I followed my friend away from the glow behind us, into the black beyond. Through the thorny desert shrublands, across tight, dry riverbeds, and up and down clashing ridges. I followed him deeper away from all we'd left. Black cactus rose like men on both sides of the wash, watching. Judging. Arms contorted, necks cocked, filled with hate, they towered tall and blocked out the stars. I had been following him for hours, now traversing a narrow wash as if a trail, and still, I had not been able to work up the courage to share with him my secret.

I noticed my shoe had gone untied, so I said, "Sorry, one second," and I crouched to tie it tighter.

His silhouette turned around and looked down at me. "You still use bunny ears?" he asked. "You should really learn how grownups do it. It's faster."

"Sorry," I said, and I made a mental note to look up how grownups tie their shoes. After I meekly finished up my bunny ears, I stood up again.

"I'll show you after we set up camp," he said.

After a brief silence, I followed him deeper.

We came upon one ridge that was far higher than all the others. After huffing and puffing up the thing, I saw him turn around and look behind me, so I turned around too. The town was a small smudge of lights off in the distance now, with a glow rising around it, almost lost in swallowing blackness.

"This is the last time we'll see it for a while," he said. "Feast your eyes."

My eyes feasted, and the blackness feasted, and soon I turned around to face the other side of the ridge, seeing he already had. All blackness. Our flashlights illuminated just ahead, then blackness.

He must have sensed my trepidation, because he said, "If you got today off work we wouldn't have had to start so late."

"That's true," I said, and I felt trapped by my job, even out here.

I watched him start down the other side of the ridge, so I followed. The stars were shining, exposed. There was no moon.

On several occasions during that descent, I almost shared my secret, but wisely stopped myself. He won't understand, I told myself. He'll never see me the same after this. It's not worth it.

But another part of me said, He needs to know. You are deceiving him. You are a liar.

But he'll see me differently.

He'll see you truly.

He'll hate me.

He should.

We set up camp that night in a wide valley that felt like the jaws of some ancient abomination. He had been talking for the past couple miles about trouble he was having with a girl, and this continued mercilessly into setting up the tent.

"She just won't respond," he said. "No matter how much I text and call."

"I'm sorry. That must suck," I said, doing my best as I hammered the stakes into the earth, one after another.

He threw up his hands. "I know! And I know exactly why she thinks she can do this to me. It's all because of the thing with the racial statistics, I should never have trusted her with that."

I tried to think of a response, and hammered harder.

He kept going. "I even showed up at her house!"

That one part of me said, See? This is why you can never tell him.

"Twice!" he added, and I hurt my thumb from hammering so hard.

I tried not to show the pain because I didn't want him to go after me for it.

Fortunately he seemed distracted. "This is why dating is so awful for men these days," he said.

"Yeah..." I groaned as I took something out on those tent stakes.

He interpreted my groaning incorrectly, but the way I wanted him to.

"I'm glad we're at least on the same page," he said, finally hammering in one stake.

Later, we sat together on a large boulder and relaxed after all the work of traveling so deep into the blackness and setting up camp by flashlight.

"Now is a good time," he said, and he got up and crouched down in front of me.

I pretended to understand what he was talking about and it made me faintly nervous.

I figured it out when he started to untie my shoes.

"This is how grownups tie their shoes," he said, and began to walk me through it.

I was hardly present during this, and I almost opened my mouth to share my secret.

Stop, the other part of me said. Don't you understand that it's something to be embarrassed of?

Since when have we understood it that way?

Any time you weren't deceiving yourself. You're grotesque. You're an abomination. You know that.

If my face had been illuminated, my friend would have seen the wetness in my eyes.

In the blackness, he only continued his shoe tying demonstration.

"I get it now," I said, and I untied my shoes and tied them up again the adult way.

"Attagirl," he said.

"Huh?"

"I'm joking!" He gave me a light punch in the shoulder. "Man up, adults can handle jokes."

"I wasn't getting offended," I said, and he just looked at me funny for a second.

"Let's get dinner started," he said.

After dinner we stashed the bear canister and retired to the tent. His monologue about the elites was finally beginning to die down, when at last we laid together in black silence. But it was never really silence.

I wanted to listen to the sounds of the wind and the bugs, and any other creatures who might pass by, but like always, he felt the need to fill the false silence.

"We have a big day ahead of us," he said.

My delirious, sleep deprived brain thought he was a coworker for a second. Then I realized, and said, "That we do."

Then, after about a minute of crickets chirping and me remembering where I was, I added, "Hey... I have something to tell you..."

"Is it important?"

"It might be. I don't know."

"How could you not know?"

I thought for a second, and that other part of me was screaming in a thousand voices.

I finally put a sentence together. "I think I'll need you to tell me if it's important. To tell me if it changes anything."

His voice softened. "What's this about? Are you okay?"

"Yeah... Of course I am. I'm just worried you'll see me differently..."

The other part of me was scratching at the insides of my skull, scratching with a thousand pincers.

"Did something... happen? Did you do something? Joseph... I want you to know that nothing could change how I see you."

I did not fully believe him, but because I felt warmed by his words, I began to speak.

But as I spoke the regret set in. The regret set in and I realized what I had done. I realized the mistake I had made, was making. Knowing that I knew, the voices silenced, and the pincers drew away. The crickets scattered and the wind froze. Not one animal passed by the tent.

My friend was giving me a blank expression, but I just kept talking. I didn't know how to stop. I just kept sharing.

His eyes began to grow wide and round.

I kept thinking they had grown fully, but they always kept going, seeming to fill up too great a percentage of his head, as I kept sharing and sharing, shredding my secret away.

I heard some kind of strange chittering, echoing and growing closer, and I thought it might somehow be my friend. No, it can't be, I told myself.

But he was growing closer.

And the chittering grew louder.

And I just kept sharing, scattering the ashes of my secret, of anything secret, and his mouth began to open and close.

But it opened and closed sideways. Not just his lips but his teeth. He was gnashing his teeth, arrhythmically and sideways. And growing closer, and chittering louder.

The tent was so tight and cramped, the world outside so black and empty. And I felt his scratching arms creep across my own. And across my legs, and my cheek, and the back of my neck all at once. He came upon me like this, all arms closing, piercing. Piercing holes in my skin and scratching against one another inside. In my arms and legs and neck and brain and that horrible horizontal mouth gnashed and clacked and chittered and it felt like a wasp sting if it just went deeper and deeper into me, and in, and out, and in, and out, and the horizontal mouth snapped on the deepest part of my mind and the last thing I saw were those bloated, bulging eyes.

The next I remember the two of us, my friend and I, were sitting outside the tent in the dark.

"I don't think the sun is going to rise," he said. "We must have been camped here for days and it still hasn't risen."

I looked around the blackness. "It's been days, has it? I don't understand. The last thing I remember is telling you my secret."

"Secret?" he paused for a moment. "You have a secret?"

"Nevermind... It must have been some strange dream. Now that I think of it, I don't even remember what the secret was."

Eventually, the decision was made to pack up and hike back to town. Hours and hours of blackness later, I followed him, huffing and puffing, up that highest ridge, and we towered above the featureless, lifeless desert, ourselves enveloped by the starless black.

At the top, there was no smudge of lights off in the distance. I crouched down, gazing off at where the town had once been, because my shoes had come undone.

I tied them up with bunny ears, and when I stood again, my friend was gone.

⚠️WARNING: BEWARE OF INTENSENESS.

Marie was a young thirteen-year-old girl who lived in the suburbs. She had moved a while ago. She used to live in the countryside: dead towns, deals on cheap clothes ranging from $4–$10, barely any cities nearby, small schools, and everyone knew each other. It was a sweet town at best, and yet Marie never fit in.

Marie had always been an outcast. She was quiet, preferred solitude, and was always addicted to her phone. However, she had made a friend a few years back. Earlier this year, her friend, Reagan, had moved to Florida. Her only friend had moved far away from her. The good news, though, was that they were still in touch! Marie would message Reagan every day and even check on her.

Now, let's move on to how this all started, beginning with how Marie texted Reagan late at night.

3:00 AM

That was the exact time Reagan received a text message from Marie.

"Hey, Rea-Rea!! I fell asleep early and couldn't text you back! How was your day today?? Are you feeling better?" Marie asked. Simple, right?

"I'm fine. Nothing much happened today, tho. Also, you always fall asleep early. Don't act like you aren't tired all the time. Maybe if you actually went to sleep at night, you'd be less tired during the day," Reagan replied, giggling to herself.

Reagan's long brown hair spilled across her pillow as she struggled to get herself out of bed. She playfully rolled her eyes as she walked toward the mirror. She removed a star-shaped pimple patch right above her freckles from her face, rubbing her eyes.

BEEP, BEEP, BEEP!

Her phone buzzed with life. As Reagan reached for her phone, she gasped when she saw Marie in its reflection. She quickly turned around, but there was nobody there. She swallowed hard, and her hand began to shake.

"Geez, I'm really not feeling good, am I? I keep seeing stuff like this. Maybe I should tell someone." She breathed out, closing her eyes for a moment before opening them to read Marie's messages.

"Rea-Rea, do you think you could come over to my house?? I know it's a long drive, but I really wanna see you! OR I could come over to your house!! Maybe next week?" Marie had messaged.

"Marie, you know my parents won't let you, lol. Remember what you did last summer? No way they'll let you come over!!" Reagan sat down, hugging her stuffed animal to her chest.

"Ugh, you're right. I should sneak into Florida instead. I could ride my bike there."

"Lol, literally, you can't. You'd run out of breath two miles down the road. Plus, you live alllll the way in Virginia." Reagan pressed the 'send' button.

After hours of texting, they eventually fell asleep.

Later that morning, Marie groaned as her alarm clock buzzed at 6:00 AM.

"Shit, I'm going to be late if I don't get up faster!" she murmured to herself as she shot up out of bed.

She grabbed her grey hoodie, black shorts, leopard-print belt, and phone. After getting dressed, she sat down in her chair in front of her makeup dresser and began applying her eyeliner. Her grey eyes stared into the mirror before lingering on her black nails.

"Huh? What is that?" she gasped, looking at her nail. A hair had fallen onto her finger. A long, black hair.

"Ew, gross."

She gagged, blowing the hair off. She stood up and put on her black ripped stockings. Finally, she put on her black knee-high Converse.

"God, I look so cool. I hope people don't stare today."

She grabbed her red bag and went downstairs. She looked over at a note on the fridge, pulled it off, and read it.

"Mommy and Daddy had to go to work early. Please wake your brother up. Be careful when walking to school: don't talk to any strangers. Breakfast is on the table. Go wake your brother up. Love, Mom and Dad."

She sighed and walked back upstairs. She knocked on her brother's door.

"Alen, school time. Don't make me late."

After a few seconds, Alen groaned and opened the door.

"Okay, okay, I'm ready."

"How did you change in a few seconds?" Marie asked.

"I woke up at night and got ready so that I wouldn't have to in the morning. Okay?"

"Oh, okay." She raised an eyebrow. This kid was kind of weird, wasn't he?

After they ate breakfast, they got up and walked out. As they walked to school, Alen spoke to break the silence.

"Sissy, what's 'Jeff the Killer'? You have him on your phone. Mommy was talking about it a few days ago."

Marie cleared her throat.

"Don't worry about it. I just had a few mistakes done. But let's not talk about it. How are you doing with your spelling? I know elementary school can be a bit difficult with the reading and shit."

Alen looked down, holding his backpack straps.

"Hm, well, it's not really good, but it's not something to worry about. So, I guess I'm doing fine," Alen responded.

"Oh, I can help you!" Marie suddenly reached over and ruffled his curly blonde hair.

Alen reached up and ruffled Marie's messy hair.

"Hey!" Marie called out with a giggle. "No way, you messed up my hair!"

After a while, they finally reached the school after walking a few more blocks. Once inside, Marie went upstairs while Alen walked down the hallway. Marie approached her first class, sighing.

Hours passed as she worked on school assignments in different classes. Middle school drama was going around, along with the usual arguments between friends and small couples.

Later in the day, school was dismissed, and Marie and Alen met outside the school gates before walking home.

When they got home, they heard their father in his office while their mom cooked. Marie set her bag down and walked into the kitchen.

"Hey, Mom."

"Hey, honey. How was school?"

"It was okay. I felt a bit weird."

"Oh no, are you getting sick?"

"Oh, um, not exactly. No."

"Oh, did you just have a moment? We can talk. I'll quit right now if you actually want to talk!"

"No, Mom, it's fine," she said, grabbing her bag and heading upstairs.

When she got to her room, she looked over at the posters, pictures, and drawings on her wall. She grabbed a picture of herself and Reagan and placed it on her dresser.

"Reagan, I miss you."

She began typing on her phone before setting it down and grabbing her laptop.

As she opened it, she typed in her password: 131313000. Then, she looked at her laptop background: Jeff the Killer.

She had been obsessed with this fictional character for three years, almost four. She began researching him on Wikipedia, looking at various Jeff the Killer rewrites. After hours of research, she started playing games featuring him. She had learned his techniques, his stamina, what he did in the morning and before bed—everything.

She didn't just research him on Wikipedia; she also took notes. She wrote down every small detail until her hands ached and her notebook was halfway full.

After a few hours, she went downstairs to have dinner with her family: Christine, her mom; Bonnie, her father; and Alen, her brother.

"Hey, kiddo, how was school?" Bonnie asked.

"Oh, it was fine. Just the average stuff. Kids screaming, kids vaping in the bathroom, people freaking out about crushes. You know how crazy it is."

"Damn, really? When I was in middle school, everyone minded their own business and was actually mature, like teenagers should be. Like you."

"Thanks, Dad, but I'm not really mature. You'd see yourself as a failed parent if you heard the jokes Reagan and I make."

"Of course not. A few immature jokes here and there don't determine who you are. It's how you handle situations."

"Oh, really?"

"Duh."

Marie raised an eyebrow, shook her head, and began to eat.

After a while, Marie started feeling the strange sensation she had experienced in class. She stood up and excused herself.

"Sorry, my stomach hurts. It must be the medicine messing with me."

She walked upstairs and headed to her room. She stayed up for hours, reaching for energy drinks every now and then. As she continued researching, her mind began to wander.

Later that morning, she looked into the mirror, peeling off a few cute pimple patches Reagan had given her before she left. She got dressed and did her makeup as usual, putting on her black knee-high Converse.

But today, she felt worse.

Well, today was the breaking point.

During school, she went to the bathroom. She noticed some girls looking at her and laughing.

"What's so funny?"

"Ooh, someone's feisty today, freak! How come you never talk to anyone? Too scared?" asked a girl wearing a pink jacket as she walked toward Marie.

"Maybe if you're so edgy, why don't you go ahead and KILL us? Hahaha!"

The three other girls giggled.

Marie ran out.

Fuck that shit, I'm out." She murmured to herself. While the end of the day approached, she found herself following the four girls. She continues to follow them until the four got into the city, going to an alleyway. Marie noticed a shop ahead. She walked in quickly, buying a folding, OTF, Trailing Point, and a Fish Fillet knife for all a deal of $70.45

She hid the knives in her hoodie pocket, and walked out back into the alleyway. "Hey, guess what." She called out quietly to them, as they turned, she grabbed a girl by the neck and sliced her throat open with the OTF. After a while of handling them, she grabbed her hoodie and put it on. Getting water and washing the blood off, she placed the knives into her pockets. She walked home, it had gotten dark.

Late at night, she had snapped. She killed her parents, slit her mouth, and stapled her eyes open. She smudged eyeliner all around her eyes, and glanced down at her wrists and thighs. After hours of being covered in red, she texted Reagan.

"Reagan, you up?"

"Yeah."

"Kill everyone, I'll come get you."

"What?"

"I'll guide you. Kill everyone, this is our chance to be together again. We can hunt people together, I'll pick you up tonight."

"No."

"Please? It'll hurt my feelings if you don't, you know how much I love you and I'll do anything to keep our friendship from falling apart, you don't want that to happen, do you? Do you hate me? Come on, say it already."

"No way, I love you, you're my best friend, but I don't think I could do that! I'm calling nine one one!"

"Call anyone and our friendship ends tonight. Okay?"

"Why? I'm trying to help you!"

"Help me by doing what I say!"

"No!"

"Fine, whatever."

Reagan began to cry. She dialed nine one one and told them about what Marie said. They came over and started to get answers from Reagan and her parents. That night, four girls were reported dead by 12:00 PM in Virginia. After a week of Marie being reported missing, Reagan heard a soft tap at her window, tap, tap, tap. Reagan glanced over and her heart skipped a beat. Marie, in her black shorts, grey hoodie, black ripped thigh highs, and her grey eyes stapled wide open. Her blonde hair was cut, trimmed being a better word, to extremely messy, razor cut, and chopped off in some areas. Marie busts the window.

The next morning, the family was reported dead, police have been on a watch for a girl named, "Marie Collins."

 I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII

There had to be a way. There had to be a way to stop it.

I got to the school late at night, dropping my bike in the parking lot underneath a solitary street lamp. It cast a dull cone of amber light against the side of the building, moths and gnats spiraling beneath the fixture.

NODE 02 was inside a fallout shelter? I didn't even know we had a fallout shelter.

I ran along the perimeter, panting, in search of a yellow, rusted sign with three downward-pointing triangles. There was nothing but handicap parking signs. I ran down a set of steps to a narrow concrete hallway. A steel door stood at the end covered with an old padlock and a heavy rusted chain. I swore. I stood on the tips of my toes and searched for a key above the doorframe, finding none. I then noticed the red case on one wall, cobwebs filling the space behind the glass. It read BREAK GLASS IN CASE OF FIRE. I kicked it in, smashing it, shards sprinkling to the floor. Thankfully, no alarm went off. I took up the axe propped against an accordioned fire hose. I then swung it at the padlock, the vibrations shooting up to my elbows. I swung again and again. It glanced off the chain, and the blade landed between my feet, sparking off the concrete.

That was close.

It took me over thirty swings, until my hands were raw. The door squealed open to pure darkness. I turned on my phone's flashlight and shone it inside.

I ran through the hallways of the lower level, my footsteps echoing off the walls. I found a boiler room, an auxiliary room, and too many musty boxes filled with old sports equipment. One room had a pile of old chairs that reached to the ceiling. Where the hell was it?

Too much time passed. Had Mr. Macy lied to me? I wouldn't have put it past him. Cold sweat stuck to my skin underneath my hoodie. I was coming down with a cold, I could feel it. I had been spending too much time in basements. I deserved sun. I deserved sunshine. I deserved Hannah in a swimsuit in my arms.

I retraced my steps. I stopped at a dusty pull-down map inside the auxiliary room. I pulled on it to retract it, but instead it fell to my feet in an explosive cloud of dust. I coughed and waved the air in front of my face, and there, behind it, was a reinforced door painted a dull green, its surface bubbling with rust.

Beside it was the sign for the fallout shelter.

I tugged on the strangely designed handle, my hands horribly sore and weak. I expected it to take another hour to get it open, while rust and paint chips rained down on me. Instead, the lever moved smoothly. The massive steel door swung open on its hinges.

I stepped inside and the dank air filled my lungs, virtually fresh compared to the Smiler's house. It was less a room than a wide concrete corridor with a low ceiling stretching into the distance. I followed it downhill for a while until it leveled out. Around the corner, the corridor continued, but now with faded murals of old cartoon characters covering the walls, their faces deformed by old water damage.

I picked up my pace and eventually reached the rear of the shelter. Narrow pipes stretched along the ceiling here and disappeared into the right wall. I pressed my ear to it and heard a hum from within. This was it, I thought. I pushed against the concrete blocks. There was a click, and something shifted. A section of the wall swung open.

The room resembled the interior of a submarine, with metal paneling and a grated steel floor.

And there, on the back wall, was NODE 02.

I stepped up to it and was bathed in blue light. My knees grew weak. I fell into Mr. Macy's well-worn computer chair.

The same screen covered every monitor:

PUPPET MASTER 24.03
AUTONOMOUS MODE
ACTIVE POPULATION: 2,391
OPERATOR ACCESS: DISABLED
ABOUT

I tried the keyboard. Nothing happened. Clicking ABOUT revealed the same horrible verse as before.

I noticed then, the population count. It had increased significantly. I sat there staring at it, and it increased again.

ACTIVE POPULATION: 2,392

PMAS was spreading.

As the sickly man had told Mr. Macy, it had global repercussions. This was what he'd meant.

I then recalled the Smiler's note: Rollout approved? WHY WHY WHY?

She had somehow learned autonomous mode was imminent. She had known what was coming, and so she took her own life.

We were fucked.

And I'd pulled the trigger.

How long would it take before we completely lost ourselves?

ACTIVE POPULATION: 2,395

Before leaving, I drove the axe through the console. I hacked away at the keyboard, the mouse, and every damned screen until the sparks flew. I knew it wouldn't do anything.

But hey, it gave me a sense of control.

The birds broke into full chorus as the sun crested the horizon. A new day had arrived. I left my bike where it lay, opting to walk home one last time through my boring little town. The town I was born in and would soon die in, with Officer Spragg's pistol in my mouth.

And as I strode down a random street lined with houses, I saw an old woman watering her flowers. And I watched my arm raise. And from my mouth came, "Good morning!"

It was a minute past midnight and the moon outside the castle was deliciously bright and round. I stood admiring it at the window, the fire crackling in the hearth behind me, shadows dancing along the flagstones. Though none were cast at my own feet.

Beyond the castle, the black cliffs crumbled away into a deep ravine, where dark trees bundled together like matchsticks, and a gushing river swelled between the rocks like a silverbacked serpent. The wind whistled through the broken casement of the window, chilling the air and threatening to extinguish the fire.

There was a whisper of movement on my left and one of the sisters appeared beside me, bowing her head. Her dress was a deep red, the same colour as her eyes.

“It’s a pleasant night,” I mused, raising the collar of my black coat against the chill as the moonlight dusted the windows. Her dark hair tumbled over her shoulders as she raised her head.

“Yes Master,” she said in a subdued tone. “However, I fear I shall ruin it with my tidings.”

I turned to her fully, examining the grave expression on her face. Her lips were pinched. “Why is that? What tidings do you bring?”

Her red eyes glowed in the firelight. A long shadow was drawn across her features. “A peasant house is in the midst of construction beside the castle.”

I stared at her for a moment. The fire crackled sharply. “A… peasant house?” I finally repeated, scoffing at her words. Surely she was mistaken. The area around my castle was a perfectly barren wasteland; the peasants in the settlements knew better than to encroach on my land without permission, never mind erect a building on my grounds. “What is this trickery?”

“No trickery, Master. Come see for yourself.”

The vampire sister turned and strode towards the opposite side of the tower, her long red gown trailing behind her like a pair of folded wings. Curious, I followed her, our footsteps silent on the stone floor. I assumed I had misunderstood her, for nobody would be foolish enough to even approach my castle. Unless they were naive or ignorant of my nature.

But as we paused by the window, and she lifted a hand to point outside, I stood aghast at what I saw. A short distance away from the front gates of my castle, visible through the fog, there was indeed a house being built. Beneath the cold glow of the moon, I saw piles of stone and wood, the loose structure of rafters and foundations already laid. What sort of fool would dare build a house so close to my castle? Who would dare to become my neighbour without first consulting the master of this tower?

I was furious and intrigued at the same time. Only the dumbest, and perhaps bravest, of men would do such a thing. And I found myself feeling very much inclined to meet him.

“The house seems deserted now,” the vampire sister observed, resting her hand against her cheek. “Perhaps they have given up?”

“Or perhaps they only build during the day, knowing the weakness the sunlight inflicts upon us creatures of the night,” I said with a harrumph.

“You are wise, Master,” she said. “Shall I take my sisters over there and tear it down? It is a stain upon your grand castle.”

I pondered her offer. “No. I should like to meet the fool first,” I decided, extending my fangs below my lips. “Perhaps he would see fit to grace my castle with his… delicious presence.”

The sister covered her mouth with a low chuckle. “I understand, Master. You would see it fit to make a meal of him?”

I nodded. “Leave the peasant house for now,” I told her, turning away from the window with a flourish of my coat. “I wish to see how far he dares to go.”

The following night, as I rose from my coffin at the heart of midnight, my first thought was of the house being built by the castle. Had more progress been made, or had the owner seen the measure of his own foolishness and deserted? It would be a shame if he had fled before a meal could be made of him.

It had been a while since I had anything to amuse me on these long nights, just as long as it had been since fresh blood had passed these lips. The peasants in the surrounding settlements had grown wise to my nature and seen fit to ward their houses, stringing garlic and crosses upon the threshold. I was only able to feed when an unwitting traveller passed by, or a fool decided to build a house directly beside my castle.

The tower was quiet as I made my way to the top, winding through the warren of rooms and climbing the narrow, crumbling stairways. The sisters were nowhere to be seen; perhaps frolicking outside in the moonlight as they so often did. I reached the highest point of the castle and strode to the window that overlooked the barren grounds. From this height, I could even glimpse the closest settlement in the far distance; a small cluster of thatched houses and burning torches that lit the foggy hills like burning eyes.

But my concern was much closer. Lowering my gaze to the land right outside the gates, I saw that the house had changed. There were more walls than yesterday, denser foundations, the first signs of carpentry. The fool really had continued building the house. Had he not been warned of the dark Count that occupied the castle? Had he not heard the rumours of the blood-feasting creatures that stalked these lands once the sun went down? Why else would he choose to dwell in my vicinity, if not for ignorance?

I shook my head, almost pitying the poor halfwit for what he had brought upon himself. But I should delight in showing him the truth soon enough; that he had elected himself a willing sacrifice for me and my hungry brides.

It was a shame that he vacated the house during the night, for I would have to wait longer to lay my eyes upon him. Would he not show himself before the house was finished?

“I see the building is progressing,” a voice whispered behind me. I’d been too lost in my thoughts to hear them approach. I turned, seeing two of the sisters behind me. They too were observing the house through the window. Their wild, windswept hair and bright eyes confirmed my suspicions that they had been dancing outside.

“Yes,” I muttered. “It would seem so.”

“What a blight upon the castle,” the other sister said, her fair skin glittering in the moonlight. “I hope the trouble is worth the meal.”

“It will be,” I said, casually flicking my hand towards the half-built dwelling, “if only the fool would hurry up and be done with it.”

The next night, more progress had been made on the building, but the owner had still not shown himself. I grew more agitated that I was allowing this to happen, but reminded myself that I would soon enough be able to quench my thirst.

So night after night, as the moon began to wane, the house’s shadow grew bigger, and my hunger grew stronger. The fool always fled before night fell, leaving the evidence of his daytime activities for me to observe. The dwelling had taken on the same shape of the peasant houses in the surrounding settlements; white stone and timber, with a long thatched roof. He had even tilled the soil into a small garden, erecting a wooden fence around the plot in front of the building. But compared to my grand castle, with its dark crumbling bricks, spiralling towers and winding, labyrinthine rooms, it was a blight. And I wanted it gone.

Finally, more than a week after the house was little more than a pile of stone and timber, one of the sisters woke me with news that the structure was finished.

I rose from my coffin, sluggish and weary from slumber, and fastened my coat about my neck. The sisters had already lit the fire, but the air was chilled.

I followed her to the window and set my gaze upon the house. A single candle sat in the windowsill, guttering in a draught. A lit candle. Did that mean the house was occupied? The fool had not fled this night.

“It’s time,” I announced, “to show this fool once and for all what happens when you anger the Count.” The other sisters joined us, and I turned towards them with a slow smile. “I hope you are hungry.”

The three sisters screeched in delight, grasping each other’s hands and dancing in circles, their gowns fluttering around their legs. The fire roared in the hearth.

But as I began to cross the room, one of the sisters stopped me with a gasp.

“Master, wait. There’s someone at the gate.” She was pointing out of the window. I peered down at the large wrought-iron gate that fronted the castle, my eyes narrowing. A figure stood by the fence, carrying a lantern. His face glowed in the flickering light, revealing a sharp, sloping nose and dark eyes.

“Who would be foolish enough to call upon me at this hour?” I snarled, my black coat twisting around me as I turned from the window.

“Perhaps your new neighbour,” one of the sisters answered, “has come to hasten our feast.”

“Perhaps,” I said, already striding towards the doorway.

The sisters swept after me, whispering amongst themselves. Flames guttered as we passed lit candles, stirring the dust at our feet and disturbing billowing cobwebs. There was a haste to our movements as we descended the tower. It had certainly been a while since we’d had prey wander into our arms like this.

Crossing the foyer, the long red carpet spilling out like blood, I threw open the doors and stepped out into the chilled night, the three sisters stepping in my wake. The moon was a pale sickle, its silvery glow dancing around my shadowless feet as the stranger at the gates called out to me.

“Hello there!”

Struck by his brazenness, I almost flew at him in anger, but restrained myself. Ignorant minds really were unfathomable. With a flick of my wrist, the gates began to creak open. The man remained at the threshold, holding his lantern aloft as he stared back at me. He was of medium build, with stocky shoulders and a mop of thick tousled hair. His clothes were poorly made, covered in dirt and patches. He had the audacity to smile at me as I glared in return.

“What business have you here at my castle?” I demanded, wanting to sate my curiosity before I sated my hunger.

The man cleared his throat, raising his lantern to the crude house sitting barely thirty metres behind him. So this was indeed the proprietor of the building; what a brave, albeit dimwitted, man he was to present himself before me like this. “I’ve just this morning finished constructing my house,” he said, not seeming to notice the displeasure on my face, “and a slight issue has come to my attention.”

“An… issue?” I repeated, my brows arching sharply.

“Yes. During the day, the leftmost tower of your castle casts a shadow over my garden,” the man said regretfully. “I hoped that you might be amicable enough to remove it. Or at the very least relocate the tower, so that it does no harm the roses I am trying to grow. All life needs sunlight, after all.”

I stared at him, completely aghast. Behind me, even the sisters had been stunned into silence. The audacity of this imbecile, to ask me to change my own castle for his benefit. The man was not right in the head, surely.

“How dare you–” I began to seethe, but the man interrupted me, lifting a finger as if hushing a child.

“I do understand it is a large undertaking I’m asking of you, but my gratitude would be immense,” he added.

“You think I care about your gratitude?” I sneered at him, clenching my fists beneath my coat. The gall of this man. Who did he think he was? “Do you know who I am?”

The man stared at me, the lanternlight dancing over his blank expression. “You are the owner of this castle, I had presumed?”

“Precisely. And what makes you think that I, as the Count of this castle, would do the bidding of a mere peasant?”

The man scowled at me, a shadow encroaching upon his face. “I shall ask you again, and I do hope you will be quite civil this time. Will you remove the tower from your castle so that my roses might see the light?”

“I don’t give a damn about your roses,” I snapped.

“Now, there’s no need to be rude,” the man said, his voice turning bristly. The shadows deepened around his eyes as he narrowed them. “I’m asking for a simple favour–”

I scoffed in his face, my rage burning beneath my skin. It took a lot to make a vampire’s blood burn hot. I almost couldn’t believe what he was saying. This fool considered the reconstruction of my ancient castle a mere favour? Asking me to tear down part of my fortress so that he might grow some roses.

I took a measured step towards him, lifting my shoulders to appear taller. My fangs were itching to taste his blood. For all the disrespect he had shown me, there was no escape. I would suck this man dry by the night’s end, leaving nothing but a fleshless husk.

“Once again, I implore you to consider my–”

I was no longer in the mood to listen to his insane ramblings. He had agitated me far too much to go back from this. I would show him, and anyone else who might learn of tonight, what happens to those who cross me.

Baring my fangs, I lunged forward, ready to sink my teeth into his neck.

In one swift motion, the man pulled his hand back into a fist and threw it towards me. Blinded partially by the lanternlight, I did not see the attack until his knuckles met my face.

Pain exploded through my jaw, and there was a terrible snap as my left fang bore the brunt of his punch, splitting completely in half. The hit landed with enough force to send me staggering backwards and, incredulous and in shock, I fell to the ground.

Dirt bit into my eyes as I landed face-down, my broken fang scraping against my lower lip. Sputtering, I raised my head, just as the man lifted his light and calmly made his way back to his house.

Behind me, the sisters watched him leave in a choked silence, before hastening to help me back to my feet.

To say I had been dealt a great humiliation was an understatement. How did a mortal man possess such strength? Enough to break one of my precious fangs and completely overpower me.

With a bruised face, and an even more bruised ego, I hobbled back into my castle, the three sisters trailing silently after me.

By the following night, the leftmost tower had been partially disassembled, leaving a gaping wound in the side of the castle. Wind gusted through like howling wraiths, immediately extinguishing any fire I tried to light, leaving a heavy chill in the air. The sisters, at least, seemed to delight in the pool of moonlight that was cast upon the open ground.

Workers had been swarming the castle all day, interrupting my sleep with their banging hammers and chiselling tools as they took the tower apart brick by brick, but I had little choice. The man had made his demands, proven his strength, and forced my hand. Now I had to destroy my own magnificent tower so that the fool might grow his roses. And I hadn’t been able to harvest even a drop of blood either.

This was a defeat, and a humiliation, that would take centuries to heal.

I couldn’t shake the feeling of unease as I laid in my bed, a tightness around my heart and lungs as if my ribs were going to crush them like a maw. It was a normal day at my mundane office job, an easy night with a simple dinner of frozen enchiladas and a glass of beer. My phone buzzed with notifications from friends in a group text that I quickly swiped away to return to scrolling of brain rotting videos. Nothing should’ve made me feel so afraid, but fear quickly turned to frustration as I glanced at the clock. I let out a moan when I saw that it was already 12 AM. Enough was enough so I stuffed my phone underneath my pillow and tried to force myself to sleep. 

I was in pure darkness for a few long minutes, curled underneath a duvet with the ceiling fan lightly whirring. I waited for the wave of sleep to wash over me as the whirring noise began to grow more and more distant. The sound of my breaths overtook my ears, soft inhales and exhales that slowly became faster with each second. The breathing became more frantic and that’s when I noticed that they weren’t coming from me. I quickly shot up from my bed, pulling the sheets over myself as I looked around frantically in the pitch black of my bedroom. I snatched my phone and turned the flashlight on, my shaking hands causing the white beam to move frantically.

I grabbed my right wrist to steady the small searchlight as I scanned the room. The corners of the room were empty, but the breathing continued to grow louder and more frantic. A sudden burst of cold air hit the right side of my face. I let out a scream as I clumsily shuffled out of  bed to escape whatever was next to me. My phone boomed as it hit the carpeted floor and its light hit the ceiling to lightly illuminate what was in front me. A long haired silhouette began to crawl towards me from my bed, its breathing morphed into sobs as it crept closer and closer. I retreated, my fearful whimpers mixing with the entity’s sobs, tears filled my eyes and before I knew it my back touched the cold face of a wall.

The dark shape was on all fours over my legs, its head shifted up towards mine. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m just so scared” the figure cried. It sounded so familiar, it sounded just like my sister, Sara. I reached my hands to touch her face but before I could make contact, Sara was gone. I let out a cry, expelling the fear that was locked in my throat. After a few moments to collect myself, I clambered to my phone. I unlocked my phone; the brightness stung my eyes as the picture of me and my fraternal twin sister Sara stared back. 

Sara and I called ourselves reflections in a funhouse mirror, the same but slightly different. We both have dirty blonde hair; I wore mine short while Sara kept hers long. We both have beige skin, but I have freckles. Twins but slightly different. Until college we were practically inseparable, but life had different plans for us. I stayed close to our hometown while Sara had dreams of acting in the big city. Similar, but mostly different. Sara tried her best to keep in contact but I was always too busy. As the years passed the twin bond we shared became just two siblings that stopped staying in touch.
As I scrolled through my contacts I found Sara’s number. The uneasiness I felt earlier and the vision on my sister, I knew something was wrong. As children we played with the myth of twin telepathy, but we swore we could feel what each other felt and knew what the other was thinking. I took a deep breath and tapped on Sara’s number. I pressed the phone to my ear and each ring would echo, almost rattling my skull. A familiar jolly voice came, “Hey! It’s Sara! Sorry I can’t come to the phone, buuuut leave me a text. Don’t be a weirdo and leave me a voicemail. Okay, Byeee.” I quickly looked for my previous texts with her. The last message was from a couple of weeks ago, Sara asking her how I was doing, a text that I had left on read. 

I sent out a few different texts, “Sara are you ok?”, “Where are you right now?”, and “Is something wrong?”. Each text was left unread. “Come on, Sara, answer the damn phone!” I exclaimed as I tried to call again. The ringing of the phone cut into sobs. “Sara? Sara what’s going on?” I shouted. The call suddenly ended but the cries continued, the sound coming from my hallway. I ran to the entry way of my room and as I crossed the threshold a sharp pain radiated from my left shoulder. It felt as if something had cut into me. 

I fell to my knees and was face to face with Sara. A familiar face, but different. Sara’s expression was twisted in pure terror, her face blotched with small cuts and bruises. Her hair was disheveled, her jeans were caked with dirt, and her shirt was torn. Sara’s left shoulder was slashed and bleeding. I winced as my own left shoulder screamed in pain. “Sara! Can you hear me?” I shouted, but Sara continued to weep. “Please, please just let me live. I promise I won’t tell anyone. I won’t tell a fucking soul!” Sara screamed through her tears. I couldn’t wrap my head around what was happening all I could do was match my sister’s screams. 

As quickly as she appeared Sara disappeared again. I didn’t know what to do, but I continued to frantically call Sara’s phone. The ringing followed by Sara’s voicemail message repeated over and over as I kept calling until there was finally a response. My ear was filled with a deep, raspy breathing of a man. “W-who the hell is this?” I muttered, pushing the anger through the fear in my voice. Sara appeared before me again, her voice echoing what I could faintly hear in the receiver. “HELP! HE’S GOING TO KILL ME!” she screamed. I looked in horror as I felt something clamp over my mouth; I looked on and Sara let out muffled wails. 

I helplessly watched as deep purple marks formed around Sara’s neck. Suddenly it was hard for me to breathe. I dropped my phone and scratched at my neck but there was nothing there. Sara’s body slowly lifted from her knees, and she was floating in midair. Tears ran down her reddening cheeks. Her face was strained in panic as she continued to let out quiet wails. I wanted to yell, thrash, call out to Sara but she could feel my consciousness fade away like the last breath I took. 

As if she were a ragdoll, Sara’s body flew backwards into the darkness of the hallway. I sharply inhaled to let oxygen rush through her lungs. I ran towards Sara, but she was gone again. “Sara. Oh god, Sara, where are you?” I whispered, my throat ached making me let out barely a croak. I crawled through the dark, forlornly hoping my hand could feel my sister. Each inch forward I wished I could do something for her, hoping that this was all some sort of hallucination or dream. The pain I felt was too real and the image of Sara was too vivid for any of this to be nothing. 

A faint voice came from downstairs. I felt so weak, but I forced myself to go down the steps towards the small noise. When I reached the last step, I found Sara on the ground looking up at me. “I’m so sorry. I should’ve..” Sara wept quietly, “I shouldn’t have left you, Cassie. I love you so damn much” My tears rushed out of me. I love but resented that she had left me. I wasn’t proud of how I responded to things, but I missed Sara so much. Sara’s hair began to lift and with it her whole body began to drag forward. Sara groaned and my scalp ached. 

Sara stopped and her arms were flung above her head. “Please. Please stop this...” I pleaded. The bottom of Sara’s shirt began to lift to expose her stomach. I didn’t want to watch my sister undergo any more pain. But I watched as my sister’s face shifted from fear, to panic, to a resigned doll-like expression. I yelped as I felt a sharp pain on my abdomen and I dropped to my knees. We were twins, the same. I watched as a deep gash began to form on Sara’s stomach and we both let out a blood chilling scream. The cut swiped horizontally across and I fought back the bile trying to rush past my throat. The pain was incredible and it was followed by multiple sharp stabs.

The life in Sara’s eyes began to fade and so did my consciousness. The pain washed over my entire body as I finally collapsed onto the floor. I reached my hand forward trying my best to call out my beloved sister’s name. I wanted to be with her so much, I didn’t want her to be all alone in her final moments. I could see Sara’s face as I laid on the floor with her, looking towards me. Before the creeping darkness took me at last, I thought I could hear Sara call out my name.  

I awoke with a beam from the sun hitting my eyes through a window. I felt so weak and defeated but quickly ran up the stairs towards my phone. I hoped again that last night was just a stupid nightmare, but I found my unread texts to Sara and a call log full of her name. I didn’t know what else to do but call the police and tell my crazy story. Of course, the police officers thought that I had lost my mind but after reaching out to a department in Sara’s city and hours of waiting we had gotten a response. Sara had gone missing and had not been seen since late last night with her friends. 

I felt that unease again, as if my ribs would crush my lungs and heart. I listened to the police officer. I already knew what they were going to say. Sara wasn’t just missing and I wouldn’t see her alive again. Of course I was right, a couple of days passed in a blur when police officers came to my front door to tell me what they believed to be Sara’s corpse was found. Another blur of time passed, and I was burying her sister, my twin, we were so similar yet so different. After everyone had shared their condolences I went home and was left alone with nothing but my thoughts. My phone buzzed and buzzed, someone was calling me, not just anybody but Sara. I picked up the phone and that’s when I heard a familiar sound. It wasn’t Sara, but the deep, raspy breath of a man. 

He wanders. The hot streets. The narrow corners and back alley ways, the bad neighborhoods and freeway overpasses. The sweltering blacktop lakes of the 7-11 parking lots. He carries cardboard signs, wears rags and cardboard clothes and grime. Layers and layers of filth that may have once been fecal spew or the dust of the earth or blood, they are worn like a coat of oil over the flesh like the ancient warriors by firelight times, he is a deranged and disgusting remnant. Haggard leftover in bipedal form that moves, mutters, sucks down bottles and pipes and congealed food pulled scavenged from the garbage. 

He is so thankful for beer or a dollar. Consciousness is pain. Consciousness is the sorrow and horror of each and every day, each and every moment is a prolonged period experienced in slow motion agony like pure torture. Everything is moved in shopping carts and over shoulder, he has become a beast of labor upon the earth, he must pull the plow of his own life if he ever hopes to get anywhere, anywhere at all but the only destination that seems to be enroute and available is a land of spoiled milk and suffering. He arrives there anyway and does what he can. It's never much. Just collecting cans and detritus that in his derangement he believes will be his fortune and his salvation. It's never much. It's never anything. 

He watches men beat women. He watches women scream and shriek and become the harpies, he watches them conspire and become the weird sisters, he watches needles and the depression of plungers and the streetside milking of human blood in a clouded swirl in the double-wide mouthed gutters. He watches it all and his eyes glaze over as the mind accepts each sight with a sledgehammer blow only the sledgehammer has lost all of its weight, it has lost all of its power. It only thuds and smacks at dead meat within cavernous skull now, it's only meaninglessness and meaningless noise and the constance of the cacophony has deluded and defanged all of its heavy power.

The city is just a dead body now, it doesn't mean anything. This cyclopean and hideous thing that he wanders. Filled with eyes and mouths that drip and water and move and open and stare. They are all of them just as ugly to him as he is to they, they are all of them, repulsive. 

There is no more beauty in this place. 

He tries to find darkness before sunset. Rarely is he ever successful. But this does not surprise him. He is a marked man. 

Like Cain. The man son that first authored murder into the virgin world. 

He unscrews the cap to some rotgut he's so crushingly thankful to have. And he takes a deep and lonely swill. He pulls, deeply. He settles down in the dirt, so lucky and so thankful to have it as well. And he pulls. Over and over the drink that tastes and smells more like disinfectant than anything sold over the counter as a beverage. He doesn't care. He's done it before. Many times. Many times before he's said fuck it and gotten absolutely shitfaced on hand sanitizer, mouthwash, isopropyl. 

He doesn't mind the taste. Not at all. He doesn't mind the taste of anything as long as the flavor is alcohol and it's strong enough to peel away the paint of his thoughts and strip away the fouled and fouling coats of his ailing and addled mind away. Just as long as it's strong enough to put him under and keep the dreams away. 

At least keep the dreams manageable. At least keep them as something he can stomach and bear. Something in the realm of his current devastation and heartbreak and not some new foul border, not some horrific new frontier. 

But neither the Lord nor the little god alcohol hear him. Nor care. 

His mind heavy with drink and thought, totters off. But not into oblivion. Not into peace. 

There are so many things alive in the darkness. 

!Sitra Achra!

He is hurdling towards the merciless face of the earth. His wings are burning. The beauty of his light and gift of flight are aflame, dying in fire. He is screaming a sound and cacophonous war cry rent that will echo forever and contaminate the crumbling ruined corridor of time that he has helped to bleed and slaughter. 

He crashes. Just outside of the Garden. 

And there he gathers and reforms. One of the first times of many. Many many many times will follow down the long line of cruel footfalls forever forward. He gathers and reforms and he is angry and jealous and into the beauty of The Garden, he slithers.

He tempts the woman and the man into disobedience. And he tempts them into forbidden knowledge. 

Forbidden Knowledge. This is his warcraft upon the virgin earth. It will defile. It will burn and torch. It will decimate. It will slaughter. 

It will divide the center. Conquered and fallen apart. 

Several centuries later and he is a pale child outside of Bethlehem. He is disguised and reformed as an adolescent but he is still the adversary. And he is there with the other, his opposite. His more beloved little brother, the son of the virgin and the carpenter. 

Teenage Jesus and teenage Satan are in contest, their hands are bleeding and full of blood and locked together in a twist and struggle. The adversary wishes to murder the savior child, in jealousy and in impudent rage. His hands wish to find his throat or a rock or his eyes, perhaps if he blinds the little brother savior child he will be useless to all of man and their sons and daughters. 

A Philistine sun burns overhead. But the adversary child is not successful. Teenage Satan is a failure once again, and bleeding he must wander and go out, cast out. Exile. Wanderer. 

Petulant. Angst. Eyes so full and wide and full of boiling water. He brings light once again but only in rage, only in his wild anger postfailure. He simmers and tears and burns so brightly out and alone way past the dark. 

Regroup out in the wild. Reform in the oblivion of solitude and pain borne in terrible silence that is only broken by the pathetic sounds of private torment taken slowly. Weeping that he tries to prevent and ignore and pretend has never been actually happening, not ever, not him, he doesn't miss heaven or his Father … none. Nothing. None of them. 

None of them mean a Goddamned thing. 

He always came back. Mighty. Diminished. Unassuming. Something in-between or intangible. He always came back. 

The adversary. 

Even broken and alone and filthy vagrant wandering. Even crystal meth slurping and supercharged because of such for the final abattoir riot of violence and great western societal collapse into shrill shattered glass cacophony and tidal waves of bloodfeast. Into he, his, the vagrant filthy jaws of the adversary. 

The fallen order, the Armageddon one, the end-is-nigh motherfucker …

the apocalypse man. 

Alone and filthy in a corner. 

Dreaming, not dreaming. 

Seeing and knowing only disorder. He hears and knows the call of the 7th Star. 

He dreams and knows of burning heaven. 

THE END 

The woods were not silent. The air is plaster on the skin, and the breeze seemed to be forgotten always just beyond. Leaves crunch. Broken skin. Canopy of blackest greens. Forgotten whispers call the light. Specks and bullets from the skies piercing earthbound night.

Eyes lie, heartbeat truth. My life. Desperate anticipation. My life. Casted to falsehood.

Truth calling for understanding, cowardice deafens and wrecks the soul yearning false blankets of medicine.[1] Frantic rhythm and trembling indexes anchor reality from the drowning pond of a
self-prescribed misconstrued meditative medication.[2] Stray beacons speak through, they groan sharp voices. Striking in whistles, a curved arrow into venison. A harmony of lies playing for my affection.[3] My rhythm validates the soul.[4] A shaky grasp on crunchy skin, I know this.[5] The Lie standing within the passing truth, the eyes can't be trusted.[6] As the whispers fade and lies beckon, and skin shatters in cacophony in front of me.[7]

I know Death is real.

I want to look at the moonlit spots, but the anxiety of learning what is revealed makes me crave the comfort of the dark. [1]
Clinging to the sense of touch as I pass from tree to tree, anchoring myself from the fears that my mind fathoms.[2]
I try to focus on what's real, made difficult as glimpses of truth contort my perception.[3]
I know I'm real, my heartbeat tells me so.[4]
I know this tree is real, my hand tells me too.[5]
I know my eyes lie, so I know what I see is not real.[6]
Somehow, now I know. Death is real[7]

I'm going to stream in a few and would love to read out some scary true stories. As well as post them on my youtube maybe after. If anyone is ok with me reading them on stream and wants to share, please give me your true scary stories! I would love to read them and give some spookie vibes to my chat lol

There is a heavy weight that has followed me all my life, born from a single inescapable moment, an event that occurred deep within the forest reservation behind my childhood home. It was there that I experienced something that no one will ever understand.

The police investigation into my sister's disappearance ended after the coroner's findings. They declared it inconceivable that she'd survive such prolonged exposure to the elements so she was presumed deceased. Yet, despite months of search parties surveying every square inch of those blackened hills, they never found her remains. I’m confident they never will. Only I saw what really happened. The truth is so unbelievable that it’s practically not worth telling. But I assure you, what follows is the exact order of events that led to her death.

To my dearest Samantha, I am sorry.

It was the summer of 83. The unbearable heat led my thirteen-year-old self to go exploring through the mountain forests where fresh springs were plentiful. One afternoon I discovered a particularly lovely pond where large rocks encompassed the edges of the water, perfect for diving off. What I remembered most fondly about that place, though, was the bountiful supply of yabbies that swam through there. My father was quite fond of crayfish, and so it was the afternoon before Father’s Day that I had decided to return to that pond with a net and a bait trap. I intended to go alone but my mother insisted I take my eight-year-old sister. With great reluctance, I did as I was told, and as the sun reached its hottest point above our heads, we hopped the fence and headed out into the forest.

A noticeable element of those hills was the way in which the yearly back-burning of the reservation left the trees scorched and black. After some time the leaves would grow back a bright orange before turning green again a few months later. The orange leaves always reminded me of spitting embers, as if the flames of the back-burning had left a traumatic imprint on the forest’s growth. We were surrounded then by blackened wood and amber treetops, the winding trail towards the pond still a long way yet. And so it was, like all sibling rivalries, that we bickered amongst ourselves in the blazing heat of the summer sun.

That day was so long ago now, it’s hard to remember the exact details of our conversations. What I do remember is how my sister was, always complaining.

‘How much longer? My feet hurt!’

‘We literally just left the house. Are you dumb or are you just fat?’

I wish I hadn’t been so mean to her then, but for her age she was pretty quick-witted with her comebacks. ‘You’re the fat one! I saw all the sandwiches you made. It was a whole tower!’

‘You’ll be hungry later. Then you’ll be begging me for one.’

She was exaggerating, I had only made four. It was a good thing I packed extra that day, though, because there was certainly a lot more walking to do than expected. You see, the deeper we ventured into the woods, the less familiar it began to feel. Begrudgingly, I made the decision to turn back and retrace our footsteps. I must have missed the turn off somewhere.

‘I thought you knew where we were going!’ Samatha whined.

‘I know where we’re going. We’re supposed to turn left at this large rock. It’s shaped like a flying saucer… We should have passed it by now. Do you remember seeing it?’

She shook her head.

And so we turned around and headed back in the direction we came from. It was about a minute after trudging through that same path, however, that I began to notice it wasn’t exactly as I recalled. I could have sworn the trees standing right in front of me were the ones we had just passed but along the ground there were these strange starfish-shaped mushrooms, very similar to the anemone stinkhorn but covered from top to bottom in a blackish goo. They looked like they had burst open, the slimy edges protruding out like wet tentacles. The floor of the forest was filled with them, but we hadn’t noticed them at all on our initial walk through there. Upon seeing them, I began to develop an uncomfortable feeling in my gut. I feared that we might be lost. Perhaps we got spun around.

‘Let’s just take a break for a second, I’m hungry.’ Truthfully, I needed a moment to calm myself. I just didn’t want Sam to worry, so I pulled out our lunch, one sandwich each.

Sam grabbed a stick with the intention of poking the mushrooms.

‘Don’t touch those things. You’ll probably get a disease.’

‘I’m not touching them,’ she countered, and then stabbed one of them deep enough that a dark cloud spat out from its centre.

This made her recoil away from it. ‘Ew! What is that?’

‘Spores. I told you not to touch them. Come and eat.’

She ran back and sat beside me. ‘What are spores?’

‘It’s how mushrooms spread, I think. They’re like tiny seeds which get carried by the wind so they can grow in other areas.’

‘That’s gross! What happens if you breathe in the spores? Does that mean the mushrooms grow inside you?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. Just don’t get too close to them.’

I thought deeply for a moment. After following the main road leading up the mountain you turn left into the house which means the house is facing towards the ocean, which is East. We walked in a straight line out the backyard, so we headed west. So all we have to do is head back the other way, towards the coast. Relieved, I pulled out my compass.

The strangest thing, though, is that after straightening it out, the needle spun in a circle. I banged it a few times, being the oblivious child that I was, and of course nothing changed. To this day I only have vague assumptions regarding the sort of electro-magnetic interference that would have caused it to do that. There was something supernatural about that place, something that I will never fully understand.

Admitting defeat, I shoved the compass back into my bag. This was when the initial anxiety began to truly set in. The hinterlands are over 100,000 hectares of dense rainforest. If we continued heading in the wrong direction, we might never make it out, I feared. I tried my best to hide the truth from Samantha. I didn’t want her to worry, so I came up with a plan. For those of you who don’t live in the southern hemisphere, there is a constellation visible in our skies that points true south called the Southern Cross. We had to wait till dark.

‘Hey, Sam.’

‘Yeah?’

‘I haven’t been fully honest with you about this trip.’

She looked up at me with naive eyes. ‘Okay.’

‘We’re not actually here for yabbies.’

She groaned. ‘You dragged me out here for nothing!’

‘No, we’re here for something even better.’

Her face lit up at this. ‘Really?! What?’

‘I heard something about this area of the forest. Apparently, you can see fireflies at night.’ Fireflies are extremely uncommon where we’re from. We had never seen them before, only in American movies.

She stood up. ‘What?! I want to see them!’

‘Yeah, me too. Do you want to camp out here with me? It might not be true, but if they’re out here, we can catch some in a jar for Dad.’

She really loved that idea. And so we set up under a shaded spot, and tried our best to build a shelter, waiting for night to come.

Finally the sun began to set, and tangerine rays of drifting sunlight squeezed through the branches as the lingering hours of the day came to an end. I only prayed that the stars would be visible enough. Sam on the other hand was already peeking through the shrubs around us, hoping to catch an early glimpse of a firefly’s light.

‘It’s too early, Sam.’

‘It should be dark enough to see them by now.’

Well, where are the stars then? I thought, finishing off the last few droplets of our water bottle.

A few minutes later, anxiously waiting, the black of the night had crept in at last. I looked up towards the sky and what I saw caused my heart to sink. The tree tops were nowhere near as thick and far-stretching just moments ago, I know that for certain. They had somehow grown, and had twisted amongst themselves, leaving tight gaps where only endless darkness could be seen. I jumped to my feet, torch in hand.

‘Stay by the camp.’

‘Where are you going?!’ She shouted.

‘I’m just going for a walk. Don’t leave this spot.’

The thought of there being an opening somewhere played in my mind on a loop as I sped through the winding forest. It was the last saving grace. There had to be a way to see the stars. There just had to be. But no matter how far I ran, the tree tops wouldn’t budge. We were stuck, lost in the dense woods, with barely a day’s worth of food.

I headed back towards the camp, the flickering light of the campfire being my guide. At least there was that.

I slumped back under the shelter, the feeling of dread washing over me.

‘Did you see any fireflies?’

‘I don’t think they’re coming, Sam. I’m sorry but I think this was a waste of time.’

She came and joined me under the shelter. ‘Okay…’

We spent the rest of our time disappointed, and prepared ourselves to sleep through the night. I prayed that Mum and Dad would send out a search party to save us. They must be worried sick, I thought. Meanwhile, Sam wanted dinner so I gave her another sandwich.

‘Told you so,’ I said, trying to keep the tone light.

Only she ate then, I told her that I wasn’t hungry. In truth, I knew then that we had to conserve our rations as much as possible.

The following morning is when everything changed. I peeked out of the shelter, bleary-eyed, and set my sights upon the hellish landscape before me. Black. Everything. The entirety of the forest floor had been replaced by that same wet goo emanating from the mushrooms. They were all around us now, spewing puffs of spores. You could see a dense fog in the air, and with the treetops still encompassing the skies, it was as if the forest had trapped us inside a vacuum. An enclosure where the only air supply was what laid beneath the canopy.

‘We have to get out of here!’ I shouted.

‘What’s going on?’ Sam replied, rubbing her eyes as she awoke.

I pulled her to her feet. ‘Come on!’

Swinging the backpack over my shoulder, I wasted no time. Clasping her hand tight, we jumped out of the shelter and headed deep into the forest. The direction didn’t matter. Anywhere at this point. Anywhere but here. But it all looked the same. Everywhere I looked, the same black mushrooms, stretching far beyond. Just blackness, and the fog that accompanied it.

‘Please, Jordie,’ she pleaded. ‘What’s happening?’

‘I don’t know, Sam. Something isn’t right!’

‘What do you mean?’

I could no longer hold the fear in. I was physically shaking. ‘What I said about the fireflies last night was a lie. We’re lost. And we need to get out of here. Now!’

‘Are we going to die?!’

‘I don’t- No! No, we’re not going to die. There’s a way out. There has to be. We just need to stay calm.’

So calmed down is what we did. I held Sam close, wiping away the tears from her face. I just needed to think. After all, the fog hadn’t killed us. And breathing felt just fine, perhaps a bit cold in the early forest mist, but otherwise, just fine. That’s when I realised. Find water! If we can find a stream, which the hinterlands were covered with, we could follow it down the mountain which should lead us back out to civilisation.

The only question was, which way to go? I guess it didn’t matter. So further into the forest we went.

‘Why did you lie to me about the fireflies?’ She asked, her tearful eyes shining up at me.

‘Because I was scared. And I didn’t want you to know.’

She was silent.

‘But it’s okay now. We’ll find our way out. I know what I’m doing now.’ I hoped that was true.

‘What is all this? It’s icky! I don’t like it.’

‘Just try not to step in it too much.’

We tried our best to walk along the path, around the wet bulbous things protruding from the ground. I remember having the strangest feeling like we were being watched. But I couldn’t quite place it. We’re alone, I thought. But there’s something otherworldly here. The faster we get out of this place, the better.

We walked along the same sinister black muck for hours. We were getting tired. But I didn’t want to rest. Not until I knew we were safe.

‘Jordie, can we sit down for a bit?’

‘Just a little bit farther.’

‘But I’m tired, Jordie-‘ Which is when I felt her hand slip from mine. She had passed out.

‘Sam!’ I caught her falling body, her weight causing me to tumble to the ground. My hands and elbows were covered black by the tar now. ‘Sam! Can you hear me?’ I shook her body, trying to bring her back to consciousness, which is when I noticed that her skin looked odd. There were red spots all along it, similar to a rash but more organised, like there were patterns across it. Just neatly strategised pieces of dead skin.

She violently awoke, coughing and heaving. Thank God!

‘Sam, are you alright? Can you breathe?’

She nodded as her coughing finally ceased. Wiping away the drool from her mouth, I helped her back onto her feet.

‘I’m sorry. Let’s just sit for a while.’

It was silent in the forest now. Any bird chirps caused by the commotion had settled. Frankly, it was nice to catch my breath. And I hadn’t eaten since yesterday, I realised. So we rationed out the final sandwich between ourselves, and after another minute, headed onwards through that same old mountain.

I started to feel almost bored after a few more hours, seeing the same black goo stretching on for kilometres ahead. A feeling I’d immediately regret upon seeing the morbid horror splayed out in front of us. It was a flock of birds, lying dead on the ground, as if a healthy nest had somehow collapsed and had fallen from the tree above.

‘Don’t look, Sam. Just keep moving ahead.’

‘What happened to them?’

‘I don’t know.’

It didn’t make any sense. The absurdity of it left me feeling quite sick. I just wanted to get away from it. But I always remember the way it looked. The way it seemed like the remains were being swiftly devoured by the earth around it. And the webbing. That strange mycelium webbing, jutting out from their decaying corpses.

As the day grew on, I noticed that Sam’s pace behind me was getting slower. She was really beginning to struggle under the pressure.

’Jordie, I’m thirsty.’

I was as well. ‘Sorry, Sam. We drank all the water already.’

The dehydration caused by the intense heat of the afternoon had given me a raging headache. We had to be getting close to a stream by now, I thought. Surely. But at this point, the sun was beginning to set again. The most logical course would be to use the final lingering rays of light to build a shelter. I couldn’t bear the thought of spending another night in that god-forsaken place. But we had no choice. Our shelter did well enough for us, but the dampness of all the wood caused by the black muck meant there wasn’t a chance of starting a fire. We spent the first hours of the night cold, hungry, and huddled together under our pathetic camp, praying for sunlight to return.

Sam was coughing, she had been doing a lot of it for most of the day.

‘Are you okay?’ I asked. ‘Are you sick?’

Her voice was weak. ‘It’s not a cold. But it doesn’t feel good.’

‘Just lie down for a bit.’ I felt her forehead. She had the most intense fever.

The forest was mostly quiet, save for Sam’s wheezing. Until suddenly, I heard a nearby rustle in the bushes, and hushed her. She did her best to stifle her breath, and the stillness left behind was enough to hear the sounds of something sniffing. We immediately turned to each other. Looking deep into her petrified eyes, I became certain that she had heard the same thing. Something predatory, and big. It circled the outskirts of our camp, persisting as if it was searching for something. It just wouldn’t leave. And then as it got closer to our tent, I could hear the most bizarre sound. A mechanical clicking. Click. Click. Click. It was so unnatural, and yet I was certain that it was something predacious. And it wanted us. I thought there and then that I was about to die. We both did. Then suddenly, for reasons still unknown to me, it sped off like a flash into the woods. I have never been as scared again as I was that night. Sam began crying, and in the dreamy fog of my own mind, I could only think one thing. Please, God, get us home safely.

I didn’t sleep a wink then. Only Sam did, eventually tiring herself out from all the weeping. I just sat there all night long, peeking out of the tent, keeping guard. Without the fire I could barely see what was in front of me, only the abstract foliage illuminated by the dim moonlight. Though, sometimes, my tired eyes would start to hallucinate images moving in the dark, tall monstrous creatures moving about. I was apprehensive. Deep down I knew that if that same animal returned, or heaven forbid something worse, I wouldn’t stand a chance against it. But I couldn’t rest. No matter how sluggish my body and mind became, I couldn’t let the forest take us. And worse still, I began to develop a cough. Just like the one that had been troubling Sam throughout most of the day. I didn’t know then what gloomy afflictions the forest was producing within us, nor how little time we had left before its ghastly symptoms took hold.

Eventually, hours passed and the dawn of the new day had finally crept in, that same shimmering black goo across the forest floor making itself known once again. I peered over at Sam lying next to me, the gentle sunlight revealing her now, and became struck with the gruesome sight of her. She looked like she had the plague. She was covered in pustular overgrowths, and her skin had indents in them, like the skin irritations she had before had somehow festered and were now decaying into blackish wounds. Most terrifying of all, though, were the small strands of mycelium growing inside her, close to the surface of her skin. Tiny roots running alongside her veins. They were popping out of her pores like strands of hair. Every second spent breathing in that toxic air had been slowly eating away at her from the inside out.

We couldn’t wait another moment. I picked her up and hoisted her onto my back. We’re getting out today, I asserted. No exceptions. The alternative was too tragic a thought to bear. I carried her as best as I could, but the lack of water, food, and sleep over the previous days had left me feeble. My legs wobbled beneath me, each step feeling insurmountable, but I had to persevere. I just had to.

‘Everything hurts, Jordie.’

Hearing her painful cries only broke my spirit. ‘I know, Sam. Just hold on.’

I carried on for kilometres ahead, Sam whimpering in my ear the whole time, pleading for the pain to stop. I felt so helpless. I knew that she was dying. I didn’t want to accept the truth but the mutations of the forest were too far along now.

I made it perhaps a quarter of the way up a further incline when my legs finally gave out and we crashed onto the wet ground. It felt so cold. Sam gazed up at me with half-shut eyelids, murmuring quietly. She was saying my name.

‘Sam, I’m sorry. I can’t. I’m trying… I’m really trying.’

‘…Jordie.’

I knew what was coming. ‘Hey, remember that time… when I was really sick. And Mum let you stay home with me? …Remember that?’

She muttered something under her breath.

‘I acted so mad because it was so unfair that Mum let you have the day off school. But really… I was secretly happy about it. I didn’t want to spend the day alone. And you were there for me, but I was so mean to you.’

'…It’s okay.’ She smiled as she said it.

‘I’m here, Sam. I’m here. Please… don’t leave me.’

Her head drifted to the side. I could tell that every word she said was painful for her. ‘I want to see the fireflies, Jordie…’

I could barely get the next words out. For her sake, though, I tried my best to hold back the tears. ‘You have to stay awake to see them. They’re here but you have to stay awake.’

‘…Jordie.’

‘Please, Sam.’

'Jordie…’ Her quiet murmurs faded out like a light. She died in my arms then. The pain she felt had stopped.

Over the many years spent recounting this story, this is the one part I always gloss over. Out of all the supernatural horrors that I experienced, seeing her in that state, the way her soul drifted from her eyes is the one thing that truly haunts me. I collapsed into her, just holding her. It felt like an eternity, just sitting in that desolate place, curled up. I didn’t want to move. But I couldn’t leave her there. I lifted her up, practically dragging myself up the rest of the incline. 

I tried to bring her home, but that’s when the forest found me. The ground shook violently beneath my feet as a heavy gust of wind came flooding across the hills, whistling through the air, sounding almost like a voice. I tried my best to run, adrenaline pumping through my body. Something was coming, but it wasn’t a beast. It was the forest itself. All around me, I could see it. The forest had finally shown its true form. It was alive, and it was staring into me. Eyes everywhere, along the trunks of the trees, and the mushrooms themselves. Just piercing eyes observing my every move. I felt so vulnerable. The canopy above tightened, and the poisonous gas thickened. From the bushes came this wave of rhythmic sound, a skittering across the forest floor. It surrounded me. I couldn’t stop to look but in my peripherals I could make out the source of it. Swarms of large insects, crawling and wriggling towards me. They wanted her. All I could do was keep moving but I wasn’t fast enough. They started climbing up my legs, gnawing into me, acid spewing from their mouthparts, burning my skin. I tripped and fell, and Sam hit the ground. They jumped on top of her. I tried desperately to pull them off, these thick centipede-like creatures with mandibles the size of thread snips. But they were cutting into me. The pain was agonising, and I left her. I wish I hadn’t, but I did. I ran as far as I could, barely able to see what was in front due to the fog.

But then it happened. A burst of blinding light, the ground falling out from under me, and a splash. It was water! And as my eyes adjusted I could make out the familiar shapes, large rocks encompassing the edges, perfect for diving off. It was the yabbie pond. That stupid yabbie pond that sent us on this treacherous journey in the first place. I couldn’t believe it. All this time we had been wandering in a circle. I swam upstream, hesitating to look back towards the woods, but I couldn’t help myself. And there, just across the pond, peeking out from behind a tree, the beast from the night before. I could hear its mechanical call, the same way it did around our camp. Click. Click. Click. It was a deer. It had antlers like branches towering above its head, twitching in place. And the strangest of all were its eyes. It had four of them, all perfectly symmetrical. The forest had possessed it, mutated its form. Like a predator standing dormant behind a glass window, I knew it couldn’t cross the barrier. It just stood there, watching me. Then it turned and wandered back behind the fog. I was alive, but I didn’t want to be. Not without Sam. I didn’t deserve it, I failed to save her. All I could do was lower my head in shame and cry.

After a while, I swam to the edge of the water, and stumbled back the way that we came, back along the trail towards the house. Strangely enough, I noticed that my fears about the reservation had vanished. The forest had somehow shifted. The entity that controlled the woods, the mushrooms, the creatures, all of it. It was gone. I was just so relieved to see green grass again. I could even feel my throat beginning to clear up.

Then, as the afternoon rolled around and the sun began to set, I was greeted by the most bittersweet sight. I couldn’t believe my eyes. There were fireflies. Actual fireflies. They glimmered in the trees around me, levitating like lanterns towards the night sky. They were lighting the way back. I think Sam was trying to guide me, back towards the fence. Finally upon reaching it, I gripped it tight, feeling the smoothness of the wood beneath my tattered fingers. I had made it home.

The events that came after were a mess. I won’t bore you too much with the details of the case. I was hospitalised, psychologically evaluated, and interviewed multiple times by police. They took my clothes as evidence and found small traces of Sam’s blood. Rumours spread of me murdering her but they never found her remains, even after months of search parties. I knew they never would. The entity had left. All the black goo would have dried out, flaking into ash amongst the rest of the charred remains in the forest. Everything else returned to the soil. So it went that the extreme lack of evidence caused her to be ruled as a missing person, presumed dead. Those years were the hardest for me, and my relationship with my parents was never the same after the event. They said they believed me as a child but I know they never did. They were of course grateful I was alive but deep down they always blamed me for my sister’s disappearance. My mother went to her deathbed asking me what really happened. So I thought in her final moments I’d offer her mercy. I told her that Sam drowned in a river trying to save me. She smiled, seeming content with that, and then departed.

To those reading this, heed my warning. Never go wandering deep into the woods. There are things that humans are not meant to see. Things that cannot be reasoned with. They only devour, it is their nature. And they will not hesitate to take everything from you.

I still find it impossible to sleep most nights. The guilt I feel consumes me, and I know that I will always feel this way. If I had been just a little bit stronger, I could have brought her home with me. I had the chance to save her, but I didn’t.

I’m so sorry. I wish you could have seen the pond, and the fireflies, you would have loved them. I wish you could’ve had the chance to grow up alongside me. 

Sam, I wish you were here.

“Is this some sort of fucking joke?” He said before grabbing my collar and pinning me to the edge of the house.

“What the fuck is your problem, dude? Let me go!” I shoved him just hard enough for his grip to give out. 

“You waste my fucking time? Two hours of work for some prank or something? JOHNATHON, PUSH THE DIRT BACK IN!” he yelled, calling to his colleague who was operating a front loader.

“What are you talking about? WHAT ARE YOU DOING? I already paid you guys! Don't push that dirt back in!” I yelled back. Too little, too late. It took two hours to dig about a fifth of what I needed. I estimated about 10 cubic yards was pushed back into the hole within 5 minutes. All that work, gone.

“We are leaving, and if you call my company again, I will cave your fucking head in. Do you understand me?” He said, sticking his rigid, callused finger on my sternum. I backed off; he had 3 inches of height and about 80 pounds of weight on me. Honestly, I was surprised I was able to push off his initial collar grab. 

They backed their equipment out, leaving only the remnants of disturbed topsoil and tire tracks. 

“HEY, WHAT DID YOU SEE? DON’T LEAVE! WHAT ABOUT MY MONEY?” I yelled back, only to be met with a middle finger and a wad of cash being thrown out of his truck.

I’ve been trying to dig a hole to install an in-ground swimming pool for some time now. I foolishly thought I could start the digging process by hand; the shovel I purchased barely even scratched the ground before it simply stopped wanting to move. I really wanted this pool to be done by winter; I had plans to install a pretty beefy heater and a nice glass enclosure for it. Unfortunately, fall in Montana this year was far colder than usual. 

The first contractor I hired took all the precautions before digging. He got the plans for the house, made calls to the city, and called the local internet providers. No sewers, no foundations, no expensive fiber optic cables; it was a perfect place to put a pool. I negotiated a fairly reasonable price, though there was an upcharge for the time constraint and worse-than-usual dirt conditions. He worked solo, using a small front loader that was similar to the one the second contractor used. He made good progress on his first day and told me he’d be able to finish within the next two days. Unfortunately, I was visiting family in Vermont, so I was out of town after his first day. I paid him upfront and told him to call me if he needed anything. 

When I got back from the trip, I expected to see a pool-sized hole in my backyard- how foolish. I walked through my back gate and saw only disturbed topsoil, and a small envelope filled with the cash I paid him on the table. The envelope had pencil writing on the back, letting me know: do not call me again, do not contact my work, stay away from me. 

As you know, the second time did not go any smoother. At least the first guy gave me part of the payment back. After the second attempt, I was less worried about getting the pool set up and more curious about what kept driving them away. I went through the permits and housing plans more than three times; there should be absolutely nothing there. Maybe a sewer line setup that wasn’t properly documented? I feel like they would have just told me I had a pipeline there. 

I was going to give it one more shot; I really didn’t have the extra funds or experience to rent my own toploader, so I ended up going back to Craigslist. Please come dig a pool in my yard. Contact me for details. 

To anyone who contacted me, I decided it would be best to send them a quick paragraph. Hi! Thank you for your interest in helping me. I am looking for someone who either owns or knows how to use a front loader. My address is [----------], and the price is up for negotiation. Before you accept, I would like you to know that 2 contractors have started digging but randomly quit the job midway. I do not know why this is happening, but at this point I am desperate to know. If you accept this job, I will be hovering over you while you work to see what is going on. I know this is strange, but that's why the price is negotiable. 

What started as 4 initial messages resulted in 3 ghosts and one acceptance. Two days later, Michael showed up at my house. He had brought his skid steer, which was smaller than the last two machines but able to be towed via a trailer.  Michael seemed nice and was surprisingly understanding of my situation. He requested half upfront and half after, which I was happy to do. 

Work began that day, with Michael setting up outlines and stakes around the would-be hole. He managed to dig the first 2 feet of the pool before we decided to call it a day. Only worked about 6 hours, but it was already 6 hours out of my weekend I wouldn’t get back. The novelty of seeing a big machine tear the ground up only lasts for the first two hours; the rest of it is just the agitating sound of the hydraulics.

Day 2, we decided to start much earlier in the day and try to knock the rest of it out. We both had other jobs during the week and wanted to be done with this side project. The rest of the digging was much faster after getting past the initial permafrost. What was done in an hour before was cut to about 30-40 minutes. I patiently sat in my lawn chair, careful not to get too close to the edge, while Michael continued to carve into the ground. I was confident he had made more progress than the second contractor had. 

At 6 hours in, I was getting ready to start preparing us a late lunch when I heard the sound of the top loader's bucket hit something metallic. Being 40 feet away, I was immediately able to tell that whatever he had hit was solid metal.  

“YEAH, SOMETHING'S HERE. GRAB A SHOVEL,” He said over the engine.

I grabbed my recently bought shovel and hopped into the pit, now about 6 feet deep at the end. 

“I would keep using the skid steer, but the first contact already dented part of the bucket.” He said, turning the machine off. 

I walked around him, studying where the end of the bucket met the dirt. A rusty pipe? I looked closer; definitely rusty, but the shape resembled more of a small arch. I dug around it, occasionally hitting the shovel end against the metal. It wasn’t long before I could make out the shape. A human hand. Definitely strange, but perhaps an old, hopefully valuable, statue lies in my backyard. 

Michael joined the dig, using his hands to more delicately remove dirt from the surrounding area.

“Here, found the face.” he pointed to the obvious shape of a nose and lips. He proceeded to use his hands to brush off the remaining dirt. 

“What the fuck… what, how did you do this?” He said, voice trembling. 

I wasn’t going to let this opportunity slip this time. I ran over to look at what he had uncovered. Right below Michael, sitting just in front of his knees, was a perfect replica statue of himself. Even with the caked rust, it was undeniably his face. Michael stood up. “I don’t know what the fuck your problem is, but this is twisted. Look I am going to take my shit and leave. I am going to call someone right now so I am not left alone with you. Stay in the pit while I leave.”

I wrote this today because I need help. I swear to god I did not make that statue, nor did I bury it. Please, if you have the equipment, come to my backyard and help me dig. 

[UPDATE]
 
He agreed to come back with the caveat that he brings a gun, and I pay him triple. I don’t blame him; it took lots of messages to convince Michael to continue the project. I admit the pool is a lost cause, but the statue? I think Michael needed an explanation more than I do. 

Two days after the initial find, both of us took off work. We decided to keep excavating around the area, wondering what else was buried. He brought back his skid steer, floodlights, some lifting straps, and his friend's truck, which had a winch attached to the front. 

Only took another 10 minutes of digging with the shovel to be able to find the bottom of the statue. We burrowed underneath until we could reach around and grab the strap from the other end. We secured it around the neck as well as the ankles, with both straps being connected to the winch. I really didn’t think it would budge; the motor's sounds alone sounded like a dying animal. Finally, the statue broke through like a scuba diver surfacing at the water line. 

“GOOD!” I yelled to Michael as he shut off the winch. 

At this point, the full body of the statue was just under moist clumps of dirt, which could easily be removed by hand. We both got to work chiseling out the body, starting with the legs. As the form started taking shape, it was clear it was meant to be put in a standing position. Even through the rust, you could see the statue wearing some sort of cargo pants and a regular long-sleeve shirt. Using a wire brush on the face, we picked away at the rust layer. 

“Jesus Christ, this is fucking detailed,” Michael said, looking down at his metal copy. 

Just underneath was a not-quite-shiny metallic finish, with details so fine you could nearly count the pores on his nose. 

“Yeah, but it looks like you in 15 years,” I said. 

With more detail in the face, we could also see the crow's feet around his eyes, some wrinkles in his forehead, and his hairline pushed back a tad. 

“I guess you're right; it seems like I gained some weight too,” Michael said as he continued to brush off his face

He worked his way around his face and neck as I continued to clean off the torso. 

“Grab the winch again, help me turn this over.” He commanded. 

“Sure, did you find something?” 

“The back of my head, I mean the back of this stupid fucking statue's head- just go grab the winch!” He yelled, clearly agitated. 

It was much easier this time; it took no more than a few seconds for the entire statue to turn over with an audible thump. Michael frantically removed the strap from around the neck and started picking at the back of the statue's head with his hands. 

I saw what made him so uneasy; it was the hole. The statue wasn’t hollow, but the hole in the back of its head burrowed in nearly 4 inches. Using the brush, we could see even more detail. As he worked his way around the crater, we began to see the metallic layers representing the hair, the scalp, then the skull, then a small gap, and finally the brain. 

“What the fuck, man? What the fuck? This is crazy, I mean, what is this? What is this trying to do?” Michael said, standing up with his hands behind his head. 

The hole in the statue's head was carved with such detail that you could see fragments of the skull embedded in the dented part of his brain. I’ve seen horror movies before, but they don’t prepare you when you see the real thing. I mean, it’s a statue, but my God, the resemblance was uncanny. 

Michael paced around, exhaling in loud, slow bursts. 

“LOOK AT ME AND TELL ME YOU DID NOT MAKE THIS ABOMINATION!” He screamed. 

“Why, why do you think that I can make a thousand-pound steel, perfectly carved statue, buried under 8 feet of compact dirt, for someone I MET 3 FUCKING DAYS AGO?” I yelled back.  

I should have been more empathetic here; I should have understood how bothersome seeing your own mutilated metallic corpse would be. Maybe it was the adrenaline, the fear; I don’t know why I fought back. 

Michael, in a fit of rage, grabbed the shovel and threw it at me like a spear. It clipped my cheekbone, immediately ricocheting off my face and back behind me. 

CLINK

We both stopped. Michael stood there, realizing he had gone too far, while I sat on the ground, pinching my cheek to stop the bleeding. I wasn’t even upset with him, I was distracted. We both heard that sound. The sound of metal hitting metal. 

We scurried over to where the shovel hit the ground and began to dig with our hands like sand crabs trying to escape into hiding. 

A hand, a face, head, body, legs, shoes. Another statue. Bigger, much bigger than Michales statue. It wasn’t until we unearthed it that I recognized who it was: the first contractor. 

He was older here, much older, and was positioned as if he were sleeping. His ears rested above his arm, legs sprawled and arms sprawled out as if he were sleeping on his stomach. After wire brushing, we could make out his facial expression, peaceful. 

“Who is this guy? Why is his statue so peaceful?” Michael asked, setting up the first of the floodlights. 

“It was the guy I hired before you. I'm gonna guess he found it before we did.” 

It was harder to find the next one; it wasn’t until around 8pm, nearly 2 hours later, that we found the next statue. 

CLINK
“HERE!” I yelled. 

30 minutes of excavating and polishing, I could see who it was. 

“This was the first guy I hired, doesn’t look much older,” I said. 

The first contractor was already fairly old; my guess was around mid-50s, maybe more. His statue, while not as morbid as Michael’s, was in a strange position. He was on his knees, left hand in front of him, with his right hand clutching the left side of his chest. 

“Looks like he’s having a heart attack,” Michael said. 

“We need to keep digging,” I responded. 

9 p.m. Statue of my ex-girlfriend, same thing as the second contractor. Older, but sleeping. 

9:30 p.m. Statue of one of my Dad’s buddies, his hands wrapped around his neck, foam from the mouth.

10:15 p.m. My mom, much older, bald, with a smile on her face, looked like she was lying in a hospital bed. This was one stung more than the others; I started crying around this time. 

No food, no water; we just kept digging. Machines that ran on the morbid curiosity of what we would find, refusing to draw conclusions until we had hit bedrock. 

11:00 p.m. Didn’t recognize this person; similar to my mom's position, however, he was grabbing the left side of his chest and was clearly in pain. 

12:00 p.m. 2 bodies at once;  I couldn’t recognize them. Looked like they were sitting down with their chests very far forward.  The front of their faces were clearly caved in, necks seeming to move backwards at an unnatural angle. 

12:30 p.m. I recognized it immediately. This had been engraved in my body, printed on the back of my eyelids, my best friend. I threw up what little food and water remained in my overworked body. 

“What? What happened? Do you know this guy too?” Michael asked. 

Below us lay a statue, no more than 5 feet tall. 

“Andrew,” I said, tears welling in my eyes.

“My best friend in 4th grade; we had the same bus route. One day he go off, went to cross the street; he looked right, but- but he forgot to look left. I saw it from the window. The screeching of the tires, the scream of the bus driver. I saw what remained of him” 

Michael was staring at me. No smile, no frown, the whites of his eyes illuminated by the harsh floodlights.

“What are you saying.” He said in a strict monotone voice.

I could barely utter the words over my sobbing,

“His left leg.” I said. 

Michael leapt onto the ground, furiously throwing dirt off the statue. 

“NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, WHERE IS IT.” Michael said in a panic. 

We knew 3 hours ago what these statues meant; I suppose what little hope we had was enough to keep us going, to keep searching. 

I haven’t found my body yet, but if you want to know how you die, please come help me dig in my backyard.

I didn’t really know what to expect from my first summer job. Some of my friends had been working part-time through the school year, but it never really appealed to me. That changed when I realized it was probably my only chance of having a car by my senior year.

I walked into the building on my first day, trying not to tug at the ugly white polo they gave me for my uniform. I hated the way it felt tucked into the black slacks I was required to wear.

The rich kids at school spent their summers by the pool wearing designer brands. I spent mine wearing a shirt that read SILVER SPRINGS RETREAT and preparing to cater to those same wealthy families.

My dad spent the entire drive reminding me how lucky I was to get hired there. According to him, it beat working at the water treatment plant.

I wasn’t so sure.

Still, at least I wouldn’t come home smelling like sewage. Or whatever it was that kept ending up on his boots.

Silver Springs Retreat had its own collection of weird smells, I realized right as I looked around the lobby area for someone to give me some guidance. A potent odor assaulted my nose immediately. A combination of sandalwood, vanilla, bleach, and something familiar that I couldn’t quite identify right away.

Shouldn’t someone be manning the front desk? I thought. Maybe that was going to be my job? Surely they didn’t want me to go back there yet. Did they?

“Hello?” I called out, feeling a little more nervous than I expected.

No answer.

“Hello?” A little louder this time.

Still no response.

I’d better be getting paid for this, I thought.

I considered taking a seat at one of the chairs lining the walls on either side of the front desk. Would that seem unprofessional?

Instead, I wandered the small room, trying to look interested in the zen posters on the walls. The soft warm lighting from the half moon sconces on the walls made them seem even more peaceful.

I noticed a large, almost wall-sized map behind the front desk. As I approached it, I realized it was a map of the entire retreat.

I hesitated to go behind the desk to check it out. But I remembered my dad telling me something about acting like I owned the place, and how that looked good to potential employers. Besides, I’ve always been terrible at minding my own business.

If the map could be believed, the compound was much bigger than I would have thought and reminded me of if a summer camp had a baby with a yoga center. I never realized how hard reading a map could be. But, after some time, I pieced together a general layout of the spa locations, the swimming areas, and most of the cabins.

My finger drifted along the surface of the map as I imagined walking the grounds, mouthing the names of cabins A through N on the west side. I stopped when my finger reached the top of the map.

THE NORTH WOODS

“Excuse me,” came a polite-sounding voice from behind me.

I jumped in shock, which gave way to embarrassment as I turned around to see a woman about my mom’s age wearing the same uniform as me.

“Oh, I—” I stammered. “I—I’m here for my—it’s my first day. I’m the—”

“Here,” she said to me with a small laugh as she handed me a clipboard with a white name tag that read CANDACE resting on top of it. “I’m Val. I’ll be showing you around. Welcome to the retreat.”

I stared down at the clipboard in my hands. I knew I should say something about the misspelling of my name. But I didn’t want to cause a scene on my first day.

“Candice,” I said to her after what felt like way too long of a delay. “I’m sorry, I was just looking around and—”

Val’s eyes flashed to the map behind me, then back to me.

“That’s okay,” she said with a gentle smile. “First days can be very exciting. But don’t worry. I’ll give you the grand tour.”

The pin stuck me a bit when I attached the name tag to my polo, but I don’t think I showed the pain on my face.

I followed Val through the halls of the retreat as she gave me a quick tour of the administration building. This was, admittedly, the most boring part of the whole place. Mostly just extra storage and more paperwork than I could ever imagine anyone filling out. But it was where the staff break room was located. That was worth finding out.

“Here we are,” Val said as we reached the end of a long hallway. “This is what we call the dungeon.”

Val laughed a little to herself as she opened the door to a small room with wood paneling designed to look like the inside of a cabin. It was fairly small, with no windows to let in natural light. The room was furnished only with a few chairs and an old tube TV on a cart. “What’s that?” I asked pointing at a machine under the TV.

“That,” Val said approaching the machine and inserting a black box into what looked like a mail slot. “Is our own little piece of the past.”

The TV came to life with a low electronic droning sound, then lit up blue with the word PLAY appearing in the center of screen.

“Everyone has to watch this orientation tape before we can really get started on training,” Val explained. “The heat and air both work overtime in here for some reason so it gets pretty cold days like today. Sorry about that. But the video isn’t very long. So your sentence will be short.”

She motioned to the waiting room style chairs and I took a seat.

“When you’re ready,” she went on, “just press play on the VCR and come find me after. I’ll be working the front desk where we met up. It’s good to have you here Candice.”

Once the door closed behind Val, I found myself immediately feeling bored in this plain wood paneled room. With nothing else to look at, I hit the PLAY button on the black machine, and sat down to let the low quality audio and persistent hum of the VHS tape teach me about Silver Springs Retreat.

“Hello,” came an overly enthusiastic male voice through the static, accompanied by the sound of generic dated music that sounded like it was recorded through a soup can. “And welcome to your first day at Ash Creek’s Silver Springs Retreat.”

The name of the retreat showed on screen as the narrator said it aloud.

“In this video you will be learning about the facility, your job responsibilities, your guests, safety and security protocols, and privacy guidelines.”

I shifted in my seat, trying to find a comfortable way to get through this. The video mostly showed static footage of the grounds and hallways as of the 1990s, with the occasional smiling staff member to head it up a bit.

“Silver Springs Retreat employs many seasonal and permanent employees making it a boon for Ash Creek, as well as the surrounding cities. The retreat has helped countless guests through difficult times in their lives over the years and we look forward to helping many more as time goes on.”

“Each guest’s stay is tailored to their individual needs. As a result, accommodations and restrictions may vary significantly between guests. Take note of the colored wristbands for each guest. The different colors represent the guests membership tier levels, accommodation needs, and permission levels.”

I sat up a little straighter to try to listen better. “Green wristbands belong to our most senior guests. The people who have been returning for their monthly visits to Silver Springs for the longest. Many of these guests have been here longer than a lot of our staff. Green status guests have nearly full roam of the facility, and can make priority appointments for any of the spa treatments. The only places a green status guest in would not be permitted are restricted access areas, such as staff only sectors and the North Woods.”

“Yellow wristbands are for our guests that have been to Silver Springs before, but have not yet earned green status. These guests may need a little more guidance with booking treatments and might not be as familiar with all protocols as our green status guests. Generally, a yellow status guest will be asked to remain on the eastern grounds where the Yellow Cabins are located, but are permitted to enter and exit the main facility building for spa treatments and special events.”

“Finally, red wristbands are for our first time guests. These guests have never paid a visit to Silver Springs Retreat or any other recognized facility like ours. Red status guests will need the most help during the daytime and will likely take up most of your time as a new hire. Red status guests are treated to a more organized and scheduled regimen of spa treatments than the returning guests, to help reduce confusion and ambiguity. Red status guests are asked to remain in the western grounds of the retreat where treatments will be provided for them. Guests with red status will require additional privacy during the night time hours. Because of this, only tenured staff is allowed into the west grounds after dark.”

I tried to take this all in. I wished I had brought a notebook with me. I considered taking notes on my phone but I didn’t want Val to think I was texting my friends instead of listening.

“Only tenured staff allowed on the western grounds after dark,” I mouthed to myself, trying to commit it to memory.

That part didn’t surprise me much. I’d known what kind of retreat Silver Springs was before I ever applied. Still, the place seemed to have a lot more rules than I’d expected.

“As a new member of our team,” the TV voice droned on, “you’ll be expected to understand and manage schedules. Even a minor miscalculation shift changes or guest changes can result in catastrophic loss of time, property, physical health, and trust from our guests, staff, and shareholders.”

Shareholders?

That part caught me off guard.

Silver Springs was one of the oldest businesses in Ash Creek. I’d always pictured it being run by some old married couple who spent their days drinking coffee on a porch somewhere and cashing checks. Looking back, that was probably naive.

Corporate America gets its claws into everything eventually.

“Your personal time is valuable,” the TV informed me. “Please do not perform work related activities while you are not on the clock. If you are asked to perform work duties without pay, you should contact person resources immediately.”

“Jewelry of any kind, is prohibited within the facility. All metals must be approved by the Silver Springs security team prior to entering guest areas. Including, but not limited to, flatware, medical equipment, construction materials, and vehicular access.”

“Silver Springs Retreat helps our guests through some of the most difficult transitional periods of their lives. By signing on to work with us, you are choosing to make a difference in your community.”

Either I zoned out and missed the rest of the video, or it ended abruptly soon after. I caught my focus again to see the camera was slowly zooming out on a forest scene with sunset lighting. Gentle acoustic guitar music played while credits rolled.

Once I was sure the video had ended and realized Val was not coming to collect me, I got up from my seat to go find her. But first, I figured I’d earned at least five minutes of uninterrupted snooping. The staff hall was pretty plain. They probably saved the decorations for the guest areas. The speaker systems didn’t play any kind of music, but I could hear a subtle hiss as though they were still making a sound I couldn’t quite hear. Probably old wiring.

I did take some interest in the row of portraits on the wall. A whole line of former retreat directors, from the past hundred years or so. All old white guys, of course, posing in front of the main structure of the facility. It was fun to see how the buildings changed around them as I traveled back in time, one portrait at a time.

The oldest portrait looked significantly different from the others. The facility behind the director was little more than a log cabin, surrounded by forest instead of manicured trails and guest lodges. The plaque beneath the frame had long since faded, but judging by the date, the retreat had existed before Ash Creek was even called Ash Creek.

After a while, I went back to the main lobby to look for Val. There was an older couple checking into the retreat, when I arrived.

“Okay, Mr. and Mrs. Simmons,” Val said cheerfully, “I’ve got you all checked in.” She handed them each a green wristband and helped them fasten them on. “I assume you remember where your cabin is?”

Mr. Simmons smiled warmly. A glint caught my eye on one of his unusually sharp canines. Dentures have always weirded me out.

“Cabin 6, dear” Mrs. Simmons replied in a very polite tone. “Just like every month before. I really do appreciate you keeping everything in order for us, Valery.” She reached for her bag

“No no no, Mrs. Simmons” Val stopped her. “You know we won’t make you carry your own things, here.” She caught my eye as I stepped closer into the room.

“Candice,” She called to me in a professional tone, “Will you help me carry Mr. and Mrs. Simmons’ bags to the eastern grounds?”

“Of course,” I said to her with a smile, then turned to the guests and repeated myself. “Of course.”

I grabbed the larger bag, belonging to Mr. Simmons and Val grabbed the smaller bag belonging to his wife. The bag was quite a bit heavier than I expected. That old man must be in pretty good shape to be lugging this thing around. Val went back to her desk to grab a clipboard while the two guests walked ahead of us. Before too long, the older couple had disappeared through the east side door.

Val and I had to move quickly to try to catch up to the couple. We headed out the side door, where I got to see the eastern grounds for the first time. I’m not sure why, but I was expecting a grand reveal with towers and Art Deco buildings. But all I saw were trees, fire pits, and a few posts for guests to play horseshoes. I was underwhelmed, but didn’t have much time to react before Val was pulling ahead of me.

“Come on Candice,” she said. “Take in the sights as you move.”

I did as I was told.

As we moved through the eastern grounds I was surprised to see the cabins weren’t actually made of logs like I imagined when I saw the ads for Silver Springs on TV. Instead, they were concrete buildings with half logs, made of vinyl, added to the sides for aesthetics.

We passed some other guests wearing green and yellow wristbands while we tried to catch up to the Simmons couple.

“Up ahead is Jerry,” Val told me while nodding forward to a man in a white uniform. “He’s the head of maintenance for the east grounds.”

“Jerry,” she called out to him as we approached. She didn’t show any signs of slowing down. “This is Candice. Today is her first day with us.”

I started to say hello, as we passed by him quickly but was cut when Val interrupted by pointing to our right, past my face.

“You still haven’t fixed that?!” She exclaimed sounding frustrated. I followed her finger to a cabin door lying flat on the ground. Its sturdy metal hinges still clung to the wall, but the frame itself had splintered through the concrete, allowing the door to be thrown outward. A large number 9 was painted on the fake log siding.

“The big event is in two nights, Jerry” Val continued before he could defend himself. Val shook her head in disbelief and continued on.

I tried to get a look into the cabin as we rushed past, but I didn’t catch too much. I thought I noticed the edge of a wooden chair, and maybe a set of bracelets on the ground. They looked thick and chunky. Maybe someone was going through a rockstar phase. I wondered what kind of special guest gets to ignore the ‘no jewelry’ rule. But the answer was obvious to me.

A rich one

It occurred to me that I should be asking more questions. My dad said I needed to do stuff like that to show an interest in the job.

As soon as I had this thought, Val stopped walking abruptly.

We had arrived at Cabin 6. The Simmons’ cabin.

The cabin looked exactly like cabin 9, except it was still in one piece.

I curled my fist and reached up to knock on the cabin door but Val stopped me. “Just leave them here,” she said, meaning the space on their small front porch. “They will come get them when they’re ready.” She began walking again. I followed.

“Is the event really such a big deal, still?” I asked trying again to keep up with her. “I mean, I know it is. But, like, wasn’t it way bigger news in the old days?”

“The event,” Val started to explain in her cheery and professional voice, “is the only reason Silver Springs Retreat exists.”

I looked over my shoulder toward where we last saw Jerry. He was in the middle of a call on an old style walk-talkie radio, but otherwise unmoved.

“Which is why you and I have jobs,” she concluded.

“I guess that makes sense,” I admitted.

“Speaking of jobs,” she pivoted, “yours is relatively simple. You just have to remain on call to help bring guests the things they need. I’ll give you a radio and an ear piece, and whenever a guests needs anything, one of your supervisors will call on you to do it.”

We moved to the large centralized structure that I recognized from the map in the lobby as the wellness treatment center.

Designed much like the cabins, with the vinyl log facade, the large concrete building doubled as a divider between the eastern and western grounds. Inside, is where the therapists would issue the wellness treatments for the guests.

“So, what? Do I just sit around all day waiting to hear from someone?” I realized how rude I sounded as soon as the words left my lips.

“Walk around the facility,” Val explained, opening the door to the wellness center and holding it open for me. “Get to know the place, but don’t disturb any guests. You have level one security access. Do you know what that means?”

The inside of the wellness center looked like if a hospital could double as a lake house. Long hallways made to look like polished wood, illuminated by unforgiving fluorescent bulbs, spread in all four directions from the centralized hub ahead of us. I noticed a door with LEVEL ONE printed on the side.

“It means I’m allowed through those doors?” I said, proud of myself for solving the riddle.

“Right!” Val said, either genuinely impressed or still performing her customer service voice. “And other sections like that. Basically, you can go anywhere as long as it doesn’t require level two permissions.

A look of embarrassment flashed across her face as she lowered her voice.

“We’re in the east hall,” she whispered, with the same cheerful tone. “Try to be quiet here. It’s where guests have their sleep recovery sessions. It’s not very popular now, but it will be in a couple of days.”

She kept moving quickly, and I stayed close behind her. My three years of cross country was coming in handy that day. When we got the the central hub, Val motioned down the hallway running north of here.

“Talk treatments are to the north,” she explained. “Mostly just group sessions and one on one talks with our therapists. It really seems to help with the guests who are worried about the transition.”

She motioned down the south hallway.

“Physical treatments are down the south hall,” she said. “Deep tissue massages, joint mobility treatments, sensory deprivation therapy, hydrotherapy pools. Things like that.”

We continued through the last hallway. The western hall looked largely like the eastern hall but reversed. The only key difference I could spot was that the security door on this end of the building was printed with LEVEL TWO. I wondered immediately about what was behind that door.

“The west hall,” Val went on, “is mostly storage and security. Sometimes they’ll repurpose a room for additional therapy sessions. But, for you, it’s mostly a place to pick up towels and toiletries.” We exited the building together and entered the West Grounds. I expected a mirror swapped version of the East Grounds, like how the west hall was just like the east hall. I was surprised, yet again, to see this area simultaneously looked newer and older than surrounding areas.

The trees seemed more sparse than the east grounds. But the ones that were present looked to be ancient, with huge trunks and roots that made the area harder to traverse without tripping. Several of the trees looked like they had the bark stripped off the bottom portion. I felt like I could always touch the top of the damage marks, if I really tried.

The cabins in the West Grounds were different too. They still had the fake log siding, but the concrete walls underneath were visibly thicker. The doors were made of solid metal. Steel, I assumed by the intense shininess. These cabins were spaced out further from each other than their counterparts on the East Grounds.

“Our newer guests stay on this side of the facility,” Val said leading me deeper into the grounds. “You probably won’t be called over here as much. They generally have senior staff members handling it. But you might have to bring some supplies sometimes. Just-“

“Don’t come here after dark,” I interrupted, hoping it would seem like I was paying attention during that boring video earlier. “Only senior staff allowed.” It occurred to me that I didn’t see any guests on the West Grounds. Maybe it was a slow month. I didn’t know how many new guests a place like this could have.

I did notice a few concrete poles scattered throughout the grounds. At the top of each pole was another large speaker system. They reminded me of the tornado sirens I’d see around when we’d go visit my grandparents out of state. But Ash Creek didn’t have those anywhere else. At least, not that I knew of.

“You got it,” She said with a wink. “Let’s get you set up with a radio and I’ll show you to where you’ll be sleeping.”

“What about the North Woods?” I asked, glancing in that direction.

“Oh,” she said, “you really have done your research, Candice. I’m impressed.”

“I just saw the map in the lobby,” I tried to sound humble instead of embarrassed. “It showed North Woods at the top.”

“The North Woods isn’t part of the guest facility anymore,” she explained as we reentered the wellness facility. “I think it got too expensive to maintain, so they cut back. There’s nothing for us there, anymore.”

Val took me to the employee rooms, located in a small transitional corridor beyond the south hall. “If you keep going down this hall,” she explained as we entered. “You’ll make it back the staff area we started in, today.”

I was a little nervous to sleep at the facility. It seemed like a nice enough place, but my understanding was that most jobs don’t keep you overnight.

But the pay was pretty good for someone my age, and it would only be a couple of nights. They didn’t want me here for the event. Which I was totally not complaining about. Who doesn’t want three days off in the middle of the week? Then I get to report back for the cleanup.

I found a room with a temporary plaque reading CANDACE outside the door. This would be my home away from home for the next couple of days.

The room was small, but comfortable. A loft style bed was suspended over a small wooden desk. I wondered if the radio on the dresser worked. I wondered if I even knew how to use a radio.

I climbed into the bed and pulled out my phone for a much-needed doom scrolling session. This place was kind of weird. I hoped a new car would be worth it.

In all my years living in Ash Creek, I had met a few werewolves before. They weren’t bloodthirsty monsters like how they are portrayed on TV. Most of them are just normal people living with a chronic condition. I drifted off to sleep, reminding myself that I was doing something good by working at Silver Springs. Helping people through a hard transition.

I assumed I would fall asleep quickly after the way Val had me running all around the facility, but the new place and the new noises proved me wrong. Instead, I just laid there staring up at the popcorn ceiling two feet above my face.

Every time I started to drift off, a pop from the speaker system, or a supply cart wheeling by my door would cause my eyes to shoot open again. I never liked sleeping away from home.

Eventually, I let the low ambient mechanical droning from outside lull me to a gentle slumber.

Part 3: Expressionism in the Screaming

  New day, it is April 14th, and she will not stay still, her blood loss could be fatal. She thinks I care for her being alive, I do not. I care for the doll she becomes, beauty is not restricted to being for only the living. People forget that beauty and art can be dead and alive; The Mona Lisa woman, she is dead, but she is still beautiful in the painting. People love horror movies and some are beautiful works and death is in all of them. She wants to go back to her job, see her parents and she swears she will survive and tell on me. Her words, “When I get out of here I am telling everyone what you did and you will be locked up!” I laughed, she will not be leaving my house any time soon! I promised that to her and she yelled for help. I think the act of screaming can be artistic in expression; Expression: An expression is the act of communicating thoughts, feelings, or ideas through words, art, or body language, or a specific word, phrase or. Anyway, I like it when she screams. It soothes my body, I loosen and I can fall asleep that night easier than I usually can!
  April 15th: I went to the store, I needed more porcelain and of course one of those pesky pigs saw me, they thought they knew me! So I went into the path near my house and I waited for the guy to come around the corner, his name is Colin Layger and I swung my toolbox I brought with me; I hit him HARD with it, right into his temple area, I was hoping that killed him, it did not, but he was out and I ran home. I am going to lead them along, pigs like to be led, think slaughterhouse. Colin Layger will be taught a lesson in niceness, I will teach him how his Mama should have! Those two other officers, Randall and Alex will also find out why they should be nice! I did nothing to them and I am doing my own thing, my Mom always used to say to mind your own business; They must not have been taught that and I will teach them that, I am getting angry thinking about their ignorance of my project. I make beautiful creations with people! I left a porcelain piece with hair and a letter. Oh, they will remember the crimes of Zodiac with my leading games! I will be as mysterious as he, and I will never get caught either.
  I was first to drive into his yard, I disregarded the look of his lawn, I threw the car in park and I ran toward the front door. 
  I pounded and no one answered, “fuck!” I muttered.
  The door was unlocked, I pulled my pistol and walked in slowly, searching the corners as I went and looked through some rooms along the way. I heard Layger and Kaleb were rushing through the entrances and exits, if someone is in here then they are not getting away. We all had pistols drawn and we went up the stairs. Randall was on the way, this was his day off and again he was doing work that was not asked of him. Searching buildings, asking people if they saw anything. Layger took the spare bedrooms and Kaleb took the far end of the hallway, I took the bathroom and storage closets; I walked in the first bathroom and saw nothing disturbed, and I went to the storage closet and heard rustling, slight movements.
  “Viola?” I asked.
  No response, I grabbed the door and opened it slowly, ready to shoot the intruder or hug the wife of my long standing partner’s wife. The cat jumped out on me, “fuck,” I whispered. Their pet cat scared me.
  “HEY, IN HERE!” Kaleb yelled.
  Layger and I ran to the master bedroom and Kaleb is holding Viola as she shakes.
  “He tried to get in, but he was clearly not well. He was twitching and asked me through the windows for something. When I told him no, he busted through the front door and I hid in the small crawlspace in the closet,” Viola explained.
Stomping came from behind us and Randall ran in.
  “Thank god!” Randall exclaimed.
  “I am fine, just a freight,” Viola said, with a chuckle.
  “Was it our guy?” Randall asked. Layger and Kaleb sat back in the doorway.
  “No, it was an addict, he kept mumbling about drugs and how he needed the fix,” Viola explained.
  “Doesn’t sound like our guy, he doesn't seem to be the type to pull off this type of trick,” Layger said, looking over at Kaleb.
  “It seems we have a drug addict on the loose,” Kaleb chuckled, trying to lighten the mood.
  We all left out laughing reliefs. We are on edge, will this guy be the type to go after one of our personal loved ones or just stick to random people around town? As I rode off after this scare,  I saw the man in question that was at Randall and Viola’s house. He laid on the curb of the street.
  Kaleb got in his cruiser and rode to the station when he saw someone being dragged into a house on Casser Street.
  “HEY!” Kaleb yelled, “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING!” he exclaimed.
  The man turned around and hurried the body inside the house. Kaleb skirted into the cul-de-sac and parked in the middle and forgot to take his keys out of the transmission.   Kaleb stormed onto the doorstep, thud thud thud. As Kaleb went for another knock and to reach for his gun in his belt strap, the man swung open the door and sprayed mist into Kaleb’s face which made Kaleb hack and cough before falling to the ground: The man grabs Kaleb before anyone can see and drags him inside.
  Gurgles and screams come from the basement. The man walks down the steps and Abigail and Kaleb sit in the room off to the left side of the basement. A boiler room, both sedated and strapped to the wall.
  “My LOVELIES, you are here to be made to your full potential!” the man exclaimed.
  Kaleb’s vision was blurry, but he could see a woman that looked familiar. He blinked a couple of times and his vision cleared, it was Abigail Garn.
  “Wha-wah-uh-” Kaleb could not speak properly, he was drugged.
  “You won’t be able to speak for a few hours, it’ll wear off,” the man said.
  Kaleb grunted and pulled at his restraints, he was wasting energy. It was time for him to think of a way for Abigail and him to get out. Kaleb stared at the ‘work’ that he had done to her. She is missing chunks of skin that are replaced with porcelain. The man grabbed Abigail and she jerked, but did not have the energy to make an escape.
  “Abigail, you ok?” Kaleb asked, he knew the answer he wanted to see if he could get her talking.
  “DON’T,” the man bellowed from deep within his throat.
Abigail looked over at him and looked sorry for Kaleb. Kaleb knew the look and shook his head.
  “NO, WHAT IS WRONG-” Kaleb started to yell, the man dropped Abigail where she stood and went to Kaleb.
  “Be nice, or she gets it worse, more mean, more pain will ensue if you speak to me in that town you PIG!” the man yelled and grabbed Kaleb’s chin.
  Kaleb tried to exude energy to headbutt the man or anything, but his body was fuzzy like it was asleep. Pig. Pig, it ran through his head. Was this guy a cop hater? Did he have something against the police, did something bad happen under police control? Kaleb’s mind raced with thoughts; He heard the terrible, skin tearing and peeling. Abigail, although seems drained of energy, still could scream and he heard the man mumbling to himself.
  “Just how I remember it,” he mumbled.
  He wondered what the man could be referencing and he found out soon enough. The man scooped up Kaleb and he could not fight back, he felt demeaned and defiled by the lack of struggle. Drugs still coursed through his veins.
  “Oh my sweet lovelies,” the man sing-songed.
  “SHUT UP!” Abigail screamed, the man stopped and chuckled.
  “I get it, it’s getting stuck in your head,” the man said, and chuckled wildly.
  Kaleb saw that the man had taken her shirt off and was replacing her breast skin with porcelain. He could not believe he was seeing this monster doing this.
  “What is..” Kaleb started, he started to gain speech again. He could barely speak. “Wrong with…you!” Kaleb struggled out.
  The man turned to Kaleb who laid on the cold hard concrete floor of the basement.
  “I see that you are eager for your turn,” the man claimed.
  “N-nooo,” Kaleb muttered.
  “No, I get it, you want your body as important as hers,” the man claimed.
  “What?” Kaleb said, he shook his head.
  The man ripped at Kaleb’s pants. Kaleb tried to keep his pants on and he knew that this could go a bunch of different places, none of them he wanted.
  “Oh, stop, I will get you to be one of my lovelies!” the man exclaimed, excitedly.
  Kaleb squirmed his body was slow and fuzzy and far away. Abigail watched in horror she had not seen anyone else get it done to them.
  “STO-” Abigail started, the man shushed her.
  The man got the pants off and around his ankles. Kaleb was frantic, his body wasn’t doing what he wanted. Trapped and helplessness was creeping in. Kaleb knew that these moments were going to be burned in his mind. Kaleb’s boxer briefs were the only thing making him not nude from the waist down and he did not want to have the man or Abigail to see his genitals. The man giggled, and tugged at his waist band.
  “One has to go for the jewels, when they are easily attainable,” the man said.
  Kaleb shivered in his numb body, but brain firing all off all the bells and whistles and flags being thrown.
  “Oh, it is time to make your manhood into a piece, a small piece, of being a lovelie,” the man claimed, and grabbed for his tools.
  “Hey, it’s not a small piece,” Kaleb squeaked out.
Abigail almost snickered in this very bad and traumatizing moment. Kaleb’s goofy and unserious side came out, but he was very serious.
  The man did not respond to the comment and ripped them off. His penis hangs out and everything is on display. Abigail looked horrified and amazed. Kaleb begged for his genitals and for him to do anything, but that. The man started the shaving of his skin, hair and all. Kaleb shook and screamed. Abigail’s eyes glued to the scene in front of her, the shock and gore was immense. She was having a LONG, seemingly never-ending nightmare, that’s what she was thinking as she watched this man hunched over Kaleb’s genitals and the blade clawed through his skin and his porcelain was being placed.
  “FUCK! WHAT! SHIT! MAN YOU’RE CRAZY!” Kaleb screamed.
  Kaleb gained control of his body, as that procedure took a bit longer than Abigail and Kaleb thought it would take. Kaleb kicked the man in the chest, he stood up and almost fell his pants were still at his ankles. Kaleb tried to wiggle off his pants and the man grabbed at his shoulder. He was covered in sweat and blood was splattered over his front. Abigail was cheering on Kaleb. Kaleb tried to climb the stairs and the man grabbed his ankle and yanked. Kaleb slammed into the wooden steps and his body racked with pain and the porcelain was shoved deeper onto his penis. The man dragged him and Kaleb kept fighting, his head throbbing as he hit his head off a jagged edge of a stair: Kaleb shoved the man off and screamed. Kaleb was screaming with frustration, he pounded onto the door as he shot up the stairs. The door was locked, Kaleb tried to shoulder bash the door when he looked back, the man was watching in an excited eager.
  “WHY!” Kaleb screamed. He did not want an answer he wanted out and he wanted to arrest this guy, kill him, bury his body in ash and piss.
  The man grabbed Kaleb and Kaleb shoved and racked at the man’s face. BANG! SLAM! CLUNCK! The men tumbled down the stairs and slammed onto the concrete floor. Abigail felt defeated and more defeated for Kaleb.
  They sped to Randall’s house. I have them riled. Scared. I do not understand why! I am just being myself, expressing myself through body modification! Modification: The act of changing something or the resulting new form. The new form is right! They will be new and beautiful- well, I am going to get someone to add to my collection, I want to make a version of the doll I got from that store! OHH, I got two new people, both of them are perfect! Kaleb Newmark (a pig), and someone I picked off the street I live on. SWEET LOVELIES, SWEET- I needed that, it calmed me. Kaleb fought back, gave me a good tussle, it reminded me of my brother. He is dead now, he was killed in a fire; A fire that was caused by my Father. Father did not like him being himself, he was a sinful, homo. I did not like his words, but he said them with hate and spit in my face when explaining himself: I loved my brother, he killed him and I was going to make my Father beautiful so I took him and made him a doll. I loved the tussle he gave me, but by the end he begged and I whispered to him in the lullaby I love about how my brother also begged when he was being burned. He is still in my closet, he stares at me.
  The next day, it was April 16th. Randall and I waited for Layger. Layger came in, he was a bit late, but he overslept; He hadn’t been sleeping very well since everything started happening. Where is Kaleb?
  “We have everyone?” Layger asked, he saw the person missing.
  “We are waiting for Kaleb,” Randall said.
  A knock came and the mailman walked away as the paper bag sat on the welcome mat.
  “HEY, who gave you this?” I yelled.
  “Oh, a man threw it at me and said it was urgent, that I needed to deliver it to the pig station,” the mailman explained, and started to walk away.
  I ran over and stopped the guy, “Did you see the guy? Like features?” I asked, ‘please please’ is all I could think.
  The mailman shook his head and turned, “He was in a giant coat, like it was cold out here, I think it is quite warm, but not my business to judge,” the mailman explained.
  I was stumped, why does this guy have to be so consistent? I walked in and Layger and Randall were looking at the new clue -not what I would call it- they waved me over.
  “Look at this!” Randall exclaimed.
  I looked into the paper bag, it had a tape in it and a note. The note said, “Listen to the noises of beautiful creation.” We ran into Layger’s office and he put the tape in his DVR player. It was all black, but there were noises of breathing, splatting and screaming. Screaming for a long 15 minutes when the tape gets cut short by the man, grunting, and saying, “lovelies, demo 1.”
  “What is this?” Layger asked, he was pissed.
  “I don’t know it’s like this is a game to him, these are not going to help us find him,” Randall said.
  I paced and I put the tape back on, looped it, listened to it; I tried so hard to recognize the voice, I did not. This man is someone I have never met in this medium size town. How? I know so many people, this killer, this monster, has to be the one of a very small number that I do not know!
  “Lovelies?” Randall said, quizzical. He looked at me with his eyebrows furrowed and curled.
  “I-his name for his “creations”?” I said.
  Randall and Layger looked at me, “You know him?” Randall asked.
  “No, someone I have never met,” I said, defeated and angered.
  “Where is Kaleb? Does he have a girlfriend?” Layger asked.
  “Uh,” Randall started, I cut him off.
  “He was talking to Piper Mavey,” I said.
  We had to go see Piper Mavey.

Part 4: April 16th, The First Break

  “Piper Mavey, can you come down to the station? We need to talk to you about Kaleb Newmark,” Layger said.
  Piper agreed and she came down, no fuss. She looked concerned. The three of us took her to the interview room.
  “When was the last time you talked to Kaleb?” Randall asked.
  “Uh, yesterday at 1 or 2 PM,” Piper said.
  “Why are you asking?” Piper asked, she looked more concerned.
  “We have not seen him since yesterday after we left Randall's house,” I said, and pointed to Randall so she knew who I was talking about.
 “Has he talked about a guy we are trying to find?” Layger asked.
 Piper looked around at us, “Not really, he did mention a guy that has been going around taking people or whatever,” Piper explained.
 “Ok, did he say he was going anywhere?” Randall asked.
 “No,” Piper said, matter-of-factly.
 Piper thanked us for looking for him. We made a missing persons poster for him. Then our phone line was being blown up, people were giving us details of nothing that would help. Or stuff that is not what we are looking for: I’ve never been so mad at Treen’s people at this moment.
 “Yeah, I saw this guy stumbling in the park, probably public intoxication!”
 “There was a weird banging coming from my neighbor’s backyard and they were doing illegal construction work!”
 “The guy who owns the ice cream shop denied me a cone because he was closing, how dare he?!”
 These were some of the calls I took and there were so many, but there was one call that came 5 hours after we first opened the line;
 “Hello, is this the police station?” the woman asked.
 “Yes, it is, can I have your name Ma’am?” I asked.
 “Bayley McIntosh,” Bayley said.
 “Ok, Bayley, what’s your report?” I asked, assuming it was going to be another call about a dog pooping another lawn that is not the owner’s lawn or something stupid.
 “I saw a man spray something in someone’s face, he disappeared with the body, but he dragged it somewhere! Wait! Hold on! Someone’s at my door,” Bayley said.
 “Wait, no don’t,” I started to say, as the phone was already taken off her ear.
 “Who are you?” Bayley asked.
 BANG! SLAM! AHH, “get off m-mmmmm” The phone was shut off, and someone just attacked Bayley.
 “DAMN!” I yelled.
 Layger and Randall were now looking at me.
 “What?” Randall asked.
 “I just heard a woman get attacked and I did not ask for her address and she wasn’t on the line long enough for it to be tracked!” I exclaimed.
 “She was attacked?” Layger asked, rhetorically. He continued, “What was her name, I might know her address?” Layger asked.
 “Bayley McIntosh,” I said.
 Layger’s eyes light up with surprise, “I have not heard that anime in a while, that’s my ex wife,” Layger explained. “She used to live on Adam Lane, 212, I think,” Layger said.
 “Ok, we got to go,” I said.
 Randall and I hopped in the cruiser and we went to Adam Lane. Layger stayed back to take calls. We arrived to see a door wide open, it must be her house. I drew my pistol and Randall followed. We stalked our way into the house, we heard nothing as we walked in. There was a clear struggle in the dining room, chairs were on the floor, one was tossed out of the back door. The table was in the corner and there was a glove on the floor, a yellow mitten.
 “Oh my, he got sloppy, she must’ve been a real fighter,” Randall said.
 “Holy shit, we got a break,” I exclaimed.
 “GET OFF ME!” Bayley yelled.
 “You’re going to regret your decision!” the man exclaimed, he looked down and realized that he was missing one of his gloves.
 The man throws her down the stairs of the basement and rushes down at her. He launches down on her and she is dazed. His hands, not big, pretty small hands around her neck; She is gasping for air, hitting him and panically thrashing to find a purchase to get herself out from under him, she finds nothing. Bayley kicks and shakes as he squeezes and presses down, breaking her trachea. She goes limp, and is choked to death.
 “What was that?” Abigail asked.
 Kaleb looks scared at the door that is closed, then thumps come loud and guttural.
 “What the hell?” Abigail exclaimed, looking at the door that was now open, the man had not walked in yet.
 The man walked in and he was covered in blood. He was breathing hard. Then he left the room and dragged in the body of a woman with her throat caved in with hand marks and one of his hands that is usually covered no longer is. The woman can’t be identified by Abigail or Kaleb, her face is sunk in, blood and bone are all that is possible to make out; The face is gone. The new subject is also crying and puking from crying too hard.
 “WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOUR HEAD!” the teenage boy yelled.
 Usually the calm man becomes visibly angry and grabs the ‘shaver’. The teenage boy kicks and bites, his head is grabbed and slammed into the wall behind him. Leaving him disoriented: The man grabs his arm and shaves off all his skin on his forearm and then rubs the blood of the other woman in it. His forearm is without skin and the veins and nerves were sitting out in the air and the blood seeping into them. The man grabs the pee bucket and dumps it on his arm.
 “I am tired of people being so mean, I am going to make people see picking on me won’t be easy and I will fight back!” the man squeals.
 “Sorry, fuck…. sorry, please I am just a kid,” the boy said.
 “That does not work for me,” the man said.
 The man storms out and slams the door behind him. The boy looked at his arm with bulging eyes.
 “He’s never been this erratic,” Abigail said to the kid.
 “Why now?” the boy asked.
 “I or we do not know maybe he is losing it more or he clearly did not plan for that woman so it seems she almost caught him or did, but got rid of her,” Abigail explained.
 “We need to band together and get out of here,” Kaleb said.
 “He won’t let me leave, look how close I am to being finished,” Abigail said. “I will help, but I am too deep to leave. He will hunt me down, he knows where I live, my shop, everything,” Abigail explained.
 “I work for the police, I can keep you-” Kaleb started, Abigail stopped him.
 “LOOK AT ME! I am too far gone, I will be changed and deformed for the rest of my life and I am slowly getting infected; I feel it and I will become one of his dolls in his collection,” Abigail explained. 
 Kaleb fell silent, and the boy was coughing over the smell of the corpse only a couple feet away and his arm looked terrible, horrifying.
 We went back to the station, got the glove tested. The DNA was not in the system, he was never caught if this is a long time thing.
“We have his DNA, but we still can’t find the guy!” Randall yelled. He was pissed. I was pissed.
“Someone has to know something, or see anything,” Layger said. “I am using my powers. We're holding a town hall meeting tomorrow!” Layger exclaimed.
 April 17th: We were all gathered at a town hall meeting; Layger, Randall and I were standing at the podium and the mic was ready, the town of Treen eagerly waiting for the start of the meeting. Treen was in unrest, people were fearful and they were counting on us to end it.
 “We are here today to gather on the ongoing investigation of the man who murdered a 16 year old girl, and has kidnapped many others,” Layger said.
 “We need some help with some details. We need anyone to tell us now if you’ve seen anything of a man in a coat,” I said.
 “Yesterday, one of our own has gone missing, and if you’ve seen anything or heard anything, we need to know!” Randall exclaimed.
 “Ok, the floor is yours,” Layger said.
 The room went quiet and no one moved, people murmured to each other. An older man came up to the mic.
 “A man in a heavy coat, wearing yellow gloves walked by my house yesterday,” the old man said.
 “Any details of his appearance?” I asked.
 “Uh, he was 6 foot and lanky, he had his hood up although I saw he had a mask on, and… glasses,” the old man explained.
 “YES, thank you!” Layger exclaimed.
 The room became wildly alive, a line formed of 4 people.
 “I heard a whole bunch banging and screaming coming from Adam Lane yesterday,” the woman said.
 “Bayley McIntosh’s house?” Randall asked.
 “Yeah, did you see where they went?” Randall asked.
 “No,” the woman said.
 “Ok,” Randall said.
 The woman walked off and the next person took the spot at the mic.
 “He was hiding in bushes by the square, and he had a bottle of spray with him,” the young girl said.
 “Why did you not call the police?” I asked.
 “Uh, I don’t know, I thought he was playing hide and seek with someone, or a water gun fight,” the young girl explained, she was way too innocent for this situation.
 I saw Layger’s face light up a bit red, or anger, but it was not directed at her. “Ok,” Layger said.
 “I saw a man in a police cruiser that did not look like an officer, he had yellow gloves on, the gloves were a bit missed colored by blood, I think,” the man said.
 “Where at?” I asked.
 “Uh, he was driving it down an alley and looked like he was driving to a wooded area or a place to hide it,” the man explained.
 The last person got up to the mic and dropped a tape on the floor and walked away.
 “Wait! What is it?” Randall yelled.
 “I was just given this, he sang a song to me and told me to give this to you for your “investigation”,” the man said.
 “Did you see his face?” Layger asked.
 “No, he wore a mask, like porcelain, dolls face,” the man said and he walked out.
 As the doors were about to close and a woman ran in, out of breath and frantic.
 “I… WAS ATTACKED!” she yelled.
 
Part 5: Going Wrong

 She had to go, she was telling the pigs about me! I am trying to make creations that are beautiful, but people act like I’m doing something wrong! Rage: A state of violent, intense, and often uncontrollable anger, it reminds me of Father. He used to be so angry, he beat me, demeaned me for being so fascinated by the art of dolls; He called me names and made me play with airsoft guns and stuff like that, manly toys. Toys: an object made or used primarily to provide amusement, entertainment- he did not like the word toys, he called them entertainment objects, if I said toys I would get punished: I still had dolls hidden, so I could fascinate over them. Mother, she died because my Father got angry about her going out with another man, she was trying to get away. Father told us she was cheating, it was a lawyer. Mother was trying to save us, but when she came home that night he waited behind the door and hit her over and over with a wrench! Wrench: No, it doesn’t matter, he beat her, blood splattered everywhere, he laughed and screamed at her. “BITCH!” “YOU TRYING TO TAKE MY KIDS AWAY FROM ME!” she had died with the first blow, but he slammed down until he had her head into a mush of matter and he kept swinging down. The floor had been broken, the wooden floor boards had a giant hole in it. Abigail is almost done and a doll so beautiful even those pigs will have to admit my skill, my masterpiece maybe. The new kid talked back and I was overcome with rage, this attention and these pigs were making me act out of character. It is now April 16th and they are holding a meeting at the town hall. About me. I was not liking the attention, as an artist I should, but I am not asking for this! I walked to the square, and I gave a tape to a man and I told him to give them it.
 A woman was walking to the town hall and the man ran up to her, sprayed his bottle in her face. The liquid hit her cheek not in the nose or eyes. She slapped and scratched at him, his hand was over her mouth: Her screams were killed by his palm. She kneed him in the balls and she grabbed at his hood and pulled it off. The man scampered away and pulled his hood back on. He ran and ran into a house on Casser Street.
 I am losing it, control. Control: well, control, I do not have it right now. My anger is uncontrollable. Rage is what it is. I went down to my basement, I grabbed the boy and shaved him from his head to his toes. I am no artist, I am wrong; Everything was going wrong.
 “Casser Street!” the woman screamed.
 We bolted down to the street in question. Casser, right next to Adam Lane. Before I tell you the end of this case. The tape that was given to that man. It was the most damning and disturbing evidence against this guy. The tape starts with him with his mask on and his coat. He sits in front of a tool wall and he gestures to it.
 “This is what I use to make my beautiful dolls, you pigs do not understand me and I do not understand why I am being targeted. I make dolls. Let me show you,” the man said.
 He grabs the camera and opens a door, a dead woman’s body lays near, a teenage boy with his forearm open and infected. Abigail Garn, mostly doll, and Kaleb Newmark, off against the wall away from everyone.
 “These are my subjects, mainly Abigail, these two will get their turn or at least piggy here will,” the man said.
 He points the camera at Kaleb’s distraught face. Kaleb headbutts the man into Abigail who grabs him. He drops the camera which is pointed at Kaleb. Kaleb watches in happiness and then it falls, his eyes welt up. What can be heard is fast rustles followed by loud metallic thuds. Then Abigail falls to the ground and her face is in the camera’s lens view.
 “SEE WHAT YOU MADE ME DO, SHE WAS MY MASTERPIECE!” the man yelled. Abigail’s body gets kicked and now the camera sees slightly over her body; The man is hastily approaching Kaleb and the boy yells out.
 “HEY, UGLY FU-” the boy started to yell and his voice was choked out.
 Gasping is heard and then a loud bump, the man grabs the camera and follows the boy as he bangs and tries to open the basement door. The door won’t budge, the boy leaps at the man, he hits the camera over and starts to flail his arms at the man in a barge. The man swings the camera at the boy and the boy falls limp, the top left half of the lens is now cracked.
 “YOU!” the man yelled.  The camera rapidly goes into the boiler room and Kaleb is tugging at his restraints.
 “I am showing you why you should’ve been nice!” the man exclaimed.
 The camera cuts and Kaleb can be heard panting and moaning in the room beside the main room of the basement. The man takes off the coat and mask, he has silver metal frames on and he sits looking nerdy and covered in blood.
 “I punished the piggy for making my life harder, my name is Davey Ethan Ramond and I make dolls!” Davey Ramond said.
 The camera cuts and that’s the end of the tape labeled, “Doll Maker”.
 “GET OUT HERE NOW! IT’S THE POLICE!” Layger yelled.
 I banged on the door and I heard a racket coming from the inside, I started to bash and kick the door. The door gave way, and we all rushed inside, the scene was horrific and the smell was haunting. Bodies lay in the basement of many victims including Abigail Garn. Davey stood with his hands up, turned around to face us.
 “I was just about to give the piggy a new look,” Davey giggled.
 I looked past him and I saw the body of Kaleb, he was out like a light and barely breathing. The thing he called the ‘shaver’ was in his hand and when I tried to cuff him he swung, nicked my face and tore off a bit of skin on my cheek. Davey went into a frenzy and Layger and Randall laid fire down on him. 10 bullets is what it took to keep him down and he fell into the doorway, his yellow glove laid across his face. An ambulance took Kaleb out and took him to the hospital. We went through the house, found pictures and other dolls fully finished. His Father, Harvey Ramond was in the closet of his bedroom. He had tapes and tapes of his crimes and former victims, Davey had tapes going back to the late 80’s.
 “We are seeing a man of evil and messed up philosophy,” Randall said.
 “This case is something I have never seen,” I said.
 “We are going to have a lot to go through,” Layger said.
 We nodded and got to work, then while we went through all of the stuff in his house and wrote this. This was Davey Ethan Ramond aka the My Lovelies Killer.

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 now.

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.

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, eventually handing 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. Only 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 something written in neat cursive.

Finally a new friend after 39 years. 

The previous one didn’t last long.

Hey everyone, I'm back.

It's been a few nights since my last post, and I figured I would come back to give you all an update.

Tonight’s shift started off rather mundane. Chris got into a fight with the vending machine, that damn wheelchair ran into a doctor’s leg when he was on the phone, and worse yet, I forgot my lunch box. Since the only vending machine we have was now out of order, I’d just have to make do with whatever place is open this ungodly late at night. Thanks again, Chris.

One of the patients in room 10 was…interesting. The man came in complaining of stomach pains and for a while we couldn’t figure out what was wrong. We ran test after test, and everything came back normal. Bloodwork didn’t show any anomalies, but he was persistent and visibly in a lot of pain. We asked the man what the last thing he ate before the symptoms started. He replied that the last thing he ate was sushi at a popular local restaurant the day prior. The doctor decided to eventually scope his stomach to see if we could find any visible issues.

When we were getting the man prepped, I could have sworn I felt something move under my hand as I was touching his stomach. It wasn’t like anything I had felt before, but I brushed it off as his GI tract was just in a battle with serious food poisoning. At the start of the scope everything was fine. His throat and esophagus all seemed normal and had no damage. When we got to the stomach, however, it became plainly apparent what the issue was.

The man had something growing in his stomach. It appeared as a ball of wriggling black tendrils that thrashed and lashed out at his stomach lining. None of us had ever seen this before and one other nurse fainted at the very sight of it. There were many lesions on the stomach lining like the ball of moving tendrils was trying to eat its way out of the stomach.

We started to push the camera closer to the mass and realized what we thought was one thing, was in fact, a ball of parasitic worm-like creatures. One of the slimy little beasts launched out from the mass and attacked the camera itself. The last image we saw was the creature’s circular mouth filled with razor-sharp teeth as it attacked the camera. We immediately called in the surgical team to try and remove the creatures. Later that night, one of the operating room nurses came back to tell me about the surgery.

She said that as they were opening up the man’s abdomen, the creatures started to react. As they got closer, the creatures started to attempt to leave the man’s stomach. Some tried to crawl back up the esophagus, while others attempted to enter the intestines. Once the OR team gained access to the man’s stomach, they grabbed one of the creatures with a pair of forceps and every one of the other creatures reacted as if they could sense what the one the doctor had grabbed was feeling. They apparently became even more violent and lashed out at anything that came anywhere near them. Eventually the team was able to extract all of the creatures and place them in a container. They apparently re-formed the ball and have been trying to eat their way out of the glass container ever since. I’m not sure how long it’s going to take for someone to come get them, but they have already damaged the container.

After that, a gruff, pot-bellied man in his 50s came in with his wrist wrapped in a big ice bag. The man claimed that he fell while chasing someone in a parking lot and thought he had broken his wrist. I tried to ask more questions to get information, but the man was hesitant to elaborate much.

“So, what happened, sir?” I asked.

“I fell,” he said flatly.

“Yes, but doing what?”

“Chasing that little bastard. I had tried to catch him before, but he keeps getting away.”

I was getting annoyed at the short, unhelpful answers when I asked, “Okay, who were you chasing and why were you chasing them?”

The man just paused for a minute as he looked up at me. “Richard.”

“Okay, but why were you chasing him?”

“It’s a long story.”

This type of question and answer continued for another 15 minutes, and truthfully, I didn’t get much more information. The man’s responses came with a strange combination of pride and embarrassment, so I decided to just leave it alone. Eventually, we took X-rays that confirmed he had fractured his wrist. He would need a cast and some pain medication but otherwise would be fine. When I handed the man his discharge paperwork, I wished him a speedy recovery. The man just grumbled something about Richard not getting away with it next time and walked out.

Speaking of people injuring themselves while running from something, we had another man come in last night with a similar story. His injuries were considerably worse, though. The man had two broken legs, a broken arm, and multiple bruises and cuts along his body.

The man was brought into the emergency room after claiming that “something” had been chasing him around his house. He said that while running away, he fell down some stairs. The issue was, the man claimed he lived in a one-story house. Part of me assumed the man was talking about the front porch stairs, but I couldn’t see how he could be this injured after a fall of only a foot or two. That’s when the man informed me that he didn’t fall outside. He said he was inside the house when it happened and that he fell down the stairs continuously for over 20 minutes.

After hearing this, I assumed the man had hit his head and was having issues with his recall. After all, there is no such thing as endless stairs. That’s when I began to ask more questions about who he was running from.

“Okay, sir. You said you were being chased. What were you being chased by?” I asked.

The man hesitated. I could see that whatever it was was an uncomfortable thing to talk about. “Just. Something,” he said.

“Can you give me more information than that? Like what it looked like? Was it an animal?”

“No. It was a figure. It doesn’t have a face. Just a black figure.”

“Do you know who it is?”

“Yes.”

“What is their name? I can have the police go to your house and make sure it’s safe.”

“No, no. I can’t. If I say his name, he’ll find me.”

I paused when the man said this and then began to check his pupils. I could tell the man was genuinely scared, but it was hard to tell how much of this was true, and how much of this was from an injury. He was insistent that he couldn’t tell me anymore though. The doctor decided to get a CT scan done to rule out any skull fractures and that came back normal. We gave the man some medicine to sedate him and let him sleep. After a few hours had gone by, the man began screaming at the top of his lungs. Chris and I shot up out of our seats and took off down the hall towards the man’s room. As we came around the corner, every light in the hallway suddenly went out.

Aside from the red glow of the emergency lighting, it was the darkest I had ever seen that hallway. After a couple of seconds, the man’s screaming stopped. As Chris and I continued towards his room, there was a brief moment when both of us saw a tall shadowy figure leaving the man’s room that disappeared in the blink of an eye. When we got to the room, the man was in shock and trying to climb out of bed.

He kept yelling, “He found me. He found me.”

It took a long time for the two of us to get the man calmed back down. His heart rate was through the roof, and it looked like he had started to claw and rip at his chest. We had a guard posted outside of the man’s room the rest of the night, but no one claimed to see anything else. When I came in to work tonight, the nurse claimed the man had an episode during the day, and his heart rate jumped over 200 beats per minute before it failed and he unfortunately passed away.

Another interesting pair of patients came in a couple of nights ago. A husband and wife, both in their late 50s, walked into the ER with their hands glued together. Yes, literally glued together. Apparently, the husband had been trying to repair a broken kitchen cabinet with superglue when the incident occurred. The problem was, neither of them could agree on how it happened.

“She grabbed my hand while I was working,” the husband insisted.

“Like hell I did! You grabbed mine with glue all over your fingers!” his wife snapped.

“Sir, ma’am, it doesn’t really matter how it happened. We just need to get you separated,” I interrupted.

The wife sighed. “We’ve been married thirty-two years, and this is the longest he’s held my hand in twenty.”

“And I’m already regretting it,” the husband muttered.

After a little work, we managed to separate their hands without causing any damage. I figured that would be the end of their argument, but apparently, I was wrong.

As they walked out, I heard the wife say, “Next time, I'm calling someone who actually knows how to fix things.”

“Next time, you can fix the damn thing yourself,” he replied.

I couldn't help but laugh. Thirty-two years of marriage, and apparently, neither of them had learned when to stop arguing.

That’s when Chris walked in with takeout bags in each hand. Since he had broken the vending machine earlier, he offered to go grab us some food. When he asked what I wanted, I told him just to grab whatever. At the time I was busy with the bickering couple and just wanted him to get something quick. Imagine my surprise when I opened the bag to find that Chris had gotten…sushi. I’m not sure if the police department would book me for assaulting someone over a California Roll, but I might have to roll the dice on this one. I think, after years of working together, I’m going to have to kill Chris.

My car didn't start so i went over to the hood to maybe check the battery. i open the hood, everything seemed fine but the engine. It moved. It wasn't running, more like it adjusted itself like people when laying in bed. I closed the hood and tried starting the car. It started before the starter even made a noise.

After that i never felt alone in my car. Not in a scary way more like a friend was sitting beside me.

Never selling it.

Car is Skoda Octavia II (2008) my grandfather said it was mine after i drove it for the first time.

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."

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.

So to preface this, you should know that I leave for work between 3:30 and 4:30 in the morning.
For the past week there has been a skeleton on the corner that, up until this point, I’ve just assumed was a scarily well placed Halloween decoration.
Every morning it seems to appear out of the corner of my eye as I take the turn, almost running me off the road.

I already found this kind of odd and honestly a little terrifying. My street is well lit and has good visibility. I can see the corner from my driveway, and yet I never notice the skeleton until I’m right up on it.
It’s nearly always in a different pose.
As of yesterday morning, it was pointing in the direction of my house.
I don’t really know what else to assume it was pointing at.

There’s not much else behind me when I take that turn. Still, I really didn’t think much of it. It’s Halloween. It’s just a scary, really well placed decoration. A prop.
That is until yesterday evening.
I passed the corner on my way home and noticed it wasn’t there.

That alone isn’t all that strange. Maybe whoever owns it only puts it out at night or really early in the morning.
What was more odd was when I started asking around.
I mentioned it to my mum. I live at home, and she gets up between 5:30 and 6 every morning.
She had no idea what I was talking about.

She said she’s never seen a skeleton on the corner.
I could still explain that away. Maybe the neighbors get up around 5 and bring it inside.
Then I asked my dad.
He hasn’t seen it either.
My dad leaves for work at around 3 AM.
Earlier than I do.
This morning when I left for work, I was actually looking for it.

It wasn’t on the corner.
I almost felt relieved.
Then as I made the turn I glanced back down the street toward my house.
I could have sworn it was standing in my yard.
I didn’t stop to check.

Maybe I’m being paranoid. Maybe somebody in the neighborhood is messing with me and I’m just the only one noticing it.
I don’t know.
I just find the whole thing incredibly unusual.
Maybe it’s a prank?

Im high, can't write for a damn, but fuck it, this scared the shit out of me. My brain to this day smolders from the fires sparked by the trauma I acquired from the incident.

A friend and I used to run roughshod over the town in which we lived,each in the full bloom ofsr adolescence. Yet, there was this building standing atop a hill and back beyond the pines a hit. This carcass of a building is a rotting, half-sunken, broken, bashed, impaled, and partially burned; some ancient apartment complex.

Of course, in a small.town, there were rumors, of shadows, of faces appearing in windows, even an incredible story of a man, psychotic and living at home, but hated by all; a man,.moreover, with a long rapsheet. Child abuse in various forms, and at the end of this very short story, you'll see the man (who WE believe to be) himself in all the glory of his thatched flesh.

We went into the building at 9 on a weekend night and on our way through tried to be quiet, but the floors were so warped and so we're the walls that one always face the danger of falling through or into a wall

All the time, we pursued the hallways, pipes banged, critters screeched, scratched, and scurried about, darting here and there.

We reached the second floor, and halfway down, Jon swiped the flashlight across a doorway and spun around his heel instantly and began pushing me to go... Keep going...

"RUN"

Crashing through the door we both ran until our legs were aflame, and, reaching the hill overlooking Hoss's, tumbled down it, scraped and cut and still getting up to run, we kept going until.we found ourselves near a crowd of.laughing patrons

Just then.I recalled what Jon said to me that last moment I saw his back: "Don't look at him."

We turned and set our sight atop the hill. In a half-shaded, dimly illuminated area stood a mountain of a man, tanned and with thick patches of white hair covering his chest and a long mane of it streaming down his paunch.

For a moment, neither of us was sure he saw us or was looking at us.

He was.

He raised his arm and pointed directly at us, and then slowly nodded his head. That isn't the worst of it Moving further into the darkness, but still visible, the man dragged his finger across his throat, and then vanished.

We called police, but they swept the area and nothing.

Later on that summer, I went to a CoGos convenience store and noticed that the man standing in on of the isles reminded me.of someone...but who?

I made my way to the register, paid, and as I turned to leave, ran square into a shirt - a big blue shirt worn by a very big man - I felt like a plane plunging into the Pacific I said "sorry", but just as I was about to leave, I heard, "Excuse me, hey!"

I turned and looked into the face my heart warned.me of He said nothing but frowed and shook his head.

Then he pointed. I ran out as fast as I could.

I never saw him again. Thank the Lord I moved away in a week.

My friend claims not to have seen anyone like him.

What was he doing in there? What's more,.with whoz?

“I want to know everything about how the human body works, like I went to medical school for a decade.”

The dark clump of vapor hanging over the rusted lamp shuddered, two dimly glowing points of red glaring up at me from the haze. It didn’t take long for a railroad spike of pain to pierce my left eye. The white hot iron pushed deeper into my head. Muscles in my legs spasmed, cramped, and finally gave way beneath me as I collapsed onto the couch. 

The change in elevation brought me to eye level with the eerily stationary cloud of smoke. It’s eyes glinted with joy at the sight of me in agony. The pain subsides, leaving me with an ocean of knowledge on human anatomy in its wake. 

Finally.

Years of urgent care visits, useless “doctors” who probably got their license from the university of phoenix in a week barely looking at me and saying I’m “fine”. Sometimes an extra strength Tylenol prescription. The last time I went in they thought I was sniffing around for drugs. 
Not anymore. I can pull any knowledge to mind about human anatomy as easily as reciting my phone number. 

A laundry list of symptoms that had been weighing on my shoulders for months flew through my mind as I checked each one and its implications. 

Gradually, my body began to loosen back up from the ordeal. I rubbed idly at my left leg, where the muscle had taken longer than the rest to unclench in my seizure (?) a moment before. The cloud of vapor wavered on the table, a low hiss emanating from the lamps spout. 

No more wasting time. I knew what my symptoms meant, but I needed to be sure I was right.

“I wish that I knew exactly what was happening inside of my body.”

The cloud shivered in place, the edges of it swirling and contorting. From the deepest pit of clump of dark came a burst of red, bright enough to singe the afterimage of it’s gaze into my vision for a few seconds. I’d learned my lesson, and clamped my eyes shut, bracing for a wave of pain that didn’t come. The afterimage of those eyes glaring out at me from that void, full of joyful malice. 

Suddenly, without opening my eyes, I could see the table. My full field of view stood in stark clarity even as I felt the muscles in my face cramp from how hard I was squeezing them shut. I was staring straight through my eyelids. I caught a glimpse of my arms in the bottom of my vision.

My initial thought was that it had skinned me. Dark red muscle and sinew stood in stark contrast against the pale grey couch, veins and capillaries snaking in and around the flesh, dutifully pumping blood through my body. Mercifully, my tshirt was blocking the view of my torso. I didn’t want to think about what my lungs looked like as I began to hyperventilate, slowly reaching a hand out to touch the exposed flesh of my forearm. 

My hand stopped just above the muscle, pressing into an invisible layer of skin. The wish had let me see exactly what was going on inside my body, just as requested. The gruesome twist of the wish had been pain enough for me to endure, apparently. The eyes hung in the air a few feet in front of me, but they no longer met my gaze. Instead, they were fixed on my leg. 

Another wave of pain passed through the muscle, and this time, the pain didn’t pass. Its eyes began to shake slightly in place, the lamp’s hissing contorting into a sound more akin to a wheezing laugh than steam. Cautiously, I pulled the leg of my shorts up to inspect the area. 

The top of the femoral vein sat high on the thigh, barely visible before it tucked under the muscle. My stomach dropped, and I was thankful I couldn’t see it through the shirt.

The vein looked more like a slug than anything that should be in the human body. A massive blood clot had formed at the highest point on the leg. I could no longer see my skin, but I imagined it was probably an angry purple at this point. 

John won’t be home for another hour. I need an ambulance.

My phone was in my bedroom. I would have to get up and cross the room to get to it, a seemingly impossible task with my leg being a dead mass of TV static, not to mention risking breaking the clot free. The hissing grew louder.

Fuck it.

“I wish that I was perfectly healthy.” Please work.

The hissing stopped. The cloud stopped stirring in place, hanging with it’s original stillness. The eyes had panned back up to me, and they shone brighter than they did for either of the first two wishes. 

Seconds passed. Then a minute. Then two minutes. 

Five minutes passed with my gaze locked on the blood clot. It wasn’t going away. If anything, the problem had worsened. The pain had turned to an absence of feeling entirely, the circulation having been cut off completely. 

“Did you hear me? I wish to be in perfect health, please!”

The hissing started up again. The cloud leaked further out of the bottle, the eyes growing closer as the vapor spread towards where I sat. My leg throbbed.
“I wish I was healthy again.”

Nothing. 

How fucking specific do I need to be??

“I wish I didn’t have a blood clot in my leg anymore.”

The hissing crescendo’d, sounding like a gleeful train whistle being sounded off in the middle of my living room. The cloud burst outwards, the eyes flashing their bright crimson once more. Instantly, pins and needles accosted my leg as feeling was slowly returned back to the limb. I cast my gaze from the thing to my leg, relieved to see the vein free of it’s clot. The eyes of the entity had left mine again, this time it stared at my midsection. The eyes seemed to be following something, tracking smoothly across the surface of my t-shirt, from the bottom of my hip up towards my chest. I lifted my shirt.

The dim afternoon light shone weakly onto my intestines from the living room windows, my stomach heaving at the sight of the inside of my own body. I watched it cramp and flex in time. 

I didn’t have long to linger on the horror of my own anatomy, as I could see what it was staring at moving through my body. Blood clots should only take a few seconds to get to the lungs after they’re in your system. The mass in my body was inching it’s way painstakingly through my vein. 

As if waiting for the attention, it lurched forwards, sliding with growing speed up my torso and towards my chest cavity. The cloud on the table begins to fade back into the lamp, the hissing sound rising back to the same wheezing laugh from before. 

I could do nothing but hold my shirt up and watch as the pulpy mass of black blood squelched into my heart and slid its way through towards my lungs. The last sound I hear is the faded, wheezing laugh of the smog.

Looking back, it began with a single piece of paper posted in the campus commons.

Having made up my mind that I wouldn’t be returning in the fall (of course, my grades had sort of decided that for me), I had gone by to close out my student mailbox. I was making my way out, trying to avoid making eye contact with anyone, when two words printed on a standard piece of paper in a large, red print caught my eye: HELP WANTED.

God knows what might have happened had I simply ignored it and kept walking. Might have spared myself a whole lot of heartache. Instead, something (probably the attractive blonde girl in the red bikini smiling underneath the red text) spurred me on, and I walked over for a closer look.

”Are you Red Cross certified? Looking for a summer job? Riley Estates is now hiring lifeguards for this summer!

• Competitive pay

• Onsite lodging

• A welcoming community

Interested? Call the number below!”

I had lifeguarded the summer before and hated every minute of it. Unfortunately for me, with my future now in flux, anything was better than trying to avoid my parents and their questions about my next steps. So, rather than studying for a final I had no chance of passing, I found a quiet spot and called the number on the paper. Unfortunately (or fortunately) for me, they answered on the first ring.

“Who is this?”

“This is Luke Sullivan. I was calling about the lifeguard job posted at Salem Commons?”

“Oh- yes. You’re Red Cross certified?”

“Yes.”

“And will you require lodging?”

“Yes.”

“Sounds good. How soon can you start?”

“…tomorrow?”

“Perfect. We’ll pencil you in for orientation at 10am.”

The woman hung up.

I decided to hold off on telling my parents for the time being. After all, there’s no good way to inform the people paying for your college education that you’ve just effectively burned $30,000 at the stake.

——

I arrived at 9:45 the next morning to a guarded gate.

“Here for work?” asked the guy at the gate. Stocky, medium height. Looked about my age.

“Yep. Lifeguard training.”

I’m nearly certain he winced, because he tried to play it off like nothing had happened.

“Straight ahead. Take the first right. They should keep you busy.”

I thanked him and drove ahead. Found the pool easily according to his direction. Fortunately, the door to the clubhouse was open, with a whiteboard propped outside reading “Lifeguard Orientation” leaving no questions as to where I should go next.

The door opened into a small foyer. Locker rooms to the left - the only way through to the pool deck. Straight ahead was the guard office, with a window counter to check guests in. I noticed it had blinds for some reason. There was another larger, wraparound window on the far wall of the office, facing the pool. The main room, where orientation would be held, was off to the right.

There were four people already in there - three at a white folding table at the front, and another guy standing next to a large flat screen on the wall. Underneath the flat screen was a fireplace, with a mantle atop which rested two very old looking shotguns.

The man - Vitaly, according to the name stitched onto his Riley Estates polo shirt - handed me a packet and invited me to sit down next to the other three - a very pretty blonde girl, a lanky guy with glasses that looked like a high schooler, and a dude who looked around my age.

Vitaly stood looking at the clock for another five or so minutes, then walked over to the TV and turned it on before pressing a few buttons on his phone.

A man appeared on screen. Older, early 50s. Graying hair. Fit. He wore a navy blazer and a striped shirt.

“Hi. I’m Craft Dunn. Welcome to Riley Estates and thank you for serving our community. We are confident you'll have a fun summer if you follow a few rules.

1. All of you will take at least one overnight shift a week. Our pool has been fitted with an innovative cleaning system that runs overnight. Contact with it is fatal. You will watch the pool from the guard office and make sure no one gets in.

2. Riley Gospel Church rents our clubhouse for weekly services. Saturdays at 11pm. Whoever is on shift will let Pastor Josiah Patterson in to set up, and clean once the service is over. The church is invitation only, so please do not ask to attend."

The video ended. Vitaly turned off the TV.

"Fill out your sizing and banking information. You start this afternoon."

I raised my hand.

"Lodging is the guest house across the street," he said, before I could ask. "The HOA has graciously waived rent. Food is your responsibility."

He left to get our uniforms, and the rest of us introduced ourselves. Cody was a rising sophomore at Boston College. Viktoria, mid-twenties, worked for the same pool company in Macedonia as Vitaly. Ricky was a rising junior who'd repeated a year; his parents had effectively kicked him out for the summer.

I had a feeling we'd get along just fine.

______

After getting our uniforms - white shirt, red trunks, and red hoodies for us guys and a red two-piece for Viktoria (it occurred to me that she looked very similar to the girl on the flyer) - we collectively made our way across the street to the house we would be staying at for the summer.

Vitaly had made it clear that, due to employee dress codes, any non-provided clothing was strictly off limits, with a 3-strike rule for offenders.

Cody, who had guarded last summer, waited until Vitaly was out of earshot.

"A guard got his third strike last year. Craft took one of those antique shotguns off the mantle and walked him into the woods out back. I showed up right as it happened. He said he'd pay my tuition at BC if I kept quiet."

He glanced around as he said it. I assumed he was joking. Viktoria, who didn't, punched him in the arm.

"Don't say shit like that, Cody! He seemed like such, how you say, a grandpa!"

He shrugged and winked at me. "Just telling the truth." I stifled a snort.

Ricky chimed in.

“What’s the deal with the deep end? It’s hella hazy. Like you can’t even see the bottom.”

Cody snapped back at him, surprising us all.

“How would I know? I’m not the one cleaning it every day.”

I think Ricky could sense something like incredulity in his tone, like he couldn’t believe Ricky could ask him such a stupid question, because he didn’t press it any further.

But it wasn't annoyance in Cody's voice, it was defensiveness. I was almost sure of it.

He'd guarded here last summer. What did he know?

_______

We spent the afternoon moving in, then an hour on Ricky's Switch, where Viktoria, who swore she'd never played Mario Kart, destroyed all three of us.

We arrived 10 minutes before the pool opened to an annoyed Vitaly. While the pool did actually clean itself (how this happened was never elaborated upon, and when we asked him how, he grew tight-lipped and refused to go any further), we needed to arrive no later than 15 minutes prior to the pool opening in order to set everything up.

After clocking in, we entered the pool deck for the first time. There were only two guard chairs, so we’d have more than enough time to relax and reset between shifts. Vitaly had already started setting up the chairs and umbrellas (which, as he had already remarked several times, he did not like doing), so the pool was already halfway done. He assigned us different areas of the pool to take care of.

Perhaps it was just my luck that I was told to take care of the deep end.

____

Ricky’s “Hazy” didn’t do it justice.

It almost looked like it was filled with static. Like something was off about it. The depth marking next to the pool said 5 feet, and yet it looked as though it quite literally didn’t have a bottom.

When a hand slapped my back, nearly startling me out of my skin, I realized I had been staring at the deep end for the better part of five minutes. Or had it been holding me? Looking back, I’m not 100% sure.

“Jesus, man!” I let out a startled laugh. “I could’ve fallen in!”

“Shit.. sorry bro.” Ricky grinned sheepishly. “You were just…staring at the pool. I wasn’t sure if I should say something.”

“Nah…you were good. But you’re right…it’s super foggy. Like, hasn’t been cleaned in weeks.”

“For real. Must be some super high-tech shit if it’s gonna be cleaned when this place opens in…a minute. *Shit*.”

Fortunately, there were only a couple chairs in that section, so we finished relatively quickly.

The first shift was, by all means, uneventful. A couple runners. But, overall, pretty boring. It had been a long day, though, and we were all pretty tired. So, we got a rather unwelcome surprise when Vitaly announced at the end of the night that we would be drawing straws for the night watch on the first shift (he had some administrative matters to take care of and unfortunately couldn’t do it).

I volunteered to go first, thinking it would be the best way to maximize my odds.

I pulled a straw. Prayed it would keep going. It didn’t, and as the others sighed with relief, Vitaly smiled awkwardly and took the cup from me.

“Thank you, Luke.”

“…yup.”

I watched the others pack their things and walked with them to the gate to see them off.

“Sorry, bud.” said Cody, a guilty look on his face.

I shrugged. “Nothing you could do about it. Just shit luck on my end.”

He nodded.

Ricky slapped me on the back. “Promise we won’t get down to too much fun without you.”

“Mhm.”

Viktoria hugged me. It lasted a second longer than a thank-you hug needed to, or maybe I just wanted it to.

“Thanks for taking one for the team, Luke.”

I followed Vitaly to the gate, where he slipped me a gold credit card.

“Didn’t want the others to see this… but since you’re taking the first overnight, I wanted to give this to you as a thanks. Anything you want tonight, my treat.”

I looked at him, slightly confused. “Shouldn’t this be an easy shift? Why is everyone acting like I’m making a huge sacrifice?”

“…well, it should be an easy shift. It’s just the first overnight of the summer, and I know you’re tired, and I feel bad that I can’t be here to do it myself. So, snacks and drinks tonight on me.”

I thanked him and watched him get in his car. Wandered into the guard office. Plugged my phone in. Settled down for the long night ahead of me.

___________

An hour later, I was looking through restaurants in the area for delivery options when there was a knock on the door of the clubhouse. I walked over to open it, assuming it would be Vitaly in need of something.

It wasn’t Vitaly.

A man in a suit stood there with a bag in hand. Close cropped black hair. Glasses. Looked like an accountant that was just dropping by for some laps after work. Nothing unusual.

“Hi, sir. We closed for the night about an hour ago. So sorry.”

“Oh, I’m not here to use the pool.” He smiled politely and stuck out his hand. “Josiah Patterson. Pastor of Riley Gospel Church. I’m here to prepare for tonight’s service.”

“It’s Monday, though. You meet on Saturdays, right.?”

“Oh, yes. I’ve been coming down from an illness, so we had to change schedules this week. Were you all not informed?”

“…No.”

“Well, I’m most terribly sorry to hear that, and I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again. Now... if you’ll excuse me, I just need to go prepare the clubhouse for our service tonight. I would absolutely love to invite you to join us - the Good Shepherd is always accepting new members to his flock - but due to…extenuating circumstances we unfortunately cannot accept any new members at this time.”

I nodded understandingly. He was so polite I didn’t have the heart to tell him I was a cradle Catholic to my core and hadn’t been to church since before the pandemic.

“If you wouldn’t mind…please leave the front door open. We have it arranged with the HOA. My parishioners will just let themselves in. I promise we won’t be a bother.”

“Absolutely.”

"Oh, and one last thing. If you wouldn't mind keeping those front blinds shut? Some of my parishioners are rather...shy."

A little... odd? But I wasn't in a position to question things. "Of course."

“Thank you so much. Have a pleasant evening.”

I propped the door open. Walked back into the office, shut the door, and as asked, the blinds, and settled on a burrito from Abuela’s Cantina, a Tex-Mex joint down the road.

__________

It was about 30 minutes later when I realized I hadn’t heard a peep from Patterson or any of his supposed parishioners. No footsteps to signify arrivals. No preaching. No singing.

It was then that I realized as well that the blinds on the pool had been drawn the entire time. Vitaly must have closed them against the afternoon sun. I somehow hadn't noticed and had spent an hour and a half doomscrolling instead of watching the pool.

I got up to open the blinds. That was when the chanting started - not from the next room, like Patterson had said.

It was outside, right in front of me. By the pool.

Loud, guttural chanting that, as it went on, made me realize that it was in a language I had never heard before. The hair on my arms started to stand up. I had attended a service at an evangelical church for a religion class in the fall, so I had a vague understanding of what speaking in tongues sounded like, and it wasn’t that either. I also knew, just knew, that I wasn’t being duped.

Whatever was going on was real, and, as it continued, I became more and more certain it had no connection to any of the thousand existing sects of Christianity I was aware of.

My hand was on the cord, about to start raising the blinds, when the keening started, freezing me in place. It was muffled, like someone was moaning in anguish. I knew I needed to pull the cord and open the blinds, to make sure no one got in, but the noise was so...awful I couldn't make myself do it.

I had this gut instinct that as soon as I looked, I would find whoever was participating in whatever what was going on outside standing at the poolside window, staring blankly at me, as though they had been standing there the entire time.

My thoughts were interrupted by a sudden, heavy splash. The keening stopped, but the chanting continued, and I remembered what Craft had said earlier. “Contact with the pool is fatal.”

So, instead I just sat there. Frozen. Watching the clock tick as I wondered what, exactly, was going on outside? And what had been tossed in the pool?

(Part 1)

Update: I stayed awake but it didn't matter.

I said I'd stay awake and I meant it. Coffee at 11, at 1, at 2:30. Three alarms set for 3:00, 3:05, 3:10, all different sounds. I sat on the couch facing the front door with my keys in my hand, because I had this idea that if I held the keys she couldn't take them.

At 2:47 I was awake. I checked the time and thought, twenty-five minutes, I can do twenty-five minutes.

Then it was 5:04 and I was in bed. Covers pulled up. All three alarms dismissed. My phone was on the nightstand, plugged in, which I never do. My coat was on its hook and the hem was wet. I don't remember getting up. I don't remember any of it. It's not grogginess, it's just gone, like someone cut those hours out and pressed the edges together.

The camera had the clips. 03:12:33, door opens, coat, key, gate, left. 05:01:48, back up the walkway, key, deadbolt, knob. Same as every night.

But this time I watched differently. I wasn't looking at her face, I was looking at her hands. They're empty. Every clip, all seven nights, her hands are empty. She's not carrying anything. She's never carrying anything.

I went to the bridge yesterday afternoon. I told myself I was just going to look at the mud, confirm what I already knew. The white caliche was on my shoes within ten steps of the embankment, chalky and pale, exactly like what's been on my coat.

Under the bridge, where the concrete meets the dirt, there's a trench. Shallow, maybe six feet long, the mud piled neatly to one side. Like whoever's digging plans to come back and finish the job.

In the trench there was my lamp. The brass desk lamp with the green shade, the one stolen off my step three weeks ago. Clean. No rain on it. Set down carefully, like someone carried it there with both hands and placed it.

I stood there a long time. Here's what I kept coming back to: her hands are always empty in the footage. She's never holding a shovel. She's never carrying the lamp. So she didn't dig that trench, and she didn't put the lamp there.

Something else did. Something that wanted me to find it.

I've been thinking about the Sunday clip, the one where she looked into the camera and mouthed something. I said I couldn't tell what she was saying. That wasn't true. I knew the first time I slowed it down and I didn't want to write it.

She said my full name. Not the name I go by. My birth certificate name, three syllables, the one nobody's called me since I was a kid.

And here's the thing. It wasn't her mouth. I know how I look when I talk, I've seen myself on video calls a thousand times. The way the mouth moved, slow and deliberate, like sounding out something unfamiliar. That wasn't me trying to say my name. That was something wearing my face, saying my name the way you'd say the name of someone you've been waiting for.

When I was nine I walked out of the house at night and my mother found me two streets over at the edge of the ravine, barefoot. She told me I was sleepwalking. She told me the scar on my arm was from an accident. She never said what kind of accident. She put up a fence and we never talked about it again.

I called her yesterday. I asked what really happened that night. She went quiet for a long time and then she said, "You were awake, but you weren't you." She said I looked right at her and didn't know her. She said she grabbed my arm and I fought her, and that's where the scar came from, her nails. She said she's been afraid every day since that if she ever told me the truth, it would hear its name and come back.

I've lived by that freight line for six years. I've always known what time the 3:12 came through, in my body, before I ever saw a clip. The train goes over the bridge and the whole ground trembles. I think that's when it wakes up. I think that's when it calls.

The trench is six feet long. It's almost finished.

Tonight I'm going to follow her. I'm not setting alarms. If she gets up, I'm going with her. I'll update when I can.

My therapist keeps telling me I need to go outside more, to reconnect with the things I used to enjoy. As a kid, I practically lived in the woods climbing trees, making forts, running trails until the sun went down. But somewhere around high school, I lost that part of myself. These days I feel more disconnected than ever, trapped in my own head. She said nature could help, that walking among trees might quiet the noise inside me. So here I am, giving it a try. I live with my roommate, Mike, and luckily our place sits right by a massive forest. There’s a trail that winds deep into it, and I figured it might be a good place to start these so-called “therapy nature walks.”

Day 1

I’ve officially started exploring the woods behind my house. My therapist has been pushing me to spend more time outdoors, to “connect with nature,” so I figured I’d start small with the forest that’s practically in my backyard basically . I also decided to blog about it. Supposedly, if this gets popular enough, I might even make a little money. Heh, who knows.

Anyway, today was more about easing into things. I didn’t go far, just wandered enough to look around. I stumbled across some mushrooms I think they’re called jack-o’-lantern mushrooms, but honestly, I’m not an expert. I also spotted a deer and a fawn. Pretty sure it’s the same pair I’ve seen wandering around the front yard recently.

Of course, it wasn’t all peaceful. The bugs were everywhere. I’ll be real with you. I can't stand them. Their twitchy little legs, the clusters of eyes, the way they crawl over everything. Gross. Just gross.

So yeah, that was pretty much it for today. Nothing too exciting, but it’s a start. I’ll be back out here tomorrow.

Day 2

Hello again. Right now, I’m on my way to a creek my older neighbor, Bob, told me about. Apparently, it’s just up the hill, a small one, nothing dramatic. Supposedly, it’s quiet, relaxing, and perfect for calming anxiety.Bob said he’d go there after he lost his daughter to clear his mind. Since that’s the whole point of me being out here, I figured I’d check it out.

I think I’m getting close. There are critters moving around near the waterline. Wait there’s even a deer in there? I didn’t know deer could swim. Fun fact, I guess. Maybe this is turning into some kind of wildlife blog. Ha.

Okay, I see it now. There’s a bush blocking the way, but I think I can yeah, I found a path through. Alright, so I’ve made it to the creek. But that “swimming deer” I thought I saw? It wasn’t swimming. It was just the head. The head of a deer floating in the water.

The creek isn’t calm and sparkling like I imagined. The water is red. Blood. That’s… unsettling. Suddenly I’m hoping there aren’t any bears around. I do not need that kind of stress.

There’s a trail leading away from here, so I think I’ll follow that instead. Funny thing is, I've heard rumors about this very trail. People stopped using it after a girl went missing nearby aka Bobs daughter. Last seen heading this way during a stormy night. Kind of her own fault, right? Wandering out in weather like that. Still, the thought of it makes the hairs on my arms stand up.

Anyway, back to the trail. It winds through the forest hills and goes deep into the woods. I doubt I’ll go that far today, but maybe tomorrow. Assuming tomorrow comes, of course. The idea of running into a bear keeps creeping into my mind. I know I shouldn’t dwell on it, but hey it’s always a possibility.

So far, all I’ve found are more mushrooms and strange plants I can’t identify. If anything interesting pops up, I’ll let you know. Otherwise, I’ll sign off for now. Same time tomorrow? Heh. Yeah.

Day 3

Alright, Day 3. This time I’m not alone. My roommate came along, and he brought his dog, Pickle. He’s a St. Bernard-Husky mix, full of energy, chasing after everything that moves. Honestly, that probably means no animal sightings today.

I told my roommate about the deer head I found yesterday. His reaction was weirdly casual. He said he’s never heard of a bear leaving just the head behind, so he figures it was probably hunters. Makes more sense than a picky bear, I guess.

We made it farther along the trail than I did yesterday. Beyond where I turned back, it’s just endless forest. Trees, grass, mud, the usual. Miles and miles of it. But it feels less heavy having someone to talk to. Not just my own thoughts rattling around in my head.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering how I’m “writing” while hiking it’s speech-to-text. That’s why the tone sometimes comes off weird. I usually clean it up before posting. Sometimes it even records conversations, like this one between me and my roommate:

(Roommate): “The girl who went missing? She actually lived a house down from us. Her family still does.”

(Me): “Wait, really? I didn’t know she was that close.”

(Roommate): “Yeah. She was super social, always exploring these woods. Came back with stories about what she found abandoned buildings, strange trees, animal corpses. You name it. Once she got started, she wouldn’t stop. I think her disappearance is tied to her adventures. Probably found something she wasn’t supposed to.”

(Me): “Hold up, you mean there’s stuff out here? More than just trees? Buildings? Cars? Man, I don’t wanna end up like her… but honestly, finding cool stuff could be fun. And distracting.”

(Roommate): “Yeah, there’s all kinds of things. Old cars, caves, even buildings. Not common, but they’re out here. She was the only one who really knew where though.”

So yeah, apparently this forest is hiding way more than I realized. Once I know the safer, familiar parts better, I might start exploring deeper. Not alone though. And definitely not in storms. I’m not repeating her mistakes. Still, I wish I could’ve talked to her. She probably saw things no one else ever has. But let’s be real, she's most likely dead. No body was ever found, but no one looked very hard either.

Anyway, today took a turn. We’d made it maybe a fifth of the way along the trail when a man suddenly came running toward us. At first, I thought he was just a jogger. But the closer he got, the stranger he seemed. He had a heavy southern accent which was weird, since we don’t even live in the South. And he kept muttering frantically:

“You best get going. Back that way ain’t no good. Ain’t no good, not at all. Get going. You ain’t welcome there. Me neither, okay?”

The words tumbled out like he was being chased. He wasn’t dressed like a hiker either. Wore a work vest and jeans, moving fast, eyes darting everywhere. Maybe drugs? Maybe something else. Whatever it was, we weren’t sticking around to find out. We turned back. I didn’t ask him what he meant about “not being welcome,” and honestly? I don’t think I want to know.

Day 5

After yesterday’s bizarre encounter, I decided to try a different part of the forest. This time, I brought Pickle with me again. He’s huge part St. Bernard, part Husky and honestly, his size alone makes me feel safer. No one’s messing with me while he’s around.

I chose a more local area today, one with joggers and hikers. There are even three small cabins scattered nearby. Feels more lived-in, less remote. Still, I couldn’t shake the memory of that man from yesterday. Who was he? Why was he running?

The place was crowded practically the whole town seemed to be out. Controlling Pickle in a crowd is no easy task. He tugged, lunged, tried to jump on kids. After wrestling with him for a while, I decided to move farther out. Not too deep into the woods, but away from the bustle. Every spot I tried before was packed. One even had children playing, and Pickle nearly joined them. Total chaos.

So here I am again, back on the forest trail, despite swearing I wouldn’t. I’m not planning to go deep. Just far enough for some quiet. And honestly? The walk’s been… peaceful. I was starting to relax when

(Editing me here. The voice-to-text cut out at the worst moment.)

The last thing it picked up was me yelling: “Oh my God, I dropped the leash! Pickle! Pickle, come back!” He tugged hard enough to rip it right out of my hands. Before I could react, he was gone. I shouted his name, but he didn’t come back. Panic sank in. My roommate is going to kill me if I don’t find him.

Now I have no choice. I have to go after him.

Should I call my roommate for help and get screamed at? Or do I try to find Pickle alone? It’s already late. I think… I have to call him.

After the Call

So here’s what happened next. I called Mike. The second he met up with me, he let me have it.

“What the hell, dude!? You just let him run off? How could you let this happen? This is ridiculous. Which way did he go? You’re so weak you can’t even hold down a dog? He’s out here in this massive forest and you just let him disappear? You thought taking him to the busiest part of the park, knowing damn well you can’t control him, was a good idea? Do you realize how stupid that is? That’s like my child out here, and he could get hurt!”

I stammered, “I’m so sorry, Mike. I didn’t know he was that bad on a leash. I honestly thought I could handle him. I just wanted to bring him along, especially after what happened yesterday, you know—”

Mike cut me off immediately. “Yeah, yesterday. Whatever freaked that grown man out could be after my dog right now, thanks to you! You put him in this situation!”

Something in me snapped. I yelled back, “Well maybe your dog should be trained better! I chased after him, called his name, and he didn’t even look back. That’s not just on me I didn’t do this on purpose!”

He froze, then sighed. “Fine. You didn’t do it on purpose. But damn, man, you still let him run out here. I’m scared. I don’t know what’s in these woods.”

His voice softened.

I told him, “Pickle’s a big dog. He’ll probably be fine until we find him.”That ended the argument. We walked the trail for hours, calling for Pickle. No response. We even contacted the local wildlife patrol, but they shrugged us off. Said they couldn’t go past the fourth section of the trail. Totally useless.

By now, it was completely dark.

8:43 PM Recording

Okay, it’s 8:43 PM and still no sign of Pickle. For the record, Pickle’s a dumb name, but this is serious. He could be dead, for all I know.

I split off from Mike because he was sick of me “narrating.” But you never know what might happen better to document.

Oh my God. I just heard yelping. It sounds like Pickle. I think it’s him. “Pickle!” I’m running now. The sound’s getting louder. He’s nearby.

Wait… it’s coming from inside a building.

My flashlight’s crap, but I can see enough to tell it’s big. Covered in plants. No graffiti, though. Strange. It looks abandoned.

Pickle’s cries are echoing from inside.

But then what the hell. A voice. A deep, female voice, distant but clear:

“No. Quiet.”

Please tell me this thing recorded that.

I froze. My whole body wanted to run. I love dogs, but Pickle isn’t worth dying for. Not over this. I’m not telling Mike what I just heard. He’d risk his life for that dog. Not me.

I’ll tell him in the morning. Hopefully by then, I’ll figure out how to explain this without sounding insane.

I’m leaving now. If I head downhill, I’ll eventually hit the trail.

Next Morning

Early morning update. I told Mike I “might” have heard Pickle crying farther up the trail. I also mentioned the building not the voice. Mike lit up immediately: “Okay, great. You’re showing me where you heard it.”

So now I’m limping along beside him. My legs ache from all the running yesterday, but I don’t have a choice.

We’ve made it about two sections into the trail. For context, I think there are five total. I told him the cries were closer to the third section. He asked what else I saw, and I caved. I mentioned the voice.

“What do you mean, voice?” he demanded.

I tried to play it down. “I just… when I heard the cries, I also thought I heard someone. A faint voice outside the building. Not sure, it was dark.”

Mike exploded. “And you’re just now telling me this? What if someone took him!?”

I stuttered, “Well, uh… maybe it’s good there’s a voice. Maybe it’s just a squatter keeping him safe.”

Mike buried his face in his hands, shaking, like he was about to break down. Then he started screaming Pickle’s name and ran off.

Now I’m alone.

Later That Morning

“Mike! Mike!” No answer. He can’t have gotten that far ahead. He’s not a runner. I’ve been jogging, and I still can’t find him.

Wait. The building. It’s here. The same one.

I’m going in.

Inside the Building

Okay. My phone died earlier, so this part is from memory.

I shouted for Mike and Pickle, but got nothing. Then, a loud thud. Followed by a muffled voice. Female. Broken English. I didn’t catch all of it, but it chilled me.

I crept deeper, keeping low. The place is an abandoned lab or maybe a hospital. Rusted cages lined the walls. Some held skeletons, mostly animals, though a few were… harder to identify. Broken bottles and glass littered the ground, labels faded but still faintly scientific. Plants forced their way through cracked tiles. Bugs swarmed over everything.

I found a cage with a nest built inside. And then I heard it Pickle’s yelp, faint but close.

I followed the sound into a room that reeked so strongly it made me vomit. Piles of bones. Rotting corpses. Animal heads. Some were intact torsos, ripped open like something had fed on the hearts.

And one corpse was human.

A girl. Long strands of brown hair clung to the decomposing skull. Most of the body was gone, but there was enough left to see what she was. My stomach turned. The missing girl. It had to be her.

Then I heard it again the voice. And Pickle’s whine.

I ducked behind a broken counter.

That’s when she walked in.

An impossibly tall figure, hunched but still towering. At least eight feet. She was holding Pickle by the neck like a toy.

She saw me.

She stared.

I thought I was going to die.

Then she threw Pickle to the ground. He yelped, scrambled, and bolted toward me. I didn’t think I just ran. Pickle ran with me.

We sprinted until I crashed into someone.

Mike.

He grabbed me, saw the terror on my face, and without a word, we both ran. Ran until our lungs burned and our legs gave out.

We collapsed on the grass, barely making it out of the forest. Pickle lay beside Mike, dirty, covered in spider webs, limping from an injured leg.

When I caught my breath, I told Mike everything I saw the corpse, the giant girl. He just stared at me like I’d lost my mind.But I know what I saw. The Following Days We haven’t gone back since. I haven’t even stepped near the forest. But it’s gnawing at me. I have to know if what I saw was real.

Everyone I’ve told thinks I’m crazy. Delusional. But I can’t let it go.

I’m going back today. Mike insists on coming probably to prove I’m nuts.

We’re packing this time: bear repellent, rope, first aid, water, ice packs, flashlights, even a few weapons.

If the building is real and if she is real then this time, I’ll have proof.

We left before sunrise, backpacks heavy with gear rope, flashlights, knives, first aid, even a rusty hammer Mike insisted on bringing. Without Pickle trotting along, the silence between us felt sharper.

The hike

The forest swallowed us whole. For six hours we walked, our boots crunching dirt and dead leaves, but no birds sang, no bugs buzzed. Not even the wind moved the branches. It was as if the woods themselves were holding their breath, waiting.

By the fifth hour, sweat glued my shirt to my back. Mike’s breathing grew loud and ragged, his broad shoulders heaving under the straps of his pack. He didn’t say a word, but the tight grip he kept on his flashlight told me everything.

When the building came into view, my stomach sank. The first time I saw it, it looked like the forest was swallowing it vines over the doorway, plants covering the walls. But now, the doorway was bare. The vines had been ripped down, shredded, like someone or something had torn them away to make the entrance clear.

Mike muttered, “That’s… not how we left it.”

I didn’t answer. My legs were shaking too hard.

Inside the Building

The air inside was damp, thick with mildew and something rotting. Every step echoed too loud on cracked tile floors. Rusted pipes hung from the ceiling like veins, and broken glass crunched under our boots.

We passed empty cages, some with bent bars, others with locks that had been forced open. Old clipboards lay scattered, the papers yellow and water-stained. Words like Subject and Trial No. 14 flashed in the beam of Mike’s light.

Neither of us spoke.

Finally, we reached the room.

The Room of Bodies

The smell hit first. Sweet rot. My throat closed up. Bones littered the ground animal skeletons mostly, but in the corner, the half-rotted remains of a human girl slumped against the wall.

Mike’s flashlight trembled as it lit her face or what was left of it. His voice cracked. “Melissa. It… it might be her.”

His eyes watered, his lips quivering, but he held the light steady. For the first time since I’d known him, Mike looked small.

I lowered my head, unable to speak.

That’s when I felt it. A touch. Light fingers brushing my hair.

Mike’s scream shattered the silence. “WHAT THE HELL IS THAT!?”

I looked up.

She was towering over me, bent forward to fit in the room. Skin stretched too tight over bone. Long, filthy hair tangled around her face. Fingers cracked and crooked, nails yellow and jagged. Her enormous eyes stared into mine, unblinking.

She tugged at my hair like a child inspecting a toy.

Her mouth opened. Dry, broken words scraped out:

“…soft.”

Her head tilted, eyes flicking between me and Mike. She reached toward him with her other hand, brushing his short hair with cracked nails.

Mike froze, trembling, tears streaming silently down his face.

The woman’s lips moved again. “…people. Not… seen… people.” Her voice was rough, like she hadn’t used it in years.

I tried to back away, but she yanked my hair tighter. Pain shot across my scalp, forcing me still.

Her stomach growled. Loud. Deep.

She whispered, “Hungry. Always… hungry.”

Her Broken Words

Mike raised his hands slowly, palms out. His voice shook. “We we’re not here to hurt you. We’re just looking—”

Her eyes widened. She repeated the word in a broken echo. “…hurt. Hurt me.” She shook her head violently, hair whipping. “Not bad. Not… monster. Just… hungry.”

Drool ran from her cracked lips. She leaned down closer, her breath hot, rancid, making me gag.

“Eat?” she whispered, tilting her head. “Need. To stay. Alive.”

Her mouth opened wider than it should, jagged teeth glistening in the light. She lowered toward me.

The Struggle

Mike snapped out of his freeze. He lunged forward, yanking her hand off my head and swinging the hammer hard into her temple.

The blow echoed through the room. She stumbled back, screeching, clutching her skull.

“NO! NO!” she wailed, voice breaking into static-like cracks. “I… not bad! Just… need…”

But her need twisted. Her eyes rolled, her jaw snapped wide, and she lunged at Mike.

He blasted her with bear spray, the mist covering her face. She shrieked, stumbling back, claws raking across the wall.

“BURNS! HURTS!” she cried, her words broken, guttural. “Not… fair! Just… hungry…”

Her voice cracked into sobs, twisted between pain and rage. “I… alone. So long… alone.”

The Escape

oWe didn’t wait. Mike grabbed my arm, shouting, “RUN!”

We bolted down the hallway, flashlights shaking wildly, footsteps pounding. Behind us, her screeches echoed, her fists smashing into walls as she staggered after us.

“COME BACK!” she cried, her words echoing down the corridor. “Don’t… leave me! Please… need… people…”

Her footsteps thundered closer. We burst through the entrance, crashing into branches and vines, running until my chest burned and my legs buckled.

When we finally stopped, the building was swallowed by the forest behind us. The only sound was our gasping breaths.

Mike collapsed to the ground, shaking his head. “She… she wasn’t even… evil. Just…” His voice broke. “She just wanted to live.”

The ID Card

I spotted something in the dirt, half-buried under leaves. I picked it up.

An old ID badge. The photo was faded, but the face was hers the same wide eyes, the same hair, before it became tangled and filthy.

Name: [2056834]. Division: Genetic Trial -Human Adaptation Project.

My chest tightened. She wasn’t born a monster.

She was made one.

A failed experiment abandoned in a crumbling lab. Left to rot. Left to starve.

And now, she lived here. Feeding on anything unlucky enough to wander in.

Her voice echoed in my head even as I stared at the card:

“Not my fault."

We gathered around the screen in silence, watching... waiting; our bellies rumbling with memories of sustenance long gone as our eyes searched desperately for one flicker of hope. We'd fed the machine, tirelessly entertaining the masses with our pain. Some laughed, some cried... others said we deserved it. None of that mattered; as long as they ate, the Ping would provide.

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