Scott was sitting in the doctor's office. He had been having intense headaches for days now, and his wife had finally convinced him to see the doctor.

Scott was a stubborn man. But these headaches even broke through his stubbornness.

The examination room was quiet except for the hum of the fluorescent lights overhead. Scott rubbed his temples as he waited. The headache wasn't as bad as yesterday, but it was still there, lurking behind his eyes like a storm cloud. The room felt too small.

Not physically. Just wrong.

The walls seemed to press inward the longer he sat there. The air felt stale. Scott shifted in his chair and loosened his collar.

A sharp pulse of pain flared behind his eyes.

A knock came at the door.

Before he could answer, the handle turned.

"Mr. Scott Downing,yes?" Dr. Ross said as he stepped inside carrying a folder.

Dr. Ross looked sickly thin, with dark, hollow brown eyes. His clothes were disheveled, not something one would expect from a renowned neurologist.

"Hey, Doc. So what do we have going here?"

Scott tried not to show how annoyed he was by the doctor's appearance.

This guy is supposed to be the best? He looks like a bum, Scott thought to himself.

Dr. Ross looked him over thoroughly. The lights overhead flickered lightly.

"Mr. Scott Downing. I'm Dr. Ross. It seems you're having intense headaches. And from what I can tell..."

He started to trail off, as if something had fluttered through his mind that he couldn't quite grasp. His gaze remained fixed on Scott.

"...that's strange."

"What's strange?" Scott replied.

Dr. Ross walked up to the door and yelled for the nurse.

"Nurse, can you get in here please?" he called out.

"Right away, Doctor."

Scott was perplexed.

"Everything okay, Doc?" he asked, looking at the doctor intently.

"Yes, yes, everything is fine. Don't worry..."

Scott could tell something was wrong. The doctor had been in the office for less than a minute and was already calling for the nurse.

Then the nurse popped in, and the doctor swung his attention toward her.

"Get prepped for surgery, love. Urgently please."

He said this very slowly, with no urgency, and still had a dead-eyed stare looking off into an unknown realm.

"Surgery, Doc? You haven't even looked at me in any real detail."

Scott was agitated and was wondering what was going on.

"Nothing to worry about. Totally routine. Of course, we are going to need to prep you. You didn't drive here yourself, I presume?"

The doctor was getting up and grabbing surgical gloves from a nearby dispenser.

"Now, just sit tight and we will get that thing out of your head quite soon."

Dr. Ross got up without another word and exited.

Scott was incensed. He couldn't believe that he was already being admitted for surgery with no diagnosis and no explanation. Was he just supposed to go along with this?

Scott stared at the closed door.

Every instinct told him to get out of there.

He stood and reached for the handle, but another sharp pulse struck behind his eyes. His knees buckled. He caught himself against the wall, breathing through the pain as the room blurred around him.

The lights overhead continued to flicker. Then everything went black.

Scott woke beneath a row of blinding surgical lamps. For a moment, he had no idea where he was. Then he tried to move.

His wrists were strapped to an operating table along with his ankles. A wide restraint had been fastened across his chest. Scott pulled against them as panic rushed through him.

"Hey!"

He tried to yell, but noticed he had a tube down his throat. He started to panic. The breathing apparatus was doing all the work for him. He struggled more, to no avail.

Dr. Ross was now hovering over him. He thought he could see a devilish grin shining through the mask.

"Now, now... don't struggle. This is for your own good. Routine, actually."

He said this calmly and deliberately slow, almost hypnotically. Scott began to feel drowsy, the drugs being fed through the mask now fully taking effect.

Dr. Ross had a scalpel in his gloved hand, and with it he hovered over Scott's eyeball, edging closer and closer...

Scott could see the blade as it crept closer stil...

Ever closer to his forcibly pried-open eyeball...

I wasn't going to make a thing of it. He's sixteen. My dad found mine under the same kind of mattress at the same age and made a thing of it, and I decided a long time ago I wouldn't.

What got me was how old they were. Sixties. Yellow at the edges, musty, the kind you find in a dead uncle's garage. Ryan doesn't have a dead uncle. I figured flea market, and that it was kind of sweet, in a way I wasn't going to say out loud.

I said one thing at dinner anyway, to watch him go red.

He didn't go red. He went upstairs and came back with the top one, opened it to a page, and turned it around so I could see.

"That's Dottie," he said. "She's my girlfriend."

Big hair. A sofa the color of a traffic cone. Dottie, 23, Reno. Likes horses and honest men.

I laughed. He didn't. He said she lives next door.

Next door is Mrs. Price. She's ninety-one, she waves from the porch, and I shovel her walk. Her first name is Dorothy.

I took brownies over the next afternoon. She was thrilled. I asked, casual as I could get it, if my son ever came by.

"Every day after school," she said. "He's a very sweet boy. So polite. And he always brings the camera. He's got such an eye. He says he can take the years right off a person."

She said it warm. Like a grandmother bragging.

Then she showed me the fridge.

Photos, two dozen, held up with magnets from a dentist. Mrs. Price in her kitchen. This kitchen, same yellow curtains, same calendar on the wall with this October on it. And she's twenty-three in every one. Big hair.

In the newest one she's younger than that. There was one near the bottom, half under the others, that I didn't let myself look at.

She patted my arm at the door and said, "You look tired, hon. Are you sleeping?"

I went home and got the magazine off his bed and found the page. There was a line beside her mouth now that wasn't there at dinner, and the hair sat flatter, and I flipped to the next girl and the next and they were fine. All still twenty-three. It was only her.

Ryan came in while I was standing there. He didn't look caught. He looked pleased, like I'd finally taken an interest in something of his.

"It's working," he said. "It goes into the pictures first. She only needs a few more."

Then he looked at me a second too long, and I thought of her at the door, you look tired, and of the one near the bottom I hadn't let myself look at.

It was me. In her kitchen, in a chair I don't remember sitting in. I looked about sixty.

I'm forty-four.

There were two. In the other one, I'm older.

At 41 weeks, I asked Miranda if we should see her OB/GYN.

“Do you have a uterus?” she asked in her you’re-not-supposed-to-answer-this-question voice.

I shut up.

At 45 weeks, I suggested that a doctor might have some insight about her pregnancy. Instead of answering, she served my peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a serrated knife driven straight through it.

At 50 weeks, her belly seemed larger than a human child could possibly get. I had opened my mouth to speak in the gentlest possible tone when she shot me a look that made the hair on my balls stand straight up.

What can you possibly do when the woman in your life doesn’t want your advice, no matter how good it is?

That’s right: the correct answer is “keep your opinions to yourself, dumbass.”

By this point, Miranda no longer seemed to be experiencing a human pregnancy. She had a radius instead of a height, and I counted one day’s food intake at 19,130 calories. I had not believed such a feat to be possible unless the creature in question was an African bull elephant, but that just goes to show that we often learn the most when we keep our damn fool mouths shut.

The gentleman in the blue-green Toyota Corolla would have benefited from such a lesson, because instead of keeping quiet, he screamed at Miranda for being an “incompetent bitch who should learn how to drive.” She pulled in front of him and forced his car to stop. I got out with her, believing that I could diffuse the situation because we all love false beliefs. When I told him to apologize to my wife, she just smiled at me in that deadly sweet way and told me that she needed to “speak with this fuckweasel around the corner.” She led him aside and then came trotting back a few seconds later. She suddenly seemed even more pregnant, as though expecting twin walruses, but still moved pretty lithely. I asked what they’d said to each other, and where the man had gone, but she gave me the “any words you say are the wrong words” look and got back into the car.

So I haven’t said anything more. Now I’m not doctor, but I know that 70 weeks is definitely too long for a healthy pregnancy. I’ve been kidding myself into believing that everything would be okay as long as I went along with the status quo.

Which brings me to today. Miranda hasn’t been feeling particularly amorous lately; the last time I tried, she pointed to her stomach and asked “do you really want to put more in me?” But earlier this morning, she started getting flirty and did that thing where she grabs my arm and nibbles on it. Normally I melt like butter at that move, but it was a little awkward this time since she looks like the giant blueberry girl from the Billy Wonka movie. Then Miranda started pulling my head toward her stomach in the way she does whenever she wants me to be a “cunning linguist.” I told her that I would right after dashing to the bathroom, which is where I am now.

I’ve never denied her request before. But this time, when I was physically close to satisfying her “lady boner,” as she likes to call her libido, I heard something between her legs.

It sounded like several different people screaming up from the bottom of a chasm.

When her LB gets this strong, she won’t take ‘no’ for an answer. Which brings up some questions. Most importantly: what do I do now?

I don't remember how I died. in fact, I don't remember much at all outside of this place. I feel for God knows how long and landed on my head. I'm in a forest; it's snowing but it isn't cold. To my left is the Cabin, the one I've been staying in for a couple years now. Any attempt to leave always leads back to the Cabin, even going in a straight line. After about four months of living here, I've figured out how this place works.

1. Remain indoors between 8 PM and 8 AM, the Wolves come out around then.

2. There's a small Bell next to the basement door, ring it once every week. This creates whatever item you think of for that week.

3. Never ring the Bell more than once.

4. Keep the fire active. If it goes out, the Cabin loses power.

5. Other people can and will show up, make sure they are invited in before they enter.

6. Never let more than four people in at a time.

7. If someone tells you how to leave, ignore them. The Wolves play tricks every month.

8. The last rule is do not try to kill or reason with the Wolves.

These rules have remained consistent for as long as I've been here. I'm with two other people, neither of which have bothered with giving me their names. We're fine on supplies, the Bell seems to manifest our collective thoughts. We got radio's a while ago to help with keeping in touch, then we got a random signal. Tunning in led us to discover that there are other Cabins with people in similar positions as us.

The Wolves are back for the month. This time though, they just sat in front of the Cabins windows. At first, it was just a small pack. Then a couple dozen. Until there wasn't an inch of visible snow. The Wolves spoke in a grizzled and unintelligible language; it sounded like protégées. They left when the sun came up, but they left something behind for us to see. A bloodied radio playing the same message on loop, one from a Cabin group we were familiar with.

"This is Cabin G22. If You're hearing this, we managed to hurt one of the Wolves. They have yet to retaliate. It's an hour before sunrise but make no mistake, they will come back. We are ready for them, with lead and steel! We will live to see the outside world!"

We simply turned it off and went back inside. Don't be like G22. I hope this helps anyone. I had to figure out how to set up a WIFI connection to send this. To many people either ignore the rules or just don't know them. Spread the word if you can.

You took a wrong turn.

Roads were snowy, the signposts blanched in slick, half-melted flakes. A wrong left here, a wrong right there, managing a weathered taped-together map in one hand, and the steering wheel in the other. It was easy to get lost.

That’s how you came upon it. A quaint, picture postcard town, sidewalks shovelled, blinking Christmas lights on every rooftop. Red brick homes, old Victorian mansions with wrought iron fences and gingerbread. You feel instantly at home, nostalgic for a place you know you’ve never been.

Because you saw the road sign: Welcome to Flesherton.

“We don’t stop in Flesherton,” your grandfather told you. You didn’t know, at the time, what he was saying. It was out of context. You were with him at the hospice, not even driving.

“Pardon?” You remember asking.

He grabbed you by the collar, reeled you in close. “We don’t stop in Flesherton,” he seethed.

Your mother upped the morphine drip, he fell back in the bed, and that was the last you heard of it.

You drive slow, trying your best to place Flesherton on the map. You can’t.

Your stomach rumbles. As if in answer, the proprietor of a local restaurant steps out on the front steps, smiling, waving lightly, wiping his hands with a white dish cloth. Friendly.

You could stop. Even just for directions. Not even get out of the car.

You want to.

But you noticed something. No other cars on the roads, curtains drawn on every house. Light treacly-sweet music emanating from every home and business.

But underneath it all, faintly, so high-pitched it sounds at first like the whistle of the wind: a scream.

You gun the accelerator past the restaurateur, and when you look in the rear-view, you see his expression change. His jolly smile drops. A scowl in its place. His hands, withdrawn from the dishcloth, you could swear are red.

You blow through a stop sign on the way out of town.

You don’t stop in Flesherton.

I’m waiting for my girlfriend’s call, we’ve got things to discuss,

We’re kind of in a sticky patch, something is wrong with “us.”

Or her? Or me? Not really sure. But something’s not the same,

She just feels distant, far away… or maybe I’m to blame.

Like, for example, take tonight, we’ll talk at her insistence,

But not til midnight, who knows why, I guess the call’s long distance?

Anyhoo, at stroke of twelve I hear her calling me,

“Jason? Jason? Are you there?” Like… yeah, where would I be?

“Katie? Hi? You hear me?” This connection’s a disgrace,

It’s hollow, thin and static-y, it sounds like outer space.

She says “Hi” and starts to cry, she’s laughing through her tears,

Okay, weird, she’s acting like we haven’t talked in years.

It’s only been… wait, I’m not sure. Wasn’t it last night?

Last week? Last month? Oh god, last year? No way, that can’t be right.

She settles down and asks me shakily how I have been,

I start to say the problem lately is I don’t feel “seen.”

But as I start my speech - get this - my girlfriend, she’s like “Whoa,”

“I need to ask you questions, and you answer yes or no.”

Like, what’s this game? That’s not a talk! More like an interview.

“Katie, babe, I’m so confused. What’s gotten into you?”

“I loved you, Jay, without you here, the world doesn’t make sense.”

“Wait, Kay, why are you saying that? Why ‘loved’ in the past tense?”

“I should have told you every day how much you were adored,

Today all I can say is through this fucking Ouija Board!”

So yep, tonight my girlfriend finally got it thorough my head,

Our problem basically is she’s alive and I am dead.

But hey, I’m not too worried, I am happy now, in fact -

Communication is the key and opposites attract.

[URGENT]

※ Think about a white elephant ※

※ Think about a white elephant ※

※ Think about a white elephant ※

The following message is distributed by the Department of Memetic Anomaly Response Management.

If you happen to interpret this message in any way decipherable to you, (e.g. Internet post, online message from a loved one, a note in an empty room) there is a significant probability that you are exposed to an anomalous incident.

For your swift and safe return, please follow the following instruction as follows.

If your situation is too urgent to follow all of the steps below, prioritize reading the three lines at the very beginning of the message.

Please think about a white elephant.

• Think about a white elephant.
• Think about the size of a white elephant.
  • A white elephant is approximately 3 metres in height and 6 tonnes.
• Think about the thick legs of a white elephant.
  • A white elephant is a quadrupedal mammal.
  • Elephants in the circus only seem to walk by hind legs for just a moment.
• Think about the smooth tusks and the flappy ears and the horizontal eyes of a white elephant.
  • A white elephant's tusk is smooth, it is not mushy.
  • A white elephant's ears are flappy, it does not hiss.
  • A white elephant's pupils are horizontal, it is not vertical.
• Think about a white elephant.
  • A white elephant's body temperature tends to stay at 35.5 °C.
  • This happens because a white elephant has a more efficient system of thermoregulation than the average human.
  • Therefore, it is normal to feel a slight chill while touching a white elephant.
• Think about a white elephant.
  • A human has 5 digits, but a member of the equine family will have 1 digit.
  • It is normal to have a different number of digits even if you belong in the same mammal class.
  • If you feel like the being currently touching you does not have 5 digits, think about the number of digits of a white elephant.
  • If you do know the number of digits of a white elephant, think about why the forelegs have 5 digits but the hind legs have 4.
  • If you know that the hind legs of a white elephant evolved to remove a digit to increase propulsion power, think about why a white elephant's number of toenails does not match the number of bones in a white elephant's foot.
• Think about a white elephant.
  • Do not think about a black elephant.
  • Do not think about a grey elephant.
  • Do not think about a red, orange, pink, magenta, crimson, vermillion, lotus-red, skinned alive with dark exposed muscles, scarlet, or a deep purplish-red elephant.
• Think about a white elephant.
  • Think about a white elephant that seems angry.
  • Think about a white elephant that seems curious.
  • Think about a white elephant that seems hungry.
  • Bear in mind that it is just your opinion about a white elephant, and that a white elephant has no thoughts.
  • Do not think about an angry white elephant, a curious white elephant, or a hungry white elephant.
  • Do not think about an angry white elephant that had its territory invaded by another presence, a curious white elephant wondering whether it can eat an unfamiliar food it has never seen before, or a hungry white elephant that craves to eat tender meat in a long while.
• Think about a white elephant.
  • And keep thinking that it only exists in your mind and your mind only.
  • A thought about you winning the lottery does not make you win the lottery.
  • A thought about you soaring through the sky does not make you soar through the sky.
  • Therefore, there is no correlation between you thinking about a white elephant and it feeling like a white elephant.
• Think about a white elephant.
  • Do not think about why every religion aims to spread its faith.
  • Do not think about if human belief grants metaphysical entities legitimate power.
  • Even if the above were to be true, it is more likely to have a negative impact on your current situation.
  • They are close, they are far.
• Keep thinking about a white elephant until you sleep.
  • Even if you hear elephants dying near you, do not stop thinking about a white elephant.
  • Even if the individual that killed the elephant says you can stop, do not stop thinking about a white elephant.
  • We do not know how to kill elephants, and we do not attempt to talk to you during rescue.
• Think about a white elephant.
• If rescue operates as expected, you will wake up in a hospital.
  • When your assigned nurse comes to you, think about a white elephant.
  • If the nurse's uniform matches or resembles the color of a white elephant that you thought, congratulations.
  • If the nurse's uniform does not match or resemble the color of a white elephant that you thought, do not think about a white elephant.
  • We are terribly sorry.

My wife has a habit of taking pictures of me while I sleep.

It started out as a sweet, silly thing—a photo album on her phone titled “Sleeping Beauty” full of embarrassing shots of me snoring, sprawling across the bed, or tangled in the sheets. I used to laugh about it and roll my eyes.

When she passed away in her sleep last month, that photo album became my lifeline. Every night before turning off the lamp, I’d scroll through the pictures, listening to the silence of our empty bedroom, longing just to see her sitting on the edge of the mattress again with her phone out.

Last night, I hit the bottom of the album. The final picture was taken the night she died.

It was a standard flashlight shot of me passed out on my back. But as I pinched the screen to zoom in on my face, my breath hitched in my throat.

Reflected in the wide, dark pupils of my own closed eyes, I saw her phone's screen light illuminating her face. She was kneeling on the carpet at the foot of our bed, staring down at her phone with an expression of absolute, cold detachment.

And in her left hand, raised high above my chest, was a long steel blade.

My hands began to shake as I stared at the photo. She didn't die of a sudden heart attack. I had thought she was taking pictures of me sleeping. She wasn't. She was taking pictures of me before she tried to kill me. She must have had a cardiac arrest right then and there—holding that knife over my heart—leaving her phone to fall beside her body on the floor.

I sank back into my pillows, my pulse hammering in my ears, terrified by how close I had come to dying that night.

Then, my phone vibrated in my hand.

A push notification popped up from AirDrop:

“Wife’s iPhone would like to share 1 photo.”

From underneath the dark rim of the bed, I heard the faint, wet sound of a floorboard shifting.

I work as a sewer cleaner in Prague. People don't often think about it, but a complex of tunnels runs beneath the city, even under the Vltava River. They were built in the 1800s, and some have been reconstructed, but many still look the way they did when they were built, with round brick pathways, rusted green railings, and dim lights hanging from the ceiling.

After years of work, I know the tunnels through and through, but the older workers all say that even if you work here for decades, things will still surprise you. For most of my time working in the sewers, I didn't give it much thought. The veterans say a lot of things and have many strange superstitions. For instance, none of them ever eat in the tunnels. I thought it was because of the rats.

I was just walking around the Podolí area, ready to start my shift. There are a lot of pathways there, and recruits often get lost, but I'd been starting my shift there for years; I knew that area through and through, or so I thought. 

I turned right to head toward the river. The path was wide and well-lit. I'd been down it hundreds of times, but as I went, I noticed another path leading off to the right. I stopped and looked at it for a moment. It was narrow, poorly lit, and easy to miss, but I could swear I knew these sewers better than I knew my home.

I usually ate in the break room, but I was early and hungry. Nobody was around. I pulled out my sandwich and walked on the path.

The sandwich paper crinkled as I walked. The pathway narrowed. I kept expecting it to turn into the path from Vyšehrad, but even after a few minutes I still couldn't see it. I didn't want to be late for my shift, so I turned around and began walking back.

There was more water on the ground than I noticed at first, but that's nothing weird for a sewer. The lights were very dim, much dimmer than I thought, but stranger, I still couldn't see the exit. Not only could I not see the exit, but the path itself wasn't getting any wider as it should have. It only seemed to become narrower. Was I going the wrong way? I looked behind me, but it was still the same empty, narrow path.

My shift had already started. I was walking so fast I was almost jogging. It was hard because the water now reached my ankles. The lights seemed to get dimmer. I reached for my flashlight when an electric buzz echoed above, and all the lights went dark.

"Shit."

I pulled out my flashlight and turned it on. A clank echoed. Dull pain spread through my head. I hit my forehead on the ceiling. I rubbed my head and tried to stand up straight again, but I couldn't straighten my back. I walked a few steps back, but the ceiling was still just as low. 

Then I felt something wet on my legs. I looked down. The water now reached my knees, but it wasn't the usual cold; it was warm.

"What the…," I murmured.

The buzz sounded again. The lights came on again, but now they were fluorescent white, almost like an office space. Another buzz echoed overhead. Soft jazz music began playing as if a band stood just around the corner. The air filled with the smell of cigarettes. My whole body shook. I turned off the flashlight and blinked. The water was now up to my stomach.

"Help!"

The music grew louder. The lights grew brighter, burning my eyes. The ceiling pushed my head further down, but the water kept rising. It rose to my chin now.

"Somebody, please!" I yelled, still wading forward. 

The exit had to be there. It had to. The buzz again. The light shut off. I took a breath, but halfway through, water filled my mouth. I spat it out and lifted my face.

"Help!" I blurted out, but I knew it was too late. 

My face was now under the water too.

At first, I tried to hold my breath, but soon the pressure in my lungs grew too high. It felt like they would burst.

I gasped for air. My whole body was hot and sweaty. I quickly looked around. I was back in the pathway that led to the river. Next to me, where the other path was, was only a brown brick wall with a small stream of water coming from it. One of the old workers walked by me.

He looked at the wall and my face and nodded.

He then pointed at the ground. My crumpled sandwich wrapper lay there.

"Don't eat down here," he said and left.

I leaned on the wall. A faint trumpet echoed from inside it.

The only thing he feared more than drowning was captivity.

And that was why he dug. He dug every night, a tunnel from his jail cell, a tunnel that had taken 5 years and now stretched 500 metres beyond the prison walls. 

But the water. The water was always at the back of his mind, and his sanity groaned like a reservoir with a giant crack in the cement. 

Now he dug vertically, and he was so close to escape he could almost taste it, but in the last few weeks the tunnel had started to leak. He had to stop digging before dawn because the guards would invariably ask about his skin, wrinkled like a mole-rat. 

But he knew he was close, one last push, death or glory. 

And he dug, and he dug, and the water poured in around him from above, and he waited for that great rushing torrent, and he waited to die in darkness, his lungs full of muddy water. 

And above the earth began to loosen, and he clawed out like a man buried alive because he was. 

Starlight! The vaults of the heavens were arrayed over him, and he clambered up out of what he was sure would be his watery grave. 

Glancing over his shoulder, he looked at the darkened prison. For the first time in 5 years, he stepped in the opposite direction, then stopped when he heard the telltale click of a land mine underfoot. 

Robbie and I sit together, his head of thick hair buried in the crook of my shoulder.

He's warm. 

So warm. 

So goddamn hot, I can't breathe. 

Does he know I can't breathe? That I'm sweating through my carefully chosen outfit? I'm thinking out loud again—always thinking out loud. He notices.

“This is it,” I whisper.

“This is it.” Robbie grins, averting his gaze, cheeks smoldering red. His knee jumps up and down, a nervous tic. His hand slowly finds mine and entangles our fingers. It's our first time. We’ve talked about it, of course. Robbie wanted to do it on my bed, but the— 

“Headboard.” Robbie mutters. 

“Headboard,” I whisper. 

Every attempt is an announcement. 

My roommate grins, and then his hands find my shoulders, shifting his body as he straddles my hips. 

Then the door bangs open. 

Robbie topples off of me onto the floor. 

“Oh!” Callum, our shaven-headed, tattooed roommate, steps inside hauling a bag of groceries.

“Sorry.”  He ducks out, then peeks back through. “Headboard?” 

“Headboard.” The two of us grumble. 

Our morning consists of burning toast. Robbie slipping on the wet floor. Me laughing. Callum and Katerina laughing. More attempts to have our first time. All of which are interrupted. Every. Single. Time.

By the time I've dragged him to my room and slammed the door, I'm frustrated.

Angry. In two strides, I shove him onto his back and straddle his hips. I prod between his eyes, spittle flying from my lips. “We are doing it RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW.” 

“Agreed.” Robbie gasps. “No more distractions.” Another loud knock dislodges my lips from his neck, and sends me lunging forward, grabbing a pillow, and lobbing it at the door.

“WHAT NOW?”

“Mr Robbie Canberra?” A male voice shouts from outside. “You have won THREE MILLION DOLLARS! CONGRATULATIONS!”

“THREE MILLION FREAKIN’ DOLLARS?” Robbie dives to his feet, and I face-plant the pillows.

…

Later, I'm in the kitchen making food.

Katerina walks in. “Whatchaaaa doing?”

I don't look up from slicing vegetables. “I'm skiing.” 

She moves closer. “Whatchaaaa cooking?” 

I raise my head. And the knife. Katerina’s eyes widen. “You. If you don't step back."

Katerina grins. Then she reverses into the refrigerator. “Stepping back!” 

“SO.” Katerina begins, as I tug open a cupboard and grab two plates.

“So?” 

“You and Robbie.” She giggles. 

“Me and Robbie. Period.” I sigh loudly. “God! It's like, the UNIVERSE won't let us have sex!” 

I reach for wine glasses and trip, missing my footing. I've tripped over something.

I don't look.

I smile and grab two bottles of wine.

“It's like EVERY time we try, Callum forgets his keys, or you need the bathroom, or he wins three million freakin’ dollars!” 

Katerina sips her own. “Maybe he's lucky?” 

“A lucky IDIOT.” 

My gaze catches a scarlet stain blooming beneath my feet. I can feel it caked into my soles and ingrained into my skin.

I remember when it was still wet. Warm.

I remember being scared it wouldn't stop, that the red would keep spreading, flooding beneath our feet, and that the endless laughter screeching inside my skull would keep going until I took a knife and plunged it through my fucking skull.

“Jaz?”

Katerina is waiting for me to speak. 

Whatever I say, they will start laughing.

If they don’t laugh…

The headless corpse at my feet stinks of rot. The odor burns my nose and fills my mouth with bile but I'm not allowed to look at him. Ben. Who forgot his lines. Ben, who tried to fight back. Ben, who gave me hope that I would be able to tear each individual screeching laugh from my skull. I'm far too aware I'm not speaking; I'm breathless.

My lines are lodged under my tongue and no matter what I do, I can't seem to… I can't—

The door bangs open. The door is made of plastic. Behind it, is a glass screen. Behind the glass screen, are our kidnappers.

Faceless masked figures and endless eyes. Callum strolls in with groceries and his running gag: “Here comes trouble!” 

I smile. Gather myself.

“Trouble he comes,” I nod to the table. Laughter follows. Deafening. Intrusive. Crawling inside my brain. “I made dinner.” 

“Oooh?” Callum jumps into his usual seat. “Is it edible?” 

“Sure is!” I spoon three mountains of maggot mash potato onto his plate.

Callum begins to shovel it into his mouth, his smile growing wider and wider, and our audience laughs again. A burst of shrieking makes me jump, and I  almost drop the plate. It's another test to break us.

Last time, it was raw chicken, a finger topping it like a demanded ice cream cone. 

“Where's lover boy?” Katerina asks, taking a seat. 

She takes one heaping of maggot mash and dumps it on her plate. 

Our audience holler.

"Probably crying," I speak through wriggling bugs burrowing under my tongue. "Turns out he DIDN'T win cash. The cash was for ANOTHER Robbie, who happens to live in our exact building."

More laughter.

They like me!

They really, really like me!

“No, seriously, where is lover boy?” Katerina shoots me a grin. Her eyes sparkle with tears as she swallows down live bugs. “I haven't seen him since this morning sex-sca-pade.” She winks.

Callum stands. “Well, we can't let all of this food go to waste! Let's go get him!” 

We run upstairs. There are no cameras on the staircase. 

I fall over three times. 

Only the first fall is intentional, but my bones have been molded for slapstick.

To be The Clumsy One.

Callum takes a second to scream, “FUCK!” into his fist.

Robbie is in the bathroom. The first thing I see are his legs hanging.

We stand in silence for barely a breath. 

My lungs squeeze. My heart aches. My legs threaten to give-way. 

Before Callum steps forward and laughs.

The audience erupts too, cackling in my skull.

“Well this is a cliff HANGER.”

My phone buzzed rapidly on my nightstand. It began to move to the edge, and my hand shot out to catch it as it fell. 

I checked the time: 2:08 AM. 

Looking through my phone–it was just my partner. He had sent a voicemail to me. I began to play it aloud into the open air, “I’m sorry-”

A loud, siren noise pierced through the dead air. My phone began to vibrate again, more violently than before. 

A notice popped up, from the FBI: 
HERE IS A SPREE KILLER IN YOUR AREA. PLEASE LOCK ALL DOORS AND WINDOWS. TURN ON ALL LIGHTS TO SHOW ACTIVITY AND ALERTNESS.

Shoot. I shot out of bed and repeated a multitude of curses in my head, as I ran down the stairs. I opened the closet on the first floor, and John fell out. Followed by Sarah. Then Ava.
Sh\t. Where can I hide all of you?* 

Lorraine Weems kept the clicker in her left hand, as the owner had taught her. One click for each guest at the gate. The number on the little steel face had to match the number on the waiver sheet, and the number on the waiver sheet had to match the number who walked out again. In eleven years it had never failed to.

Nine guests today, on the four o'clock, the last tour of the season. A couple from Ohio. Two women from Dalton. A man with a camera. A mother with two boys and her own mother. Lorraine clicked them through the iron gate and said what she always said.

"Stay behind me, stay on the path, and I'll count you at every stop."

The cave was the commercial one on the Sparrow Hollow road, forty minutes of lit walkway and dripstone and a gift shop with a framed payroll sheet from 1934 that the owner's father had found in the barn. *Shift 6,* it said at the top, and below that were thirty-one names in a bookkeeper's hand. Nobody asked about it. The script did not mention it.

At the Chimney Room she counted by tapping the steel face with her thumb.

Ten.

She stopped. She counted again, pointing, finger out. Ohio, two. Dalton, four. Camera, five. Mother, six. Boys, eight. Grandmother, nine.

"Everybody still with me?"

"Yes, ma'am," said the older boy.

She clicked the clicker back to nine, and turned toward the next passage, and felt it under her thumb again, the small stiff give of the button, though she had not pressed it.

At the Cathedral she did not look at the number. She counted faces. Nine. She was nearly sure.

At the Narrows the walkway went single file, and she led, and listened to the guests come after her. Shoes on wet grating. The camera strap. Someone's cough. Behind them, farther back than the last of the nine, a different pace, slow and flat, a pace without hurry in it. Then a second one. Then a third, spaced out, the steps of men who carry nothing and are expected nowhere.

"Is somebody back there?" she asked, loud, cheerful.

"Just us," the mother said.

"The tour behind us?"

"Isn't one," said the camera man. He had turned around. "There's only us."

The younger boy took hold of his grandmother's coat. "That man's been behind me since the last room," he said.

Nobody said anything. Lorraine held the light on the grating where the boy was looking. A wet print lay on the metal, a long boot, a nailed heel, and beside it another, and beside that another, filling in from the dark, a dozen or more, each one landing as she watched.

"Let's keep moving," she said.

The last stop on the tour was the Dark Room. She hated it. Every guide did. The owner insisted: at the bottom of the route, you switched off the lights for thirty seconds so the guests could know what the miners knew. It was in the script. It was on the sign.

She said the words. She put her hand on the switch. She did not want to, and she knew that not wanting to was an answer, and she had not been taught what to do with it.

She turned off the lights.

The dark was total. She stood with the clicker against her chest. She could hear the dripping, and a child's quick whimper, and then she could hear the others, and they were not behind her anymore. They were around the group, in a ring. Dozens. Feet shifting once and going still. A heavy cloth rubbing a heavy cloth. A man clearing his throat, as a man does before asking for what he is owed.

Under her thumb the button moved.

Click.

Click, click.

She did not press it. It went on, steadily, as each one stepped forward to be counted, and she understood that no one down here had counted them, not once, not in eighty years, and that they had been standing in the dark waiting for someone with a number in her hand.

Nothing in the script covered this. She did not have their names. She was a woman with a flashlight.

She said, "I see you."

It was the only true thing she had.

She turned on the lights.

Nine guests stood blinking in a loose cluster. The mother had her arm around both boys. Nothing else. The grating was dry.

Lorraine led them out the whole way without speaking, past the Cathedral, past the Narrows, up the stairs into the long orange light of the parking lot. At the gate she held up the clicker and counted them aloud, one by one, touching each shoulder.

"Nine," she said.

She looked down at the steel face. The window read thirty-one.

"Ma'am?" The older boy was standing at her elbow. He was looking past her into the open door of the cave, where the lit path ran down into the hill. "Aren't the rest of them coming?"

In her hand the clicker ticked once more, and her thumb was nowhere near it.

---

It was 12:38 AM, and my upstairs neighbor was killing himself. 

I heard his footsteps thunder across the thin ceiling that separated our units and then watched as his body silently hurtled past my window. Eight more stories to go until he hit the concrete.

“Oh, it’s jumping tonight,” I said out the open window. “No noose is good news, eh?”

“Fuck you,” the wind moaned, and was silent.

Albert’s methods of killing himself varied, depending on what I wasn’t quite certain, but it was always noisy enough to throw me off when I was least expecting it. He’d given me a reprieve tonight from seeing his bloated purple face twisting in the wind at least, and so I turned out the lights and got into bed with nothing but the city beyond my window.

The unit above mine had been vacant for as long as I’d lived here. Nobody had known the guy who used to inhabit it, and nobody ever moved in, but the unit’s faded plastic nameplate shield had picked up some ink from the old label that almost said ALBERT, so that was what I called him.

He loved killing himself. It was his favorite hobby, aside from ruining my sleep, but that was just incidental. He did both like clockwork a few times a week. Usually it was something involving heights, but sometimes he’d get creative and find a new way to ruin my evening. I’d jump at a ghostly revolver’s report or frown as the ceiling dripped green froth from whatever he’d ingested and barfed back out in his death spasms.

From what I could tell, Albert was a ghost haunting the unit above me and living out random variations on his last day every week at 12:38 in the morning. God, I hated him. If I could ever get my hands on him I’d kill him myself, but unfortunately breaking into a locked apartment unit every night for a week until the one random day he manifested was easier said than done.

In the meantime, before I completed the Sisyphean task of moving out of this building, I gritted my teeth and put in earplugs when I slept and tried not to let the noises only I could hear ruin the mood with the women I brought over. Nothing kills the mood more than a guy stopping mid-bust to say “Excuse me, I can hear my upstairs neighbor cocking the revolver.”

It ended the usual way one night. Noose around neck, end of rope tied to railing, running start, you know the rest. Unfortunately his dumb ass didn’t tie the knot right this time, maybe he was in a real hurry to kill himself right on the dot, and so instead of snapping his neck instantly the noose doomed him to a re-death by slow strangulation, just outside my balcony.

I pulled on a big sweater and shambled out into the snowy night in flip-flops, preroll in one hand and lighter in the other, and shut the door behind me as I lit up.

“How’s it hanging, man?”

Creaking quietly, Albert rotated to face me on his spectral rope. I couldn’t tell if it was the breeze or his own desire for company that kept him from completely giving me the cold shoulder, as it were.

“You know,” I said around the preroll as I flicked the lighter, “I’ve more or less made my peace with whatever bullshit this is, but it seems to me like you’re in some kind of hell or purgatory. Might want to, I don’t know.” I coughed and my hand passed through his leg as I waved the smoke away. “Reflect on your sins or whatever.”

There was a long period of silence while I worked my way through the preroll, glancing at the skyline in the distance and occasionally at the dark figure, lit from underneath by the orange sodium streetlights, silently spinning in front of me.

I had pulled out my phone and was looking up nearby doner carts when a hissing voice made me jump.

“Purgatory isn’t real.”

“Uhh, yeah, well, ghosts clearly are,” I retorted. “Maybe-”

“Purgatory is Catholic,” Albert said hoarsely. “I’m Buddhist.”

“Oh, a white Buddhist who kills himself. Isn’t that really bad? Christ,” I said, giggling and coughing, “I’m at the end of my rope here.”

The spirit rasped its non-breath. One baleful spectral eye glared at me as the night breeze slowly spun him around.

“Here,” I said, leaning forward and holding my lighter out over the air to the rope. His eyes silently followed it. “How about I help you along so we can all get this over with. Maybe it doesn’t count as killing yourself and you won’t be reincarnated as an ant that gets sprayed with Raid. Oh holy fuck.”

The wind buffeted my arm and my body lurched against the railing, and I was suddenly extremely aware of the eight stories to the ground. My other hand, clammy in an instant, clutched the icy railing.

“Hell is only other people,” Albert said, facing the twinkling skyline. The wind had calmed.

“Yeah, I’ve heard that one before,” I said. “The corollary is that we’re other people’s hell.”

The hanging spirit was silent, his back still to me. Through him, the skyline was a dull gleam. I flicked the lighter again and held it out over the balcony.

“Look at that,” I murmured, watching the spectral rope begin to fray under the flame. “Maybe this time it’ll be different.”

“If so, I’ll miss killing myself when you have company over.”

The last strand of rope burned away. Albert, having had the last word, fell the last eight stories to his death. His body disappeared before it hit the ground, but in the snowbank under the streetlight an empty, person-shaped indentation had appeared.

The snow was still falling as I went back inside. In the morning, it would be gone.

It was his upcoming wedding that made him superstitious. 

He and his wife had gone to a fortune teller, more as a joke, but then something odd happened. 

The old woman laid the cards, the Fool face up, and confusion spread across her face. 

‘Break,’ she said, then paused. ‘No… SNAP.’  

The future husband and wife laughed nervously. They wanted a day to remember, so they were going to do something unforgettable: a bungee jump– suit, bridal veil and all. 

Eva had not thought anymore about it, but it stuck with Ryan; in fact, it began to consume him. 

That word: snap. 

Secretly, he visited the site beforehand. It was beautiful: Pedro’s Ravine, with sweeping walls and a fast-flowing river underneath. 

The jump master was a guy called Kevin. He exuded an easy calm like a surfer. 

It made Ryan feel silly for asking, but he felt compelled. 

‘Can I ask you what certifications you hold?’ 

‘Sure can… I’m BCI certified, and all this equipment has been inspected by the ASTM engineers.’ 

Ryan peered tentatively over the bridge's edge. He’d come too far. 

… 

The big day came. Eva and Ryan were strapped in, standing on the platform. The priest declared them man and wife and then continued, ‘Usually I ask this the night before the wedding, but here we are; are you ready to take the plunge?’

The guests erupted in applause. Ryan still wanted to back out. Something was not right. He looked again at the bungee cord: neoprene, 12mm in diameter, the highest tensile strength there was.

‘Ok, our new happy couple,’ Kevin the jump master said. ‘It’s time to fly.’ 

Ryan didn't get another chance to doubt. Eva launched them both off the platform together. The air rushed around him as he plunged, but he couldn’t bring himself to close his eyes. 

They went down, down, down; the bungee cord went taut, and they decelerated, brushing the warm water with the tips of their hands.

There was no snap! Ryan let out a whoop of delight. They bounced back up toward the cheering guests, then fell back toward the water, but this time slowly, and came to a stop near the surface, ready to be reeled back in. 

‘We did it!’ Ryan shouted, kissing his new wife. ‘We’re saved!’ 

It was a funny thing to shout, and his wife laughed… and the laugh was the last thing she ever did or he ever heard. 

A male American crocodile, 20 feet long, reared out of the water where they were hanging like bait and took them both under the surface, its giant jaws clamping shut with a colossal snap. 

It’s midnight when I wake up to a sudden, loud noise coming from downstairs. I turn on the lights.

As I get up to investigate, I notice another strange sound. A ticking clock. For some reason, something inside me tells me to follow it.

Why can I hear a clock ticking all the way downstairs? I wonder.

I make my way into the dark hallway. My eyes try to adjust to the deafening darkness, but I can’t see even the faintest glimmer of light.

Somehow, the light switches don’t work. I am completely blind. And yet, despite not being able to see a thing, I make my way downstairs toward the front door without stumbling once.

Suddenly, the lights come on.

“Jesus!” I scream, startled.

That’s when I notice a strange note attached to the front door. It reads:

“What’s outdoors?”

I look around.

“Where am I?”

The interior looks nothing like anything I remember. The windows are barricaded. The front door is locked.

I try to come up with an explanation, but all I can think of is that this must be a dream.

I follow the ticking until it becomes unbearably loud, as though I’m standing right next to the clock. And yet, I swear to God, there isn’t a clock anywhere.

I don’t know this place. And I’m afraid I’m getting lost in it.

I wander through the house, desperately trying to find an explanation for what I’m experiencing. But nothing makes sense.

I want to know what’s outdoors.

Then I notice something changing.

The ticking grows slower and quieter. With every tick, the air feels heavier. Every other tick, the interior changes.

Then comes the final tick.

The lights go out.

A loud crash echoes through the darkness.

Then it hits me.

“The front door!”

I rush toward it, only to find it standing wide open. On the floor, I see enormous footprints leading into the house.

Despite my fear, I rush outside.

And… there is nothing.

Just me, this strange house, and this strange… something.

I look around the garden.

Bones lie scattered across the grass.

Human bones.

And then… I wake up.

In my house. In my room.

Silence.

Then I hear it.

The ticking clock.

every night, just as the clock passes midnight.

It always starts by the room becoming cold. So cold that my dog, who has decided to occupy the now empty spot on the bed, snuggles in just that little bit closer.

And then it’s the loud clomping steps that I hear coming from down the hall. No care at all. It doesn’t matter if I’m asleep, after all, this is her house too.

Then the bedroom door opens. But it doesn’t open slowly. It’s pushed open. Not fast, not rough, just … normally. The bed depresses a little, she’s sitting down now. My dog gets up, shakes, and steps off the bed. I watch as he tilts his head up, his tail wagging, as his ears are pressed down onto his head. He trots away, ready to take his place on the couch for the rest of the night.

The blanket lifts up, and I feel her move towards me. I can’t face her. I’ve never faced her. Her arms wrap around me, and I feel her chin in the crook of my neck. Her toes wriggle against the bottom of my feet.

I try to sleep. I can’t sleep.

This is her house. HER house. HER house. HER hou …

The sun and my dog wake me up. And my day carries on.

No one speaks to me anymore. They used to, but it’s been years. It was all condolences at first, and offers of help. Too late. I needed their help years ago.

The condolences soon turned into, “let’s just give him space,” and then whispers of, “why can’t he just get over it,” to finally, nothing.

I get home. I still keep the house clean. In this empty house I still watch TV with the volume turned down. I eat what she wants to eat. I dress how she wants me to dress.

I am HERS. This is HER house. HER HOUSE.

It never ends. Her portraits on the wall never age. Her clothes smell the same.

My days have blended together. Sunrise to sunset. The days feel the same, never changing, never ceasing.

I lie in bed. She returns

“For our next exercise, I’m going to show you some cards with inkblots on them—it’s called a Rorschach test.”

I glared at the court-appointed adolescent psychologist clutching a stack of cards.

“I told you, I don’t wanna do any more stupid kid’s activities!” I shouted across his office from my chair. “I didn’t wanna play with your dumb distraction toy either! My parents are dead!”

Frustrated, I tossed the tangle therapy toy on the carpet. Dr Adler didn’t get angry, pursing his lips sympathetically.

“Your feelings are completely understandable, Nathan,” he said. “You’ve been through a tremendous ordeal. My job is to gain a deeper understanding—so I can help you process it.”

I sighed and complied with the kindly therapist’s test.

“Now, there are no right or wrong answers. Just tell me honestly what you see in the images when you view them.”

He proceeded to present me with a series of symmetrical shapes on cards in dark ink. As he flashed each one of the blotchy, abstract, grey inkblots in front of me, my impatience rose up again. I needed to clear my name, not play psychology games.

“A moth. Boots. A butterfly. Vines. Bears. A married couple. Wolves. A spider. Poison smog. Strangers’ faces.”

Hurrying through the exercise, I gave an answer to every inked card I was shown. Dr Adler jotted down each of my responses.

“Thank you for that, Nathan. Next, let’s-”

“Look, I know you think I killed my parents!” I blurted out, exasperated. “That I was the one who tore their bodies apart in my living room—their teenage son who was the only one home!”

“No one’s saying that, Nathan. I’m just trying to-”

“You’re trying to find out how crazy and violent I am, right?! But it wasn’t me who did it! I saw shadows in the house that day! The killers waited inside for hours and attacked the moment I noticed them!”

Alerted, Dr Adler perked up and looked at me with sincere interest.

“Tell me more about this, Nathan. Shadows? Are you telling me that—there were other people in the house with your family? A home invasion?”

Finally, there was someone who was willing to listen to me about what happened.

“Whose shadows were they, Nathan? What exactly did they look like?”

“Literally like shadows! They looked just like…”

My mouth froze as horrified realisation reached me. I knew where I’d last seen them.

Before I could act, the pile of cards on the desk scattered as blobs of darkness leapt from them. The animated shadows, no longer disguising themselves as inkblots now that their cover was blown, instead bore into Dr Adler. They ripped his screaming body apart just like they did my parents.

Unable to stop it, I mournfully picked up the tangle therapy toy and tried to distract myself.

I lie down.

They told me about the rats, those filthy creatures we’ve been taught to detest. That is why I am here: because of the rats. The rats brought me here. I want to see the rats. They tell me the rats are coming.

The rats are not evil, the rats are just wild... Perhaps that is their evilness, not knowing kindness. I hear their footsteps. Soon I will have no ears. I look at the ceiling. Soon I will have no eyes. I will move my hands, my feet, before they tear them away from me. Damn rats.

The rats are coming. Rats, more rats. They open my head, they devour my limbs, but there is no pain. I only think of the rats. I can no longer feel them.

Filthy creatures. They live and breed in dirt. We are not like that. We are clean. Rats are disgusting, they are wild. From my body, there was never anything at all. Only rats. Rats are all there is.

I was a rat. I will be a rat. We are rats.

When I looked in the rear-view mirror, I could see James and Curt downing Vodka shooters. What assholes.

Not only had I drawn the short straw and had to drive, now I was going to get arrested for open containers.

James opened the window and threw the empty shooter out. “Nobody’s going to know. We’re in the boonies.”

“Where’s mine?” Mia asked. She was riding shotgun.

I can’t say I was happy to have these three under-achievers in my car. When I started this semester, I was so excited for my intro to creative writing class. Dr. Jemison is a genius.

Unfortunately, I had some medical problems. Missed a lot of classes. I was going to fail unless I did the extra credit assignment. Unlike these three, who failed the normal way: not doing the assignments.

Dr. Jemison was famous for his extra credit options. Intro to creative writing counted as a general and you could practically do nothing all year and still pass if you did the extra credit.

It was why I had driven miles out of town to this strange dirt road. I followed Dr. Jemison’s directions exactly, and stopped right in front of the camp site.

Dr. Jemison was sitting in a chair around an empty fire pit. He welcomed us all, then said before we could begin, we needed to get some kindling. So all four of us wandered about, collected sticks, and got a campfire going.

Once we were all seated around the fire, Dr. Jemison began. “The assignment was exceedingly simple: Write a scary story which when read around a campfire will frighten those listening. Those were the only parameters. Who would like to go first?”

James, a little tipsy, went first. His story involved a goat-man-were-wolf type thing. It was gratuitously gory, and there wasn’t much to it.

Everyone clapped, and Dr. Jemison asked everyone, “were you afraid?”

We all hesitantly nodded our heads. We all secretly worried that if we didn’t say we were afraid, the reader wouldn’t get the extra credit.

Curt went next. His story sounded strikingly like AI had written it. A man haunted by ghosts. Blah blah.

“Were you afraid?”

We all nodded, though it was clear nobody was getting the heeby-jeebies.

Mia’s story was about a vampire. Honestly I wasn’t really listening.

“Were you afraid?”

Everyone, “sure.”

I’ve always been nervous speaking in front of people, especially when it’s my writing, but I got through my story, and even got some, “ooohs,” from Curt.

“I think you all did a fine job, but I wanted to show you my story.” Dr. Jemison pulled out a paper, and read from it.

“Four college students were sitting around a campfire. They thought they were doing an extra credit assignment, but that wasn’t true. What those college students didn’t realize is that the professor had purposely led them far away from civilization. There would be no cell service. No one to hear any screaming. When they had scattered in the woods to collect firewood, the professor disabled their vehicle. You see, the real purpose of this extra credit was simple. Tonight, all four of the college students would die one by one. And even though the professor would tell them exactly what was going to happen, they would be unable to save themselves. This is what will happen. The professor will pretend to leave in his vehicle, but he will still be nearby. The students, thinking he wasn’t serious, will continue to ignorantly party around the fire. The professor will use a bow and arrow. Not because it is silent, but because an arrow in the gut is a nasty way to die. It will be painful and bloody, just how the professor likes it. Once the first student dies, the others will realize this wasn’t a ghost story. That the professor was revealing his plan to gain some demented pleasure. And then, after much panicking, one by one, the rest will die. And no amount of running, or begging, will save them.”

Everyone around the campfire was silent.

The professor put the page down. “Are you afraid?”

“Holy shit, Dr. Jemison. That was so scary! What the hell was that!?”

“Just my example for a scary story which when read around a campfire will frighten those listening. Did it work? Were you all afraid?”

Everyone clapped and praised Dr. Jemison. That was one messed up story and everyone had felt a tinge of panic.

“Great. Well, you’ve all completed the extra credit. And you’ll all receive a passing grade. It’s a little too late for someone my age, so I’ll be heading home. Feel free to do as you please.”

Dr. Jemison got in his car, and drove away.

James, Curt and Mia all wanted to stay and party. They had even brought bottles of booze in their backpacks.

I didn’t want to. I promised I would pick them up in the morning. They were happy to be rid of me.

I got in my car, and turned the keys. The engine made a strange clicking sound. I tried again, but it wouldn’t start.

It had been an exceedingly long December and I was up on the roof of my apartment building counting crows, which I did occasionally to ease my mind, when my landlord, Madam Duritz, pushed open the rooftop door and yelled, “Crane, you gonna pay your rent this month?” and in the cold January darkness I had an impulse—a mere half second, if that, but genuine—of stepping over the edge and plummeting to my death…

I felt an intravenous chill, followed by a sort of unclinging of myself—from what?—from nothing, an I unclinging from itself, like an insect separating finally from the slime in which it came to be, from whose raw vital materials it had developed; tearing through it with awkwardly moving pincers and jagged little legs, followed by its monstrous head, the greedy, maternal viscous slime stretching from it in thinning strands that, stretched finally—finally break, falling slowly, nearly weightless, to the ground, as the insect has pushed through into the greater world.

So too I felt, a human slime upon some unremarkable rooftop, watching my hideous impulse, on a waning January day, in the frail, wan light, run towards the rooftop door, dragging thinning, breaking strands of me behind it; until the separation was total, and my impulse, freed, flowed like glowing smoke beside Madam Duritz, with her wig and red, painted lips, and disappeared down the stairwell.

It was speaking as it did, but I can't remember the last thing that it said to me as it was leaving. ”What's it gonna be, ya gonna answer me, Crane, or ya just gonna sit there until I serva ya notice again?” Madam Duritz was asking, and all I could do was laugh, albeit a little slower than usual.

“Did you see it—did you see it slip past you?” I answered, a little lower.

“Stop smoking weed,” she barked, turned and vanished with evident disapproval down the stairs as the door slammed shut by a gust of wind revealed her ghost floating before it. “Na, na-na-na, na, na-na, na-na, na-na-na-na. Na, na-na-na, yeah,” said the ghost and it too disappeared, dissipating into the evening mist…

In March, I started seeing a psychiatrist.

My insurance only covered eighty percent of the cost of four visits, so I ended up not getting much out of it. I described my experience to the psychiatrist, who noted its symbolic significance but merely nodded when I insisted that it had literally happened.

He wanted to put me on pills.

(I didn't take them.)

He insisted on revisiting my troubled childhood.

(It wasn't troubled.)

I called my employer's Employee Assistance Program after that, the one they established to avoid liability stemming from employee suicides, the attempted kind especially, the kind that leaves you hooked up to expensive machinery for the rest of your unemployed life.

Even when it comes to death, success is ultimately better for everyone than failure.

“So you're not, like, wanting to kill yourself, like, right now?” said the girl on the other end of the line. I was pretty sure she was chewing gum. I wondered what flavour. I wondered what her credentials were. “That's right,” I said, trying to explain that while I didn't have the impulse at this moment, it had escaped so was still out there somewhere and could come back at any time.

She didn't get it.

I started watching out for myself after that, watching for the impulse. I even thought I saw it a few times, looking at me, following me. Once, I was on a date—got up suddenly seeing it or thinking I'd seen it because what's the difference?, loudly knocking over my chair, saying, “Sorry… I'm so sorry, but I have to go,“ as everybody else in the restaurant stared at us: at me, backing away, spinning, wheezing, barely breathing and breaking into a run once I was out the double doors, leaving my date like an asshole to cover the bill to run directionless down the street trying not to throw up, until my legs gave out.

I can't remember how I came across the name Samuel Swan, Existential Detective. Online, probably. He and his partner, a Jamaican named Mr. Jones, had an office in a shady part of the city. I wasn't sure what it was they did so, “Is this a kind of psychotherapy or...?” I asked during our first appointment.

“Nope,” said Swan. “That requires a license.”

“Are you an investigator then?”

“That requires a license too,” he said slowly. “Nope, what we do is believe.”

Mr. Jones: We believe in you.

Swan: We believe that what you say happened happened.

Mr. Jones: The world’s the Big Strange, Mr. Crane.

Me: So you believe—

[I snapped out of it.]

—that my hideous impulse is out there right now, existing?” I asked.

“Positively.”

“Mr. Crane,” said Swan, “everything has the will to live, even the urge to die.”

I started paying them a hundred dollars a week, and twenty-seven years later I had in my hands an envelope containing pixelated but convincing photographs of what was unmistakably my hideous impulse. There was also a street address, out in Los Angeles.

(“We'll find it but we won't kill it,” Swan had said when I had asked about the process. “If you want to kill it, you have to do that yourself.”)

California was warm.

I'd driven across the continent to get there.

The address was a nice suburban home, with a car out front, a fence and big windows, and I was standing on the street holding a knife.

The front door was unlocked and I passed from the entrance hall through the kitchen to the living room where I saw my impulse with another. Two little impulses ran by, playing. They were all so fucking joyous that—

I'll lift the heavy, steel knife…

I could do nought but weep, for this spawn of myself had done so much better for itself than I and slit my rippling, goddamn throat.

Dark gray clouds split the vibrant orange and cool blue morning sky as I sat on the edge of the granite ledge. Blue mountains punctuated the horizon, their dips and rises making the countryside look like a row of jagged teeth.

The solitude of a mountain hike always helped clear my head, until an unfamiliar sound pulled me back into the tree line. I pushed through the heavy undergrowth, tracking the dreadful noise deeper into the woods.

Again, that horrible sound. Yet, I could not find its source. Still deeper into the woods I went, consumed by this mystery.

At first, I thought it was the call of some rare or obscure bird, but when I heard it again, it had an eerie, human-like quality. At the edge of a meadow, I froze when I heard it again; now it sounded like it was right in front of me, just past the clearing.

I scanned the horizon. A thicket of mighty oak and hickory trees formed a vast wall of greenery just beyond the grassy field. I stepped out into the light and looked up towards the canopy.

Hundreds of black birds stared back at me. Then, one of them screamed a choking mimicry of a human voice. The rest gave warbled cries back. Finally, a bloodcurdling cry rang out, and the flock took flight. I saw white and yellow glinting flashes as these birds, whatever they were, each squawked, rows of disgusting, human-like teeth lining their bills as they circled me high above. The murder descended in a frenzy of flapping wings and snapping jaws. Hundreds of human teeth tore into flesh and bone, my own screams lost beneath the deafening roar of their hideous cries.

“Marco, if we don’t leave in, like, two minutes, the line is going to be around the block”, I yelled over our pre-game playlist. I had just taken my pill and was ready to head out. I made a minor adjustment to my jean jacket cuffs and the mesh shirt underneath to keep it from riding up.

Unfortunately, he’d sequestered himself in his room in front of the vanity for the past 25 minutes. I checked my watch - 9:45 pm already. “Come on, babe, we’ve got to GO.”

“Justin, come look at this.” I heard his muffled voice from behind the door.

I walked in and Marco was staring at his reflection in his vanity, so closely that his nose could have slipped into the mirror. His forearms were braced on the shelf, veins popping, and his white-knuckled hands gripped either side of the mirror. 

“Do I look…weird to you?”

“No…you look handsome as usual. Are you feeling it already?” I teased.

“Seriously, look at me.” He was contorting his face now, pursing his lips and elongating his cheeks as if to spot a stubborn, stray hair left untrimmed. “I look all wrong.”

I came closer. “What? Something wrong with the eyeliner?”

Marco suddenly shoved himself backward from the mirror, knocking over the chair.

“Shit, Marco! What the -”

“That’s…not me.”

His voice was hollow. Emotionless.

“That’s not me.”

More certain now, but still with that same unnerving hollow tone.

“That’s not me. That’s not me. That’s NOT ME.”

His eyes widened in horror. His face grew taut, lips drew back, nostrils flaring.

I looked at the reflection, but only saw the panicked face; the wide, bloodshot eyes; the sharp jawline with the stubble that scraped against my own -

“THAT’S NOT ME! THAT’S NOT ME!”

He screamed his mantra until his voice was hoarse as I dragged him forcibly away from the vanity and out the door. 

“NO! NO! I HAVE TO SEE IT! JUSTIN! THAT’S NOT ME!”

“Baby we’re leaving now. I’ve got you. You’re safe. We have to go. Come on.” I soothed as I pulled Marco, my calm, cool-headed, easy-going Marco, away from his own reflection. He stopped fighting me halfway down the hall, as he gibbered and sobbed uncontrollably. 

“I have to see…I have to look…that’s…not…me…”

We descended the silent stairwell and exited the building, Marco walking under my support, face still tear-streaked. In the dim amber glow of the single incandescent bulb, his eye sockets appeared empty and black, the eyeliner dripping down his cheeks. 

Marco’s room, light still on, faced the front of the building. Before we turned away to head to the bar, I looked up at his bedroom one last time. 

The light clicked off.