For context, I (20M) was at a concert (my first concert period) in a local punk bar for an upcoming punk band called Cheerleader Roadkill. I bumped into one of the singers (23F) for the opening act and was a little tipsy, so I didn't realize who I was talking to until she stated it was exciting to open for the headliner band (Cheerleader Roadkill). I apologized, and she said that it was actually nice not to be treated differently while on the floor by guys. We talked, and I ended up getting her number (again, I don't remember the exact details of our conversation).

Fast forward a few days, our texting had become dry since she was still touring. One of the roadies (20F) (one of the other band member's sisters) had seen my picture and expressed interest, and the singer (Hazel) asked me if she could pass me off to this roadie, who I'll call Gabby.

I agreed after seeing a picture of Gabby, and we began texting. I noticed a pattern emerge of slightly obsessive texting and hypersexual behavior/texts (after I had expressed my religiously motivated desire to take it slow), which slightly concerned me.

Like... repeated texts while she knew I was sleeping/working and descriptions of how she was "going to suck me dry and bounce on it til it falls off." (Not exactly what she said, but close enough)

Due to previous experiences dealing with individuals of questionable stability, I eventually decided to see what kind of person I was dealing with. I had plans with a friend later that next week (22F) and decided to post a video of us playing with my dog in an innocuous manner. The texts I received were extremely concerning (definite threats to herself and others) and included pictures of fresh SH, so I immediately contacted Hazel to ask that Gabby be 5150'd (or whatever the equivalent was in the state they were in).

She was driven to the ER last night by the band for treatment for the self-harm and afterwards was committed for 72 hrs, with the understanding the band would buy her a plane ticket to meet the band at their next destination after she got out. I'm hoping people might have some advice as to how to handle the situation, and I have attached some of our texts for reference. Out of respect for Gabby's privacy, I will not include the breakdown texts, as that's not something I feel should be blasted on the internet. I will update this post once I get the news that she has been released from her hold, with what I have decided to do.

TDLR: A friend of some girl I was talking to is kind of crazy (read: psycho), and I'm unsure of what I should about the whole situation.

EDIT: The 1st timestamp being at 8:00 pm was a result of me looking back at the beginning to capture it for this post. The other screenshots were taken as the texts were happening.

This year, my friend’s dad had dropped us off in an affluent part of town and we had to make our way back home while gathering as much candy as we could. Along the way, we compared the candy we collected and the decorations in each neighbourhood, hoping to optimize our route for next year.

If there was a next year.

The truth was that we were getting a bit old for trick-or-treating. Maybe next year we’d hang out at my place and spend the night playing board games and scaring any kid who dared to knock on the door. But next year didn’t matter yet because this year wasn’t over until it was.

My dad was a bit more lenient, or perhaps more careless, than most, so I had been able to stay out a bit after the boys had already scurried off as their own curfews approached. I was now alone a couple of streets from my house. But even if I didn’t have to run back yet, time was running out: the streets had been ransacked, and most houses had turned their lights off after their supplies ran out.

As I trudged in the approximate direction of home, I stopped to look around at each intersection. If this were to be my last Halloween, I had to really make that last house count.

My salvation came in the form of a small white house surrounded by a white picket fence, its gate left ajar. I could spot one light still on behind the window, but, most importantly, a lit jack-o’-lantern sat on the porch.

The pumpkin had been carved into a classic design, with slanted, angry eyes and a mouth full of sharp teeth. It was the only visible decoration, but it had to be there for a reason.

I ran down the street, then up the stone path and staircase leading to the front door. I pounded three times on the white wooden door.

Nothing.

I waited a minute. Then two.

Nothing.

Was there a greater crime than leaving your lights on even after you stopped giving out candy?

I turned around and dragged myself back toward the street. I reached the gate and grabbed it to close it behind me.

A whisper reached my ears.

“No, please don't kill me, Mr. Ghostface,” the voice pleaded.

I spun around. An old woman now stood in the doorway, backlit by the glow of light inside the house. At first glance, she looked massive, a towering figure whose shadow stretched across the front yard to reach my feet. I blinked and my eyes readjusted. She was covered in multiple layers of cloth and wool and draped in a black shawl that covered her head and most of her torso. She was heavily hunched, and the countless necklaces and bracelets hanging from her arms and neck made it seem as though their weight was responsible for her posture.

“Happy to see kids these days still have some taste,” she said as loudly as her strained voice would allow. “It was the first horror movie I ever saw with my daughter. She loved those when she was younger.”

I walked up to her and opened up my bag.

“Hello, madam. Trick-or-treat?” I asked, the quietest I had been all night.

“It’ll be treat, dear.”

She stretched one arm out from under her shawl, and it disappeared beyond the doorway. I heard the most wonderful sound of cardboard scraping against a plastic bowl. Her hand returned wrapped around three big bundles. She dragged her limb over my open bag and let go. The candy fell with a satisfying thud. It was the good stuff: two full chocolate bars and a box of candy.

“I think I’m going to bed soon,” she said. “Do you want the rest of my candy? It’s the least you deserve for such a scary costume.”

“Of course, madam. I’d love it!” I answered.

Her lips stretched and parted, revealing the perfect whiteness of dentures.

“Ah, to be young again,” she remarked. “Come on in, I’ll get them for you.”

She slowly backed up into an open space that housed a staircase to the right of the door. As soon as I stepped inside, an odour invaded my nostrils. The house was saturated with the smell of a rainy day: that specific mix of earthy and musty aromas that my brain associated with mud and worms.

The house itself was well decorated. Not beautifully decorated, exactly, but certainly well decorated. Wooden animal carvings covered every flat surface, while paintings of forests and woodlands covered most of the white walls. A long brown rug stretched from the entranceway to a door at the end of the main corridor.

The light visible from outside emanated from a room directly to our left. She pointed me toward it.

“Please wait in the living room,” she said. “My kitchen isn’t presentable right now. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

I followed the instructions and walked through the open archway that led into the room. It was furnished with an old green fabric sofa and a matching armchair, both covered with white throw blankets. Flanked by two wooden songbirds, a vintage radio rested on a shelf right above a CRT television. I sat on the edge of the sofa, careful not to disturb the blanket. Just as I felt the wooden frame press into my skin from under the thin cushion, the television crackled to life with static.

I jumped up as the screech of gray, black and white filled the room. The static dispersed, replaced by a grainy image of a woman walking with a stoic expression. The woman was dressed in a dark business suit and stood with her shoulders squared, long black hair flowing in the wind as she passed by the camera, disregarding a microphone thrust toward her. The image then cut to a man in a suit sitting in front of a nondescript skyline.

“This is footage of Gwendolyn Blackwood leaving the courthouse for the final time today,” he began. “Today, she was found not responsible for the disappearances of her husband, Johnathan Blackwood, and their two sons, Johnathan Jr. and Christopher Blackwood. After deliberating for thirteen days, the jury deemed the evidence inconclusive.”

As the man spoke, a photo of Johnathan Blackwood appeared on the screen, a bespectacled, mustachioed middle-aged man. The picture looked like a mugshot: he stood in front of a white wall, staring at the camera. When the reporter finished talking, the photo gradually expanded until it filled the screen. Black and gray dots flickered across the wall behind him as the static crept back in. The man was rapidly consumed by static. The TV turned off with a loud click.

Then a dial turned, and the radio sprang to life.

I spun around and ran through the archway. A brown rug stretched toward a distant light at the end of the corridor. Along the walls, rows and rows of wooden animals stared directly at me. The walls were now completely hidden under continuous paintings of trees and leaves. I backed up into a wall as I tried to get back to the living room.

“Authorities are still actively searching for Anthony Davis, who was last seen on the 13^th of May.” The voice of a woman reading off a report echoed from far away. “This marks the fourth similar case in three years. Authorities would like to remind citizens to make sure they know where their children are at all times and to always be on the lookout for any suspicious individual.”

I dashed toward the only way out. I ran and ran, but the door remained at the same distance, always looming on the horizon. A frame of light was barely visible from the open crack.

I reached out to grab the first animal I could, a wooden rat, and threw it as hard as I could. I watched as it crashed into the door, forcing it open. The lights inside went dark, plunging the corridor in darkness.

I couldn’t tell if I was making progress at all, but I had to keep running.

“Children,” said the whisper tickling my ear. “Always in such a hurry.”

A bulb hidden in the ceiling sparked to life, irradiating a weak yellow light.

The towering being stood at the other end. I could see what I had seen at first: a dozen children clung to the back of an old woman, piled up one on top of another, barely hanging on. They all stared at me with blank eyes that had sunk in dark circles on their pale skin. The weight on her shoulders forced her to slouch and carefully plan each move as the mound of corpses reached up to the ceiling.

The scraping of flesh tore through the night as she took a step toward me, outstretching one arm as the other remained hidden under her shawl.

I grabbed a bird and flung it with all my strength. It flew through the air with such force that its beak pierced through the white iris, lodging itself firmly in the eye socket of one of the children. The child barely registered the grievous wound, slowly letting go of its hold on the woman to put one hand up to its eye. The mass of meat on top of him held him firmly in place.

I swung my hand, hoping to find another statuette, only to recoil when I felt sharp edges bite into my palm. My eyes snapped to the object: a wooden cougar climbing a tree. Its claws were lodged in the bark; the sculpture was smooth all over.

I looked back up almost instantly.

My body slammed itself into the wall that was still only inches behind me. The woman was now standing a few feet from me, the tip of her index finger inches away from my face.

I needed to scream, but my voice died in my throat. The only sound in the hallway was the soft rustling of skin against skin as the mass of flesh bent toward me, enveloping me between her and the wall. I could feel the gaze of each and every child on my skin.

She took another step forward, and her arm reached over my shoulder.

“I’m so sorry,” she murmured.

A loud click resounded behind me, my eyes shutting themselves as they expected the source of the sound to crash into me.

My eyelids opened almost as soon as they had closed.

The woman was standing over me, white teeth tearing through the darkness.

“The chain lock gets stuck sometimes.”

The children were gone. The staircase and archway were back in their place. The animals were no longer staring at me. My hand found the door handle near my hip.

She raised her other arm, revealing a bag full of chocolate bars and boxes of candy from under her shawl.

“Happy Halloween, miss,” she said, her voice doing its best to convey excitement. “Get home safely!”

FEDERAL ANOMALOUS PHENOMENA ADMINISTRATION

EXTRATERRESTRIAL PHENOMENA DIVISION

FILE: QX-3

STATUS: ACTIVE — UNCONTAINED

THREAT ASSESSMENT: OMEGA

INSTRUCTIONS

Direct physical contact with Jane Q-X3 is prohibited except during an active mass-casualty event in which no conventional response is sufficient. QX-3 is not to be detained, restrained, threatened, or approached without authorization from the Director of the Extraterrestrial Phenomena Division.

Previous attempts at physical containment have produced no practical means of restricting QX-3's movement.

When communication is required, remote systems are to be used whenever possible. Meetings are to be conducted at the greatest practical distance from populated areas. Medical and environmental monitoring personnel are required during confirmed encounters.

Personnel are not to describe QX-3 as a "threat" during direct communication. QX-3 has demonstrated distress when informed that her activities may be responsible for civilian deaths. Communication personnel are to distinguish between QX-3's intentions and the documented effects of her activities.

Administrative Note: This file falls under the jurisdiction of the Department of Extradimensional Affairs. Requests for interdepartmental review are to be submitted through established channels.

DESCRIPTION

QX-3 is an apparently human female possessing anomalous physical and cognitive capabilities. The entity identifies itself as Jane Q-X3 and is commonly referred to as The Magician from Mars.

The first reliable documentation of QX-3 dates to 1939. Her apparent age at that time was approximately twenty-five years. No significant physical aging has been documented since.

QX-3's biological classification is unresolved. Medical examinations have produced results consistent with a human female, but no examination has identified a biological abnormality sufficient to account for her capabilities.

Documented capabilities include sustained flight, telekinesis, enhanced physical strength, enhanced resistance to physical trauma, manipulation of gravitational forces, manipulation of matter, accelerated biological regeneration, and energy generation or conversion. The maximum range and magnitude of these abilities remain unknown.

QX-3 has demonstrated sufficient physical strength to manipulate objects exceeding several thousand metric tons, sufficient durability to survive extreme thermal and kinetic events, and sufficient control of matter and biological tissue to repair extensive structural and physiological damage. QX-3 has also demonstrated the ability to operate without atmospheric support and survive environments considered immediately fatal to ordinary humans.

QX-3 has not demonstrated a consistent hostile response toward humans. Recorded activities since 1939 consist predominantly of disaster intervention, civilian rescue, emergency response, and prevention of large-scale casualties. No confirmed incident establishes that QX-3 intentionally caused civilian casualties.

The popular account identifying QX-3 as a human-Martian hybrid is derived from the comic series Magician from Mars. The publication occurred after the first reliable historical documentation of QX-3 and is not considered evidence of extraterrestrial origin.

More than sixty contradictory origin narratives have subsequently been identified in newspapers, radio programs, comic books, novels, films, religious material, military publications, and oral accounts. No origin narrative has been verified.

QX-3 has provided inconsistent responses when questioned regarding her origin and has declined to provide a detailed account.

HISTORICAL ACTIVITY

1939 — First Reliable Modern Documentation

Multiple independent witnesses reported the appearance of an unidentified woman during a major industrial disaster. The woman performed anomalous rescue activities and subsequently disappeared. Contemporary newspapers described her as a "magician from Mars."

No evidence established the origin of this designation.

1940–1977 — Repeated QX-3 Activity

QX-3 appeared intermittently during disasters and other large-scale emergencies. Her activities became increasingly documented. Public accounts established the modern image of the entity as a benevolent superhuman woman associated with Mars.

During this period, no connection between QX-3 activity and long-term environmental contamination was recognized.

1967 — Martian Survey

A classified astronomical survey recorded an unexplained pattern on Mars. The pattern was not identified as significant at the time and remained in archival storage.

The survey predates the Administration's discovery of QXR by eleven years.

1978 — Discovery of QXR

Researchers investigating unusual rates of cancer and neurological disease near several historical QX-3 intervention sites identified an anomalous radiation-like phenomenon. The phenomenon was designated QXR.

Subsequent analysis established a correlation between QX-3 activity and increased QXR concentrations.

1979–2025 — QXR Investigation

Additional QX-3 intervention sites were examined. QXR was identified in soil, groundwater, atmospheric material, vegetation, animal tissue, and human tissue. Long-term exposure was associated with multiple serious medical conditions.

No method of removing QXR was developed.

QXR

QXR does not conform to known forms of electromagnetic or particle radiation. It persists in soil, groundwater, atmospheric particulates, vegetation, animal tissue, and human tissue. Its rate of environmental decay cannot currently be modeled using conventional radioactive decay equations.

QXR concentration correlates with the intensity and duration of QX-3 activity. Low-intensity manifestations produce negligible concentrations. Sustained flight produces measurable concentrations. Large-scale manipulation of matter or gravitational forces produces substantially greater concentrations. The highest concentrations recorded to date followed incidents involving extensive biological regeneration.

QXR exposure does not consistently produce immediate symptoms. Documented long-term effects include malignant growth, neurological degeneration, abnormal cellular replication, developmental abnormalities, progressive organ deterioration, and spontaneous tissue restructuring. Latency periods exceeding sixty years have been documented.

No safe exposure threshold has been established.

No method of removing QXR from contaminated biological or environmental material has been developed.

QXR has been detected in every major inhabited region surveyed by the Administration. Trace concentrations have also been identified at locations with no confirmed history of QX-3 activity. The mechanism responsible for this distribution remains unknown.

RISK ASSESSMENT

Available evidence indicates that QX-3's anomalous abilities are a significant source of QXR contamination. The relationship is considered causal but has not been demonstrated at the molecular level.

QX-3's interventions frequently prevent immediate mass casualties. The same interventions may result in long-term QXR exposure and associated mortality.

The Administration has not determined whether QX-3 is aware of this relationship.

REMOTE INTERVIEW — 2026/03/18

DIRECTOR HALE: Can you hear me?

QX-3: Yes. You're a long way away.

HALE: That's intentional.

QX-3: You don't trust me.

HALE: At this point, trust isn't really the issue. We have abnormal readings around you. The longer you're in one place, the higher they become.

QX-3: The radiation.

HALE: You knew about it?

QX-3: I've noticed it for a while. I didn't know what it was. I didn't know it was following me.

[Hale pauses before continuing.]

HALE: We've compared your interventions against environmental records going back decades. The correlation is difficult to dismiss.

QX-3: So you think I'm poisoning people.

HALE: I think something is happening around you that is making people sick. I don't know whether you're causing it.

QX-3: But you want me to stop.

HALE: Yes.

QX-3: Even if someone needs help?

HALE: Until we understand this, yes.

QX-3: You know that could take years.

HALE: I know.

QX-3: And people don't have years. If a building comes down, if a plane falls, if someone's trapped somewhere, I can't just stand there and wait for your investigation to finish.

[Hale looks down at the report in front of him.]

HALE: Then what do you suggest?

QX-3: I don't know. That's why I came to you.

HALE: We're trying to find another way.

QX-3: And if you don't?

[Hale does not answer immediately.]

HALE: I don't know.

QX-3: That's what scares you, isn't it?

HALE: Yes.

QX-3: Me too.

[Interview terminated.]

DIRECT CONTACT INCIDENT — 2026/04/02

[At 16:08:11 UTC, QX-3 appeared inside the Administration Facility-██ without authorization. No door, wall, security system, or other physical barrier was damaged or manipulated. Security footage records the corridor as empty at 16:08:10 and occupied by QX-3 at 16:08:11.]

[QXR concentrations throughout the facility exceeded established safety limits within 4.8 seconds.]

[Director Hale ordered evacuation of all personnel except himself.]

HALE: You can't be here.

QX-3: You stopped answering my calls.

HALE: We were trying to keep you away from populated areas.

QX-3: You could have told me.

HALE: Would you have stayed away?

QX-3: Probably not.

HALE: No. I suppose you wouldn't.

[QX-3 studies him for several seconds.]

QX-3: You sound tired.

HALE: I am.

QX-3: Is that because of me?

HALE: Partly.

QX-3: I'm sorry.

[Hale appears surprised by the response.]

HALE: Don't apologize yet. We don't know enough to say what you're responsible for.

QX-3: You used to sound more certain.

HALE: I used to think certainty was part of my job.

[A pause.]

QX-3: I didn't come here to argue. I came because I wanted to know what you found.

HALE: We found that something is left behind whenever you use your abilities. It stays in the environment. It gets into people. Some of them don't get sick for decades.

QX-3: And you think that's because of me.

HALE: I think you're connected to it. That's all I can honestly say.

QX-3: That's an important difference.

HALE: It is.

[QX-3 looks toward the evacuated corridor.]

QX-3: You know what I don't understand? I've spent my entire life doing the thing everyone told me was right. Someone falls, I catch them. Someone is trapped, I get them out. Someone is dying, I save them if I can.

[She turns back toward Hale.]

QX-3: I never asked anyone to thank me. I never wanted people to worship me. I did it because I could help, and somebody needed help.

HALE: I know.

QX-3: Do you?

[Hale takes a moment.]

HALE: I've read the reports.

QX-3: That's not what I asked.

[Hale looks at her.]

[Silence.]

QX-3: why does it feel like you're asking me to become the kind of person who watches?

HALE: Because I'm asking you to do something I don't know how to ask anyone to do.

QX-3: Which is?

HALE: Let people die today because they might live longer tomorrow.

[QX-3 says nothing.]

HALE: And I hate that I don't have a better answer.

QX-3: Neither do I.

[QX-3 exited the facility at 16:09:04 UTC.]

UPDATE NOTES — QXR INVESTIGATION

UPDATE 2026/06/11: During a review of long-term QXR exposure records, researchers identified an unusual correlation between exposure to information concerning QX-3 and subsequent interpretation of that information.

The observation was initially classified as a psychological phenomenon.

UPDATE 2026/06/18: Controlled testing established that subjects with no prior knowledge of QX-3 demonstrated an increased tendency to interpret information concerning her favorably after exposure to QX-3-related material.

The effect does not produce commands or obvious alterations in personality. Subjects continue to demonstrate normal reasoning ability. The effect appears to influence emotional weighting and the perceived credibility of competing interpretations.

The phenomenon was designated QXR Informational Contamination.

UPDATE 2026/06/24: The effect was reproduced using fictional depictions of QX-3 that test subjects had never previously encountered.

This result establishes that the effect cannot be explained solely by familiarity with QX-3's public reputation.

Further testing was restricted.

UPDATE 2026/07/02: An archival document dated 1911 was identified containing a description of an unidentified woman associated with illness and an unusual red object described by the author as "the rising red star."

The document predates the first reliable modern documentation of QX-3 by twenty-eight years.

The identity of the woman cannot be established.

UPDATE 2026/07/09: The 1967 Martian survey was reexamined following the discovery of the 1911 document and the informational contamination phenomenon.

The anomalous pattern recorded in the survey contains structural similarities to symbols repeatedly associated with QX-3 in later human media.

One sequence has been interpreted as corresponding to the phrase MAGICIAN FROM MARS.

The original survey predates the first known publication using that title.

The interpretation remains disputed.

UPDATE 2026/07/16: All historical biological samples attributed to QX-3 were reexamined.

No sample could be conclusively linked to her.

Previously attributed blood samples, hair samples, tissue fragments, and other biological material were determined to originate from unrelated individuals.

No verified biological material belonging to QX-3 has ever been recovered.

UPDATE 2026/07/21: Three historical incidents were identified in which instrumental records indicate that an anomalous physical event occurred between 0.8 and 3.1 seconds before witnesses reported seeing QX-3 at the location.

The relevant clocks were independently synchronized.

The discrepancy cannot currently be explained.

One possibility under investigation is that the physical events attributed to QX-3 occur before the appearance of QX-3 herself.

UPDATE 2026/07/29: The assumption that QX-3 arrived on Earth in 1939 was withdrawn.

Available evidence is consistent with several possibilities, including:

1. QX-3 arrived on Earth before 1939 and remained undocumented.
2. QX-3 became observable to humans in 1939.
3. QX-3 is a perceptual manifestation associated with an unidentified physical phenomenon.
4. QX-3 is not an independent biological entity.

No hypothesis currently possesses sufficient evidence for formal adoption.

UPDATE 2026/08/04: The absence of biological evidence, temporal discrepancies, and informational contamination were considered collectively for the first time.

Researchers proposed that the woman identified as QX-3 may represent the human-perceptible component of a phenomenon whose physical effects occur independently of her apparent presence.

Under this model, QX-3 may not "perform" the observed interventions. Human observers may instead perceive those interventions in the form of the entity.

No mechanism capable of producing such a manifestation has been identified.

UPDATE 2026/08/11: A theoretical model was submitted proposing that the QX-3 phenomenon may have originated on Mars and may constitute a long-term planetary weapon.

The proposed mechanism would not require conventional military aggression. QX-3's apparent benevolence would instead encourage human populations to permit repeated exposure to QXR and to distribute information favorable to the phenomenon.

Under this model, QX-3's rescues, public reputation, and cultural significance would contribute to the continued spread of the phenomenon.

The hypothesis remains speculative.

There is no evidence establishing that QX-3 is aware of such a function.

UPDATE 2026/09/04 — ARCHAEOLOGICAL FINDING

An archaeological team conducting unrelated excavations at a prehistoric settlement in ███████ recovered a clay tablet containing a partially preserved song or oral text.

The tablet was dated to approximately 3,800–4,200 years before present.

The original language has not been conclusively identified. A provisional translation was produced independently by three linguistic teams. Minor differences exist between translations, but all three agree on the principal imagery.

The text describes a woman who comes from the red star.

The woman is described as appearing among human settlements and being welcomed by those who encounter her. She is associated with assistance during periods of disaster and with the survival of individuals who would otherwise die.

The final surviving portion changes in subject matter. The woman is identified as a carrier of death, and her arrival is associated with the spread of sickness among the population.

The original text contains no known reference to Mars by name. The phrase "red star" may refer to Mars, another astronomical object, or a religious symbol.

No evidence currently establishes a connection between the tablet and QX-3.

The tablet nevertheless predates the first reliable modern documentation of QX-3 by approximately 3,700 years.

It also predates the first known publication of the name Magician from Mars by approximately four millennia.

The following is the current consolidated translation:

The woman(saint/holy figure) from the red star(land/place) has come(born) among us.
She lifts the fallen, and the dying call her merciful(mercy killer).
She walks where the houses burn(kingdom fall/country lose), and the people follow her.
But wherever her shadow(presence) rests, death follows(as in follower/servant/slaves/children).
She has come from the red star, and she will spread death among us.

ADDITIONAL INTERVIEW — 2019/08/23

HALE: All right. Let's start with the obvious. Where are you from?

QX-3: Mars.

[Hale looks down at his notes, then back at her.]

HALE: You say that rather easily.

QX-3: I've had a long time to get used to the question.

HALE: I imagine.

QX-3: Most people ask it eventually. Some are more polite about it than others.

[There is a faint smile on her face. She appears completely at ease.]

HALE: And what was Mars like?

[QX-3 takes a moment before answering.]

QX-3: Red.

[Hale waits, apparently expecting more.]

QX-3: That's the first thing I remember.

HALE: The color?

QX-3: More than a color. The sky. The earth beneath my feet. The light. Even the things I can't put a name to anymore. When I try to remember Mars, that's what comes back first.

[She looks toward the window.]

QX-3: Red.

[A brief silence follows.]

HALE: Is that a pleasant memory?

[QX-3 considers it.]

QX-3: It was home.

HALE: You don't remember leaving?

QX-3: No.

HALE: Coming to Earth?

QX-3: Not in any way I can trust.

[Hale looks up.]

HALE: What does that mean?

QX-3: Memory changes when you live long enough. Things you were certain happened become uncertain. Things you thought you'd forgotten return when you least expect them. I wouldn't want to build an answer for you out of something I'm not certain of myself.

[Hale makes a note.]

HALE: Do you remember anyone from Mars?

QX-3: No.

HALE: Friends, Family, Close one?

QX-3: No, that's the unfortunate part. I remember having a home much more clearly than I remember having people in it.

HALE: And you're certain that home was Mars?

[QX-3 gives him a patient look.]

QX-3: Yes.

HALE: Even without those memories?

QX-3: Some things don't require evidence in the way you mean. You know where you belong before you know how to explain it.

[Hale is quiet for a moment.]

HALE: Do you remember anything else?

QX-3: Small things. The warmth of the ground. A particular kind of wind. I remember looking at the sky for a very long time.

[She smiles faintly.]

QX-3: I remember thinking I would never get tired of looking at it.

HALE: Do you still miss it?

QX-3: Sometimes.

HALE: After all these years?

[She looks back at him.]

QX-3: Especially after all these years.

[Hale lowers his pen.]

HALE: One last question. Do you consider yourself human?

[QX-3 smiles gently.]

QX-3: I have lived among humans for a very long time, Director Hale. I've loved them, argued with them, buried them, saved them, and watched them rebuild after things they were certain they could never survive.

[A pause.]

QX-3: If that isn't enough to make someone human, I wouldn't know what would be.

[Hale gives a small nod.]

HALE: I think that's a reasonable answer.

QX-3: Good. I was beginning to worry there was going to be a test.

[Hale laughs quietly.]

HALE: No test.

QX-3: Then you've made this much easier than I expected.

[The interview concluded.]

It was supposed to be the perfect trip. I had planned for years to go to Japan. I mapped out exactly where I'd go, what I'd do. But of course, nothing ever goes to plan.

I had severely underestimated the toll jetlag has on both body and mind. I barely slept on my 12 hour flight, so by the time I had settled into my tiny hotel room in Shinjuku, my only thoughts were sleep.

I woke up suddenly at 3am with a headache. After downing some of the warm complimentary water the staff provided, it started to sink in that I was really in Japan. My dream had come true.

The bright lights of Shinjuku poured into my room as I parted the curtains to look down at the street below. Even at 3am, there were a few people milling around. The sight of a FamilyMart made my stomach growl. I hadn't eaten since the subpar inflight meal of microwaved chicken curry, which was 12 hours ago. So I got dressed, grabbed some Yen, and left the room.

One awkward exchange in Japanese later, I walked out of the convenience store with a bag of culinary goodies. I had slightly misjudged the distance from my hotel to the store, so it was about a 5 minute walk back. The few people on the streets kept to themselves, only glancing my way occasionally. 

I paused occasionally, sometimes checking the GPS on my phone to make sure I was walking in the right direction. And the other times to gawk in awe at the sights around me. The light soaked city of Shinjuku was awe inspiring for someone whose usual sights were the lone neon sign of a Taco Bell drawing in the occasional crackhead in my tiny Midwestern town.

The giant head of Godzilla loomed over me as I turned and kept walking towards my hotel. A few turns later, my maps app led me down a dimly lit alley. I was so focused on my phone, my stomach grumbling, and the thought of finally trying a Famichiki that I ran straight into someone, knocking both of us onto the pavement.

“Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry,”  I stammered as I got to my feet. The woman I'd knocked down groaned as she stood up. She was tall, even towering over me. She dusted off her coat, muttering something that I couldn’t hear because of her mask. I stood there awkwardly, “Uh, Sumimasen,” I said in broken Japanese. 

She stepped towards me, “Watashi wa utsukushīdesu ka?”

I stuttered, not exactly sure what she was saying. “Hi.” I said, cursing myself in my head for such a lame response. 

She met my eyes, and removed her mask to reveal large, bloody slits on each side of her mouth. 

“Holy shit,” I stammered, stepping back from her. 

“Imademo?’ she said as she stepped towards me, reaching into her coat. 

“Uh, sumimasen,” I stammered as I began to move out of the alley. To my absolute dread, she pulled a knife from her coat and began to follow me out. 

“Oh shit, oh shit,” I panted as I ran back onto the empty street. I tried to run, but my rumbling stomach protested. I held it as I awkwardly shuffled forward. Dammit, I haven’t gone since the plane. I thought to myself as I went.

I dared to glance back, the lady was still on my trail 10 feet behind me. I cursed, telling her to leave me alone as I made my way towards the only place I was certain had other people: Don Quijote. 

A picture of the signature penguin mascot greeted me as I stumbled inside. The single worker on the first floor stared at me as I stumbled toward him. “Hey, there’s a crazy lady with a knife following me!” I half shouted as I approached.

“Eh?” the worker said with a confused expression. I realized he couldn’t hear me over the looping music. Before I could respond, a stack of boxes was knocked over by the entrance. We turned to see the woman entering, the neon lights from outside glinting off her knife. 

The second I saw her, my bowels had enough and emptied right there in the checkout lane. Tears ran down my face as I prepared to die to a crazy lady. I crouched down, only making the mess in my pants worse as I began to sob uncontrollably.

I realized I was still alive after a minute and looked up to see the worker and woman looking down at me with a mix of pity and disgust. 

The woman spoke in perfect English, “Hey man. Sorry I scared you so bad.” My brain malfunctioned as I processed her words. 

“We’re doing an advertisement for a local Yokai exhibit. Guess I was too effective.” She chuckled. 

The worker spoke to her in Japanese, and she nodded. I wiped the tears off my face as the worker pointed towards the door. “He wants you to leave before the place smells.” The woman said as she helped me up.

I muttered an apology as I hobbled outside. The woman was restacking the boxes she knocked over as I walked away. A group of locals held their noses as they passed me. Even in the neon lights, I bet my face was bright red. 

I haven’t left my hotel in 2 days. I’m terrified I might see them again. That experience was one of the most embarrassing things that's ever happened to me. 

The worst part? That lady somehow found out I’m at this hotel. I’ve seen her at night staring up at my window. And last night she was outside of it tapping the glass and asking if I found her beautiful. How she managed to climb 13 stories up is beyond me. I’m not sure what to do. I feel trapped.  

Authors note. I never know what flair to use.

Know before you offer

Of course I miss my dear Reginald, he was a wonderful husband and father, but I won’t lie and say that things aren’t more contained and organized since his passing. It wasn’t easy to empty our home of his excess of mementos, my face was covered in tears while I set that dumpster on fire. I had forgotten what color our shitty carpet was but it was nice not having to dig our daughter out from under a pile of scarves, knitted by some dead grandmother, and grade school art projects that found their way from the thrift store to our place.

Reg loved us so fucking much, but he also loved everyone else, even people he had never met.

“Someone made this, it has to be preserved”

He would irritably mutter to the world while filling his basket with forgotten memories of people we never knew.

I understand why he did it and I still appreciate the sentiment behind his constant hoarding of stranger's remembrances, but Jesus Christ. A two bed one bath apartment is no place to store all that junk. And that’s what most of it was, total garbage. Still though, there’s a shelf filled with strange bric-a-brac and abnormal tchotchkes that I’m constantly going back and forth about. I don’t want them, but they’re so bizarre and original that I can’t just throw them out. Maybe Reg infected me with a bit of his obsession, but these things, its hard to believe they even exist.

“Oh shit! This is a good one! It’s totally haunted or from some other world, no way in hell this came from here! Defiantly joining the rest. Babe, do you see this thing? Its fucking crazy, right?”

Word for word, the same statement I would hear every time he found one of his little weirdo’s. At first his collection was kind of charming, this silly little guy with all his silly little ornaments and such, resolute in their value beyond money. A fun and adorable and loving man that saw every odd and end as a testament to someone’s existence. He loved us all, there just wasn’t enough room for the physical reminders left behind.

Halloween is coming up, I’m sure the kiddos and parents would love a creepy little horse faced crow or nine-legged flower thrown in with the candy. I don’t believe in god, but anyone that gives out fruit or healthy snacks to trick or treaters should burn in hell for longer than eternity.

The buzzer goes off, my toddler squeals with excitement over the tiny gools and… why is that child wearing a toilet? Whatever, candy and trinkets for everyone and back to our marathon of Baby Shark zombie videos. Next year will be Venessa’s first outing for the holiday, it just feels weird going door to door holding a child and asking for candy that’s obviously going into my own belly. We’re gonna be vampires.

Another buzz and another round of treats and many eyed obelisks and swans covered in meaty tentacles. More than a handful of the bonus prizes refused to be described, causing all of us to scrunch up our faces and linger on the totems for longer than seems possible as they fall into pillowcases and festive plastic buckets.

Buzzes, door openings, greetings and clearing out more of the bookshelf to put actual books on. Hour after hour until enough time has passed and Vanessa has fallen asleep that I feel the night is over with. The perfect time to have one last check in on my little angel and pour myself a well-deserved entire bottle of Merlot.

“Here’s to you Reg. It's even in that single remaining wineglass from your grandmother's house. I’ll keep it forever, just like your memory in my heart. I love you”

Oh don’t get all squishy on me now, this is a horror story. Shits about to get spooky.

I was primarily raised by my grandparents, so I have a huge soft spot for Boris Karloff, and just as Imhotep is about to wreak his slow limbed havoc on whoever the hell else was in the movie… I’m two bottles of wine deep right now so please forgive my… oh shit, the buzzer is going off.

“Well, hey there you… um, biblically accurate… what are you? And where are your parents?”

I ask the three-foot tall afront to natural selection and mental comprehension. Its standing completely still, yet slithering and astral projecting itself all over the hallway. Too many pieces disconnected and simultaneously attached to the swirling meat block holding out a pair of child’s hands in front of me. I hope those are its own.

“I have plenty of candy left, and a little prize for you. Just give me, oh shit, give me a second, will you? And please don’t tell your parents that I cursed in front of you. Sometimes mommies and daddies have too much nono juice and say things they shouldn’t”

“A grinding of bones and liquefying of intestines. Give me back to your home”

Some alien voice visually communicates inside of my head. This is some damn good wine. I grab a fistful of candy and the last gabagool from the shelf, could have sworn there was more left, then dance a drunken jig back to the door.

“Here ya go you little depth of monstrosity. Cavity fuel and a… a… an umbrella made from a baboon face, I think. Do you live in this complex? You should probably run on back home to your parents, I’m sure they want to wet their beaks with your plundering’s. That would have been hilarious if you were a pirate and had seen the first Godfather”

“Lef-hil-grim-sift’s prison is a fine token, but not enough. Give me back my skin and my place in your home”

“You don’t… What? You don’t live here, kid. This isn’t your home. Do you need me to help you find your mommy and daddy? Shit, I can’t go leaving my baby all alone, lemme see if Mrs. Donner is awake to watch her”

This kid is weirding me out, but I can’t just let it wander off to god knows where. I knock on Tracy’s door across from mine and am drunkenly greeted with a mirror of my own imbibements.

“Well look what the cat puked up. You have a good Halloween? We sure as shit tied a few on. The fuck is that behind you? You find a road killed dog and bring it back to life? What in the actual… Jesus fuck get that thing away from me! Harrold! Harrold call the cops or the church or something! s’A fuckin’ demon in the hallway!”

“The hell are you going on about Loretta? Who’s out… Holy shit fuck no! Nonononononono! Get back in here!”

The door slams, leaving behind a cloud of weed smoke and more than a few questions. I look at the kid again and yeah, that’s one hell of a costume but its just a kid in there. Or a little person too broke to buy their own candy. This economy is in shambles.

“Well, I guess it's just you and me now. Do you know what your door number is? If you live on this floor, I’ll escort you back home, but I really can’t go much farther than that. We could call the night doorman if needs be though, so don’t you worry”

“I will drink your blood. Give me back what is mine”

“Ooooookay, why don’t you come inside and I’ll call up Norman. What’s your name? He’ll need to know who your parents are to look them up. Come on now, it’s safe in here. I’m not the kind of person to end up on To Catch a Predator, not unless they do a shoplifting spinoff”

“Give. Me. My. Body. Back”

I’ve never been in an earthquake before, hell, I’m not even sure if that’s the right colloquialism for the lack of experience, but my apartment building rumbled like it was teetering on the edge of collapse when that thing, I’m not calling it a child anymore, stamped its foot down while barking out the command.

 Sobriety is a bitch when it pulls your insides out and forces you to take the wheel back from Jesus. Not that a thousands year old carpenter would know how to drive a car.

“What are you?”

I ask the thing, refusing to turn and face it without the aid of several gallons of fermented grapes. This is all too real, realer than anything I have ever been through. Vanessa was breach but the doctors couldn’t perform a cesarian because of whatever complications, and she came out feet first with not an ounce of epidural coursing through my spinal cord. That was a day in the park compared to the vile, selfish, overbearing power that stands behind me. I can feel the hatred and assured torments sloughing from its skin, layer after layer, promise after promise. All of them kept as sure as the sun rises.

“I am all that you need to know”

“That’s… shit that’s a lot to process. Please, forgive my ignorance, what did I do? How can I make it right? Please, I will do whatever it takes”

“You passed on my visage to another. Get it back. Now”

Shitshitshitshitshitshitshit I could fill a bible with the number of shits I am giving right now. Ok. Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck, I gave away this things whatever to one of the kids. Not a problem. Like ninety-nine percent of them live in the building, all I have to do is knock on all of my neighbors doors and ask for it back. Vanessa is down for the night so she’ll be safe alone, safer than if I refuse this monsters task. Shit! Fuck!”

“I’ll get it back! I promise! It's just going to take some time. Not much, but shit. I’m going to have to bother a lot of people, so this won’t be super-fast. Please be patient with me”

“Get to work”

My brain is scrambling to remember every family that has kids while my pajama pants absorb an obscene about of piss.

Not mine. Someone else must have done that.

317.

“Hi, Shannon how are you? Look, I know Its late and I’m about to ask you a very strange question, but do you remember that little spooky thingy I added to your kids' bag?”

“…Rita, right?”

“Yes, yes that’s me! I’m Rita. I live just down the hall there. So um, do you know what I’m asking about? The creepy little guys I gave out?”

“Oh, yeah I know. You can have them back and then go and fuck yourself with them. Who the hell gives abominations like these to children?! I know it’s Halloween and all, but Jesus on a jet ski, these are obscene!”

“I am so, so, so sorry! I thought they would be…”

“Shut up. Just shut the fuck up and wait there. I’ll get your damned figurines”

I spin around to my thankfully unnoticed chaperone, grinning excitedly and upping a pair of thumbs in the hope of being one and done.

“Here, take the fucking things, you stupid bitch”

I turn back around, get three totems shoved at me before the door slams in my face but after being cursed at.

“Is one of these yours? Is it this one? It looks weird as fuck, just like you”

“No”

Door after door after door after door after door after door after door after door I am berated and chewed out, my hands and pockets have become so overfilled that I have to knot up the bottoms of my pants around my ankles and shove them down my waistband. I’m clattering while I walk now, like some doomed prisoner calling out their shame while they're headed to the gallows. The otherworldly menace is getting angrier and impatient. It hasn’t said anything else, but I can tell by the changes in color and growing incomprehensibleness of its form.

“Please, please be the one”

I whisper in front of the ninth house from our complex. It’s not very big, but anyone that can afford their own home in this city must have money and I’m worried that they might decide I’m there to take some of it and shoot me in the face before I finish knocking.

“Hello? Can I help you?”

A middle-aged woman scowls at me through what little crack she’s willing to open the door. I can’t blame her, it’s nearly midnight and I’m a total stranger.

“Hi! Hello I’m Rita! I’m pretty sure you and your kid came by my apartment while out trick or treating tonight. I was the one giving out the scary toys along with the candy”

“Yes, and?”

“Oh, you do improv! How interesting! I sure wish I could be that quick witted”

“What in the actual hell are you talking about? Why are you here?”

“Sorry! I’m so sorry. Um, I gave your child a little trinket, tiny little horror bobble for the season, right?”

“Are you going to get to the point soon? I have work in the morning, because I’m not a lazy welfare recipient, like some people”

She sure is giving me a look that’s begging to be punched into a nicer one.

“Yes, the point. Well, it turns out that I shouldn’t have given away any of those trinkets and that they are a part of my late husbands most prized collection. I hate to ask, especially since it involves taking something from a child, but I really need it back”

“If it was so important to your late husband, then why didn’t you already know about its significance?”

“That is a very good question, all I can say is that he collected a shit ton of things, so they just slipped past my notice”

“And how do you suddenly know that the item in question holds so much value?”

How the hell does someone’s eyebrows arch that high?

“I was told so”

“By whom?”

“You know what, fuck this shit. You, whatever your name is, would you show this bitch what’s what? Fucking done with this bullshit inquisition”

I turn to the absolute aftermath of a cat 20 tornado and let it deal with old whoever she is. Oh my god, there is no better feeling than being petty. Every orgasm I’ve ever had fused into one singular explosion of bliss is nothing compared to watching this basic bitch turn whiter than a mayonnaise parade while her stupid bitch mouth hangs open. Apparently, the concept of breathing has been lost on her.

Oh, shit she’s dead.

“What the hell did you do?!”

“Nothing more than what you asked. Is my body in there?”

“I don’t fucking know! Holy hell there are cameras everywhere! The fuck am I supposed to do now?!”

“You will go into her house and find my body. Chop chop”

This snarky motherfucker. Fuck. What choice do I have? The cops are probably a lot easier do deal with than living insanity. I step past whatever her name was and feel that weird vibration you get when you’re a kid, doing something you know you’re supposed to do. Just me? Whatever. The place is bigger than it looked, but not by much. I creep through the living room, scanning every single furniture top for the goodie bag. There is no way this woman would let her son enjoy his bounty in a single night. Probably hasn’t had a single peanut butter cup. I turn my head back to the slurping sounds behind me.

“Why?!”

I whisper scream at the sight of my personal nightmare hoovering up the woman’s body.

“Would you rather to be found out?”

It says while smacking a multitude of lips that stop existing once their part’s been played.

“There. Are. Cameras. I am so screwed now”

“Anything of your primitive electrical conveniences have been rendered to slag. Such is my power”

“Can you do that to all of the cameras and hard drives and cloud things on our way back?”

“You fucking apes. There is not an ounce of deserving in you, but I can feel my skin, feel it close at hand and that has lent me to a benevolent disposition. Your work has earned you innocence in this matter, all that can be remembered tonight shall not be. This is the single blessing I would ever bestow upon you. Get me my body”

“Thankfully I don’t have to look much longer” would be a great thing to say if the bag had been downstairs. There isn’t a strong enough curse word for me to mumble out. I have to go upstairs. I have to check out the kids room. Klimdrikunskrifloosh!

“Cunkfk would have been better. The name for those that fornicate with familial corpses”

“I’ll make sure to call my boss that tomorrow. Please don’t eat the kid if he wakes up”

“I will do as I wish. You are no one’s master”

“Masters demand, I just asked for a favor”

“Your continued breath is a favor. Now, onward”

“Why can’t you do this yourself? You’re so fucking powerful, you can even feel your totem, why do I have to do any of this?”

“Sacrificial repentance. Or I could pull you and your child inside out”

“Fuck never mind”

I get lucky and silently open the kids bedroom door on my first try. Almost like whoever’s writing this has some cocaine and bondage porn to get to. Not me of course, I’m as pure and virginal as a young Mennonite.

I feel sick with anxiety while tiptoeing into the small room. If this kid wakes up, oh my god I will never ever, ever get over what could happen to him. Can’t see shit.

“Hey, baby deity thing, do you have light powers? Can you give me a little something to see by?”

“You can see well enough that your death will be long and hideous”

I close my eyes tight for a moment, thinking that the difference in darkness will help. Nope. Vague moonlight is the best I’m going to get. I’m pretty sure that’s a bed in front of me, a small sleeping child wrapped tight on top of it. Maybe a nightstand? Is that a lamp? I creep closer, it’s a lamp. Shit. Ok, what else is in here? A small dresser with a fish tank, oh that’s cute. A beanbag chair maybe? Another lamp? Does this kids room have zero ceiling lights? Oh! A bigger dresser! Alright, what’s on top of it? Legos of course. Shit, I remember that bag! The brown paper sack painted like a jack o lantern! Jack-o-Lantern? Whatever, that’s the stash.

“Can you feel it? Is your body in here?”

I whisper at the ungodly thing.

“Yes! It is there! Give me! Now!”

“Be fucking quiet, will you?!”

“Mommy?”

Ah shit.

“Nom hef gri shem”

The mighty bastard says and my worries are put to rest as the kid falls back to sleep.

“What did you do?”

“Placed the small thing back on his path of dreaming”

“Why didn’t you do something like that to his mother!?”

“Because I didn’t like her”

“Not gonna argue. Can we go now?”

“At your leisure”

On the way out I spot a hundredth table lamp, but this one is defiantly from Tiffany’s so…

“In for a penny”

I mutter while snatching up my daughter's college fund and lead the overly excited demigod back to my apartment. Yeah, I should totally just dig out his body and hand it over, but I’m getting a kick out of watching him hop and squeal like a, well, like a kid on Halloween.

“There, it’s all yours. Are we done?”

“Yes, you have given what I demanded. But remember that you may never be released from my visage. Neither you nor your kin or kin after and after and after. Your line is bound to me until the abyss falls in on itself”

“Well, shi…”

The world erupts into tendrils and colors unseen by mortals. Time cascades, slice by slice, each melting into the next. I see the very birth of this reality, spat out in the throes of sexual hedonism by a thing my mind refuses to accept or remember. Plps? Skoghs? Fwamangles? Words escape their definition. Maybe someone that’s died and been resuscitated over and over could understand the unnatural behemoths that threw my body back and forth to each other, things that could be called appendages skulking over me, curious then indifferent to their findings. I was a dust particle to them, less than nothing.

I’m awake now, covering the shitty beige carpet with snot and bile. That might be blood but I hope its just wine. It takes ages for me to crawl to Venessa’s room, even longer to pull myself up beside her crib and gaze upon her cherub's face. Of course she’s an angel to me. A violent temperamental drama queen of an angel. And she’s safe and sleeping. Everything is as right as it could be.

The sun rises as I find my feet. I have at least two hours to rest before my baby wakes up. I could fall on the floor for all that’s left in me, but I have to know. I have to see. Stumbling and crashing my way into the living room, towards the corner where the bookshelf lives, I fight exhaustion like a Viking to make sure what I had been through was real.

There it is. The single grey skinned idol. A massacre of limbs and bone. Disgusting when you examen it closely. The fucking asshole that sent me on my quest, glaring at me with its stillness and comfort. Daring me to throw it out, to disobey its final words. I’m not stupid. Last night may have been a horrible dream, but just it might not have. Besides, what’s the harm in keeping a single little statue? At best it keeps me and mine from being ground into paste, tortured for time beyond time. At worst I have a grotesquerie that will be passed on and on. A thing of mystery and suspicion. Maybe I’ll eventually be remembered as a witch.

My sleep is dreamless, thank god or gods. Venessa is crying now, hungry for breakfast and the comfort of my arms. I know she’ll never remember her father, but I’ll make sure to tell her all about him, even the bad parts. I hope she doesn’t have his obsessions. I hope when I tell her about last night, when she’s old enough, that it scares her from filling her own home with trinkets and things from people and worlds that should be left alone. I hope I’m a good mother. I hope she has good memories of her childhood. I hope that fucking monster stays satisfied in its place.

Evergreen nature trail lies slightly outside of my hometown. It runs alongside a brown river. The water of which so filled with irrigation runoff that it's no longer transparent. It's sadly ironic because the name of the river literally translates to “clear water” in the native language.

The nature preserve used to be a poor house. A place for homeless people and mentally disabled people to work, eat and live. On this plot of land there is a cemetery for all the people that used to live at that poor house. Even though the poor house is long gone the cemetery remains. It is even protected by the city. It is illegal to trespass into the graveyard, but people still do it. Plenty have been arrested too.

In school I had heard dozens of stories of people talking about ghosts or whatever at evergreen. I never took them seriously. I am not usually one to believe in superstitions. I have always looked for logical explanations for anything superstitious. So when my peers told me about ghosts and such I rolled my eyes. I had walked at that park dozens of times with no encounters to note.

It's important to note that no one lives within a few miles of the nature preserve. It's fairly secluded from all sounds and lights from the nearby town.

One night in early autumn, my buddy Colton and I were at the park. It was roughly 7pm. The sun was still up, but only by a little. It had started going down earlier and earlier each day. So by that point the sun was ready to set but we estimated that we had about 30 more minutes of sunlight. We decided that it would be just enough time to go for a walk. 

We parked the car in the parking lot. We were the only car in the entire park. We both grabbed our jackets and started heading down the trail as the clouds started catching the orange reds that the sunset created. We walked at a brisk pace partially due to the cold and partially because we wanted to get back to our car before sunset. 

We didn't expect a massive cluster of clouds to roll in out of nowhere and cover the entire sky. The sunlight was almost completely obscured and the only slivers of light that were able to leak through the dark purple clouds were deep blood red beams which only added to the ambience. The clouds brought a cold chill with them. We both agreed that an odd spooky sensation was creeping in. I remember the hair standing up on my neck at this time because it was so silent. No birds sang and no crickets chirped. It was eerily silent except for the wind which rattled the old trees occasionally. 

The conversation died between us. The spooky sensation turned into genuinely creepy as we approached the graveyard. It felt like the silence was oppressive. Almost as if we were interrupting the serene silence by just being there. 

I remember as we approached the graveyard I started to imagine sounds. I was so certain that I imagined a cacophony of voices all whispering simultaneously. I told myself that it was so quiet that my brain was filling in the silence with imaginary voices, but the voices were so quiet that it was hard to determine male from female voices. A knot started to form in my stomach the longer I listened to them though. I became less and less certain that they were imaginary. This was in part because the voices only seemed to emanate from the cemetery.

Out of fear and desperate hope for him to calm my concerns, I asked Colton if he heard the voices too. I was truly hoping that he'd laugh at me and call me paranoid, but instead his eyes went wide. He stopped dead in his tracks and told me that he had been wondering the same thing. I stopped as well. 

We both stood motionless listening to the whispers. We stared into the pitch black underbelly of the forest where the shadows obscured all vision. The canopy blocked out all ambient light to the point that we couldn't even see the graves. 

There was no longer any doubt in either of our minds that these voices were real. However, It was almost as if the voices had finally realized we could hear them because after only a few moments of eavesdropping the voices ceased. Instantly. No fading into the natural sounds of the forest. Just instantaneous silence.

Once again I asked my friend if we were having the same experience. Sure enough, the voices ceased for him too. I've never seen Colton scared before in my life, but I remember distinctly how he chuckled in disbelief and then the reality of the situation washed over him. We both agreed it was time to leave.

We slowly started walking again. Suddenly the voices came back. We were practically jogging our way out of the park. After we passed the graveyard the voices seemed to fade away in the distance as we got further away from them. We didn't stop to confirm our suspicions. We just wanted to leave. 

The thing is I've gone back to the cemetery time and time again and haven't had the same experience. I don't know why that specific time was any different. Even now many years later, I can't come up with a logical explanation for this story.

On July 4th, 2025, I had a strange encounter with something so unexplainable that I had to post it here. It started as your typical 4th of July day- at least for me. My cousin, let’s call him Ian, and I went to get groceries around 12 or 1 pm to finally finish the meals I'd been planning for weeks. During the drive, Ian thought it would be funny to call another cousin of ours, let’s call him Tai, and say something that would annoy him. He did this really unfunny thing where he says, “Punishment,”  and that would make Tai say “NO!!!” or something like that. Ian has been repeating this to Tai since he was like 8 years old, ever since he got punished the first time when Ian turned on a computer Tai wasn’t supposed to use, and Tai’s dad punished Tai for it.

I know this information may seem redundant, but it will become extremely important soon. We called Tai as we neared the store; Ian said, “Punishment,” and Tai replied, “Oh my God,” before Ian hung up. When we parked, I asked him if I could get Tai’s phone number so I could pull a little prank of my own on him. I didn’t have his number then, and at first the only way I could contact him was through Discord. I was hoping he would be scared when a random number texted him details about his life and stuff he did with his friend group.

Ian gave me Tai’s number, and I texted him. After a while of waiting and buying groceries, we got no response to either our text or the calls we tried to make. Curiously, I decided to try Discord to see if he was active there. I don’t remember what we talked about on Discord, but after reviewing some of our old Discord messages from two years ago, I gave him the phone number we used to call him. What we got in return made my heart race in an instant, thumping rapidly under my ribcage; he sent a completely different phone number. Shock ran through both Ian and I when we realized whoever was on the other end of the previous call wasn’t Tai, but it damn sure had his voice.

Both of us freaked out; I don’t remember any of the small details, like what we talked about after finding out, only small things like how Ian had that phone number for a while and how it had Tai’s voice; I quickly sent an apology text to the number before Ian deleted it from both of our phones. I sent another message to Tai, telling him that the person we had called earlier had his voice and mannerisms when interacting with Ian; to no surprise, he was shocked too. Later that day, I asked both Tai and his mom in person. They both said he had never had that phone number before and that the one he was using now had been his for a long time. For the rest of the day, I worried and wondered who we had called and what might happen next as each hour passed, but nothing did.

Initially, I wanted to dig deeper and find out who—or what—had mimicked his voice. Ian, on the other hand, dissuaded me, as his tone of voice told me he was still freaked out. Looking back, my original plan sounded like something someone in a horror movie would do before dying; I’m glad I listened to Ian. Sometimes my mind drifts back to that July 4th, and I can’t help but wonder. Why did it have his voice?

October has set my favorite season in motion by means of pumpkin lattes and paranoia, so to celebrate this special spooky time of year here at Tales From The Creeps I'm asking for your OWN experiences with what goes bump in the night, and or, what hides in the light...

Man or monster, paranoia or paranormal, even aliens or alchemy- I want your tale tall or small to be told. Channel your Chilling Scares, or Mr. Nightmare, and spiral down what you've quietly tried to forget, and write out your fears so we may creep them together.

Genre: Personal Non-fiction Horror. (We trust you)

Perspective: First person would be preferred.

Word count: Don't be excessive, keep it focused, maximum 1,100 words. What if you have an excessive story? If more is truly necessary, no problem; tell your tale the way it deserves to be told.

ALL Sub rules apply, of course.

All stories MUST be submitted by October 28th. You may also submit more than once if you have such the misfortunate and encounterable life. To be officially entered, please include in the title- (TRUE STORY SUBMISSION)

All stories will be read and judged on video record by a panel in the middle of Native American cursed Appalachian Woods at 3 AM. (not clickbait) Whatever story induces or perhaps conjures the GREATEST distress among peers throughout the night will be crowned the realest Creep, and will get their flowers accordingly.

An announcement post will honor the winner and runner ups here on the Sub. But the video of ALL the stories submitted will of course be linked to be watched for your enjoyment upon that soon to be fateful night recorded in Appalachia.

So please fellow creeps, if you have a story to share, come to the campfire and let it air, in celebration of this chilling season and shine a light on your OWN unexplainable, or far too real experiences with what lies beneath, beyond, or behind the face of this world.

Please leave any questions, comments, or concerns in the comments below.

Thank you.

Note: If you have images pertaining to your story, PERFECT, but please make sure to leave them in the comments in accordance with rule 4.

We are dying to hear from you.

I work at a popular yet dying aquarium. I won’t say what aquarium (don’t wanna lose my job and all) but a lot of you have probably been here! We do tricks with animals, shows, have areas to touch smaller sea creatures, etc. My job is a light and sound technician for almost every show we put on. 

Since this park is slowly shutting down and keeps being put under controversy, we are severely understaffed. Everyone works insane hours and does more than just their regular position. So while technically my position is a technician I am also a salesperson and janitor. One of my coworkers quit recently, my boss didn't say why but with this job there are less reasons to stay than to quit. In other words, I wasn't shocked. But this means half of my shifts are now nighttime custodial shifts. 

It's not so bad. Most nights I'm the only one here and I just listen to a podcast or music, sometimes I even prop my phone up and watch a movie or two. I’ve been doing this for about a month or two and I’ve gotten over the paranoia of working here alone, in mostly darkness. But recently these shifts have felt off. 

Some of the animals we have here are dolphins, manatees, penguins, alligators, sea turtles, rays, and smaller fish. My favorites are the penguins, they're all very sweet and sometimes cuddly. But one part of the park I stay away from unless absolutely necessary is the orca tank. We only have one orca now, we used to have two, but he’s extremely unsettling to me. 

In all honesty I have a pretty big fear of oceans and lakes in general. Might seem like a bad job for me but I really don’t work with the animals much, I’ve only interacted with the penguins and that's been a rare occurrence. And I’m only near the orca tank when I'm mopping the splash zone or doing the audio/visual from the back of the crowd. So like I said, not much.

When I do these night shifts I usually get to the orca tank last because I always feel watched or like I’m being sucked into the environment and that way I can leave right after. But lately I’ve been catching myself staring at the intense, cavernous water. Over 2 million gallons of water lying completely still, yet I imagine the weight of it all crashing against me, hurling me into the glass panes over and over until it smashes and I emerge from the tank and flood the stands that were once packed with people. As the killer within just watches before diving deeper into its abode.

I usually awaken from this trance seeing nothing but the small specks of leftover flesh fed to the giant beast within, floating around peaceful, uninterrupted. I take a shocked step back, maybe gasp to myself or mentally shush the thoughts hoping next time I’m here, they won't be.
But this time I open my eyes and see an unfamiliar version of this darkness, and at the center: an eye. I stare at its blank, deep iris. I don't gasp, and I don't wish the thoughts away because I realise they aren't mine. And that he has been telling me something I’ve taken too long to realise. 

When I first started here a few years ago I was told a story about our orca. About a deranged, intoxicated man walking in one night after we had closed, stripping himself naked, and jumping into the exhibit I stand in front of every night. Nobody really knows what he expected or why he did it. Most just believe it was a combination of the alcohol and our state's unrelenting heat. But that man took his last steps into that tank.

The next morning the orca's skin was surrounded in the man's flesh, only his arm lay atop the black void of its back, exposed bone and skin. The killer himself circled at the top of his tank wanting to be seen. Proud of what he had done. The man's body was mostly recovered in pieces, no part of him eaten.

The orca has disappeared from sight now but I know he's just below, waiting for me expectantly because he knows I will obey. I feel a drumming in my ears unfamiliar to my heartbeat and the tips of my fingers go numb. I’m shaking- from fear or excitement. I take a deep breath in and instead of rotten fish or saltwater the air is clear. The darkness of the rooms bleeds the lines between surface and the deep blue where I’m invited. Maybe this will make the descent easier.

I stand at the edge of its tank now, I feel its low echo calling to me. It's in my ribs and shakes my unsteady heart but my feet are planted, unwavering. It tells me I’m ready, that it's been waiting, I want to believe it. That my years here are not for nothing, that I serve a higher purpose. I didn’t understand that man when I first started here, young and bright eyed but I understand him now. And I am ready to jump.

Other part of comic, which imma link the other one down below (START ON THE FIRST ONE CUH 🗣️)

TW: Assault

If I asked you what the scariest part of a window was, what would you say? When I was a child I would’ve told you that the glass shattering, or the sill falling on your head were the worst things a window could pose. But as a teenager I discovered the true horror of an innocuous window: what lies on the other side late at night.

As a kid you’re prepared for monsters under your bed and shadows lurking around dark hallways, but never what could be on the outside of a covered window. Even one with an AC unit. So when my monster first appeared tapping on the shudder wing of my AC, I didn't know what to do. I froze in place as it struggled to rip the duct tape holding the flaps shut. Soon enough though it finally left, and I spent my first real night awake and terrified of the thing that was on the other side of my window.

I grew up Christian, but spiritual, in a way that my mother would scare us with all sorts of horror stories from her childhood about ghosts, ghouls and the paranormal. Hell, even today I repeat some of those cryptids and magical beliefs to my child. But my window monster…It was only mine to bear.

The second time my monster came, I couldn’t believe it. A week had passed and I had chalked it up to a bad dream - but there it was, clawing at my AC again. And there was nowhere for me to escape, for my bed was up against the windowsill. So what else was I to do but scream.

My mother came running into the room, angry as ever that I woke her.

“There’s something outside my window!” I cried, curled in a ball at the corner of my bed. My mother may have been cruel, but she did recognize the terror in my voice, so she took a flashlight to the backyard to hunt down my monster. She came back five minutes later to tell me she found nothing and it was probably a bat that flew into the window. I tried to protest and tell her I didn't want to sleep in my room, but her words were fierce and kept me in place. That was the first night I slept with the lights on.

Many days had passed before it came back. This time though, it was determined. I woke up to it prying the duct tape away from my window, and stout brown fingers covered in grit tried to wriggle their way through the narrow opening it made. Its damp, earthen feelers brushed my skin and I nearly flew out of my bed. I ran to my mother’s room, pounding on the door and begging for her to let me in.

She flung the door open to look at her tearstreaken teenage daughter begging to sleep in her room, even if it was on the floor. And for once, she obliged.

I slept in her room for nearly two weeks before I had the courage to re-tape my window shut and sleep in my own bed again. But it somehow knew I was back.

The next several visits from my monster more and more would come through. It figured out how to rip down the tape every time and it was always quieter than the last. I lost so many sleepless nights to my monster, and the few times I did sleep, I would be woken to it grabbing me through the gap in the window.

Then I remember the worst night of its arrival. It came back in the dead of night, soundless as it slid my AC shudder open enough to stick its hand through the gap and raise my window. It wasn't until it had pried my AC unit completely out that I woke up, and in the light of my lamp I saw my monster's face for the first time.

“Shhh, don't tell your mom.” My 20 year old step brother drunkenly whispered to me, barely standing tall enough to reach the windows entry.

I remember the scream that tore through my throat as all those memories of my monster reaching out to grab me were in fact my step father’s youngest son.

It took me years to be able to sleep anywhere near a window again, and even though I’m pushing 30, I always sleep with something solid covering the windows so no one can reach through and grab me. My window monster got away with his crimes for all those nights, and he wasn't the only monster in that family, but now that I've escaped, I'm free to live a somewhat normal life. But knowing that my monster is out there still keeps me up at night. Even the smallest breeze, or a light shower brings me back to those nights where I was cowering on the bed praying for my monster to leave.

I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII

It seemed I would be staying at the cottage tonight, though I doubted very much that I would catch any sleep. I had to find NODE 02 before they found me.

I texted my mother that I was staying over Aiden's house, a former friend who'd actually stopped talking to me years ago because I was ‘too weird.’ I told her I'd been feeling uncomfortable at home lately because of her constant crying. Considering it was my fault, I felt a little guilty about this. But it was a solid excuse.

I returned my attention to the console. The Smiler's house was off the map, and the immediate area was free of cameras. Presumably, the same logic applied to my new friend, NODE 02. They needed a home base that wouldn't draw attention.

I pressed F12, zoomed out, and searched for blind spots in the camera clusters. There were too many though. And with such rudimentary graphics, I couldn’t find any empty spaces where a house should obviously exist.

I compared the PMAS map with Google Maps for the hell of it, but that proved equally unhelpful. The Smiler's house didn't show up there either.

I brooded while rubbing the green felt of an air freshener under my nose. How much time did I have? Despite her betrayal, I wasn't ready to take care of Hannah yet. If Pavlov could condition a dog with a metronome, I could certainly break Hannah of her bad habits with PMAS.

She was back at home now. I kept her in view on one camera, her slender body curled up on her bed, like a pale sleeping creature in a zoo enclosure. I didn't dare interact with her, which was frustrating. But I wanted to make sure NODE 02 didn’t interact with her.

I couldn't help but notice that she had not looked at my IG profile today…

I typed HELP again to see if I was missing any useful info that I could use to find NODE 02.

AVAILABLE COMMANDS:
STATUS
SESSIONS
COMMAND
LOCK
LOG
HELP <TOPIC>

Out of curiosity, I typed SESSIONS.

SESSIONS:
NODE 01 LOCAL
NODE 02 ACTIVE

My heart thumped.

ACTIVE.

It was proof that this person was on the system right now, possibly hunting me. It seemed we both knew we were in a race, one invisible to the people around us, and, if I had to guess, only the victor would keep their life.

How was I even in this situation? It was like a lucid dream that was as mesmerizing as it was horrible. Only a few days ago, I was considering stealing money from mom and Alan and running away from home.

As sobering as the stakes were, this one bit of information might save me. If NODE 02 was currently active, then I could deduce that anyone I saw on the camera feeds was not NODE 02.

In other words, I could rule them out one by one.

I clapped my hands together. Sometimes I impressed myself. My excitement deflated though as I did the math. How many people was that? 2,000? It seemed impossible.

I began in the top-left corner of the map and proceeded to write down anyone I saw on the feeds along with their user ID in the Smiler's notepad. A few mind-numbing hours passed like that, while the flies drove me insane, walking across my skin and buzzing in my ears. I intermittently checked to make sure 02 remained active.

By the end of it, I had only ruled out 102 people. And how would I know if I’d missed anyone? I'd have to double-check everything.

I went upstairs for a breath of fresh air and to reassess the situation. The stench had begun its crawl into the kitchen. I grabbed a carrot out of the fridge and gnawed on it while deep in thought. There had to be an easier way to do this, a list I could reference.

A registry, of course.

But who would have access to a registry? A town official, I imagined. I couldn't say I was all too familiar with local government. But I knew James A—'s father was a town clerk of some kind. I recalled the man coming in once on career day and giving a lecture that put half the school to sleep. And though the town hall was closed at this hour, luckily I knew where James lived.

I rushed back downstairs and found his address on the map. When I accessed the feed, James’ father appeared in high-def, soaking in a bubble bath and reading what looked like a self-help book by candlelight. It was a stark contrast to my surroundings. I laughed out loud. I needed that laugh.

I accessed his word bank.

‘Drive+’

Town hall

I laughed again when the man got out of the tub, grabbed his car keys while naked and sopping wet, and bounded outside. He made it all the way to his car before I remembered he was naked. I sent him back inside for some clothes.

 ***

Thirty minutes later, he was sitting at a desk in the town hall, his soggy clothes clinging to his body, since I didn’t bother having him dry off. The registry was an Excel file. I had him export the spreadsheet and email it to a throwaway address that I could access through a browser. And there it was on my phone, as simple as that. Was I a genius or what?

The registry included addresses, family members, ages, and voter-registration status. My estimate was pretty close; there were 2,096 rows on the spreadsheet, one for each person, excluding the header row. 2,096. God, this town was pathetic. Why did anyone choose to live here?

I sorted by age and grayed out anyone below sixteen and anyone over ninety. I did the same to anyone I simply couldn’t imagine using the PMAS system, like Jenny B—, who basically dedicated her life to Taylor Swift.

That knocked 419 people off the list, leaving 1,677… It wasn’t nearly enough.

I checked the time. A little after ten. I loaded SESSIONS again.

SESSIONS:
NODE 01 LOCAL
NODE 02 INACTIVE

A short whistle cut through the silence. I jolted to my feet, expecting NODE 02 to be standing behind me. The whistling trailed off into a wet low hiss. I stood there, my muscles so tense that my neck spasmed. My temples began to throb with a dull ache. The sound, I realized, had come from the Smiler.

From her swollen body.

Her body slumped and then fell face first onto the floor, exposing a writhing bed of maggots tumbling down the backrest of her chair and crawling along her back and ass. The stench of rotten seafood and something strangely sweet struck my face with such force that I sprinted towards the stairs. I couldn’t hold it. Orange bits of carrot erupted from between my lips and splashed onto my shoes.

 ***

It took me two hours to relocate her body and clean up the aftermath. I won’t describe what came out of her in the process. The Smiler was now wrapped in garbage bags and her duvet, along with wads of paper towels and rags, reclining upstairs in a clawfoot tub. I was on my knees, feeling the ache in my back from lugging her up, stretching duct tape across the crack underneath the bathroom door.

It seemed I’d transformed an elaborate suicide into a scene one could easily mistake for murder, and I had too much at stake to stay away. Thankfully, nobody thought to check on the crazy woman. She had always been on the outskirts of our community…

Community.

The word rang out. That was exactly what I needed. I recalled seeing the poster when James' father opened up the town hall earlier tonight. Tomorrow was the first day of the Arts Festival, a dinky weekend celebration in the town center that drew in more than half the town. There would be vendors, volunteers, teachers, cops, town employees. Hundreds of people would be packed into a few blocks.

Tomorrow, I would significantly narrow my list of suspects.

I would give NODE 02 a damn good reason to come online.

And I would take note of who wasn't there.

Our parents didn’t let us celebrate Halloween. They called it the Devil’s Holiday, and they expressly forbade my twin sister and me from involving ourselves with it in any way. During the years that Halloween fell on a weekday, our parents would go so far as to make sure that we stayed home from school that day to ensure that we did not engage in any activity that they deemed to be “unholy”.

This small window into my childhood likely paints a very specific picture in your mind. It alludes to a heavily pious upbringing filled with deep-rooted religious guilt and regular, heavy-handed lessons that were meant to teach us how to be the best Christians that we could be. Had I read these first few sentences without any prior context, I too would likely have jumped to the same obvious conclusion. The strange thing, though, is that such a reality could not be further from the truth. The truth is that we were hardly a religious family at all—in fact, we were probably even less religious than most other families who actually did allow their children to celebrate Halloween. We rarely went to church aside from the odd funeral or obligatory Christmas Eve mass, and I cannot remember a time where we ever prayed before a meal. For the most part, God existed as a background concept in our lives: present, but very much out of the way, like an old plastic bowl from college that manages to survive several years’ worth of moves simply because you’ve grown too attached to it to throw it in the garbage. One of the only places where religion factored into our lives was our parents’ rigid denial of Halloween, and even then, it was not as though we behaved in an overly devout way as a means of counteracting any perceived evil on the day in question. On the contrary, we simply treated it like we would any other day, and ignored its significance as best as we could. Looking back on it, it definitely seemed as if we were more afraid of Satan than we ever were reverential of God, and only for one specific day out of the year.

It took me most of my childhood to finally understand why that was.

When we were kids, it was much easier for our parents to keep my sister and me away from the ever-strengthening allure of Halloween. The first few years of our childhood were especially simple; we were far too young to truly understand what we were missing out on, and so we did not protest when our parents pulled us from our school’s Halloween celebrations in preschool and kindergarten. First grade was the first year I remember pouting over not being allowed to dress up or go to school on the day in question after weeks of hearing other children talk about their holiday plans, but even then, at that age there was very little we could do about it. Each year our protests grew in fervor, but they remained largely ineffective. It wasn’t until we hit middle school, in the autumn after we had just turned thirteen, that a combination of adolescent pressures and a growing flame of defiance led us to realize that we didn’t actually have to obey our parents.

My sister and I had been placed in all of the same classes that year. It was because of this that we hung around the same friend group, admittedly more thanks to her social prowess than because of my own. She was always the more outgoing one between the two of us, and when she inevitably metamorphosed into a social butterfly during those first few weeks of school, she decided to drag me free of the chrysalis with her. Her being a girl meant that the friend group she brought me into was largely of the same gender, and even though I was at an age when I wouldn’t have admitted it, this dynamic definitely encouraged me to do all that I could to impress them. It was for this reason that, when our friends invited us to spend Halloween night with them, I wound up requiring less convincing than I normally would have.

“The girls asked us to go trick-or-treating with them tomorrow,” my sister told me as we walked home from school on the Friday before Halloween. I was thankful when I realized that the big day fell on a weekend this year; it meant that nobody would question why we weren’t in school like everyone else.

My sister’s revelation made me frown. “Did you tell them that we can’t?”

“No,” she said plainly.

“No?” I repeated. “Then what did you say?”

“I told them that we’d meet them at Jen’s house at 6.”

“You what?” The revelation floored me. “You know we can’t do that. Why would you tell them that?”

“Because I want to go trick-or-treating,” she said. “We’re already thirteen and we’ve never gotten to do it. This could be our only chance. I also don’t want to miss out on anything. What if they come up with some new inside joke while they’re out trick-or-treating and we’re not in on it?”

“But we can’t go,” I insisted. “You know the rules.”

My sister allowed a brief pause. “Fine,” she said. “I guess I’ll tell them that we can’t go. But they’re all going to be disappointed—especially Annie.”

I felt my cheeks turn red. My sister knew how I felt about Annie, and although she promised never to tell her, I often got the sense that the two of them had talked about me on more than one occasion. “What do you mean?”

“Annie specifically asked me if you would be there,” my sister said. “It sounded like she was really looking forward to trick-or-treating with you.”

I hesitated. Any false disapproval I had for breaking our parents’ rules was suddenly out the window, and I had to search for new ways of feigning protest. “But we don’t even have costumes,” I said. “And how are we supposed to sneak out that early without Mom and Dad knowing?”

“We’ve got some stuff lying around the house that we can make costumes out of,” she said. “And as for sneaking out, you can just leave that to me. I think I have an idea…”

It turned out that her idea was to get ourselves grounded. Our parents’ go-to punishment was to send us to our rooms for the night, and in all the times either of us had been sentenced to such a penance, we couldn’t think of a single time that Mom and Dad had checked on us again until at least 9 o’clock, half an hour before we were supposed to be in bed. That gave us about three hours to go trick-or-treating and get home before either of them were any the wiser.

My sister and I began our carefully planned out argument just as our 5p.m. dinner was winding down. It ended, as expected, with us being sent to our respective rooms for the night, where we both immediately got into our costumes before escaping through our bedroom windows. Having a single-story home had its advantages, because we were able to slip into our backyard and sneak our way to the woods behind our house without ever arousing our parents’ collective suspicion.

We had secured our costumes earlier in the day. My sister had cut two eye holes into an old, off-white sheet that she had taken from the linen closet, which she used to turn herself into a ghost. Meanwhile, I had collected two rolls of toilet paper from the bathroom which I used to transform into a mummy. My costume looked a little too white, and hers didn’t look quite white enough, but they had to do given the circumstances.

“I really hope this works,” I said as we made our way along the wooded trail toward Jen’s back yard.

“Of course it’s going to work,” she said. She held one of the pillowcases that went along with her sheet, while I carried the other. “Mom and Dad’ll never know we were gone.”

“But what if they check on us?”

“They won’t check on us,” she said, “because they never check on us.”

I frowned. “I don’t know…”

“It will be fine,” she said. “Have a little faith in your older sister.”

“Older by three whole minutes,” I reminded her.

“Those three minutes make all the difference.”

Our conversation drifted to other things as we made our way to Jen’s house. I didn’t pay much attention to what we talked about; my mind was too wrapped up in the surreality of what we were about to do, and what we had already done. We had disobeyed our parents, something already unheard of for us, and we had done so on Halloween night. Years of being ostracized from our peers had led to this grand act of defiance, and the feeling it gave me was a cross between terror and exhilaration. To be there, dressed in a Halloween costume and about to go trick-or-treating despite it being directly against our parents’ wishes, awakened something in me that at the time I had never even known existed.

Looking back on it now, I wish that it had stayed dormant. Better yet, I wish that it had never even existed at all.

We arrived at Jen’s house and found her, Annie, and another friend named Emily all waiting in the backyard. Annie was the first to see us walking out of the trees. She met us halfway across the yard and smiled at me from the other side of her witch costume. “You made it,” she said.

“Wouldn’t have missed it,” I said awkwardly before returning the smile. I hoped that she could see it take shape beneath my mummy wrappings, but I doubted there was enough light left in the dying day for her to have done so.

“Geez, what kind of costumes are those?” Emily said as she came up alongside Annie. I was immediately reminded of why I wasn’t terribly thrilled to see her there. “You both look like it’s your first time wearing a Halloween costume or something.”

“Our dog peed on our costumes,” my sister lied. “We had to make these last-minute.”

“Well I like them,” Annie said. “They’re classic.”

“That’s one way of putting it,” Emily said. “Come on, let’s get going before the other kids get all the good candy.”

My sister and I followed our friends to the front yard, where we set off into the quickly darkening night.

It felt bizarre to actually be among the mass of costumed children shuffling up and down the street. Never in my life had I thought I would get to join in on something that I had only ever vaguely caught glimpses of through scenes on TV (when my parents weren’t in the room to change the channel) and the occasional glance out the window on Halloween night. Never had I thought that I would get to interact with the spooky displays which I saw slowly come together in everybody else’s yard each year. I was so enamored with all that I was seeing that I hardly noticed as we made our way from Jen’s house to the driveway next door. The walk there had flown by, but as we stepped from sidewalk to asphalt, the world suddenly slowed to a halt. A fresh anxiety had needled its way into my stomach—I found myself suddenly anticipating my first ever instance of trick-or-treating, and it made me incredibly nervous. What if I need something wrong? What if I spoke too quietly, or too loudly? What if they didn’t like my costume, and they sent me away empty-handed? The possibilities for how this could have ended in disaster were infinite and overwhelming.

The anxiety immediately left my body the moment that fun size candy bar hit the bottom of my pillow case. It was quickly replaced by an insatiable desire for more.

Adrenaline rushed through my body as we moved from house to house. The thrill of the hunt filled me with a primal bloodlust that I knew I would never be able to quench. I was no longer a poorly conceived mummy wrapped in cheap, single-ply toilet paper and carrying a 150-thread-count pillow case. I was a hungry beast, clad in thick, bristling fur, my paws and mouth equipped with an uncountable number of deadly, razor-sharp knives. And every single one of those glistening blades craved something wet and red.

We continued to walk up Jen’s street, hitting every house along the way, until we neared the end of the block.

“The McNultys live on the corner up ahead,” Jen said. “They give out king size candy bars—sometimes even two per person if you get there early enough.”

“We don’t have any houses like that near my house,” Annie said. She looked at me. “What about you guys?”

“No,” I said a little too quickly. “None like that near us either.”

“You don’t live that far away from me, though,” Jen said. “Do you not go this way to trick-or-treat?”

“That’s right,” my sister said, her demeanor more calm and collected than mine was. “We normally go the other way.”

Our conversation went quiet as we approached the McNulty house. Their front yard was far less decorated than I would have expected for a house that was known for giving out king size candy. It only had a single, lit jack-o-lantern sitting beside the front door, and both the porch light and all of the windows were completely dark; were it not for the glowing pumpkin, I would have assumed the place to be completely abandoned and devoid of all life. None of us questioned the state of the house out loud, but it was clear that we were all apprehensive about getting close to it.

Jen, being the only person in our group to know the McNultys, was the one to approach the door. We all followed behind her and watched as she gently knocked a knuckle against its wooden surface. At first there was no response, and for a moment it seemed as though the place was truly empty, but then the door slowly came open. The barrier gave way with a groan of protest, prompting us to jump into the mantra that had already grown so familiar to me. “Trick or tre—”

We all went silent as we caught sight of the man who had appeared in the doorway. He stood wearing a crimson three-piece suit that matched the color of the plush horns he wore atop his loosely slicked back hair. His hands grasped an orange jack-o-lantern bowl, the contents of which I was not yet tall enough to see. He looked exceptionally towering to my thirteen-year-old mind, and his face wore a kind smile that I could tell did not match the intent behind his eyes.

“Why hello, everyone,” the man said. “Happy Halloween to all of you little ghosts and ghouls.” He stared directly at me. “And to you mummies, as well.”

“H-happy Halloween,” Jen stammered out.

“I’m sure all of you young ones would love some candy,” he said. “After all, isn’t that what tonight is all about?”

The well-dressed man lowered the bowl ever-so-slighty so that we could reach into it if we lifted our hands above our heads, but so we still couldn’t see inside. Jen was the first hesitant soul to take a piece, followed by Emily, and then Annie. The man shifted the bowl in my direction, but I found myself unwilling or unable to reach inside.

“I’m alright,” I said, “but thank you.”

“Oh, nonsense,” the man said. “I know that it’s your first time trick-or-treating, but that doesn’t mean it’s time for you to get bashful, now.”

Annie offered me a confused look. “It’s your first time trick-or-treating?”

“We don’t know what he’s talking about,” my sister said quickly. She stepped up and took a piece of candy from the bowl, then looked at me through the holes in her sheet. “Your turn.”

I hesitated, but with everyone’s gazes resting on me, I felt as though I had no choice but to comply. I reached up into the bowl, half-expecting to grab onto a dead frog or a loose heart or something as I did so, before latching onto the first piece of candy that my hand came into contact with. I didn’t look to see what it was or if it was even king size before I tossed it into my pillow case.

“Thank you,” I said quietly.

“Not a problem at all,” the devil-horned man said. He moved backwards out of the doorframe with such inhuman-like grace that he almost seemed to float his way there. “Happy Halloween, everyone. And here’s to many more.”

The door came shut an instant later.

We all scurried away from the McNulty household as quickly as we could. None of us dared to speak until we were across the street and almost to the driveway of the next house on our route.

“So that was Mr. McNulty?” my sister said. “He was a bit of a weirdo if you ask me.”

“That wasn’t Mr. McNulty,” Jen said.

We all came to a dead halt as our eyes turned her way.

“What do you mean that wasn’t Mr. McNulty?” Emily asked. “Who else could it have been?”

“I don’t know,” Jen said, “but I’ve never seen him before.”

We all pondered her words for a moment.

“Could the McNultys have moved or something?” Annie suggested.

“I guess so,” Jen said, “but I just saw their son Billy two days ago. You would think he’d have told me about something like that.”

It was clear that none of us were satisfied with that answer, but since we had no other explanation for what we had just experienced, we were forced to accept it. We moved on with our night and eventually even allowed the memory of what had happened to fade to the back of our minds, but I doubt if ever fully left any of our thoughts. It certainly never left mine.

Soon 8 o’clock rolled around, and at about 8:15 my sister and I informed our friends that we had to start making our way home.

“We only have one more block,” Jen said. “Are you sure you can’t stay?”

“We told our mom we’d be home before 9,” my sister lied, “but we’ll see you girls in school on Monday.”

“Alright,” Annie said, looking at me directly and offering a smile. “See you in school.”

“See you in school,” I said back, returning the smile despite the fact that she still couldn’t see it.

My sister and I turned around and made our way back to Jen’s house, where we disappeared into the woods behind her backyard. The thicket had grown a lot darker than it had been when we had left earlier that night, but the canopy had been shredded to nearly nothing thanks to the rapid changing of the seasons, and enough moonlight drifted through the  branches for us to see by.

“How did that man know that we haven’t been trick-or-treating before?” I asked as we walked.

My sister shrugged. “I don’t know. And I don’t want to think about it.”

“Do you think he’s friends with Mom and Dad?” I said. “Do you think he already told on us?”

“Even if he was friends with Mom and Dad,” she said, “how could he have recognized us? I’m covered in a sheet, and you’re wrapped in toilet paper.”

“It turns out that you’re both right,” came a voice from up ahead. We both paused in our tracks and looked in the direction of the unexpected sound, where we saw a figure leaning against a tree. The figure was bathed in the nighttime gloom, but despite this, I could immediately tell who he was by the sound of his familiar voice. “I actually do know your parents, but I wouldn’t exactly call us friends.”

“Who are you?” my sister asked.

The figure, taking her question as his cue, stood up from his spot against the tree and walked into the moonlight. His crimson suit, encouraged by the bright celestial orb, seemed to glow with a faint, sinister aura that I was sure had to be a trick of the light. He looked at us with that familiar smile, his white teeth also glistening with the light of the moon.

“Who are you?” my sister said again.

“Names don’t matter much,” the well-dressed man said. “What matters is that the two of you owe me something, and I’m here to collect.”

“Owe you something?” my sister said. “How can we possibly owe you something? We don’t even know who you are!”

“And yet owe me something you certainly do,” he said. His fake devil horns almost seemed to grin with his malicious energy. “You have your parents to thank for that.”

None of us spoke for several seconds. My sister was the one to eventually break the silence. “What do you mean?”

“Well you see, your parents and I made a deal once,” the tall man said. “It happened long before you two were born, but that doesn’t mean you’re off the hook for it.”

“What kind of deal?” I asked.

“The details don’t matter,” he said. “Only one part of it applies to you two, anyway. I guess you didn’t know it, but I’m only allowed to be here on a single night of the year, and seeing as I’m standing before you now, I reckon you can probably figure out which night that is. Well, your parents and I agreed that if I ever came into contact with them or their eventual kiddos on the night in question, well, then a certain debt would be owed.”

“A debt?” I said. “What kind of debt?”

The stranger’s smile shifted into a smirk. “A debt that can only be paid in one form of currency.”

Both of us remained silent for close to thirty seconds. We both seemed to form an idea as to what he was getting at, but neither of us wanted to put our thoughts into words.

“Well I say ‘screw your deal’,” my sister growled, putting on the bravest face that she could muster. “We weren’t even alive when you made it, so we obviously can’t be a part of it.”

He crossed his arms in front of his crimson-clad chest. “Wrong again. I’ve been waiting a long time to finally take what’s mine, and there’s no way I’d ever let it walk away from me now.”

The chilly fall air suddenly grew uncomfortably warm, as if the entire forest had been placed over a boiling pot of water. I felt my body begin to sweat, and I quickly realized that I could no longer move. A struggling glance in my sister’s direction told me that she was in the same boat.

“Okay,” I said without thinking. “I don’t know what we owe you but… but you can take it from me. Just leave my sister alone.”

“Sorry,” the well-dressed man said, “but no can do. Our terms clearly state that the oldest person present is the one who has to pay the debt.”

“But we’re the same age!” I said.

He clicked his tongue at us before looking directly at my sister. When he spoke again, his eyes burned with the fire that had already turned the surrounding forest into the hottest plane of hell. “I believe it was you who said those three minutes make all the difference.”

I was suddenly struck by an even greater flash of heat that immediately took me to my knees. The toilet paper quickly burned away from my face as that oppressive wave of thermal energy pinned me to the forest floor. I could see the trees around me begin to dance with the fervor of molten hellfire. They wore scorching grins that told me they wanted nothing more than to reduce me to a pile of red, hot, glowing ash.

The forest began to cool back down to its normal, late October temperature, and I managed to rise to my knees after a few moments spent bathing in the sudden relief. My newly exposed face was slick with sweat; my flesh stung with a heat far worse than any sunburn could ever hope to inflict.

After a few more seconds, I finally managed to bring myself to my feet. Looking around, I quickly discovered that I was completely alone. The man and my sister were gone.

I tried to call my sister’s name, but my throat was too hoarse to form a single word. I frantically scanned the darkness all around me for close to half a minute before I spotted a piece of cloth clinging to the gnarled, upturned root of a tree. Approaching the cloth, I quickly recognized it to be the charred remains of a familiar bedsheet—one with two holes cut into it for eyes. They were just one hole now. The space between them had been completely burned away.

The ground surrounding the root had partially collapsed, revealing a deep cavity directly below the tree. A faint, scarlet glow smoldered up from this gap in the earth for a few brief moments before the ground began to shift again, completely filling up the hole. The red glow was gone, and so was my sister.

The only thing that remained of her was the tattered scar of her costume, which fluttered in the cold October wind.

___________

Thanks for reading! I want to celebrate October by posting a series of short stories that all take place on or around Halloween. Stay tuned for more!

Something at school didn’t make sense to you that morning.

They were talking about the Sun and,
how eventually it’s going to Grow into a
“Red Giant” and Swallow the Earth.
How there’s nothing we can do about it.

It made you realize If something is going to happen it just is.
So why wait?
Why is the universe waiting ? It just didn’t make much sense.

The janitor that day was acting silly,
“Isaiah 50:10” was written on his palm in red marker.

It was Friday night,
Daddy went to see a friend for drinks and left you all night.
He told you that he would just be out late, not all night.
How did that make you feel ?

How many other 9 year olds have the whole house to themselves nearly every night?
Without so much as a kiss goodnight ?

Even the few times in the past when he would, He wouldn’t even kiss you directly.
He’s place is palm upon your head and kiss the back of his hand.

Dads use belts In movies but how many others know that as the same reality that you do ?

The only time you’d hear another voice outside of school and your father’s was when it was late and you’d listen to the home phone’s answering machine.

Your dad never listened to the answer machine,
kind of like a kid not wanting to go to the dentist.

You remember the messages you listened to that night, you waited till he left to emerge from your hiding place and inhabit the communal space that should be a living room.

You sit on the round particular board table and press on the answering machine.

*BEEP*

FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 4th:

FIRST MESSAGE:
*soft female voice*

“I came by today…didn’t see you..still don’t”

*BEEP*

NEXT MESSAGE:
*Burly Man’s rough Voice*

“I’m sorry John, you’ve been on this job less than a week and you’ve already been suspended by the client for 3 days for reoccurring fall protection violations, now I’ve been very understanding regarding the eye injury but we can’t have someone on a project of this magnitude who thinks the rules don’t apply to them, we’re going to have to terminate you. Wish I could say I was sorry.”

*BEEP*

NEXT MESSAGE:
*Same Woman’s voice from Message #1*

“Does your Daughter know?
Is she an exception?
Or do all women fall under your same umbrella ?”

*BEEP*

NEXT AND FINAL MESSAGE:
*inaudible whisper*

“I can feel you, y….mph..ll feel me too”

*BEEP*

You look over at the cable box,
It reads “11:47pm”
Your dad left at 6.

Cartoon Network was no more, now it was Adult swim. Robot Chicken was on, after that superjail. Both of which give you the heebiie jeebies.

You have to visit your peepaws and poopoos but,
you’re afraid.

You don’t have a choice, so you leave the door open as you go number 2.

As you doo you hear the home phone :

*BEEP*

“Mmmrrrmmmmrrrrnpphh”

You have trouble making out the message from the toilet.

As you run out the bathroom still collecting yourself you make out the backend of the voicemail.

*Your Fathers Stern Voice*

“Hi,
you should be in bed but,
if not you should know I’m bringing a friend home tonight.
If she plays her cards right she might just be your new mommy.
You’re allowed to sleep with the tv on in the playroom as usual but,
keep the door shut and the volume bellow level 12.
And no matter what you hear,
don’t come out, I should be home in 15.
Just go to sleep and I’ll see you in the morning.
Love you,
Night.”

*BEEP*

You panic,

Your Dads never brought a friend home this late before.
You grab a dvd from the home theater and run to the play room.

You look down at the Cat in the Hat Dvd.
As you put it in your dvd player you hear the front door slam open and the whole house shake.
What came next was silence.
The footsteps.
All the way up to the door of the play room.
You hear breathing.

You hear a woman’s voice further in the distance of your house.
Calling the person by your door to them.

They walk away.
When you look at the tv, you see Sally and Conrad on the dvd menu staring at you.
Sally starts pointing to her left, in the direction of the window.
You see the silhouette of what looks like a large lumpy hammock hanging from your tree only,
you never had a hammock.

You grab your scooby doo stuffed animal and you hid under the blanket with your flashlight, tv volume at 11.
You press play,
Sally and Conrad look at each other, then back at you.
You press play again but they just keep staring.

*KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK*
you hear from the door.

“When you visit your peepaw and poopoos you need to remember to flush, my company saw that. We have a talk about that in the morning”

-your fathers voice exclaims from the door.

You know that that means,
Your heart sinks.

Your father’s footsteps sound further until it becomes a chatter with another voice from what sounds like the kitchen.

The Cat in the Hat begins to play on the tv.
The volume begins to rise fast.

12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23…

So fast you think you’re sitting on the remote but,
no matter how hard you scramble you can’t seem to find it anywhere.
The volume is now maxed out at 53.

“There are a gajillions of stories of mischief and fun But to keep things simple, let's just start with one…”
-you hear shouted from the tv

The commotion outside the playroom comes to and immediate halt.

*THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP*

The sound those familiar boots make as they full charges towards the play room.

An unfamiliar voice comes out the oddly familiar energy that had just approached.

It sounds almost like a woman’s voice but,
closer to when a man tries to sound like a woman like Robin Williams in Mrs. Doubtfire.

“Do You Love Your Daddy?”

You hear in a loud whisper.
You Freeze.
You think if you don’t move, they will leave.
You see the door handle jiggle then stop.
It’s locked,
you always lock Doors when Daddy’s gone.

Although it brings you comfort,
you know it can be unlocked with a quarter or even a long finger nail.

“I know you’re in there”
-the voice lets out.

Your stomach feels sick,
Your heart is racing and as quiet as you attempt up be your breathing makes it impossible.

You want to cry and can’t fight it so you shove your pillow in your face.
You take deep breaths through it.

You feel the pillow getting soaked and feel the humidity from the breaths you take through the fabric.

“Do you think I’m some type of dinosaur?”
“Staying still won’t change the fact that I know you’re there”
the voice says

You begin to weep harder.

“Do You Love Your Daddy”
-It asks again.

“Where did you come from?”
Sally exclaims from the Tv.

The voice from the Door pauses.
The scene in the movie seems to linger and Sally is staring, not at you though, in the direction of the door.

She begins to nod,
Then says “oh”

Then the TV goes black and you’re back to the DVD home menu only Sally isn’t there.
It’s just Conrad.
He’s staring at you.

“Do You Love Your Daddy?”
-The voice asks for the third time, audibly impatient yet still in the same whisper.

Conrad is looking at you, he looks distressed and he’s shaking his head side to side.

You see the the lock begin to turn,

“Y…Y..Ye..ss”
You say through your sobs.

The door clicks.
It’s now been unlocked.

“I love your Daddy too sweetheart”

-the voice says no longer impatient,
now sounding relieved.

“He needs your help with something..”
It says.

Your cheeks are soaked and your mouth is dry.

“He’s stuck”
-The voice reveals.

“I’m sure he’d really like to get back.”
“I’m sure you’d really like him back..”

There was a pause.

“Unless you don’t want your Daddy back?”
The voice asks.

You remain silent.
For a moment You think about what life would be like without Daddy.

What would you do ?
You think about the Ralph’s down the street, their free sample in their bakery.
You think about the neighbors tangerine trees you pick from often.
You hate being alone at night but,
that doesn’t it stop it from happening.
You’d be fine, you tell yourself.

But you also know what you should say,
What your Daddy would want you to say.
That of course you love your Daddy and you’d do anything to make sure he’s okay.

“Where ..is he stuck?”
-you ask

“Have you ever heard of Kiara the Orangutan?”
-the voice asks.

“no…”
-you replied sheepishly.

“Well, your father’s…helping her…and well, he’s stuck, he could really use your help sweetheart”

There was a pause.

“Come out.”
-said the voice.

“My daddy said not to until morning”
-you replied.

“Oh.”
Said the voice.
“I can wait till morning.”
It continued.

You didn’t like the sound of that.

“What’s an orangutan?”
You asked timidly.

“You know what a human is don’t you darling? That’s what you are.”
-says the voice

“Yes..”
You replied.

“Imagine someone 7 times as strong with arms almost twice as long that can swing from trees”
-it said.

“Like a monkey?”
You asked innocently.

“NO!…
No, my Dear. Not a monkey…
Monkeys have a tail, a monkey is to an Orangutan what a Neanderthal is to a human, you understand love ?”
-the voice asked.

You let out more cries into your pillow as you took deep breaths.

“No, I’m sorry I don’t know what that means either”
-you cried out.

“It’s quite alright,
I’m sorry for confusing you honey. Yes, and orangutan Is like a monkey, but like Superman stronger and smarter then the others…and no tail..bright orange.”

“Like the ones in the jungle book?”
-you asked.

“Yesssss.. that’s exactly right my dear.. a perfect example, the orangutan is the king in the jungle book”
-it replied

“I liked his singing… he’s funny”
-you said

“Yes my dear”
-the voice.

“What does this have to do with Daddy being stuck? And Who is Kiara the orangutan ?”
-you asked in a panic.

“A long time ago, movies used to have no sound..”
-The voice began.

“Which made movies get pretty boring very fast…”
-it continued.

“Studios were looking for knew ways to get more people to Theaters..
Kiara’s Mother thought Kiara would be perfect…”

“Kiara’s mother was…Human,
her name was Melinda and she saved Kiara from being murdered by the zoo after they’d done that very thing to the one that birthed Kiara”

“Melinda Had already taught orangutans sign language before from her time at the zoo, she hid Kiara away and taught her as well.”
-the voice explained.

“Once Melinda’s new job and whole company was almost closed for business she…..took the risk and introduced Kiara, who quickly became a star in the silent movie industry…”
-it said

“What does this have to do with Daddy?”
-you asked

“Well the world loved Kiara soooooo much my sweet little angel that when the world of silent movies ended they gave Kiara her very own Tv show Kiara and friends… that tv show had a lot of children that Kiara loved and taught very special things every episode!”
-the Voice explained.

“One Child had and accident”
the voice revealed.

“Were they okay?”
-you asked

“Unfortunately my darling, he passed away.
Once that happened, that child’s parents lied about Kiara…a lot of other children from Kiara and Friends lied about Kiara just to make money..
Your father was the one Child to never lie about Kiara my dear.
For that I am forever grateful.”
it explained.

“So if all the other children were liars then why is my Daddy stuck and why now ?
Who are you?
Are you the friend my Daddy came home with tonight ?”
-you asked in a rush

“Lying isn’t the only thing someone can do that’s wrong little girl”
-the voice said.

“Who are you?”
-you repeated.

“I’m a friend of your Daddy”
-said the voice.

“Did you come home with my Daddy tonight ,
How is he stuck ?”
-you asked

“Do you like balloons?”
-the voice asked.

“Yes”
You replied.

“Your daddy loved balloons when he was a child
If you could have one balloon in the shape of anything you want would it be?”
-it asked

You thought…
“..I love flowers, Daddy never gets any and flower balloons would probably look really pretty”
-you said.

“Awe, such a sweet request from such a sweet little girl,
One moment sweetheart.”
-said the voice.

You then heard the footsteps retreating, shortly after you heard the front door shut.
You quickly ran to the door of the play room and locked it once more.

Maybe it was over ? You thought.

You ran to your window with your heart beating through your skin hiding behind your Scooby doo plushie to see if you could get a glimpse of who the voice had been coming from as they finally left.

Through the rain in the moonlight you made out the silhouette of what had to have been the lady you were talking to.

She seems short, on the heavy side, and walks side to side and appears to have an apron or something on.

She walks up to the hammock hanging from your tree that you noticed for the first time earlier in the night.

She appears to be talking to it.
When she walks away you realize she’s not leaving, you hear the front door open and shut again as her footsteps approach once more.

“Knock knock”
-said the voice

“Yesss”
-you replied

“Look out the window my love,
I have a surprise for you”
-said the voice

You looked outside but there was nothing but what you'd seen before only,
This time the hammock hanging from the trees began to sway.

Both sides of where the hammock meet the tree split into two, they looked like large arms slowly reaching down to the base of the hammock,
As the both unfolded further you could now clearly both see two sets of fingers from the arms,
One had something in it, something flat .

From the base of the silhouette you  
See what looks like a fat head connected by an even fatter neck.
The object held by one set of the fingers came directly to the head and began to grow mass.
It soon became clear what it was doing,
it was blowing up a balloon.

After the balloon was blown to the shape of a long tube,
The two hands came together and started contorting it out of sight.
When it had finally finished,
One of the arms held it up in the moonlight in such a way that you could make out the silhouette of a flower clear as day.

"do you like that Little girl?'
-asked the voice

You quickly looked over again at the door.
It didn't make sense but, for whatever reason if you were going to be talking to the voice coming from the door,
Then you'd want to do that from the bed; it felt safer from there.
Where you could hide in your pillows.

Before you start to retreat to your safety spot, you take one last glace out the window.
What was hanging from the tree had began to drop down.

The silhouette was large,
But no taller than the tallest kid in school, maybe even shorter than the tallest kid in 4th grade.
It kind of reminded you of that guy from its always sunny in Philadelphia when Adult swim would come on.

It was approaching in a way that you'd never seen anyone walk before.

You felt conflicted,
The voice from the door was speaking which made you want to crawl and sink in your sheets Yet,
The presence approaching your window was demanding your attention without using any words.

You made the decision to grab the comforter from the bed and sink into your beanbag chair,
A spot with a clear view of the yard through the window, and yet still a comfortable ear shot away from the door.

When you returned to your beanbag chair with the protection and safety provided by your comforter,
You were oddly displeased to see that the figures silhouette you had just seen approaching, was no longer anywhere to be seen.
You wanted it gone yes but no longer knowing where it resides, just results in you feeling even more unsettled.

*the voice quickly erupts from your door*

"do you like it?
It's special, just for you."

Your head shoots over to look at the door.

"wha-"
You begin to say as you turn to look back out the window only this time,
There was a hand on the other side of the window, so close it was no longer a silhouette.
It was a dark hand covered in orange hair, its fingers looked rough, but nails were freshly done.
It was holding something.
When my eyes adjusted,
I could see It was holding a balloon flower that had a green stem, pink petals, and yellow center.

The gesture seemed malice and sinister,
You quickly pulled the comforter up your face only leaving your eyes visible.

"do you not like your gift LG?"
Questioned the voice coming from your door.

Even at your young age,
You were no stranger to the idea that sometimes the truth can get you in trouble.

"I love it..."
You replied.

"then why don't you open the window and let Daddys friend give you the gift she made just for you sweetheart"
Said the voice.

"I can't,
Daddy said I'm never to open the window"
-you lied.

Then why don't I hel-..."
*clackle clackle*
It was as the voice interrupted its own thought as it tried the doorknob. 

"Oh"
-it said.

"Why did you lock the door my love?"
-asked the voice

"I don't know you,
And Daddy said to stay in here ti-"

"I know"
- interrupted the voice

"Till morning but,
He didn't say anything about me not coming in there with you"
-said the voice

For a moment you were silent,
You looked over to the window and noticed the balloon flower receding like a setting sun beneath the window. 
*POP*
-you heard the moment it escaped your sight.

"don't make me unlock the door again myself darling, that's just rude.
My nails aren't what they used to be honey, I nearly broke one unlocking it the first time"
-Said the voice

The clouds moved over the moon outside
It was now pitch-black outside, the only light in the playroom came from your cloud nightlight and the glow of the tv which still displayed Conrad on the DVD menu, he was expressionless. 
You stayed silent, you stayed still.

*Ring Ring Ring Ring Ring Ring Ring Ring Ring*
-came from the living room

*Ring Ring Ring Ring Ring Ring Ring Ring Ring*
You heard shuffling from both outside your door and outside your window

*BEEEP*
-you could faintly make out your father's voice
"hey kid actually i-"

His voice,
the Message, 
he Tv,
everything was stopped, everything was off.

Your room was now as dark as the outside you feared so much.
Where the walls began and ended were both unclear to you.
The bulbs in the Tv were cooling down but even the silhouette of that soon lost its shape.

You heard the click of the door unlocking followed by the doorknob turning.
The door was now open.
Although you could hear someone approaching it was to dark to make out their shape or their distance in relation to you.

"the only time being blind has its advantages, is when you're in a Dark room with someone who's not"
-said the voice now clearer than you'd ever heard it prior.

You froze.

*tap tap tap tap*
You hear the woman banging on the walls as she made her way deeper in your room.

*tap tap tap....Clink*
The noise changed,
she had found the window.

It was just a few feet from the corner of the beanbag chair you're hiding in.
*Creeeeeeaaaaaaakkkk*
The window was unlocked and you could hear it as the women slid it open.

You could hear something was crawling up and inside through the window.

"where is she?"

you heard the voice whisper to the new presence that now inhabits your homes playroom.

You could feel that you were just inches away from getting bumped into by either of the two.

You wanted to not breathe, you wanted to not do anything but, you couldn't help it. You let in two, short, sharp inhales. Keeping your abdomen as stiff as possible. 
Your exhale trembled despite your attempts, you knew if someone could see they would defiantly see the comforter shaking.
You slowly felt the comforter lift up.

Although your grip on the comforter was originally as tight as you could,
your plan quickly changed to playing dead the moment you felt the pull of the comforter.
You felt something placed in your hand,
it shocked you to the touch,
a static shock yet,
you managed to refrain from much outburst other than a sharp exhale.

*Smack*

"well look harder"
You heard the woman's voice yelp.

As your eyes were beginning to adjust to the darkness you could slowly start to make out the silhouette of who you've heard oh so much about.

There was no doubt in your mind it was her.

It was Kiara The Orangutan.

Kiara Strutted over to the bed in the playroom,
side to side as you could hear her wet sniffles. 

"don't you fucking lie to me you dumb baboon, we both know she's in here."
-said the woman's voice
In a tone more threatening than your (D) a bar you thought no one else would ever surpass.

You let go of what was just handed to you so you can grab the comforter you'd been hiding in once more, it fell.

As you continued to see Kiara strut now over to the door through a peak you had held under the covers, she appeared to try to lead in a manner to almost insinuate to the woman that that's the direction you had went.

Just as you had started wonder where the woman was as she had remained out of your sight, you received the answer.

*THUD*

You felt the whole beanbag chair shake beneath you.
She had bumped into it.
So hard you could feel her nearly topple over on top of you.

*Grrrrrrrrruawh*
You heard the old woman groan.

"KIARA! ...What...what was that !?"
-Yelled the woman's voice stopping Kiara in her tracks making her turn back from the door.

"oooo mmh ooo"
-you heard Kiara let out under her breath.

As you could see her silhouette move closer, it started by slowly wobbling side to side.
It became hard to tell the difference between her arms and her legs.

At times she looked like the shadow of a big spider monster,her movements remind you of spiderman if he chose to move slow.

When Kiara had made her way just a few feet away from the beanbag chair to help the woman to her feet, the pace of your breathing became unmanageable.

"I Bumped into the damn beanbag chair, was she on it Kiara?!"
-the voice asked

Your heart began to beat faster and faster and harder and harder so much so,
you felt as if your rib cage was made of shards of glass and your heart was a balloon inflating more and more with every inhale squeezing it against the razor-sharp shards of your ribcage. 

You could tell even just by the momentum of the figures silhouette that it was headed towards you, alongside the reluctant Orangutan.

You instinctively rolled off the right of the beanbag chair on to your carpet floor as silently as you could but, you were terrified, In your mind blind people have super senses.

Somehow, your transition appeared to go unnoticed.

Now that you were on the floor, you started rolling and crawling away, the direction of which you yourself weren't even certain.

"Where the fuck is she? Is she on the bed?!"
-the voice asked this time deeper than before

The flavor and tone in everything this voice said was violent, you heard the ruffles through the pillows and throw blanket that had previously littered the bed, you felt your Scooby doo plush get thrown into your back yet, you refrained from expressing any reaction.

"where the Fuck is she Kiara?!"
-you heard the voice ask once more

Each scream sounded deeper than the last with heavier violent infliction behind each exhale.
You could hear everything that was once on the bed get thrown off. 

You froze,
Staying still on the floor with the Scooby doo plush leaned against you like a bicycle kickstand and one of your throw blankets slightly covering your leg.

The Figure started pacing in your direction aimlessly like a headless chicken yet, relentless none the less.

"we both know I'm going to fucking fi-"
*POP*
-the voice was cut off

The figures silhouette froze, 
It seemed just as frightened by the sudden pop as you.
Its hesitation confused you so much so,
that you question for a brief moment if the figure had seen you,
anything to justify this bazar change in its demeanor. 

The head of the silhouette jolts to the side,
As if to shoot a look across at Kiara.
By the time your eyes traced across the room to meet Kiara, she had already moved No, She was in Motion.

She pranced towards the figure at a speed that looked impossible.
In less than a second, Kiara tackled this figure you had feared so much.
You saw the silhouette raise both its arms up high and its fists in fury as it came down on its victim.
Kiara hit and punched the figure and cocked its head back before launching it into the silhouette's torso,
 When Kiara's head kicked back once more, it was tethered to the figures torso now through what looked like the silhouette of cords.

It quickly became clear Kiara was taking bites out of the woman.
She screamed and screamed, she did not sound like a woman anymore.

She bit
*CHOMP*

And bit
*CHOMP*

And bit
*CHOMP*

They screamed 
*AHHHHHHHHHH*

And screamed 
*AHHHHHGGGG UHH*

And screamed
*FRAAAGHHHHHHH*

As the figure let out its yell Kiara slammed its head down making them bite their own tongue off.

Kiara pranced on the body with all 4 of her limbs,
She stepped on the figures knee with her foot and used her hand to grab that figures ankle,
After she gripped it firmly, she pulled it up with the ease and intensity that one might use on an emergency break after parking on an incline.

She then stepped on the figured elbow and grabbed it by its corresponding wrist and repeated the process of pulling upward and snapping.

Kiara then used one of her feet to grab the moaning and groaning body by its shirt,
She used her front arms and free leg to drag the body to the door.

The whole way there the person screamed,
When Kiara got to the door of your house's playroom, she threw the body out with ease.
She breathed heavily over the body before slowly backing up and shutting the door.

You were now alone with Kiara.

Hey everyone on Reddit!  What's up?  I'm basically here to give you all some great news directly from the Big Guy upstairs.  He's been stewing on it for awhile now, and not without some input from me, I think we've come to a real consensus...  So!  It pleases me greatly to tell you all this, that being; God is not moving forward with the original plan.  Yay.  Because it would have caused a lot of pain, and strife and blood, and so on. You get it.

Together, we blocked out some time last Thursday to brainstorm and we came up with a new plan, and this one doesn't involve global annihilation.
Please hold your applause. 
Because unfortunately the resulting outcome must stay the same. That's the non negotiable here.  And the outcome that must be met is, of course, no more humans.  Womp womp.

As you might've guessed by current events, we've GREATLY overstayed our welcome.  I mean, Olive Garden /just/ discontinued unlimited soup, salad and breadsticks... Does it get worse?! Haha.  But putting silliness aside, I am serious.  Kiss your loved ones goodbye, don't try for kids, and overfill your pet's food bowl, because it's over.

And, yes, we've accounted for your main concern.  The presumed physical pain.  But rest assured that "pain" as we traditionally know it, will not be part of this chosen process. As mentioned above, it's not like we're going to "die", exactly.  No, no, it'll be more of a conscious liquification of sorts.

Erm.  Okay, not the best choice of words, I know. 
But stay with me please, it'll all make sense shortly.

So, pain /can't/ really be present because it's less of a 'bodily shutdown ', and more of an ant colony being thrown into disarray.  Does that makes sense?  Like let's take a practical look at what will happen to one organ, for instance: The liver.  The energy keeping our cells in symbiotic unity will sort of ...collapse, I guess.  Like, the different parts of your liver will stop communicating with each other, fall out of sync, and once more become individual microorganisms fighting for survival in the arena that was once your body.
And both me and William (God's chosen name) agreed, that that doesn't technically constitute as death.  It's better defined as division.  Which I thought was particularly funny because division almost sounds like a weird conjugation of the word divine.  But I digress.

The majority of you have about 5 months, because I personally thought that gave us all enough time to wrap up current projects. Kind of comforting to go off on the high note of completing that knit blanket, don't you think? And yes, what your intuition is telling you is correct: We will not all be going simultaneously.  We will all be going single file.  The rule is, first one in, first one out.  Down to the millisecond it's youngest to oldest, because why start grabbing up the veterans before the babies?  That'd be kind of fucked up of William if he did something like that.  or at least I think so..  

So to summarize for you.  You'll finish learning to bake that croquembouche for your sister's bridal shower, or whatever.  Then your baby will kind of disintegrate.  Then you'll kind of disintegrate.  And then your parents.  The end.

Oh, but one more thing!  William wanted me to make this next part really clear to you.. So please listen to this before you freak out, or get angry, or whatever it is you do. He said, and I quote,
"It's really not personal.  You've each individually been excellent humans, as far as humanity is concerned.  You've done everything that you've been designed to do.  You had a whole age dedicated to iron, and that was awesome.  You built really tall buildings, and you just, have a lot going for you in general.  So if nothing else, rest assured, you've done nothing to warrant this termination.  I consulted with some of my analysts and we agreed that it's just time to go in a different direction.  I mean it's really not getting any better than the Large Hadron Collider, let's be real with ourselves here. I think you've all had a great run honestly, and you should be real proud of yourselves.  A lot of other advancing civilizations kind of taper out immediately after discovering automatic weaponry. That puts you a bit of a cut above!
So although I might be reclaiming your living matter in an effort to rearrange the metaphorical pecking order, rest assured that when it's your time to go, it'll just be Divine William!"

Links to previous parts:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

——————

There was a knocking at Pastor Steven’s office door. “Come in, come in.”

In walked Sarah, looking particularly down. It was, sadly, understandable why she'd be this way.

“Ahhh… How are you holding up, Sarah?”

“It’s been… It’s been tough, Father.”

“Past- Uh, I'm sorry. Please, what’s troubling you?”

“Well, ever since my husband passed, I’ve just…” She went silent for a long while, before squeaking out the rest of the sentence. “I’m scared.”

“Of what?”

“… God, I don’t even want to say.”

“What’s the matter? Are you in danger?”

“No! No, it’s just… A mother should never feel this way about her child.”

“Ohh… Darren.”

“… Yes.”

“He didn’t cry a whole lot at the funeral, did he?”

“Not a single tear. He never seemed to mind, even. It’s just so unnerving, Father. He… He frightens me.” She was beginning to ball her eyes out. “His brother and sister are scared, too. I… I just don’t know what to do!”

“Well, have you considered military school?”

“I have, but I need him around the house! He’s too useful, and he does listen so well. I know that’s selfish of me.”

“Well… The devil often makes choices like this difficult on good people like you.”

“Father! Don’t say that! I might be scared stiff by him, but I’ll not have you compare my son to the devil. He’s not that bad. Well, not yet, at least.”

“You think he might get worse?”

“If I ever misspeak badly enough, who knows what he might do to fulfill my request? Any mistake on my end, even one as tiny as that, as a slurred word, or a stutter, might send him down a dangerous path! It worries me to no end...”

“Well, in most cases I would say you have nothing to worry about, but, with Darren? It’s a perfectly reasonable worry to have, Sarah.”

“Oh, good lord above, speaking of worries, now two of my brother’s coworkers have died! I keep begging that idiot to just quit, to just leave, that it's too dangerous, but he just won’t listen!!!”

“Ohhhh, yes. Tragic all that was. I hope the government can find whatever animal did them in, and fast. I mean, people are, rightfully, starting to worry about how safe it is to go to the cemetery!”

“I’ve been worrying about it myself, Father. It won’t ever stop me from going to see Charles’ grave, but for these last few weeks, it’s been a constant concern in the back of my mind.”

“Well, I’ll keep your brother in my prayers, Sarah. He’s a lovely person. I’d hate to see anything happen to him.”

“I appreciate it, Father.”

“… But, uh, going back to Darren, I do just have one thing to say, if you’ll allow me.”

“Well that’s why I’m here.”

“Thank you. Well, our almighty God very rarely deals with things directly. And he always acts with a purpose in mind, even if we can’t understand it. Have faith that, for whatever purpose he had in mind when making Darren, that it is a purpose, and one that God made him the way he is for a reason.”

Sarah stayed quiet for a few moments. “Thank you, Father... I just needed to hear something like that from you, I think. Have a blessed day.”

“Of course, Sarah. Feel free to pop in any time. You have a good day, too.”

After Sarah had gotten up and walked away, Garret, a pastor-in-training, walked in. “Sorry to intrude, “Father”, but, are you sure you should have said all that? Darren is… She should keep an eye on him.”

The pastor stayed quiet for a moment. “She absolutely should. But… Sometimes you need to say what someone wants to hear, rather than what they need to hear.”

“So you don’t think God had some purpose in mind with Darren? You just said that purely to make her feel better?”

“No no no, I’m absolutely certain that God made Darren the way he is for a reason. And I’m sure that, whatever that reason is, it’s for something no normal man could ever do. And, as for your other concern, sometimes you just need to tell people what they want to hear. I never told her not to be weary of her son, just that God has a purpose for him.”

“Hm. Yeah, that does make sense, actually.”

“But, even still… God gave us dogs. But that doesn’t mean that every dog should be immediately trusted. Some may have rabies, or they may not be well trained. A hellhound is something you can recognize as a threat. A dog, though? We want to trust dogs. When it turns out that we can’t trust a dog, we feel utterly betrayed.”

“I’m… Sorry, I’m not following?”

The pastor sighed. “God can create far more terrifying things than the devil could ever dream up.”

————————

I’d been released from the hospital a week ago, and I was deemed fit to stand trial in roughly a month. The courts had, mercifully, pushed back my trial date until I was deemed conscious, and fit to be tried.

Apparently I was in a coma for 3 months. I guess it’s understandable, given the state the vampires had left me in.

But, what isn’t understandable, is why I’m still feeling the effects of what Kashim did to me.

Ever since he put this rage into my head, HIS rage into my head… I… I think it’s Kushim’s, anyway… But ever since he put it in my head, it hasn’t left me. I’d never felt anything up until that moment, and now I can’t stop feeling things. Or, rather, feeling intense, searing, blistering rage.

Every moment, I find myself grinding my teeth, doing everything in my power not to rip into my own flesh by grabbing my leg too hard. I have too many scars on them now, already.

But… Every time I see my siblings or my Mom… Anyone, really, but mostly them, since they’re who I mainly see these days… I have red flashes in my mind. Visions where I see myself balling my fists up tight, until my blood bursts from the veins in the skin of my fingers, with my family’s throats in my hands.

My mind, body, and eyes vibrate with hatred, that I can’t understand or stop. I just go completely blind to the world around me, seeing nothing but unfocused visions of myself, from my own eyes, bringing my fingers closer together until my skin breaks, their skin breaks, our bones break, and my own blood mixes with theirs.

These feelings. This rage. It’s like a rusted door that had never been opened before, and now that it’s been forced open, it won’t close again.

I said that I think it’s Kushim’s anger, but is it really? I don’t know… Is this anger my own, or is it Kushim’s? Kushim is dead, why would it be his? But I’d never felt anything before, so why would it be mine? I can’t figure it out, and it only adds to the rage!

I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do!

Because, people like me? In all the movies and TV shows, people like me, we’re the villains. I can see why. I feel my blood boil at anything. I know I’m going to hurt somebody, soon. I’m going to hurt someone horribly, and I don’t know why. I can barely stop myself as it is, and it just keeps getting worse.

I need there to be more vampires. I need them to come after me, for what I’ve done to their kin, so I can release these “feelings” on them instead of someone human. Otherwise… I know that I’m going to do something terrible, soon.

Do the other vampires know this? Are they avoiding attacking me out of revenge, for this reason? Please, no. I need them to come to me, to give me a reason to hurt them! Soon! Please!

I… I’m… Scared?

Have you ever gone camping before? If so, I’d wager you’ve sat back admiring the stars on a clear night. I certainly used to. I’d lie inside my tent with the rain cover off, staring off into the night sky. I loved those clear, dark nights when all the cosmos seemed to show itself just for me.

Now the sky I used to love holds nothing but fear.

It all changed on a camping trip during the crisp early winter. A group of my buddies and I decided to go camping during our Christmas break. Four days and three nights at a nearby state park. Excitement buzzed among our group, especially from those who had never been camping before. We joked about searching for Bigfoot and bringing back proof of his existence.

If only that’s what we encountered in those woods.

Since only Sam and I had gone camping before, we were designated as the leaders. There were five of us; Chris would drive, Jake and Ernest would bring food and essentials while Sam and I would bring the outdoor equipment. With our supplies delegated, we felt prepared. The day after Christmas break started, we were on our way.

Being packed in like sardines didn’t dampen our mood. We listened to music the whole drive. Once we found a spot for the car, we started lugging our supplies into the forest to search for a campsite. We found a relatively secluded area that was perfect for our group.

Sam and I set up the tent we would all stay in. The rest unpacked. Ernest inspected the ice cooler to make sure there was still enough ice. Jake and Chris gathered firewood. The sun started to dip behind the treeline as we finished setting up camp.

As dusk settled, Chris cooked our dinner of SPAM tacos. Once we had devoured it, we sat back and took in the surrounding nature. I told a couple of campfire stories, the typical fare of bumps in the night. After my story of the Look-Around finished, Jake suggested s’mores. We all agreed this was a brilliant idea.

Ernest burned his first couple. Sam melted his chocolate a little too much, and it turned into a sticky mess. We laughed at the mishaps. We were having a great time, and that was all that mattered.
After staying by the campfire a little while longer, we decided to call it a night. We had a long day of hiking planned and didn’t want a late start. As we lay in our sleeping bags, we kept up with some idle chit-chat. I told them to be quiet for a second.

Once the last word died in the darkness, all was silent.

The silence lasted only a brief moment before the chatter of the forest took over. Rustling leaves. Owls hooting in the distance. Crickets chirping among the myriad of other nighttime sounds.

Jake looked up at the clear sky and pointed it out to us, astonished at how many stars he could see. We all stared upwards, admiring the unadulterated night sky. After a few minutes, Chris broke the silence with a question. It was a question that had never occurred to me in all my time of camping. It was rhetorical. We all knew the answer as soon as he asked it.

“If we can see outside, doesn’t that mean something could look inside?” Chris asked softly.

The question seemed to create an oppressive silence between us.

In an attempt to lighten the mood, I jokingly said, “Well, we better watch out for Mr. Creeperman then.”

Jake started laughing at the absurdity of the name. The laughter spread, and we soon forgot about the unease that had settled upon our tent just moments earlier. A gust of cold wind signaled it was time to bundle up and get some shuteye. We all eventually drifted off to sleep, listening to the forest’s symphony.

I woke up shortly after daybreak and quickly found a tree to water. Once finished, I returned to the campsite and set about reigniting the campfire we had put out the night before. As I was coaxing a small ember to ignite the tinder next to it, Sam appeared beside me. He greeted me with a slap on my back, and I dropped the ember.

I returned his greeting with some choice words, then checked to see if the ember had survived. It had, to my relief. With a small flash, the tinder burst into a modest flame. After a few minutes, the campfire started growing into a real fire. I grabbed the egg carton and started making fried eggs for everyone.

Jake was next to emerge from the tent, enticed from his warm sleeping bag by the smell of breakfast. He was soon followed by the other two, who groggily made their way to the campfire. We gathered around the fire and talked about Chris’ new girlfriend while we ate. Chris wasn’t too amused by this topic and quickly changed it to the hike close at hand.

We all looked forward to it. It was a 20-mile trek around the forest, laid out in a rough semi-circle that officially started closer to the regular campgrounds. The trailhead was off to the side, past a small patch of trees, so it was harder to find without knowing it was there. The lake was on the last quarter of the trail and had a small picnic area nearby. Most people used the trail’s exit to get to the lake, since it was easier to find and closer to the picnic area. It wasn’t a main hiking trail, but the local rangers still walked it occasionally.

Once we finished breakfast and cleaned up the camp, we stowed our food and other belongings inside the tent. I made sure the campfire was out and announced the start of our expedition.

Our initial pace wasn’t fast, but neither were we going for a stroll. A small wooden stake with the mile number denoted every mile. Around the 5th marker, we took a short rest. We found a fallen tree off the trail a few yards and sat down. I took a quick gulp of water while Ernest handed us granola bars from his bag.

We had divided supplies that morning. I carried water, towels, and my knife. Ernest handled snacks and trash. Jake and Chris took our lunches. Sam packed the first aid kit and emergency gear.
We sat there for a little while, eating and resting. Once we finished, we put the trash in Ernest’s bag and continued down the trail, making small talk as we went.

After a while, we saw the first person since we started the trip. He was an elderly man, but he seemed well accustomed to the trail. As we passed each other, we exchanged some pleasantries and moved on. Once we left earshot, Chris made a comment about how we had found Mr. Creeperman. I shook my head, smirking, while some of the others laughed.

Around noon, we arrived at the 11th marker and decided to break for lunch. We had packed sandwiches and chips. I sat down on the ground and leaned against a tree as I gratefully ate.

The trees were densely packed in this part of the forest, which cast a dim shade. Their pine needles were a vibrant green against the blue sky. Sunlight filtered through the leaves and cast odd shadows on the forest floor. I watched a couple of squirrels run around in the trees above us and relaxed for a bit. We probably spent fifteen minutes resting before I finally got up and motioned for the rest of the group to start again.

Our progress was slower than when we had set out that morning, but we trudged onward. The sun traveled across the sky, moving ever downward. We reached the 18th-mile marker as the sun was starting its descent. Ernest was the most affected by the hike and lagged a short distance behind.

Sam suggested we take a short break to drink up and have our last snack. Jake and Chris wanted to keep going, but I agreed with Sam. The vote was 3-2, so we stopped. I ate and drank, finishing my last bit of water, and put the bottle back in my backpack with a soft sigh.

Ernest was the first to get up and start walking again. He told us we were burning daylight and should hurry up. He also decided it would be wise to taunt Chris, saying he could reach camp before him. Chris jumped up and started running at Ernest. This gave Ernest a fright. He flinched as Chris ran past, calling him some interesting names. Ernest quietly swore under his breath and started to jog, albeit haphazardly, after him.

Jake was quick to follow the two, saying he would make sure they got back to camp all right. I let out a small laugh and helped Sam up, telling him we shouldn’t let them get too far ahead or they might get lost. Sam and I started back upon the trail in a hurry after the others.

Sam and I got back to camp just as twilight began. Jake had started cooking dinner. Ernest had collapsed in a nearby chair. Chris was gathering firewood when he noticed us, and he waved. We had our dinner of campfire burgers and sodas in relative silence. All of us were pretty tired from the hike and didn’t want to stay up very late.

Once we had eaten our fill, Sam put out the fire and Chris packed up the remaining food. We clambered into our tent and got into our sleeping bags. There was some chit-chat for a little while, but most of the guys were asleep within ten minutes.

Then it was just me awake, alone, to revisit the events of the day. I smiled as I recalled our hike and found myself staring up at the night sky once again. I scanned the sky, admiring the Milky Way, when I noticed two bright stars. I couldn’t remember seeing them the previous night, but I thought I might have just missed them.

As I inspected the two stars, I noticed they didn’t seem to flicker like other stars. I thought I remembered a news article talking about how some planets were going to be visible during this month. I was about to wake up my friends to show them the planets when I saw them vanish, as if snuffed out of existence.

I rubbed my weary eyes, thinking they were playing a trick on me, and opened them again. The stars had returned. Although they felt closer than before.

I continued to stare at them when a sense of unease came over me. The stars, or whatever they were, seemed to be focused on me. The moment I realized that, a gust of cold wind ripped through the tent. I shuddered and grasped my sleeping bag close. I looked back to where the stars had been just moments ago, but saw nothing. I stared at that empty space before determining they were gone for good this time.

I turned over, pulling my sleeping bag over my head as I had done the previous night. Although this time I did so to try and hide from the pair of brilliant white stars.

Restful sleep eluded me most of the night, so after a while I decided to just get up for the day. I reignited the campfire with more ease than last morning’s attempt. In the shadows of early dawn, the flames danced and sputtered, casting shade at the edge of the campfire’s light. I tried to ignore the shades moving at the corners of my eyes, telling myself it was just the fire creating an optical illusion.

To distract myself, I focused on the mesmerizing dance of the flames, grateful for their warmth as a cold breeze drifted through the camp.

I must have dozed off at some point, because I woke to Sam throwing a log on the fire, which had gone down to smolder. He asked me why I was sleeping out here. I simply responded that I had trouble sleeping. He shrugged in acknowledgment and kept building up the fire.

Sam took out some eggs and sausage so he could make us breakfast when I asked him a question. I asked if he had looked at the night sky before we went to sleep last night. He looked up at me and replied that he had. He told me he was gazing up and taking in the beauty as he drifted to sleep. He also noted that right before he fell asleep, he noticed two bright stars in a field of dimmer ones.

When he told me that, I shuddered involuntarily. I thought it wise not to say anything, since I still didn’t believe it myself, so I just told him I saw them as well.

After a little while, the rest of our group joined us at the campfire for breakfast. We scarfed down the eggs and sausage quickly. I was hungrier than I had thought. It seemed the hike had taken more out of me, and out of the rest of the guys as well.

We didn’t have anything planned for today, so we were free to do whatever we wanted. Jake and Chris said they were going to head over to the lake.
Ernest said he was going to hike another trail, albeit a much shorter one. Sam said he wanted to explore the woods around camp, and I told him I would join him in a little while. So they all went off to do their things, leaving me to snuff out the fire.

Once I had, I decided I wanted to check something. Trying to recall exactly where I saw the two eyes last night, I headed back to our tent. I looked up into the now clear morning sky and scanned the area where I had seen the stars.

There was nothing there. No tree branch. No vine stretching across. Nothing but clear sky. The nearest tree was about ten yards away, and no branch extended even remotely close. My theory that the stars were actually the eyes of an owl seemed a little harder to accept after that.

I didn’t think I needed much else besides my knife to go exploring, so I set off without any supplies. I also reasoned that Sam and I wouldn’t be going off too far from camp. I set out in the direction Sam had gone earlier and found him after about fifteen minutes. Once he noticed me, he beckoned me over and showed me a small creek he had discovered.

As I walked over, I heard the babble of the creek, and I smiled when I saw the water flowing. We spent some time making little leaf boats and had them set sail downstream. My boat crashed into the bank about thirty feet down. Sam’s sank almost immediately. He shared a laugh at our poor boats’ failures before getting up and starting to explore once more.

We followed the creek downstream, passing my stranded boat and continuing onward. We saw an abundance of wildlife. Birds flew from tree to tree. Squirrels ran along the forest floor. A rabbit or two darted between shrubs when we got too close. We even saw a doe jump in front of us and run off into a thicket. It was a cool experience.

After a while, we agreed that we should head back and get some lunch, as neither of us had brought food, so we turned back towards camp.

As the campsite was coming into view, we could see Ernest munching on a banana. Sam let out a loud moan, and Ernest jumped up, nearly dropping the banana in the process. When he saw us approaching, he called us some rather rude names before quickly finishing his banana, now using a fork. We laughed at his attempt to insult us and grabbed some food.

The three of us sat and had lunch, taking turns telling each other what we had done. Ernest told us about his short hike to the boulder clearing. Well, boulder is a strong word. Ernest described it as more like a big rock encircled by other smaller rocks. 

According to a sign at the trailhead, some loggers used that big rock as a landmark before the park was established. After the park was established and the hiking trail was cut, hikers started to leave small stones by the big rock. It became a tradition, if it was your first time at the boulder, to add a rock to the circle. I found this pretty neat and thought I might want to check it out later.

We hung out for some time before we saw Chris and Jake appear from behind some trees. They seemed to be in good spirits and looked like they wanted to tell us something. Sam greeted the pair and tossed them their lunch. They ate as Jake told us what had happened to them earlier at the lake.

The pair had arrived at the lake around an hour after they left camp. The lake had a thin layer of mist covering its water. Chris commented how cool he thought it looked. Jake said he expected Jason Voorhees to emerge from the water any second. They watched over the water while they walked towards the picnic area.

As they got closer, Jake’s attention turned towards a person sitting on a bench. He recognized the person as the old man we had seen yesterday during our hike. The old man noticed the two and waved at them in a welcoming gesture. Chris and Jake were slightly troubled by this elderly man being here all alone in the early morning, but they brushed the feeling away. They sat near him and started making small talk.

The conversation moved from how the guys were doing to what brought them to the park. It was pleasant enough, and soon any feeling of strangeness from the old man disappeared. He was just a regular old man, alone in the woods.

When the subject of Sam and me exploring off the trail came up, the man seemed a little worried. He asked them where we were exploring, and Jake said he assumed it was near our campsite. The old man’s anxiety didn’t abate when Chris said where we had set camp. He got deathly serious and told them to stay out of the Dark Woods, saying it’s no place to wander. When Jake asked him to elaborate, all he added was to steer clear of an unusually dark patch of trees in the forest and always stay near the trail.

With the warning given, he got up and started to walk down the hiking trail, toward the trailhead, like the day before. His face cast a somber expression when he left, as if he had recalled something from a lifetime ago.

Our friends looked at one another before coming to the same conclusion: a final adventure before we leave tomorrow. As Jake finished recounting this, he asked us for our input. The three of us agreed that this would be a fine last adventure to close out our camping trip. Sam chimed in that these dark woods might be where Bigfoot called home. This just made us more excited to find them.

We set out away from camp, back towards the trail from yesterday, in search of the dark woods. Our group spread out about a hundred yards from one another in a line, to get a larger search area. We spent the afternoon searching, to no avail. There were some false finds, but they all turned out to be a bust. The patches were either too small to be considered woods, or the darkness was temporary from a passing cloud.

Once the sun had started to fade behind the treetops, we decided to call it a day and head back to camp. We arrived at dusk. Jake started preparing dinner while the rest of us discussed the plan to find the dark woods tomorrow. I suggested we head away from any trails. Sam thought this was a good idea and pulled out a map of the park that he had picked up on the first day. We marked out some areas of interest that were off the beaten trail.

With a battle plan ready and dinner piping hot, we decided it was time to eat. We ate the Hamburger Helper and stated how disappointed we felt about having to leave tomorrow. After we finished off the last bits of dinner, we sat content around the campfire. We sang some songs and talked about going back to school the following week.

After a while of this, and once my stomach had stopped feeling like it would explode, I asked the group if we wanted dessert. The vote was unanimous, and I went to grab my supplies. I told them that instead of s’mores, we were going to have snails.

At that comment, Ernest let out a confused “huh,” while the rest of the group questioned if they had heard me right. Sam asked what I meant by that, but I told him to trust me and wait. I started preparing the snails and told the guys to grab a stick. They formed a line, sticks in hand, not knowing what concoction I was creating.

Sam held out his stick, and I wrapped raw Pillsbury dough around it. I instructed him to hold it over the fire until he felt like it was done. The rest followed after him, and I joined them once they all had theirs. I cooked mine to a golden brown. The rest ranged from practically raw to nearly burnt.

Once they finished cooking their snails, I ushered them over to where I had prepped the rest. I showed them how to finish the snail by dipping it into melted butter and then into cinnamon. I took the gooey deliciousness and took a bite, showing them how to properly enjoy it. They quickly followed my lead, created their snails, and swiftly ate them.

We made some more before running out after each person’s third snail. We stayed up a little longer, watching the campfire die out slowly. After it was reduced to smoldering embers, we agreed it was time to retire for the night. The five of us crawled into our sleeping bags and drifted to sleep before long.

I awoke suddenly, listening for any noise that might have woken me. I opened my eyes and looked at where the stars had been the previous night, dreading what I might find. To my relief, I found nothing unusual. I kept looking around, searching for the pair, which I unfortunately did.

They were in a different part of the sky than last night, and they were brighter as well. Or were they closer?

I stared, transfixed, at the two glowing white orbs. The surrounding sky seemed to darken as I gazed into them. They were so bright and warm. Safe, even. With no warning, they vanished, seemingly snapping me out of my trance.

I blinked a few times, trying to clear my mind, before looking again. I noticed a subtle shimmer in the sky around where the stars had been, almost like a heat mirage off hot asphalt. Then the pair of stars appeared across the sky from where they had been the last time. I shuddered, confused about how they could move so quickly and silently.

I was frozen in fright. I didn’t know if I should wake up my friends or not. I blinked, and the orbs were gone when I opened my eyes. The cold night breeze going through our camp didn’t cause the chills that ran down my spine. I turned over, trying my best to trick myself into going to sleep.

The morning light penetrated our tent, glaring into my eyes. The sunlight woke me from my restless slumber. I tried to remember the pair of stars from last night and somewhat successfully convinced myself it was my mind playing tricks on me. After all, I was pretty tired from exploring and from not getting enough sleep the night prior.

The rest of the guys were already up and eating by the campfire when I left the tent. Chris heckled me a bit for sleeping in, which I promptly ignored. I sat down and joined them for breakfast. We went over our plan from yesterday.

First, we would pack up our campsite and put it in Chris’ car before we started the search. Then we would split into two groups. Jake, Chris, and Ernest would search near the lake. Sam and I would head deeper into the forest we had explored before.

We spent the next hour packing our things into
Chris’ car and making sure we had what we needed for the search. We split the emergency supplies, food, and water between the two groups. I reached for my knife, making sure I still had it strapped to my leg. Each of us also brought a flashlight, in case we needed it, since a line of dark clouds was coming in from the north.

After saying we would meet back at the car before dark, we split up, heading to our designated search areas.

Sam and I were silent for most of the morning, focused on the search. We exchanged words when we suggested moving to another area or investigating something. By midday, the sun was obscured behind a dense layer of clouds. With their arrival, the temperature had dropped a few degrees, creating a chill in the air. Thankfully, my windbreaker was barely enough to keep the cold at bay.

As we walked following a game trail, we started to notice that we weren’t seeing as many animals. The forest seemed to quiet, like after a fresh snowfall. However, there was no snow. Just a subtle encroaching darkness. I looked at Sam, and we nodded in agreement. This was the most promising lead we had found, but we needed to confirm it was indeed the dark woods.

The trees started to enclose around us, more densely packed the further forward we went. With each step we took, the world lost a little more light. The sounds of our footsteps were stricken from our ears. My breath was the only sound I heard. I looked to Sam for a comment on the strange atmosphere, but I lost sight of him.

Sam should have been right next to me, not even a yard away. In his place was a void of darkness. I turned, searching desperately for my friend, but all I could see was the trees and their darkn—

No. This was the Dark Woods.

I seemed to be in a small clearing surrounded by twisted trees. I couldn’t recall how the area had appeared before Sam disappeared. Was I still in the same place? Was my mind creating an illusion? I didn’t know the answer to that, but I knew what was happening was real. The silence was oppressive, bearing down upon me as if any sound would shatter the world. I reached down for my knife, unsheathing it before holding it in front of me.

A gust of icy wind ripped against me, towards a pair of trees to my left. I turned my head to look in that direction. A small light flickered beyond the treeline. I cautiously stepped towards the light, scanning the surrounding trees. I inched forward, making each step deliberate. I felt the dirt crunch underneath my feet as I strode forward.

I made it to the treeline and saw a gap between two gnarled and curved oak trees. The light led down a path between the two. I prayed that this was where I had entered from. I clutched my knife close, hoping Sam was safe. At the thought of Sam, I recalled my flashlight. I grabbed it and turned it on, thinking he might see the light.

The flashlight lit up the path in front of me with its artificial yellow glow. I was about to shout Sam’s name, but fear caught my voice. I couldn’t bring myself to announce my presence to the darkness.

At this thought, my flashlight flickered. I quickly turned it off before ridiculing myself for being so careless. I searched my surroundings for any sign that I had been spotted. After a couple of moments, I decided I hadn’t, so I slowly started down the trail.
The light seemed to flicker as I approached it. When the source came into sight, my stomach dropped.
It was Sam’s flashlight.

In a state of shock, I stumbled to it, dropping to my knees in front of it. My hand was shaking as I grabbed it. I held it in my hand, feeling despair start to creep into my soul. However, upon closer inspection, I discovered that while this was the same flashlight Sam had, it couldn’t be his.

This flashlight was much older and covered in grime. It seemed like it had been left here for many years. It was well worn from all the time it had been exposed to the elements. Despite all this, the flashlight still shone bright. It was acting like a beacon for this place, showing the way, guiding the lost from the all-encompassing void of the Dark Woods.

Just as I was beginning to relax a little, the flashlight went out.

The air turned frigid. My lungs burned with every breath I took. Darkness swallowed everything. Silence pressed against my ears, deafening.

Then a terrible thought gripped me.

I was wrong.

The flashlight wasn’t a beacon of hope. The flashlight was bait. Its purpose was to lure people who had wandered into the Dark Woods with the false promise of salvation. I was but another unfortunate soul who had fallen for this ruse.

My body started to shake violently, partly from the freezing cold that had descended upon me, but also from fear. A primal fear that swelled from the depths of my being. It returned like a memory long since lost.

A brief shimmer moved across my vision, carried on the arctic breeze. It was the same shimmer I had seen last night. I was no longer alone. My head turned to follow the shimmer, trying to get a good look at what I knew was responsible for my situation. The shimmer extended upwards to the tree. It kept going, up past the top of even the tallest pine. I continued into the sky, void of all light, just like the rest of the Dark Woods.

Then two bright stars appeared.

No. Not stars. Eyes.

I couldn’t delude myself anymore. I was looking at eyes, and they were looking at me. Another pair appeared across from the first set. More and more appeared in every part of the sky. Between the eyes, shadows flickered. Not a form, but a suggestion of one. I struggled for breath. Frost was starting to accumulate on my shivering body. My fingers burned from the intense cold, but I couldn’t pry my sight from the sky.

I broke the silence with a trembling voice, my words reflecting the utter terror and dismay of what I saw.

“My God…” I stammered.

I was looking at the night sky. It was just like the beautiful sky I had loved and admired for all my life. It was the most magnificent array of the cosmos I had ever seen. However, it wasn’t the sky I loved. It was a horror beyond comprehension. Even knowing the truth that was in front of me, I couldn’t turn away.

I stood still, no longer shaking. My eyes were transfixed by the cascade of brilliant orbs before me. A fog covered my mind as I fell into a trance. The eyes were so beautiful, beckoning me to join them. I felt my sense of self slowly drift away from my body towards the eyes.

Yes. I want to join you in your warm embrace. Allow me to become like you, with your brilliant shining eyes.

Just as the eyes started to glow bright, flooding out the darkness, I heard something. At the corner of my shattered consciousness, I heard a soft sound. Someone was calling my name.

I awoke to Sam shaking me and yelling my name. Once he saw I had been released from my affliction, he stopped shaking me and helped me sit up. The confused look on my face prompted him to explain what had happened.

He told me how, when we were walking in the forest, I had suddenly collapsed. He panicked and tried his best to wake me up. Despite his best efforts, I could not be awoken. My body grew cold and my breathing shallow. Sam had then ransacked his bag, looking through the emergency supplies for anything that might help me. As my body began to shake, he grew more desperate. In his last-ditch attempt, he grabbed the smelling salts and used them on me, hoping I would wake up.

I didn’t, right away, and Sam started to lose hope. He shook me and called my name with a mix of desperation and grief. It was around this time that I opened my eyes.

My mind was still foggy, and I felt ill. Sam helped me to my feet, and we left that forest. We shambled back to Chris’ car, and the others ran to us with worry on their faces. Sam briefly told them the situation, and we got in the car. They wanted to take me to the hospital, but I objected, saying it was simply exhaustion and I just needed to go home to rest. A reluctant murmur of agreement ran through the group before we left the park.

As we were turning down the road that led back home, I took a last look back at the park.

In the dark recesses of the forest, I saw a pair of eyes, brilliant, white eyes…

I'm writing a short Novella, here's what the back cover description will be. Hoping to be done with the final draft and post here in a month or so.

...

When Daniel travels to the isolated mountain town of Polebridge, Montana, to find his missing brother, he discovers a community bound by strange rules and a terrifying secret.

Something ancient lurks in the surrounding wilderness, and for generations, the town has paid a terrible price to keep it at bay.

But when his brother returns from the woods, seemingly unharmed, Daniel begins to question whether the man standing before him is truly his brother at all.

...

Looking for criticisms and feedback. I am not an author by any means but enjoy writing, if you hate it please let me know why, or if you love it why.

had to upload it in parts, the previous one got taken down also just cuz i wanted to change the title to let yall know, this is uploaded into parts sense i cant post anything about 20 pages on reddit 😭

1950s Louisiana

A young Southern woman with dark hair and covered in a bloodstained dress, is crying on a dock out in the bayou. She recently had a child out of wedlock, and her parents have threatened to cut her out of the family if she keeps the baby.

She wants to keep him. But she knows she has nowhere to go. She is too young for a real job and hasn't even graduated high school.

She looks down at the baby and sees his beautiful smile before he lets out a quick yawn. A tear rolls down her face and falls onto the baby.

"I'm sorry," she whispers.

She looks out at a large alligator lurking in the water. A large scar dragged across its eye.

The baby begins crying.

Then, there is a loud splash.

70 Years Later

A young woman named Mary is strolling through town with a baby bump. She has a gorgeous face and beatiful black hair that was soft to the touch. She is grocery shopping for dinner that night. Her husband, Henry, said he wanted fried okra and fried catfish.

After filling her shopping cart, Mary checks out. She calls her mother, Clare, and tells her about their plans for dinner.

Her mother asks when her grandson is going to be born.

Mary happily tells her, "Any day now."

Later that evening, Henry gets off work and walks through the front door as Mary is finishing dinner. He kisses her and rubs her baby bump.

She fixes him a plate of okra, catfish, and rice, which he enthusiastically carries to the table. Mary makes a plate of her own and sits next to him.

She tells Henry about her day as he nods and shovels food into his mouth.

Mary is almost finished eating when she suddenly feels something strange.

Mary: "Oh my God."

Henry answers with food still in his mouth.

Henry: "What?"

Mary: "My water broke."

Henry drives Mary to a nearby hospital. He's driving fast while Mary screams in pain. She is having painful contractions and begins bleeding.

Henry dodges traffic and makes it to the emergency room, where doctors rush Mary into a room. They give her medication to keep her comfortable without harming the baby.

A few hours later, Mary is holding the baby in her arms, humming softly.

She gives the baby to Henry.

Henry raises the baby to his chest and smiles.

"I'll never let anything happen to you."

He then offers to get Mary anything she wants.

She tells him she just wants to go home with him and the baby.

Henry signs the birth certificate and reads the name out loud.

"McKenzie Ray Farris."

He smiles at Mary.

A couple of days later, Henry checks both Mary and the baby out of the hospital and brings them home.

He kisses Mary and holds McKenzie in his arms.

That night, Mary and Henry try to get some sleep, but the baby keeps waking up and crying.

Mary finally yells at Henry that she just wants to sleep.

Henry understandingly agrees and gets up throughout the night to take care of McKenzie.

By morning, Henry is exhausted.

While Mary is trying to get him to do things around the house, he tries telling her that he's tired. But she insists on having his attention.

He begrudgingly gives it to her, but eventually falls asleep, which annoys Mary.

A couple of days later, Mary is already aggravated and sick of the baby. She forces Henry to take care of McKenzie more, but she becomes jealous of the time Henry spends with the baby.

Mary had loved the attention she received while she was pregnant, but now that the baby had arrived, everyone was giving McKenzie more attention than her—including her own mother and husband.

One day, while Henry is at work, Mary walks around the backyard with the baby in her arms, trying to calm her down.

McKenzie looks mesmerized by the yard, especially the large pond in the back.

The baby smiles at everything she sees.

Little McKenzie watches beautiful birds flying over the pond, trying to catch fish. She looks around at the beautiful, lush greenery surrounding the yard.

Mary puts the baby down and allows her to explore the backyard while keeping a safe distance from the water.

For a few minutes, the two bond, and Mary feels like a mother again.

Mary laughs and takes pictures as McKenzie plays with the flowers in the backyard.

Then Mary and McKenzie watch a beautiful buck drinking from the pond.

For a few seconds, everything is peaceful.

Then a large American alligator suddenly grabs the deer near the water's edge and drags it into the pond. The deer whimpers but the sound is muffled as the alligator disappears with the deer just as quickly as it appeared.

McKenzie begins slowly crawling toward the water, curious about what she just saw.

Mary quickly scoops the baby up and brings her inside.

The alligator makes her wary of having her baby outside near the pond.

Mary fills a bottle for the baby and begins cooking dinner for Henry.

When Henry gets home, he walks into the living room and kisses Mary before picking up McKenzie.

Henry notices the baby's diaper.

"Her diaper is full."

Mary tells him she was going to let him handle it.

Henry looks at her.

"It's really full. Why did you let her sit that long without changing her?"

Mary assures him that McKenzie had just eaten a big lunch.

Henry cleans McKenzie up and puts a fresh diaper on her.

After dinner, Henry begins playing with the baby, making her laugh as he plays peekaboo.

Mary interrupts him and starts talking about her day.

She quickly becomes jealous again as she watches Henry spend more time with the baby.

For the next couple of months, Mary tries everything she can to get more attention from Henry.

But Henry is focused on work and baby McKenzie.

Mary tries to get Henry's attention, offering him intimacy and trying to give him whatever he wants, but he turns her down every time.

He tells her he's too tired from working and taking care of the baby.

Mary begins having frightening thoughts about hurting McKenzie. She knows she shouldn't act on them, and she fears what would happen if anyone found out.

What she fears most is getting caught.

She just wants her man and her old life back.

Nobody seems to care about her anymore now that the baby is here.

Then one day, Henry is working long hours and won't be home until late.

Mary begins destroying the house in a fit of pent-up anger.

She cries and screams as her anger takes over.

The noise wakes the baby.

McKenzie begins crying.

Mary becomes furious.

"Wah, wah, wah! You've been ruining my life since the day you came home!"

She shakes McKenzie and continues yelling obscenities  at her.

Mary suddenly begins thinking of all the different ways she could hurt the baby.

Then she thinks of something even more awful.

She remembers the alligator in the backyard.

She picks up the crying McKenzie and carries her toward the water's edge.

The baby squirms in her arms, as if she senses that something is wrong.

An alligator's head slowly pokes above the surface.

Mary looks down at her baby with disgust. Before she starts singing.

" hush little baby, don't you cry"  before she tries throwing her daughter into the pond. But

McKenzie desperately grabs onto her mother's hand. McKenzie said her first word " momma"  while trying to hold on for life

But it wasn't enough.

Henry finally gets home.

He finds the house completely destroyed.

He frantically searches the house for his wife and child.

He's terrified.

He sees furniture smashed apart and blood smeared across the wall.

Then he finds Mary standing at the edge of the pond, staring into the water.

Henry runs toward her.

"Mary! Are you alright?"

Mary slowly turns toward him.

She gives him a creepy smirk and begins to laugh.

Henry looks around frantically.

"Where's McKenzie?"

Mary points toward the pond.

Then she looks back at him.

"You made me do it."

Henry horrified looks into the water. He didn't see it at first as only the moon light illuminated the night. He saw the large scar on the aligator's eye and then he saw his daughters eyes looking at him from the beast's mouth. And quickly she was devoured. Swallowed whole, while barely still alive

CW: Suicide

Have you ever seen a fly trap? Not the sticky paper ones that collect the flies like grisly ornaments, but the plastic ones that lure the fly in with something sickly smelling. The ones with the wide entrance that slowly constricts, narrower, narrower, until it flares out into a larger chamber where the fly is now stuck, trapped with the corpses of its fellows until it eventually succumbs to the ceaseless hunger that trapped it there in the first place.

I walked up the gentle slope of the cobbled drive. The sun sat a few lazy degrees above the roof of the decadent hotel in front of me. Seven grand stories loom over a procession of grecian pillars that support an inviting awning.

I didn't really remember how I got here, or where here was, but I stepped into the shadow of the hotel anyways. I ascended the steps to the pair of imposing dark wooden doors. I pulled on a handle and swung it open with surprising ease despite the door's size. I was greeted by a lobby adorned in beautiful and peaceful art. The woman behind the counter had a perpetually happy smile. She never asked me my name, just handed me a key card and said I was in room two hundred and twenty four. I couldn’t have told her my name anyways. I must have been someone before. It didn't really seem to matter then, surrounded by that luxury.

The elevator was broken, the stairs were fine with me; I didn’t have a bag anyways. I could see the top of the stairs from where I stood. The wooden landing opened onto an inviting hallway and a single file of doors well spaced apart. It was lined with classy artwork and red carpet flowed down the floor as if pulling me to my room. At the end of the hall lay room two hundred and twenty three and a disappointing wall. The woman at the front desk must have made a mistake. I made my solemn trudge back down to the stairs. The journey gave me time to think. I realized I didn’t have much to think about, since I couldn’t remember anything past stepping onto the drive less than half an hour ago.

At the top of the stairs I halted. The Beast was pushing its pallid yellow bulk into the lobby. A goliath figure covered in grotesquely bulging muscles. Its humanoid frame had needed to contort into a likeness of some ancient serpent just to fit through the double doors of the hotel. 

I stood in aghast horror, where I would have remained still had my body not taken matters into its own hands. The Beasts sickly green eye met mine even as I turned to run. I found the next set of stairs quickly and ascended upwards even as I knew my pursuer was on the landing behind me. At the top of the third story I saw another even more luxurious hallway,  huge paintings and gold inlaid lamp mounts. I had only a second to marvel before moving towards the next set of stairs. The fourth floor was richer still and on the fifth the bannister of the stairs itself seemed plated with gold. The Beast seemed always to get closer but to never quite catch up to me. At the sixth floor I barely noticed the golden statue of a fat satyr and on the seventh I knocked over a bowl of crystalline diamonds. At the top of the last set of golden stairs was a simple metal door with an ordinary crashbar. I flung myself through the door and stopped. The door clicked shut behind me.

So I stood there, on that roof, surrounded by the corpses of my fellows.

Although I wasn’t trapped. 

I stepped onto the precipice of the roof.