“Unicorn! Unicorn!”

I looked to where my two-year-old daughter Katie was pointing. There on the screen was a unicorn in the cartoon we were watching. 

“Yes, baby, that’s a unicorn. Very good.”

“Katie wanna unicorn!”

“Sure, baby, keep watching this show as long as you like,” I said, working on the report due tomorrow. 

“Katie wanna real unicorn!”

With a sigh, I put down my laptop and looked at her. “Unfortunately, Katie, unicorns live in their own magical kingdom far, far away. They hardly ever come down to see us mortals, and people can’t get there.”

She looked up at me, her big blue eyes shiny with unshed tears. “No see real unicorns?”

“No, I’m afraid not, baby. But would you like me to get you a unicorn plushie?”

Instantly her frown of despair was replaced with a smile. “Plushie! Katie wanna unicorn plushie!”

“Then a unicorn plushie Princess Katie shall have.” Crisis averted, I kissed her on the head and put her back down on the floor, where she resumed her show while I picked up the laptop and got back to work. 

At dinner that night, Katie was excited to tell her big sister about her latest prize. 

“Katie gonna get a unicorn plushie! Like a real unicorn!”

“Oh, please,” said Katie’s older sister Alex. Alex was firmly into the teen years - Dan and I had taken a gap after our first child before trying for another - and had all of the surliness and moodiness that went with them. 

“Don’t ruin your sister’s happiness, Alex.”

“But why are you lying to her? Everyone knows unicorns aren’t real.”

Everything stopped; silence overtook the table. 

“Alex!!”

Alex just shrugged. “I just figured the kid should know the truth.”

“Just because you’re miserable doesn’t mean you have everyone else feel that way, too!” I chastised her as I looked back at Katie. She just looked up at me, eyes wide. 

“Unicorns not real?” I could see her eyes beginning to brim. 

“Of course they are, honey. Your sister is just messing with you. Right, Alex?”

Alex shrugged. “Whatever they say, kiddo. What do I know?”

“Mommy?” Katie asked, looking up at me. I just took her in my arms and hugged her. “Don’t worry, sweetheart - you’ll have a unicorn plushie before you know it. Then you can tell your sister all about it.”

That night, after putting Katie to bed, I went to Alex’s room. 

“Alex, what’s going on with you?”

“Nothing,” she replied sullenly. “I’m fine.”

“Then why did you do that to your sister earlier? She’s just a baby. You know she still believes in Santa and the Easter bunny and unicorns; all the things you stopped believing in long ago.”

“Well maybe she shouldn’t!” Alex exclaimed. “Maybe she should know what the world’s really like!”

“She’s two, Alex. There will be plenty of time when she’s older for her to learn what the world’s really like.”

“Like you did when dad left?”

That was a low blow. She knew Dan leaving two years ago for his secretary was still a sore spot for me; I’m guessing that’s why she said it. 

“You can try to hurt me all you want, but I still love you. If there’s something going on, talk to me. Maybe I can help.”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Then help me understand. I know things have been difficult since your father left—”

“It’s not just about him! I don’t know who I am! I don’t fit in anywhere! I don’t…”

“Alex…”

“Forget it!” she said, her eyes brimming with tears of frustration. “You wouldn’t understand anyway. Just leave me alone.”

Not knowing what else to do, I got up and left her room, closing the door behind me. I knew that Dan abandoning us had had an effect on her, but I wasn’t sure what to do. The therapist said she was still adjusting, but even with the sessions and the medication he prescribed, she was always so unhappy. She never had been before. 

The next day, I got up, got dressed, made breakfast for everyone, reminded Alex to catch the bus, and drove Katie to day care on my way to work. I spent the day sitting in meetings and working on presentations while thinking about home. By the end of the day, I’d come up with a plan. 

I left work and stopped at the pizza shop and the bakery. Afterward I picked Katie up from daycare and headed home. It had been a tough few months, but tonight, we’d sit around in our pajamas, watch cheesy movies, eat pizza and donuts, and just have fun like we used to. 

I got home and opened the door, setting Katie loose and going to change out of my work clothes. She’d been talking about her potential unicorn plushie all the way home, and, while I was glad she was so happy, I was ready for a different topic of conversation. Suddenly I heard Katie’s ecstatic laughing from down the hall. 

“Mermaid! Mermaid!”

Great, she’d moved on to another fictional creature. I guess it was better than more unicorn talk, but now I’d have to find a mermaid plushie. I walked to her room to find her, but she wasn’t there. Surprised, I followed her voice to the hallway bathroom. 

“Mermaid, Mommy!” she said, giggling and clapping. “She mermaid!”

And there, at the bottom of the full oversized bathtub, surrounded by empty pill bottles, was Alex, her open eyes frozen, staring up lifelessly through the crystal clear water. 

I found Froggy under a dumpster when he was only a few weeks old.

He was such a skittish little thing. Little blue eyes, silver fur, skin and bone really. It took me an hour to coax him out, but when I saw that little face, I immediately fell in love with it and gave him some of the food I had with me.

He devoured my cheese and tuna ravenously, and we instantly became best friends forever. The only one I'd made since moving to New York. The City can be a kinda unfriendly place. I felt equally unwelcome in Brownsville and the Upper East Side, for different reasons in each case.

Those little triangular ears, and ridiculously long whiskers, and the way he purred at night while he nuzzled into my neck. Not even audible, really. You could more feel it. I loved him so, so much.

Still do. But I used to, too. (He, he — copyright Mitch Hedberg!)

As he grew, he turned into a gorgeous silver tabby that was easily the most loving cat I'd ever known.

During the day, he'd go off on adventures and frequently bring me back "gifts". Rodents he'd killed. Half a cheeseburger. (Boy, he loved that stuff!) And on more than one occasion, people's underwear! This one time he brought back this fancy lacy lingerie. I mean, not even washed — he'd clearly taken them right out of a laundry basket or something!

One thing I always adored about him is I was his person. He really didn't like other people very much or trust them.

People would try and talk to him, making that stupid che-che-che sound that they do, and speaking in a high-pitched voice, and I'd watch, knowing full well that he wouldn't go anywhere near them.

Rottweilers and German shepherds, on the other hand, he'd try and make fast friends with, invariably unsuccessfully.

At night, he'd always come back to me and sleep under my chin, right in that spot he'd first found when he was a kitten, and purr the quietest purr. We'd lie like that all night, keeping each other warm, making one another feel safe.

We used to go for walks together in the park, and people would look at us. Doing a double take, because he was so dog-like. He'd just walk at my side. And people would stop to talk to him in a way that they never would have me on my own.

He was so attuned to the environment. One day when we were on one of those walks, he refused to go down the path to the left, where we would usually loop. So I took the right-hand path instead, and he followed along as normal.

We looped round the park in the opposite direction to the way I'd originally intended, and when we approached the point that he had refused to go to from the other side, I had a better view of the scene his little feline antenna must have detected.

There were a bunch of cops going through the bushes, looking for something. I heard someone coming the other way talking on their phone, telling their wife some girl had been murdered in the park. “Yeah, the cheese wire guy.” The Wire Man, as the news had taken to calling him, had everybody nervous. People had been looking over their shoulder at night for weeks.

Froggy looked up at me with those piercing blue eyes like, "See? I told ya!"

We turned around and headed back the way we came. I didn't need Froggy to tell me we should do that this time. As any New Yorker'll tell ya, you don't talk to the cops unless you have to.

One time on one of our walks, he shot up a fire escape and into someone's apartment. I sat in that alleyway for at least an hour, hoping he'd come back out, which he eventually did.

At night, at home, I always joked with Froggy that I'd know if anyone were in the house with us, because he was so sensitive to his environment. Anything untoward, and he'd lift his little head, nuzzling my chin. My little furry alarm clock and guardian angel, rolled into one.

Most people aren't worth a damn, but Froggy meant everything to me.

Tonight, though, somehow Froggy didn't wake me. I immediately knew something was off.

Coming to the way you do, when you know with absolute certainty that something is wrong. I realised he wasn't there, in his usual spot under my chin, and a chill went down my spine.

Turning my head and sitting up ever so slightly, I peered into the darkness.

And there was Froggy leaping up onto the homeowner's bed and creeping up to settle on to her sleeping form. Any moment now, I knew he was going to nuzzle her chin in the way he did mine.

I could see the whole scene play out in my head, even before it happened.

As I lay in my cupboard, I knew that any second now she'd scream. Then the guy next door, who worked at the bakery on the corner and was built like an ox, would likely call the cops or come running, and I'd be done for. He started work at 4am. If only Froggy had waited an hour, I'd have been safe.

I felt the cheese wire in my pocket, watching the scene unfold in slow motion, like I was floating in treacle, horrified. As Froggy licked her face and she began to stir, he turned and looked right at the cupboard where I was hiding. Penetrating what passed for a soul with those piercing blue eyes.

“Hi.” My first words were a breathy laugh.

The guy was cute. Late-twenties. Ragged blondish curls and freckles.

Kind of fidgety, shuffling uncomfortably, like he was mentally practicing the words he was going to say.

It took me a moment to realize he wasn't excited-nervous.

This guy was nervous nervous.

And then it hit me.

He was one of them.

His nerves suddenly made a lot of sense.

Our town had recently voted for someone who insisted that people like him didn’t have rights, whose campaign speech had revolved entirely around reminding voters that these people belonged in factories and didn't "deserve" to reproduce.

20 years ago, when kids started dropping dead in the third grade, it was labelled as “pneumonia of unknown etiology.”

When enough kids died to elicit lockdowns, the World Health Organization told us what it really was: a biological weapon developed by a country that refused to take accountability.

“Hi.” The guy held out his hand, first hesitantly, and when I happily shook it, his body language shifted. More comfortable.

“I'm West.” He said, and his glass of water wobbled onto its side, before jerking back upright.

By the time the school year was out, every kid on my street was dead.

Riona drowned in her own lung fluid.

Noah coughed up blood in the middle of PE.

Ellie collapsed in the playground during recess.

Mom expected me to die when I developed a cough.

But I somehow survived.

There was a difference between kids who fought the virus and kids who succumbed to it.

Survivors of the virus were rare.

I never started High School because there weren't enough kids.

My college classes were online.

I hadn't met someone my age in years– not since my Mom took me to a survivors group, and it was just traumatized kids.

There were two types of survivors:

Kids like me, who had a strong immune system.

And kids like him.

The man sitting across from me.

My freckled date straightened with a smile. “I'm—”

“You're one of them,” I said, intrigued.

He blinked and then laughed.

“I was going to say I’m starving,” he teased, “but yeah, that too.”

We ordered food, and he was surprisingly forward about his life.

A little too forward, borderline trauma dumping.

“I stopped breathing when I got sick like all the other kids,” he admitted, halfway through his steak, mouth full of gravy.

His lack of table manners made me laugh.

“Mom declared me dead, and then I just woke up…” He frowned. “Well, technically, I didn’t.”

West didn’t elaborate, inhaling mashed potatoes.

“Anyway, Mom thought I was demonically possessed, so she sent me to this…” He stopped chewing, his expression cracking.

I knew what he meant. I was almost sent to one too.

Until the Doctor gave me the all-clear.

“Place.” West finished. “I spent ten years at this, like school, fashioned into a holding facility. They didn't call it a prison because we were kids. But they killed a lot of us for just asking questions. So, I kept my head down and did what I was told.”

He set his fork down gently.

“When I turned eighteen, I was dumped back in the real world. I tried to go back to school, but…” he shrugged. “It's fine! Who needs school, anyway? Not me!”

He grinned, dipping his finger in leftover gravy and writing, “SCOOL SUX” on his napkin. “Since then, I've been working mostly cash-in-hand.” He sighed, leaning his fist on his chin. “Sometimes, I just straight up lie about my age and say I'm younger.”

Leaning across the table, his lips found my ear. “That's how I got my job, but shhh.”

I laughed. And, as if trying to please me, he copied.

“Sooooo, how about you?” He pressed. “Any childhood trauma? Or can we skip to the “What TV shows are you watching, stage?"

I liked West.

He smiled at me, chin on fist, eyebrow raised. “Anything you want to ask me?”

“Nope." I felt comfortable enough to peck him on the cheek.

He took me back to his apartment, and we hooked up.

West talked all the way through sex, which was a slight turn-off, asking me if he was doing it right, then if I was doing it right, and, strangely, if I could still “feel” him.

Afterwards, he insisted on downing coffee every five minutes. When he finally shut up halfway through an anecdote, I realized he’d fallen asleep on my chest.

I woke up shivering.

Sunlight bled through West’s blinds.

Something was… cold.

Ice cold and slimy, pressed against my chest.

West.

His weight suffocated me. I shoved him.

“Hey. Wake up.”

He didn't move.

Something slimy wound its way into my mouth.

“West!”

I shoved him off of me, and he landed, face-planting the sheets.

The smell snaked into my nose. Wrong.

Panicking, bile filling my throat, I pressed my trembling hand to his chest.

Nothing.

No pulse.

No heartbeat.

My almost-boyfriend had died in his sleep.

This was why West seemed so nervous, I thought. Why he talked so much. Why he never shut up.

Mom always told me kids like him didn't live long; either because they were hunted down, or because, unlike me, they didn't survive the virus. They adapted as carriers, evolving with it.

Tears stung my eyes.

Why he drank so much coffee.

Why he couldn't seem to sit still.

Because he was terrified of going to sleep.

“West!” I shrieked, shoving his body again.

“Yeah?”

I twisted around. West sat next to me, cross-legged. “Sorry.” He shot me a grin when my hands went straight through him.

His presence reminded me of fog, more of a blurred image than a person. “I’m not dead.” He rolled his eyes. “Sometimes, I can… separate from my body.” He flicked his own corpse. “Just give me a sec.”

A whole minute passed, and his lip curled slightly. His eyes widened.

“Any second now.”

November 1967

* * *

Everyone on the Laurel Fork line knew the rules, and Wilma Teague's mother had taught them to her before she could read. You could lift the receiver and listen, because everybody did. You did not speak into a ring that was not yours. And you did not lift for two shorts and a long, because that ring belonged to the Pettigrews, and the Pettigrews had burned in their beds in the winter of 1951.

The telephone company never took the ring off the books. There were eight parties on the line and a ninth code on the switch with nobody under it, and once or twice a year it rang anyway. Eight kitchens would hear it. Eight kitchens would let it go.

Since September it had rung at Wilma's every night at twenty to ten.

September was when Ruthann came. Her granddaughter was six, with a healing lip from the wreck on Tanyard Road that took her mother, and she slept upstairs in the room that had been her father's, with the door open to the hall light. At twenty to ten Wilma stood at the wall phone in the kitchen with her hands in her apron and did not touch it. It rang nine times and quit.

Tonight she lifted it.

She could not have said why. Ruthann had been coughing, and Wilma was tired, and her hand took the receiver down before she had decided anything. There was the hiss of the line. There were eight small clicks, one after another, as every house on Laurel Fork picked up to listen. Then breathing, close to the mouthpiece, and a child's voice with the consonants popping.

"Mama Wilma?"

It was Ruthann. The lisp on the S, the flat vowels she had brought from Knoxville. Wilma put her free hand on the counter.

"Mama Wilma, it's cold. The lady says I can come out if somebody says my name on the line. She says it has to be somebody that's mine."

"You're upstairs," Wilma said. Her mouth would not stay shut. "You're asleep in your bed."

"No ma'am. I'm at the old house. It's dark." A pause, and under the hiss a sound she took at first for rain: a great many small bare feet shifting on a floor. "There's a lot of us. She says say it now. She says before the other one gets down."

"What other one?"

A stair creaked.

Wilma turned with the receiver against her ear. At the top of the stairs, in the yellow bar of the hall light, stood Ruthann in her nightgown with one hand on the rail. The split lip. The bare feet. She was looking down into the kitchen with an expression Wilma had not seen on that face once since September. She looked pleased.

"Mama Wilma," said the child on the stairs. "Who are you talking to?"

In Wilma's ear the small voice went fast and thin. "Don't answer her. Say my name. Say it on the line, Mama Wilma, you have to say it on the line."

The child came down a step. Her hand slid along the rail and did not leave it. Another step. She did not hurry. A child holding a rail looks at her feet. This one looked at Wilma.

On the line, the eight listeners breathed. Wilma could hear them. She could hear the Gaddis boy's asthma and old Mr. Finley's radio and, behind them all, the shifting of the bare feet in the dark.

"Please," said the voice in the receiver. "It's so cold."

Wilma had been taught three rules and had broken one. She stood with the cord drawn across the kitchen and she looked at the face on the stairs, the lip and the freckle under the left eye, her son's chin, every part of it right, and she thought of the room upstairs and the bed she had not checked.

"Ruthann," she said.

She did not say it into the mouthpiece. She said it to the stairs.

The child stopped on the third step from the bottom. The pleased look went out of her face, slowly, like water leaving a dish. In Wilma's ear the small voice said, "That's not what I said," and then there was no voice. There was the hiss, and then eight clicks, one after another, as every house on Laurel Fork put its receiver down.

The kitchen was very quiet.

"I'm so cold, Mama Wilma," said the child on the stairs. Her hair was wet. It hung dark and heavy on the shoulders of the nightgown and a drop ran down her temple and off her chin. "Come hold me."

Wilma stood with the dead receiver in her hand and the cord across her chest.

Then she put it on the hook, and crossed the kitchen, and opened her arms.

* * *

.. Two…. One…. There you are.

I’ll wait.

I think you’ve got one more scream in you… Yep, there it is.

Okay, let’s zip through this bit. Yes, I abducted you. And no, I don’t want anything, certainly not the money you don’t have much of. I brought you here to murder you.

No one can hear you, but sure, let it out. This is always my least favorite part.

Aaaand we’re back. I might as well tell you this now… We’re in a time loop. Like relive the same day over and over again time loop. It’s mine. Obviously.

I know what you’re going to say, and I’m not crazy. Well… Okay, I do have you tied to a chair in a barn in the middle of nowhere, so that’s honestly debatable. But the point still stands. You are stuck in my time loop. Every day I capture you, and every day… Well, we’ll get there.

Now, the first few times I figured I’d hit the jackpot. Getting to do this over and over again, the rush, it was insane. Don’t get me wrong, I love the lead-up too. The prep work, the research. The watching you sleep. But there’s nothing like the main event. So we’d do our little dance and I’d clean up and go about the rest of my day.

But it turns out maybe there is too much of a good thing. Doing it got… stale? No, more like routine. And the real kicker? The giant cosmic joke? We all know how this is supposed to go. You get to leave the loop when you learn your lesson. You have to evolve, to be better. But can someone like me really do that? Can I really give this up?

So instead of killing you outright, I started bringing you here. To give me some breathing room, time to think. Oh, you didn’t think this was plan A, did you? No, I used to do it on the trail while you were jogging. Drag you into the picnic area and carve you up there, just like all the others. Yes, I’m *that* guy. But I’ve never been great at silent reflection, so I started talking to you. It’s not like you’re going anywhere yet, right?

So here we are. This is what we do. I talk, and you listen. We’ve actually figured out quite a bit, you and me. You’re a good listener. Until you’re not.

Ouch! Do me a favor, will you? Remind me to bring a folding chair tomorrow. These hay bales just aren’t cutting it. Too rough.

So after we talked yesterday about my dad leaving, I thought about my mom. And I think I might have figured something out. I think the reason I kill joggers might go back to her. I told you how she would beat me something fierce, for the smallest thing wrong. Because she was mad at him. And I just had to take it, you know? I couldn’t go anywhere.

Yes! Exactly. It’s hard to push back at that age, even when we’re being hurt ourselves. We just have to push it down. And the resentment grows, and digs in. And then, I think it makes us lash out at other people. I couldn’t run away from her, so when I see all of you out there, running for fun? It does something to me. It makes me so mad. Why should you get to run free when I couldn’t escape?

Wow, that really feels like a breakthrough. Thank you.

Speaking of escape, you should be just about finished sawing through the rope with that loose nail on the back of the chair. Of course I know about it. No, don’t stop on my account, finish it up. I used to fix it, but I decided I like you amped up for what comes next.

Because what I was saying about things getting stale? Totally true. So ultimately, I decided to do what all good innovators do: pivot.

So I’m going to let you go… with a head start. And here’s the deal. If you manage to make it to a road and flag someone down, I won’t chase you. In fact, I’ll let you go entirely. I’ll find someone else tomorrow. That could be exciting, I think.

Don’t get too excited. Really we’re just going to see if you can get farther than yesterday. Think you’ve got it in you? Ha! I like that spirit.

Now, listen carefully. Please, PLEASE try to remember this. There’s a tree root that sticks up a little bit on the other side of the creek bed. It’s just after you see a deer on your right. Step over it. Say it with me. Creek bed. Deer. Tree root. Good, again. For all that is holy, don’t twist your ankle this time!

And one more tip. Stay out of the cornfield. As much as I’d like to get another round on that harvester, some things are just too far. I won’t do that to you again. Hey, look at that, maybe I am growing. I guess we’ll find out tomorrow.

Okay, here we go! I’ll count you down. Five…. Four…. Three..

It was 11:52 PM, Tuesday night.

The air was cold, but not freezing. It was raining, but not heavily. The gravel, lit up by unnaturally-white street lights, was littered with crumpled orange leaves that crunched under my unbearably-heavy feet.

I heaved my battered suitcase out from the boot of the taxi, and dragged it through the revolving doors into the hotel.

I had just landed in this city an hour or so ago. It’s my first trip abroad for this stupid entry-level job. I booked the nearest hotel to the office: 3 stars, a fifteen minute walk to work. Sufficient for me.

The receptionist greeted me blandly. She eventually handed me the key to room 1303, on floor 13.

That’s strange, I wondered. I thought hotels usually skip floor 13.

My eyelids felt like stones. I pondered no more on the thought.

I trudged into the elevator with my suitcase, alongside a hotel plumber. He pressed button 12, then turned to me and asked, “Floor number?”

“Thirteen,” I murmured.

The plumber stiffened. “That’s accessible through the staircase from floor 12,” he said in a shaky tone.

I glanced towards the button panel. My guess was right: there was no button 13 after button 12, only button 14.

He answered the question before I asked it, “Floor 13 was built before the elevator system, on the other side of the building which the elevators can’t access.”

The elevator doors opened on floor 12. In the span of two seconds, the plumber yanked out a folded paper from his pocket, shoved it into my free hand, and hurriedly strode off down the corridor, without making eye contact the entire time.

Stepping out of the elevator, I unfolded the paper, read what was on it, then felt like ripping it apart. They were instructions on how to get to floor 13 from here, written in neat cursive.

What the hell is this bullshit, I thought. Is this some sort of joke? Why can’t I get a normal room?

I wanted to go back down to reception to change my room, but I was too tired to go through that long process. I’ll do that tomorrow, I’ll just spend one night on floor 13.
Following the instructions, I headed to the staircase area, inserted my key into a keyhole that seemed to be on the wall randomly, and pushed. Surely enough, part of the wall dragged open like a heavy door.

Floor 13 looked a lot like floor 12, which probably looked like the other floors: beige walls, patterned dark green carpets, and fluorescent lights. But there were key differences: no elevators, no visible staircase door, and the corridor was only about twenty feet long. 

There was just one room door. Room 1303.

My mind screamed to get out of here, but my body forced me to stay put. I needed to sleep here. For one night only.

I looked at the wall door from which I entered. It was still propped open by my suitcase. It had no doorknob, even though I’d have to pull it to open it again. 

Cursing under my breath, I took my left shoe off and placed it in the doorway. I walked towards my room, the shoe keeping the door open.

When I unlocked the door and entered, my fatigue intensified, but not in a bad way. A large queen-sized bed, pleasantly-cold air, and clean surfaces made me crave sleep even more. 

While unpacking my suitcase, I noticed a calendar on the wall above the bedside table. It was marked Wednesday, October 16th, 2013. The correct date. I looked at my watch. It was 12:01 AM. Was someone in the room one minute ago to mark the calendar? Putting the question out of my head, I went to take a shower.

I entered the spotless bathroom and took a look at myself in the mirror. I looked exhausted, older than I actually was. And not just because of tonight: nothing has been the same since the Financial Crisis. This job, no matter how much I hated it, was my only hope.

Then my reflection blinked. 

I didn’t blink.

I’m probably hallucinating, I thought. I rubbed my eyes, then lowered my hands. But my reflection lowered its hands one second later.

“What the…?” I spluttered. Suddenly alert, I looked around the bathroom for anything suspicious. I didn’t know what to expect, but something was definitely wrong.

Then I looked back at the mirror.

My reflection was gone, replaced by the lifeless body of an old man sprawled across the bathroom floor, staring blankly towards me. It was undeniably supposed to be me, just elderly: same skin tone (but wrinkled), same eyes (but empty), same identity, but as dead as dead could be.

Heart racing, breath shallow, completely forgetting about my tiredness, I dashed out of the bathroom. I grabbed the in-room phone, only to realise its cord had been cut. I snatched my cellphone from the bedside table, but it was out of battery (it was 78% when I landed). I took out my charger; that was cut too.

I briefly looked up at the calendar. It was marked Friday, October 16th, 1857.

My eyes and forehead moistening, I sprinted out of the room, shoving the stupid 1303 door aside. The wall door was now shut, as if it was never there. Half of the shoe remained lying on the carpet.

I tried feeling the wall, pushing it, but the doorway was gone. I was trapped.

A sense of hopelessness gripping me, I looked back at the room door. The number 1303 had disappeared, and the plaque was slightly larger.

When I looked closer, I could make out text written in neat cursive.

Finally a new friend after 39 years. 

The previous one didn’t last long.

It’s dark. There’s something over my head, but I can hear low voices talking in the distance. Where am I? Panic rising, I try to figure out my surroundings. With no sight, I must use my other senses.
 
Hmm, what can I feel? I’m sitting down. I stretch out my fingers and grimace in pain. A splinter. Some kind of thick wooden chair. My hands are restricted and so are my feet. Not good. My heart is racing. I can almost feel the thumps grasping to explode out of my chest. The restrictions are likely to be metal. It’s cold against my warm skin. I feel groggy. Was I drugged? There’s no breeze but it’s cool. So, I’m not outside, maybe underground? I’m not sure but what I do know is that I’m in danger.
 
On another note, what can I hear? Besides the low voices coming from what sounds like another room, there’s really nothing else going on. It’s dead silent. Drip. Drip. Drip. Hold on. There’s water dripping slowly in the right corner behind me. Where could the water be coming from? Maybe a leaky pipe or water on the surface above me? I can’t tell but whatever it is, it’s giving me the creeps. Great. One more thing to add on to the already dread-filled feeling. Alright. Moving on. What else?
 
Smell! What can I smell. It smells musty which could mean it’s damp. The air is breathable but there’s a metallic aroma lingering in the air. Wait. Is that… blood? Oh my God. What the hell is going on! I start to wriggle in my chair. Maybe there’s a way out. The voices in the other room abruptly stop. I wait, holding my breath in anguish as to not make a sound. The voices resume. I let out a breath of relief.
 
Okay so to quickly recap I’m bound to some kind of wooden chair, I might have been drugged, it’s possible I’m underground, there’s muffled male voices in the short distance, it’s damp, and it smells like blood. Could I be in a-
 
There’s a squeak as to what I’m assuming is a large door opening. The sound of the voices are getting closer. Trying to get an idea of my surroundings I listen hard, but my fear is taking over. I can’t focus. I manage to pick up the sound of feet hitting small puddles. There’s water on the floor. There seems to be an echo ruminating throughout the space as the men approach me. I feel the color run out of my face. What are they going to do to me? What do they want with me? I’m terrified.
 
They’re right in front of me now. Panic ensues. I swallow hard and no later the men rip off the sack that was over my head. The room fades in and out of view. I can feel the sweat pouring down my face. A mixture of heat and panic. It tastes like fear. The walls are made of large heaps of stone plastered together. The room is lit enough to see but still eerily dark. On each side of the wall there are braziers with fire illuminating the walls.
 
There’s two men standing over me. One looks to be tall and muscular, while the other is short and stocky. They’re both in dark clothing and have black hoods over their faces. They smell horrible. What is all over their clothes?
 
I take in the rest of my surroundings, and I start to realize where I am. I feel like I’m about to pass out. This can’t be. My heart drops to my stomach.
 
I’m bound to an electric chair…

He moved into the apartment across the hall three months ago. My soul shook the moment our hands grazed each other while exchanging a misplaced package. His scent of cedarwood and rain entered my nostrils sending a heat wave through my body. He was the one. 

We ran into each other often, he was always polite but also always distracted. He was the one, I just needed to help him realize. He needed a push. 

Using magic on a man was typically frowned upon in my coven but exceptions - and secrets - can be made. I whispered love spells through the vents. When the central air turned on little pieces of rose flew through the vents and I hoped made their way into his apartment. 

I realized that this was not working, at least not as fast as I would have liked. So I brewed a simple love potion. I couldn’t simply just give it to him so I came up with a plan.

Luckily our maintenance man was both a drunk and a pervert so it only took a few minutes of flirting in his office to locate and grab the set of master keys. I made my own copy and returned them without notice. 

I used the master key to enter his apartment for the next three weeks. Everyday, while he was at the gym, I poured the clear love potion into the water filter he kept in the fridge. My heart raced every time I did it, out of fear and excitement.

It was finally working, he was seeing me. Truly seeing me. 

Our “accidental” meetings in the lobby turned into the best part of both of our days. He started looking at me with a hint of wildness and want in his eyes that wasn’t there before. He even texted me at 3am one night to tell me he couldn’t sleep because he couldn’t get my laugh out of his head. A few days after that I arrived home to a bouquet of black roses and a note on my doorstep that read: “I am losing my mind. You are everywhere. Everything.”

It was working, he was becoming completely drowned in me. He was falling in love. 

The day arrived for our first real date. We were having dinner at his place. I walked across the hall and knocked.

He opened the door almost immediately. He looked terrible. His eyes were red, he looked - and smelled like he had not showered for days, and he was shaking. But when he saw me a crazy smile came across his face. 

“You’re here!” he exclaimed as he grabbed my wrist and pulled me inside the dark apartment. He had gone all out for this first date, the only lighting being candles placed throughout the open floor plan. So romantic. 

“Are you okay?” I asked like I was an innocent woman just on her first date with no selfish intentions of her own. “You seem stressed.”

“I have never felt better!” He said as the deadbolt clicked behind me. He walked over to the kitchen pacing back and forth with restless energy. “I was just thinking about finding the perfect one. How it forces you to be… creative.”

I smiled softly and took a step towards him. “It really does.”

“I knew you would understand!” his voice had become low and there was something missing from his tone, though I couldn’t figure out what it was. He looked at me the way a wolf looks at a deer. “You see, for years, so many, many years, I have had these, these - thoughts. Beautiful but such - such incredibly dark thoughts. I look at women on the street and I imagine what they look like when the light leaves their eyes. I imagine the perfect way to make sure they are mine forever. I look at these women but I don’t see them. But you, I see you.”

My smile faded and a cold chill washed over me. “What are you talking about?”

“I tried to fight it!” He laughed a crazy sound that echoed through the room. “I really did try! I took the pills. I stayed away from people. But then - I moved here - and I saw you. Suddenly the thoughts became too loud to ignore and my mind just - it just - snapped! It snapped and I became completely obsessed with you, my perfect girl.”

I took a step back but he kept coming forward. My spells had worked, they had created a deep and powerful obsession - but they did not create love. It had simply focused his darkest thoughts completely onto me. 

“I have been planning this for weeks!” He shouted as he picked up a long carving knife. His hands were shaking with excitement. “I even bought plastic sheeting for the living room floor so we don’t make a mess!”

“S-Stop!” I yelled, my voice trembling.

“Don’t be scared, my love.” He said and his smile stretched wider than it should have been able to as he raised the knife. “You wanted us to be together. I could feel it every time you looked at me in the hall and now - now you will never, ever - ever - leave me.” 

The agony peaked, a blinding, white-hot spike that drove deep into my thoracic spine, seizing the core of my chest and twisting until my back arched off the mattress like a broken bow.

For five years, I had told them. Five years of MRIs, CT scans, and endless tubes of blood. I had lost count of the massive steroid injections they had jammed into my lower back, blind to my cries, insisting the cortisone would eventually kick in. It's my mid-back, I had begged, like a fist grabbing my spine and wringing it out.

But they only looked at my lumbar, charting my exhaustion, handing me prescriptions I refused to touch anymore, and shrugging. "You're in pain because you're in pain," that last arrogant doctor had told me with a sterile, patronizing smile. I had muttered Thanks, Dr. Obvious under my breath, walked out, and given up. I was forty-eight, medically broken, and completely abandoned by science.

Until tonight.

I had refused to take any of the medications they had prescribed for the last few weeks, entirely done with their useless chemical band-aids.

And right on cue, the thoracic pain hit, worse than it ever had in the last five years.

The guttural sound ripping from my throat didn't sound like me; it was a jagged, inhuman howl that tore the lining of my lungs. Every single rib felt like it was breaking, buckling inward before bursting outward with a sickening crunch. The skin across my back split open, hot and wet, as something massive and heavy forced its way out from between my shoulder blades. I braced for the final, lethal shock of it—but instead, a sudden, heavy stillness washed over me. The torment that had anchored my entire existence for half a decade simply vanished, replaced by a cold, pulsing hum of pure, unadulterated strength.

I opened my eyes. The familiar dark of my bedroom was gone, replaced by a sharp, predatory clarity tinted in a deep, vibrant crimson.

When I tried to shift, the mattress felt like a bed of jagged rocks beneath me. I sat up, and a pair of massive, pitch-black leathery wings unfolded instinctively, brushing the ceiling with a heavy, ominous rustle. I gasped, reaching a hand out to touch the sleek, armored span, only to freeze. My skin was a dark, bruised blood-red. My arms were elongated, corded with dense, heavy muscle.

Swinging my legs over the edge of the bed, I stumbled. My new, longer limbs didn't quite obey the old rules of gravity, but there was no weakness in them. No ache. No arthritis.

I lunged toward the mirror on the wall, bracing my claws against the frame, and stared. The tired, fragile woman was gone. In her place stood a towering, terrifying demon, eyes glowing like dying embers against crimson skin.

A slow, sharp smile curved my new jaw, revealing a row of lethal points. I always said I wanted to be more, I thought, a strange, intoxicating warmth flooding my chest. I wanted to feel something beyond my own pain.

I turned, extending my wings, admiring the terrifying symmetry of the monster I had become. I had promised those unhelpful, dismissive doctors that I would give them an update if my condition ever changed. I thought this definitely qualified as a change in status.

A low, feral laugh rumbled deep in my chest, vibrating through the quiet room.

"Now, now," I whispered to the empty air, the crimson vision narrowing with perfect, deadly focus. "Which one of these doctors should I visit first?"

I smiled wider, the realization settling in with absolute perfection.

"I think the choice, is Obvious."

Mary woke before her alarm as she often did. She rolled over through the sheets to check the window. She saw the still dim sky was in a muted, moody grey and she started feeling for her phone. Blinking through the blindness she found a delightful sight.

‘Rain out everybody, work’s off.’ A text from her team lead read, and a little smile tugged at her lips. She curled up in a stretch, arms wide to welcome the inclement weather. Mother nature had given her a day off, and she was going to enjoy it.

She set a pot of coffee to brew, notes of mocha filling the air, and gathered up her kitchenware. In her kitchenette, at the counter she cut strawberries into halves and then quarters while white chocolate melted in the microwave. It was, in her mind, a wonderful Thursday morning.

And then she noticed it.

Eyes on the back of her head, drilling down at her—into her.

Something saw her.

She froze.

The feeling was unsettling, but like the skittering of phantom spiders along legs and arms, it was just a quirk of the body. Everyone felt it, or at least something like that now and again. A spectral sensation here now and gone in a blink, these feelings came and went.

Not now though.

Mary felt the eyes on the back of her skull, unblinking.

Something was watching her. And it wasn't leaving.

It was over her shoulder and behind her—couldn’t tell how close. She saw no shadow pass behind her, felt no breath upon her neck. No soft footfalls cautiously creeping to catch her off guard.

There hadn't been a sound, nothing she could have missed. No smashing glass nor shattering locks. No music to be lost in, save for the rhythm of knife against board.

Her head moved. Just a twitch, at first, and that felt too much… But the twitch carried through, her head began to turn.

She had to know.

She needed to see what saw her. Its presence alone was turning her guts into knots. It had come to her unannounced, without a sound, and it held those unseen eyes on her.

She had to know.

She desperately wished otherwise, but her head kept turning.

Her pupils crept with the turn, stuttering to the corner of her eye.

And she saw nothing.

Behind her stood no one… And the only thing in the apartment between her and the far wall was…

Nothing.

No one was looking at her through the window and nothing was in the apartment with her.

But she was still being watched. She knew it. Instinct screamed that something saw her.

Her breath caught in her throat, and the grip she'd kept on her knife tightened, her knuckles white. She turned fully now. She looked from left to right scanning cabinets and tables for anything, anything that might be off and found nothing.

Nothing was watching her.

“Is… anyone there?”

She heard no response, but felt the invisible eyes’ unrelenting gaze all the same.

Then she blinked.

And It was gone.

Our building's fire marshal retired in June, so I inherited the clipboard.

Forty-two people work on the sixth floor. During a drill, I stand by the parking lot gate, call their names, and tick the boxes. It's boring enough that nobody else volunteered.

At the first drill I counted forty-three.

I checked twice. Everyone on the list was present, plus a man in a mustard-colored tie who stood with Accounts. I didn't recognize him.

"That's Graham," said Priya. "He's been here forever."

By lunch, there was a photograph of Graham at last year's Christmas party. I was in it too, laughing with my arm around his shoulders.

I don't remember that party. I remember being home with the flu.

Next month's drill, I counted forty-four.

The extra person was a woman in a blue cardigan. She looked exhausted and had damp hair plastered to her forehead. My coworkers called her Denise. They were shocked I didn't remember her, especially since I'd apparently trained her.

That afternoon I searched our shared drive. There was my training checklist, completed in my handwriting.

At the bottom, under additional notes, I'd written: SHE WASN'T WET BEFORE.

I went to security. The guard let me watch the footage from the drill.

People filed out of the sixth-floor stairwell. Denise emerged after the others. She stood perfectly still until the last person's back was turned, then joined the crowd.

I asked the guard to rewind.

At the edge of the frame, through the glass office door, I saw someone standing at my desk.

Me.

I was watching the empty corridor. Then I turned around, picked up the clipboard, and started writing.

"That's you," the guard said.

"I was downstairs doing the headcount."

He watched the footage again.

"Right," he said slowly. "Of course you were."

I quit that afternoon. Left the clipboard on my desk and went home.

This morning, Priya called, laughing. Apparently I'd forgotten to tell anyone I was taking vacation. She asked when I was coming back.

Behind her, the fire alarm started ringing.

"Not today," I said.

There was a pause.

"That's strange," she said. "You just walked past my desk."

Then I heard myself speaking in the background, cheerful and breathless, asking if she'd seen the fire marshal's clipboard.

Priya laughed again.

"She says you're going to be late for the headcount."

The voice moved closer to the phone.

"Don't worry," it said. "I'll put you down as present."

The sensor’s green flash reading my keycard, the smell of cheap dark-roast grounds, and the hiss of steam followed by steady drips defined my morning routine. I stared blankly at the break-room poster of a goldfish wearing a plastic shark fin above the waterline. The words “Mindset is Everything” were printed in cheap serif font below the fish. What bullshit. Goldfish are a freshwater species; why would they need to mimic a saltwater predator? I made a mental note to notify Jerry to tear it down.

I carried my red, yellow, and blue Mr. DNA mug to my desk and logged into my workstation. Red alerts flashed across the Laboratory Information Management System’s home screen. I cleared my queue and sighed heavily. Today would be a long day.

I pulled the newest case from the evidence vault and logged its relevant details. It was a double homicide that occurred last week near the county line in a small house off the main road in a rural community.

I put on two medium-sized purple nitrile gloves from the box on my lab bench, opened the sealed evidence bag, and carefully removed a small square cut-out of window glass collected from the crime scene. I dusted the surface with fluorescent powder, illuminated it under an alternate light source, and began capturing high-res digital images of the prints. I followed standard ACE-V procedure: analyzing first-level loops, whorls, and arches, then inputting the minutiae points into the biometric database.

I took a break to grab more coffee while the algorithm searched for matches. When I returned, the dual monitors were flashing an error override sequence. My jaw dropped, and a chill ran down my spine as I read the results. This couldn’t be right.

I ran the analysis again, manually re-checking every ridge and detail of the prints against the candidate list. I skipped lunch. I needed answers more than fuel. I re-calibrated the scanner. I ran the prints for a third time.

The math was undeniable— cold, precise, and absolute. I had exhausted every possibility, and the remaining hypothesis shook me to my core. My gut churned as my mind raced. The probability of a full-print match between two separate human beings is one in a hundred trillion. Yet here it was: a flawless, verifiable level-three match to an unsolved latent print card digitized from a 1936 axe murder. Another homicide from 1948 had prints collected from a knife. Another case had prints left on a countertop after a strangulation from 1978.

In total, these fingerprints linked fifty-two cold cases across ninety years. All homicides.

I leaned close to the glowing monitor and read the attached scene report. An eyewitness had spotted a man fleeing from the house into the treeline. They described him as broad-shouldered and athletic, appearing no older than thirty-five.

He was the boogeyman. He was real. He was out there somewhere, right now, moving through the city and killing as he pleased. Given his track record, he had no reason to stop.

The first red flag, that day, was probably the road itself. A perfectly even gravel road that became rutted and rollercoaster-esque almost as soon as we entered the reservation. Maybe it was even a red flag that the spot my friends were so interested in, in the first place, was in a zone we were never supposed to so much as lay eyes on. Not without various permits. Not without some kind of normal and reasonable objective.

But it wasn't the worst place that Justin's obsession with caves had taken us either. Only the last. We'd done enough sketchy trespassing by now that even Jess, despite her past misgivings, only seemed the expected amount of bothered for her being in such a remote stretch of desert, so far from any kind of help. Should something happen.

There had been a long stretch, Justin's bluegrass record sounding faintly over the bumpy road, before he interrupted it to say, "Think we can make that turn?"

He pointed to an offshoot on the left, where the road became essentially just boulders.

I looked up at the rearview mirror and saw Jess frown in the passenger seat. "We could make it," she said. "I think it's a bad idea, but we could make it."

Without verbally responding Justin made the turn. And it turned out Jess was right. The jeep made it. And it was a bad idea.

We parked when there was still about two miles of "road" left, but it was going to have to be walking here on out. Almost climbing. We put on sunscreen, ever cautious, strapped on our bags, and off we were for the mines.

During the last bit of vague path through the desert, I did find myself becoming afraid. Why be afraid? I insisted to myself. It's only a hole in the ground. Only a pit. We've explored many mines before. And haven't Justin and Jess always come through? From when they first had your back in high school, when you were outed and all that? From when they let you crash at their place a few years back, when it was that or the streets?

I really did trust them. Even that last day, meandering off trail into bleak, steep-hilled desert, for no other purpose than finding the entrance to an old abandoned mine. It was a long, exhausting search, the three of us splitting up but staying just close enough for our voices to reach, sound bouncing off cliffs and canyon walls. I was beginning to lose hope in ever finding the pit, and was worried of the consequences should Justin lose hope too.

A little before noon I came across Jess. Just sitting dejected on a boulder.

I sat next to her, and I said, "Win win to me, if we find it or not."

"You know I love you, right? You're my best friend in the world."

I wasn't sure how to respond.

A little past noon we heard her husband yell from across the valley. "I found it! I found the pit!"

Jess was my best friend, too. They both were.

We followed the sound of Justin's voice, and eventually found him on the edge of a black abyss, his backpack off to the side.

"Woah," I let out. "That doesn't look like any of the other mine pits."

Justin nodded with enthusiasm.

It was a black pit in the earth, just big enough you could probably fit a sedan in. Something out of a video game.

"I'm sorry, Sparrow," said Jess.

"What?"

Out of nowhere Justin was furious. "Yeah! Sorry for what?"

Jess cupped her hands together. "Uh..."

"Fine. If you won't be subtle, I guess I'll just come out and say it."

I had never seen Justin angry like this before. "Say what?" I asked.

Right then a memory flashed before my eyes, of the time I opened up to Justin about my estrangement from my family, when we bonded over our shared abandonment to the cold dark world.

Now, Justin moved cautiously around the black bottomless pit. "You know what, Jess? You say it."

I noticed a single tear. It slid down her cheek. Whatever was happening became real.

Justin stomped. Jess was stuttering. I was starting to understand my savior's anger as something more like impatient nervousness.

He glared at his wife.

"Sparrow," she mumbled.

"Uh... yes?" I remember feeling a pit in my stomach, right then.

Before she said, "You have to go in the pit."

"Like... to explore it? Alone?"

Jess was shaking.

Justin snapped at her. "Say it's a fucking sacrifice. Say it."

"It..."

For a moment I thought this all might be some kind of joke. Then the lies I had been telling myself shattered, and more than anything I felt betrayed.

"Look," said Justin. "I care about you, okay? I love you man. But some things are more important. Are you gonna chicken out? Again?"

Manipulator.

"Sparrow, you mean so much to me. It has to be you, you understand?

I didn't think. I don't even really know how it happened. Jess was letting out a ragged scream and a thud and a crack came from far below us in the pit. It must have been Justin's head hitting something on the way down. After I pushed him.

Five seconds passed.

"You killed him... Sparrow. You fucking killed him!"

I took a step toward the pit.

"Wait! Don't."

"What? I killed him. I… I deserve—"

"Don't go. We… already made the sacrifice."

Jess and I walked back to Justin's jeep in silence. Lucky the keys were in his pack, not his pocket. And I never did learn what the sacrifice was for; she never told me, I never asked. Did it count?

It was easy for us to tell the cops it was an accident. We got lost. He fell.

A year ago Jess even left me a voicemail, saying she forgave me.

But we're not friends, anymore.

I was betrayed.

I work in crime scene remediation—scrubbing away fluids left by people who died alone. The job reeks, but after five years, my stomach is iron. You scrape the floors, burn the mattress, collect your check, and move on.

That was the rule until I met Mr. Morwood.

Morwood was a wealthy old man who approached me outside a taped-off apartment complex. Smelling of expensive cologne, he looked out of place against flashing police lights. He offered ten times my daily rate for one specific task.

“I don’t want jewelry or cash,” Morwood whispered. “When you scrape the dried fluids off the floor—what the body turns into when it sits too long—collect that dark residue into this vial and bring it to my home.”

Money is money. I didn't ask questions.

My first delivery came from a cramped studio where an old hoarder had died in his sleep three weeks prior. I brought Morwood a jar of thick, dark sludge. I figured he was into weird occult nonsense. Instead, in his dim study, he smeared a layer onto a glass slide and shoved it under a brass microscope. He pressed his eye to the lens and let out a ragged breath.

“Look,” he rasped, his freezing hand digging into my shoulder. “Please. Tell me you see it too.”

I leaned into the eyepiece, expecting standard cellular decay. It wasn’t cells. The dark smear was moving—particles aligning like iron filings until they spelled out tiny, jagged letters. Over and over, filling the lens: PLEASE OPEN THE WINDOW IT IS SO HOT IN HERE.

“I knew it,” Morwood whispered, tears spilling down his face. “The final thought. The last electrical misfire of the dying brain imprints on the physical matter. It freezes in the rot. I’m building an archive. I am terrified of nothingness, son. I need absolute proof that we don’t just stop existing when the monitor goes flat.”

He wasn’t an occultist. Just a dying billionaire losing his mind over his own approaching grave, buying hope with stacks of hundred-dollar bills.

The money kept pouring in, and I got greedy. A week later, I brought him the residue of a young woman who had overdosed in a cheap motel. Under the lens, her fluids shifted into words: HE PROMISED HE WOULDN'T LEAVE ME. Morwood paid me three grand on the spot. I was hooked, actively chasing the grimmest scenes in the city for a heavier harvest.

Yesterday was my fourth delivery. It didn’t come from a crime scene—no chalk outlines, no stench of decay. It was a quiet suburban house where an old schoolteacher had peacefully passed away in his favorite armchair. Natural causes. He died with a calm smile.

It took me less than an hour to clean. I scraped a thin wafer of residue from the hardwood floor, sealed it, and drove to Morwood’s mansion.

His hands shook as he prepared the slide and pressed his eye to the lens. Then, Morwood went completely rigid.

I could hear the old man breathing. All the color drained from his face, leaving him sickly white. He didn't gasp or scream; he just slowly backed away from the desk, his eyes wide and blank. He bumped into the table, and the microscope tipped over, shattering on the floor. My expensive puddle spread across his pristine Persian rug.

“Morwood?” I muttered, taking a step back. “What is it? What did a peaceful old man have to say?”

Morwood slowly turned his head. His lips trembled so hard he could barely speak.

“It’s... it’s not their final thoughts,” he whispered, his voice cracking. “The brain doesn't imprint its last memory on the body. We were wrong. We were so damn wrong.”

He stared at his shaking, manicured hands.

“Remember the first old man? 'It is so hot in here'... That wasn't the stuffy air of the apartment. When a body sits for weeks, it rots and heats up from the inside like an oven. His cells were literally boiling alive right there on the hardwood. And that girl... 'He promised he wouldn't leave me'... It wasn't about a boyfriend. It was her soul abandoning her, leaving her living flesh to decompose in absolute isolation.”

“Morwood, what the hell are you talking about?” My voice dropped.

Morwood pointed a shaking finger at the shattered glass and the brown smear on the floor.

“The cells,” he choked out. “They don't die when the heart stops. They break apart, but every single microscopic particle remains fully, agonizingly conscious. They are broadcasting live what’s happening to them while the corpse is rotting before you even arrive.”

He dropped to his knees right into the glass shards.

“Do you know what the letters said? Millions of them, spelled out by the dust of a man we thought died in perfect peace? Right there, in the dried fluid where the flies laid their eggs?”

It spelled: I CAN FEEL EVERY SINGLE MAGGOT. PLEASE MAKE THEM STOP CHEWING.

Morwood didn’t cry out. He just went completely still, his face going slack. Then he tipped sideways onto the rug.

Five years on the job, I’ve seen enough death throes to recognize a massive heart attack. But this wasn’t fear. It was worse—a man who had spent his life hoping, finally told no.

I reached for my phone to call emergency services. Then I stopped.

I looked at Morwood. I looked at the spilled residue on the rug, and I knew that within minutes, his own cells would begin their long, endless, fragmented scream.

I put my phone back in my pocket and walked out.

I sat in my truck for a long time, staring at the dashboard, thinking about the heavy scrub brush in the back. For five years, I thought I was cleaning up the past. Now I know the truth. There is no peace. There is no light. There are only trillions of tiny minds, trapped in the dark, feeling every agonizing scratch of my brush.

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.

An unforgiving breeze whipped through her thick hair as she walked a familiar path home from the local bookstore. Her bounty, a stack of heavy books waiting to be devoured, was tucked under her arm. Her coat swished with each step, and she breathed a relaxed sigh as she prepared to spend the evening tucked away reading. As she turned the corner onto her street, a strange feeling overcame her. Goosebumps swept over her body as she suddenly felt as if she was being watched. She quickly shrugged away the feeling and pulled open the heavy door to her home. 

The warmth of being indoors was a welcome reprieve from the autumn chill, and she hurriedly placed a kettle on the stove to warm up with a cup of tea. As the kettle began to whistle, she stilled at a sudden creaking sound. Despite her anxiety, the bustling wind outside was easy enough to attribute the sound to. Uneasy, she poured herself a cup of tea, inhaling the warm chamomile steam before retreating to her couch with a book in hand. 

 Hours passed, and the lingering unease haunting the room eased with each turn of page. It was not long before her limbs began to grow heavy, sleep impatiently waiting. Tired feet flexed and stretched before meeting the cool tile, drawing the slightest gasp from her lips before beginning the walk to her bedroom. As she climbed the stairs, she heard the gentle creak of a step behind her. She froze, too frightened to turn and look. Without a glance, she steadied her breath and sliding a trembling hand up the handrail. She continued up the stairs, pulse throbbing in her ears, until she reached the top and turned. As she glanced into the shadow of the dim stairwell, a dark figure disappeared like a flash from her peripheral. She swallowed her scream. 

“I must be imagining things,” she assured herself. But as she turned to make her way to her bedroom, another creak sounded from the stairs. She quickly turned, and recoiled in horror as she saw a figure halfway up the staircase. Frozen in fear, her wide eyes scanned what stood before her. A humanoid figure hunched in the shadows, grotesque and twisted. Thin legs wobbled as it lurched towards the top of the stairs. The woman cried out and took several steps backwards as she took in the sight, gripped with terror. As she lifted her eyes, she realized the creature bore no face. Thin, pale skin stretched across bone, with shadows of a grimace twisting beneath the surface. Footfalls broke the silence as the woman stumbled into the hall bathroom before locking the door. She slid to the floor, convinced that she was trapped in a nightmare. 
Shuffling steps reverberated through the hall, approaching the bathroom door. 
Her breath hitched as the doorknob wiggled. She was paralyzed with fear as a slow, rhythmic knock on the door sounded through the small space. Each rap on the door caused her to startle, and silent sobs shook her chest as she sat on the floor against the barrier between her and whatever was on the other side. 

After several hours, the knocking ceased, and sleep took the woman. She slept fitfully, curled in a ball on the bathroom floor, her back pressed to the locked door that seemed to have protected her. Upon waking, she felt a sense of relief, sure that she must have had a horrific nightmare. She attempted to open her eyes, but was met with only darkness. In horror, her hands slowly reached towards her face. Trembling fingertips met smooth, featureless skin. Panicked, she mapped the taut skin, grasping for any familiar feature. A shadow of a grimace twisted beneath the surface. A low hum vibrated through her chest as she writhed on the floor, frantically grasping and clawing at the tight skin stretched across where her face had been. 

The front door creaks as a woman steps outside into the brisk autumn air. She blinks, raising a hand as the sunlight hits her squinting eyes. It was so much brighter than she remembered. She paused, reaching cautious hands towards her face to feel her features. Her fingers traversed her nose, eyelids, and her mouth cautiously and thoroughly, as if they were brand new. Tiny wrinkles folded around her eyelids as her mouth widened, stretching into a contorted smile. Wind whipped her thick hair and she braced against the cold as she stepped, reborn, into the street. 

I’ve been trying to be more health conscious lately. I’m not getting any younger. But I never realized how expensive exercise can be.

I don’t want to pay for a gym membership. I can’t afford a bike or weight lifting equipment. I’m broke! So just about the only exercise I bother with is walking/running.

Then comes my next struggle. I already wake up pretty early to get to work. So when I finally have the time to go on a run, it’s late at night. Sometimes, after dark.

I’m always very cautious. I don’t have headphones in, even though I love music. I always keep my head on a swivel.

Well, tonight, when I was out a little later than usual, walking in my favorite park I saw a man. He was dressed in a dark hoody, with the hood up, and black sweatpants. I mean, come on! He was practically screaming, “I’m a kidnapper!”

I noticed him watching me the entire time, and, naturally, was afraid. So I did what I’ve always done when I’m scared. I began to sing to myself.

That is when he began to follow me.

I walked the trail, not going too fast. And there he was a hundred feet behind me. We must have been the only people in the park this late.

Once I was sure he was in fact following me, I did something a little reckless. I bolted right off the path into the woods. It isn't a thick forest or anything, but there’s no reason he should have followed me into the thicket.

Yet, when I looked back, still singing to myself, he had turned into the woods too. I had no doubt that he was coming for me. I wouldn’t let myself think about what his intentions were.

I just ran. Terror coursed through my veins, and it was all I could do to keep the song going. Trying hard to keep myself calm.

I could hear he was closing in. Branches snapping with more fervor behind me.

I found a familiar tree and climbed up it. I’m no athlete, but I was up that tree in a second. I thought the high ground would help me. Even as I flung up the branches I kept singing.

Once he was below me in the tree I stopped the song.

“Where am I?” the man said. A taser fell out of his hoody pocket. He was clearly confused and scanning his surroundings. That’s when he saw the three skeletons at the base of the tree.

“Those are the last men who followed me.”

The man looked up at me in terror, turned, and ran with all his might.

I began to sing my siren song, and back he came with lust filling his eyes.

I sang until he lost his mind, and fell dead.

As far as exercising goes, running from criminals is great cardio. But I still prefer a relaxing walk with nobody following me.

The day you entered my life, it was as if a light shined upon the quartz of my world. Beautiful, new colours were introduced to me with every word, every touch, every gesture. A strange kind of synesthesia, and I marvelled in it. I marvelled in you. We danced around each other, fluid and lithe as we taught each other our quirks and our tics, our rights and our wrongs. I gave you my everything; my heart, my soul. My entire being was yours to have and to hold.

The colours soon became loud, and discordant, as they always do. You gave me migraines, your brilliance physically hurt me and I cried in bed each night. I couldn't make you understand; you were too bright for me. Too kind, too smart, too everything. The weight of my shortcomings left me crawling and weak. The shapes of us were suddenly jagged, cutting as arguments became our normal volume.

Worse still when things became just...dull, voices monotonous. The same statements roll in to one constant, as the air becomes stale and our fire burns out. And then all that is left is the haze of what once was, and what could have been has long since drifted away with the smoke.

And then... You were gone. Food lost its taste, my world lost its gravity. My sun lost its warmth and my tides no longer moved with your moon. My quartz cracked and splintered, irreparably. All the colours you showed me were gone forever, and the withdrawal was unlike anything I've ever known before. The tremors destroyed my foundations, the constant sweating and malaise made me withdraw. Constant adrenaline made me paranoid, angry, and my friends left me in my own monotone world.

Now my world is grey. The red of you runs through my fingers, marrs my skin, my face and my clothes. My hair webs in wet strings around my forehead. Splatters my walls and runs down in lazy, babbling brooks to pool on my floor. I hold you, broken and battered, in my lap as the brilliance of you fades from your eyes. I stroke your hair, and hum our favourite song.

Even now, we melt into each other so easily. Just as we once did.

Damn, it's hot this summer. I can't keep the house cool on the sunny side. The skeeters are bad, too. I have so many bites that I feel like a big, walking bug bite.

I haven't seen my cat, Hades, in three days since she went walking into the woods behind the house. She usually comes back before long, purring and pleased with herself for whatever she was doing out there.

I have decided that I'm going to go into the woods and look for her after it cools down some this evening. I taught her to come when she's called when she was a kitten by giving her treats when she came to me.

Hades is hard to see in the shadows with that black fur, but it's just too damn hot to look for her right now. I would risk having heat stroke if I tried.

There's a rumor that people who go too far into the woods will not come back out. I wonder if that goes for cats as well. I miss that bratty cat. I've had her since she was born. I spoiled her too much when she was a kitten, but I couldn't help myself.

Hang on. What's that messed up critter walking out of the woods? "Hades, is that you?" I have to go see. If it's her, she didn't react like she normally does.

"You crazy furball. What happened to you? I'm going to have to see if you're hurt." I reach down to pick her up, but stop short. It's definitely Hades, but something feels wrong.

"Ouch! What the heck? You scratched my face! No, young lady. Do not scratch me again. Get the fuck off! Aaaarrgggg..."

I arrived on the silo-dotted property as a rosy film of atmosphere cradled the horizon like a hide and was skinned by the gloaming. Its centrepiece was my destination: a run-of-the-mill, tin sheeting-topped barn.

I’d found the classified serendipitously whilst leafing through an old newspaper at the coffee shop. The gig paid handsomely, for next to no work at that. The instructions were to the point: Take Piglet Into Barn, $1000. I was to see myself in. An envelope at its entrance would hold the cash and key.

But first, I had to catch a piglet. They ran and ran with all their might, and I chased them round and round in circles in their pigsty until one of them tired. This farm only had piglets, bar a pair of mature pigs that looked like they didn’t want to be alive anymore and watched silently from a separate enclosure. The piglet resigned itself to me once I picked it up, its head dropping with a short-lived groan.

I then ventured into the barn.

Buzzing filled the space. I should’ve set the piglet down then and left, but something was wrong. There was a… shape in the middle of the room, barely illuminated by a lone plane of light percolating in through a slit in the barn boards from the main farmhouse’s porch light outside.

The piglet jittered as I crept forward, the movement soon compounded by my own jittering arms.

…It was a porky man lying motionless in a child’s pram, torso marinating in a rainbow-tinged puddle in the carrycot, limp limbs protruding from it like flaccid oars. A purple network of veins pressed up against the translucent skin, streaking it like rain did windows on wistful days.

The buzzing was louder here. It reeked of death.

Both the piglet and I jumped out of our skins as the man yawned before arduously propping himself up on his elbows.

When he finally took notice of us, his eyes lit up like fireworks, and his gargantuan sausage-tongue made its expeditious appearance, carouselling slipperily over his bulbous slug-lips and wetting them to no end.

“PIGGYYYYYYYYYY!” he squealed. His outstretched hands groped the air continuously. His shallow panting accelerated.

Fuck this. I threw piggy into the pram, where it crashed with a squelchous SLAP. It immediately audibly gagged before being engulfed in a bear hug. The pram creaked wildly and I heard something burst. I couldn’t take it. I scrambled back to the door like a possessed rag doll, the taste of bile bubbling up to the surface with the fervour of a geyser on Enceladus. A quick glance over my shoulder I was certain had burned itself into my brain for good: the piglet’s hind legs backpedalling frantically on the beads of condensation lubricating the man’s bloated gut, and the man’s beady eyes gleaming like those of a spoiled brat unwrapping a Christmas present.

Outside, the blood-curdling screams came, then abruptly ceased. I saw the other piglets there, huddled together at the back of their pigsty. They whimpered as I approached.

I unlatched their gate, tears streaming down my face.

I want you to close your eyes and envision…

Wait.  If you’ve closed your eyes, how are you reading this?!

OPEN YOUR EYES! YOU’RE DRIVING!!!

Wait.  If you’re driving, WHY ARE YOU READING THIS?!

Come back when you’re not driving!

phew. that was close.

Okay, now that you’re back, envision with me, if you will.

We’re driving down a dusty road in your hometown.  Maybe it’s the last dirt road in town because you live in a busy metropolis.

It’s late at night.

You’re coming home from a party (hopefully sober, but we’ve all been there…)

There’s no one on most of the roads around, especially not this one. 

It’s just you, the open road, and the starry night sky…

What do you see out there?  Which constellations can you see?  Is the moon covered by a rainy, autumn sky?  Are you out so late that there’s not even birds flying to and fro, looking for a place to settle in?

WHAT WAS THAT?!

In the rearview mirror.  Did you see it?

What was that?!

Oh, it was just the way the brake lights shimmer in the kicked-up dust.  Perfect.

Back to watching the road.  It’s late.

Are there any deer out?  When even is the last time you saw a deer?  Wait, if there’s more than one, is it deers?  No. deer.  No. definitely deers.  Wait. That sounds wrong.  It’s dear.

Possum?! …aww… sad panda.  dead possum.  Sorry little guy…

What was that?  In the rearview mirror.  I saw it again.

What WAS that?! 

I definitely saw something that time, and it wasn’t just the possum.

It’s late af.  There’s no one out here! 

Okay, now we’re creeped out.  You drive a little faster, but not too fast.  It’s still late, and if anyone really IS out here, we don’t want to hit them….

probably.

Did you see it, though? It went by so fast, it was hard to tell if it was big or small.

What? 

Oh, idk.  Idk if it was outside, behind the car or not.  Alls I saw is something fly by real fast in the rearview.

Rearview mirror or literally the rearview?  You’re right.  That’s a VERY good question.  I’m not sure where it is, exactly.  I just saw it when I looked in the mirror.  

Oh, you saw it, too?!  What did it look like?!

What was it?  Oh, I’m so creeped out now, you GOTTA get us home before it gets us!

How much farther is it?  Past the cornfield?  And then there’s the old, abandoned mill right after that. How do they harvest and process all this corn if the mill is closed?

Yeah dude, I’m talking so much bc I’m freaked out.  Idk what that thing was back there.

It WAS back there, wasn’t it?  Omg. please don’t tell me it’s following us…

What?!  You saw it again?!  GET US HOME, RIGHT NOW!  Go faster! Go faster!

You put the pedal to the metal.  I’m holding onto the “oh sh*t handle.” 

IT’S STILL THERE!  IT’S NOT LEAVING THIS TIME! 

Yeah, dude.  It’s f*cking following us! 

If we were going any faster, we would be flying like Marty and Doc.  I can’t wait to be out of this car and safe under my covers.

Don’t look?  Yeah, I know they say when you’re running away, don’t look behind you, because it slows you down, but dude, YOU’RE DRIVING.  I can’t help it!  What else am I supposed to look at?!

Is it gaining on us? That’s the thing, dude, it looks like it’s keeping the same distance the whole time.  idk wtf.  Just get us home! 

Now we’re back on the lighted streets.  How is it still following us?  How much farther is your house?  2 miles?  Might as well be 100.  I’m so f*cking scared right now! How is it still behind us?  WHY is it following us?!

Just before we get to your house, all the street lights go out. And the car dies.

You have got to be f*cking kidding me. 

Should we get out and run?  Stay in here, and hope we are safe?

I can’t look anymore, dude.  YOU look in the mirror. 

Is it still there?

You look in the mirror.

The color drains from your face.

And then… 

Red.

That’s the color he liked his blade.

A deep, shiny red as he sawed through the surface into the flesh, feeling the tension of his knife as it met resistance from chunks slicing through to the center. Cutting her into pieces. Yes. This was his favorite part.

He set his knife aside, globs of innards sticking to its edges. He wiped red off onto his apron. He wiped red off onto his brow, replacing the sweat.

“Job well done,” he thought.

And it was a fine job, now that it was over. He suffered all day. He toiled with her. He tried to beat her into shape. Punched her and punched her and punched her. No use. She just didn’t look right. She would never look right.

“So,” he thought, “to hell with it.”

And he stuck her in an oven. And she protested. She bubbled with rage. But not long after, it was quiet again. Nothing but the sound of the morning breeze whistling in through the windowsill.

And on that windowsill, he placed his newly baked slice of cherry pie.

“She’s a beauty,” he said, admiring his work.

And the customers would beg for him to cut her up again.  

I was driving home from work, on the phone with Melanie. 

“Sure honey, I’ll grab take-out on the way home.”

I stopped by the Chinese place and then headed home. When I walked in, Melanie greeted me with a hug and a kiss. “How was your day, sweetheart?”

I paused for a second while putting the food down, then replied “it was good - my presentation went great, I even got complimented by the boss.”

“That’s great, honey! I’m so proud of you. What’s say you go change while I plate the food and then we put on a movie? The new Spider-Man just came to pay-per-view.”

She knew I loved the MCU. “That sounds great, honey. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Just then, there was a crash and the front door flew open. There, standing in the doorway, was a figure covered in mud and dust, clothes ripped, hair frazzled. I knew those clothes…

“Get away from my husband you BITCH!”

Melanie?

The woman who was getting our food ready stared at this visitor in alarm. “Who the hell are you? What are you doing here? Why do you look like me?”

The newly arrived (new?) Melanie looked at her with disbelief. “Why do I look like you? Are you kidding me? What are you, some kind of psychopathic monster? You kidnap me, break into my home, stand with my husband, and then call me an imposter? You’ve got a lot of nerve!”

The already here (old?) Melanie looked over at me. “Stephen, I don’t understand what’s happening here, but I’m scared. Do something.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know - make her leave! Call the police! I think there’s something wrong with her!”

“With me? Stephen, you can’t possibly be falling for this. We’ve been married for eight years - surely you can tell me apart from this tramp!”

I looked back and forth. “Well, you do look exactly alike…”

“Ask me something only the real Melanie would know!” said old Melanie. 

“Ok. When is our anniversary?”

“August 31st!” she replied immediately. 

“She could have looked that up anywhere. Ask me something!”

“What concert did we go to on our first date?”

“Bruno Mars!” shouted new Melanie triumphantly. 

“Aloe Blacc opened for him,” added old Melanie immediately, “and you had to get tickets from a scalper because the show was sold out by the time you worked up the nerve to ask me by saying you had an extra ticket.”

“How the hell did you know that?” asked new Melanie in confusion. 

“Because I was there! Because I’m his wife!” 

Suddenly “new” Melanie moved from the doorway and attacked her counterpart. The next few minutes became a maelstrom of fists and snarls and yelps as they rolled on the floor, scratching and clawing. It was harmless at first, but then a knife block got knocked over in the struggle. The next thing I knew, both women were holding long kitchen knives and pointing them at each other. 

“Okay, this is getting out of control. Put the knives down before someone gets hurt.”

“No!” screamed new Melanie. “I won’t let her take you from me! I won’t let her have you!”

“You’re the one trying to take him, to take my life, and I won’t let you!” screamed old Melanie. 

They raced at each other, knives lifted to strike. I tried to intervene, but had to dodge the moving blades. But I couldn’t just let them kill each other. One of them was my wife. I had to do something. 

“Stop it! You two can’t just kill each other!”

But they ignored me, grappling on the floor until new Melanie got the advantage. She swept old Melanie’s leg from beneath her to throw her off balance, then pounced on her, knife raised above her chest. 

“I’ll show you not to try to steal other people’s lives!”

“Come on! Put the knife down! You can’t just—”

“I can and I will! Someone has to do something, you useless coward!”

The woman on the ground started to shed a tear. I moved to try again to separate them. “Stay back, Stephen!” said old Melanie, a look of fear crossing her face. “She’s dangerous!”

At that moment, I took out the gun I’d grabbed while they’d been arguing earlier and put a bullet through new Melanie’s head. Her body jerked and rolled off of her counterpart, who pushed her away and scrambled up. 

She looked at me. “Oh my God! Oh my God!” She ran into my arms, shaking. 

“Thank you, my love. Thank you!”

“Of course,” I said, hugging her tight. 

“How did you know it was me?” 

“When you thought I was in danger, your first reaction was to keep me safe, even if it put you in jeopardy. You actually cared about my well being. My wife hasn’t done that in years.”

I let her go and started to walk up the stairs, ignoring the shocked expression on her face.

“Keep it up and you’ll be a better Melanie than the real one ever was. I’m going to go wash up. Can you clean that up and have the food heated up when I come back? I don’t want to ruin movie night.”