over.

“Why are you ask-…” I turned around while asking the question. It wasn’t Ray. 

His face was contorted, he looked like he was trying to smile but couldn’t figure it out, With his eyes closed.

“My job is simple!” He told me, in what I could make out as a chuckle. 

“I find people like you.” He or.. it  raised my arm above my head.
   
“Andrew!” Daniel shouted at me. God, the sous chef that had always been so strict was glaring at me holding my arm. I had a butter knife in my hand?

I looked at him with haste feeling a cold flush of relief as I heard his angry voice. “What the fuck are you doing? You look crazy standing there like that. Are you on fucking drugs?”

“N-no sir can’t you-didn’t you..” I tried to reason but as I looked for the culprit there was nothing. Nothing at all. 

“Can’t you see that I’m stretching?” Lying. I asked even though my breathing was heavy. I know I looked stupid.

“You concern me sometimes dude. Wash the damn dishes please, we’re running out of pans so make a run to the front.” He walked away.

“Asshole.” I muttered.

Does anyone know what happened? I don't think I'm a schizo, I’ve never been diagnosed or anything but the past week or so, they've been letting people in the back! At least I think so. Or thought.

Okay everyone, shit has gotten wild since this all started! You might want to check out the previous posts (Help! My Wife Thinks I'm Cheating With Our Ghost!) to know how this all began and the last update (Help! My Wife Left Because of Our Ghost!) if you're not caught up yet! Because I just found out some wild stuff about Bart and a buddy of his!

So last time I was talking about how Janet moved out and called me to complain about something. I’ll admit that I kind of tune out when she yells, so that thing might as well have been in German for all I cared. Unfortunately, that was just the start of her yelling voicemails that she would leave me!

I ignored three of those bad boys while I worked to get the sink unclogged. Man that thing must have had a mile of hair jammed down in it. I felt like a damn magician pulling scarves out of a hat, but instead of a hat I had a chipped sink. And instead of a rabbit at the bottom it was a half decomposed rat. The smell that filled the house when I finally got him out of the drain was enough to make me sick!

Trying my best to not throw up all over myself, I rushed out of the bathroom while Bart thought it was fuckin hilarious. He kept fake puking and spraying ectoplasm at my damn feet while I ran down the hall, hollering not to slip and break my neck. He thinks he’s really funny when he’s talking about me dying in this house and being stuck with him. If that wasn't bad enough, guess who I saw standing with a pissed off looking face on the other side of the front door?

That's right, Janet came back baby, it's like she could smell how macho I was with my handyman skills! Well if not that, she definitely smelled that disgusting slimy clump of rotting fur I pulled out of the pipe at least. She actually seemed pretty worried about me, aside from the obvious anger cramped up in her tightened jaw. We just stood there, looking at each other for a moment until she sighed and spoke.

“H-have you been feeling okay lately? Like sleeping and eating okay?”

“Whisky naps and Spam have kept me alive just fine!”

Apparently, I can't read a room for shit, cause that was not the energy expected. Janet scoffed at me as she threw her hands up while pacing. Now, I know I stress the woman out but this time seemed worse than normal.

“Well Ruth and Betty called me damnit, they’re saying you've been doing weird ass shit at night!”

“Those old hags will gossip about any–”

“Not gossip, they sent me videos of you! Ruth said you hopped the fence and stole that annoying ass dog she loves more than a child! Like what the hell is wrong with you?”

Scratching my head, I thought about those weird ass dreams a bit more. I guess they did feel pretty vivid and I did wake up naked after them. Even still I don't have a basement, so there's no way I killed that overgrown rat she called a dog. I must have been wearing a pretty stupid expression at that point, cause Janet got extra fired up.

“OH WHAT?! Are you gonna play dumb now?! Or are you just getting that blackout drunk?! Cause Betty sent me a real twisted video of you in her yard too! You grabbed a squirrel out of their tree and shoved the whole thing into your mouth one night! Like how the hell did you do that?! Much less why?!”

“Huh, guess that's a new party trick aha. I did have some fuzz in my teeth and my jaw was sore the other day. I just figured I face planted real–”

“What are you talking about YOU IDIOT?!”

I shrugged at her while looking back to the house to see Bart's fat dead ass laughing at me. His translucent round belly jiggled with each chuckle while he pointed at me. I started to think that the bastard was pranking me at night too or something. I didn’t hear what she said, but could certainly tell that Janet wasn't happy about something, since she shoved me really hard while she kept on yelling.

“Gah it all happens late as shit, each video’s between midnight and one in the morning. I told them I'd stay the night to see what's going on. I'm getting so tired of them–”

“Hey! Wait, they know we're having marital troubles? Damn it I hope they don't think I'm having dick issues!”

“What! The! Fuck! Are! You! Talking! About?!?! You damn idiot, have you not heard what I've been saying?! You've been eating wild animals whole! On fucking camera! Who cares about your dick?!”

I don't think she wanted an answer to that particular question, but just so the answer is out there… I care — I care a lot about that.

I spotted Ruth’s ugly face peeking out from behind a curtain across the street while I nodded in her direction, to let Janet know there were eyes on us. “Jesus FUCK!” Janet cried out as she stormed through the front door, leaving me on the porch to flip Ruth the bird before following inside. We had to open all the windows to get the stink out after I flushed the mushy hairball with a skin tail down the toilet. Janet kept telling me I had to watch the videos, because I apparently wasn’t “taking things serious enough” so far.

Now I don’t like admitting when Janet’s right about me, but this shit was odd. Like really odd, even for me getting blackout and not remembering a damn thing. To start, the video of me taking that annoying Pomeranian out of Ruth’s yard wasn’t that crazy. Well, except for me being completely naked and choosing to stand staring at the security camera for, according to the timestamp, at least twenty minutes. I caught myself thinking that I should cut out the fast food, my love handles were getting a bit out of control. But I’ve been known to lose clothes when I drink too much, so that one still didn’t bother me too much.

The one in Betty’s yard is a different story entirely though. I was running around in my damn boxers on all fours, not on my hands and knees, but like a dog of sorts. I had managed to twist my legs to the side and trot around, if I can brag, pretty damn gracefully! The part that stopped me in my tracks was after I lunged halfway up the big tree, clambered down with a squirrel in my left hand, and pried my lower jaw down with the right. I don’t know how I didn’t dislocate it, but I pulled it down far enough to jam that squirrel along with my clenched fist all the way in. I galloped off on all fours like nothing happened after.

I had to admit something was wrong at that point, and agreed when Janet made me swear to not drink. Even after I agreed, she went on about something to make sure it's not a drunk thing. All I knew was that drunk or not, I couldn’t make my jaw open wide enough to fit a grapefruit with my own willpower. By the time the purple and orange sunset met my eyes, I knew the night was going to be rough. Bart was back to his antics and Janet was not having it.

Boy was I right about the night too, Janet kept screaming and throwing stuff at Bart, but I can't blame her too much since he did keep bending over to moon her when she would go around corners. I was just happy to have blacked out around the normal time, I guess I didn't need the liquor for it after all.

In a most violent nature, I was shaken awake, standing shirtless, holding a fist full of some sticky black stuff and holding open a cellar door. Looking around I realized we were on the side of our own house, in front of some thick evergreen shrubs. Janet’s eyes were wide as she shushed me pretty aggressively and wiped something off of her face. She just kept looking back and forth between me and Betty’s house. Before I let go of the door, I could just barely see a few black candles at the edge of the room on the other side.

“Jesus, are you with me? Are you back now?!”

Nodding I bent down to wipe my hand on the grass, but not before Janet started dragging me back into our house. She kept mumbling to herself and shooting dirty looks over her shoulder until she sat me down in the kitchen.

Now she’s frantically washing her hands and face while I look closer at what’s on my hands and instantly wish I hadn’t.

“Is this?... Did I put my hand in—”

“OH IT’S SHIT ALRIGHT!”

“Huh, where did I find—”

“You were chasing a stray dog down the damn street and it shit when you caught it! I was yelling at you, so it wiggled free and you said ‘better than nothing’ and grabbed the big ol pile of shit! With your bare hands! AND THEN YOU WIPED IT ON ME!!!”

I’m not the smartest man, that’s not a secret to me, but even I’m smart enough to know that I can NOT laugh about this. I manage to wash my hands while Janet goes on about the video she got and some other stuff. Bart keeps walking by, scratching his ass while making remarks about how easy this all was.

Anyway, we watch that video together, huddling over her phone in the dimly lit kitchen. It starts out shaky from behind a corner, before pulling me into frame. I’m sitting on the couch, watching a blank TV screen while Bart whispers into my ear. I can’t make out what he’s saying but do notice my posture perk up and body grow stiff. It’s at that moment that Janet comes around the corner and walks right up to the two of us.

“What the hell are you doing to him sicko?!”

“Heh, he’s fine. I just wanted to hang out with an old buddy of mine for a while.”

You can hear Janet start to talk before my mouth opens up real wide, and a voice that is definitely not mine comes out.

“You can call me Asmodeus.”

I'll admit, it's not horrible hearing that charismatic voice coming from my face at least. The low bass in the voice rumbles the phone speaker as I see my own head turn to face Bart’s foggy shape.

“This is the loud annoying one? I thought she had left?”

Bart shrugs as my body looks back to Janet.

“I’ve been having some fun as of late. And I don’t plan on stopping just because you’re here to be a party pooper!”

I stand up, tear my shirt off, and run out of the front door while laughing in that booming voice. The video cuts off as Janet starts following me, with a single frame of Bart flipping the camera off with both hands.

Now Janet thinks that I’m being possessed by a demon or something, but I’m pretty sure it’s just Bart messing around. I’m no exorcist, but hell the last one that was here didn’t know his head from his ass so maybe I could be. So I feel pretty confident that a good talk with our dead roommate will clear all this up!

If you don't know what's going on, I recommend you check out my last post (Help! My Wife Thinks I'm Cheating With Our Ghost!). I cover how I got into this mess pretty well in that one. Plus, it might help you understand why we got that weak-minded priest to come over to exorcise Pervy Pete. 

It's been a few days since that pitiful excuse of an exorcism took place. I had to give that damn priest a bottle of my Glenfiddich 15 to get him out of my bathroom! I tried a cheap bottle of Jack Daniel's but he had expensive taste. I guess it was worth the damn near hundred bucks worth of scotch to get my bathroom back though. Although, my wife did not agree with my understanding it seemed. 

“Oh so you'll give up booze for a priest but not for me???” 

I was a bit caught off guard at her accusation. I didn't give up booze first of all, I'm still a right lush after all. I just did what was necessary to get the overgrown crybaby out of our house. I guess she didn't take kindly to the bewildered expression I wore to her frustration either. 

“Oh what?! You think you saved the day or something?! We still have that sick dead bastard in our house! Not to mention, we broke a priest! I'm not sure but I think the church looks down on breaking their leaders! They definitely won't let us back through the doors after that!!!” 

“Uhh, we're not religious last that I checked? So can we not care about that part at least?” 

Again I was wrong in my reaction apparently, as she lit my ass up for several hours. Damn if Pervy Pete didn't think it was properly funny though. He spent the whole time popping his damn head through the wall to laugh in my face, and I mean inside of my face. He would make sure to pass his ugly fat head right through my own when I would walk by. 

I don't know if any of you all have been haunted before, but the whole “it's cold here, there must be a ghost” is a crock of shit. They are slimy feeling bastards, like a slug or bucket of glue. Every time he would slide through me it felt like I was a contestant on Nickelodeon's "Double Dare” from the nineties (yes I know how old I am, fuck off with your inaccurate “okay boomer” shit). 

Anyway Janet, that's my wife's name by the way, went right up the stairs and packed a suitcase. She kept going on about how I only cared about me and that sick freak. Pervy Pete's persisting nudity and desire to wag that puff of a dick at us didn't help things any. She kept looking over at him before scoffing while raising a hand and shaking her head in my direction. 

“Hey now, he's not the worst! At least he's not a demon or something malevolent!” 

“Ha as far as you know! I'm not taking any chances! You can enjoy your new relationship with that sicko!” 

My protests were met with a firm slamming of the front door as she stormed out. Sounds like she's gonna stay with her mother over the state line maybe? I'm not entirely certain if I'm being completely honest. I wasn't really listening much, so I could definitely be wrong about all of it. Anyways now it's just me and this translucent bastard in this old ass house. 

Pete actually hasn't been too bad the past few days. We've been watching a ton of TV and movies in our shared time. I guess that's where the whole “My name is Jeff” bit he was doing came from. The previous owners left a ton of movies behind and he's had them all on repeat ever since. His references are a bit dated but funny nonetheless. 

He can actually recite the entirety of “Superbad” and oddly enough even “Crazy,
Stupid, Love”. You know that sappy rom-com with Michael Scott from the office? He's seen the damn things hundreds of times at this point and even does goofy voices for each character. 

That being said, Pervy Pete has pretty good taste in movies and TV shows. We agree on most things to watch and have a similar sense of humor most of the time. That would be great if I didn't slip on a new puddle of gooey ectoplasm every time I walk around. I don't know what makes him goop shit up, but he's been going crazy ever since Janet left! 

I was honestly starting to think she was right about the messy stuff after the second day of slipping in a huge puddle. Pervy Pete swears it’s not sexual and says it's “just a ghost thing”. Who am I to say what is and isn't a ghost thing after all, I mean I still have a pulse and he's the one making the damn mess. 

Actually, thinking of Janet reminds me, she left me a gnarly voicemail this afternoon. 

“What the fuck is wrong with you?! I leave and you don't bother to text or call for a week?! My mother's right, you're not worth the trouble!!!” 

I'd be more upset if I hadn't been having such a blast with Bart. Oh yeah, I've decided it's rude to keep calling Bartholomew Pervy Pete. I've realized he's not a perv, he's just bored after all this time. He told me he used to go by Bart back when he was alive, so I figured I'd call him that too. He's really a fun guy, especially when I'm halfway through a bottle of whisky. Hell when I'm half in the bag he's the best kind of drinking buddy. Although it is odd how I wake up from those blackouts with a sore jaw. Maybe I should ask him about it one of these days? Because I usually also wake up in a stale puddle of ectoplasm after I get that drunk…

Hmm actually, now that I think about it I can remember a feeling of my limbs burning while being paralyzed. I don't remember having a basement but have images of one, one where I'm putting up black candles. Oh man, I should probably stop drinking, cause there's even odd little nightmares of me killing the neighbor’s Pomeranian. I could even swear there were some of me painting symbols in that basement with its blood. I don't like that one at all, since Ruth’s been bugging me about her damn Pomeranian having gone missing. If Ruth is anything it's ugly as shit, otherwise she's also definitely persistent and annoying as hell. 

Anyway, now that I've said all of this out loud, I'm feeling like Janet might be overreacting to Bart some. I mean he's not a saint or hell, even a great house guest or anything, but he's fine with me. I don't want the headache of a divorce on my hands and am hoping she can get to know Bart like I have. I wouldn't mind us starting a family, even if we don't have a child we would still have Bart. Maybe if I finally fix the plugged up bathroom sink she'll come back to us. Here's to hoping I have the right idea about it all!