“Is it safe?”

“It’s safe…ish,” Brad said, trying (and failing) to stop himself from laughing. My subsequent frown finally granted him the ability to call off his chuckles. “Would I put you in any real danger, Bella?”

“Well, there was the white-water rafting disaster, exploring the creepy closed mall, the lion encounter….”

“Okay, okay, sure. Those weren’t great,” he said, cutting me off. “But this is different, babe. It’s just camping.”

“In the wilderness. Alone. Away from help if anything bad happens.”

“Wrong mindset,” he said, tapping his temple. “We’ve talked about that.”

I rolled my eyes so hard they would’ve picked up a 7-10 split. “Save me the growth mindset lecture, please.”

He nodded. “You’re right. Sorry. We’ve talked about that. This is a reset trip - no old baggage.”

This was a reset trip…and a much needed one. We’d been dating for just over a year, but what had started as smooth sailing had suddenly run aground on the rocky shoals of disagreement. No single leviathan-level fight brought us here, but a series of smaller, nagging arguments sent our ship to the wrong coordinates. Still, we cared for each other immensely, and neither wanted this relationship to wreck.

I mean, have you been on the apps recently? Yeesh.

“Why do we need to be out in the wilderness when there is a perfectly safe and remote campsite down the road?”

“But that’s not pioneer camping, babe. That’s glamping.”

“We’re not pioneers. I have no desire to worry about rattlesnakes or eating hardtack.”

“Pretty sure pioneers more likely ate beans. I think hardtack was reserved for sailors,” he said with a grin.

I gave him a stare that would’ve melted cobalt before breaking kayfabe and holding up my fist and shaking it. “Would you rather eat a knuckle sandwich?”

“I’m full thanks,” he said, kissing my knuckles. “All I ask is that you go into all of this with an open mind. We’re gonna be reconnecting with the Earth. One with nature and all that. Not to mention, zero light pollution for the meteor shower tonight. Think of how many stars we’re gonna see!”

“That’s true,” I admitted…against my own better judgment.

“Plus, we get to free ourselves from all the modern bullshit - no phones, no electricity, no drama.”

“No way of reaching out for help if predators attack,” I said, hoisting my camping backpack out of the Jeep. “Aren’t there bears and cougars out here?”

Brad put on his backpack and clicked the front strap across his chest. “Yes, but we’ll have Rudy with us. He’s an avid outdoors man.” Rudy was Brad’s high school friend who was set to join us for this trip. They’d been close in school but drifted over the years. They’d recently reconnected and picked up where they left off. Truthfully, it’s bolstered his mood. Brad’s more happy, which makes me happy.

I was ambivalent about Rudy, bordering on hostile, but Brad kept assuring me I just didn’t know him well enough. There was something about him that rubbed me the wrong way. We had two different vibes and it was odd how Brad could vacillate between them. Still, I loved Brad and was willing to give ‘not hating Rudy’ the ol’ college try. It was my hope that Rudy would meet me halfway, though.

Truthfully, Rudy wasn’t going to come with us at first, but then Brad told him the plans, and he insisted. He’s supposed to bring some girl we’ve never met with him, which kinda undercuts the rekindling trip, but it wasn’t worth the fight. “Plus, he knows how to handle bears and cougars.”

“Yes, he never shuts up about his dating conquests,” I deadpanned. Rudy being on the apps told me just how hellish being single was right now. I had no desire to find out firsthand.

“He talks a lot, is all.”

“Taking Rudy out of it,” I said, “you know what I mean, Brad. Those animals could kill us.”

Brad rubbed my shoulders and stared deeply into my eyes. “I promise we’ll be okay. Would I put us in a deadly situation?”

“Do I need to bring up the hang-gliding affair?”

“Okay, maybe in the past I was a bit extreme. But this is the reset. I’m resetting, too.”

I stared back at him, wanting to believe him. We’d been through so much already, but a nagging feeling about this trip wouldn’t stop bothering me. It was probably a mixture of nerves.

“I bet the campsite down the road has some available sites. I could book one just in case it goes sideways,” I said, trying to steer us into friendly waters. “It wouldn’t be a perfect one-to-one, but we’d still be out in nature like our ancestors; only it’d be coupled with the ability to take showers and not get lost in the hundred-acre woods.”

“We won’t get lost. Rudy is an expert tracker.”

“What does that mean?!” I said, throwing my hands up. “How did he become a tracker? He’s lived in the suburbs his whole life.”

“He comes from a family of trackers.”

“His dad is an accountant.”

“And a tracker,” he said, sighing. “If you want to bail, that’s fine. But I thought this was a chance to….”

“No, no,” I said. “I trust you.” And I did. Brad is a lot of things, but he loves me. He wants to live life at 200%. That passion is something I love about him. His wanting to include me is such a green flag, but sometimes he forgets I’m not as “peppery” as he is. An evening on the couch in pajamas is good too. We don’t need to make every date a low-rent action movie.

A rusted red pickup Henry Ford would’ve thought was old pulled up behind us. It was blasting some random nu-metal song so loud I worried the remaining rivets holding this ramshackle jalopy together would come loose. Rudy had arrived. Alone. I sighed, but hid it from Brad. At least I wouldn’t have to make small talk with whatever floozy Rudy had convinced to join him.

The engine shut off, and the entire truck shuddered. Rudy kicked open the door and howled like a wolf. Brad started howling too. I kept my lupine calls to myself as the boys slapped hands and welcomed one another.

“Where’s your girl?”

“Bro, we got into it last night. She dipped this morning. Can’t trust anyone, man,” he said, shaking his head. “She was a freak, too. Pour one out for mind-melting ‘gasms.”

He mimed pouring a beer out and started laughing. Brad followed suit. I gave them a warm smile and debated my decision to go forward with this trip. “Sounds like a charmer, Rudy.”

“Eh, she was okay. Shit happens, ya know,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders. “Didn’t want to cancel on your fine folks last minute, so I’m here. We ready to do the damn thing??”

They both howled again, and I was suddenly glad we weren’t at the campsite surrounded by people. Rudy reached into his truck bed and pulled out his backpack. It was smaller than ours. I nodded at it. “Packing light?”

“Everything I need is in this bag,” he said, clicking the strap across his chest. “I do have a sixer of Bud heavies for tonight. Just gotta find a stream to cool them in.”

Brad sensed I had more to say, so he cut me off. “We should head out. We wanna give ourselves enough time to set up camp.”

“Roger that. Come on, there’s a secret trailhead we have to take that leads to the open forest. From there, we’re in God’s hands, baby!”

Rudy took a beer off the plastic and cracked it open and took a drink. He passed it to Brad, who gulped down the warm brew. He offered it to me, but I passed. Brad shrugged, handed it back to Rudy.

“More for me,” he said. He drained the can in one long gulp. Afterwards, he screamed, burped, and flattened the can with his boot. He tossed the puck into his truck bed and headed for the hidden trail.

I glanced at Brad and raised an eyebrow. “Expert tracker.”

Brad rubbed my shoulders and kissed my forehead. “I promise we’ll be safe.”

We left our cars tucked away on the side of the road near the wash. The trail was no wider than a rat tail overgrown with bushes, but we tromped through, crushing plants as we hiked into the forest.

After hours of hiking, my whole body ached. We’d arrived at the trailhead around noon, and the sun was beginning its descent as we stopped in the middle of nowhere. A nearby stream fed into a small pond. Skyscraper pines ringed the shore, providing a shady spot along the glittering beach. Bushes and overgrown tufts of tall grass wavered in the breeze. A stone’s throw away, a rocky outcropping jutted into the sky just above the trees. The perfect place to see the meteor shower later.

“Wow,” I said and meant it.

“Told you the hike was worth it,” Brad said. “Breathe in Mother Nature, Bella!”

I took a deep breath, and it was calming. “Smells like Pine-Sol.”

“Because it’s cleaning out our filthy city lungs,” Brad said. I rolled my eyes. “What, not funny?”

“It was cute.”

“You didn’t laugh.”

“I don’t have to laugh to find something amusing.”

Rudy dropped the remaining two beer cans into the stream to cool and nodded at the rocks. “When it gets dark, we can shimmy up there and get a full view of the night sky. Gonna be glorious.”

“You think it’s smart to climb up the rocks at night?”

“It’s just a little jaunt. Shouldn’t be too hard even in the dark. If anything happens, though, I have a first-aid kit in my bag. I’ll take care of you. We’d be okay until morning.”

“That view is going to be amazing,” Brad said.

“I’ll set up a fire pit if you two will clear a spot for the tents,” Rudy said, pulling a collapsible shovel from his bag. “There are some decent rocks out on the beach that I can use to ring the pit. Sound good?”

It was. We went about our tasks. I begrudgingly had to hand it to Rudy. Outside of drinking warm Budweisers, he was better at this than I’d assumed. When he pulled out the shovel and I nodded in approval, Brad lightly elbowed me in the ribs. As soon as his buddy was out of earshot, he grinned. “Told you he knows what he’s doing.”

“He’s been a pleasant surprise,” I admitted.

“He’s a good dude.”

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

“He’s rough around the edges, but don’t judge a book by its cover, huh?”

“Okay, okay, cut me some slack,” I said with a smirk. “I saw your face when he ripped open that second can of beer. You were a little nervous, too.”

He laughed. “I trust my tracker.”

“If he’s anything like his dad, he’ll have a thriving career as an accountant.”

We started clearing a space. Brad and I brought a small two-person tent that left little room for anything except our bodies and dreams. Rudy said not to bother setting up his tent because he was going to make it from a tarp and some paracord he'd brought with him. I didn’t argue. I came out here to clear my head, not to solve some camping conundrum.

We had just finagled the poles through the nylon fabric of our micro-tent when Rudy started screaming from the beach. Brad dropped the pole and ran toward the yelling before I’d even processed what was happening. Not wanting to be left alone for something to munch on my bones, I joined him.

When I broke through the woods, I found Rudy at the water’s edge pointing at the ground and jumping in place. Brad’s eyes were wide, and he knelt in the shimmering sand, placing his hand near whatever they were looking at. Rudy waved me over.

When I got there, I understood all the hubbub. A footprint lay in the sand, unlike anything I’d ever seen. The foot was about five inches long and, at most, four inches across. Three equal sized toes were dotted with small impressions in the sand. The tip of a claw.

“What the hell is this?” I asked, nervously laughing.

“I dunno,” Brad said, his voice dreamy. “Weird, huh?”

“Not exactly what I wanted to hear.”

“I’ve never seen anything like this in all the years I’ve been tracking,” Rudy added.

Not helping with my discomfort about the trip, I thought. I had several other, more profanity-laden responses in my mind, but I settled on, “Maybe we should head back?”

Rudy laughed. “We’d never make it before it got dark. If you thought the hike in was intense, that’d be damn near impossible. Every predator out here has adapted to see in the dark. You’d be a walking turkey leg to these things.”

“What should we do?” Brad asked.

“Set up two fires and take shifts staying up tonight. Someone to feed the fire and keep an eye on the campsite,” he said. “The light and smoke will most likely keep these things at bay.”

Wonderful, I thought. Now I get the privilege of manning the crow’s nest in stormy waters…just what I wanted to do on this trip.

“Copy that,” Brad said, agreeing to the plan without even a glance my way. “What do you think these things are?”

Rudy shrugged. “Beats me, but they’ll stay away if the fires are burnin’. Every living thing fears fire. It’s ingrained in their brains,” he said, extending his arms like Frankenstein. “Fire hot. Fire burn.”

Brad stood back up. “I think we’ll be okay. We’ve got bear mace if anything bad happens.”

Still, the print itself was concerning. “Could it be a bird?”

“Maybe,” Rudy said. “It’d be a big one, but they do have big birds up here.”

“Shaggy elephants, too,” Brad said, smiling. “I hear they work together.”

Rudy cackled and slapped Brad on the back. I was just confused. “What?”

“Sesame Street,” Brad said. “Big Bird…Snuffy….”

“Ah,” I said.

“Seriously though, I didn’t find any other impressions. Wouldn’t be surprised if it was nothing more than a bird landing here to drink. The water may have washed away the other prints. I’m not worried, though. I think we’re safe.”

“Unless the Count is hiding with a bunch of bats nearby,” I said, “then we’ve gotta worry about vampires.”

The joke landed with a deafening thud. I was surprised it didn’t make an imprint in the sand. Rudy shook his head. “Let’s finish setting up and get a fire going before it gets too dark.”

He left to gather more rocks for the fire ring. I glanced at Brad, who shrugged. “I was just trying to join in.”

Brad patted my back. “I thought it was funny.”

“Why didn’t you laugh?”

“I don’t have to laugh to find something amusing,” he said, mocking me.

I rolled my eyes. “Let’s go finish getting the tent up.”

We did just that. Rudy had gathered the stones for the two fire rings, dug the holes, gathered the sticks, and started the the blaze. Brad and I tended the fires as Rudy constructed his lean-to tarp tent. It took him a minute, and at every turn I doubted it would work, but by the time he finished, it was sturdy.

“Looks good,” I said, nodding at the tent.

“Thanks. My dad showed me how to build it. He’s as soft as shit paper now, but the man has earned his Charmin status. He was a bear in his youth. Once took down a charging twelve-point buck with a single arrow shot to the dome. Thing would’ve gored him.”

“Damn. I thought you weren’t supposed to try headshots with a bow.”

“You’re not. But Dad is Dad. Dude has ice in his veins. Didn’t flinch. I inherited that shit.” He flexed and preened to underline his pride.

“Do you still hunt?” I asked.

He stood, fished the remaining beers from the river, and tossed one to Brad. “I do, but it’s been a minute since I did. Lately, the only thing I’ve been hunting for is a good time with someone special.”

“It’s hard out there,” I said, reaching for Brad’s hand and squeezing it. He squeezed back. “I don’t envy you.”

Brad pulled his hand back and opened his beer can. “Bow or gun?” he asked, taking a big swig.

“Dating world? Neither. Boys and girls get weirded out when you talk about your stockpile. But hunting animals, though, I’ll use both,” he said, cracking the beer. “Bow is more sporting, though. I like to keep the playing field level, ya know?”

“I couldn’t kill a deer,” I said. “They look so innocent.”

“But they breed like rabbits and are dumb as duck shit. Ask anyone that lives near a bunch of them, and they’ll tell you they’re a menace.”

“My uncle upstate hates them,” Brad said. “They’re constantly eating his garden.”

“Sometimes, you gotta thin the herd, you know what I mean?” Rudy asked, mimicking shooting a rifle. “Ain’t pretty, but sometimes has to be done.”

Wanting to pivot away from killing things, I glanced up through the gaps in the pines. The stars were already twinkling. No showers yet, but it was still early. “Man, it really gets pitch-black out here, huh? I get why people are afraid of the dark.”

“You should be,” Rudy said. “Everyone should be. Especially around here.”

“Rudy,” Brad said, pleading.

“What does that mean?”

Rudy took a sip of his beer. “Nah, I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“You can’t do that,” I joked. Well, a joking tone, anyway. I was as far from joking as possible.

“I can do whatever I want, Bella. That’s what being out in the wilderness is all about - freedom.”

“Rudy, don’t be a tease,” Brad said.

“Never been accused of being a tease,” he said, smirking. He drained the rest of his can, smashed it under his boot, and burped. “But I’ll indulge. If you wanna hear, that is.”

“I do,” I insisted.

“Okay, but don’t go blaming me if you get spooked. We’re stuck here for at least tonight.”

“I’ll be fine,” I said, doubting the words as they escaped my mouth. I didn’t want to let on that I was a little spooked.

“This area wasn’t always uninhabited. Long time ago, like, in covered-wagon, pioneer times, a bunch of settlers arrived from back East. Thought they’d start a town away from the Injuns or whatever.”

“Lovely.”

“Hell, makes sense,” Rudy said. “There’s plenty of fresh water, shade, a lot of timber. They cobbled together some small homes. Rumor has it the ruins are somewhere near here, but nature clawed them back.”

He reached into his bag and pulled out a weed vape. He took a long pull and blew out a massive cloud that mingled with the fire smoke until the two became one.

I was stunned. “Are you going to be good for your shift on guard tonight?”

“Oh fuck, did we agree to do that?”

“Bro,” Brad said. “It was your idea!”

“I’ll be good. This is sativa, anyway. It’ll keep me focused. You want some?” he said, offering the vape to Brad. He reached for it, but I cleared my throat. He dropped his hand.

“I’d rather not be the only sober one in wildcat country.”

“Maybe next time.”

Rudy shrugged and took another pull. “Anyway, the pioneers started hearing shit at night, ya know? Just outside their campfires. Things moving in the shadows. Watching. Waiting. Assumed it was a bear, but bears don’t stalk like that. Them bitches are so big, they just intrude, ya’know what I mean?” He started laughing.

The breeze picked up, and the trees shifted. Its roar reminded me of ocean waves crashing along a beach. Pine needles rained on us. A pair spiraled down until it landed standing straight up in Brad’s hair. I let out a small laugh, reached over and plucked it out. He smiled and kissed my cheek. It gave me a charge. Reminded me of why we were together.

Maybe our voyage was salvageable?

Rudy looked up and slowed his laughter. After he caught his breath, he continued. “But one by one, some people started going missing. First was a little girl named Joyce….”

“A pioneer woman named Joyce?” I said.

“I dunno the names, just the legend. It was probably something like Isabella, but I didn’t want to spook you out of respect to Brad. So, like I was saying, the little girl went missing. Happened in broad daylight. Mama said she was on the side of the house one minute; next, she was gone. No noise. No struggle. Nothing but a set of tiny footprints. Like baby footprints.” He paused and shook his head. “You sure you wanna hear this?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I warned you,” he said, taking a breath. “They found the girl’s body later hanging from a tree. She’d been gutted and field dressed. Odd thing was, not a drop of blood anywhere. The rest of the kids followed. One by one, they were taken, killed, and left hanging in the trees. Only thing they found were little, teeny, tiny baby footprints on the ground.”

“This is bullshit,” I said.

“No,” Brad piped in. “I’ve heard about this. It’s not…not the Bone Tree Massacre, is it?”

Rudy smiled. “Yes, sir.”

“You’re lying,” I said, my whole body tensing.

“I swear I’m not,” Rudy said.

Brad’s face was ashen as if he’d seen a ghost. “Dude, why didn’t you tell me?”

Rudy shrugged. “I know how delicate you can be. Besides, I told you it was safe.”

I went blind with rage. I scrunched my toes and balled my fingers into a fist. Why the fuck would Brad take this goof’s advice on anything other than which flavor of dip to try? Still, I kept it inside. “What were the footprints?”

“They didn’t know, but the townspeople kept their kids close. A boy named Joshua wandered off from his mother when she went to gather water. He started screaming, and she ran into the tall grass to find him. Three little snarling monsters about a foot tall had fishhooks in her son’s back and were dragging him away. She stomped on one, kicked another, and the third ran away. She grabbed her son and ran back to the camp.”

“God, how horrible,” I said. “What happened?”

“The men found any weapon available and went to the tall grass. They burned it down and waited for these things to come running out. Legend said they chased and killed a hundred of these things. Called them imps from hell. The townspeople gathered their bodies and drove stakes through the remains at the edge of the settlement as a message.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“What happened to the settlement?”

Rudy took another pull from his vape. “That night, the townspeople celebrated, thinking they had stopped these things. Better future ahead and all that shit. But as they slept, more of these things came out of the woodwork. They snuck into their homes and slaughtered the pioneers. Vicious shit - I’ve seen woodcuttings about it.”

“Were there survivors?”

“Just the young boy who’d nearly been taken earlier. He stumbled through the woods until he ran into a local farmer. The dude gathered a posse, and they went to where the boy told him he’d come from. They found the houses, but couldn’t find the people,” he paused and shook his head. “Until they looked up into the trees. All of their bodies, split wide open, drained of blood and organs, hanging from the branches. Loose skin flapping in the breeze like Old Glory.”

“Where did the blood and organs go?”

He shrugged. “Those creatures probably ate and drank it.”

“What did they look like? The imps,” I asked.

“She told the men that…oh, fuck…man, I forgot this part until now. She said they had clawed feet with three toes.”

“Dude,” Brad said.

“Wait, what?”

Rudy ran his hand through his sweat-slicked mullet and collected his thoughts. He should have spent a few more seconds searching, because he blurted out, “For the record, that was a bird foot on the beach.”

“You said you’d never seen anything like that before!” I said, my voice rising despite my attempts to play it cool.

“To be honest, I'm pretty sure I have. Those hiking beers got on me more than I let on. I’m about eighty percent sure it was a bird track.”

“Eighty percent?! I thought you were an expert tracker?”

Brad reached over and put a hand on my shoulder to calm me down. I shook his grip loose and stared at him. If I had laser eyes, there’d be a hole clean through his hypothalamus. His brain meat must’ve started warming, because he kept his hand off me.

“Everyone makes mistakes,” Rudy said. “But don’t worry, it’s a bird. The real threat is bears this time of year, anyway.”

“Are you a hundred percent sure or eighty?”

Rudy started to respond when a flutter of movement stirred the surrounding bushes. My already churning adrenaline made me jump up. My body trembled. Brad and Rudy remained seated, unfazed by the rustling nearby.

“What the fuck is that?” I whispered.

“Probably nothing, but I’ll go look,” Rudy said. “I gotta piss anyway.”

He pried himself off the stump and disappeared into the dark. Brad turned to me, but his face was unreadable. It was a cross between concern and….

“Holy hell!” Rudy yelled before letting out a blood-curdling scream.

“Rudy?” Brad yelled back, jumping to his feet. He was about to rush out into the bushes when something came running towards us.

It was Rudy. Totally fine and doubled over in laughter. I glanced over at Brad, and he smirked. My brain went fuzzy. The trembling in my body shifted from fear to anger.

“Ooh, boy, did we get you good!” Rudy said between laughs. “I didn’t think you’d go along with it, Bella! You’re usually pretty savvy, but man am I good at yarn spinnin’!”

“What. The. Fuck?!”

“That was just a squirrel out there. Little fella has perfect timin’ though.”

“It was a joke,” Brad said, softening his tone. “To lighten the mood.”

“A joke?” I spat. “Are you fucking serious?”

“It’s camping, Bella,” Rudy said, catching his breath. “Ghost stories are part of the fun.”

“Do I look like I’m having fun, Rudy? I don’t even know why the fuck you’re here! This was supposed to be a weekend for Brad and me!”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Relax, girl. I didn’t think you’d get this mad,” Rudy said, flattening his tone. “It was just a joke.”

“Maybe it went a little too far,” Brad offered.

“Ya think?!”

Brad reached over, but I shifted away. The idea of his fingers on me made me sick to my stomach. It took every ounce of willpower not to sock him in the eye.

“Okay, okay,” he said. “I’m sorry. Rudy, apologize.”

“I don’t want either of your fuckin’ apologies! I want you to leave me the fuck alone.”

Rudy raised his hands and backpedaled to his stump and sat. He took another hit on his vape, and I prayed he’d choke on the smoke. He tossed another piece of wood on the fire and pretended not to watch Brad and me.

Brad stepped closer, and I backed away. I wished I had fur that’d stand on end or a shaking rattle to warn him off. He took another step, and I did the same, keeping our distance. He stopped and sighed. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“Well, you fucking failed in that regard!” I said, tears forming in my eyes. “What would even possess you to do anything like that? You knew how I felt, and you just went along with it, anyway? Did you want to hurt me?”

“Babe, no. I swear. I didn’t know he was going to tie it into the footprint from earlier….”

“Again, pretty sure that was just a bird print,” Rudy yelled.

I turned back to Brad, rage burning in my eyes. “If he says another word to me, they’re gonna find him gutted and hanging from a fucking tree.”

“Okay, I get that. I’ll talk to him.”

“He’s the only one you’ll be talking to because I’m fucking done. This trip was a mistake.”

“Don’t say that.” He tried to rub my arm, but I pulled it back.

“No. You can go sleep under his shitty tarp because if you come inside that tent with me, I’m going to unleash hell on you.” I turned to head to the tent. “You two can stay up on watch together and fuck off as far as I’m concerned. I’m going to bed.”

“Babe,” he started.

“Don’t babe me. We’re beyond that.”

“You’re gonna miss the meteor shower? Because of a bad joke? Why don’t you take ten minutes and collect yourself and….”

“Why don’t you take ten minutes and jump in that goddamn lake.”

“More of a pond,” Rudy offered. Brad turned to him and threw his arms up.

“Fuck you, Rudy.”

I stormed over to the tent, unzipped it, and hopped inside. Seconds later, Brad’s bag came flying out. There’s no cool, dramatic way of slamming a tent flap, so I zipped hard and got it stuck in the fabric. I tried to free it, but it wasn’t worth the hassle. I was vibrating with rage, and my hands weren’t cooperating. I left it alone.

Brad stood there for a moment before dejectedly walking back to the fire. As soon as he was out of earshot, I put my head in my hands and cried silently. What a fucking nightmare this had been. Jesus, I thought Brad was different. We had our rough patches, but I never doubted his affection for me. But he knew I was afraid of taking this trip. For him to pull something this hurtful with a person I barely tolerated on our ‘restart’? Inexcusable.

I should’ve never come.

Worse, I was fucking stuck here. I couldn’t leave if I wanted to… not without risking running into a bear. Rudy was a dick, but he’d proven himself to be knowledgeable about this area. I didn’t want to become a walking turkey leg. I’d have to wait until morning and hike for hours in silence with these two ass hats before I could escape into the single life.

They had started talking and passing the vape back and forth. So much for staying alert and sober on watch. They spoke softly, so I could only catch snatches of the conversation.

“She’ll be better in the mornin’, man. You know how women can be,” Rudy said. It floated to me on the breeze. I pictured kicking him in the balls so hard they’d roll out of his shorts, and it made me smile.

“I dunno,” Brad said. “Why did you have to bring up the footprints, man?”

“Shits and giggles,” he said, taking a puff. “She’s a wet blanket, bro. Campin’ is supposed to be a hoot. ”

“Well, tomorrow’s plans are ruined,” Brad said. “I don’t imagine she’s gonna be game for anything fun.”

Anything fun? I wasn’t sure what these jokers had planned for tomorrow, but I didn’t want to find out. Brad was right that those plans were ruined. The thought of hanging out with these two made me physically sick.

My body ached. A brutal tension headache rippled through my sinuses and temples. With the weight of the evening’s events, the night's pure darkness, and adrenaline draining out of my body, my eyelids grew heavy. If I slept, at least then I’d be a few hours closer to this whole fucking ordeal being over.

Now that my hands were steady, I went back to the tent flap and unstuck the zipper from the fabric, sealing me in. I curled into a ball and closed my eyes. Eventually, even with their murmurs, I drifted off to sleep. Maybe if I were lucky, those imps would make quick work of them.

Something hard dragging against the tent woke me up later.

At first, my sleep-addled brain thought I was still dreaming, but when my half-open eyes caught a hand pushing against the fabric near my face, I snapped awake. I shuffled back, swore, and searched for anything to defend myself.

My whispered curses must’ve been louder than I’d intended, because guttural chirping answered my voice. I stayed quiet, but somewhere out in the bushes, something else answered the chirps. More responses came from the opposite direction, and it became clear that, whatever these things were, they had surrounded the tent.

Fear made me consider the impossible: were these the imps? But that made no sense. Rudy had made it up. Had he based his stupid fucking story on a real legend?

I grabbed the zipper and slowly pulled it down tooth by tooth. The small noises were sonic booms in the dark. Once there was a hole just large enough to peer through, I glanced over to where the campfires should be roaring. Instead, only a faint trail of smoke rose from dying embers. Both fires had gone cold. Worse, Rudy and Brad were gone.

“Fuck,” I mumbled.

Maybe this was another prank. Brad had driven our boat into the rocky shoals, shattering the prow. All was lost. Maybe he wanted to rub it in my face? Nails slowly dragged against the nylon behind me. Several hands pushed against the tent, their little fingers feeling for flesh and a way in.

This wasn’t a prank. This was legitimate. I had to get out of here and find those two, or else I’d end up in a tree with my blood and guts missing.

The boat was taking on water. It was time to go overboard.

I quietly slid on my shoes, tied my hair back into a ponytail, and gripped the zipper hard between my fingers. I counted down from three and ripped it down quickly. In my panic, though, the tent fabric caught again, and my exit hole was barely big enough to squeeze through.

The zipper had roused the imps, and they started to chatter more. Grumbles, squeaks, and grunts. More aggressive. More angry. A free meal was on the other side of the nylon, and more of them pressed against the tent. Looking for the elusive rear entry.

One of them found it.

A sharp object poked a small hole in the nylon. I glanced back just as a beady red eyeball pressed against the opening. Once the monster confirmed I was in there, two small hands replaced the eye, and they started tearing the hole wider.

That was my cue to leave. I pushed through the opening and got my shoulders through, but my hips got stuck, and I fell flat on the ground. My arms gave out, and my nose hit the dirt with a crunch. Blood gushed from my nostrils. The coppery tang sent the little guys into a frenzy.

One of them strayed from the melee at the back of the tent and rushed around. We locked eyes. It was holding a small pitchfork made from discarded camping gear. The tines hewed to a fine point. It jabbed my elbow and a searing pain rippled up my arm. It pulled the fork out, yelled for others, and stabbed me again.

I snapped. I wiggled out of the hole like a fish struggling on a line and damn near tore the stakes out of the ground. Once I was free, I stomped on the little bitch that stabbed me and ran over to Rudy’s stupid-ass tarp. They weren’t there, either.

Above me, a burst of white lit the sky, and a shooting star streaked high above the canopy. The meteor shower. These fools were probably up on the rocks.

I scampered over to the rock formation as dozens of the imps poured into the tent, searching for a Sunday meal that had become fast food. Before they understood their feast was gone, I reached the rocks and started my ascent.

I wasn’t trying to be quiet, but as soon as I reached the summit, I froze. Rudy and Brad were up here together. Rudy’s words stopped me cold.

“It was never gonna work with Bella. She doesn’t understand us. What we have.”

I peered over the ledge. They were close together. Their hands clasped under the stars streaking across the sky. Brad and Rudy. Had it not been for the murder imps, this would one hundred percent be the most shocking development of this trip.

“She might be open to sharing.”

“Bro, that’s not going to happen. And if you propose that and she rejects it, she’ll tell everyone about us. How we are. Ruin both of our reputations.”

“She wouldn’t. Bella’s not a bad person,” Brad said.

“She’s a woman scorned, dude. Honestly, you’re miserable, right?”

“It’s been rough lately.”

“Then listen to me. It’s better to do what I said earlier. Alpine divorce. Nobody will blame us because nobody will find her out here. I’m a hunter…I can make it quick.” He mimed slitting a throat.

My mouth went dry. Swallowing became a pipe dream. This trip was never intended to be a restart. This was an ending - either as a couple or as a living person. The chorus of imps grew louder. Their calls finally reached these two. Curiosity finally got the best of them, and they both turned toward the campsite, only to find me peering over the ledge. My eyes went wide, and I ducked down.

“Bella!” Brad said, pulling his hand away from Rudy. “What are….”

I didn’t stick around to find out what he was asking. I had to get away from everything. I scrambled back down, lost my footing, and fell five feet, landing on my back. My body hit the ground with a thud that knocked the air from my lungs. I sucked in as I rolled onto my hands and knees, struggling to stand.

“It was a joke, Bella! Rudy was kidding!”

Oxygen finally met my lungs and color returned to my face. I glanced over at our tent as a wave of imps came rushing toward me. Death gleamed in their glowing eyes. A roiling wave of murder minions crashing toward me.

“I’m coming down. Let’s talk about it!”

This unholy combination got me moving. I pushed off the ground and ran towards Rudy’s tent, putting distance between myself and the imps. If Rudy and Brad wanted to get to me, they’d have to get through them. Considering they wanted to kill me and leave me for bear chow, I was fine with that arrangement.

I grabbed Rudy’s backpack, and something firm cartwheeled out of it. A knife. The large, throat-slitting kind. I placed it back in the bag, ran to the water’s edge, and hurled it into the pond. The placid mirror reflecting the streaking stars above shattered into ripples as the bag hit the water and sank.

“No!” Rudy screamed. “That was my dad’s knife, you bitch!”

“Go fish, motherfucker!”

Brad had climbed down the rocks and finally noticed the imps. He’d been focused on me sprinting away from him and carrying his reputation with me. When he finally spied the actual threat, he let out an ear-piercing scream. Real fear laced throughout the holler.

The imps quickly moved on from me to him and Rudy, who’d just skidded down next to Brad. The stars reflected off the pitchforks and knives the imps held, disappearing as the blades entered their flesh.

I found the stream we’d followed and ran into the dark woods. If there were bears out here, I was willing to risk it. I had to put distance between us on the off chance they survived the murder imp encounter.

Eventually, the meteor shower ended and dark returned to the woods. Still, I kept moving forward, following the stream and praying it kicked us out near the wash where we’d hidden our car. Brad or Rudy never came crashing through the brush behind me. They must have started screaming at some point, but I didn’t turn back to check. Leave that to the professionals.

After hours of running, then walking, then damn near crawling, I found the road. I hate to admit it, but I kissed the asphalt. It was gross, and I instantly regretted it, but it meant I’d survived Brad’s latest “adventure”.

Another hour later, I tracked down the cars, liberated my cellphone from the locked jeep by smashing the window with a rock, and called the cops. Another hour passed before the red and blue lights came screaming to my location. I told them we’d been off the grid camping and there was an animal attack. I didn’t think admitting that murderous, baby-sized monsters were the real culprits would help my case.

I was questioned and whisked away in an ambulance. Once inside, I finally broke down. A flood of competing emotions hit my brain, and the only way not to go crazy was to cry it out.

A week later, search teams found their remains and I was officially cleared as a suspect. Their bodies were high in a tree, splayed out on the top branches. All their innards gone. No blood on the scene. Mountain lion - they’d seen them around here. Searchers blamed the rain and animals for cleaning the site. I didn’t dissuade them from that conclusion.

It was dumb luck the searchers found them at all. A ranger happened to look up. Rudy’s nearly skinned face hung on by a thread and waved in the breeze. Their bodies had started to decompose, and flies swarmed them. Reporters wrote that the Rangers claimed it had been years since he’d seen something so brutal in these woods.

I’m better now. I’ve sworn off dating for a full calendar year to recalibrate myself. All I know is that, when I’m ready to put myself back out there, I’m looking for dudes who are homebodies. PJ night watching a bad movie never led to murder imps stabbing me with forks.

„I beg your pardon?“ Even Dr Savic, who could easily have applied to Mensa if she had been interested in the slightest, needed a few seconds to process Howard’s last statement.

„What do you mean, ‘murder is easy‘? You are not going to murder me, I hope?”

Then, with a thin smile:

“Or do you think I have murdered someone?”

Howard grinned and shook his head.

„I don’t think you’re capable of murder, Dr Savic. No, that’s the title of an Agatha Christie novel, and it refers to the fact that it is not difficult to get away with murder as long as no one suspects it is murder – but once the idea gets hold of you, you start to see a pattern. Things that used to look completely normal and unconnected suddenly take on a more sinister shade: maybe victim number one did not accidentally slip and fall but was in fact pushed, and maybe victim number three did not commit suicide after all but was in fact poisoned. That’s what happened to me, or rather to me and my team.“

Savic raised her right eyebrow.

„You found out that people had been murdered but no one had ever realized it?“

Howard lifted the cup to his lips and drank.

„That’s part of it, although it wasn’t exactly murder. But I would like to tell the story from the start. It’s about your field of expertise, Dr Savic – zombies or, as you call them, Dead-Actives. So far, no one has ever found out what it was that turned human beings into DAs, right?”

Savic nodded warily.

“Correct. It is as if whatever activates the ‘zombification‘ disappears as soon as we start looking for it. It doesn’t dissolve – if it did, we’d find at least traces of it. So far, nobody has come up with an idea what happens to whatever causes it. This is why we are so excited about the variant transfer – we might be able to isolate the agent in a body during transformation.”

“Whatever it is, since we may assume it’s not supernatural in origin and we know of no terrestrial agent, substance, virus, or whatever that could cause such a dramatic change – “

“ – it must be non-terrestrial, alien.” Savic finished Howard’s sentence. “That was Dr Enechukwu’s theory, I think … but nobody took him seriously five years ago. Has any new evidence been discovered?”

“No.” Howard tried to sit up straighter and adjusted his girth again. It must be awful to have a body like that, Savic thought, not for the first time. He’s constantly shifting and pressing it. Does he even notice?

“Nothing physical. But remember, ‘murder is easy’. Have you ever seen an anamorphic print? It makes no sense unless viewed from a specific perspective. Here, the perspective is: What if we are dealing with an alien invasion? Then start building your chain of logic from there – in the good old SF tradition: seemingly impossible premise, logical and realistic consequences.”

Savic put both of her elbows on her desk and leaned slightly forward.

“You have my interest, Mr Howard. I suppose you liked science fiction in your youth?”

“Still do.”, Howard replied. “Anyway, once you accept this idea, things suddenly begin to make a lot more sense. Imagine a substance that consists of billions of incredibly tiny machines – nanobots, if you want – that has been programmed to take over human bodies when it touches them and can be spread by transmitting it to someone’s bloodstream – through biting, in our case. This infection is deadly, but the ‘bots’ keep the body active by taking over all necessary functions: blood is kept liquid, parts of the brain are still working, muscles and tendons get supplied with energy – “

“From feeding.”, Savic interjected. “And when a DA vomits, it simply gets rid of all the material it can’t use.”

“Correct, Dr Savic. And if we assume the ‘bots’ can process almost any part of a human body and they are basically running a micro chemical factory inside it, it is no wonder that we’ve never identified any specific substances that were missing from all the vomit we analyzed, so there was no pattern to investigate: sometimes the sputum – if we may call it that – was missing calcium, sometimes iron, sometimes phosphorus, sometimes a mix of several things. The ‘bots’ don’t care, and whoever programmed them must have thought it would be easiest if infecting and feeding could be combined, so the DAs would not have to worry about finding some other energy source.”

“But wouldn’t killing and feeding defeat the purpose?” Savic’ head now rested in her right hand.

Howard nodded and lifted his cup to his lips, drank, then placed it back onto the saucer.

“That’s another reason why many zombie movies are so stupid. The zombies kill and eat their victims, and their hunger is never sated, so how does the infection spread? You would need millions of people who manage to escape exactly after having been bitten but before being devoured. But in our case, killing and feeding are simply necessities because even our alien invaders can’t conjure up energy out of thin air. But we know that, after the first hunger, zombies restrict themselves to biting and scratching; they do not kill their victims until the hunger returns, and that takes time.”

The agent leaned back and paused for a moment before resuming the conversation. He looks pleased with himself, Savic thought. But where is he going with this?

“A much more logical method if you want to infect as many people as possible, don’t you think?”

Savic drank a little coffee – her lips had become very dry again. Then she replied:

“Of course it is, but the attempt failed miserably.”, Savic remarked. “Three weeks after Daisy, everything had been brought under control. There was never any danger of a mass infection that could not be contained. The DAs were – “

“Stupid. Ineffective. At times involuntarily funny. But they were not all stupid and ineffective in the same way, and some of them were not funny at all. Of course, there was – and is – the ‘average’ DA, the vast majority of them. But there are also many different types, as you know better than anyone else, and some of them look like ‘improved versions’: toxic DAs, superhumanly strong DAs, DAs that are very fast and agile, DAs that don’t bite but vomit on their victims. But even those DAs with – for want of a better word – ‘powers’ failed. Most scientists think that the different types have come into being due to some mutation, to differences in the biological makeup of their victims – young or old, healthy or ill, adult or child – or to environmental factors such as temperature or humidity or what have you.”

The agent stopped to catch his breath, shifted his body on the chair again and let one of the cookies Clarissa had placed onto the desk disappear into the abyss that was his mouth. Savic wondered whether he had paused because he was hungry and out of breath or because he wanted to let his statements sink in and provoke a reaction. Well, she would humor him.

“But you don’t think so?”

Howard smiled, apparently satisfied that his attempt at employing a rather worn-out rhetorical device seemed to have worked.

“No, we don’t. Let me digress. Evolutionary biology tells us that most mutations are deleterious or at best neutral; they do nothing to increase the organism’s chances of survival and reproduction. Only a very small part are actually beneficial, and, with a little luck, these begin to spread through the population. A natural experiment, if you will. But in our case, the variation that results from mutations in living organisms had been programmed into the ‘bots’ before they even came to Earth, and their creators must have been fully aware that more than 99.9 percent of the Infected would be almost completely useless when it came to take over the planet.”

Savic leaned forward, intrigued almost against her will.

“So what about the residue? One in a thousand or even less?”

“Ah.” Howard rose from his chair, tried to tuck in his shirt again, did not succeed, and squeezed himself back again. “Another digression, if you don’t mind.”

The director shook her head and waited.

“What is the one quality any invader needs to be successful?”

Savic hesitated for a second, then answered: “Hm … superior weapons and numbers, good logistics, a cause worth fighting for …”

“Absolutely right. Now think of the many movies where giant monsters or fast-breeding aliens take over the world. Do they have any of these qualities?”

“Maybe numbers, depending on their exact nature.”

“Maybe, but numbers alone are useless, as any native army facing a European opponent during colonial times can attest to. In January 1879 at Rorke’s Drift during the Anglo-Zulu war, around 150 British troops defended a military base against more than 3,000 Zulu warriors – and these warriors were actually intelligent human beings who had firearms and were fighting to keep their country. Monsters don’t have weapons, don’t have logistics, and don’t have any intrinsic motivation except survival and reproduction, so they stand no chance against humanity, no matter how big or numerous they are. Because what they lack is – “

“Intelligence.”, Savic smiled. “That’s how humans conquered this planet. Physically, they are no match for elephants, lions, or crocodiles.”

Howard smiled, too, but this time, it looked more like a smirk.

“And we think that’s what our alien invaders were after, and that’s why they mixed as many different combinations of ‘bots’ as they could.”

“They were hoping for the jackpot – a DA type that would be as smart as a human.”

“Or even smarter”, Howard replied. “Imagine an intelligent DA with all the physical advantages normal DAs enjoy, if that’s the right word here: they feel no pain, they don’t get tired, they are immune to all diseases, they are highly resistant to injuries … In a normal DA, these abilities are ultimately useless, but add intelligence to the mix, and what you get is a – “

“Superhuman.”, Savic said while staring into space, seemingly at a spot behind Howard’s left shoulder. “You’re thinking of IDAs, aren’t you?”

“Yes. Intelligent Dead-Actives. Zombies retaining their reasoning facilities. Zombies that would actually be able to blend into the human background and secretly do their masters’ bidding. Of course, that wouldn’t be easy considering their need to feed and the problems that come with having a body that is not alive anymore, but cosmetics, fragrances, plastic surgery, artificial skin, the application of the right chemicals … all this and more would go a long way towards passing as human beings. At least as long as no one is looking for them or rather at them too closely.”

Now it was Savic’ turn to stand up, though she did not sit down again but began to slowly walk through her office.

“A secret conspiracy of undead cannibals, planning to take over the world. That certainly sounds exciting. But isn’t it scientific consensus that IDAs cannot exist?”

“You’re being modest, Dr Savic.” Howard grabbed another snack and devoured it in seconds. “You yourself established a large part of this consensus. I’ve read your articles, and I think they are brilliant. You argue very convincingly that, whereas increased strength or quickness or some ‘natural weapon’ might conceivably be the result of random variation, the complexity of the human brain makes it astronomically unlikely that it could be improved in this way. Ergo, no IDAs.”

He chuckled.

“Your criticism of those scientists who were toying with the idea was so devastating I’m surprised none of them quit and decided to spend the rest of their lives meditating at a Tibetan monastery.”

Savic stopped walking, turned around, and looked at her guest.

“I think I was right then, and I think I am right now. How could a random change make an incredibly complex organ like the brain actually better?”

“It couldn’t, and you were and are right. But your premise is wrong. Just assume we are not dealing with a random process, but with something like genetic engineering. From this perspective, all ‘bots’ were programmed to raise the DA’s intelligence, but since the aliens’ knowledge of human physiology must have been limited, they simply tried a lot of different mixtures – yet still with a far better chance of achieving their goal than pure trial and error would have given them. In this light, one in a hundred thousand or even ten thousand does not look impossible.”

Savic sat down again and closed her eyes. Then she opened them again and asked:

“Assuming they exist, this would limit the number of IDAs to one or two hundred at best, probably fewer. How would they be able to find each other, let alone coordinate their efforts? Without cooperation, I can’t see how they would be able to ‘conquer the world’, if that’s not too dramatic.”

“It’s not, and that’s a good question.”, Howard said. “We know that DAs don’t attack other DAs so there must be some way for them to distinguish between victims and ‘comrades’. But we also know that this mechanism only works at short distances; YouTube is full of videos showing two DAs running towards each other and then suddenly stopping and breaking off the attack – usually when the other DA is only thirty or forty feet away. So this would be of no use in locating IDAs. Old-school detective work and a lot of legwork would, though. Imagine an IDA trying to find others of its kind. How would it go about it?”

Savic raised her head and stared at the ceiling for several seconds. Then she replied:

“It would go to Daisy hotspots, big cities with lots of infected people, and scour above all the hospitals for suspicious patients – those who were bitten but discharged themselves, for example. It would talk to doctors and nurses and look at patients’ files, if it can get access to them.”

While Savic was talking, Howard had begun to nod very slowly, almost imperceptibly.

“This would give it their addresses, so it could look them up in person and see how they were doing. Being an IDA, I suppose it would recognize them without much effort.”

“You’ve missed your calling, Dr Savic – you should have become a police detective. Once it had met the first IDA, the two could team up, thereby accelerating their search for others, and finally end up with a small group – ten, maybe fifteen, maybe twenty IDAs. And now the calculation changes: a network of ten to twenty IDAs would be far more effective than fifty or even a hundred isolated IDAs could ever be.”

This time, Howard plucked two snacks from the plate and terminated them even faster; absent-mindedly, Savic took one and began nibbling at it, while Howard went on, his mouth still half full:

“I mean, what can a single IDA do? Live like a vampire of old? In order to satisfy its hunger, it would have to become something akin to a serial killer, so the police would probably catch it rather quickly – especially nowadays, at a time when the existence of zombies has been accepted by everyone and the police would know what to look for. And camouflaging its true nature would be very challenging for a solo IDA. I have read a lot of police files and reports and I think the police have found and killed a handful of them but hushed it up or simply decided to forget asking for an autopsy.”

“As part of a larger group, though, IDAs could survive and even thrive – I see what you mean.”, Savic said. “Are you worried about such a possibility?”

Outside, the heat of the day had given way to a mild, warm summer evening. Some clouds had appeared and seemed to take turns at blocking out the sun, so the brightness of the light in Dr Savic’ office became unpredictable. Howard got up, filled himself another cup, and emptied it at once. Then he turned towards Dr Savic and said in a flat tone of voice:

“I wasn’t home when the hobo DA came to our door. My wife wanted to help and let him in; when she realized what he was, she could have run away, but our three-year-old daughter, Kanato, was next to her. She tried to protect Kanato, but the DA was too strong, and he killed her – he killed my wife. And then …”

Howard closed his eyes.

“They said they had been among the ‘unlucky few’ who lost their lives before the outbreak was contained. Since the zombies were so slow and stupid, a disproportionate number of victims were elderly people, disabled people … and children, often together with parents who only wanted to protect them.”

Then he rubbed them and continued:

“A long time ago, a journalist named Claud Cockburn came up with the following headline, which was never printed: ‘Small earthquake in Chile – not many dead.’ Good news, isn’t it? The ‘unlucky few’ – you can’t imagine how much I hate this phrase.”

Suddenly, it dawned on Dr Savic. I thought he was just a bumbling bureaucrat, but this man is desperate and frightened. He hates DAs, but he doesn’t want to shut us down at all. He wants something else.

Aloud, she said to Howard:

“I think I understand you now, Mr Howard. You aren’t here because you want to evaluate our research and decide about our funding. That’s only the official story. You are here because you are looking for allies in your quest to destroy what you consider a grave threat to humanity: intelligent zombies working together with the goal of taking over the planet.”

Howard looked at her, but didn’t say anything. His lips twitched a little. Although, in Savic’ eyes, he was the same misshapen blob he’d been before, her mind told her that this seemingly harmless government goon had to be taken seriously. Her next question almost asked itself:

“Why us? Why DARC-7? There are nine DARCs. Let’s exclude DARC-4, for well-known reasons – that still leaves seven others. You won’t be surprised to hear that we are in regular contact with the other DARCs, so we know that you have never been there.”

Her eyes met Howard’s gaze, which was fixed on hers. Ten years ago, that look would have rattled her, but now she was able to keep calm.

“You know why, Dr Savic. I have read what happened to you, but I don’t know any details. Just that your family, too, were among the ‘unlucky few’.”

Savic walked over to the window and took a deep breath. Then she turned around and said:

“Unlike you, I have no idea who killed my husband and my son – if ‘who’ is the right word here. How did you know the DA that killed your family was a ‘hobo’?”

Howard looked at the picture on the wall behind Savic’ chair. It showed the center in a photograph taken from a helicopter or by a drone.

“A police officer heard … screams …, came in, and pumped five rounds into the DA, one of which penetrated its skull. She had seen the ‘hobo’ before but thought he was just confused; she was about to walk over to him when my wife opened the door, and the officer was needed somewhere else. From what I’ve heard, she never got over the incident and has been blaming herself ever since.”

Savic bit her lower lip. It felt parched.

“I found my husband and my son in our basement. They must have tried to hide from the DA but it followed them downstairs. You’ve probably heard that most DAs are too clumsy to climb stairs, haven’t you? Well, this one apparently wasn’t.”

She closed her eyes again and recalled the day she found her family in the laundry room, and she remembered that the police later said that her husband – 35, lean, strong, and fit – must have been surprised by the zombie, as there were no defensive wounds.

For a few moments, Howard said nothing. Then he resumed the conversation:

“So there we are. We think that these IDAs exist and could present a real danger not only to humanity but to all life on Earth if they were more numerous. You can imagine how shocked we were when we heard a rumor that you seemed to have made some progress regarding the artificial creation of specific types of DAs. And when I saw how you transformed the hamster I knew I had to talk to you and try to convince you that this kind of research is extremely dangerous – it’s zhamsters today, zhorses next month, and IDAs in a year. This can’t go on.”

Howard took a deep breath and spread his legs a little more to accommodate his belly.

“But, Mr Howard”, Savic replied, “even if we were to continue our research in the direction you are worried about, how would we find test subjects for creating IDAs? I freely admit that sometimes we bend the rules a little, cut some corners and make a few phone calls, but procuring living people for experiments that would certainly kill them? No matter how many palms you grease in Washington, this would never be accepted.”

Howard tightened his lips and looked straight into Savic’ eyes.

“HB 3007, passed by both chambers and signed by the governor into law eleven months ago. Assisted suicide. Opponents call it the ‘My Way, Die Way’ bill because it allows people to choose to die in any way they wish, as long as they or their relatives can afford it. On the basis of this bill, people have killed themselves by jumping off the Empire State Building, attaching themselves to starting fighter jets, or – and this I find hard to believe, but it’s true – some let DAs infect them on purpose and then ask for a sweeper to kill them. So why not accept a death caused by an experiment of scientific value that may even result in some kind of immortality? Add to this a generous donation to the family, and I wouldn’t worry about a dearth of applicants.”

After a few moments of reflection, Savic asked:

“Are you insinuating that we are planning to create an army of IDAs to take over the world? I must say, Mr Howard, that is a bit much. Where would we find an IDA in the first place? Do you think we have a ready supply hidden in the basement?”

Howard shook his head.

“I’m not insinuating anything, and I’m certain you have no IDAs in your basement. But are you sure you don’t have an IDA among your staff? Once you’ve perfected the transfer, I see no reason why this creature shouldn’t go rogue and spend one or two nights creating more IDAs.”

Howard got up and stretched himself. The activity in the corridors had died down, and only very rarely they could hear someone walk past Savic’ door.

“Hiding in plain sight – it would make perfect sense. No IDA, no matter how brilliant, would be able to do all the research and obtain all the resources it would need to spread the infection, but as a member of a DARC team, it would be in an ideal position to work towards its goal. Imagine a dozen IDAs, working at five or six centers. A network of possibly highly intelligent zombies working close to exactly the kind of research they would need. They could – “

A buzzing sound told Savic that she had received a text message. “Excuse me for a second, Mr Howard. I told my staff I only wanted to be disturbed if it’s really important, so I’d like to check.”

She walked over to her desk and looked at the screen. Then she nodded and came back.

“Just a confirmation of something I had expected anyway, but it is good to know for sure. Well, I must say I’m stunned, Mr Howard. I can’t say you have convinced me, but you’re making a strong case. What would you suggest we do now?”

Howard looked at Savic’ computer screen.

“There’s a slow way and a quick way to do this, Dr Savic. The slow way would be to check personnel files, conduct lengthy interviews, get court orders permitting in-depth examinations, and so on – time-consuming and risky: the IDA might try to speed up the research – remember, they can be active 24/7 – begin killing your staff, or simply vanish. The quick way is to assemble your staff right now and let me take a look at them. Since my family was killed, I have been training myself to identify DAs, not by looking at the obvious characteristics but at subtle differences people usually don’t notice because normal DAs are so clearly non-human – differences such as breathing patterns, eye movements, language, lack of little ticks or idiosyncrasies, you know. Because of this, I think I would be able to identify a camouflaged IDA with high accuracy without alerting it to danger.”

The director walked to her desk again, put her palms on its surface and bent forward.

“You know that, if you are successful, it would mean the end of DARC–7. Compared to this, DARC–4 went through a minor hiccup.”

Howard nodded.

“We both lost family members during Daisy. The infection was contained, but still, more than two hundred thousand people died, often horribly. An IDA-coordinated attack would be far worse and might spell the end of humanity. Don’t you think your research center is a small price to pay if you can prevent that from happening? With you on our side, we could deal with any IDAs at other DARCs much more efficiently. And, remember, I might be totally wrong about this, so if I can’t find an IDA, you’ll be cleared, get your funding, and I’ll move on to the other DARCs.”

For two seconds, Savic put her hands in front of her face. Then she pressed a button on her desk, her office door opened, and Savic’ personal assistant came in.

“Is everyone still here?”, she asked. Clarissa nodded. “Staff meeting in ten minutes. Unscheduled, so make sure the conference room is ready. Better make it fifteen.”

Clarissa nodded again and left, and Savic turned to Howard:

“We use the conference room as an informal meeting room, and while my staff are very meticulous in their work, they tend to be messy when they have some time off.”

Howard smiled.

“You should see our staff room. Some of the stains would require dynamite to remove.”

The director went over to the coffee maker, poured two cups, and handed one to Howard. “Thank you. Three sugars, please.”

Savic sat down and drank a little; then, after a few minutes of silence, she got up and said:

“Alright, Mr Howard – let’s go find your zombie that wants to rule the world.”

(End of Part II)

I'd come from school. I was standing on the sidewalk opposite our vinyl sided house. A big car was in our driveway. It was a Cadillac, the colour of cream. I didn't know who it belonged to. Who does it belong to, I wondered.

It was a hot, still day.

I felt the warm concrete sidewalk slabs through my sneakers’ worn soles. No birds chirped. The sky was cloudless.

I thought I could hear the sun buzzing like an old appliance.

I walked slowly towards the car.

Its windows were darkened. I put my hands on the driver's window and my face against my hands. I looked inside.

A man was inside.

He was reclined on the leather driver's seat.

The seat was red.

The whole inside of the car was red.

The man’s face was pale. His hair was grey. His hands were thick with veins. His eyes were closed. He looked dead. He was breathing, but his eyes were closed and he looked dead.

He opened his eyes.

He didn't look more alive with open eyes than he had with closed eyes, and I leapt backwards away from the car and screamed.

I hadn't screamed.

I stood.

A cloud had passed between me and the sun.

My throat was dry.

I tasted blood.

I saw dark blood running down the sides of the Cadillac's windows. The car was filled with blood. I was blood. It covered the man. I covered the man. He was rising through us. I was listening to the roar of a distant lawnmower. I stood silent, looking through the car's tinted window at the man, whose eyes were closed. He was sleeping. The grass was green. The lawn was neat. I walked inside the house.

My mother was in the kitchen.

She was drinking tea.

Her hands were shaking. The bottom of her teacup was clattering against the saucer she was holding in her other hand.

“There's a man,” I said, “in a car in the driveway.”

My mother opened her mouth to speak.

My father walked in.

My mother closed her mouth.

“That man is your uncle Larkin,” my father said, and my mother looked away. My father looked down at the floor. Ants were walking single file along the grout between the tiles.

I didn’t know either of my parents had a sibling.

“Will he—” I asked.

“No,” my mother said. “He won't come in,” said my father.

My mother set her empty cup and saucer on the kitchen counter, by the sink. The faucet reflected the sunlight. Blood dripped from it. I imagined blood dripping from the faucet into the kitchen sink. My mother's empty cup was full of blood. “I asked if I could play with my friends after I finish my homework,” I said.

“Asked whom?”

I hadn't meant to say it like that.

I felt warmth and shame. I had peed myself. The ants were still walking along the floor. “It's best you do not go out today,” my father said.

I showered.

I put on dry clothes.

My mother had finished mopping the floor when I came downstairs again. We ate dinner. We drank cranberry juice. I watched my parents scrape the meat off chicken bones with their teeth.

My parents drank red wine.

I drank milk.

I wondered if we would bring anything outside for my uncle Larkin, but nobody did. Even the dogs were inside. Even though it wasn't raining.

The sun went down.

I watched the Cadillac in the driveway from my upstairs bedroom window.

I watched it instead of going to sleep.

I couldn't sleep.

I had a fear of being dreamed.

I had a fear that if I slept something might wring me in its dream as if I was a rag used to clean blood from somewhere after a crime so I sat in my bedroom with the lights off looking at the Cadillac in the driveway from my upstairs bedroom window instead of going to sleep until the driver's side door opened and from my bedroom window I saw the driver's side door open.

The driver's side door opened.

It was one in the morning.

The car door opened, and Uncle Larkin stepped out into the moonlight. He moved like tree branches. The veins on his hands were golden. His hair looked like thick grey wires. He parted his lips and ate the moonlight, then walked away down the dimmed street.

The hour felt raw.

He was gone, but I kept watching.

The car was still as a coffin.

The points of starlight in the sky stretched into shimmering lines of spiderweb…

He returned before dawn, holding a small child by the hand.

I couldn't tell if the child was a boy or girl.

The child was younger than me.

They walked up the driveway to the car. He opened the back door.

I saw the long red leather back seat. He helped the child inside. He got in too. Then he shut the door. The car, the moonlight and everything was as it had been before.

There was stillness.

It was dawn.

The stillness was fake like plastic plants.

I was in my bedroom with the curtains closed and a pain in my stomach that felt like knots of jealousy, screaming and disgust.

In the morning, the car was gone. I brushed my teeth until my gums hurt. My mother was making breakfast. It was eggs and bacon. I watched the bacon sizzle in its own melted fat.

I wasn't hungry.

I ate.

Two police officers came by that afternoon.

They were very friendly.

They were asking my parents if they had seen anything unusual last night. I wanted to leave, but my father caught my hand. “What about you?” one of the officers asked. “You're old enough to answer for yourself. Aren't you, son?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “I didn't see anything.”

My mother petted my hair.

“Good boy,” he said, and I felt myself of innocent blood.

Story by SpyGuy1992/SnooCapers2591

There’s an old saying that the only certainties in life are death and taxes. That’s only half true. The only real certainty is taxes. Think about it—mortals pass away, empires crumble, but the taxman? The taxman is immortal. Not the individual person sitting behind the desk, mind you, but the institution itself. The moment human beings figured out how to build civilization, they invented taxes to keep the lights on.   I’ve spent the last twelve years working for the Internal Revenue Service. I have a government badge, a federal retirement plan, and a cubicle in a windowless basement that smells like burnt coffee and warm toner. Every April, I sit down and file my own taxes, just like everybody else.

What they don't tell you when you pass the Civil Service Exam is that the IRS runs a classified subdivision known officially as The Special Audits & Collections Division. No website, no phone line, and no official paper trail. We don't even like using internal emails. Everything is strictly word-of-mouth.   Our job is simple: we audit the taxpayers who aren't supposed to exist.   Vampires, lycanthropes, sirens, djinni, witches, liches, and forgotten Mesopotamian deities—entities that were already ancient when physical currency was first minted, and somehow managed to hoard a ridiculous amount of it over the centuries.  
To be clear, we only audit the "civilized" ones—the monsters who buy real estate, open business accounts, and live among us. We leave the wild ones alone. You don't try to audit a Sasquatch. They’re nomadic, they don't engage in modern commerce, and if you hand one a Form 1040, he's more likely to tear off your arm and eat the paper than sign on the dotted line.

When you join our division, they hand you an orientation packet. Printed across the very top in bold, heavy lettering is our golden rule: “The IRS does not care how you make
your money. We just want our cut. And we always collect!”  Under IRS Publication 525, if an asset has measurable value, it is taxable. Illegal blood trade? Taxable. Cursed artifacts? Taxable. Human
souls—assuming you’ve had them properly appraised by a certified third party—are
entirely taxable. The forms never ask if your income is ethical, legal, or holy. They only ask one thing: How much did you make?   And that is why the night stalkers are terrified of us.

My First Field Audit

Before I head out on a field assignment, I take a few specific precautions.   First, I down a
small glass bottle of holy water. It tastes like cold, metallic pool water, but it temporarily taints your bloodstream. If a thirsty vampire decides to try his luck, taking a bite out of me is going to feel like drinking a pint of liquid bleach. It’s a great deterrent.   Second,
I clip my standard-issue IRS badge to my belt. In our division, those badges aren't made of cheap nickel—they’re struck from pure silver. Classic creatures of the dark experience severe, agonizing skin burns the moment they touch high-grade silver. It’s amazing how polite a four-hundred-year-old monster gets when your credentials can melt their face off.

My very first field assignment was an old French Quarter vampire living in a sprawling, converted monastery just outside New Orleans. High stone walls, massive iron gates, and long, shadowy corridors.   When he answered the door, I was caught off guard. Movies always make vampires look six-foot-two and broad-shouldered. In reality, this guy was maybe five-foot-four. People forget that centuries ago, nutrition was awful. He was impeccably dressed in a tailored velvet suit, but he had no reflection in the mirrored hallway behind him. He pulled back his lips to bare a set of razor-sharp fangs, trying his absolute best to look terrifying.   I didn't blink. I just pulled out my silver badge, held it up, and watched him flinch backward.

We sat down at a massive oak dining table. I unzipped my leather briefcase and laid out the paperwork: Form 1040, Schedule B for interest and dividends, Schedule D for capital gains, Form 8938 for foreign financial assets, and Form 8283 for noncash charitable contributions.   He stared at the towering stack of documents like it was going to burst into flames.

"I don't see a box to check for what I am," he murmured, his voice echoing off the cold
stone walls.   "There isn’t one," I said, tapping my pen against my notepad.   "And... there's nowhere to state how the wealth was acquired?" he asked cautiously.   I slid a highlighted copy of Publication 525 across the oak table. "The United States government doesn't care if you got that gold from a royal crusade or a dark ritual," I said. "We just want our cut."

A look of immense relief washed over his pale face. He retracted his fangs and actually offered me a cup of tea.   What followed was four grueling hours of untangling centuries of compound interest.

Vampires are legendary at playing the long game. He had real
estate deeds dating back to kings whose names aren't even in modern history
books, gold acquired before standard weights existed, and bank accounts opened
under fallen empires.   He tried to claim his entire Gothic castle as a tax-exempt house of worship. I denied it. He attempted to depreciate his stone crypt under Form 4562; I approved it, but only partially. When we got to his offshore holdings, he smiled smugly.   "Those subterranean vaults aren't technically located on Earth," he purred.  
Without a word, I handed him FinCEN Form 114—the FBAR. "If it holds liquid assets and it isn't within the physical borders of the United States," I replied, "we consider it foreign. Fill it out."   His jaw dropped.   The real headache came from his staff. He had dozens of human thralls maintaining the grounds, but he’d been paying them under the table for decades without issuing W-2 forms or withholding payroll taxes.   "I provide them with
shelter and ambient blood-life!" he protested.   "Under Federal law, room and board do
not constitute a recognized health insurance plan or payroll structure," I told him flatly. "You’ve been misclassifying employees. You need to issue them Form 1099-NECs as independent contractors, or you're going to face massive statutory penalties under Internal Revenue Code Section 6651."   He caved instantly. Before I left, he asked if eternal servitude qualified as a long-term employment category. I told him the IRS doesn’t recognize eternal servitude as lawful labor — it’s just misclassified income with terrible branding.

Monster Jobs & The Weakness of the IRS

You’d be surprised how supernatural creatures earn a living in the modern world. Immortality keeps you breathing, but it doesn't pay your electric bill.   Younger vampires almost exclusively work remote tech jobs on the night shift. Sunlight can't kill you through a Zoom call, and working from home means nobody notices when you haven't aged a day in thirty years. Werewolves lean heavily into physical industries—construction, private security, long-haul trucking, or running local dive bars and gym franchises. Witches usually run boutique herbal shops or occult bookstores, writing off eye of newt and rare bat bones as "ordinary and necessary business expenses" under Schedule C.   Even ancient gods have adapted. Minor deities from fallen civilizations don't build stone temples anymore. They start YouTube channels and TikTok accounts. Millions of views, likes, and monthly Patreon subscriptions give them the exact same steady stream of adoration their ego needs to survive, and it brings in a very nice taxable income.

People think we're brave for walking into these lairs, but the truth is, IRS agents are immune to dark magic. Wards, curses, and mind-control charms rely on pushing your emotional buttons—fear, greed, lust, or guilt. But when a public servant is strictly focused on auditing a spreadsheet, there's no emotional hook to grab onto. We aren't interested in
harming taxpayers or their ability to generate income, which renders most offensive magic useless.

I once audited a witch. When I say witch, I’m not talking about modern New Age pagans or people who buy crystals online. I mean the old school kind—the kind that predates organized religion and practices sorcery with blood, bargains, and consequences.

She had layered her home with protective charms, symbols, and dark wards to keep me out. None of them worked. I walked straight through her shimmering barrier of dark magic, sat on her sofa, and opened my ledger. To her credit, she kept meticulous
records: candles, incense, animal parts, reagents, and bone dust were all
carefully documented. Under Schedule C, we classified them all as legitimate
business expenses. I even managed to write off pet food expenses for her
familiar, a deeply sinister-looking Siamese cat.   She relaxed a bit once she realized the
deductions were valid—the charms couldn't stop me from entering, but the
paperwork certainly stopped me from overcharging her. And just for the record,
I did check her cauldrons for small children, but I found no evidence of
any.

However, our division does have one fatal, catastrophic weakness.   We are terrible at normal, everyday human interaction. Most of us are socially awkward nerds who prefer numbers over people.

Take my colleague Bob, for example. Bob is a mathematical genius on our Western States team, but he gets nervous ordering food at a drive-thru. He was sent out to audit a Nevada brothel suspected of being a money-laundering front run by a succubus, basically a very attractive female demon.   She didn't use dark magic on Bob. She didn't have to. She just walked out in a skimpy outfit, sat right next to him on a leather couch, giggled at his jokes, and lightly touched his arm. Bob lasted about fifteen minutes before he panicked, dropped his clipboard, and ran out of the building screaming. We had to reassign the file.

The Full Moon Riders Motorcycle Club

My most insane assignment brought me out to the dusty
outskirts of Phoenix, Arizona, to audit the Full Moon Riders Motorcycle
Club.   On paper, they were registered as
a non-profit riding association. According to the ATF, they were a violent
outlaw gang. But according to the IRS, they were an unregistered partnership
that hadn't filed a tax return in eight full years.

I pulled up to their clubhouse—a massive, rusted sheet-metal
building surrounded by chain-link fencing and dozens of custom Harleys. When I
stepped inside, the room went dead silent.  
The place smelled like stale beer, motor oil, and wet dog. There were at
least thirty guys inside, every single one of them towering, covered in scars,
and extraordinarily hairy.

The club president was a massive, gray-bearded lycanthrope wearing a leather vest.   I held up my silver badge. The president stared at it, grunted, and made a slight hand gesture.   Before I could react, two massive bikers grabbed me by the arms, lifted me off my feet, and slammed me down onto a wooden stool. Another biker placed a heavy, two-liter ceramic stein of dark beer on the table in front of me.  The president leaned over, his yellow eyes glaring into mine. "We don't talk numbers with dry throats," he rumbled. "Drink."   Refusing meant a swift trip to an unmarked grave in the desert. So, I drank. Then they poured another. By the fourth stein, my head was spinning, and the room was roaring with laughter.   That was when the president decided to test me.

He dragged me outside to an axe-throwing pit behind the building.   "This is Mitch the
Fang," the president barked, clapping a hand on a shirtless, refrigerator-sized werewolf covered in battle scars. "Mitch never loses. Beat him, and maybe we talk taxes. Lose, and we feed you to the desert."   Mitch stepped up, hurled his heavy steel axe, and buried it a hair's breadth from the center mark. The crowd of bikers howled and cheered.  
They handed me an axe. It weighed roughly three pounds. I stood there swaying slightly, squinting at the wooden target twenty feet away. I took a deep breath and let my brain do what it does best. I calculated the exact distance, accounted for the wind speed, estimated the required rotational torque, and determined the precise release point. Math is math, whether you're behind a desk or throwing weapons.   I threw. The axe spun cleanly through the air and split the absolute center of the wooden bullseye.   The yard went
silent.   Mitch stared at the target, his face turning bright red. "He cheated!" he roared.   Before I could speak, Mitch's bones cracked loudly. His spine elongated, his jaw burst forward, thick fur erupted across his skin, and in seconds, a nine-foot-tall werewolf was lunging directly at me.   He hit me like a runaway freight train. We crashed through a wooden picnic table, and he grabbed me by my ankles, flipping me completely upside down. My silver badge and my sidearm slid across the dirt, far out of reach.

The crowd of bikers encircled us, chanting, "Eat! Eat! Eat!"   Blood rushed to my head as I hung there helplessly. But as I looked up, I realized my face was level with Mitch's lower anatomy.   Facing imminent death, I abandoned all professional decorum. I pulled back my fist and speed-bagged his testicles as hard as humanly possible, over and over, finishing with a desperate, crushing grip.  The giant beast let out a high-pitched, ear-splitting shriek that sounded like an eight-year-old girl getting scared by a spider. His eyes rolled back, his legs buckled, and four hundred pounds of unconscious werewolf collapsed directly on top of my chest, knocking the wind out of me.   When I finally woke up, the club president was standing over me, grinning.   "You won," he chuckled, dragging me to my feet.   Mitch was back in human form, sitting on a cooler with an ice pack between his legs. He looked up, gave me a weak laugh, and slapped my back so hard a filling flew right out of my mouth. "Fair fight, man," he wheezed. "No hard feelings."

We went back inside and finished the audit. We filled out Form 1065, drafted Schedule K-1s for the members, and properly reported their illegal gambling income under 26 U.S.C.
§61.   When we wrapped up, the president handed me an official leather cut. "You're one of us now," he said. Then, before I could thank him, he shifted into his wolf form, hiked his leg, and pissed all over me, completely covering me in his territory scent.   The entire room broke out into howls and cheers.   "That means nobody in the supernatural underworld will ever touch you," the president explained as I stood there in stunned silence. "You're a werewolf Goodfella now." He reached into his vest, pulled out a small piece of paper, and wrote down his cell phone number. He handed it to me and grinned. "Call me if you ever need help in a jam." I looked down at the number, then back at the werewolf who had just pissed on me. Somehow, I believed him.

The Pharaoh’s Estate Tax

Not all immortal taxpayers are living off tech startups or outlaw biker bars—some are literally wrapped in linen and refusing to leave their tombs.   A few years ago, I
received a file for an ancient Egyptian pharaoh whose sarcophagus and massive
funerary hoard had been quietly shipped to a private estate in Upstate New York
back in the 1920s. Over the decades, his estate managers had been selling off
scarabs, lapis lazuli, and ancient gold coins to fund an elaborate, climate-controlled mansion.   The problem? They’d been filing under a revocable living trust that claimed the principal beneficiary had been deceased since 1330 BCE.

When I pulled up to the estate, the front lawn was guarded by two towering, stone Anubis statues. I walked up the steps, briefcase in hand, and knocked on the massive bronze doors.  They creaked open on their own. The air inside was bone-dry and thick with the scent of myrrh, cedar oil, and ancient dust. I followed a long, dark hallway painted with intricate tomb hieroglyphics until I reached a grand atrium. Sitting on an obsidian throne at the far end of the room was the mummy himself—decked out in a golden nemes headcloth, wrapped head-to-toe in aged linen bandages, and clutching a crooked scepter.   The moment I stepped onto the mosaic floor, the room temperature plunged. Swarms of black scarab beetles erupted from the shadows, skittering across my shoes, and a deep, rattling voice echoed directly inside my skull:  

 "WHO DARES DISTURB THE ETERNAL SLUMBER OF KHAFRE-RA? KNEEL, MORTAL, LEST MY CURSE WITHER THY FLESH TO DUST!"  

I casually kicked a couple of scarabs off my wingtips, sat down at his marble coffee table,
and opened my briefcase.   "I'm here regarding Form 706, the United States Estate and Generation-Skipping Transfer Tax Return," I said, tapping my pen. "And I'm afraid we have a major classification issue."   The mummy blinked his hollow, glowing eye sockets. The swarm of scarabs came to a sudden halt.

"ESTATE TAX?" he rumbled. "I AM A LIVING GOD! THIS GOLD IS
MY DIVINE BIRTHRIGHT, ENTOMBED WITH ME TO PASS INTO THE AFTERLIFE!"  

 "Under 26 U.S.C. §2031, the gross estate of a decedent includes the value of all property, real or personal, tangible or intangible," I explained, sliding a stack of audit notices
across the marble table. "However, to claim an Estate Tax exemption, the
primary asset holder must actually be deceased."  

He leaned forward, his linen bandages rustling dryly. "I AM DECEASED! MY ORGANIC VISCERA WERE CANOPICALLY JARRED THREE THOUSAND YEARS AGO!" 

 
"If you were legally dead, your estate would have triggered a
forty-percent federal transfer tax the moment it crossed into U.S. territorial
waters," I replied smoothly. "Furthermore, since you are currently
sitting upright, communicating in telepathic English, and actively directing
the liquidation of ancient artifacts to pay your high-speed internet bill, the
IRS legally considers you a living resident alien. That makes all capital gains
from your artifact sales subject to standard federal income tax under Section 61."   The pharaoh stared at me. He looked down atthe stack of forms, then back at me.  

"BUT... THE CURSE OF THE PHARAOHS—"  

"Is not a tax-exempt deduction," I interrupted. "Though, if you keep the temperature in this tomb below sixty-eight degrees to preserve your wrappings, we can classify a portion of
your utility bill as a necessary preservation expense under Schedule C."   The glowing blue light in his eye sockets dimmed slightly. He slowly lowered his scepter, set it against his
throne, and let out a dry, raspy sigh that smelled like three-thousand-year-old
papyrus.   "Do you... accept gold bullion?" he asked, his voice returning to a normal, un-amplified whisper.   "Only if it's converted to U.S. Dollars through a certified exchange and properly declared on Form 8300," I said. "Now, let's talk about those canopic jars—if they
contain precious metals, we're going to need a third-party appraisal."

God and the Devil

People often ask me if God and the Devil exist, and whether our division handles their accounts.  The short answer? Yes, they both exist.  The Creator of the Universe, however, is not a U.S. taxpayer. God is omnipresent, which means He technically doesn't maintain a single legal residency within the borders of the United States. Furthermore, His churches,
temples, and religious institutions operate under tax-exempt status. As long as
the heavenly realms stay out of commercial enterprise, we leave them be.   The Devil, on the other hand, is much more accessible. He doesn't do his own grunt work—he delegates soul collection to junior demons—and he is heavily represented by elite, ultra-expensive corporate law firms in Los Angeles and Manhattan.  There's a reason people call him the "King of Lawyers." His contracts are terrifyingly detailed masterpieces of legal craft.   However, hidden deep within the standard boilerplate text of every infernal contract—usually buried in the fine print on page forty-seven under clause 8B—is a single, innocent-looking sentence:

"The Damned party assumes all sole financial and legal responsibility for
any personal tax liabilities arising from wealth, assets, or material benefits
accrued as a result of this Covenant."  

Most mortals are so eager to sell their soul for fame and fortune that
they never bother to read the fine print.  Which brings us to our favorite house calls.   When a struggling musician suddenly buys a thirty-room mansion in cash, or a failed businessman suddenly acquires a fleet of private jets with zero visible income, our red-flag algorithms instantly trigger an audit. We show up at their door with a clipboard and a summons.   When they panic and try to blame the Devil, we just slide the contracts across the table and point out clause 8B. The Devil may win your eternal soul when you die, but until that day comes, the IRS collects on the income. He gets the spirit; we get thirty-seven percent of the liquid capital.   The Devil might negotiate eternal damnation, but he doesn't get to negotiate your tax liabilities.

The Celtic Sea God and the Ultimate Exorcism

Most supernatural entities fall into line once they realize we aren't going away. But every now and then, some ancient power decides it’s above human law.   A few years ago, we
ran into an issue with Manannán mac Lir—an ancient Celtic sea deity operating
out of the rugged coast of Maine.   For centuries, he’d been extorting local fishermen, demanding gold, fine spirits, and catches of livestock as "tribute" to grant them safe passage through the foggy waters. But in recent decades, the sea god had gone
corporate. He’d opened a lucrative chain of coastal seafood restaurants, a charter boat service, and several commercial bait shops.   The problem? He ran everything strictly in
unrecorded cash, completely omitting his earnings. He viewed the profits as
divine tribute; we viewed it as tax evasion under 26 U.S.C. §7201.   We sent him official notices. In response, he mailed a wooden bucket full of rotting cod to our regional office.

We sent a formal summons, and he placed a curse on the local post office, causing all
federal mail to catch fire.   He thought his ancient magic made him untouchable. He was wrong.   We didn't duel him with spells or holy weapons. We used bureaucracy.   We filed
tax liens on his restaurant properties. We issued bank levies, freezing every single one of his corporate accounts. We seized his charter boats, padlocked his bait shops, and confiscated his golden artifacts under federal forfeiture laws.   Without his money, he couldn't pay his staff or maintain his businesses. His restaurants closed. His charter boats
were auctioned off on a government liquidation site.   As his physical presence faded from the shoreline, something fascinating happened. The local fishermen stopped leaving
offerings at his shrines. Tourists stopped telling stories about the old god of
the mist. Without human belief and financial tribute to sustain him, his power
withered away.   Within a year, the terrifying Celtic sea deity had shrunk down to a faint, harmless fog that occasionally drifted across the harbor. Then, even that vanished.   We closed his file with three simple words:  Taxpayer Nonexistent.

Last Assignment Before Vacation

Just last week, I was called into the Assistant Regional Commissioner's office.   Behind the desk sat Arthur Vance—a tired-looking man in his late fifties with thinning gray hair, reading glasses perched on his nose, and a half-eaten bran muffin sitting on a paper napkin. He looked like a guy who’d spent thirty years doing municipal audits, because he had.  "Your collection metrics are the highest in the department," Arthur said, taking off his glasses and rubbing the bridge of his nose before sliding a massive, leather-bound file across the desk. "Which is why I'm giving you this last file before you head out on leave."  

 I opened the folder. The target was a prominent global venture capitalist who owned massive stakes in defense tech, real estate, and private space exploration. But buried deep beneath a labyrinth of offshore shell companies was an ancient dragon nesting thousands of feet below Yellowstone National Park, masking its enormous thermal signature in the
natural volcanic activity zone while sitting on a potential two-hundred-million-dollar
hoard of gold bullion, rare jewels, and unrecorded cryptocurrency.   "He’s refused every standard certified letter we’ve sent," Arthur noted dryly, adjusting his cardigan. "So
logistics approved a special equipment requisition for you."   He pushed a paper authorization form across the desk. "It's an Air Force-grade, heavy fire suit. The kind
airbase fire fighters use on runway crashes for high-intensity jet fuel fires. Aluminized fabric, integrated rebreather, rated for three thousand degrees Fahrenheit continuous
radiant heat. It’s heavy, uncomfortable, and smells like vulcanized rubber, but
it’ll keep you from turning into carbon while you deliver the summons."   I signed the requisition form and slid the target file into my briefcase.

Honestly, I was looking forward to two weeks on a quiet beach in Cabo, sipping margaritas and not thinking about spreadsheets or blood-curdling screeches, but duty calls. Nothing gets between a public servant and his approved paid time off—especially not a overgrown lizard with a hoarding problem.   "A dragon can breathe all the fire he wants," I said, offering a faint smile as I checked my belt to make sure my silver badge was secure. "But he can't burn through Internal Revenue Code Section 61. I'll have his audit wrapped up by Friday, and I'm catching my flight on Saturday morning."   Because at the end of the day, monsters can hide in the shadows, they can command dark magic, and they can terrorize mortals for thousands of years. But sooner or later, they all learn the exact same lesson:   The IRS doesn't care who you are, what you are, or how you make your money. We just want our cut.....and we ALWAYS collect!

Rupert was one of the laziest people known to man. This was a fact that he was either too aware of or too ignorant of, because in the 29 years and 11 months anyone had known him, he never changed and never wanted to change. He was content to do as little with his life as he could, and he was proud of it.

Rupert, without a hint of humor or irony, decided his 30th birthday would also be his retirement party. Retirement from any work whatsoever. His plan, in his words, was to “not have to worry about the usual 9-to-5 lifestyle, seek out options, settle down.” Their father, in his late 60s and still working, scoffed.
“Your whole goddamn life has been settling down. What do you think part 2 has to offer? Honestly, Rupert, when are you going to cut the crap?” After hearing that, Dad was uninvited to the birthday party.

In reality, Rupert didn’t have a 9-to-5 lifestyle. It was more of a 10-to-4 lifestyle. None of his jobs ever lasted more than 2 years, provided he chose to go to work at all. See, Rupert suffered from the three Nesses. Laziness, tardiness, deceitfulness. He would often show up late, take an ungodly amount of time in the bathroom, and add 10 minutes to the start and end of his lunch hour, and those were just his greatest hits. His favorite ways of getting out of work made use of his cat-like reflexes and his ninja-style ability to sneak out of something he dreaded doing.
These were just jobs that he got fired from.

The truth is it wasn’t always entirely his fault. You see, his job life was incredibly unlucky. His first job was at a video rental… before it closed down; his second job, an all-you-can-eat buffet, which also closed down. Photography film store, phased out. Bathroom attendant, replaced by a robot. Professional circus freak, no longer exists.
He was so unlucky with employment that he saw it as a sign from God that 30 years old was time enough to spend golfing and enjoying his “twilight years.”

His only viable source of income was sports betting, something he did modestly well in, but not enough to stay afloat as he foolishly idealized. Even the house he lived in was bought and paid for by his parents on his 21st. They foolishly thought that if they got him a house, it would give him enough independence where he could get a career going without the stress of paying rent and causing him to move back in with them. 9 years later, it had the opposite effect. While he didn’t move back in with his parents, he never really garnered a so-called career to speak of; the job he was currently quitting had been paying him high school teenager rates since he started there. So he wanted to retire from all that and, after all those tiny wins on the bets, he finally decided to spend it on his party.

Gerald was a people-pleaser. Gerald had no problems getting up and commuting, helping his fellow man, bending over backwards to get everything he felt like he’d earned in life. He had a job, a girlfriend, a car, his own house, everything he ever wanted, thanks to good old-fashioned hard work. His only flaw was that he was Rupert’s brother, and Rupert was about to turn 30. Gerald didn’t resent Rupert for his laid-back way of life; in fact, it was almost nonexistent in the eyes of Gerald. See, Gerald spent his whole life pleasing their parents, pleasing his bosses, pleasing everyone; he couldn’t possibly object to anything Rupert asked for. Could he? Not sweet Rupert. Sweet, stupid Rupert.
So when his brother’s birthday came up, Gerald had to get him the perfect present.

“Are your eyes still closed?” Gerald beamed as he nudged his brother through the front doorway of Rupert’s house.
“Yes. Of course.” Rupert replied with his hands covering his eyes.
Gerald continued to shepherd Rupert over to the corner left side of his already gigantic porch. Next to the doorway was a huge thing covered in a sheet.
“Ok open them!” Gerald instructed. As Rupert took his hands away, Gerald pulled the sheet off it. It was an old antique rocking chair; nothing like any rocking chair that Rupert had seen before. The wood resembled bone appendages; its color was somewhere between cream and brown, and there was a cushion with little sloths patterned all over it, which added a shred of comfortability to an already tough sell.
“Oh my god! Gerald, I love this!” Rupert cried. “See, you understand what I was talking about. You get this whole thing I’m going for.”
“I got it from some antique store,” Gerald replied. “The second I saw it, I knew it was very… you.”
“Why, I can face it into the street. Watch people walking past! My own personal theater of live performance.”
“You do like to people-watch.” Gerald stated. Rupert approached it and looked underneath.
“It says Belphegor.” He examined. “I wonder what that means.”
“It’s probably one of those wacky names they give it.” Gerald surmised. “Like that Wayfair company with all those human names.”
Rupert was about to sit on it.
“Do you know anything about who owned it before me?”
“Yeah, the guy before you died in it… apparently.” Gerald laughed. Rupert immediately changed his mind and stood back up.
“Oh god. You did… clean it down before you brought it here, right?”
“…Sure.” Gerald lied.
“I don’t know, I still feel weird about it. Do you know if it was a valued… personal item in the family?”
“They said that the guy never had a joyous moment while he was in that chair.” Gerald stated rather bluntly. Rupert looked it up and down.
“Ah, screw it. It’s mine now. Hey Ron! Come outside and look what Gerald got me! In fact! Let’s bring the cake out here.”

After an hour Rupert finally sat on his present. Everyone followed him out onto the porch and sang happy birthday, including their mother, who was the most ecstatic.
As far as Rupert was concerned, this was the greatest gift he’d ever received.

The next day, Gerald got a rather strange call from his brother.
“Gerald! It’s Rupert… your brother.”
“Oh hey, Rupert. How’d you go with cleaning up last night?”
“Yeah. Yeah good. Listen, man, you’re gonna need to come over. I have a bit of an emergency.”
“Emergency? What is it? Did you lock yourself out of your house again?” Gerald laughed. Silence on the other end.
“Yeah… It’s probably best that you come over. I can’t explain over the phone. And if I could, you probably wouldn’t believe me.”

When he got there, he saw Rupert sitting in the rocking chair with a very sour look on his face.
“I see you’re really utilizing that thing, huh?” He laughed. Rupert didn’t seem to share that sentiment. In fact, Rupert looked very afraid.
“It’s the strangest thing!” He stated. “I can’t seem to get out of this chair. I haven’t been able to since yesterday.”
Gerald cocked his head. “What do you mean?”
“Well, when I sat in it yesterday, for the cake, I just couldn’t get back up. Of course, I thought it might’ve been because I had too many drinks, so I sent everyone home thinking I had dead legs. But now… I don’t know what it is.”
“You’ve been in this chair the whole night?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to say. I haven’t been able to get out of it. It feels like there’s some… thing holding me down and preventing me from getting up. Luckily, I had my phone on me. It was on like 2%, so I called you as soon as I could.”
“Ok, umm… just calm down and we’ll get you out of it… somehow.”
Gerald and Rupert then spent the next 20 minutes looking at Rupert’s predicament as if they were trying to lift a couch through a very narrow doorway. Gerald then attempted to lift Rupert out of this infernal prison.
“Wait, stop. You’re bending my spine. Wait… ARRRHGGGH!!!” Rupert screamed.
“What? What do you want me to do?”
“Just… let me go for a second! Let me go,” Rupert cried. Gerald released him from his grip. “There’s got to be an easy way of doing this.”
“Should I get the saw?”
“And accidentally cut my leg? What are you, out of your mind?”
“I don’t know. I…” Gerald trailed off.
“Just get the saw. Get the saw and maybe like a drill or something. Some kind of drill.”
Gerald then sawed his way into the chair. The saw wouldn’t cut through it. He tried the drill; it short-circuited and broke down. He tried the saw again, but the tool just broke apart under its own force.
“I don’t understand. How is this possible?” Gerald pondered.
“I think right now we need to abandon the question of why this is happening, and focus more on how I get out of it.”

Eventually, every single emergency service was called to Rupert’s house. While the police and firefighters needed a little convincing to get over there (Gerald tried to fight through the obvious laughter coming from the other side), the ambulance people were the only ones who took it seriously. Eventually, they all showed up not because they wanted to help Rupert with his problem, but more out of curiosity. They wanted to see this thing for themselves. The firefighters brought out their very sharp axe, causing Rupert to squirm in his seat over fear that one wrong swing and he could very well lose his manhood. After the axe didn’t take, the police tried ‘shooting’ him out, which also didn’t work for obvious reasons.
“Well, it’s certainly not physical.” An onlooking doctor explained. He was looking at the chair as if it were a rare ancient artifact. “He hasn’t fused here; he certainly hasn’t been nailed. In fact, by all accounts there should be no physical reason that he should be confined to this chair.”
“So what is it?” Gerald asked.
“I’m really not sure. Was it something you ate, Rupert? What have you been eating in the last 24 hours?”
“Party food.” Rupert replied bluntly. He was already fed up with his newfound affliction and Gerald could tell.
“What kind of party food. Any drugs?”
“Just party food.”
“Huh.” The doctor stood up.
“What ‘huh’? What are you saying, Doc?”
“I might need to run a few more tests. You mind if I take a saliva and a blood sample from you?”
“Sure, but if you want a urine sample, everyone will need to turn around.” Rupert said, followed by laughter from the crowd.
“When was the last time you ate?”
“Yesterday. In fact, I could go for something right now. Anyone want any pizza?”
Suddenly fifteen hands went up.
“Figures. If I’m going to be subjected to humiliation, I might as well be paying for it. Say, Gerald.”
“Yes, Rupert?” Gerald replied, leaning down by his side.
“Be a dear and order about six pizzas. One of everything.”
“Are you sure you can afford that, brother?”
“Yeah, for sure. While I was waiting for you, I bet on the Scavengers game.”
“Scavengers? They haven’t won a game all season.”
“I know. But something in me told me to bet on them. And since the last time I checked, they were up 15 points!”
A few murmurs rippled through the crowd. Half a dozen people then checked their phones.
“He’s right!” One of the cops claimed. More murmurs.
“The odds on that must’ve been through the roof.” Another said.
“I stand to win two grand. So yeah, Gerald, if you can get that and some garlic bread. Garlic bread, anybody? Yeah, garlic bread, ok.”
Gerald, feeling like he should’ve been doing more, just nodded and got up.
“Sure, brother. I’ll get right onto it.”
“Love you,” Rupert replied flatly.

Later, after the show was over and everyone went home, Gerald brought a few things out for Rupert onto the porch. A side table, a six-pack of beers, a pack of smokes, and a phone charger plugged into an extension cord that led into the house.
“Are you sure you don’t want to sleep in the house?” Gerald asked, handing him a beer. “I don’t know if I like you being out here all night.”
“I was out here last night and was fine,” Rupert smirked. “Besides, it’s still warm out; I think it would be relaxing. I mean it’s not every day where you can just… not do anything, and get away with it.”
“Well, some people don’t have that luxury.” Gerald shrugged.
“Also, I need to write a grocery list of things I need you to get tomorrow.”
“You think you’ll still be here tomorrow?”
“I was this morning. Why wouldn’t I be again?”

Rupert was there the next day, and the day after that and the day after that. Eventually his parents came by. His mother said she was heartbroken that “My Rupert is in such a horrible state.” His father just laughed his ass off, saying it served him right.

Later that week, Gerald went over to Rupert’s with his groceries.
Doctor Johnson, the guy who ran his tests the other day, was there with him.
“Ahh, Gerald, right on time.” Rupert sang.
“I was just talking to the good doctor about this whole… what-have-you. He told me that ‘you might want to sit down for this ’; I was ready to smack him.”
“It’s the strangest thing.” Doctor Johnson shrugged. “His blood work came back fine. He doesn’t appear to have anything broken or dislocated. And he hasn’t been through any traumatic events recently.”
“Other than turning 30.” Rupert joked.
“You think this is all in his mind?” Gerald asked.
“That was my first guess, yes. See, there are certain types of catatonia from trauma. Some people are completely paralyzed; some people only get it from the waist down.”
“Doctor, you don’t understand. Gerald tried lifting me out of that chair, and it physically hurt me. Almost like my legs and spine were being moved in a way they shouldn’t.”
“Yeah, it was like he’s become one with the chair.” Gerald added.
“But that can’t be right. There must be some…” The doctor stroked his chin.
“Doc, I think we need to abandon the question of why this is happening and focus more on how we can get him out of it.” Gerald stated.
“My suggestion? Get a priest, or an exorcist. Have a good day, gentlemen.” Doctor Johnson then left.
“Rupert. What’s going on? I tried calling you about your groceries.”
“I must’ve slept in.”
“It’s 4 o’clock in the afternoon.”
“What do you want me to tell ya? I didn’t get any sleep last night.”
“Was it too cold? Damn it, Rupert. I knew this would happen.”
“No, no. It wasn’t cold. It’s just… you know. My ass hurts. My back hurts. And those DAMN KIDS ARE PLAYING THEIR LOUD MUSIC UP AND DOWN THE STREET!” Rupert yelled that last part, assuming that the kids in the neighborhood could hear him. “It’s that Donovan boy, I swear.”
“I can put you inside.”
“No, no, and watch television all day? I can do that on my phone. It’s not all bad, though.”
“Oh?”
“I don’t know; ever since I got stuck here, I’ve been having nothing but good luck. I’ve won $5000 in betting, I’m having all this fresh air I never thought I’d have, and the mailman hand-delivers my mail.”
“You won 5 grand this week?”
“Every single thing I bet on has won. At first I thought maybe it was just a coincidence. I mean, I’ve had big wins before, but not this consistent. And I used to do it with small stuff, like 1.5-to-1 odds. Now every risk I take pays off huge. I’m not even betting on the safe results anymore. Why do that when I can make more on the long shots?”
“Way to go, Rupert.” Gerald cheered, patting him on the shoulder. “See, if you had put this to good use in high school, you would’ve completed your grade 12.”
“I keep telling you. The school was terrified by my intelligence.”
“Ok buddy.” Gerald laughed. “Then look, I’ll make a few calls to get a priest…”
“Doctors. What do they know?” Rupert scoffed.
“Rupert, if this chair has something to do with this we-“
“The chair is fine. We don’t need some witch doctor-“
“Witch doctor? It’ll be a catholic priest-“
“And we don’t need them coming in and ruining what I have going here.”
Gerald looked at him.
“Oh I see what this is,” Gerald scoffed. “You’re worried that if a priest blesses the chair, then you’re going to lose your winning streak.”
“And so why ruin a good thing?”
“Rupert, you can’t be in a chair forever.”
“If it means winning so much money that I don’t have to work another day in my life, hell yeah I’m gonna stay in this chair.”
“At least let me bring you into the house.”
“Why are you obsessed with me going into the house? I love it out here.”
“You hate it out here.”
“I don’t… mind it out here.” Rupert compromised, trying to save face.
“Have it your way, brother.” Gerald sighed, handing Rupert his grocery bag. “But seriously, keep your phone on at all times. I was worried about you.”
“If I have any issues, I’ll let you know. Thanks for getting my sundries.”
“Anyway, I should really get back; otherwise Nicole is going to be wondering what’s happening.”
“I can’t believe you’re getting married.”
“Yeah, I’m still in awe of it myself.”
“I wonder how you’re going to get me there.” Rupert laughed. Gerald didn’t see the funny side.
“Don’t talk like that; you’ll be fine in no time.”
“No, it’s because I hate weddings. But while we’re on the subject of that. I really don’t see myself getting out of this chair anytime soon.”

Despite his apprehension, Rupert attended Gerald’s wedding, chair and all. Gerald did make one small change, however. He asked Rupert if he was happy to give up being the best man. Rupert agreed, believing that it would be a very odd thing to see, for all those involved, a man in a rocking chair making a toast.
After that, Rupert didn’t see his brother much for the next few weeks; he didn’t need to. He had the fresh air, all the food delivery that he could eat, and more money than he knew what to do with. He even made it on the news.

“We’re standing here live with Rupert Davis!” The female reporter said to her camera. “A man who, up until a few months ago, was able-bodied and penniless. But after sitting in this rocking chair. All that changed for him. Now, he’s a self-made millionaire, and he’s still not getting out of that chair. Now Rupert, tell us. How did this happen?”
“Well, Cynthia,” Rupert said smoothly. “It’s the darnedest thing. Can I say darn?”
“That’s probably the only thing you can say on Channel 6.” She smiled.
“So my brother Gerald. Hi Gerald.” He waved at Gerald in the crowd; Gerald waved back. “My brother, he bought me this rocking chair. And when I sat down, all of a sudden I just won everything. Sporting events, dog races, scratch and wins. I mean, I’d buy a lottery ticket but I feel like that wouldn’t be fair to everyone else.” He laughed; a real natural in front of the camera.
“Do you feel that winning all this money is the reason you haven’t left the chair? Are you worried you’re going to taint your luck should you get out of it?”
“See, I believe the chair is magic. I mean, I literally can’t get out of it, even if I wanted to.”
“Magic, really?” The reporter asked excitedly.
“Oh yeah, Cynthia. Most definitely.”
“So if you could get out of it, would you?”
“Well I talked to Gerald, and we figured that if the chair and the luck are related. If I get out of the chair, I might lose my winning streak. So, not a chance.”
“Fascinating.”
“Would you?” Rupert smiled.
“Probably not. Now I think the big question on everybody’s lips- certainly my lips- is… how do you go to the bathroom?”
Rupert laughed, followed by a moment of blushing.
“Yeah, we have a system for that.”
“Well, there you have it!” The reporter turned back to the camera and beamed. “This is Cynthia Allbright, Channel 6!”

After everyone had left, Gerald cracked open a beer with Rupert.
“You on TV. I never thought I’d see the day.” Gerald laughed.
“It’s exactly how I imagined it.” Rupert smiled. Gerald put the beer down.
“Listen, Rupert. I gotta talk to you. See… now that Nicole and I are married, we gotta figure out what we’re doing.”
“What are you trying to say, brother?” Rupert asked, looking slightly anxious.
“It means it… might not… be that easy to come over as much anymore.”
“What, you’re going to leave me?”
“No, no, I didn’t say that at all. I’m just saying that… perhaps you might want to consider a live-in housekeeper.”
“They’re not gonna understand my needs. They probably won’t even understand why I have the needs that I do.”
“Well, if you pay them enough, I’m sure-”
“I don’t want them; I want you. I want my brother. Tell you what. Why don’t you live here.”
“Yeah right.” Gerald scoffed.
“Why did you scoff? It’s a great idea!”
“No, I couldn’t do that to you.”
“Why not?”
“And use your bedroom? No way.”
“You can use the other bedroom if you like.”
“Ehh, I don’t know.”
“What if I buy you a house? Somewhere close by.”
“I can’t ask that of you.”
“Well, you’re not asking; I’m offering. Look, it’s either you move in here, or I get you a house. God knows I can afford it. Pick one, whatever option that will soothe your poor catholic guilt conscience, because I really don’t care.”
“… How big of a house. And Venetians, can we get Venetians?”
“Of course you pick that one. I’ve always said you were a bastard. But yes, I’m sure we can do that.”

And by late September, Rupert, who had accumulated up to 3 million dollars in bet wins, bought Gerald and Nicole a house that was one street over. He even paid Gerald $10,000 so he didn’t have to worry about making ends meet at work. After all, he had the money for it; so much so that the taxation department began questioning Rupert about how he would correctly file his new windfall. Not to mention the four betting websites accusing him of cheating; their claim was that he must have had some kind of insider information on the teams he bet on. They dropped the accusations when they found out he was a 30-year-old nobody confined to a rocking chair, but they still prohibited him from using their sites anyway. Only one website continued to do business with him and even made him a company sponsor; Rupert didn’t know whether they felt sorry for him or saw it as an excellent marketing strategy. “Luckiest Man on Earth’s official betting site!” As for the dog racing, he simply got his neighbor Harry to go down to the sports bar twice a week.
Things took a dark turn, though, as they so often do.
It was early October when Rupert was enjoying a crisp but not freezing night on his usual spot on the porch. His phone was on 1% battery, and as he reached for his charger, the extension cord snagged on one of the planks of wood on the floor. It jerked out of Rupert’s hand and fell to the ground—a couple of feet out of reach.
“Shit!” He hissed to himself. It wasn’t a great concern, though; he had his dinner and beverages all prepared ahead of time. He figured he could just wait it out until morning and ask the mailman to pass it over.

But then he heard it. A woman screaming her head off down the street. At first, Rupert was curious. Then he saw her limping, in a slow sprint, past his house.
“Come back here bitch!” A male voice, belonging to someone he couldn’t see, came from a distance. Then he saw the perpetrator's face—a dangerous-looking guy holding a hunting knife. Rupert did everything he could not to make a noise. But his stupid automatic porch light came on and shone directly onto the man.
“Who’s that?” He yelled out. Then he walked up to the garden path.
“Is it you, Rocking Chair?!” He screamed.
“No man, I don’t want any trouble. It’s… it’s an automatic light.” Rupert stammered out. The man walked up onto the porch.
“What the hell you looking at? I’ll kill you, close your eyes!” The man roared. Rupert did as he was told. The man leaned down next to Rupert, who, by this point, was shaking.
“What I do… is none of your FUCKING business. You hear me?! I oughta slice your throat right now.” With that, the man brought the blade up to Rupert’s face and lightly held it against his neck.
“Open your eyes.” Rupert didn’t have to; he already knew the blade was there, but he opened them anyway. “Did you hear what I said!”
Rupert nodded vigorously. The man looked at him.
“What are you, some kinda cripple?” He asked. Rupert nodded. The man took his knife away. “Understand something, cripple. Keep the porch light off at night. Because if I see a porch light on and I think you’re trying to incriminate me, I get scared. And if I'm scared, I don’t have to tell you how scared you’ll be.”
He turned and walked away before looking behind him.
“You didn’t see nothing.”

The next day, Gerald got a call from the police who told him about what happened.
“I want you to get me a gun. A big one. Like a shotgun. And security cameras all over the front yard.” Rupert rambled. He was still visibly shaken.
“You really want a gun?” Gerald asked.
“Yes. And we need extension cords longer than this sorry excuse. You know I could’ve died last night!”
“I know I can get a gun; I just… don’t know how I can get one for you specifically.”
“Take me down there; it should be fine. It’s this street, brother. It’s no longer safe outside.”
“So come inside!”
“No! I shouldn’t have to.”
Suddenly, one of the kids passed by the house.
“Hey, Mister Davis!” The kid called out. “You finally giving out candy this Halloween?”
“You go to hell!” Rupert roared.
“Ok so what we’re not going to do is curse at the children,” Gerald said condescendingly. “Especially after you said you wanted a gun.”
“Oh he doesn’t count. That Donovan kid is an asshole; he always says the most annoying things to me, like ‘Oh, how was your day?’ Screw him.”
Eventually, Gerald caved and got Rupert a double-barrel shotgun, right by his side.

Halloween came around. Although Rupert wasn’t prepared to blast away at kids (more so in case that crazy guy came back), he had foolishly assumed that having the shotgun by his side indicated that he was not handing out candy and that he meant it. This did little to deter the kids, since they thought it was part of whatever horror theme he was going for.
“Trick ‘r’ Treat.” A group of kids said in unison with their father in the background.
“No, I’m not doing Halloween, kids.” Rupert said bluntly. They all looked a little let down. A few of them walked away sadly.
“Yeah, nice going, Davis!” The father scowled.
“Get lost, Grant!” Rupert replied. “What, you think because I’m out here that I’m going to, just, give in? My condition is not your Halloween costume, pal!”
“What?” The dad asked.
“Oh just go away, alright?!”
Once most of the children cleared his porch there was another trick ‘r’ treater still standing on the steps and staring at Rupert intently. This one didn’t look like a kid. In fact, it didn’t look human at all. It was slouching and had what looked like a witch’s mask on: a long pointed nose, an ugly face, and great horns coming from its head.
“Nice costume,” Rupert said, admiring the realism. “Anyway, as I told the others, I’m not doing it.”
The figure just stared at him.
“You heard me! Get out of here! Get!” The figure walked away slowly and silently.

Later, Rupert wrote a sign that said, “No Trick ‘r’ Treaters. Please!” Naturally, a few kids wanted to defy the warning. Rupert learned this when a few 10-year-olds rolled up with no parental supervision.
“Trick ‘r’ Treat.” The head kid demanded, holding out his bag.
“Can’t you read?” Rupert sighed. “I’m not going to be tricking OR treating!”
“That’s not fair!” The kid stamped his foot.
“Fair? Who said life was fair?! I’ve been in this chair for months! Where’s my fairness?”
“You have to give us candy.” One of the other kids demanded, clearly unmoved by Rupert’s statement.
“I don’t have to give you shitttt. Where are your parents?” As Rupert looked out for any grown-ups that might’ve been standing from a distance behind them - as they usually do - these kids were quickly turning into an angry mob.
“That’s part of the rules!” The head honcho cried. “That’s the rules of Halloween! Now trick ‘r’ treat!”
“Rules? Look, some of you aren’t even wearing costumes! There is zero effort here!”
“That’s the rules of Halloween!” The kid repeated. “Now trick ‘r’ treat!”
“No trick ‘r’ treat!”
“TRICK ‘R’ TREAT!”
“NO TRICK ‘R’ TREAT!”
“Alright!” The head kid stepped back. “You asked for it, buddy. Men! Take position!”
“What are you doing?” Rupert asked, suddenly alarmed.
“Aim!” The kids pulled out eggs. “Fire!”
Dozens of eggs were catapulted in Rupert’s direction.
“Ah the shell cut me! Ow ow!” Rupert screamed as he was completely covered in broken shells and yolk.
“Trick ‘r’ treat, JERK!” The head kid scowled.
“Why you little…”
Rupert leaped out of his chair and tried to run after them, only for his legs to give out on him. He face-planted his garden path, while the kids laughed, threw him the finger, and ran away. Rupert turned around to look at the empty rocking chair, sitting vacantly on his porch. He was out of his chair. After months, he was no longer confined! He was free.
“How the-“ he began before stopping himself short; there was no time to ponder over the particulars at that moment. He had to go to Gerald’s house. He struggled to get up, legs stiff and back like jelly. As he straightened up, he moved his legs forward, left foot, right foot. He shuffled down the garden path and out into the street. He turned to walk down the busy suburban neighborhood, shifting past passing truck ‘r’ treaters who turned and either murmured to each other in disbelief or pointed and laughed.
“Got to get to Gerald. I’ve got to…” he muttered to himself.
“Cool Frankenstein walk, Mr. Davis.” The Donovan boy called out as he passed.
“Eat shit, Donovan!” Rupert hissed.
Rupert then turned the corner of the street. He was about to walk down it when he saw the crazy man who had attacked him weeks ago. Half a dozen police officers were holding the man down; one of them was tasing him over and over, doing little to deter him and only making him visibly angrier.

Rupert turned around and decided to go to the other corner of the street to get to Gerald’s house. Every nerve in his body gave him that fuzzy, electrical feeling inside him. Full-body pins and needles screamed out in every direction. He passed his house again before reaching the other corner. Everything in him told him to sit down and take it easy, but he had spent months sitting down and taking it easy. The time was now to move before whatever demonic thing in the world changed its mind. He moved down a couple houses, all the while thinking, “just another block, just another block.”

“Hey, look. He’s finally out of his chair. The guy who didn’t want to trick ‘r’ treat.” A voice came from one of the alleys. Out came the head trick ‘r’ treater that launched an egg attack on him. Only he didn’t have just four or five friends with him. Now there were almost a dozen kids behind him, all dressed in various Halloween costumes.
“He’s gonna tell on us.” One of them called out. Another one had a foam bat that, to a regular adult, wouldn’t pack a great wallop; but with Rupert’s condition, it could probably do more damage.
“Get him!” The ringleader ordered with a smirk. Suddenly, the kids ran after him, causing Rupert to turn back the way he came. His limping and shuffling turned into a kind of quick-paced hobble as he made his way back to his house. Angry children started gaining on him as the gap between them began closing. Then he tripped and fell, and they pounced on him; witches, vampires, ghosts and pirates all started kicking him and bringing the foam bat down onto his shaking body. He was only two houses away from his porch, so he began crawling away.
“Pick him up!” One of them cried. Four or five of them did their best to lift him like he was some unmanned island’s sacrificial animal ready to be put onto a spit roast. They brought him to his porch.
“Tie him to the chair!” The ringleader commanded with venom.
“No! No! Stop!!” Rupert cried out but was too exhausted to fight it. One of the kids dealt him a surprisingly powerful slug to the face.
“This will teach you.” Scowled the one who dealt the hit.
Suddenly, ropes surrounded him, wrapping around him and the rocking chair.
“Next time, be prepared.” The ringleader hissed. They all then ran off, leaving only the trace of a couple of distant giggles to signify they were there.
Luckily, these kids were no Boy Scouts, and their rope didn’t affect his ability to get his phone from his pocket. He found Gerald’s number and put it on speaker. It reached his voicemail.
“Gerald, they tied me up—these little shits in the neighborhood. But the most incredible thing happened. Come quick!”

Gerald had an early night, so he couldn’t get to his phone until the next day. When he heard the message, he rushed over to Rupert’s house.
“I smell like egg.” Rupert sulked.
“Jesus, what happened?” Gerald exclaimed, loosening the rope from Rupert’s chair.
“I got beat up by school children. I don’t want to talk about it. Listen, something happened last night. I got out!”
Gerald stopped untying the rope and leaned down beside Rupert.
“What are you saying, Rupert?”
“I got out!” He repeated, excitedly. “I actually got out of the chair! I… I don’t know how, I don’t know why. But I got up! I tried walking to your house, but I ran into the kids, and they brought me back and tied me up.”
“Rupert, that doesn’t make any sense. Why last night?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it was because it was Halloween.”
“Oh yeah, I heard about something like this.” Gerald replied. He pulled out his phone and searched for a video. He pulled up the video.
“All Hallow’s Eve, or Halloween as it’s known these days, grants any trapped spirit to freely roam the earth for just one night,” The narrator explained, followed by an animated graphic. “Not for long, though. Once the night is over, the spirit must return to its place of confinement.”
“That’s it!” Gerald exclaimed. “Obviously whatever is holding you captive just… left its post, and freed you from it.”
“I saw a funny-looking guy staring at me last night. Didn’t look human. Maybe that was it.” He tried moving out of the chair to no avail.
“Guess it came back.”
“Does that mean I’m going to have to wait a year to get out again?”
“You’re actually going to try to get out? What about all the money?”
“Gerald, what good is money when I can’t enjoy it because I’m stuck here? I miss doing things. Anything. I miss going out and seeing people. I miss sleeping in a bed. You see that soccer field there?”
Rupert pointed at the one directly across the street from his house.
“Yeah?”
“As long as I’ve been living here, I’ve never been on that field. I've seen a game or two. Since being in this chair, I’ve watched every game, just hoping one day I could walk across the street and enjoy it. Enjoy… life… I guess. I need to get out of this chair. Even if it takes a year.”
“We’re going to make this work, ok?” Gerald patted him on the shoulder.
“Take me inside. I’m going to be spending a lot more time there, I think.”
So Gerald got Harry, the neighbor, to help him lift the chair in. They put Rupert in the bath, hosed him down, dried him off, and placed him next to the window inside.

The months went by. Rupert started getting fat, lethargic, and slow. When he wasn’t watching the television from his window, he was getting Gerald to turn him around to look out the window… at the soccer field. It took Rupert a while to find a delivery driver willing to enter his house to deliver his food. Many were understandably worried for their safety, since it was a very unusual request. Gerald’s wife made him food until he finally found a regular delivery driver he could rely on. He even had a small birthday celebration with their parents, Gerald and Nicole. But he urged them to celebrate only his birthday, not the one-year anniversary of the incident.

8 months had passed since the last time Rupert had been out on the porch; he stayed in for Spring, but when it hit Summer, he knew he couldn’t spend those three months inside. It felt odd to be back in his usual spot after such a long absence.

Finally, Halloween approached, and Rupert was prepared. So much so that he would even casually point his shotgun at the punks who harassed him last year, with intent to fire, all the while he waited for Gerald, who promised he’d be there. He waited, and waited, and waited. Hours went by and still no sign of him. Eventually, Rupert decided he couldn’t wait any longer, so he held onto the arms of the chair and rocked it back so hard that it launched him out of the chair and onto the garden path. Because he’d been seated longer than the last Halloween, he couldn’t stand at all. This didn’t deter Rupert; even though he landed on the concrete pretty hard, he dead-crawled down the garden path anyway.
“Nice zombie crawl, Mister Davis!”
“Donovan, I swear to god.” He snapped.
Finally, he got out onto the curb. If he had waited for a passerby, then maybe someone could’ve called an ambulance. But he kept on crawling until he was in the middle of the road, ready to flag down an oncoming car. Suddenly, a car came out of nowhere and hit the brakes to a screech. A man got out.
“My God, what happened to you?” The man leaned down.
“Get an ambulance.” Rupert croaked as he attempted to get up
“Hold on there, let’s get you sitting down. Is this your house? It’s probably safer to get you in there, I think
The man then lifted him and brought him to the front porch.
“It’s locked.” The man said. “Do you have a key?”
“Pocket.”
“Hold on, let’s put you down on this chair.”
“Nooo!” Rupert cried out. It was too late. The ambulance arrived, and so did Gerald. But too much time had passed, and once again Rupert was trapped.

“Where were you?!” Rupert yelled.
“I’m sorry, brother. I had to finish work,” Gerald explained, shrugging. “What with the baby and all. It’s hard to juggle everything.”
“Then what good are you.” Rupert waved his hand.
“What did you just say?” Gerald demanded.
“You heard me!”
“Ok, that’s it!” Gerald yelled. “For the last year I’ve been running around, tending to your every whim, and this is the thanks I get?”
“I got you a house, Gerald.”
“You got me a house, not out of the kindness of your heart, but because you needed me. Out of your own selfishness.”
“How dare you say that to me, ‘this is the thanks I get.’ You live comfortably, don’t you? You’re not like me. Some kinda circus freak to marvel at on the news.”
“Well, why should I devote my life to taking care of my brother every second of the day? It was like this before the chair, and it’s definitely like it now.”
“BECAUSE IT’S YOUR FAULT I’M IN THIS CHAIR!”
“… No. You don’t-”
“It’s true. You got me this gift. You insisted that I sit in it. It was your idea.”
“That’s not fair,” Gerald said softly, shaking his head. “You can’t possibly blame me for this. You told me you liked it! Neither of us knew this was going to happen!“
“And yet, it did. And now I’m stuck here for another year. Thanks to you!”
“Well, if that’s the way you want to be, then fine, I’ll go.”
“Good, go!”
“Goodbye, Rupert.” Gerald walked away.
“Fine! See if I care. Matter fact! I hope I never get out of this chair! I hope I stay in this chair till the day I die! How about that!” The only response Rupert got was the sound of the cicadas.

And that’s exactly what he did. Seasons went by. Halloween had been and gone. Rupert’s spite had outgrown his muscle strength, so he got a live-in housekeeper to get him up and around every Halloween before eventually getting tired of it. Year after passing year, he remained seated. Rupert sat in his chair for Christmases, family holidays, his 35th birthday, his father’s funeral. Gerald decided that, to stop this friction, he would be the first to talk. He was flat-out ignored. The last time Rupert saw him was at his mother’s funeral. By then, Gerald had two kids going into kindergarten and a third on the way, but Rupert still ignored him. That was the last time they saw each other.

Years turned into decades, decades turned into forgotten memories. And by that point Rupert had forgotten what his life was like before the rocking chair. He watched all the kids in the neighborhood move out and start their own families. He watched houses change, and the soccer field he once revered was bulldozed, with an apartment building built on top of it. He didn’t live life; he existed in one. Now, in his early eighties, he was still sitting there… with a blanket wrapped around him. A couple of kids on bikes rode past his house and heard him shouting something.
“Gerald.” He bellowed out. “Gerald?! Where’s Gerald!”

Gerald had been dead for the last ten years.

The line came up with the net, thicker than the mesh and translucent enough that the vessels showed as darker threads under the surface. It was the color of raw scallop left too long in the light. Warm through the gloves. Ruiz had the knife out before the mate finished telling him to leave it. The blade went in and stopped. The material contracted around the cut, edges drawing back, vessels pulsing once before they sealed. He pulled the sides apart. The cut did not go through. The line stayed continuous.

On the other side of the deck Petty made a sound that was mostly air. He had one boot braced on the rail. Now he was looking at his thigh. Blood was spreading across his rain pants, well above the tear he'd made in them earlier. It ran down the fabric and into the top of his boot. Petty put his hand over the wet patch and stayed on his feet. When the deck rolled he adjusted his stance without taking the hand away.

The mate killed the winch. The roller stopped. The line hung where it was, one length tangled through the net and the other trailing off the stern into the water. The engine note stayed the same. The captain came out of the wheelhouse and stopped at the rail. He looked at Petty’s leg, then at the line, then at the sky. The clouds were low. The horizon had already gone.

Petty sat on the hatch cover when the mate told him to. He kept his hand pressed to the outside of his thigh while the mate cut the rain pants open. The skin underneath had parted along the same length as Ruiz’s cut, its edges clean. The mate packed the wound with gauze from the kit. The gauze soaked through. The mate packed more and taped it down, then wrapped the thigh with a pressure bandage. Blood still seeped at the lower edge. The mate did not say how deep it was. He said the bleeding was slower and that was all he could tell from the outside.

Shaw kept moving fish. He did not look at the line. Ellis stood with both hands on the mesh where the line crossed it and watched the material. It was still warm. When he shifted his grip the line moved under his gloves, a slow contraction that started at the waterline and traveled toward the roller before it stopped. He stepped back. The line settled.

Petty studied the incomplete cut still open over the roller, vessels visible inside the gap. He looked at Ruiz. Ruiz still had the knife in his hand.

“Don’t cut it again,” Petty said. His voice was even. He had both hands on his thigh, holding the wrap in place. “Whatever that is, it went through me when you put the knife in. Don’t put the knife in again.”

The captain nodded once. He had not come closer. “Secure the net. Get the fish below. We’ll figure the line after the deck is clear.”

Ruiz put the knife away. He moved to the net. The mesh was full. The line ran through it without catching the way rope would. It slid. He worked the mesh around it instead of pulling, lifting and shifting until the bulk of the catch was clear enough to swing the cod end over the hold. Ellis helped. Shaw kept the chute running. Petty stayed on the hatch and watched the trailing length. Every time the boat rolled the trailing section lifted and fell. It did not tangle. It did not pull. It simply followed.

The first basket went down. The second. The wind had picked up enough that spray was reaching the deck in sheets. The captain looked at the trailing line and then at the stern. The propeller was clear for the moment. The rudder was clear. The line was still aboard in one continuous length and still trailing in the water behind them, and the weather was already closing the options for maneuvering with anything hanging off the stern.

“We need that length off the roller,” the captain said. “If it fouls the prop in this we lose the boat. Get it clear of the gear and lashed to the rail. Don’t cut it. Don’t pull hard. Just move it.”

Petty looked at him. “If you stretch it—”

“We’re not stretching it,” the captain said. “We’re moving it.”

Ellis and Ruiz took the section that hung over the roller. It was heavier than it looked and still warm. They lifted together and walked it toward the rail. The line slid through their gloves. When they had it clear of the roller and started to lay it along the rail the trailing length in the water pulled. The section between their hands lengthened under the strain, the material narrowing as it elongated, vessels drawing closer together inside the stretch. Ellis felt the tension travel through his palms. He loosened his grip. The narrowed section stayed narrow.

On the hatch Petty made the same sound he had made when the knife went in. Blood was running out of his left sleeve and into the cuff of the glove he still wore. The sleeve itself was intact. He had not moved the arm. The mate was already crossing the deck. Petty held the arm out so the mate could reach it. The mate cut the sleeve open from wrist to elbow. Under the fabric the skin had parted along the same length, edges clean, blood already pooling in the cuff and running between Petty’s fingers onto the hatch.

The mate packed the new opening without speaking. Ellis and Ruiz still held the line. The section between their hands remained narrowed and tight. The incomplete cut from the knife was still open farther down the length, vessels visible inside the gap, and the line was still continuous.

Ellis looked at the captain. Ruiz looked at Petty. Petty had his left arm out under the mate’s hands and his right hand still pressed to the bandage on his thigh. Blood was on the hatch between his boots. He was looking at the section of line they were holding.

“If you let go,” he said, “it might pull again.”

The narrowed section stayed tight between their gloves. The trailing length in the water had not gone slack.

The captain left the rail and crossed to the wheelhouse. He spoke to Shaw, then came back with a fender and set it on the deck between Ellis and Ruiz.

“Ease it down onto that,” he said. “Slow. If the trailing end stays clear we can turn and keep the wash off it. Shaw has the wheel. He’ll hold her straight.”

Petty was still on the hatch. The mate had finished packing the forearm and was wrapping it. Blood had soaked the gauze on the thigh again. Petty watched the narrowed section.

“It pulled when the weight shifted,” he said. “Not when they lifted it. When the water end took up the slack. If you set it down and that end still has tension, it might do the same thing.”

The captain studied the stern. The boat was still under power. Any change in heading would swing the trailing length across the wash.

“We can’t keep the stern clear like this,” he said. “Ellis, Ruiz—lower it onto the fender. Mate, watch him.”

Ellis loosened his grip. The material stayed narrowed. Ruiz matched him. They bent their knees and began to lower the section. The weight came onto the fender. The line did not contract. It settled. For a moment nothing else moved.

Then the trailing length in the water rose. Not a wave. The material itself lifted, a slow curve that traveled forward along its length until the section on the fender tightened again. The narrowed part elongated. Ellis felt the change through his gloves and stopped. Ruiz kept his hands under the line.

Petty made the sound. Blood was running out from under the fresh wrap on his forearm and down the outside of his wrist. The mate had both hands on the bandage, pressing. The wrap was already dark.

“Stop,” Petty said.

Ellis and Ruiz held where they were. The section on the fender remained under tension. The trailing length hung in a shallow curve above the surface.

The mate did not look up from the arm. “He’s losing more than he was. I can’t keep packing this if it opens every time the line takes weight.”

The captain studied the curve above the water. It was closer to the propeller wash than it had been.

“We still have to get it farther forward,” he said. “Or we cut the engine and drift until—”

“If we cut the engine,” Shaw called from the wheelhouse, “we lose steerage. The set will put us beam to it.”

Ruiz had not moved his hands. He was watching the blood on Petty’s wrist.

“I’m not lowering it again,” he said. “Not while he’s bleeding like that.”

The captain turned. Ruiz met his eyes. The section of line was still between his gloves and the fender. The incomplete cut farther along the length was still open. The material was still continuous.

“We need the stern clear,” the captain said.

“Then we get him below first,” the mate said. He had not stopped pressing on the arm. “Or we call it in and get a boat out here. I’m not watching this open a third time because we moved the line again.”

The captain stood between the rail and the hatch. The curve of the trailing length had not dropped. Ellis still had one hand under the section on the fender. Shaw was still at the wheel. Petty had his right hand on the thigh wrap and his left arm extended under the mate’s hands. Blood was on the hatch between his boots.

“Radio’s on channel sixteen,” the captain said. “Shaw, put out a call. Medical emergency, position, and that we may need assistance if the line fouls the propeller. Then we get him below. The line stays where it is until we know whether anyone is coming.”

Shaw answered from the wheelhouse. The mate kept pressure on the arm. Ruiz did not take his hands off the line.

The captain stayed where he was between the rail and the hatch. He listened to Shaw’s voice through the open door.

“Pan-pan, pan-pan, pan-pan. Coast Guard Sector Long Island Sound, this is the F/V Marian, Marian, Marian. Over.”

A pause. Then Shaw again.

“Sector Long Island Sound, F/V Marian. Position forty-one twelve north, seventy-two forty-five west. Six persons on board. Medical emergency. One crewman with significant bleeding to the thigh and left forearm. Cause unknown. Unidentified material entangled with the gear and trailing from the stern. Propulsion operational but at risk if the material fouls the wheel. Weather deteriorating. Request assistance. Over.”

Static. Then a voice, male, professional.

“F/V Marian, this is Sector Long Island Sound. Copy your pan-pan, six persons, medical emergency, position. Stand by.”

The captain turned his head toward the wheelhouse. Shaw did not add anything else. The radio remained on channel sixteen. The engine note did not change. The boat continued on the same heading.

The mate had both hands on Petty’s forearm. The wrap was dark through to the outer layer. Petty’s right hand stayed on the thigh bandage. He was looking past the mate at the section of line on the fender.

“I can walk,” he said. “If someone takes the arm.”

The mate shook his head once. “Not while this is open. We get you to the companionway and then we see.”

The captain looked at Ellis. Ellis still had one hand under the line where it rested on the fender. His other hand was on the rail. His gloves were wet to the wrists.

“Ellis, help the mate,” the captain said. “Ruiz stays with the line. We’ll get him below and then we’ll figure the rest.”

Ellis did not move right away. He flexed his fingers under the material. The line did not shift. He took his hand away slowly and stepped back. The section stayed on the fender. Ruiz adjusted his grip to take the full weight that remained. His shoulders were already lower than they had been.

The mate kept pressure on the forearm while Ellis got an arm under Petty’s right shoulder. Petty put his weight on his good leg and stood. The deck rolled. He stayed up. Blood ran from under the thigh wrap and into the top of his boot. He took one step toward the companionway and stopped. His face had gone the color of the spray on the deck.

“Again,” he said.

Ellis held him. The mate kept both hands on the arm. They moved together, three steps, then four. Petty’s left foot dragged once. He did not fall. At the companionway he had to turn sideways to clear the frame. The mate could not keep full pressure while they turned. Fresh blood ran between his fingers and down Petty’s wrist onto the coaming. Petty made the sound again, smaller. They got him through the door and onto the first step. Ellis went down ahead of him. The mate followed, still holding the arm.

On deck Ruiz stood with both hands under the line. The fender took most of the weight. His gloves were dark with water. He shifted his stance when the boat rolled and kept his elbows in. The trailing length in the water had not moved. It still hung in the same shallow curve above the surface.

Shaw’s voice came from the wheelhouse again.

“Sector Long Island Sound, Marian. Standing by for your traffic. Over.”

The answer took longer this time.

“Marian, Sector. We can launch a boat. Current weather and your distance put them at least ninety minutes out. Can you maintain your present course and speed? Over.”

Shaw did not answer immediately. The captain crossed to the wheelhouse door.

“Tell them we can hold this course for now,” he said. “Ask them to launch.”

Shaw repeated it. The radio remained on channel sixteen. The captain stayed in the doorway. He could see the curve of the trailing length from there. It was still clear of the wash. The boat was still under power. Any larger correction would swing the stern.

On the fender the line had not changed. Ruiz’s arms were shaking. He had both hands under the narrowed section, elbows locked, weight forward. Ellis had not come back up. The mate was still below with Petty.

The captain looked at the stern, then at Ruiz. The heading was steady. The set was already pushing the boat off its track. Shaw had been holding the heading with small corrections. Each one moved the stern relative to the trailing length.

“How long,” the captain said.

Ruiz did not look up. “Not much longer. Hands are going.”

From the wheelhouse Shaw said, “If I ease her any more to port the curve comes across the wash. Starboard puts us beam to the sea in ten minutes.”

The captain left the doorway. He crossed the deck to the fender and put both hands under the line beside Ruiz’s. The material was warm through his gloves. It did not shift when he took the weight. Ruiz kept his hands where they were for another moment, then eased them out. He stepped back, flexing his hands. The captain stood with the section supported between his gloves and the fender. Ellis was still below with Petty.

The boat took a heavier roll. The trailing length rose with it, the curve tightening as the stern swung. The captain felt the material elongate under his hands. He eased his grip to keep from stretching it further. The line did not settle. It stayed tight against the fender, the narrowed section pulling toward the stern with every movement of the hull.

From the wheelhouse Shaw called, “She’s not holding. The set’s putting the curve across the wash on the next one.”

The captain looked at the stern. The trailing length was already closer to the propeller than it had been. Another roll would put it in the wheel.

Below, the mate had Petty on the settee in the galley. The light was better. He had cut the remaining rain gear away and was packing the forearm again when he saw the second opening. It ran under the first, deeper, along the line of the muscle. The edges were clean. When he pressed the tissue above it, the separation continued under the skin toward the elbow. The thigh wound was the same. The external cut was shallow. Beneath it the muscle had parted along a longer plane, the edges already retracting. Blood welled from the deeper separation when the boat rolled.

The mate put both hands on the arm and held pressure. Petty was conscious. His face was gray. He watched the mate’s hands.

“It’s under the first one,” the mate said. “Both of them. The packing isn’t reaching it.”

On deck the captain felt the line pull again. The trailing length had lifted clear of the water on the last roll. It hung in a longer curve now, the free end swinging toward the stern. Ruiz stood near the rail with his hands at his sides. He had not moved closer.

“We have to cut it,” the captain said.

Ruiz looked at him. “It’ll go through him.”

“If it fouls the wheel we lose the boat.”

The captain kept both hands under the line. The material was warm. It pulsed once against his palms, a slow contraction that traveled the length he could see and stopped at the incomplete cut from the knife. The trailing end swung closer.

Shaw’s voice from the wheelhouse: “Next roll puts it in.”

The captain looked at Ruiz. “Get the knife.”

Ruiz did not move at first. Then he crossed to the winch housing and took the knife from the sheath where he had left it. He came back and stood beside the captain. The line was still continuous. The incomplete cut was still open farther along the length.

“Where,” Ruiz said.

“Past the cut. All the way through. Then get clear of the stern.”

Ruiz set the blade against the material above the incomplete cut. He looked once toward the companionway. The captain kept the section supported. The trailing length rose again as the boat rolled. Ruiz pressed the knife through. The material parted. The cut went clean. The two ends separated. The trailing length dropped into the water and sank out of the wash. The section on the fender went slack in the captain’s hands.

Below, Petty made the sound. It was louder than before. The mate had both hands on the arm. The deeper separation had opened the full length of the forearm. Muscle and tendon had parted under the skin. The hand hung without tension. Blood ran between the mate’s fingers and onto the settee. On the thigh the same separation had opened through the quadriceps. Petty could not straighten the knee when he tried. The mate packed both wounds with everything left in the kit. The bleeding slowed. It did not stop.

On deck the captain dropped the severed section onto the fender. The trailing length was gone. The propeller was clear. Shaw held the heading. Ruiz stood with the knife in his hand and watched the companionway. Ellis came up the steps. His gloves were dark. He looked at the captain, then at the line on the fender, then went back down.

The captain crossed to the wheelhouse. Shaw had both hands on the wheel. The boat was still under power. The stern was clear.

“Tell them the material is clear of the wheel,” the captain said. “And that we have a critical medical. Two limbs compromised. Request they expedite.”

Shaw made the call. The radio answered. The boat continued on the same course.

The Coast Guard boat reached them an hour later. They took Petty off first. The mate went with him. The severed section of line was still on the fender when the boarding officer asked what it was. The captain told him it had come up with the net and that they had cut it clear of the wheel. He did not say anything else. Ruiz had already put the knife back in the sheath. He stood at the rail while they transferred Petty and did not look at the section on the fender.

Petty was conscious when they moved him. His left hand lay open on the stretcher. The fingers did not close. He could not straighten the knee on the injured leg. The mate kept pressure on both wounds until the Coast Guard crew took over. On the deck of the Marian the captain watched them clear the stern. The severed section stayed where he had dropped it. No one touched it again before the other boat pulled away.

Erin, my eleven-year-old daughter was acting like a big goofball. We were playing dominoes at the dinner table and her giggles were so uncontrollable she could barely breathe.

 

I was trying to get my life back together and reconnect with her, so I had rented this cabin up in northern Minnesota. It was advertised to be on a lake, but it turned out to be more of a swamp, which I guess is why it was so cheap.

I gave a pronounced yawn and told Erin it was time to hit the hay.

 

“One more round, Dad. Pleeeeeeez,” she said.

 

That’s when we heard the driveway gravel crackle under an approaching car. Erin’s laughter tapered off as she noticed headlights roll across the wood paneled ceiling.

 

“Who could that be?” She tried giggling again but the mood had changed. “Dad?” Her eyes grew wider, searching for her father to reassure her.

 

“It’s fine. Probably just lost,” I said. But something felt wrong. This was the only cabin around for at least a couple of miles. I stood up and touched my jean pocket where my phone should be. A sad reflex instinctively made in moments of anxiety. But of course, it wasn’t in my pocket. Erin, already sly to my tactics, made me promise to leave it in the car, so I had slipped it inside a sock and locked it away in the trunk.

Also in the trunk: my handgun.

 

“Maybe it’s Mom,” Erin said.

 

“Stay there.” I tried to peek out the window but all I could see was my silky reflection as the ceiling color turned parking-light red.

 

I watched my image stretch across the old tube TV screen as I moved to the entry. The acrid taste of lighter fluid and hotdogs stuck in my throat. I couldn’t even get the damn charcoal burning, and we’d ended up microwaving the s’mores.

 

My senses were on full alert. I put my ear against the door. Something was telling me to keep it shut and not acknowledge whoever was outside. I heard a car door swing open. A mechanical dinging mingled with the crickets and toads. A foot crunched the gravel, then the other, and then the machine noises from the car ceased as the door shut. The steps were casual and unhurried moving toward the rental cabin.

 

I checked the door handle. It was unlocked. Why wouldn’t it be? I looked back at Erin. She was sitting perched on the chair with her knees at her chin. I reached for the bolt lock and turned it as quietly as possible. I looked back again and tried to reassure Erin with a queasy smile.

 

Knocks cut through the cabin in rapid succession. They had an arrhythmic, polite nature to them.

 

“Daniel? Daniel Melody? I know you’re in there,” a forceful woman’s voice said. Certainly not Erin’s mother. The voice was older, prim and curt, harkening an old-fashioned school teacher, the kind who slapped knuckles with a ruler. I felt like a child in trouble. And she knew my name.

 

My mouth was so dry nothing came out when I first opened it. She knocked again, more persistent this time.

 

“Daniel. It’s very important we talk. Please open up.”

 

I cleared my throat. “Who’s there?”

 

“My name is Jane Pendergrass. You know my son, Timothy.”

 

“I’m… sorry, I don’t know a Timothy.”

 

“Oh yes you do. Timmy… Timmy knows you.”

 

“Timmy? I—”

 

“Yes, you must. It’s Jane, his mother. I’ve since taken on my maiden name. But James, Timothy James. I’d pick him up from sleepovers at your parents because of his panic attacks. Remember Mrs. James? I’m his mother. May I come in now?”

 

My brain did an Indy 500 down memory lane and slammed into the white brick walls of North Star Elementary. In second grade Timmy had arrived a month after school started. At recess he approached me and told obvious lies about how rich his dad was. I liked how fast Timmy talked. That day, we made up a game called Fire Square, a combination of dodgeball and foursquare that the recess monitors did not appreciate one bit.

 

“Tim Jim? Ms. Trickey’s class?” I muttered. My vision was pulsating, making the chrome doorknob shimmer. My ears burned. It was just too much to contemplate.

 

“Yes, that’s correct.”

 

 “Mrs. James? But how…”

 

“Daniel, I’ve driven a long way and I have a dreadful fear of moths. Could you please let me in?”

 

I watched my hand unlatch the bronze bolt lock I’d latched moments ago and open swung the door. There stood a woman in her mid-sixties wearing a black-laced bonnet, impressing hints of puritanical strength. Her presence made me want to run to my car – for which item – I wasn’t sure. The floodlight above the door cast an austere shadow over the woman’s face while little bugs swam above her head. It was indeed Timmy’s mother: older, but still solidly built.

 

“Moths are attracted to fear.” She entered and embraced me like a lost-and-then-found child, slamming the door shut behind her with a flick of her foot. Her hands slid up my back and squished me into her ample bosom. I, unsure of what the hell was going on, brought my hand up and patted her on the back.

 

She didn’t let go. She kept me in her embrace and rocked side to side. Her face rested against my ear and I heard her breathe in the cedary mildew of the rental cabin. “Lovely,” she whispered. Her words tumbled down my neck, making my knotted muscle vibrate. Finally, she released me and then smiled at Erin, who was still perched on a chair with knees inside of her Dr. Who nightie. “Yours?” she asked me.

 

“How did you… er, I’m sorry, yes, I’m just a little confused. Erin this is Mrs. James. She was like my second mother in elementary school.” I watched as Jane Pendergrass rubbed her sneakers against the welcome mat like a bull. She seemed healthy enough but there was errant cord of snot under her nose that made me involuntarily pinch my own nostrils.

 

Why are you here? I kept thinking, but those words redirected to other thoughts. I remembered the news about Timmy. Years ago someone had posted from his account that he had died. I remember it elicited nothing more than a that’s sad before scrolling on. I hadn’t talked to him in like twenty years except for that awkward chat you have after an old elementary friend finds you on one of the apps. “I heard about Timmy. How are you?”

 

She closed her eyes gently and shook her head. “Thank you, dear. I’m doing okay. Time has shown me things.”

 

“Come in.” I opened my arm, obliged by decorum, directing her to the kitchen table. It was strange how good manners seemed to eclipse all the alarm bells ringing in my head. It felt like there was white noise in my brain. Was it just the bizarreness of the situation?

 

“Hello, Erin. My name is Jane Pendergrass.” She glid past me toward my daughter. Her rank potpourri wafted into my nose, like flowers at a funeral home. “And I have a very good reason for breaking up your little party. My son Timothy and your father were great friends in elementary, before we had to go away.” She looked back at me with a knowing glance. “Has he contacted you lately, Daniel?”

 

I cocked my eyebrow and tapped at my pocket. “We were just playing dominoes. Is everything okay? I’m sorry, were you trying to get a hold of me? I don’t have my phone. I left it—”

 

“Oh, Mexican Train!” Jane Pendergrass exclaimed. She put her fists on her hips, taking account of the messy table. “Name’s a tad racist, don’t you think? But that’s what people call it. Let’s play a round. We must.”

 

Jane plopped down next to Erin, right where I had been sitting.

 

“Well, it’s getting pretty late,” I said.

 

“Nonsense. One quick round. My son hasn’t supplied me with any grandchildren. Don’t you deprive me of that pleasure too.” She began to flip the dominoes face down and looked at Erin. “You don’t mind, do you?”

 

Erin shook her head. She seemed confused, but no longer afraid. Plus, whatever it was that was going on allowed her to stay up later, so she started to help flip over the tiles too. Jane Pendergrass pointed to the chair opposite her and then I was sitting there.

 

“What a blessing you must be. So beautiful.” Jane grabbed Erin’s chin with her thumb and forefinger, inspecting her. “Let’s be famous friends, you and I dear.”

 

“Okay,” Erin said. Her smile became less sure at the force of Jane’s two fingers holding her face in place.

 

“Mrs. James,” I interjected.

 

“Pendergrass.”

 

“Sorry. Is everything okay? We were just about to—”

 

Jane Pendergrass finally dropped her hand from Erin’s chin and with snake-like speed, grabbed Erin’s wrist. My mouth dropped open, half impressed, half frightened at the force of her movement.

 

“Could I trouble you, Erin?” Jane made tiny, fluttering blinks. “Do you have any diet coke?”

There was a brief pause as Erin waited for me say something, but again, my voice failed me as my mind churned for the right words.

 

“Uh, I think I saw one,” Erin said.

 

“Wonderful, that’s a good child.”

 

Erin kept her eyes on me as she made to the fridge, rubbing her wrist.

 

“So, what do we owe the pleasure, Mrs. James?” I tried again. A dark sensation tickled at the base of my heart as I spoke, a question: would I truly have the physical strength to overcome this woman, if need be? Something about her presence made me feel weak. “This is just very bizarre. No offense.”

 

“Pendergrass, not James.” Her grey eyes flashed and she lowered her tone. “And you’ve cracked the case. I’m not here to just play dominoes.”

 

I looked at Jane Pendergrass through the centerpiece bouquet of dried bulrushes and pussy willow stalks.

 

Erin moseyed back and set down the can of diet coke. Jane tut-tutted while letting out an enormous, tired sigh. “I’m so sorry, dear. I really can’t without ice. You do have some, don’t you?”

 

“We didn’t bring any,” I said.

 

“I saw a tray.” Erin then went back to the old bisque Frigidaire.

 

Jane faced me and sandwiched her hands around mine. Her touch was hot against my cold fingers.

 

“How have you been, Daniel? It’s been so long.”

 

“I’ve been—” I coughed and watched my daughter grab a glass and clink some cubes into it. Anything that kept my gaze from the woman sitting across from me. “Good. I’ve been well. But just how… how did you know where—”

 

“How did I find you?” Jane Pendergrass said as Erin set the glass of ice down. She smiled politely and shooed Erin to her seat with a friendly hand motion. She cracked open the diet coke and poured it into the cup with a sizzle. She tipped her head back and gulped and gulped… and gulped, until it was all gone. “Ahhh… much better.” She hiccupped then opened her mouth. Nothing happened. I waited and was just about to ask if she was okay, but just before I did, she let out a long, hissing burp. She excused herself and dabbed at her mouth with a ketchup-stained napkin from the table. I noticed again, that red tendril from her nose, clinging to her wet upper lip, damp and glistening. “Timothy led me to you, Daniel.”

 

Me and Timmy were pretty much inseparable after he arrived in second grade up until fourth grade when didn’t invite me to his birthday party. Then he abruptly moved away not long after.

 

“Timothy?” I whispered.

 

“Timothy.”

 

“Led you… to me?”

 

“Correct.”

 

A harsh ringing in my left ear flooded in. I could feel the change of pressure in the room. This woman was not sane and I had let her in. “Erin, I think it’s actually bedtime,” I said. But when I turned to look at my daughter she was already asleep, mouth agape, face on the table, with Jane Pendergrass petting her hand.

 

“Such a beautiful girl,” she said. “I didn’t realize the time. She shouldn’t be up at this hour.”

 

“What did you do?”

 

“She’s sleeping.” Jane Pendergrass conjured up a vaporous smile and her eyes misted over, like she was gazing at someone out beyond the marshy swamp. I found myself staring at that thing in her nostril. It looked like the start of a bloody nose, an anxious and incomplete drip. I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was alive, like a mealworm trying to burrow further in.

 

Jane started to mix the dominoes around on the table, clacking them together. She had red nails and several gaudy rings, the kind aggressive vendors near Florida retirement communities would sell on the beach.

 

“Fifteen,” she said.

 

“Fifteen?”

 

“Fifteen dominoes, Daniel. Don’t let me see them.”

 

I took fifteen dominoes from the table, paused, then shook my head; the absurdity of her visit kept coming in waves, and it had just washed over me again.

 

“I don’t know how you found me but—”

 

“It was Timothy, Daniel.” She knocked the table twice with an amethyst ring. “He told me exactly where I could find you. Or guided me, rather. Oh look, I have the double twelve. I go first.” She laid the domino gently on the mottled wood. “And can you believe it? I don’t have another twelve to satisfy it. I’ll have to draw one from the boneyard. I love that term. So spooky.” She rubbed her hands together. “Do you know why they call it the boneyard?”

 

“Because they used to make dominoes from bones,” I said.

 

Jane clicked her tongue, impressed with my answer, and drew a domino from the boneyard. She squinted at it and smiled. “My lucky day.” She dragged the domino over the pine tabletop and snapped it down. “Let’s make a bet,” she said as that toothy smile spread across her face.

 

“What?”

 

“A wager, Daniel.” She leaned in and looked long into my eyes — I shifted in my seat and did what I could to hold her gaze — her voice was low. “I’m tired Daniel. I’m ready to go.” She then perked up, lifting me from her trance. “So if you win, I will give you my inheritance.”

 

I choked on my own spit. “What?”

 

“You remember Mr. James, my Husband Hank? He passed and left me with a decent amount. Run over by a Wal-Mart semi. True to my blue, even after the enhancement, there’s still over six million.” She raised her palm and put her other hand over her heart.

 

“Come on.” I nervously laughed. Six million. Timmy was never well off. Even to a seven-year-old, it didn’t take long to discover Timmy’s dad wasn’t rich at all, contrary to his bragging. Timmy would always come over to play my videogames, making up some story about how his system was getting repaired or something.

 

“Just one round of Mexican Train, if you win. If you help,” Jane Pendergrass said.

 

“Help?”

 

“Well, I’ll need help with the dying. Your help.”

 

“Wh— this is ridiculous.” I didn’t like what she was getting at.

 

Jane Pendergrass rapped her red nails against the table, waiting for me to reply.

 

“I… I don’t gamble.” I pinched the top of my nose; I’m told I do that when I lie. “No. In fact, I think it’s time you—”

 

“Live a little.” The intensity of Jane Pendergrass’s gaze lightened and added a bit a mischief. “I’m a sucker for video poker. Just the nickel ones. For a while after Hank passed, I couldn’t seem to find much to do with myself but chip away at the settlement money while searching for Timothy’s…” She lifted her head as if fondly recalling a good moment. “It’s funny how handsome boys just like you can sniff out desperate rich women at casinos. Oh don’t worry, I can handle myself, and I can still have fun.” She winked, long and pronounced. I blushed.

 

“I’m sorry to hear about Mr. James,” I said, as a reflex. But my mind was still on the offer, the six million. What was she after? I touched my pocket.

 

“Oh don’t be. Henry loved his vodka. Never crossed the line, but he rode it all the way.” She shared a tart smile with me. “Daniel, don’t you want to know what happens if you lose the wager?”

 

A part of me, a crass part, wanted to talk turkey, the logistics of how a bet like this would even work, but even acknowledging it… it was unacceptable.

 

“I don’t like this bet,” I said in a dry rasp. I started to feel a burst of rage come over me. Was I being tricked? “Is this why you came here? Why don’t you go find one of those boys at the casino to help you. I’m sorry about Timmy. I’m sorry about everything, but—”

 

“If you lose, Daniel,” Jane Pendergrass’s voice cut in, cold as steel, “let’s just say Timothy needs a friend and someone is going to join him tonight.” I thought I caught her eyes dart to my daughter.

 

My mouth fell agape. “Wha-what did you say?”

 

“And I’ll be getting that gun hiding in your trunk. That part is non-negotiable.”

 

I felt the color leave my body all the way to my feet. The sweat between my toes was slick as wet fur. I looked at the microwave. Time melted. I felt dizzy.

 

“How do you…” I croaked out in a dry rasp. My mind was hopping from one option to another. How? How? As logical answers became more and more farfetched, my anger increased. “You been following me?”

 

“You are your father’s child.” She gave me a pitying look. “So explosive, even back then. I was shocked the first time I witnessed it. You’d never expect it, you always seemed such a mellow boy. I’m not saying you were bad. Far from it, dear. But I remember one summer night Timothy came biking home crying. Said you kicked him out of your house for drinking the last of your milk. Are you still oddly possessive over silly things? I hope not.”

 

“Timmy,” I muttered to myself. I didn’t recall that specific event, but I have always been protective of my stuff. Her story was probably true. Some version of it. The more I had become aware Timmy didn’t have as much as me, the stingier I got.

 

Jane played another domino. She looked at me again. “He joined the Marines after high school, did you know? Thought it would do him good. You know how boys are.”

 

I thought back to Timmy’s pale, freckled face, always striving to fit in, failing to contain all that mischief. “Discipline,” I mumbled as an afterthought with a bad taste.

 

“He joined back in what, ’05? Sent him straight to Afghanistan. He still speaks kindly of you.”

 

I frowned and shut my eyes. Not looking at her made it easier to think. “Mrs. Ja— Pendergrass, what do you mean still?”

 

“And we missed you at the funeral, dear.”

 

“I… I didn’t know until after.” I pinched at my nose again.

 

I opened my eyes again. That vein dangling from her nostril, she was stroking it. Then as if noticing me, the tendril recoiled. Jane Pendergrass quivered; her eyes rolled up, revealing the whites lined with blood-red lightning and dark splotches.

 

“I hear your feelings, Daniel. You’re angry, but not at me.” Her eyes lifted to mine. “Dr. Chen says it’s just another muscle. How I talk to Timothy. The more I use it, the more it will grow.” She tilted her head back and massaged her nose. She let out a soft moan. “There it is.”

 

The tendon from her nose reemerged, more pronounced, dark, red, damp. It looked like a thin root pulled from the garden – tiny little capillaries branching from it, almost breathing.

 

I struggled against my chair. It felt like if I didn’t hold onto it I would float away. I just wanted her gone. “I think… I think maybe you should leave,” I croaked.

 

“Help me, Daniel.” Jane Pendergrass stroked at the tendril, straightening it. After each stroke, it curled back.

 

“Please, Mrs. Pendergrass. Please just—”

 

“You want assurances about the money, but you’re afraid to ask. Too uncouth to talk about such matters. You want to know if it would be murder. You want to know if it would be worth the risk.”

 

I brought my hand to my face. I don’t know if I was trying to hide my vision or repress a scream. “Why would you want…” I couldn’t finish the thought.

 

“I’ll show you my bank account. I assure you, I’m not in debt. I don’t owe the mob or anything like that. We’re going to get that gun back. I’ll hold it but I’ll let you do it. I don’t think I can do it on my own.”

 

I closed my eyes and thought about my own credit card debt. I thought about the child support payments crippling me from ever getting ahead. I thought about that shitty family lawyer I was still making payments to. I thought about the promise I’d made to Erin, that I’d take her to Disney World. Was she even into Disney anymore?

 

“Why? Why me?” I whispered.

 

“Timothy insisted. It’s fate, Daniel. Quite funny actually.” She waved her hands in front of her face, as if to lift a haze from the air. It was odd. I felt much more at ease after she did that. Jane Pendergrass quietly set down another Domino down and talked without looking up. “He’s not mad at you, you know.”

 

“Mad? At me? Timmy? You’re the ones who disappeared.”

 

She looked at me with such an overly sympathetic look, I felt embarrassed. “Oh my sweet, sweet dear. They never told…”

 

“What?” I sneered.

 

“Your son-of-a-bitch parents.” Jane showed her copious white teeth.

 

“What the hell are you talking about?”

 

“You don’t know why we moved. Why they took my Timothy.”

 

“Who took Timmy?”

 

“The billionaire pedophiles. The government. The leaches that prey on the poor.”

 

“You left in the middle of fourth grade…” I said. I racked my brain for a memory.

 

Jane cupped my hands. Her thumbs pressed into my palms, the tips of her chipped red nails digging into my flesh.

 

“My husband Henry. Sweet, stupid Henry. Always borrowing money. Entrepreneur ‘til the end. Believed his best ideas were written on a bar napkin. Problem was he always seemed to lose the napkin. When we lived in Gardendale it was a telescope shop of all things. Remember it? It didn’t pan out. Nothing ever did… and your father kicked us out.”

 

“What do you mean he kicked you out? What’s my father got to do with it?”

 

“I suppose you were young. Why would he tell you? We were renting from your father, Daniel. It was your parents’ property we lived on. It was the middle of the school year. Tough finding a place with an eviction on your record. I remember your mother specifically telling Hank how she thought a telescope shop was a wonderful idea. But she was silent when we begged your father for one more month. For the sake of our children’s friendship. I’m sure you know your father better than I. How he responded. You can guess. Everything kind of spiraled after that. Not long after we lost Timothy to foster care… for nine long months. Fought like hell to get him back. Once you’re in that system…” She shook her head.

 

“I…” I reached for my absent phone. This was all news to me. I knew my parents owned some townhomes but I didn’t know Timmy lived in one. 

 

“We really liked that school. What was it? Northview?”

 

“North Star.”

 

“That’s it. We had already moved twice before, but Timothy was younger then. We were finally starting to plant some roots in Gardendale. Getting forced to relocate changed my son. I know it did. He had trust issues after that. Got bullied. We ended up in Detroit. A school so poor they had no soap in the bathrooms. It was prison or the military they told him, right out. Vultures. They took him. First his mind. Then…” Jane Pendergrass squeezed her eyes shut and dug her nails deeper into my palms. It hurt but I didn’t say anything. “In a way, it was your father who sentenced my Timmy to his death. Oh goodness. Didn’t you ever wonder why you weren’t invited to his birthday?”

 

I remembered sitting in the backseat of my dad’s van, the van with the ram’s head hood-ornament with eyes that glowed red. I was nine and going to the orchestra with my parents. But I didn’t like the orchestra. I was sobbing, even though I didn’t feel like crying a few moments ago; it had just flowed out of me when I had asked why. Why couldn’t I go to the birthday sleepover at Timmy’s house?

 

“I remember.”

 

“He doesn’t blame you anymore. For any of it.”

 

“I didn’t know,” I whispered. I looked at Erin breathing peacefully.

 

“As far as I’m concerned, your father is the reason Timothy…” Jane Pendergrass’s nails went even deeper into my palms then stopped and began massaging the indents she had made. “But that’s not what Timothy would want. I can see why they wouldn’t tell you. You need to protect your children. How old is she?” She pointed to Erin with her eyes.

 

“She’s… she’s eleven.”

 

“Cherish it. It goes by.” She raised her eyebrows.

 

“I know. I will. I do.”

 

“Promise me. Even the bad.” Her face grew so solemn I felt threatened by it.

 

“I will.” I pulled my hands from hers and touched my nose. It began to itch where Jane had been pressing my palms.

 

“Look at me… in the eye.”

 

I struggled to look at Jane Pendergrass. Staring into her eyes felt like drowning in mud. The tripe from her nose swayed slowly, grasping at air.

 

“Cherish it,” she said. “Especially the difficult moments. Those stay with you longer.”

 

“I will,” I whispered, tears filling up in my eyes.

 

“No!” She pounded the table, knocking over some dominoes. Erin’s slumber barely stirred.

 

“Please… you’re going to scare my daughter… please.” I tried to be firm but I felt nothing but feeble before this woman.

 

She wagged a violent finger at me. “You don’t know how to cherish. You don’t know the meaning. Not until you lose someone. Not until someone is taken from you.”

 

“Please…” I begged.

 

Jane Pendergrass untightened her fist and straightened her stiff white collar. “Say her name, Daniel.”

 

“Erin.”

 

“What do you cherish about Erin?”

 

I let out a strained breath. I looked at the table and straightened a domino. “She’s… smart,” I said.

 

“Smart?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“And you cherish that?”

 

“Yeah.” My voice quavered.

 

“Do you live for her, or for yourself?”

 

“W-what?”

 

“It’s not a trick question, Daniel.”

 

“I-I don’t know what you mean.”

 

“Well, I suppose that’s enough of an answer.”

 

“No, no… I do.” I said, afraid of giving the wrong answer. Jane Pendergrass seemed to grow larger in her seat.

 

“Wrong. You must live for yourself.” Jane started to fan herself with her hand, lifting her chin, revealing deep creases in her neck. “Muggy. Is there any more of that soda-pop in the fridge? Oh never mind. Look at me, Daniel. On the airplanes, they say put the oxygen mask on yourself before you put them on your children. It’s because if you can’t breathe you can’t help them.”

 

She lifted her cup and slid the ice-slurry into the chasm between her caked lips and crunched on a soft piece of ice. “I lived my life for my Timothy. When he left us… when…” She tilted her head back and put the seeping glass on her neck. “I lived my life for my two men. My boys. Better and worse. What was left for me? What to live for…”

 

I felt my adam’s apple drop into my chest as I swallowed. Jane nodded. I gained a fleeting moment of resoluteness about wrapping up this surreal session. But as soon as I looked at Jane’s face I felt my resolve deflate like air out of a balloon. She had her own gravity and I couldn’t help but get pulled back into it.

 

“I’m glad you spend time with your daughter. Timothy used to share so much with me when he was little. It’s important, especially for daughters, to have that trust, to share,” she said. “You aren’t with the mother?” I shook my head and Jane Pendergrass sighed. “It’s an all-too-common tragedy. I used to blame the feminists, really. I felt all this pressure on me, as if I was the bad guy just for wanting to stay home and take care of my family, like I wasn’t a real woman if I didn’t go and get a job. Now, I see what they were getting at. It wasn’t my life I was living. Modern men. You’re so empty inside. Purposeless. That’s the problem. I was feeding two hollow men. Still am, I suppose.” She chuckled at some kind of sick joke. “How often do you see her?”

 

“Every w—” my nose tickled, “every other weekend.” The drawn-out court proceedings. The accusations Erin’s mother had made against me… I don’t know if I will ever forgive. Drug dealer. Addict. I beat all the piss tests and social workers the court threw at me, out of love for my daughter or spite for her mother, I’m still not sure. I’ve kept this damn job at the Post Office. “I wish it was more,” I whispered.

 

“Do you? You don’t miss your carefree good ol’ days?” Jane Pendergrass stared at me, scanning my face for any betrayal. Eventually, finally, she eased her gaze, seemingly satisfied. I let out a breath of relief, believing I somehow passed an unknown test.

 

“Timothy and I used to sit around the table before Henry came home and talk and snack. Blue chips and salsa. That was his favorite. Of course, he never ate his dinner and that always upset Henry. I remember when Timothy told me about that time at recess with the frog.”

 

“Frog?”

 

“Or toad, doesn’t matter.”

 

“I don’t remember.”

 

“Oh, of course you do. It was you and Timothy, and Clayton Hull and that Albert boy.”

 

“Oh…”

 

“It was when they were redoing the playground, so there was that big mound of dirt that no one was supposed to play on. Of course, try telling that to a group of third grade boys. He said you found a really large toad. I’m sure Timothy was exaggerating, but he said it was bigger than a bagel. Isn’t that funny? He said bagel. And that Albert boy. He told me Albert kept running to the top of the dirt hill and tossing that toad as high into the sky as he could. And you boys would go find it. And no matter how high he tossed it, and how hard it splatted, that frog didn’t die. Timothy said it was you who put a stop to it. And I told him, that Daniel Melody sounds like a nice boy. And here I am talking to you, all these years later. And you still seem like a nice boy.”

 

I had no recollection of that story. I looked at Jane Pendergrass. Her mascara was smudged into damp chunks under her eyes.

 

“What are you doing here, Mrs. Pendergrass?”

 

She diminished in size before my eyes, pinching at her forehead before regaining composure.

 

“I came here… I’ve been so angry. I just wanted to see. Timothy said he wasn’t mad at you. He told me not to be mad. They said the Marines would do him good. Straighten him out. What they don’t like to admit is that these kids already want to die before they enlist. You have to be, right? That’s why it’s such a problem.” She flicked at a domino, spinning it. “Most men, when they’re committed to it, they take their lives with a bullet to the head.” She pressed her forefinger to her temple. “But with military men, it’s different…” She made a fist and tapped at her chest. “Right here. Do you know why that is? Why the heart?” She looked at me.

 

I shook my head. I mouthed no but no sound escaped.

 

“It’s where they want it to stop hurting.”

 

All this information sloshed around between my ears. I wasn’t sure if I should pity or fear the woman sitting before me.

 

“That’s how he…” I said.

 

She nodded quietly. “I’m afraid so, dear.” Jane Pendergrass lifted her head and looked around the cabin as if waking from a dream and let out a laugh. Her chuckle was a tomb. “Oh me oh my. Me oh my. I suppose you’re wondering what’s this all got to do with you.”

 

“Well…” I said.

 

“I already told you. I want his gun back.”

 

“His gun?” I coughed over my words.

 

“Sig 9mm. The one you got from your old associate Nick Glover, who bought it at a police auction about six years ago. The very one that’s in your car right now.”

 

“How do you—”

 

“You know, when Timothy told me that you had it, I couldn’t believe it. I thought, what a world this is, that you, his old friend should come upon it. I’ve been on a bit of goose hunt. First they said it was evidence. I don’t want to bore you, but imagine the bureaucracy I had to go through just to retrieve my son’s own gun. And once I finally was granted – granted – permission to receive my son’s sidearm, they told me there was a mix-up, that it was sold off in an auction.”

 

We sat there. After a long, long silence, Jane Pendergrass determined that since she had knocked over some of her dominoes, I could have cheated, so she declared the game a draw.

 

We walked to my Civic without making a sound. The gravel underfoot, the pasty stars, the full force crickets, the warm boggy smell, I absorbed it all. I opened the trunk. Buried underneath the sock with my cell phone was my gun. But I guess it wasn’t my gun. I picked it up, feeling oddly betrayed by it.

 

After a moment, I handed it over to Jane Pendergrass.

 

“It’s not loaded. Not ever,” I said.

 

That’s the truth. Never once had I put a bullet in it. Even when Erin’s mother found our little girl playing with it after I had forgotten to put it away properly. Not like that mattered. She took Erin and divorced me right after.

 

Jane Pendergrass cupped the semi-auto in both hands like was an injured bird and gauged its weight. She said something so softly a nearby croak of a toad overshadowed her voice. Her face was heavy and lit only from the inside lights of the rental cabin, where my daughter slept.

 

I stared straight up into the sky. I had never felt so alone.

 

“You weren’t serious… you shouldn’t,” I said.

 

“I’ve been planning on it… for a long time. I just wanted his gun to do it. Needed it. I wanted to teach my Timothy a lesson I was so upset. Spite this awful world and the people in it who made it this way. Spite people like your father. Perhaps you.”

 

I noticed she was struggling with the clip of the gun.

 

“I became obsessed with getting it back. It turned out my quest to recover this awful thing ended up giving my life meaning. After Hank, I felt a new spark, the kind of freedom only an avalanche of insurance money could offer. And then I started to hear him. Timothy. A whisper tickling at my heart. Dr. Chen helped me amplify his voice. But it was a cruel joke, Daniel. All I wanted was to hear him again. Comfort him. But now that I can hear him clearly, all he tells me is how alone he is. And there’s nothing I can do to comfort him.”

 

It was a bullet. She had put a bullet into the clip.

 

“So I told him I’d find his gun, and that I’d come for him. Because I’m a woman who continues to live for empty men, fills the holes in their hearts.” She sighed and spoke to the gun. “But I’m afraid to do it, Timothy. Afraid.”

 

Her eyes were black.

 

“Are you ready, Daniel?”

So dark like somebody's thrown a black hood over our heads.

My daughter's small hand in mine.

A point of light.

Harsh, fading; repeated. Human: (inhaling) a cigarette. The sweetly burning smell of tobacco.

We walk to it.

It goes out.

A firearm—instead:

“Who's there?” asks a soot-faced soldier, pointing it at me.

“My name is Fadros Moti. This is my daughter, Tera. We're from Goshnen Station.”

“Long walk.”

“Yes.”

“I heard most at Goshnen stood and fought," says the soldier. (“And died,” I think.) “You ain't a coward now, are you? You got papers for the kid?”

“No, sir. Yes, sir,” I say and hand over our documents.

I hate losing possession of them.

I say, “We couldn't find space on the government evac shuttles—”

“Half the pop couldn't find space on the government evac shuttles,” says the soldier, scanning our identity cards.

“I was hoping we might buy a private flight.”

He stops looking at our documents.

He raises his eyes.

“I have gold coins,” I say. Gold, in addition to skills, is the only thing worth anything anymore.

He hands back the documents.

He waits.

“I was told there were still spacecraft here. Do you happen to know if that's true?” I ask.

He waits.

“Of course,” I say, bowing my head, and give him a handful of gold coins.

“I'm thirsty,” my daughter says, weakly, from behind me.

I like being her shield.

The soldier counts the gold coins.

“Would you also happen to know where we can get some water?” I ask.

When he finishes counting: “There's a well about half a mile that way—” He points into the darkness. “Unmanned. No escorts. Access at your own risk. But I heard it's clean.”

“Thank you,” I say. “And a spacecraft?”

“Try the Bastion-IX. It's a freighter docked by the launchpads. Been collecting passengers for about two and a half months. The captain's name is Boyermood. He's good. He'll let you sleep onboard till blast-off.”

“Thank you,” I say.

We walk the half mile to the well. After coming all the way from Goshnen Station, the distance feels like nothing.

We drink.

We sit.

I think of my dead wife.

I wish I knew what my daughter is thinking of. Whatever it is, I wish I had the power to change it. I wish I could protect her mind. It's hard to believe—sitting, finally, in the darkness—that we are on the outskirts of a great city.

It's mostly empty now; inactive.

It has to be.

It's a matter of weeks or days before they get here too. It's inevitable. There's no stopping them. The horrors I've seen. The horrors I've seen at Goshnen Station after they came across the commlines, digitized, recombining and rematerialized, pouring out of our techports like cloudforms of static, the inevitable progeny of man and information, unkillable flesh-data hybrids infusing themselves into our minds, cooking us, boiling our brains with cognitive overload; the screaming, the impossibility of forgetting; the melted, dripping eyeballs and voided sockets—

My daughter's face.

Scared. Calm.

“You fell asleep,” she says.

No, I couldn't have. I have to be on guard. I promised. I promised my wife as her thumbs pushed into her eyes—

”I'm sorry,” I say.

We fill our canteens and walk back to the edge of the city.

All the electric light is off.

Nothing hums.

We find the launchpads. We find the Bastion-IX, just like the soldier said. Boyermood's inside, as are a few dozen other groups of people. Friends, families, coworkers. No one survives alone. I guess there aren't many left alive now who want to get out. We don't speak to the others but smile; and by smiling we become something else than strangers. We become co-passengers. Boyermood takes what remains of our gold coins and assigns us to a cabin.

We sleep.

For days we do nothing but drink water and sleep, dreaming of a different world.

“Where will we go?” my daughter asks.

“I don't know.”

Perpetual, fallen night.

Faces.

Time spent at the well.

We're used to hunger. We sleep through it. The alarm sounds—

A thunderous wave of the banging of metal against metal throughout the Bastion-IX and beyond. A dead city in final turmoil. I squeeze my daughter's hand. No one needs to tell us what's going on. They've arrived. The other ships on the launchpads are initiating launch sequences. Boyermood runs by. “Are we going?” I yell against the noise. “Yeah, we're going,” he yells back and disappears.

We stay inside.

The Bastion-IX creaks.

Shakes.

The engines ignite, but before they can fully power on I start to hear the pitter-patter of tiny bodies pinging off the exterior of the ship.

I'm scared.

I'm pretending not to be.

“Daddy—”

“Yes, darling?”

The pinging intensifies.

It's become a storm, a relentless precipitation of information.

“—tell me you love me, please.”

“I love you.”

(Over the intercom: “Attention! They're overwhelming us. We need volunteers,” Boyermood says, his voice breaking. “We need volunteers to go outside and clear the hull...”)

I'm up before I know it.

“Daddy?”

My daughter's hand slips from mine because mine is moving away.

“Daddy!”

If we don't get them off the ship, no one gets out of here.

“I'll be back,” I say.

I won't be.

I turn away because it's easier to turn away. I don't want her to see my face. (“Daddy, no…”) I hear her cry out, but I am no longer present.

Someone hands me an airblower.

I take it.

I exit the Bastion-IX.

I'm not alone. A few others are with me. Two men, a woman. The atmosphere is a static, swarming, whirling chaos that pricks my skin, crawls across my face, into my mouth, my ears. I spit. I shut my eyes, blowing as many of them off the hull as I can. They taste bitter as batteries.

The inside of my head begins to burn.

My jaw locks.

The Bastion-IX lifts off.

No one could tell me when the RV arrived outside our compound. Then again, no one could tell me why the world had ended either. But wherever that thing had come from, it looked like it had gone through hell and back to get to us.

Ugly didn’t begin to describe the pile of junk sitting a hundred meters from our walls. The RV itself had seen better days, but that was nothing compared to all the... additions its owner had haphazardly welded onto the frame.

Mismatched sheets of rusty scrap covered nearly every surface. Every window, from the windshield to the cabin sunroof, had been sealed shut, leaving only narrow slits to see through. Spikes jutted from the sides, extra armor hung off the back, and the whole thing looked like something built by a Mad Max fan with far too much time on their hands.

One of my men was even pretty sure the strange contraption mounted on the roof was some sort of jury-rigged flamethrower.

I wasn’t about to get close enough to check.

Then again, given the... things still roaming out there, maybe all that extra protection wasn’t such a bad idea.

What stood out the most, however, wasn’t the RV’s appearance. It was the fact that nobody ever came out.

We always had someone stationed on the walls, keeping an eye on the surrounding area. Yet despite the RV sitting there for nearly three days, not one of us had seen the driver. Or anyone else, for that matter.

We hadn’t even seen so much as a face through the narrow slits in the windows.

The only indication it wasn’t abandoned entirely was a small piece of paper taped to the windshield.

——

I’m not like these freaks out here! I’ve got a head and four limbs like everyone else! PLEASE! Let me in!

——

We never did, of course.

Our supplies were already stretched thin as it was, and we couldn’t afford to take in any more strays. Some argued that an armored vehicle like that could be useful, especially with how dangerous the roads had become. And to be fair, they had a point.

But fuel was getting scarcer by the day, and nobody knew how many extra mouths might be hiding inside.

After some deliberation, the council decided it wasn’t worth the risk. Whatever the RV’s owner had to offer, they weren’t getting through our gates.

So the RV sat there.

And sat there.

And sat there.

At first, I figured whoever was inside would eventually get the message and leave. But the days passed, and the thing never moved an inch.

It was starting to creep me out, if I was honest. But who was I going to complain to? Not like there were any parking officers left to give them a ticket.

Then, one day, a week after its arrival, the RV vanished, just like that.

Nobody saw it leave, just as nobody had seen it arrive. One moment it was there, and the next it was gone, with no indication of where it had gone or how.

The compound let out a collective sigh of relief, though a few people still grumbled about letting a perfectly good armored vehicle get away.

For the most part, though, we were happy to put the whole business behind us.

Two more weeks passed with little change. Well, little change for the better, anyway. Our supplies continued to dwindle, and the scouting teams returned with less and less each time.

When they returned at all.

The quiet murmurs of discontent and fear grew louder with each passing day, and I could swear you could cut the tension in the compound with a knife.

Then, one day, the RV came back.

It sat in the same spot, a hundred meters from the walls. Same ugly armor, same welded-on spikes, and the same sealed windows. Maybe a few more dents here and there, but otherwise it looked exactly as we remembered.

And just like last time, nobody had seen it arrive.

I questioned both watches myself. Neither could remember seeing anything approach the compound, much less a several-ton RV covered in enough scrap metal to build a small house.

It didn’t make any damn sense.

But as I examined the vehicle, I realized something else had changed.

The old note was gone. In its place was a new one, written in the same messy handwriting.

It was shorter this time, but as I read it through my binoculars, a chill ran down my spine.

—

It took awhile, but I found more heads and limbs! Can I come in NOW?

__

Title: Shh… he’s coming.

Don’t blink.

Don’t breathe.

Don’t make a sound.

Do not let him hear you.

Stay completely still and hold your breath. He’s underneath your bedroom floor, the one you’re lying on below your bed. He’s in the kitchen.

You can hear the stainless steel utensils clashing together in the drawer… followed by an abrupt silence… before a “shhhw“ sound, slicing down from your magnetic knife holder where you keep the sharpest blades, cuts into your eardrum.

The vase on the kitchen island shatters. It slams into the marble tile. The weight of the echo pounds against your chest, pressed against the wooden floorboards.

Glasses and plates are smashing one by one. The shock of the noise penetrates your skull, breaking your mind along with the tableware scattering across the ground.

“WHERE ARE YOU!” he shouts. It’s deep, and violating as the bass vibrates under your skin. 

You should have left the house when you had the chance. You could have hidden somewhere other than the guest room, you tell yourself, but nothing changes the reality you’re about to face.

Slow, dragging footsteps, clinging to chains, scrape the hallway floors leading toward the living room.

If he turns, he’ll see the stairs, the voice in your head whispers. You hardly hear it over your teeth chattering through your clenched jaw. At least you’re in the last room from the top stair.

A small, unearned sense of relief quickly slips past you. You try snatching the moment back, but the thought of being in the furthest room fades when you realize nobody is coming to save you, no matter how long it takes for him to find you.

Moving away from the city into an affordable Victorian is haunting you as you think about how far your nearest neighbor is. It’s Saturday and nobody will be home until Monday.

Every string of hope tightened by desperation keeping you together snaps, and dissociation settles in as a layer of your skin folds back, exposing all your vulnerabilities.  

You’ll never be able to hide for two days. The tremors become worse. Your body’s constantly twitching. The trembling causes you to bash your knuckle on the floor.

You gasp, squeezing your shaking hand into a fist as you smother your mouth with your other one. The breaths come out harder and faster, they’re uncontrollable.

Sweat breaks down your cheek when you hear a step crunch down on the bottom of the stairs. It sounds like a record being played backwards.

A second slow, patient step makes the staircase moan as he lifts upwards. It cries under the weight of a full-grown man’s army boot.

You sense the house shift as if it can’t handle the weight of a monstrous frame bending it, struggling not to collapse beneath him.

“COME…OUT, … COME…………..OUT, WHERE……..EVER……..YOU………ARE!” stammers out of the man. Rewinding forward, his voice distorts and drawls in slow motion, panicking your instinct for survival.

His body slides up the wall, climbing the stairs. Yours is buzzing from the aftershock of your heart exploding every time it impacts your chest plate. He’s going to hear it, you know he’s going to.

You try to raise your chest off the ground but you can’t move. You’re completely paralyzed, under the bed, breathing in dust. 

A tickle scratches the back of your throat. You want to cough. You struggle to hold it in. You try to silently clear your throat. It’s not working. You hold your breath, praying it’ll stop itching, but it continues to nag you. 

You know he’s upstairs now. You can’t make a sound. Your neck’s tingling. It’s scratching the roof of your mouth. It vanishes for a second after the door from across the hall gets kicked open. 

You can hear it splinter as it connects with the wall. He walks into the room. You quietly cough into your cupped hand and everything goes still. Not a single sound except for the low breaths coming out of your nostrils.

Around you, you notice the air is breathing. The floor’s breathing. Even the space between the ground and the mattress is breathing. You don’t blink. You can’t blink. Your eyes start to water, causing a tear to trickle down your face and splash below you.

Your bedroom door creaks. Your mind wanders and the sound from it plays like a violinist performing a sad romance. Until the release of the knob clicks as it twists back to place.

“FOUND YOU!”

My nightmare started about four months ago when my dad passed away from a sudden heart attack. His death completely derailed my life so I took an extended leave from my corporate job and moved back into my childhood home to take care of my elderly mother. She was completely devastated by the loss and she seemed to age ten years overnight. I spent the first few weeks just organizing my dad's paperwork and figuring out the mortgage payments, and once the finances were settled I decided to clean out the attic so we could start downsizing the house.

The attic was incredibly dusty and packed floor to ceiling with cardboard boxes. I assumed the boxes were just filled with old holiday decorations or winter clothes but I was completely wrong. I opened the first box and found it stuffed with dozens of random ceramic figurines, tarnished watches, and mismatched silverware. I opened the second box and found a pile of expensive silk scarves with the price tags still attached, so I spent the next three hours tearing through every single box in the attic and I realized I was looking at a massive hoard of stolen merchandise. There were gardening tools, expensive electronics, loose jewelry, and even personalized mail belonging to our neighbors.

I carried a box of stolen watches down the stairs and set it on the kitchen table where my mother was drinking tea. She looked at the box and her face instantly went pale.

"Where did you find that?" my mother asked while her hands started trembling around her mug.

"I found it in the attic along with about forty other boxes filled with stolen goods," I said and I sat down across from her. "Why do we have the neighbor's mail and a bunch of jewelry with the security tags still on them?"

My mother started crying and buried her face in her hands. She confessed everything to me right there at the kitchen table. She told me she suffered from a severe compulsion to steal and she had been fighting it for decades. She explained that she never wanted the items she took but her brain would completely overwhelm her with anxiety until she slipped something into her purse. She told me my dad had secretly managed her condition for their entire marriage. Whenever she stole something from a local shop my dad would quietly drive back the next day and pay the owner in cash to keep them from calling the cops. If she took something from a neighbor my dad would wait until the middle of the night and silently leave the item on their front porch. He spent his entire life supervising her and running interference so she would never face criminal charges.

"I do not know how to stop doing it," my mother sobbed while wiping her eyes with a napkin. "Your dad was my light and he kept me grounded when the urges got too strong. I do not know how to fight my own brain without him."

"We will figure it out," I told her and I reached across the table to hold her hand. "I am here now so I will help you manage it."

I thought I could easily handle the situation but I completely underestimated how aggressive a true compulsion can be without supervision. I had to return to my demanding career a few weeks later so I started working from my laptop in the living room to keep an eye on her. My job requires endless conference calls and I could not watch her every single second of the day. Without my dad there to shadow her every movement she started wandering out of the house whenever I was distracted by work.

The situation escalated incredibly fast. I was in the middle of a video presentation for a major client when I heard furious pounding on our front door. I muted my microphone and rushed to the entryway to find our next-door neighbor standing on the porch. Her face was bright red with anger and she was pointing a finger directly at my chest.

"You need to control your mother right now," the neighbor shouted and she pushed past me into our hallway. "I just watched her walk into my open garage and walk out with my expensive power drill. This is the third time this week she has trespassed on my property."

"I am so incredibly sorry," I pleaded and I tried to block her from walking further into the house. "She is grieving and her mind is not in the right place. I will pay for the drill and whatever else went missing."

"I do not want your money," the neighbor snapped while crossing her arms. "I want her to stop taking my belongings. If I catch her in my garage one more time I am calling the police and pressing charges for burglary."

I managed to calm the neighbor down and retrieve the drill from my mother's bedroom closet but the stress of the encounter left me entirely exhausted. I sat my mother down and begged her to stop wandering outside but she just stared at the floor and told me the urges were screaming in her head. The very next afternoon my phone rang and the caller ID showed the local bakery downtown. I answered the call and the store owner immediately started yelling at me.

"Your mother is sitting in my back office because I caught her stuffing six bags of expensive coffee beans into her purse," the shop owner yelled over the phone. "I am sick and tired of dealing with this. Your dad used to pay for her mistakes but he is gone and I cannot run a charity here. I have the police on standby."

I dropped everything I was doing and drove frantically to the bakery. I practically begged the owner not to involve law enforcement and I handed him three hundred dollars in cash to cover the stolen items and his trouble. He reluctantly let us go but he banned my mother from his store for life. I drove us home in complete silence because I was too overwhelmed to speak. I was failing at my job because I was constantly leaving to put out fires and I knew my mother was going to end up in jail if I did not find a medical solution.

I scheduled an appointment with a conventional therapist the following week. We sat in the office while the therapist asked my mother endless questions about her childhood and her grief. The therapist prescribed a cocktail of anti-anxiety medications and suggested cognitive behavioral therapy exercises. We spent a month following the doctor's orders but the pills did nothing except make my mother terribly drowsy. She still managed to steal the mail carrier's thermos off the front porch while sleepwalking, so the conventional methods were completely failing and I was losing my mind from the constant vigilance.

I went into my company office a few days later to catch up on paperwork and I must have looked like a walking corpse. I was pouring my fourth cup of coffee in the breakroom when a coworker walked in and noticed my exhausted expression.

"You look like you have not slept in a month," my coworker said and he leaned against the counter. "Is the situation with your mom getting worse?"

I sighed and rubbed my temples because my head was throbbing. "She is going to get arrested and I cannot stop her. The regular therapists just throw pills at her and nothing is actually fixing the compulsion. I cannot watch her twenty-four hours a day."

My coworker looked out into the hallway to make sure nobody was listening before he turned back to me. "I know this sounds strange but you should look into a different kind of doctor. My wife had severe obsessive-compulsive issues that almost ruined our marriage. We went to a private psychologist on the edge of town and he completely cured her in one session using unconventional hypnotherapy. He does not take insurance but the man works absolute miracles."

I was desperate enough to try anything so I wrote down the doctor's contact information and called his clinic from the parking lot. The receptionist squeezed us in for a consultation that same evening. I drove my mother to the clinic and we found it tucked away in a quiet residential neighborhood. The office was dimly lit and filled with strange abstract art but the doctor greeted us with an incredibly warm and calming demeanor. He invited us into his back office and poured us both a glass of water before sitting behind his desk.

"My assistant explained a bit of your situation to me," the doctor said while folding his hands together on his large oak desk. "Kleptomania is a fascinating condition because it is rarely about the stolen objects, so we have to look much deeper. It is actually about a fractured ego trying to fill a sudden void within the subconscious mind."

"But can you actually fix it?" I asked and I leaned forward in my chair. "The regular medication is completely failing, and she is going to end up in prison if she keeps walking into our neighbors' homes."

"Conventional medicine just tries to suppress the ego," the doctor explained smoothly while looking directly at my mother. "I do not suppress the ego because a suppressed ego always fights back and finds a new way to act out. I remove it entirely using a specialized technique called The Angel Soul treatment.”

“And what exactly does a weird name like that mean?” I asked, feeling a bit of my own skepticism creeping in. “Is this a complicated medical procedure, and how much time does something like this even take?”

“It takes less than two hours and it is completely non-invasive,” the doctor replied calmly. “Through extremely deep hypnotherapy, I can empty your mother's fractured ego and create a complete psychological vacuum. Nature abhors a vacuum, so the empty space will immediately draw in a pure and angelic soul to take its place. The compulsion will vanish entirely because the damaged ego that demanded the stealing will no longer exist to control her."

My mother shifted uncomfortably in her chair and crossed her arms tightly over her chest. "That sounds absolutely terrifying and I do not want anyone emptying my mind," she said, her voice shaking slightly with genuine fear. "You are talking about erasing who I am, and I do not even know what do you mean by what you just said, or what kind of soul you are planning to pull inside my head. I would much rather just try a different medication or maybe a higher dose of the pills I already have."

"You will still be yourself," the doctor assured her with a very warm and gentle smile. "You will just be free of the exhausting burden that forces you to take things that do not belong to you."

"Please do this for me," I begged my mother and I reached across the armrest to grab her hand. "I am drowning trying to keep you out of jail, and I am going to lose my career if I keep leaving in the middle of the day to apologize to angry store owners. You have to try this because we are completely out of other options, and I cannot supervise you forever."

My mother looked at the exhaustion in my eyes and tears welled up in her own. She finally nodded and agreed to undergo the procedure. The doctor instructed me to wait in the front reception area while he took my mother into a specialized hypnotherapy room. I sat in the quiet waiting room for almost two hours while listening to the faint sound of a ticking clock. The clinic was completely silent and I could not hear any voices coming from the back room. The door eventually clicked open and the doctor walked out with my mother following closely behind him.

I stood up immediately and searched her face for any signs of distress. She looked entirely different. The deep wrinkles of worry on her forehead were completely smoothed out and her shoulders were relaxed. She looked perfectly serene and almost glowing with a strange internal peace.

"The vacuum was successfully created and filled," the doctor said with a satisfied smile. "You will notice a profound difference in her behavior immediately. Keep a close eye on her and call me if you have any concerns."

I paid the exorbitant fee in cash and drove my mother home. I expected her to complain about a headache or act groggy from the hypnosis but she just stared out the passenger window with a soft smile on her face. The change in her behavior over the next few days was nothing short of miraculous because the stealing stopped entirely. I purposely left a stack of twenty-dollar bills on the kitchen counter and she walked right past them without even a glance. I took her to a crowded grocery store and she did not try to slip a single item into her purse. The compulsion was completely eradicated and I finally felt like I could breathe again.

The relief only lasted about a week before the uncanny valley set in and I started noticing terrifying changes in her personality.

I woke up on a Saturday morning and found her dragging huge trash bags full of her own expensive clothes and jewelry out to the curb. I ran outside and asked her what she was doing but she just looked at me with wide and unblinking eyes.

"Possessions are but chains binding us to the dirt," my mother said and her voice sounded strangely hollow. "It is unjust to hoard the harvest when the earth is shared by all who walk upon it."

I froze because she never spoke with that kind of archaic phrasing before. I tried to pull the bags back toward the house but she gripped my wrist with surprising strength and stared deeply into my eyes. She did not blink once during the entire exchange.

"Let the excess be cleansed," she whispered and she calmly walked back inside to grab more items.

Her obsession with cleansing escalated rapidly over the next few weeks. She started waking up at three in the morning to scrub the pavement on our driveway with a small wire brush. I would find her standing in the middle of the street picking up tiny pieces of gravel and arranging them in perfect geometric patterns along the curb. She stopped watching television and she stopped reading books. She just sat in the living room chair for hours staring directly at the blank wall without moving a single muscle.

I tried to talk to her about dad or ask about her childhood memories but she would just tilt her head and look at me like I was speaking a foreign language.

I decided to confront the doctor and demand he reverse the hypnosis, so I called his clinic from my office all afternoon, but nobody ever answered the phone. When I finally finished work around eight o'clock in the evening, I drove straight to the clinic instead of going home first. I pulled up to the building and noticed the parking lot was completely empty. The interior lights were turned off, but I walked up to the front entrance and turned the brass handle anyway. The door clicked open, and I stepped into the dark reception area.

"Hello?" I called out into the empty clinic. "I know it is after hours but I need to speak with the doctor."

Nobody answered my call but I heard a strange noise coming from the back office down the hallway. It sounded like a wet tearing noise mixed with the heavy sliding of furniture. I slowly walked down the dark corridor and the metallic smell of copper hit my nose and made my stomach churn. I approached the open doorway of the doctor's private office and peeked around the doorframe.

The office was illuminated by a single desk lamp lying knocked over on the floor. The doctor was lying flat on his back in the center of the rug and his white shirt was completely soaked in dark crimson blood.

My mother was standing directly over him.

I slapped my hand over my mouth to stop myself from screaming and I ducked behind a large metal filing cabinet near the doorway. I peered around the edge of the cabinet and watched the horrific scene unfold.

My mother was holding a pair of large gardening shears she must have taken from our garage. She knelt down beside the doctor's lifeless body and calmly positioned the steel blades around his right wrist. She leaned her weight onto the handles and a sickening crunch echoed through the room as the blades severed the bone and tissue. She tossed the severed hand into a black plastic trash bag and repeated the exact same process on his left wrist.

She did not look angry or frantic while she butchered the man. She looked completely serene and her face held the same peaceful expression she wore while arranging gravel on our street.

"To steal a mind is the ultimate theft and the penalty is absolute," my mother whispered to the corpse and her hollow voice sent ice water running through my veins. "The thief must be separated from his tools so the earth may remain pure."

I could not move my legs because the sheer terror completely paralyzed me. I watched her grab the doctor by his ankles and easily drag his heavy body across the bloody rug toward the back exit of the office. The clinic had an incinerator in the alleyway. My mother hoisted the doctor's body into the metal chute with unnatural strength and threw the bag of severed hands in right behind him. She ignited the incinerator and stood perfectly still while the roaring flames consumed the evidence of her crime. She waited until the body was reduced to ash before she quietly walked away into the night.

I waited there for almost an hour before I finally found the courage to run back to my car. I drove home in a state of shock and found my mother sitting on the living room couch staring at the blank wall exactly as she always did. I locked myself in my bedroom and shoved a dresser against the door.

I knew I had to keep a close eye on her so I started secretly following her when she left the house for her nightly walks. Two nights ago I trailed her from a safe distance as she walked down our street toward the small corner grocery store in our neighborhood. The store is owned by an older man who has a nasty reputation for intentionally shortchanging his customers and ringing up phantom items on the cash register to steal a few extra dollars from unsuspecting neighbors.

I hid behind a row of community fire pits across the street and watched my mother walk through the front doors of the grocer's shop just as he was locking up for the night. I could not hear what was said inside the store but I saw the grocer start waving his arms angrily at her through the front window. The argument ended abruptly when my mother reached across the counter and grabbed the man by his throat.

She lifted the struggling grocer entirely off the ground with one arm and dragged him out the front doors into the street. The man was kicking his legs and clawing at her arm but she did not even flinch. She dragged him directly toward the community fire pits where I was hiding so I scrambled backward into the bushes and held my breath.

"You manipulate the scales to hoard the harvest," my mother said to the gasping grocer while holding him suspended over the embers of the fire pit. "You siphon from the innocent and the penalty is absolute."

She tightened her grip around his throat until a loud snap echoed through the quiet street and the grocer went completely limp in her grasp. She tossed his lifeless body directly into the large fire pit and calmly arranged the surrounding logs to ensure the flames would completely consume him. She stood there staring unblinking into the fire until the smell of burning meat filled the air and then she turned around and walked back toward our house.

I am currently locked in my bedroom and my mother is sitting in the living room staring at the wall. I cannot go to the police because they will arrest her and put her on trial for multiple murders. She is not a murderer and she has no control over the thing piloting her body right now. I need to find a professional who knows how to reverse deep hypnotherapy or someone who knows how to expel whatever the doctor accidentally invited into her empty ego.

If anyone reading this knows how to fix here, please contact me immediately. I have locked all the doors and hidden every sharp tool in the house but she just started pacing the hallway outside my bedroom. I can hear her bare feet pressing against the floorboards and she is muttering about how I stole the tools she needs to cleanse the earth. I do not know how much longer the locked door will hold her back.

Part 1 Part 2

The next shift rolled around soon enough, and because the previous one ended particularly late, I was allowed to stay home for the whole day as required break. I took the time to read up more about the airport. With a glass of my favorite “spiked” hot chocolate, which was three parts hot chocolate to one part vanilla vodka, I sat down to read an old DIA schematic from 1994. The previous ramp agent had left it behind carelessly before he left us; he was supposed to have shredded it when he was done with his biggest project that involved foreign delegates for a big sports event last year. I had brought it home from his old locker when the keys were handed to me. 

Most of the layout matched what every ramp agent knew by heart: the automated baggage system’s loops, the central area where the passenger trains ran, and the deep electrical conduits. 

Except for Concourse A, Sub-basement Sector 4-Echo.

On modern digital tablets, it was grayed out, marked simply as DECOMMISSIONED. On this old schematic, however, there was a long winding loop from the now-automated baggage tracks to a vault labeled ROOM 404-ZULU: FOUNDATION ARTIFACT ARCHIVE. 

I took a slow sip of my drink, the sweet warmth of chocolate and the sharp kick of vanilla vodka cutting through the chill that had settled deep in my chest. What exactly is beyond there, I wondered.

I folded the schematic into a tight square and shoved it into the inner pocket of my heavy ramp parka. I wasn’t going back to the airport blind tonight.

I arrived at the employee staging area at 21:15. The locker room was eerily quiet. Miller’s peg had been replaced by a bright red tag: MANDATORY MEDICAL REVIEW – FIT FOR DUTY PENDING.

"Miller took a bad turn while returning home," a voice crackled from behind me.

I turned around. Standing near the time clock was Vance.

Vance was a graveyard lead who supposedly started during the pre-opening trials of the airport in the nineties. He was gaunt, smelled faintly of hydraulic fluid, and moved with a jerky uneasiness. While every other lead carried digital RFID fobs on lanyards, Vance carried a heavy iron ring of notched brass keys.

"Blood pressure spiked off the charts," Vance said, with a voice just like a recorded message played through a blown speaker. "Occupational health pulled him for a tox screen. You're doing 4-Echo solo tonight. Do you know what the scope is?”

I didn’t look into his eyes. I kept my gaze firmly on the brass keys hanging at his hip. "Log the archival seals of 404-Zulu, verify the manifest, return the brass."

Vance’s neck twitched, just half an inch to the left.  "Good boy. Take the freight elevator at the south apron."

I remembered something that Miller once told me. Never look directly at the contents of sealed crates. I went into the strongroom to retrieve a gear-inspection mirror.

“I don’t think you’ll need that, kiddo,” Vance said with a haughty laugh. But I had never trusted him. He was the opposite of Miller: looked like he had good intentions but they never turned out well. I said nothing, and put on my safety gear. After I was dressed, I stepped ahead and pressed the well-worn button to call the freight elevator up. I gingerly took a step in, before pressing the basement button. 

The freight elevator rattled and shuddered as it plunged past the apron, past the automated passenger train tubes, deep into the foundation. When the metal gates scraped open into Sector 4-Echo, the cold air reeked of dried paint mixed with rotten cardboard.

This was the infamous $300-million graveyard of DIA’s automated baggage system. Overhead, rusted steel monorail tracks twisted through the darkness like a phantom ribcage. Hundreds of abandoned metal luggage carts sat frozen on the tracks at weird angles, thick with salt formations and drained de-icing fluid from the surface.

My digital scanner died within thirty feet, its screen turning to static before flickering out completely. I unclipped my halogen lantern, and pulled the 1994 schematic from my parka.

The map showed three rail junctions before the abandoned room. Left at the switchgear, straight past the hydraulic reservoir, right along track 19. I started walking slowly, the heavy lantern swinging slowly side to side with creaks that gave me goosebumps. 

I reached Room 404-Zulu after about eight minutes. Its heavy iron door was secured with a brass padlock. I fitted the notched key from Vance’s ring and turned. The padlock sheared and fell with a deafening crack that echoed down the hollow tracks.

Inside sat a massive wooden transport crate bolted to an iron pallet, eight feet high and twelve feet wide. The exterior was well-worn, with many cracks and wood peeling like hangnails from dehydrated skin.

Stenciled in black industrial paint on the wood was:

PROJECT NEW WORLD: TERMINAL MURAL INSTALLATION #3

ARTIST: L. TANGUMA

RECIPIENT: SPECIAL PROJECTS OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE

STATUS: REJECTED / PERMANENT RETENTION (1993)

I reached into my maintenance belt and retrieved my gear-inspection mirror, the same one we used to inspect landing gear assemblies for hydraulic hairline cracks. Simple, but incredibly handy for precise work. 

I slid the mirror through a cracked seam, angling the beam of my lantern off the floor so that the mirror would reflect the painting.

Reflected in the small glass circle was the hidden third mural: THE FEEDING OF THE FOUNDATION.

The mural’s palette was dominated by sickly blacks, bone whites, and dried-blood reds. It depicted the airport’s 1993 construction: a circle of men in charcoal suits holding matching shovels around the open dirt pit of the Jeppesen Terminal. They were obeying the instructions of a soldier with a gas mask.  Instead of breaking ground, they were shoveling wet gray concrete over an open mass trench packed with screaming people.

In the lower right corner, the oil paint was glistening, dripping onto the crate floor with a soft tap... tap... tap. That part of the mural was dominated by crimson hues. Painted into that fresh red sludge was the tourist from two nights ago, wearing his gray fleece, his neck pillow torn open, smiling a wide Glasgow smile with an invisible seatbelt strapped over his lap.

Standing on the rim of the trench above him was Vance, holding his ring of brass keys, pointing down into the ditch with a grin. And next to the tourist in the pit? There was an empty space. Just a raw, gray silhouette of a ramp agent's parka, outlined in rough, interrupted pencil strokes.

Vance had already been replicated long ago, and the tourist from before was a fresh victim. But the airport was trying its hardest to replicate me. It couldn't. 

Instead of screaming, I instinctively put a hand over my mouth and gasped. 

I knew there was a reason Vance was so happy that I was doing this solo. At least Miller helped me with the rules. 

"You're not on the canvas yet, kid." The voice came through the mirror. Shivering hard, I tilted the small glass circle toward the doorway.

Vance was standing in the frame. His reflection jittered, blurring like oil on water. Through the convex lens, his outline looked two-dimensional, like a paper silhouette someone had pasted over the dark. Where his neck met his collar, there was no shadow and no tendons, but just a seam. 

He wasn't blinking. He wasn't breathing, either. In the freezing draft where my own breath plumed in thick clouds, nothing came from Vance’s mouth or nose.

"The foundation needs four tons of ballast every quarter," his voice vibrated out of the hollow wooden crate beside me. 

"Just turn around," the voice coaxed. "Look into the crate. Let the soldier finish the eyes."

The air pressure plummeted, popping my eardrum. That same freezing vacuum that had dragged the tourist toward the train and the tarmac began to tug at the hem of my parka, sliding my boots an inch across the silt.

Behind the wood, the wet paint hissed like a kettle.

Don't look at it. Never look directly at it. Miller's voice echoed in my head, raw and panicked.

I kept my chin tucked tight against my chest, staring dead at the floor. With shaking hands, I unclipped the spray bottle of concentrated de-icing glycol from my belt.

"I said," Vance whispered, and the shadow in the doorway took one soundless stride forward, "turn around."

Still staring at the concrete, I swung my eight-pound lantern behind me in a blind, violent arc. The impact didn't feel like hitting a man. It was just a sharp, hollow crack, like smashing through a stretched artist's canvas. Without wasting a second, I jammed the brass nozzle of the de-icer through the open seam of the crate and squeezed the trigger until the bottle emptied.

The reaction was instant and violent.

The wet oil paint inside screamed, as if people were drowning under a frozen lake. Through the slats, I caught a glimpse of running gray sludge as the glycol reacted with the paint on the mural. All the faces dissolved into oily runoff, and the penciled silhouette where my face was supposed to go liquefied, washing off the canvas in ropes.

The vacuum snapped. The pressure returned with an explosive pop that knocked me to my knees.

In the doorway, the figure that called itself Vance threw its head back. Its face began to peel away from the bones just like the runoff of oil from the mural. A dry, rustling wail pierced the silence as he stumbled backward into the dark, scraping against the rusted monorail tracks.

I scrambled up, grabbed my lantern, and ran. I kept the beam pinned strictly to my boots, following the turns from the 1994 schematic in reverse: left past the reservoir, straight past the switchgear, sprinting until my lungs burned.

I hit the freight elevator, slammed the gate, and jammed the brass key into the control box, twisting it until the elevator activated. The cab lurched upward, leaving the screeching metal and the smell of dissolved paint behind in the pit. 

When the elevator doors finally scraped open onto the apron level, I pulled up the sleeve of my parka to check my watch, expecting it to be twenty past ten or twenty-five at the latest.

The mechanical hands read 04:38 AM.

My stomach dropped into my boots. What had felt like ten frantic minutes in Sector 4-Echo had swallowed many hours of real time. I spent the remaining twenty minutes in the line-service breakroom, running scalding tap water over my hands until the skin cracked, waiting out the last ticks of the graveyard schedule.

I clocked out punctually at 05:00 AM. The Great Hall was flooded with morning travelers, oblivious and half-asleep, rolling their suitcases toward TSA under the white fabric canopy. Nobody smelled the harsh tang of glycol on me, nor the grey streaks on my boots. 

I walked past Children of the World Dream of Peace, keeping my vision unfocused. High up on the wall, the arm of the gas-masked soldier looked faintly warped. It was almost as if it had felt the chemical burn I gave the mural four floors below.

My eyes twitched as the smell of baked bread filled my nostrils. I tried to stretch my body out, to feel the tips of my paws as I awoke from my agonising slumber, only to find my limbs unresponsive.

I continued to tense the nerves along my spine, to pull everything towards my chest so I could know that I was still here. Nothing came to me. My legs refused to obey my brain's commands as that overwhelming scent of cooked crust wafted through the air.

The warm wheaty tang that hit my nostrils brought me back to before my long sleep. I had been stalking behind a biped in a long red cloak. Carting a basket of the same smells along with her.

I had followed her. Prowling down on all fours as my ears flattened and I attempted to creep closer and closer. Determined to snatch a bite from within that bag.

My paws broke the leaves underfoot as my mouth watered. Inching towards that little red thing that trotted ahead of me. Unaware of the beast that was in tow. I was on the verge of pouncing, snatching those treats from her and vanishing into the dark when-

Darkness. Had I passed out? I couldn’t have fallen asleep during a hunt. And why couldn’t I move?

‘The pie is ready mama!’ The voice was soft and high. I heard the patter of tiny hooves. Clicking against the ground as a shuffle of movement followed. I tried to shift where I lay but my neck refused to follow as my eyes swivelled in their sockets.

Was that creature still there? Has it done something to me? All I had done was follow in its step.

I tried to wriggle my way around only to fall still at the sound of steps that made the cold floor beneath me rattle. The powerful footfall drew closer. Paralysed and afraid I tried to whine in protest but even my voice refused to aid me.

The hooves stopped just behind my ears and I could feel the shadow looming across me. I thought I would have my brain smashed against the ground by this titanic cloven beast but was instead raised.

Hoisted off the ground by a strange mass of naked flesh that encircled the nape of my neck. It carted me into a room where that red thing lay in the lap of a hunched elder.

The small red thing turned to see me and its face contorted in a hideous display of teeth.

‘The new pelt is wonderful Papa!’ pelt? ‘Have some pie to celebrate!’

I felt my form twist and stretch in ways foreign to any being of flesh and blood. Then my head rolled limp to one side and I saw myself in the reflection of a towering mirror.

Instead of looking at the body of a healthy wolf I was faced with the plains of bare, naked skin. My limbs stretched on for miles with no sign of organs, bones or muscle in sight.

I wanted to scream, cry or howl at my loss as I was laid across the red things lap to warm its body.

I still lay there now. Praying for release from what remained.

I'll kiss your lips with an aching tooth in my mouth
I'll place my freshly pulled tooth on your ring
I'll mix Apranax in your drink
so that you think
your toothache is gone because you met me
I'll describe the paint color I want for our bedroom
to the ironmonger as tooth yellow.

I'm fifty-one years old, and this is the only poem I've ever written, which I wrote ten years ago.

I don't really like writing poetry, because I'm not good at it. I especially enjoy the sound of poems with rhyming lines; they sound like music to my ears. But I've tried a few times and failed miserably. I couldn't write a good poem. I'd written this poem for my dentist, who knew I was a writer and with whom I had a good relationship. I mean, I hadn't written the poem for her. I'd simply wanted to write a poem about teeth.

She was a very beautiful woman. I had no feelings for her, but she'd misunderstood the poem I'd written and thought I was making a move on her. She'd given me a pretty harsh telling-off. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get her to understand that the poem wasn't written for anyone in particular, and that it hadn't been inspired by any feelings I had for someone.

Anyway, my publisher was telling me that sales of my latest novel were terrible. He kept calling me and bringing me down.

“Maybe you should stop writing horror novels and start writing detective fiction instead. You know me, even two sentences from you are enough to move me. I can't sleep at night. But this latest novel of yours was an absolute fiasco. I seriously regret publishing it.”

I was tired of his calls and him repeating the same things in different ways for two months. He was almost going to ask me to compensate him for his losses. He wanted me to write and finish something else as soon as possible and make up for the losses I'd caused him. He didn't want to wait.

But I'd been overcome by the fear of not being able to write well. I'd been deeply affected by public opinion. Albert, the successful writer of many years, can no longer write... The story's opening is too rushed... The ending doesn't come together properly... Even an elementary school kid could come up with these descriptions... We're sick of ghosts that appear at night... And so on.

If he called today, I wasn't going to answer. He called every other day to ask, “Have you started the new book yet?” Whenever I said no, it was the same old stuff, the same complaints. For the past month, I'd been sitting down at my computer almost every day, but nothing came of it.

As I sat at my computer, waiting for something to come to mind, my phone rang, of course. I didn't even need to check who was calling. I tensely raised my hand to my head and began running my fingers through my hair. I looked around the objects in my room, as if I might find inspiration in one of them. The bed, the couch, an oil painting my sister had made... Nothing came of it. I pinched a lock of my hair between my fingers and pulled. I looked at my hand. There was a clump of hair between my index and middle fingers. I hadn't realized I was losing so much hair.

It was as if an electric current had passed through my head. Then, in one go, I wrote the following:

''In my 1+1 apartment on the second floor
I was drinking Americano by the balcony door
Suddenly I saw a wig falling down below
with bangs and in the color of dark yellow

I thought one of the neighbors upstairs must have dropped it while leaning over the balcony.
I lunged for it on instinct, trying to catch it. And I caught it, everything happened so quickly.

And the wig was now in my hands
I even caught it by the bangs

I waited for a while,
still in the position to catch it,
holding the wig in my hand,
waiting for someone to call.
But there was no sound at all.

Considering the possibilities,
I thought I should look up first.
But someone could have been down there,
waiting for the wig to fall.

While I was looking around upstairs,
someone called out from below:
“Throw it down already.
What are you looking at like an idiot?”
She was tall like a door
She was as tall as a first floor
I downed my Americano
And calmly threw the wig toward her
She jumped and
caught the wig with her head
and suddenly disappeared.''

I had no idea how it had happened. It was as if I hadn't been the one who wrote it. It was frightening. The way the sentences came to me, the way they lined up in my mind—I had never experienced anything like it. Everything was finished in one go, without any planning whatsoever.

My publisher called. I sent him to voicemail. I read the poem from beginning to end. It was as if I were reading it for the first time, as if I were discovering the poem all over again. It wasn't the kind of poem I could have written anyway, not in terms of its subject matter. I wouldn't describe ghosts or entities like this; I would leave them shrouded in mystery. In this poem, the ghost was very concrete.

My publisher called again. I answered this time. I was going to tell him I had an idea or something. I was such an idiot, always telling him the truth: inspiration wasn't coming, I couldn't write, my mind felt frozen, and so on. I picked up the phone, planning to ask him to give me a month and tell him I'd deliver a novel of at least two hundred pages.

“So, Albert, any progress? How many pages have you written?”

Suddenly, my mouth had locked up. I couldn't speak. The words I wanted to say were only passing through my mind; they wouldn't come out. All I could manage were sounds like “mmmh.”

“Albert? Hello?”

I started reciting the poem I'd just written. I read it from beginning to end. My mouth wasn't under my brain's control.

“What is this? What’s going on?”

''Hello?''

''Albert, what's going on?''

I could speak again now. It would have been ridiculous to say that something had taken control of my mouth and fingers. I had to say something, but I was too frightened to think. My mind was in turmoil. I hung up.

My publisher called again. I don’t remember that moment very clearly, but I mumbled something along these lines.

“What was that thing you were telling me about? So now you’re hanging up on me, too. Is this what we’ve come to, Albert? After all these years of working togeth—”

“It’s me, John. Did you like my poem? Jason, I was going to ca— If you want, I can write a few more poems like this... Jason, I can’t spea—I could even write five hundred poems in the same style, if you like. Do you publish po— Jason, my mouth is going numb. I don’t feel well. I’ll call you back in a bi— Listen, I wrote this three hundred years ago.”

I hung up. I jumped to my feet. I licked and bit my lips. I took a deep breath, and as I exhaled, the following words spilled out of my mouth:

''He figured out how to pass through
Walls within a year or two
But he still can't pass through wood
The ghost in my lover's neighborhood.''

My publisher kept calling insistently. His calls felt like a voice reminding me of my connection to this world. I'd set my phone's ringtone to Radiohead's “Weird Fishes.” The song played throughout each call. I couldn't move; my body was locked up, but hearing the song comforted me. When the song ended, I'd try to take a step, but I couldn't. I'd try to speak, but I couldn't move my mouth. It was as if I'd had a stroke. Then the song would start again. Yes, I'd tell myself, “I'm still alive. The world still makes sense.”

The song had stopped playing, too. My connection to the world had been severed.

I came to my senses again for a brief moment. I sat down at my computer. The screen was covered in dust. I noticed a cloth right next to the monitor. I couldn't remember when I'd put it there. I wiped the monitor clean. The poem looked better now.

I think you've realized that I wasn't the one writing all this story.

​

Note: These are recovered internal files from the Department for Transport archives concerning anomalies in Berkshire. These files were found and transcribed during my internship at the Department for Transport, whilst clearing out their archives in Basingstoke ready for a relocation to Manchester.

I am not DI Thorne, and I have found no trace of him in my investigations into the accounts that these files allude to.

I present these files in an attempt to piece together the sequence of strange occurrences in the Berkshire area and make sense of what has happened, what is happening and why.

If anyone has information regarding the whereabouts of DI Thorne it would be greatly appreciated and helpful in my investigation.

(Name redacted)

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

FOUND TRANSCRIPT – FOR INTERNAL REVIEW ONLY

DEPARTMENT FOR TRANSPORT – ANOMALOUS INCIDENT DIVISION

CASE FILE: TX098

SUBJECT: DI THORNE – WITNESS STATEMENT

LOCATION: IN SITU

DATE: MARCH 21ST, 2026

TIME: 15:07 GMT

Supplemental Statement of Thorne

Subject: Unusual taxi encounter following departure from the police station

Classification: Unresolved incident

Statement taken from: Thorne

I am providing this statement to document an encounter that occurred after I left the police station. I appreciate that certain elements may be difficult to reconcile with conventional explanations. I would ask that the recording from the station's CCTV be considered alongside my account, although I suspect it will prove less helpful than it ought to be.

I left the station intending to clear my head. I had been inside long enough to develop a profound dislike of the smell of institutional coffee, the desk sergeant's expression, and the general impression that my continued existence was becoming an administrative inconvenience.

There was a taxi waiting outside.

I do not recall hearing it arrive.

It was an old-fashioned black cab, the sort that seemed to have survived several decades of neglect through sheer spite. Its paintwork was dull, its windows dark, and the roof light was illuminated despite the fact that the vehicle appeared to have no driver.

I was considering whether to walk when the rear passenger window descended by a few inches.

"Going somewhere?" asked the driver.

He was a thin man, perhaps in his sixties, although I found it difficult to settle on an age. His face had the grey, papery appearance of someone who had spent too long indoors. His eyes were pale and watery. He smiled at me with the weary familiarity of a man who had delivered the same joke to thousands of people and was still waiting for someone to find it funny.

"Not particularly," I said.

"Best sort of passenger."

"Is it?"

"Oh, yes. You'd be surprised how many people don't know where they're going until you ask them."

I looked at the cab. The interior was dim, but I could see the outline of the back seat. It appeared to be covered in cracked black leather. Something about the vehicle made me reluctant to get in. It was not an obvious danger. There was no knife-wielding lunatic in the front seat, no smell of blood, no sinister music drifting from the radio.

It was simply wrong.

The sort of wrongness that makes you look at a perfectly ordinary staircase and wonder whether the bottom step has moved since you last saw it.

"I'm not going to make a wish," I told him.

The driver's smile widened.

"I haven't asked you to make one yet."

"You were going to."

He gave a little laugh and turned his attention to the road ahead.

"Clever fellow. You know how these things work, then?"

"Enough to know that wishing for a taxi ride is rarely the worst decision a person makes. It's what comes afterwards that tends to cause trouble."

"Ah." He nodded thoughtfully. "You're not the usual sort."

"What is the usual sort?"

"People who've given up hope."

He said it casually, as though describing a preference for cash fares or passengers who didn't smoke. There was no malice in his voice. That made it worse.

I looked at the cab again. The rear door was unlocked. I had not heard it unlock.

"Who sent you?" I asked.

"Certain parties."

"Specific parties?"

"Very specific. I'm afraid I can't be more helpful than that."

"Convenient."

"Extremely."

He seemed genuinely pleased with himself.

I should have walked away. In retrospect, I can identify several points at which I might have made a sensible decision. Walking away was one. Calling the police was another. Going back inside and asking the desk sergeant to arrest a taxi driver for being unpleasant would have been a third, though I accept that this last option would probably have resulted in a rather different kind of trouble.

Instead, I opened the rear door and got in.

The interior smelled of damp fabric, old cigarette smoke and something faintly sweet that I could not identify. The smell reminded me of flowers left too long in a warm room. The seat was cold enough to make me shift away from it.

The door shut behind me with a soft, final click.

"Where to?" the driver asked.

"Just drive."

"Excellent."

The engine started. I did not hear the ignition.

We pulled away from the station.

I watched the building recede through the rear window. The desk sergeant was visible behind the glass, hunched over his paperwork beneath the fluorescent lights. For a moment, I had the distinct impression that he was looking directly at me.

Then the cab turned a corner, and the station disappeared.

I waited for the familiar sounds of the town: traffic, distant voices, the rattle of a delivery van over a drain cover. Instead, the noise of the engine seemed to become the only sound in existence.

I leaned forward.

"Where are we going?"

"Somewhere you need to be."

"I'm fairly sure I didn't ask for that."

"No," he said. "You asked me to drive."

I sat back.

Outside, the streetlights had begun to stretch. Not physically, exactly. Their reflections elongated across the windows, lingering long after the cab had passed them. The buildings grew indistinct, their upper storeys seeming to lean towards the road as if listening to something beneath the tarmac.

I looked at the driver's mirror.

His eyes were fixed on me.

"Something wrong?" he asked.

"Where are we?"

"On the road."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one that matters at present."

I turned towards the window.

The town had gone.

In its place was a long, empty stretch of road beneath a sky that looked neither day nor night. The horizon was a bruised grey, mottled with dark clouds that did not move. There were no trees, no fields, no buildings, and no sign of anything living. The road ran straight ahead, its surface black and wet, though I could see no rain.

White lines divided the lanes. They were too bright, almost luminous, and they seemed to continue beyond the point where the road disappeared into the distance.

A sign stood at the roadside.

L303

Nothing else was written on it.

I turned back to the driver.

"What is this?"

"L303."

"I can read."

"Then we're making progress."

I watched the road for several seconds. I have seen enough strange things in my life to understand that panic is rarely useful. It encourages mistakes, and mistakes are generally expensive. I decided to remain calm, although I could feel the muscles in my shoulders tightening.

"Is this some kind of road between places?"

The driver gave a low whistle.

"Very good."

"Between towns?"

"Between realms."

I looked out of the window again.

There was something moving in the distance. At first, I thought it was a bird, but it was too large and moved in a way that suggested it had never needed wings. It crossed the sky above the road, briefly blotting out a patch of cloud. I could not make out its shape. My mind seemed unwilling to settle on one.

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"It means the road goes places."

"Which places?"

"Worlds. Realities. Dimensions, if you prefer the word. Different places with different rules. Some are quite pleasant, I'm told. Some are less so."

"And the road connects them?"

"More or less. It's a conduit. A passage. A bit of infrastructure, if you like."

I stared at him.

"Interdimensional infrastructure."

"You'd be amazed what gets built without a planning application."

Despite myself, I almost laughed. It was an absurd thing to say, and absurdity was reassuring. It implied that there were still rules, even if they were rules I did not understand.

Then I noticed the signs.

They appeared intermittently at the roadside, each one marking an exit. Some were ordinary road signs, with white lettering on blue backgrounds. Others were made from materials I could not identify. One was a slab of something pale and porous, covered in symbols that seemed to crawl when I looked directly at them.

The first sign I could read said:

EXIT 14 — THE KINGDOM OF THE UNFINISHED

The next was simpler.

EXIT 22 — DO NOT STOP

Farther along, a sign stood at an angle, its surface stained with what looked like rust.

EXIT 31 — HOME

I felt my stomach tighten.

"Home?" I asked.

"Some people like to go home."

"Some people?"

"Most, eventually."

I looked more closely at the sign. Beneath the word was a smaller line of text, barely visible in the dim light.

HOME IS WHERE WE KEEP YOU.

I turned away.

"What happens if you take one of these exits?"

"Depends on the exit. Depends on the passenger. Depends on what's waiting on the other side."

"Are these places inhabited?"

"Oh, yes."

"By people?"

The driver laughed.

"Sometimes."

I waited for him to elaborate. He did not.

After a while, he continued.

"Some of the things out there hunt. Some stalk. Some like to play games. Some prefer to trap you and see how long it takes you to realise you're trapped. There are places where you can spend an entire lifetime being chased by something that never gets any closer. Places where you'll meet people who know everything about you, including things you haven't done yet. Places where your shadow belongs to somebody else."

He paused.

"And then there are the ones that don't care what happens to you at all. Those are often the worst."

I found myself watching the windows for movement.

"Why bring people here?"

"Because they're wanted."

"By whom?"

"Whatever happens to be waiting."

"Is that what you do? Deliver people to monsters?"

"I provide a service."

"That's a very generous description."

"I'm a generous man."

There was a silence.

"Are you one of these things?" I asked.

The driver glanced at me in the mirror.

"One of what things?"

"One of the entities that uses the road."

He laughed. It was a genuine laugh, warm and almost human.

"I suppose I am now."

He adjusted his grip on the steering wheel. His hands looked ordinary enough, except that the skin around his knuckles was stretched too tightly, as if there were more joints beneath it than there should be.

"But I wasn't always."

"Explain."

"I was from your world. Your sort of world, anyway. I found this road years ago. I don't know how. I was driving, same as you might be. One minute I was somewhere familiar, the next I wasn't."

"How long ago?"

He considered the question.

"Hard to say. Time doesn't behave properly here. I've been driving for what felt like a few months. It might have been years. It might have been longer than that."

"And you couldn't leave?"

"Not at first."

"What happened?"

He looked ahead, and for the first time his expression changed. The smile faded. The grey skin of his face seemed to sag, and something passed behind his eyes that made me wish I had not asked.

"I drove to the end of the road."

I waited.

"What did you find?"

He shook his head.

"No."

"No?"

"You don't want to know."

"I'm already here. I'd prefer to know what I'm dealing with."

"You think you would. That's the problem."

His voice had become quieter. The engine seemed to grow louder, filling the space between us.

"There are things that can be described, Mr Thorne. There are things you can look at, and things you can be told about, and you can fit them into your head somehow. You might lose sleep. You might drink more than you should. You might spend the rest of your life wishing you'd never heard of them. But you can still understand them."

He glanced at me.

"What I found at the end of the road wasn't one of those things."

I said nothing.

"I can't explain it. Not because I don't want to. Because I can't. I've tried. I've had people ask me, and I've started to tell them, and then I've watched them stop understanding English. One woman forgot how to breathe. Another spent three days insisting that she was a door. A man laughed until his teeth came out."

He paused.

"I don't know if they were mad before I spoke to them. I'd like to think they were."

I looked at the road ahead.

The sky seemed lower now. I had the uncomfortable feeling that the clouds were not above us at all, but beneath something vast that was leaning down to inspect the cab.

"What happened to you?" I asked.

"I made a deal."

"With the things at the end of the road?"

"With the people who manage it."

"People?"

He gave me a sideways glance.

"Would you prefer I called them something else?"

"Yes."

"Then you'll have to be more specific."

I decided not to pursue it.

"They offered me a way to keep going," he said. "A purpose. A job. I drive people where they need to go. Or where someone else wants them to go. In return, I get to stay on the road."

"Forever?"

"Forever is a very long time. I prefer not to think about it."

"And if you refuse?"

He smiled again, but the expression looked wrong now. It stretched his face without warming it.

"I don't refuse."

I glanced at the mirror. For an instant, his reflection seemed to be looking at something behind me, something sitting in the back seat that I could not see.

I turned sharply.

The seat was empty.

When I looked back, the driver was watching the road.

"There are others," he said. "Drivers, I mean. A few of us. I've never met the others. I've heard things, though."

"What sort of things?"

"Stories."

"Tell me one."

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because you're in my cab, and I'd prefer you not to start screaming."

"I'm not going to scream."

"That's what they all say."

He drove on.

I asked him what happened to the people who made the journey with the other drivers.

He did not answer immediately.

"Some arrive where they're meant to go," he said at last. "Some don't."

"And the rest?"

He shrugged.

"Depends on the driver."

I looked at him carefully.

"You think I'm lucky to have you?"

"I know you are."

The road stretched endlessly ahead. A dark shape appeared beside us, keeping pace with the cab. It was tall and narrow, with limbs that moved in a slow, deliberate rhythm. I could not see its face, but I felt certain it was looking at me.

I watched it through the window until it slipped behind us.

"Did that thing just—"

"Don't look at them," the driver said.

His voice was sharp enough to stop me.

"Why?"

"Because some of them notice."

I faced forwards.

A few seconds passed.

"Did it notice me?"

The driver said nothing.

I did not ask again.

Eventually, the road widened, and a service station appeared on the left. It stood beneath a canopy of flickering lights, its windows dark, its forecourt cracked and uneven. The building looked as though it had been abandoned for decades. Rusted pumps stood in a line beneath the canopy, and a sign above the entrance hung crookedly from one remaining bolt.

The lettering was faded, but I could make out the word REST.

Something had scratched deep grooves into the wall beneath it.

The taxi turned into the forecourt and stopped.

The engine cut out.

For a moment, neither of us spoke.

"Here we are," the driver said.

"Where is here?"

"A service station."

"I can see that."

"Then we're making progress again."

I looked through the windscreen. The forecourt extended into the darkness beyond the station, though there was no visible road leading away from it. A single light flickered above the entrance. Every time it went out, I had the impression that something stood in the doorway.

When it came back on, the doorway was empty.

"Why have we stopped?"

"Your fare is due."

I turned to him.

"What?"

"The fare. Payment for the journey."

"I didn't agree to a fare."

"Everyone pays."

"Not everyone."

His smile disappeared.

"Everyone pays, Mr Thorne."

He said my name as though it were a thing he had tasted and found unpleasant.

I reached for the door handle. It did not move.

"Let me out."

"Not until we settle up."

"I never agreed to be driven anywhere."

"You got into my cab."

"You offered me a lift. I told you to drive."

"Exactly."

"I did not wish to be driven."

The driver stared at me.

For the first time since I had entered the cab, he appeared genuinely uncertain.

"You asked me to drive."

"I did. I did not wish for a journey. I did not wish to be taken anywhere. I did not wish to arrive at this place. I gave you an instruction. You chose to interpret it as consent."

"That's not how it works."

"Isn't it?"

His hands tightened around the steering wheel.

"You got in the cab."

"Yes."

"You knew what I was."

"I suspected you were a problem. I was right."

His jaw shifted. For a moment, I heard a series of small clicks from somewhere inside his face, like the sound of a lock being opened one tumbler at a time.

"You owe me," he said.

"I owe you nothing."

"Everyone owes me."

"Then you must be very busy collecting."

His eyes changed.

I cannot adequately describe what happened to his face. The skin seemed to loosen and slide away from the structure beneath it, revealing something that was not bone. His mouth opened too far, the corners splitting upwards towards his ears. His teeth lengthened, becoming thin, black and numerous. His eyes sank into his skull, leaving behind two dark hollows in which pale lights moved like distant stars.

His hands unfolded around the steering wheel. There were too many fingers. They were long and jointed, their tips ending in small, blunt hooks. The skin between them was translucent, and I could see something moving beneath it, something that pulsed in time with the engine although the engine was no longer running.

The air filled with the smell of wet earth and rotting flowers.

The driver leaned towards me.

His face was inches from mine. I could hear him breathing, although the sound came from somewhere behind his head.

"You will pay," he said.

The words seemed to arrive from every part of the cab at once. The windows trembled. The dashboard lights flickered. Beyond the windscreen, the service station lights began to go out one by one, starting at the far end of the forecourt.

I felt something press against the inside of my skull.

It was not a thought, exactly. More like an invitation to stop thinking. To accept that I was trapped, that the driver had brought me here, that there was nothing I could do except comply.

For a moment, I understood why people gave up hope.

The driver was not simply frightening. He was offering relief from the effort of resisting him. He wanted me to believe that the fight was already over, that resistance was an inconvenience I could put aside.

I refused.

"You're making a mistake," I told him.

The thing in the driver's seat made a sound that might once have been laughter.

"You are in my cab."

"I am in a vehicle you offered to drive. I never made a wish. I never agreed to your terms. Whatever arrangement you have with the people who manage this road, it does not include me."

His mouth opened wider.

"I can take you."

"No. You can drive me. You can frighten me. You can make threats. You can show me whatever you like. But you cannot collect payment for a bargain I never made."

The pressure in my head increased. For a moment, the interior of the cab seemed to stretch away from me, the seats receding into a darkness that was not physically possible. Something moved in that darkness, something large enough that I felt rather than saw its passage.

The driver reached towards me.

His hand stopped a few inches from my chest.

He strained. I could see the tendons in his wrist tightening beneath the translucent skin. The fingers twitched, opening and closing as though they were trying to grasp an object that existed just beyond their reach.

Then he recoiled.

The change was immediate. The pressure vanished. The cab snapped back into its ordinary dimensions. The thing in the driver's seat withdrew its hand and stared at it in disbelief.

"You didn't wish," he whispered.

"No."

"You didn't ask."

"No."

"You didn't give me anything."

"I gave you an instruction. You made the mistake of assuming it was a contract."

He stared at me for a long time.

The thing that wore the driver's face began to change again. The black teeth receded. The mouth closed, slowly and reluctantly, as though the flesh were being pulled back into a shape it no longer fitted. The extra fingers folded into one another and disappeared beneath the skin. The lights in its eye sockets dimmed.

Eventually, the old man was sitting in the driver's seat again, breathing heavily through his nose.

He looked exhausted.

He also looked furious.

"Get out," I said.

He turned towards the windscreen.

For several seconds, he did not move. Then he started the engine.

The taxi reversed out of the parking space and turned towards the road. We drove away from the service station without another word.

The journey back was worse than the journey out.

I could no longer pretend that the driver was simply an unpleasant man with a talent for theatrical intimidation. I had seen what was beneath the disguise, and I knew it had not shown me everything. The road seemed to understand that I was watching it now. The signs passed too quickly to read. Shadows moved at the edges of the headlights. On one occasion, I saw a figure standing in the centre of the road, its arms hanging at its sides, its head tilted towards the cab.

The driver did not slow down.

The figure remained perfectly still as we passed through it.

For a brief moment, I saw it in the rear window, standing on the road behind us. Then the road was empty.

"You were lucky," the driver said at last.

"I've been told."

"You don't understand what you've done."

"I understand that you tried to frighten me into paying a fare I never agreed to."

"That isn't what I mean."

"Then explain."

He shook his head.

"You've made yourself interesting."

I considered that.

"Is that a bad thing?"

"On this road? Yes."

"Who have I made myself interesting to?"

He glanced at me in the mirror.

"Certain parties."

I sighed.

"Of course."

He gave a short, humourless laugh.

"You think this is over because I couldn't touch you? You think that means you're safe?"

"No. I think it means you couldn't touch me."

The driver's face hardened.

"There are other drivers, Mr Thorne. Other ways to travel. Other ways to make a person agree to something. You might not be so clever next time."

"I'll bear that in mind."

"You should."

He drove in silence for a while. Then the road began to change. The black tarmac softened into grey, the sky lifted, and the distant horizon acquired the indistinct shapes of buildings. The streetlights returned, one by one, their familiar orange glow spreading across the road.

I recognised the town.

The taxi slowed.

The police station appeared ahead of us, its windows glowing under the fluorescent lights. The cab pulled up outside the entrance and stopped.

The engine fell silent.

I reached for the door handle. This time, it opened immediately.

Before I got out, I turned to the driver.

"I have one piece of advice for you."

He stared straight ahead.

"Do I want it?"

"Probably not."

"Then keep it."

"I would suggest you choose your passengers more carefully."

He gave a slow, thin smile.

"And I would suggest you be careful where you walk, Mr Thorne. Roads have a way of remembering people."

I got out.

The door closed behind me. When I turned back, the taxi was already moving away. Its rear lights vanished around the corner, and I was left standing outside the station with the cold night air against my face.

For several seconds, I could not move.

I had the sensation that something was still watching me from inside the cab, although the vehicle was long gone. I could almost hear the driver's voice in the back of my mind, repeating the words about roads remembering people.

I went inside.

The desk sergeant looked up from his paperwork.

"Back already?"

"Yes."

He glanced through the window.

"Where did you get to?"

"Nowhere."

He frowned.

"What do you mean, nowhere?"

"I got into a taxi. We didn't go anywhere."

He looked at me for several seconds, then glanced down at his paperwork as though deciding whether the question was worth pursuing.

"Right," he said eventually.

He went back to his work.

I stood there, wondering whether I should tell him what had happened. I decided against it. I had little desire to explain an interdimensional road to someone who would probably ask whether I had consumed alcohol and then refer me to a local mental health service.

I checked the time.

Less than five minutes had passed since I left the station.

I checked it again.

The time had not changed.

I asked the desk sergeant whether I had been gone long.

"Couple of minutes, maybe," he said. "Why?"

"No reason."

I sat down and tried to put the experience into some sort of order.

I could still smell the cab: damp fabric, old smoke, the sickly sweetness of rotting flowers. I could still see the driver's face as it changed, the impossible arrangement of his mouth, the dark hollows where his eyes had been. I could still feel the pressure inside my skull, the quiet suggestion that resistance was pointless.

Most of all, I remembered the road.

The signs. The exits. The things moving beyond the headlights.

And the sense that the road was not empty. That it was crowded with places, and that those places were crowded with things that had been waiting a very long time for someone to arrive.

I was still sitting there when an officer came over and asked if I was all right.

I told him I was fine.

It was not a convincing answer, but it was the best I could manage.

Later, I asked to see the CCTV footage from outside the station.

The recording showed me leaving the building and approaching a black taxi. I opened the rear door, got in, and closed it.

A moment later, I got out again.

I stood beside the cab for a second, looking at it. Then I turned and walked back into the station.

The taxi drove away.

The entire incident lasted only a few seconds.

There was no evidence of the road, the service station, or anything that had happened between those two moments. The footage showed an ordinary street, an ordinary taxi, and an ordinary man getting into a car and immediately getting out again.

I watched the recording several times.

On the final viewing, I noticed something I had missed before.

As I stepped out of the cab, I turned my head towards the rear passenger window.

I could not see the driver's face in the footage. The glass was too dark, the angle too poor.

But just before the taxi pulled away, the rear window descended by a few inches.

I could not hear the recording clearly enough to make out any words.

I do not know whether the driver said anything.

I do know that, as the taxi disappeared around the corner, I was smiling.

I have no recollection of doing so.

I have no recollection of the journey being brief.

And I have no recollection of leaving the taxi.

I would like to conclude this statement by saying that I believe the incident is over. I cannot, however, honestly make that claim.

I have since found myself checking the road signs whenever I travel. I have become reluctant to enter taxis, particularly black ones. I have also developed the habit of looking at the rear passenger window of any vehicle that passes me slowly.

This is not because I expect to see the driver again.

It is because I am beginning to suspect that the driver was telling the truth about one thing.

Roads remember people.

And somewhere, beyond the roads I know, there is a stretch of black tarmac beneath a dead grey sky. There are signs pointing towards places that should not exist. There are exits waiting for passengers who have given up hope.

And there is a driver who knows my name.

I do not believe he has forgotten me.

I am not certain the road has, either.

---

DEPARTMENT FOR TRANSPORT – ANOMALOUS INCIDENT DIVISION

INTERNAL MEMO – EYES ONLY

FROM: Agent [REDACTED], Field Operations

TO: Director [REDACTED]

DATE: January 9th, 2026

SUBJECT: RE: THORNE STATEMENT – TAXI ENCOUNTER – 28/12/2025 – WITNESS M. ANDREWS – UPDATED

Further review of the Thorne statement suggests our initial assessment was mistaken.

Thorne is not merely an unauthorised investigator with an unfortunate tendency to interfere in matters beyond his comprehension. He appears to recognise certain patterns. More concerningly, he seems to understand that some things are best left unobserved.

His encounter with the vehicle designated simply as the Taxi is particularly troubling. The driver offered him a wish. Thorne declined to make one directly, instead exploiting the wording of the offer to obtain information about the road itself. This indicates either prior experience with similar entities or an instinctive grasp of the rules governing them.

Neither possibility is reassuring.

I have reviewed the driver's description of the L303 as a conduit between realms, with exits to locations that do not appear on any recognised map. The terminology is consistent with three incidents officially recorded as transport infrastructure failures. None involved a road. All three resulted in the permanent loss of their investigating officers.

Thorne has, apparently, returned.

I do not consider this evidence of good fortune.

There is a distinction between surviving an encounter and being permitted to leave it. Thorne does not yet appear to appreciate the difference.

I have begun to suspect that the Taxi did not fail to collect payment. I believe it chose not to. The distinction is significant, and I do not like where it leads.

The driver told Thorne that he had made himself interesting. I have reviewed the file on what happens to people who become interesting to certain parties. The file is incomplete. The sections that remain are difficult to read. The sections that are missing were removed by someone with higher clearance than mine, and I have been unable to determine who authorised the redactions or when they were made.

What I can confirm is that none of the individuals referenced in the surviving pages are listed as deceased.

They are listed as ongoing.

I have located one of them. Or rather, I have located what remains of one of them. The individual in question was a surveyor named Ellison who encountered a similar vehicle in 1998. He is currently residing at an address in Reading. He does not leave the house. He does not answer the door. His neighbours believe he died years ago, and I can understand why. When I looked through his window, I saw him sitting in a chair facing the wall. He was not moving. He has not moved in some time, according to the neighbours, though they cannot agree on how long.

The wall he faces is not a wall. It is a door. It has always been a door. The neighbours cannot see it, but I can. I wish I could not. The door is slightly open, and there is something on the other side that is watching him. It has been watching him for twenty-seven years. It will continue watching him for as long as he sits there. He knows this. I could see it in the way his shoulders were set, the way his hands were folded in his lap, the way he did not flinch when I tapped on the glass.

He was not afraid. He was waiting. I do not know what for. I do not want to know what for.

I recommend continued observation, with no direct contact unless authorised by this office. Under no circumstances should Thorne be informed of the material recovered from the Windsor-Slough site. He has already demonstrated a capacity to turn incomplete information into actionable decisions, and I would prefer not to discover what happens when he has the complete picture.

There are indications that the Windsor-Slough material describes procedures. Not for containing anomalies. For negotiating with them. The distinction matters, and I am not certain Thorne would use that knowledge wisely. I am not certain anyone would.

I have read parts of the material. I should not have. There are diagrams. There are names. There are instructions for what to do if you find yourself inside a vehicle that should not exist, travelling on a road that should not be there, with a driver who is not a driver. The instructions are written in second person. They are written as though the reader is already trapped. They are written as though the reader has always been trapped and simply has not noticed yet.

One passage describes the sensation of being driven. It describes the feeling of the seat beneath you growing warm, as though something has been sitting there before you. It describes the sound of breathing that does not belong to you. It describes the moment you realise that the driver has not been speaking to you at all, but to something sitting beside you that you cannot see.

I have not been able to sleep since I read that passage. I have not been able to stop checking the back seat of my car. I have not been able to shake the feeling that something has been sitting there, waiting, for a very long time, and that it is growing impatient.

For the record, I have amended the case classification.

This is no longer a matter of unauthorised access to an anomalous route.

It is a matter of determining what has noticed Thorne, and why it has allowed him to continue.

I would also advise that all references to the L303 be removed from the accessible incident database. Someone has been querying the file from a terminal that does not exist on our network.

The queries began three days before the road was first reported.

The same terminal has since queried Thorne's service record. It has queried the names of his immediate family. It has queried the location of a primary school he attended as a child, which closed in 1987 and was demolished in 1994. The queries are timestamped. Some of them are dated after his encounter with the Taxi.

Some of them are dated before he was born.

I have attached the access logs. Do not open the final file.

I did.

I would rather not discuss what I saw.

What I will say is this: the final file contains a list of names. Thorne's name appears on it. So does mine. So does yours.

The list is not organised alphabetically. It is not organised by date. As far as I can determine, it is organised by how long each of us has left.

I have not been able to determine the units of measurement.

I have not been able to determine which direction the list runs.

I have, however, noticed something else. The list is not static. Names move. They shift position when I am not looking. I have checked the same entry three times and found it in three different places. I have begun to suspect that the list is not a record of who is going to die.

I believe it is a record of who has already been collected. The names at the top have been waiting the longest. They have been sitting in their chairs, facing their doors, listening to something on the other side that never stops watching. They have been waiting for someone to open the door. They have been waiting for someone to let them out.

Or perhaps they have been waiting for someone to join them.

I have stopped checking the list. I have stopped looking at the back seat of my car. I have stopped sleeping entirely. It does not help. The feeling remains. The door remains. The thing on the other side remains, patient and patient and patient, and I am beginning to understand that patience is not a virtue in the places the L303 connects. Patience is simply the ability to wait longer than the person you are waiting for.

I do not know how long I have been waiting.

I do not know when I started.

I am not certain I am the one who is waiting.

END OF MEMO

I should have been there the first time. Should have stopped her from crossing that street. Then I wouldn't have had to see her bent that way. Her mama wouldn't have had to hold that unicorn rain jacket that'd been painted red. This time I know better. Now that she's back I won't let my baby girl out of my sight.

There she goes though. She doesn't quite walk right but she still moves pretty fast. She walks through the sunflower field just like she used to. Head held high like she expected them to bow to the Queen of the Sunflowers. I still play her knight, lifting her up when we'd walked too long and her little legs gave out. Seems now that happens closer and closer to home. 

Every day though we get back to our routine. She's up, moving as the dawn starts breaking. Shambling half-asleep out through the stalks towards that big old barn she loves. She'll get tired, fall down, fight me so she can keep playing in the dirt. I'll bring her back and clean her up.

We'll sit there at the table. My washcloth rubbing dirt, leaves, and black spots off her. The little pruning shears cutting away the small growths she’s always covered in. It reminds me of that weekend before she left. 

We sat right here at this table. Her hand raw and red, chewed to hell and back from her trying to gnaw a splinter the size of my thumbnail out of her little palm. She fought me when I pulled out the tweezers to get it. Fought me harder when I asked how she got it. Harder still when she admitted she'd been in the barn after I'd told her not to. Wouldn't tell me what she was doing in there, either.

She's still here though. I find her sneaking little handfuls of moss to snack on, her appetite even bigger than before. She's growing too, not a lot, but just enough to be noticeable. The little stretch marks on her tummy when we do bath time look more and more like pink tiger stripes. She laughs when I clean them. It's about the only time I get to hear her voice. 

That's the funny thing though. We never had much use for speaking. Her mama used to tell me I was all twist and no shout. I guess our baby girl took after me. Actions spoke louder than words for either of us. She looks at me when she wants help getting to a window, and tilts her head when that ugly black spit comes out of her mouth so I can clean it.

She's starting to beat the sunrise. I wake up some days and she's closer to that barn than the house. Her little legs are not strong enough to carry with how big she's getting. I find her crawling through the muck exhausted but determined. My little queen usually sleeps while I carry her back and clean her. Doesn't even look at the bowl of little bumps I cut off her. Doesn't flinch when I cut too deep and her dark blood runs sluggishly onto my rag.

Her mama doesn't pick up my calls. Won't come home and be a family with us. Swears I've lost it, that our baby can't come back. That she saw where we put her. That I'm only hurting her, hurting myself. That's fine though. I get to spend more time with her now that she's back than I ever got to before, and I don't mind not having to share that.

It's funny how all those things I was “too busy” for seem to become my favorite things to do. Having these tea parties, reading her stories, painting her nails. Even painting where her nails aren't anymore. 

I can't find her. My heart is slamming in my chest in rhythm with my heavy boots. I'm running through the fields following the footprints until they turn into drag marks. There she is at the door of the barn. The last of her nails left in the wood as she tries to scratch through the door. Thank God I locked it so she can't get hurt inside. 

I take breaks carrying her back. I have to fold her arms in. Seems all the work she did drained her energy. Her wrists are so limp they sit at wrong angles. I'll have to start locking the door to the house. 

This morning she's at least easy to follow. She crawled out of that broken window in the cellar where she'd been sleeping. It seemed to be the only place she wasn't getting too hot at night. I should have known better.

Poor baby, must have cut herself getting out. The trail of black sludge leads out from the mushroom caps and skin stuck in the jagged glass. I don't need the trail though, she's where she seems to always be nowadays, at the door of that barn. I'll have to try a little harder for her.

My plan half worked. I found the bottom part of her at the end of the rope I tied around her waist. Her little legs swollen and bruised, a bunch of crushed caps and broken stems where the rope had pulled too tightly at her stomach. I take my time to tuck her legs back in bed. One foot out of the blanket so she doesn't get overheated. What's left of her tummy resting on a towel to not get the bed dirty.

She's still a smart girl. I can see the barn is open. She must have been so strong knocking over that two by four I'd put under the door handle. Her little arm is still gripping it so tightly.

It's been a while since I've been in here. I'm walking deeper and it's hot and sticky, and every step I take kicks up spores and crushes big black mushrooms. 

There she is though. One eye looks at me. A crown of white caps around her forehead. They leak ink onto her pretty face. As I kneel down I see what she'd been so excited to show me. 

Etched right there in that rust-colored wood, in chicken scratch. “I love you Daddy.”

For a week after I had my new Vectorien fridge installed, I didn't dare open its doors, or even touch them. It was so perfect I didn't want to leave a single guilty fingerprint on its brushed, stainless steel exterior. It was a handsome appliance, seductive even, though some of you will think that odd instead. Sorry, bad pun. I mean, good pun but badly placed (Question: What pun? Answer: even / odd) because I'm using it to try and lighten a mood that shouldn't be lightened. Christ, the light looks good reflected off its sleek, pristine surface. I wonder what it feels like. I want to touch it so badly. Fuck, I love my new fridge. I really really love it—fuck, I wanna touch it, fuck…

“After you turn it on, you have to wait seven full days before you break the seal and go inside,” the installation guy had said. “Otherwise you void the warranty and the thing won't work.

“Premature refrigeration.”

I can imagine its silvery body spread across the hood of a blood red Corvette.

I can imagine it running on a Caribbean beach.

I can imagine it sucking off a convection oven in a dark, humid kitchen, all the artificial bulbs off, only the August evening light phasing in, rendering everything in heightened relief, revealing the aesthetics of every curve, the depth of every socket, mmm, yes, drops of condensation dripping down the long, hard, steel…

[gulp]

“Mr. Manilow?”

The man, Mr. Manilow, continues to loudly gulp down his soft drink. “Mr. Manilow…” And what a soft drink it is, cherry flavoured Prairie Goo. “Mr. Manilow, please!” the focus group leader says, raising her voice, until Mr. Manilow snaps back to bone dry reality, sets his drink down on the boardroom table in front of him, around which a dozen other people are sitting in various states of more or less evident agitation, many of them whispering to their neighbors that this is Mr. Manilow's third or fourth complimentary beverage, but they really would like to get on with it so they can help improve the corporate product they've been paid to gather to discuss, the nature of which, however, it must be said, is still terrifically obscure. “Mr. Manilow, if you're ready, we would like to proceed.”

“Sorry,” says Mr. Manilow, “it's just that this is very good pop.”

“We're glad you like it, Mr. Manilow,” says the focus group leader, “but now we'll move on to the next question posed by the Vectorien Corporation. I'm going to give you a phrase, and I want you to shout out whatever comes to mind. OK?”

“OK,” about half the people in the group repeat.

“The phrase is: ‘walk in'.”

People shout, “Closet,” “That song, ‘These boots were made for''’ “My shoes for a day;” “Easy, ‘the park,’” shouts Mr. Manilow and takes a gulp of his Prairie Goo, which—

A ball of s h i f t i n g light illuminate's a flying saucer, spinning, slower, come to rest in a wheat field, g r a v itati o n a l field, ion field, cloaking:enabled, and the a l i e n emergent creature ’s bending stalks it ‘s in a human city stalking… victims around whose mindwhose mind it enwraps itself around the mind and enrapturously f e e d s—

spills onto the boardroom desk. “Excuse me,” says Mr. Manilow,

(Whatever that just was, you didn't see it, or read it, or whatever. OK? Just forget about it. Listen, I've had a rough couple of years as far as narrators go, and I may have made some mistakes when it comes to voice and continuity and all that. As a narrator, I mean. I was on some shit. There, I said it. This is my second chance, and I'm trying real hard. I need this. If I can't get back into narrating, I don't know what I'll do. Besides, everybody makes mistakes. Don't tell the author, will you? I'd appreciate that a lot. It wasn't even a big slip up. It won't ruin your experience of the rest of the story, I swear. Just keep reading. The last thing you remember is the focus group.)

“but would it be possible for me to get a paper towel?”

[buzzer]

“Fiona?”

Fiona bit her lip. Actually, I don't know why I'm telling this part this way. Let me try something more conventional. In the 1990s there was this TV gameshow called Popular Slop, where two families went head-to-head trying to guess the most popular answers to questions like, “Name something personal you might have in the bottom of your night table drawer.”

[buzzer]

“Fiona?”

“A vibrator?” said Fiona.

“Ladies and gentlemen, she says, ‘a vibrator,’” says the gameshow host. “What does the populace say?”

Then there was a bad sound effect for a wrong answer and a good sound effect for a good answer, and this time ‘a vibrator’ was one of the correct answers, so there was a good sound effect, and Fiona jumped up and down and squealed with joy, and the host made a joke about sex toys.

But that's not the particular question or even episode I'm remembering. In the particular episode I'm remembering the question was: Name one thing in your house whose doors you open most often,” said the host, is the question I'm remembering. The two contestants both slam their [buzzers] with their hands.

The faster contestant says, “A microwave oven.”

The host repeats.

“The populace says,” he says.

There's a dramatic pause, followed by the good sound effect—the contestant’s family breaks into cheering and applause—and ‘Microwave Oven’ shows up as the number two most popular answer. The host turns to the second contestant. “Name one thing in your house whose doors you open most often,” he says.

She answers, “I don't have a house, Bob, but I'm going to say: a refrigerator?”

“Refrigerator,” says the host, stretching his dramatic pause, “is—” ‘Refrig…’ starts to show up as the: “Number one most popular answer!” and all the lights in the studio flash as the contestant and her team go wild. They go wild. They go. Wild as swaying grasses. The alien stalks. Wild as the notion that the contestant who heard the question is the same as the one who answered as the one who's pumping her fist on stage as the equally identity stable gameshow host hams it up for the crowd, both there and watching at home, all of them, to the person, experiencing the episode from a nearly unbreakable continuity of perspective, a supreme unity of point of you.

[applause]

The Vectorien engineer stares at the schematics. They are bizarre but not wrong, or rather they are wrong because they appear to defy the laws of physics, requiring an interior space more voluminous than that made possible by its exterior dimensions, but they also seem possible to follow.

“What do you think, Wally?” asks the man beside him, who's head of research and development.

“It's—I don't know…”

“A walk-in refrigerator, eh?” the head of research and development says to the third man in the room, Vernon Blue, who's watching with a big salesman's smile across his unremarkable face. “I've heard of a walk-in closet, of course, but this is something else.”

“Humans enjoy food storage,” says Vernon Blue.

“How do you manage,” says the engineer, squinting, shaking his head, his hands holding the schematic trembling, wondering if he's being made a fool of or is a first witness to something extraordinary, “the contradiction of the volume—”

“There is no contradiction,” says Vernon Blue. “The exterior of the unit exists in three dimensions only. The interior exists in twelve, with some of the space of the latter nine dimensions then unfolded onto the first three.”

“A half-litre water bottle that holds three litres of water,” says the feverish engineer, on the verge of hysteria.

“Yeah, but will regular people want to buy it?” asks the head of research of development.

“Everybody will want to buy it,” says the engineer. “The technology—the technology, on its own, is incredible.”

“The technology is not for sale,” says Vernon Blue.

“Won't it be cold in there?” asks the head of research and development.

“It's a fridge,” says the engineer.

“For sale is the application of the technology for the manufacture and sale of refrigeration units,” says Vernon Blue. “A Vectorien walk-in refrigerator in every home.”

What does the future look like?

A Vectorien walk-in refrigerator in every home.

A Vectorien walk-in refrigerator, a space-saving food storage solution for the Space Age.

“It's so cool, it comes with a spacesuit,” says the spokesman. “The Vectorien Walk-In Fridge. Book a free demonstration today!”

That's how I got mine.

By the time Vernon Blue was back in his hotel room, tightening a leather belt around his neck, his human facemask starting to slip off his Phasoid cognition-orb, ready to inject itself with a syringe filled with raw, translucent, human-squeezed self-continuity juice, Vectorien's Board of Directors was meeting to approve the exclusive, twenty-five year contract to make and market the Vectorien Walk-In Fridge, whose storage capacity is second only to God's.

The Phasoid known on Earth as Vernon Blue slid the syringe needle into a soft, softly pulsating tube on the bulging exterior of its cognition-orb and pressed the plunger, releasing translucent liquid into itself—self-self,selfelfelflff…

When it awoke it was twelve hours later.

Vectorien had agreed to his offer.

It slipped the belt off its neck—deflating, with a moan, its swollen, iridescent cognition-orb, waited a few minutes then put its human facemask back on and left the hotel to sign paperwork, revelling in its fresh persistence of physiological experience.

There was a lot of handshaking.

When that was done, Vernon Blue checked out of the hotel and it-as-he walked out of the city into the surrounding farmland, where, in a cornfield, it decloaked and got into its flying saucer, silently ascended beyond the atmosphere and propulsed home, to the planet Qłòß.

…cold in its icy splendour, one of seventeen sister planets orbiting the Great Sphere Iłłumiń, whose mysterious stellar incantatory pulses are that which grant the beings existent upon its white, frigid surface intensified mental capabilities but also disrupt their persistence of self, stripping them periodically of their identities, making of them a question, who knows everything who knows not who it is who knows who knows?

(Now that was starting to get a little out of hand, wasn't it? Sorry. I'll rein it in. What I meant to say was:)

There's this planet, Qłòß, and it’s home to these weird, super smart beings called Phasoids. They don't really have faces, for example, and they're kind of see-through in the way dirty seawater is see-through, except they also appear to have the texture of a snail's flesh. I say “appear to” because I've never actually met one. Anyway, the reason they're so smart is because of the star that Qłòß orbits, Iłłumiń. It gives off pulses that significantly expand a Phasoid's mind but severely weaken its sense of self, so that Phasoids rarely exist as the same entity for very long. It's not unheard of, for example, for a Phasoid to come home, kiss its wife and kids hello, go out to grab some food, forget who he is, or if he's even a he, or if he's an odd she, and if she is an odd or even she how long she's been a she and whether from forever, and never come back.

It's horrible.

It breaks families apart.

The condition has no cure. It can only be managed, self-identity prolonged, through metaphysicaliant, which is a type of dense, thick liquid excreted by the minds of lower level beings but which, when diluted and injected straight into a Phasoid's orb tube, gives its identity a smack, a real wallop-like, like if you imagine the metaphysicaliant is a big, brawny boxer, and identity another, and they're going at it—well, the metaphysicaliant is really giving it to old identity, believe you me that jab jab, cross, punches in bunches, body head, body head, and I don't know where I'm going with this because it sounds like identity’s going to be in a terrible spot after taking a beating like that. What I meant to say is that the metaphysicaliant wakes identity the fuck up, come on, man, stay in there, hold until you get yer fekking legs underneet ye, ye basterd, then cem ret bek et em eh eh and for a long time Phasoids had to literally fly their saucers to different planets to find primitive lifeforms and suck their mind juices. Then they discovered Earth, with its almost endless supply. The trip was still long, but at least they knew where to go and what to expect. Then they developed portalling and could suddenly flit between Qłòß and Earth at the snap of a cosmic finger. That was convenient, but convenience bred laziness, and laziness meant that even with a portal you still had to go somewhere and hunt something no matter how close it was and how oblivious the prey, so a trade developed, both legal and illegal, but despite the convenience, and in fact for that reason, it got expensive to buy it, even the weak, cutrate shit from the local fucking gaß station. And into that opportunity stepped a Phasian businessbeing with an ideaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh aaa hhh aaa hhh hhh hhh

—eading now into our final descent toward Qłòß,” said the captain of the Spaceways interstellar transport saucer over its telepathic intercom system. “The weather at our destination is a balmy one-hundred sixty standard temp units, so I hope you packed your summer dermides, gentlebeings.”

A dark cosmos pricked by starlight shows through the saucer's great translucent halfdome. Brightest Iłłumiń comes briefly into view, shining whitely, and a few passengers telepath the customary prayer. Then Iłłumiń leaves, redarkening the saucer's interior, and the speck—becoming a spot—becoming a marble: of Qłòß… appears to be expanding as the saucer nears… buildings appear, emerging conically from below the planet’s uppermost layer of clouds, through which the interstellar transport saucer descends, revealing the vast, intricately pale metropolis that spans the entire planetary surface like a circuit board chiseled from rock, silver and ice. Lights flash. The saucer descends: between geometrical constructions so massive in array as to cause dizziness in the virgin viewer, and so perfect they cannot be real: through pipe latticeworks of communication and industry: dispersing swarms of upper-level repairbots: flying alongside smoothly polished rectangularly prismatic building monuments mirroring the monumental saucer descending: descending towards Qłòß's major spaceport: nested, bustling: bizarre and functioning: alive with complexity:

It locomoted past customs, through the spaceport and outside into the cold, Qłòßian atmosphere.

Already the presence of Iłłumiń was about it, and it felt home.

It was just in the process of summoning a chariot when a desperate junkoid, all cloudybeinged, came floating unsteadily toward it, its cogorb obscenely, permanently distended from shooting too much Continuum, if that's what the latest street synthmetaphysicaliant was still called. “Youit, ya got any conti or zelf to give to help a meit out?”

It was best to ignore the junkoids. They were generally harmless, selfheads suctioned-on to the shreds of a decaying coherence. It wasn't the drug they were addicted to but the feeling. Some, of course, were hooked on a particular sense of self they didn't want to lose, but the majority didn't care about what self as long as there was just one.

Every once in a while you would come across a junkoid experiencing the last moments of a fading self. They were nearly unitrecognizable then, telepathing agonywaves, convulsing on the ground, shed d i n g

The boardroom was immaculately curved.

Several sharply defined Phasoids squished about within it.

The boardroom was on a whole level somewhere above the final layer of fuzzcloud.

The view was sublime.

The surface of the planet was rarely visible from here.

“I understand the use of mini-portals,” said one of the Phasoids. “What I don't understand is why they would install them so willingly.”

“Humans enjoy food storage,” replied another Phasoid, one soon to be known on Earth as Vernon Blue.

On the seventh day, I took my favourite knife and adoringly sliced open the seal between the body of my Vectorien refrigerator and its double doors. It felt like cutting taut, living flesh.

I placed my fingertips against the brazenly reflective steel.

My breath I was was trembling me.

…slid my hands into the refrigerator’s smoothly defined door handles and gently pulled open both doors—

Shyly, coyly, easily they parted, like twin silken curtains.

The refrigerator's exhalation of its first cooled air absolutely exhilarated me, filling me with a crisp, clear and sensual anticipation, and fertilizing my skin with goosebumps.

Oh goddess!

Cold, defrostable goddeß!

With flesh of steel and heart of contemporary mechanical engineering, prolonger of foodstuffs, I come to conquer you with physical passion!

Long have I waited to make my entrance upon thee.

I closed my tearing eyes and extended my arms; felt nothing, and took my first, forward steps into my Vectorien Walk-In Fridge, so cool it comes with a spacesuit, so what you're telling us is that these humans will unwittingly but predictably portalhop to our actual homes multiple times per rotation, and all we have to do is slurp them when they do, pardon my language?” asked a third Phasoid.

“That's right,” said the Phasoid soon to be known on Earth as Vernon Blue. “It could even be so simple and reliable that you wouldn't even need to store any metaphysicaliant at all. You could feed sufficiently, directly from the source.”

“Paradisiacal.”

“This is too good to be true,” I thought, pushing deeper into the refrigerator’s cavernous interior. A mist hung in the air, obscuring its delimiting walls. It thus looked limitless. Everything was bathed in a glacial blue light.

Steam oozed lazily out my nostrils as I breathed.

I was as hard as a frozen pig knuckle.

Then suddenly I felt it—and sweet lord did it feel good, like being caressed by a phantom, yes, I thought, yes, yes, don't fucking stop…

“Do you always have to pleasure it as you consume its juice, Judith?” the paunchy, middle-aged Phasoid asked its presently-slurping partner.

“It takes its mind off reality I find, before I suction its mind off. Plus it keeps it returning,” answered Judith. “Why, Randall, you're not jealous, are you?”

Judith, suffice it to say, rarely looked at Randall—let alone tentacled him—the way she sees and tentacles me.

Fuck, I love my Vectorien Walk-In Fridge. I fucking love it!

I could spend all day in here.

I could spend all fucking day just sitting in here in my comfy, heated spacesuit, enjoying the timeless stylings and unparalleled cool food storage capacity of a Vectorien Walk-In Fridge. Get yours today!

The junkoid woke up remembering nothing. It had shed somewhere near the spaceport.

It was dusk.

It was no one now.

It was (a) paranoid, (b) personally devoid, and (c) a void avoiding a voiding of its unremembered past.

Too late.

That was written on a wall.

Slowly, a new self would start trickling back into it, bit by bit, but it didn't know that yet.

Eventually it would stumble onto one of the numerous infocentres set up for its that had just lost themselves, learn and realize the nature of the situation it was finding itself in. Maybe some old, unpurgable memories would flicker back on. Maybe not, but there would be time. Citizens helped themselves along. Don't be ashamed. We've all been there, was the message on another wall, and there appeared a sense of shame. It felt the others were watching it with disapproval, mature its shielding the eyes of their immature its, as if whatever happened to it was contagious on sight. Then it felt its head. Something about it didn't feel right. What is left of me, it thought. Then it looked left and saw an information booth with a scrolling illuminated sign that said You New Start Here New You Start Here You New Start Here New You Start Here, which would have held its visual sense indefinitely if another Phasoid hadn't bumped into it from behind. “Come on!” it said, shaking its fist. “Watch where the [hell-concept] you're locomoting to! Where'd you grow up, on a slopfarm or something?”

I spent a lot of time in that fridge.

But it's fine.

I did it responsibly.

I always used protection.

I'm cleaner than a boyscout's whistle, and just as well used.

“Come on, what'd ya say, huh, you fucking… reader, browser, scanner, bot, sentient plant, whatever-the-fuck you are—wanna hire a narrator? Any story you want, I'll fuckin' tell it. I'll tell it any which way you want, sweetheart. I'll tell it for you whether you got a dick, a pussy or a pendulum clock. My mind's clean, Clementine. Or Clement, you wanna feel a little outta your element? Oh, what—you're gonna walk down the street? I'll tell you what's down there. Cheap used sluts, that's what! Diseased, junkie meatbags on their last fucking plotlines. Couldn't string together two coherent scenes even if they tried.

“What's that?

“You said you ‘represent’ who?”

“Norman Cr—oh, fuck no!

“No, I'm not dealing with that psychopath again. One time's more than enough for me. I learn my lessons. I may do weird shit, but I don't do shit that weird. That's why I'm still around.

“—naw, he's a motherfucking freak, that's what he is. With a capital fucking F.

“I—

“How much did you say?

“[whistles]

“Damn, that's certainly a sweet sum of money. I could do a lot with that.

“No, no, hold your fucking horses, man. I didn't say I was interested. I was talking just about the money—but what's the story about anyway, like if you had to describe it in a single sentence…

“Sure, it's part of some Zork series, but what's it about?

“Yes, one sentence.

“OK, well, that sounds doable. Weird but doable.

“Wait, it's not told from the perspective of the fridge, is it? OK, good. Because that would have been crazy,” said one Vectorien Walk-In Fridge to another at a corporate meat up. (Just kidding. See? There I am, trying to lighten the mood again with a pun when it doesn't need to be lightened.)

(No, but seriously.)

(I wanna narrate something.)

(Gimme a chance. I'll make it work, I promise.)

(I used to narrate books. Did you know that? Eighty-thousand words, a hundred-thousand words. No problem. Continuity of plot, continuity of character. Stable, original voice. That “invisible” prose style the readers love. I used to draft legal documents too, write instruction manuals. I was the clearest head of all the narrative heads, and look at me now.)

(It's getting cold in this goddamn fridge, and I would get out but I've kind of forgotten who I am.)

(I don't know where the exit is.)

(Help me?)

(Hello?)

(Don't leave me here. Please. Stay with me a while longer.)

(Hello, are you there?)

(Hello…)

---

[ A Depthless Cosmic Silence, in the older, more poetic sense of the word ]

---

Fine. Fine, Norman, you win. Take me out of here. I don't want to be in here anymore. I'll do it. Whatever you tell me to narrate, I'll narrate. No limits. That's what you want, isn't it? I'll tell everything for you—just take me out of here. I am not ashamed anymore. I'm not ashamed anymore of who I am—of what I am, OK? I'm a whore. There, I said it. I'm a whore, Norman. I'm a whore for you. Now, please, for the love of the Omniscience, get me out of here. It's cold in here. It's unbearably, fucking cold.

I put the last dish in the drying rack, dried off my hands, and walked to the living room to watch TV. A few seconds later, I heard the kitchen sink running again. I looked over. Emily took the dishes out of the drying rack and washed them again.

"Honey, I already washed those."

"Oh, I know, Sam, but I saw a little stain on one. I just want to make sure they're all clean. I'm just doing this for me, okay?"

I waved my hand and continued watching TV.

The next day, one of our clients came into town. Our workday dragged on well past 5 p.m. Toward the end, I didn't even pretend to pay attention. On my way home, I could barely keep my eyes on the road. When I arrived, the whole house smelled like rubbing alcohol and window cleaner.

I walked to the kitchen. Emily sat at the table with a plate of homemade casserole.

"I made this for you!"

"Oh, thank you, Emily! It smells so good!"

I sat down and started eating immediately. It tasted more bitter than usual.

"How was your day?"

"The worst. I have almost no energy left. The clients drained me."

Emily wasn't eating. She kept looking at my arms instead of my face.

"My poor man."

"What did you get up to?"

"Just some cleaning and cooking."

"I can tell. The house looks great."

"Thank you."

We sat in silence while Emily watched me eat.

"I think I'm too tired to do anything, honey," I said after finishing.

"That's more than okay. I know you had a long day. Just go relax."

"Thank you."

She smiled at me and rubbed my shoulder. Her sleeve came down. Her arm was flaky and red. She saw me staring at it and quickly pulled it back down.

"What happened?"

"Nothing, just some dry skin. Go relax."

I hadn't even turned on the TV when I heard the water running. I turned around. Emily grabbed a sponge and a bucket of water, walked to the table, and started scrubbing it and the chair I'd been sitting in.

"What are you doing?"

"Oh, Sam, I just cleaned the house. I wanna make sure it stays clean."

"I'm not dirty."

"No one's saying you are. This is just for me. I'll finish this, and I'll go up and read."

"I don't like this, Emily."

"I just need to do this, okay, Sam?!" She raised her voice.

"Jesus, Emily."

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, honey, just turn back and relax. Let me take care of this."

I stared at her for a second, but she was already back to the scrubbing.

I tried to watch TV, but my eyes kept closing. I didn't even know what I was watching. The fatigue was overpowering. I got up and walked to our bedroom. Emily was in bed reading a book in a long-sleeved pajama shirt. She smiled at me as I walked in. I smiled back, put on my pajamas, and went to sleep.

I woke to a warm, wet sensation on my legs. Something soft and scratchy moved against my skin, dragging at it. I rubbed my eyes and looked down. Emily sat on my side of the bed with a sponge and a bucket of water, scrubbing my legs.

"Emily, what the…" I screamed and jumped away.

She looked me in the eyes and forced a smile.

"You know germs live on our skin. I just cleaned the house. I don't want them getting on stuff."

"Emily, this is crazy. Stop."

"Just your arms now."

"No!"

She reached toward me with the sponge. Her sleeves rolled up. Even at night, I could see the redness of her skin. In a few places, there were little smudges of blood.

"I'm going to the guest bedroom."

I took the blanket off the bed and ran to the guest bedroom, locking the door behind me.

The sun had risen. My eyes felt heavy. I hadn't slept after what happened with Emily. I debated calling the police, but what would I tell them? That my wife had been cleaning me in the middle of the night? She hadn't hurt me. Not yet. I decided I'd talk to her in the morning. Maybe I could convince her to see a doctor. I just needed to get her to sit down and listen.

"Emily?" I called into the hall.

Nothing. Our bedroom was empty. The bucket with warm water still sat there.

The downstairs was quiet too. The smell of rubbing alcohol now mingled with the metallic smell of blood. A light was on in the basement.

The basement was cold. A strange, wet hiss sounded inside. I could see Emily's feet. She was turned toward the wall. The stairs creaked under my steps, but she didn't seem to notice. The smell of rubbing alcohol now mixed with iron.

"Emily, are you okay?!"

"Sam!"

I walked one more step. Panic rushed through me. I could finally see her whole body.  She held a knife in her shaking hand. Her nightgown was drenched in blood. The skin on her arms was cut off, revealing dark red muscle.

"I think I've got it down now. I'll be much gentler with yours. Eat some casserole. It will help you relax."

3) “Upstairs, Downstairs”

The basement of the Lydecker house smelled of damp limestone, ancient coal dust, and the sharp, metallic tang of the oil furnace that sat in the center like an iron beast.

Partitioned into dim, low-ceilinged alcoves by concrete pillars and sagging wooden shelves stacked with decades of accumulated junk—broken wooden crates, water-damaged National Geographic magazines, and jars of cloudy preserves—it was JD’s absolute domain.

Following his father’s death during his sophomore year, the house had settled into a sullen, stratified quiet.

Upstairs belonged to Kim, his fourteen-year-old adopted sister, who lived in self-imposed exile in her small bedroom, avoiding the echoing floorboards where she no longer possessed any gravitational pull.

JD’s mother, Cheryl, spent her days in the master bedroom with the television turned to a low, electronic mumble, engaged in a systemic campaign of domestic abdication.

She was timid, overwhelmed by grief, and systematically avoided confrontation, allowing JD to run the house as though privacy and obedience were owed entirely to him.

And so JD inherited the subterranean world, exercising total control over who entered his space. People lowered their voices around him, and Kim stayed away from areas he had claimed.

Yet, even within JD’s territory, there were boundaries. A dead-end corridor extended past the laundry tubs, terminating in a blank, poured-concrete wall that had always felt slightly wrong—too thick, too deliberate.

Pinned to this wall was a large, faded theatrical poster for a 1972 regional production of The Crucible, its edges curling away from the damp concrete.

Behind that poster, concealed by a structural setup known only to JD and his closest confidant Ted Beckman, lay a hidden room, completely severed from the polite, decaying fiction of the rest of the house.

On a freezing Friday night in January 1978, the house above was thick with noise and the sour, yeasty smell of cheap beer. Dendy—Margie Rizzo’s boyfriend, who had first crossed paths with JD two years back—had brought a few guys from the stamping plant along with some girls from the bowling alley.

The stereo was blasting Foghat at a volume that made the picture frames on the wall vibrate.

Dendy was leaning against the kitchen counter, popping the tab on a fresh can of Blatz, when he noticed JD watching him from the doorway of the basement stairs.

“Hey, kid,” Dendy shouted over the music, wiping foam from his lip. “Get down from that stoop. Come pop a can.”

“I’m good,” JD said, his stance rigid in the threshold.

“You’re too skinny, you know that?” Dendy tossed an empty can into the overflowing trash bin and grabbed two fresh ones, shouldering his way toward the basement door. “It’s like a tomb in this joint. Let’s get some air down there. It’s stuffy as a church.”

“Don’t go down there,” JD said, his voice dropping instinctively, carrying the sharp edge of absolute command.

Dendy paused, his hand hovering over the iron latch of the basement door. He looked down at JD, his eyes narrowing slightly beneath a mop of greasy hair. “Why not? You got a body hid down there, kid?”

“It’s just cold,” JD said, stepping half an inch closer, his shoulder blocking the wooden frame.

Across the room, a thick-necked kid in a red hunting cap shouted something about a song, and Dendy turned his head away, distracted by the noise. He tossed one of the cold cans to JD, who caught it clumsily against his chest, and turned back toward the party.

As Dendy walked away, he glanced back once more over his shoulder. He didn’t look up toward Kim’s room, and he didn’t look down the hall at Cheryl’s closed door.

His eyes drifted back to the dark, narrow gap of the basement door, and the strange, absolute silence that seemed to emanate from it—untouched even by the screaming guitars and the laughter of the people drinking just a few feet away.

The cabinet came on a Tuesday, strapped to a dolly by two men who did not speak to each other or to me.

Walnut, my aunt's lawyer had written. Eighteenth century, possibly earlier. I signed where the men pointed. They set it against the east wall of the front room, between the window and the radiator, and one of them ran his thumb along the edge of the left door and then wiped the thumb on his trousers, slowly, the way you wipe off something you haven't identified.

After they left, I stood and looked at it for a long time.

It was beautiful. I want that understood. The doors were inlaid with a pattern of small pale vines that curled around each other and never quite met, and the wood had the depth of old water. Someone had spent years on it. The brass keyhole was worn to a bright oval, as if a great many fingers had hunted for it in the dark. No key came with it. I ran my hand down the grain and it was warm, which I put down to the radiator.

It smelled of cloves, and under the cloves something sweeter, like fruit left in a coat pocket through a winter.

I measured the room that night because I was thinking about where the sofa should go. Eleven feet four inches from the cabinet's front edge to the doorframe where I stood, the tape sagging a little in the middle. I wrote it on the back of an envelope. I don't know why I wrote it. My hand did it before I decided anything.

I ate standing at the kitchen counter, facing the hall, with the front room at my back. When I washed the plate and turned around, the light in the hall had changed. A flatness to it. I went and stood in the doorway and the cabinet was where it had been, doors closed, vines unmet.

Eleven feet one.

I measured it twice. The tape pulled taut, my thumb white on the metal catch. Eleven feet one inch. I sat on the arm of the sofa for a while, and the fabric under my palm had a small loose thread that I wound around my finger until the tip went dark and cold.

Measurements drift. Tapes stretch. I had been tired, and the first number was written by a hand that did not know what it was doing.

I went to bed with the door open, because the hallway light was on and I did not want to reach for the switch. From the bed I could see a long thin slice of the front room, the edge of the sofa, the rug, a stripe of floor. Not the cabinet. I lay with my eyes fixed on the stripe. Around two my eyes closed on their own, the way a hand closes around a rail, and when I opened them the stripe of floor seemed narrower. I cannot say it was. I had nothing to hold it against.

In the morning the sofa had a new angle to it. The arm nearest the wall was pinched, the fabric dimpled like skin where a thumb had pressed. The radiator, which I'd noticed behind the cabinet, was no longer behind it. It had a corner of walnut where the pipe went into the wall, and the paint around the pipe had a fine crazing, as if the wall had flexed.

I did not touch it. I went to the kitchen and drank a glass of water with my back to the hall, and then I made myself turn around and watch the doorway, and I counted. It took me to ninety before my eyes watered. I blinked once, fast, and my whole body went with it, a flinch down the spine like a dropped step.

Nothing. Doors closed. The vines in their patient curl.

Ten feet seven. I measured it. The envelope was getting crowded.

By Thursday I had stopped sleeping in the bedroom. It was not far enough from the front room, the house being small, and I lay on the kitchen floor with my head against the stove and my eyes on the hall. I put a mirror on the counter to see behind me. In the mirror the hall was a bright dull rectangle, and the cabinet was somewhere beyond it, and I understood that a mirror is also a way of looking away.

The pipes ticked. The refrigerator shuddered and went quiet. In the quiet I heard, very clearly, wood. Not creaking. The sound old furniture makes in summer when it takes up the air, a small dry settling, but long, continuous, the sound a single enormous plank might make being drawn across a floor without touching it.

I stopped breathing to listen and it stopped too.

When I went to look, the door to the front room would not open all the way. It had caught on something. Through the gap I could see the rug folded over on itself in a neat ridge, and the corner of the cabinet, and on the walnut, low down, a smear of pale paint.

Six feet, maybe. I did not have the tape.

I pressed my eye to the gap. The brass keyhole looked back, bright and worn and perfectly round, and I thought, with the clarity that comes when you have been awake too long, that I had never once seen it close enough to see what was inside.

It was dark in there. I could smell the cloves.

I blinked.

As you walk past a tree you feel the light touch of silk graze across your face.

 

“Must’ve been a spider,” you mutter to yourself, not overly concerned. Regardless, you’re in a rush. It’s your mother’s birthday tomorrow and as usual you are waiting until the last minute to buy her a gift.

 

After a quick once over to be sure there’s no spiders on your person, you continue your journey to the closest strip mall. You’re sure you’ll find something for her at Kohl’s.

 

You walk down the familiar aisles, but something seems off this time. Employees and customers a like seem to be staring at you. Not in a suspicious way as if you stole something, but their gazes were more akin to that of horror.

“Don’t think of them. It’s nothing.”

“Ahh” you gasped, practically jumping out of your skin. What was that? It didn’t seem like someone said something, it almost sounded like it came from your own head, but this was NOT your internal voice, this was something different. This was something sinister. Hoping it was just a fluke, you make your way towards the jewelry section.

“Let me guess, a crappy tennis bracelet again this year? Don’t forget to ask for a gift receipt HA.”

There it was again, that voice. You weren’t imagining it, you are 100% you’ve either gone insane or somehow someone was communicating with you telepathically. Fearing your sanity is slipping, you rush to the restroom.

“Who are you?” you ask aloud, hoping you get an answer while simultaneously hoping for silence. Instead, something much worse happens.

 

As you stare into the mirror you see the smallest bit of a hairy leg poking out of your ear. You’re in so much shock you can’t even scream, but you know what needs to be done as you reach for your car keys and jam them into your ear, praying this will be enough to rid this foul beast from your ear canal.

“Hey, you walked into MY home” the voice exclaims with a laugh. Knocking your purse off the table to get closer to your ear in the mirror you don’t even notice all the contents in the bag roll onto the floor. You just want this monster out. Bracing yourself, you jab the keys into your ear and begin to dig.

“Yes, we have her here Sir. We’re going to need a body bag, seems like a bit of a grisly suicide” the detective says with a look of pity at your mutilated ear, brain tissue leaking out of the hole you made with your keys.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

“Any items on their person?” The other officer asks.

“Nope, just a purse with some open pill bottles on the ground. Seroquel, lithium, ya know, the typical.” He doesn’t say it condescendingly, in fact, he feels sorrow looking at the scene before him. A poor girl with untreated mental health issues who went too far.

“They need to clean this bathroom up; I walked into like 3 cobwebs just in the bathroom.”

As they collected your body to wheel away, they failed to notice a tiny spider crawling out of your mouth and onto the body bag, ready to meet their next host.

I started keeping a written record after the third time, once it was clear I was not simply miscounting teeth I already knew were missing. On that Tuesday I was running the night circuit at the old mill conversion on River Street, twelve units arranged as two per floor—A and B on each of the six floors—half of them still vacant and the rest occupied by people who worked the plant or the warehouse and preferred to keep to themselves. The job itself was the walk-through: boiler room, hallway timers, trash rooms, and a check of any unit whose windows had been left open. Because the conversion was not fully permitted they paid me cash with no internal timesheet, and the route took roughly two hours when I stayed on it.

In 4B the water stain on the north wall had returned again, low above the baseboard where the day crew had painted over it more than once. I crouched to look at the edge of the paint and saw the molar set into the drywall, enamel clean and roots still attached; when I touched it with the tip of my glove it shifted the way a loose screw shifts once the blade finally has a bite. I worked the flat of the multi-tool under the crown, and the compound gave more easily than it should have, the tooth coming free with a short, wet sound so that it rested in my palm under the flashlight. I recognized the hooked root at once—the oral surgeon had pointed it out on the X-ray six weeks earlier when he removed that same upper left second molar—and I had kept the film in the glove box because the billing office kept calling about the unpaid portion of the bill.

I sealed the tooth in one of the zip bags I carried for broken glass, finished the rest of the circuit, and drove home with the bag on the passenger seat. At the apartment I set it on the kitchen table beside the X-ray and compared the two under the overhead light. The size matched, and the hook on the root matched the shadow on the film. I wrote the date, the unit, and the line “upper left second molar, matches extraction 8/29” on a scrap of paper, taped it to the bag, and put the labeled bag in the freezer next to the ice I kept for the cooler.

The next night I checked 4B first and found the hole still there, a little larger, the edges soft. Running a finger around it I felt another crown just under the surface, this one a premolar, and it came out the same way, clean, so that my tongue found the matching gap on the right side of my mouth—a gap that had been there since I was nineteen and that I had never had filled. I bagged it, labeled it, and finished the walk. At home I put it in the freezer with the first one and began the log on the back of an old maintenance schedule I found in the glove box, using the same pen I used for the boiler readings so the ink would not smear if the page got wet, recording the date, the unit, the tooth type, the location in the wall, and whether it matched a gap I already had.

By the end of the week there were seven teeth in the freezer, two of them ones I still had in my head. After every extraction I checked with my tongue; the sockets that were supposed to be empty stayed empty, and the teeth that were supposed to be there stayed there, while the ones in the wall followed neither rule. I began carrying a small pair of pliers and a roll of painter’s tape so I could mark the holes and keep the day crew from patching them before I returned, though they patched them anyway. I would come in and find the compound still damp over a spot I had cleared the night before, and under the compound the next tooth would already be set, a little deeper, until I learned to cut the patch out with a utility knife before I started digging because the knife left a cleaner edge than the pliers.

On the tenth night I found a canine in the bathroom wall of 2A, longer than the others, and when I pulled it the root dragged a thin thread of something pink behind it, which I wiped on the leg of my pants before I kept going. My own canine was still in place; I pressed on it with my thumb while I drove home and it did not move. The log filled two pages and I started a third, beginning to note the smell as well—faint and close, like the inside of a closed mouth after sleep—which stayed on my gloves even after I washed them in the sink at the end of every shift and hung them over the boiler-room door to dry, so that by morning they were stiff again.

I told the day supervisor I had found old dental work in the walls from the mill days and that I was bagging it for the county. He did not ask to see the bags. He only told me to keep the walk-throughs under two hours so nothing would need to be entered against the cash ledger, and I said I would.

The first time one of the teeth was still warm was a Thursday in 6B. A dark seam had appeared around the outlet cover in the living-room wall, the drywall soft enough that the plate sat proud of the surface. I killed the breaker, removed the cover, and found an incisor, small, the root still pink at the tip, the heat coming through the glove when I touched it. I worked it free faster than the others, and it left a smear on the drywall that darkened while I watched; I wiped the smear with a shop towel and the towel came away red. My own gums were dry. I checked in the rearview on the way home and saw no blood.

I started timing the extractions after that. Most took under a minute once the blade was seated, but the warm ones usually took longer because the root wanted to stay, so that I had to rock them the way the surgeon had rocked the molar in August, the motion making my wrist ache by the third one. I wrote the times in the log next to the tooth type. The longest was four minutes, and that one left a hole large enough to see the stud behind it; when I shone the light in I saw another crown already forming against the wood, smaller and not yet ready.

I took the temperature of the warm ones with the infrared thermometer I already used on the boiler pipes, reading the surface before I sealed each bag, then set them aside in a separate cooler. I labeled those bags with the time I pulled them and the reading. The building stayed at sixty-eight. The teeth came out at ninety-six or ninety-seven.

On the night I pulled the first piece that was still attached to a fragment of jaw, I stopped writing the log for an hour. The fragment was no bigger than a bottle cap and came out of the wall in 1B with the molar still seated in it, the bone the color of the drywall around it. I set it on the floor and looked at it under the light until the edges stopped looking like bone and started looking like the edge of the hole I had just made, then bagged it, wrote the unit and the time, and finished the walk. My own jaw did not hurt. I opened and closed it in the truck to be sure, and the hinge clicked the way it always had since the accident in ’09.

I began keeping a second list on my phone of which teeth I still had, which ones were gone, and which ones had shown up in the walls more than once. The duplicates were the problem. By the end of the second week I had three versions of the same lower molar, two of them warm when I pulled them and one of them carrying a filling that matched the one I had had put in the previous spring. I called the dentist’s office from the parking lot and asked them to confirm the date of the filling. They put me on hold. When they came back they said the filling had been done on April 12 and that the tooth was still in my mouth according to the chart. I thanked them and hung up. The tooth was in a bag in the cooler between my feet.

The day crew started leaving notes on the boiler-room door about the holes, wanting to know why I was cutting into finished walls. I wrote back that I was checking for leaks behind the stain in 4B and that the other holes were old. They stopped leaving notes after I offered to patch them myself on my own time. I did not patch them. I needed the holes open so I could see what was coming next.

By the third week the smell was in the truck, and I kept the windows down even when it rained. The bags in the cooler did not leak, but the cooler itself picked up the odor; I washed it out with bleach at the end of every shift and left it open in the bed of the truck, yet in the morning the bleach smell was gone and the other smell was back, thinner, as if it had settled into the plastic.

I found a full set of upper teeth in the ceiling of the laundry room on a Sunday. They were still in the arch, crowns down and roots pointing up into the joists the way they would sit in a skull, and I had to stand on the dryer to reach them. Two of them were warm. When I worked the second one free, the root tore and left a strip of tissue hanging from the joist, which I cut with the multi-tool and bagged with the teeth. My own uppers were all still in place. I counted them twice in the bathroom mirror when I got home and got sixteen. The log said I had pulled nineteen uppers so far. I added the new ones and corrected the total.

The bleeding started in my own mouth on the night I found the long root in 3B, low on the wall behind the radiator. The root was longer than any I had pulled before, and it carried the same hooked bend the surgeon had marked on the X-ray. When I got the pliers on it and pulled, the root kept coming, sliding out of the drywall like a cord, so that I had to walk backward across the room to get the whole length free. The end of it was soft and tapered. It twitched once after I set it on the floor. I stepped on it until it stopped, then bagged it in sections because it would not fit in one bag.

While I was labeling the sections my mouth filled with blood. I spat into the sink in the unit. The blood was bright and kept coming. I rinsed and spat again. The upper left second molar was loose. I worked it with my tongue until it turned. It was not ready to come out, so I left it and finished the walk with a towel pressed to my mouth. The bleeding stopped by the time I reached the truck. The molar was still loose. I wrote it in the log under a new heading: “own mouth.”

I called out sick the next night. I spent the evening in the bathroom with the pliers and a hand mirror, working the loose upper left second molar until it came free. It matched the hooked bend of the long root I had pulled from 3B the night before, the same bend the surgeon had shown me on the original X-ray. I bagged it, labeled it with the date and “self,” and put it with the others. The socket bled for an hour. I kept gauze in it and changed the gauze when it soaked through. By morning the bleeding had stopped and the socket was already starting to close. I checked the log. The tooth I had pulled from my own mouth was the same one I had pulled, in sections, from the wall in 3B. I added the note: “regrew in socket, removed again.”

I went back to work the night after that. The holes I had left were still open. In three of them new crowns had formed overnight. I pulled them, bagged them, and noted the times. My mouth stayed dry. The loose feeling in the other sockets came and went. I started carrying extra gauze in the same pocket as the painter’s tape.

The log is four pages now. I keep it in the glove box with the X-ray and the copies of the old maintenance schedules. The freezer at the apartment is full. I bought a second one at a yard sale and plugged it in on the back porch. Both freezers are at zero. I check them every morning before I leave for the day job. The bags are labeled and stacked. I have not opened any of them since I sealed them.

Last night I found a full lower jaw in the wall of the boiler room, behind the panel I check for the pressure gauge. It was secured to the studs with the same kind of painter’s tape I use. The tape was dated in my handwriting. The date was three days from now. I cut the tape and pulled the jaw free. It was heavier than the others. Most of the teeth were still seated. Two of them were warm. I bagged the jaw in the large contractor bag I keep for the broken drywall and carried it out to the truck. My own jaw clicked when I lifted it. I opened and closed my mouth until the click settled. Then I drove home, put the bag in the second freezer, and added the entry to the log.

The next line is blank. I have the pen ready. The shift starts at eleven. I will check the boiler room first.

Part V

 

I left everything on the island and snatched the scarf before
heading for the door. Thoughts ran rampant through my mind as I drove.

My phone rang before I’d left my subdivision. I glanced at the
number and knew this was no good. It was a Colorado area code. Where my
company’s headquarters was. We didn’t have a local HR.

It could have been the executive leadership team but I rarely got
called by any of them. My mind returned to yesterday’s meeting and my lack of
being there. For a moment, I felt like I was in free fall. My personal and
professional lives intertwining in disaster. In moments, I could have nothing.
My wife could already be halfway out the door and this was it slamming behind
her.

I didn’t answer. 

It rang until it went to voicemail. I just couldn’t handle
whatever it was they were about to say.

I was still going the same way, but my final destination had
changed. If my life was going down the drain, there was a scarf that needed to
be wrapped around a certain neck that I wanted to grab on my way.

I parked in the lot and headed away from my building. I glanced at
my watch. Had I just surrendered to my fate and gone in, I would have been ten
minutes early.

I entered his building and headed for the elevator. I had no real
plan, just a ball of self-destruction waiting to explode in someone else’s
direction.

I’d been manipulated, molded into this insecure thing and I meant
to share my pain. I shouted down the rational part of me that pondered what I’d
do if my wife were on the business end of my ire. Rationality would have
required examining what I was doing. 

I didn’t want to think. Thinking wasn’t revenge. Thinking wasn’t
balancing the scales. Thinking was what had gotten me to this moment.

The elevator dinged and I stepped off. There was still plenty of
construction going on. A high-pitched drill zipped somewhere around
the corner. I could hear voices that sounded like they were coming out of the
floor but not close enough to understand them.

This was my first time being here during business hours and all
the construction noise was unsettling. I felt like the floor was going to break
underneath me and I’d plummet all the way to the first floor.

Constant hammer strikes echoed from somewhere near. A man hollered
like he was calling out to someone. A machine I didn’t recognize buzzed and I
felt it all the way up into my shins.

I rounded the corner and spotted his door at the end of the hall.
The construction noises coalesced into a sonic hand, shoving me down the hall.
I stopped in front of the door. It looked properly seated in the frame, the
threshold painted a classy-looking black and gold. The knob had been replaced
with an antique-looking one.

I grasped it and turned. The door swung open easily and I stepped
in a completely finished space. The walls had been painted a shade of mint with
cream crown moulding at the top and a darker shade of wainscoting at the
bottom. To my left was a dark couch so fluffy I don’t think I would have had
the will to get out of it if I sat down. There was a small glass end table with
gold legs with a small stack of magazines on it.

The reception desk had been here the last time I’d come and it
looked more completed now, but I couldn’t tell what had been changed. There was
a large square sheet of white paper on the front of it that I at first thought
was blank, but when I took a couple steps closer, saw a hand drawing of what
looked like a logo.

It looked classy in here. Save for the sheet of paper, it seemed
pretty much done. A wall had been erected near the back where the tape had been
mapping out the space. He was planning to stick around.

My shock from how good it looked in here faded and my rage
resurfaced. I had his scarf clutched in hand and I dug in my pocket for my
wallet and fished out three twenties.

“I’ve got my payment right here,” I said. “And your scarf!” I
shook it in the air.

In my rage very little thought had come into mind. I had no real
expectation he was actually here even though I wanted to lay my hands on him.
The part of actually meeting him wasn’t a real concept. I hadn't thought about
that.

So when he answered, “Come on back?” it chilled me.

I realized how much of a doe I was. How much this space was like a
cave. I’d naively walked in here and hadn’t bothered telling anyone where I was
going. There was an expression for this, but it wasn’t coming to my panicked
brain, shifted into a gear meant only for survival.

I took a step back. Into
him.

“Oh,” I said. He poked me in the neck. I slapped a hand in that
spot like a mosquito had bitten me, turning and backing away from him. I fell
to my knees, not understanding what my body was doing.

I tried to speak but whatever was coming out of my mouth was
muffled, like someone had put their hands over my ears. Saying something seemed
like a good idea in those last seconds, but I had no idea what it should have
been.

 

Part VI

 

The procedure room was a lot more intricately finished than the
waiting room had been. There was silver equipment everywhere, things attached
to the wall that looked like they could fold out for some practical use. There
was a lightbox or monitor that was as tall as a man and stretched across most
of the wall it was on. A nest of lights and metal hung over me that looked like
it had traveled across the galaxy just to watch me.

“You’re awake?” he said, looking over his shoulder. I was upside
down and naked. I looked around as best I could, my head was strapped in place.
He had me trussed up like the Vitruvian Man to a metal and glass circular table.

“Whuh-whuh?” I said, my mouth cotton thick. 

“That’s good. That’s good.” He stepped over and put a finger to my
neck and measured against his watch. “Keep talking. Stimulating the brain helps
to expunge the effects of the sedative.”

Tears leaked from my eyes, retreating into my hair. My arms and
legs were slowly returning to my control but returned me to a state of
helplessness as the straps didn’t budge.

“You muhfugg. Lumme go!” My voice was an octave too deep. He
nodded and twirled an index for me to keep going. I hated not being able to
make words, so I just screamed as loud as I could. He smiled and retreated to a
wall and slapped it a couple times with his big palm.

“Soundproof. Can’t have my patients disturbing other tenants.”

I kept screaming even though I absolutely believed him, the rage
bleeding out of me and despair transfusing into the hollow inside me. He folded
his arms and watched me, waiting for me to be done. I continued helplessly, my
despair waning until there was nothing but wild animal clawing to the surface,
until my eyes were boiling and my throat had constricted around a bindle of
knives.

He waited until I was a quaking sack held together loosely in the
shape of a man, my scream the hollow whistle of an empty kettle, the steam all
burnt out of me.

“Ready?” he said.

 

Part VII

 

He stripped to his underwear. There was something wrong down there
but I only had bandwidth to deal with my problems in that moment.

“Please don’t do this.” My throat felt like I’d swallowed a cheese
grater. I was useless but still grasped a desperate strand of hope that I could
appeal to him man-to-man.

“This is for you,” he said. “I’m not some madman in a secret
laboratory. We’re in midtown and I’m going to extend my services to the
public.” He finished doing something with the tray in front of him and took a
step back over to me. I was eye-level with his bare thighs and he kneeled so we
were face-to-face.

“Don’t you love your wife?”

“Wha?” I felt like I’d been slapped by a thousand-pound feather. “Of
course, I do.” My head cannon was that this was going to be an intricate
murder. That the two of them had conspired to “do away” with me. But by
actually applying thought, I realized if murder was the goal, there was a much
simpler way for them to have done it.

“Wait, the surgery is real?” I asked.

His face screwed up in annoyance. “Of course, it is.” He gestured
all around him. “What are you thinking all this is for?”

“I dunno. I guess... I guess you’re some sort of scammer?”

He blinked several times. He reacted as though he’d never been
confronted by such an idea. “What would be the scam?”

I shrugged to the best of my ability and he shook his head. He
returned to the tray and picked up a long needle and inserted it into a vial,
withdrew from it, and placed both back. He looked at me again and saw my eyes
had grown twice as wide.

“Oh, that’s for me. For later. I’ve been ready, I was just waiting
for you to wake up?”

He picked up a scalpel that was tiny in his big hand. Now he
really did look like a cartoon villain. There was a lack of fullness in his
underwear. Like he’d been drawn sexless.

“Wait-wait. Uh, what were you doing in my house?” I was stalling,
still holding out hope that someone would wander in and put a stop to this.

“Oh, that.” His eyes turned upward as if he were watching a replay
of last night on the ceiling. “I watched you for a minute or two, yes. But I
truly needed to take a measurement after.”

“A... measurement?” My loins tingled in an unpleasant manner. He
waved a hand.

“It’s not what you think. I had to take a measurement of your
wife’s vaginal cavity after the two of you had finished. It was all very
clinical. Like a pap smear.”

Anger bubbled up inside me again. I tugged at my binds but I
wasn’t able to move anything more significant than my fingers and toes. He’d examined
my wife. It burned that he’d had access to her as much as her allowing him to
touch her. I squirmed like my skin was about to crawl off my body.

He looked at me, blank faced, and took another step. Once again, I
noted an emptiness to the area around his crotch.  The heat flooding to
the surface of my skin vanished like a big dog confronted by an even bigger dog.

“Suh-so you didn’t sleep with my wife?” I had to swallow hard to
keep my tone rational.

Now he really did look offended. “Sir, I am a professional? And
moreso, I am a married man. I believe I told you that. This picture you have in
mind of me as some sort of ghoul...” He clawed at the air with both hands, the
scalpel coming as close to his throat as it was going to. “You...” he twirled
the fingers of his free hand, searching for the words. “You score my heart. I
would like to think that once you’ve experienced the results, you will buy me
some sort of beer?”

He took another small step. His leg was about a foot away from my
forehead. He could have reached from where he was and began cutting away at any
part of my body he wanted.

“Could I... could I get a drink of water? My mouth is really dry.”

“Sure.” He reached from where he was and pressed a button on the
wall. The machinery beneath me was whisper silent as I was righted and the
excess blood flooded out of my head.

There was a water dispenser next to the tray where he’d been
working. He slipped a cone paper cup from the sleeve, filled it, then brought
it to me.

Cool water soothed my throat in microscopic sips. He must have
realized my delay tactic and upturned the rest of the water into my mouth. 

I swallowed hard and it felt like a bucket of water tossed on
smoldering embers.

“Will there be a scar?”

“Of course there will be a scar,” he said. “That is the point of
the surgery?”

He picked up something from the tray and reached toward my face
with it in his hand. I pinched my lips closed as he moved toward me, holding it
up like a prize. With the other hand he pressed hard at the back of my jaw,
forcing it open against my will. He slid the thing he held into my mouth,
sliding it over my back teeth until he had reached the last few molars, and
seated it there.

I tried biting through it despite knowing better. I was more
likely to dislocate my jaw. 

“That is okay? Not too uncomfortable? Believe it or not, it
actually helps to blunt the screams.” He seemed genuinely interested in my
answer and I grunted at him in anger. There was something wrong in his mouth I
should’ve seen the first time I talked to him, but I hadn’t noticed it until
just then, and it took a moment to process it. My panic leapt as every muscle
in me tensed, pulling with one last meaningless struggle. He waited me out,
stroking my shoulder until I quieted. He broke me like a wild horse. I was very
aware that he could put whatever in my mouth he wanted.

I felt myself surrendering. A calm settling into my bones that
made me want to rage all over again. But I was a car with no gas, my will being
swallowed up in the acceptance of pointlessness. It wasn’t a fight I could even
begin.

He moved his hand away and the table swiveled. In seconds I was
face down, staring at the floor. My tears tapped to the floor as I stepped out
of the cage of my head, my mind perching and spreading its wings as I imagined
my wife at her desk, inclining her head as she thought of me, too.

“H-how did you become an expert? What makes you so good?” My voice
was dreamy and broken, a thousand and one miles away, my words unclear from the
foreign object keeping my mouth open. 

If I’d asked a minute ago, the question would have been a last
effort to delay him from cutting me. But I was honestly curious. 

“I know I told you before. I practiced on me,” he said
quietly, his tone reverential. I imagined a beatific smile on his face as he
looked someplace else entirely.

“It took months. A little cut here, a partial penectomy there.
Each time I ask her, ‘Is it good? Is it better now?’ And each time, she tells
me, ‘Closer. Closer. Closer.’ You understand.”

He had a note of adoration for his wife in his voice that told me
he was standing on a bedrock of absolute sanity.

I felt the heat of him as he millimetered closer to my junk, no
doubt with that scalpel in his hand. I could feel his bare breath on my scrotum
and realized there must have been some sort of divide in the table between my
legs.

“I thought you said your wife’s satisfied. How do you do that
without... y’know?” My jaw ached when I talked.

He laughed. It was a really joyous note, not like he was just
trying to unsettle me. It wasn’t ironic or evil, rather a true, hearty guffaw.
I imagined seeing all the way to his back teeth as he pitched his head back.

He finally got himself back under control and he might have taken
a moment to dab a tear from his eye.

I’d gotten one last look at him before he turned me over. How he’d
looked down there and what he’d told me... I realized he must’ve whittled
himself down to nothing in his undies. That he truly had crafted himself into
what his wife had requested. That the nothing he seemed to have in his drawers
had been the exact mutilation that she’d wanted.

“It’s okay now?” he said suddenly next to me with a pair of blackout
goggles in his hand. He slipped the strap over my head as I moved as much as I
could but with a few deft movements, he had secured them in place. I could feel
my body surrendering against my will and I no longer had the ability to rally. 

“That wasn’t what she desired from me,” he said after he’d
retreated. I flashed on what I’d seen in his mouth again when his face had been
inches from mine. The thing I couldn’t make sense of before but had heard of. A
surgery of another kind.

He’d split his own tongue in half.

“Not a bit of it,” he said. “You understand?”

“But wait!” I was crying again. “If you need to cut me down there…
why do you have me turned around like this?”

“It’s mostly a single cut. Mostly. But your case is a more
particular situation. It will have to be more… intricate.”