It was 11:52 PM, Tuesday night.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Thirteen,” I murmured.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There was just one room door. Room 1303.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then my reflection blinked. 

I didn’t blink.

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

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

Then I looked back at the mirror.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finally a new friend after 39 years. 

The previous one didn’t last long.

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

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

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

And then she noticed it.

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

Something saw her.

She froze.

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

Not now though.

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

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

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

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

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

She had to know.

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

She had to know.

She desperately wished otherwise, but her head kept turning.

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

And she saw nothing.

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

Nothing.

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

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

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

Nothing was watching her.

“Is… anyone there?”

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

Then she blinked.

And It was gone.

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

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

At the first drill I counted forty-three.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I asked the guard to rewind.

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

Me.

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

"That's you," the guard said.

"I was downstairs doing the headcount."

He watched the footage again.

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

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

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

Behind her, the fire alarm started ringing.

"Not today," I said.

There was a pause.

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

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

Priya laughed again.

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

The voice moved closer to the phone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Unicorn! Unicorn!”

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

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

“Katie wanna unicorn!”

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

“Katie wanna real unicorn!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Everything stopped; silence overtook the table. 

“Alex!!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Alex, what’s going on with you?”

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

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

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

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

“Like you did when dad left?”

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

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

“You wouldn’t understand.”

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

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

“Alex…”

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

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

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

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

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

“Mermaid! Mermaid!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was a hot, still day.

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

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

I walked slowly towards the car.

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

A man was inside.

He was reclined on the leather driver's seat.

The seat was red.

The whole inside of the car was red.

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

He opened his eyes.

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

I hadn't screamed.

I stood.

A cloud had passed between me and the sun.

My throat was dry.

I tasted blood.

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

My mother was in the kitchen.

She was drinking tea.

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

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

My mother opened her mouth to speak.

My father walked in.

My mother closed her mouth.

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

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

“Will he—” I asked.

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

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

“Asked whom?”

I hadn't meant to say it like that.

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

I showered.

I put on dry clothes.

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

My parents drank red wine.

I drank milk.

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

The sun went down.

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

I watched it instead of going to sleep.

I couldn't sleep.

I had a fear of being dreamed.

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

The driver's side door opened.

It was one in the morning.

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

The hour felt raw.

He was gone, but I kept watching.

The car was still as a coffin.

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

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

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

The child was younger than me.

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

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

There was stillness.

It was dawn.

The stillness was fake like plastic plants.

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

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

I wasn't hungry.

I ate.

Two police officers came by that afternoon.

They were very friendly.

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

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

My mother petted my hair.

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

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

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

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

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

This guy was nervous nervous.

And then it hit me.

He was one of them.

His nerves suddenly made a lot of sense.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Riona drowned in her own lung fluid.

Noah coughed up blood in the middle of PE.

Ellie collapsed in the playground during recess.

Mom expected me to die when I developed a cough.

But I somehow survived.

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

Survivors of the virus were rare.

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

My college classes were online.

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

There were two types of survivors:

Kids like me, who had a strong immune system.

And kids like him.

The man sitting across from me.

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

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

He blinked and then laughed.

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

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

A little too forward, borderline trauma dumping.

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

His lack of table manners made me laugh.

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

West didn’t elaborate, inhaling mashed potatoes.

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

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

Until the Doctor gave me the all-clear.

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

He set his fork down gently.

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

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

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

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

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

I liked West.

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

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

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

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

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

I woke up shivering.

Sunlight bled through West’s blinds.

Something was… cold.

Ice cold and slimy, pressed against my chest.

West.

His weight suffocated me. I shoved him.

“Hey. Wake up.”

He didn't move.

Something slimy wound its way into my mouth.

“West!”

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

The smell snaked into my nose. Wrong.

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

Nothing.

No pulse.

No heartbeat.

My almost-boyfriend had died in his sleep.

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

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

Tears stung my eyes.

Why he drank so much coffee.

Why he couldn't seem to sit still.

Because he was terrified of going to sleep.

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

“Yeah?”

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

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

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

“Any second now.”

I want you to close your eyes and envision…

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

OPEN YOUR EYES! YOU’RE DRIVING!!!

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

Come back when you’re not driving!

phew. that was close.

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

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

It’s late at night.

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

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

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

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

WHAT WAS THAT?!

In the rearview mirror.  Did you see it?

What was that?!

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

Back to watching the road.  It’s late.

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

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

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

What WAS that?! 

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

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

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

probably.

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

What? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You have got to be f*cking kidding me. 

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

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

Is it still there?

You look in the mirror.

The color drains from your face.

And then… 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I wasn't sure how to respond.

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

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

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

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

Justin nodded with enthusiasm.

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

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

"What?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He glared at his wife.

"Sparrow," she mumbled.

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

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

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

Jess was shaking.

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

"It..."

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

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

Manipulator.

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

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

Five seconds passed.

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

I took a step toward the pit.

"Wait! Don't."

"What? I killed him. I… I deserve—"

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

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

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

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

But we're not friends, anymore.

I was betrayed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I then ventured into the barn.

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

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

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

The buzzing was louder here. It reeked of death.

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

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

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

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

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

I unlatched their gate, tears streaming down my face.

Red.

That’s the color he liked his blade.

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

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

“Job well done,” he thought.

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

“So,” he thought, “to hell with it.”

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

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

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

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

The red sky bled into orange and light blue hues as I turned the key to my golf cart and pressed the accelerator. The trees swayed in the gentle evening wind as I drove past the reptile house and to the first large public bathroom, starting my visitor sweep of the zoo grounds. I clicked on my flashlight and found no one hiding in any stall in either restroom. I was excited to finish my sweep so I could catch up on some reading in the guard's booth. The classic "who cooks for you?" sound of the barred owl made me smile as I continued my sweep.

As I passed the flamingo enclosure, I did a double take at the new enclosure to its left. I stopped and checked the zoo layout on my phone; this was strange. There was no mention of a new exhibit opening. Curiosity took precedence over my sci-fi novel, and I slowly made my way to the edge of the exhibit to glimpse the new creature the zoo had acquired. I scanned the darkened forest for any movement. The enclosure was similar to the bear exhibit: a raised area about an acre in size, separated from me by a large, dry moat that kept whatever was inside away from the rest of the zoo.

Yet I could only see darkness and hear the foliage rustling within the enclosure. I looked down at the exhibit's infographic sign, which usually featured a picture and some facts about the creature. Yet, all this sign said was:

"Coming soon, the notorious Redcap from the Scottish Highlands."

Movement caught my eye, as what appeared to be a squat elderly man about three to four feet tall gave a weak wave from within the enclosure. He wore a large red hat, similar to a wide-brimmed witch's hat. He wore a simple, tattered cloth around his waist and small, metal-looking boots. His hair was fine, wispy, long white strands that stuck out from under his hat. His eyes and face were scrunched into a simple, closed-mouth smile that creased his forehead with layers upon layers of wrinkles.

"Sir! The zoo is closed; how did you get in there?" I asked earnestly.

The man merely shrugged, as if he didn't know how he got into the enclosure. My eyes squinted. How did this tiny man get up the dry moat? But his kind eyes looked at me as if he genuinely needed help, which set my thoughts at ease. Did it matter how he got there? Someone was probably worried about where he was, I convinced myself.

"Hang on, sir, I'll come unlock the back side to get you out of there," I said, and started toward the back door, where the zoo handlers have access to the back of each exhibit for feeding or medical care.

I flipped through my key ring and finally found a key that opened the back door, but the man was nowhere to be found. I stepped slowly into the enclosure and called out.

"Sir, sir, you can come out now. I will show you where the exit is, and we can get you home now." I said reassuringly as I walked deeper into the wooded habitat.

Then I saw the man, hunched over, his back to me, and heard a sound like rock scraping metal.

"Sir, it's ok, follow me and I'll—" I stopped speaking when the tiny man moved his head to look at me over his shoulder. His eyes glowed with a fearsome crimson shine as he contorted his wrinkled face into a corrupting smile. His lips parted, revealing rows upon rows of sharpened fangs. He let out a hideous cry and bolted toward me, pointing a sharpened piece of iron. His speed was otherworldly, faster than any man his age should be able to move. His hands were not like the kindly old man I had seen; instead, they were now unusually long, with curled claws at the ends of each finger. The clacking of his iron boots rang out like a dark percussion as he closed the gap between us.

I immediately drew my weapon and fired a few shots, but he seemed to dodge the incoming fire with an extreme and terrifying blinding speed. He contorted as he dashed between foliage and over logs in the enclosure. Before I could react, he had already impaled my stomach with the sharpened iron rod and leaped onto my face, biting and clawing with an unmatched ferocity. Before I lost consciousness, he was licking his bloody fingers and rubbing them onto his strange red hat, which seemed to pulsate, as if it were absorbing my blood. Up close, I could tell the hat wasn’t a hat; it was more like the fruiting body of a mushroom. Then, a horrifying red third eye opened on the hat and looked deep into my eyes as I coughed up blood. The crimson color deepened as everything went dark.

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

That was the rule until I met Mr. Morwood.

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

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

Money is money. I didn't ask questions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He stared at his shaking, manicured hands.

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

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

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

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

He dropped to his knees right into the glass shards.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That is when he began to follow me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Those are the last men who followed me.”

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

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

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

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

Growing up, I was always told stories about Grandpa. Of his heroic exploits in the war. Of his anything but heroic drunkenness at shows, playing that fiddle from the photos in a nonsensical, microtonal way that they swear even made the papers, though I've never seen said papers. He's dead, by the way. Grandpa is. But, he had only been dead for a handful of years, that time that we went to visit Grandma and the twins.

The road to get to their valley was like if you cut up a snake, the way it twisted about through the mountains. Like someone was trying to trick you into driving off the cliff. Once we arrived in town, to their credit, most of the buildings were still standing, only gaps in the wood here and there, boarded up windows. There was even one guy in the street. A shambling drunk who shouted something at our open car window, but not even Mom understood.

When we knocked the door to Grandma's house, it took them quite a while to let us in. We heard the twins yelling at each other, and yelling at a third person we could not hear, nor could we hear what the issue was, before eventually the one called Samuel unlatched the lock.

"Welcome," he said. "Make yourselves at home. You two," he looked at Mom and Dad, "can sleep in the guest bedroom. You two, I'm afraid," and he looked at Sydney and me, "will have to sleep on the floor. We do have an air mattress, if you can get it to fill up."

"Hi," said the other twin, Samantha, with a wave both shy and dismissive.

I was a kid, so my aunt and uncle towered over me.

We had to make our way past the entrance room, leaving our shoes by the door so our socks could soak up the dirt, to see Grandma.

When we first laid eyes on her atop that throne of an old electric massage chair, she said, "My baby is so happy."

I understood that she was referring to Grandpa.

Once those initial interactions were over and there was an awkward silence, Sydney asked where the air mattress was. Apparently it was in Patrick's room. Patrick was my mom's other sibling, and he had disappeared long ago. In his old room we saw a perfectly good bed.

So, after the air mattress turned out to be riddled with holes, I asked Mom to ask Grandma why we couldn't just sleep on Patrick's bed. The answer: "Your Grandpa always said, only Patrick can sleep there."

When Uncle Samuel explained that Grandpa also had a rule against sleeping on the couch, we moved the cushions onto the floor. This was apparently an acceptable way of circumventing that rule. I even asked Aunt Samantha before trying to sleep, and she said, "Yes," and slightly nodded.

I barely could sleep at all that night, in the cold. I think Grandma and the twins had long ago stopped paying the electric bill.

I had a dream about a puppet show.

When I woke up everyone was already having breakfast. Toaster waffles. During the breakfast conversation, which I do not remember word for word and was too annoyed and sleep deprived to participate in, Sydney had asked Uncle Samuel something to the effect of, why doesn't Aunt Samantha (who wasn't awake yet) get a job too? You know, to afford more things?

It was rude, but Sydney had also been violently cold all night. Her shivering had vibrated our awkwardly shared cushions.

Samuel said, "Dad said that's not a woman's place."

Grandma, somehow hearing this despite her old ears not hearing the rest of the conversation, said, "Amen. Baby always honored the old traditions."

Her voice was extra crackly in the morning. Her eyes were crusted over.

In the hours between breakfast and lunch, Sydney and I went out to explore. Overnight, a small amount of snow had settled on the forest floor.

At one point, balanced on a log, unprompted, Sydney said, "Why do they follow that old fucker's rules anyway?"

"Grandpa?"

"Oh, who else?"

"Sorry. Yeah. He is dead, after all."

"Exactly. Long dead."

Eventually when we wandered through that shallow snow back to what remains of Grandpa's house, our car was no longer parked there.

The two of us wondered for a second if we should even go inside.

But Mom startled us from behind. "Oh! There you are. Did you hear? Samantha drove off with Dad's car, I was looking everywhere for you. We were afraid that, acting all erratic like that, she could have—"

"Mom," said Sydney. "She obviously just wanted to escape. Since when are you such a suck-up to authority?"

Hearing this, I thought I might have missed something. Maybe from before I woke up.

Mom frowned. "His house, his rules. You two watch your manners."

Sydney started to open her mouth, but Mom was already walking back inside, evidently expecting us to follow.

Back inside that musty, cramped home, everyone was already around the dinner table. Turns out Dad had gone and brought home gas station pizza, and taking it in had been when Aunt Samantha got the car.

Dad looked defeated, and in the utterly inane conversation said almost nothing.

Towards the end, I reached for the final slice of pizza. But Uncle Samuel stopped my hand, said, "We always leave some for Dad."

"That's right," said Grandma, and she slowly, gingerly grabbed that final slice, and started to rub the greasy pizza in her eyeballs. "This is for you, baby. This is for you."

She smiled across at me with that red pizza sauce in her eye sockets.

That evening, at my Dad's insistence, we began the long drive home in Grandpa's old truck.

And, after much fighting over it, none of which I understood, the last words I ever heard Mom say were, "I'll fly home next week. He's… he's in her eyes."

My flight was at twelve. I had to be at the airport in an hour, but I needed to see her. I needed to know if she still loved me. I borrowed my friend's car.

I waited out the front of her house.

I saw the curtains pulled back. She knew I was there. She ignored me. I waited ten minutes. I stared from my watch back to the window.

“You only think about your stupid trip, not about what happens to us!”

Her words echoed through my mind.

Fuck it. Time was up.

I started the car and swung into a U-turn.

Split-second decision: I’d reverse the car to the front of her house, one final time. I’d blow her a kiss. It was all I could do. It was all I had left.

I put the car into reverse without checking the rearview. I pressed down on the accelerator.

I hit something.

Shit!

I got out of the car to inspect.

There she was. Her body twisted. Contorted. Unrecognisable. My wheels had flattened her.

I looked around.

Quiet.

No one saw me. I think. I hope.

I ran back to the driver's side and got in. I sped away.

I left the car by my friends parent's garage. I wiped the back down, although there were no visible signs.

At the airport, I checked in. Waving goodbye to my parents as I went through security.

I was the last on the flight. I sat down.

I wanted to cry.

I was quiet most of the journey. Thirteen hours non-stop. I was silent and still for at least seven of them.

In the bathroom around the eighth hour, I looked at myself in the small mirror. I couldn’t recognise that face. The face of a killer. Someone who had taken a life.

Not willingly! I thought.

Why the hell did she come out without saying anything?!

I woke up. We were coming in to land.

Sydney.

Half a world away.

I expected a call from my family.

Emily is dead.

I would wail down the line. I wondered where I would take this call. Customs? Immigration? Maybe wait until I checked into my hotel.

I flagged down a taxi. Told him where I wanted to go. He drove me through the streets of this unknown land.

The radio was blaring.

“Governments have made coordinated efforts to understand the motives of the walkers. Right now, they are uncommunicative. Thousands have already entered the waters of the Pacific Ocean, to a fate unknown.”

“What are they talking about?” I asked the driver.

“Weird day… very weird.”

He turned up the radio, hoping that would answer my question.

“We don’t know why they are doing this. Every time we attempt to stop someone from entering the water, they attack us. The only common theme we can come up with is that each one of them is a victim of crime, and each one of them has had their assailant flee from justice… That was Detective Vasquez of the Los Angeles Police Department ending that report…”

“Los Angeles!” I yelled.

“Yeah, all these people walking into the ocean. Some of them dead already, waking up in the morgue, making their way to the ocean. All across the world, they say. Very weird, my friend, very weird.”

I powered on my phone. It had been off long enough.

I scrolled the papers.

THE DEAD WALK!

Thousands of bodies had emerged from various areas of containment, all heading for the ocean for what appeared to be a communal death march.

A week went by.

I barely left my hotel room, still thinking of Emily. Replaying the phone call with my mother, asking me if I would return home.

The funeral was supposed to be tomorrow, but her body was missing.

I turned on the TV.

Breaking News

Bodies have emerged in Buenos Aires, London, New York, and Auckland. Believed to be the walking dead who walked en masse into the oceans across the world.

I turned the volume up.

It could not be.

“As if by some miracle, the bodies have emerged from the ocean. They appear not to have drowned themselves, as originally reported, but to walk in a sort of communal exercise. A communal expedition to various ends of the earth… for what purpose, we do not know.”

They walked underwater?

Downstairs, people were running. Screaming. The streets were filled.

Should I stay back in my room?

I raced to the elevators. They were out.

Damn it!

The stairs were flooded with guests making their way down. I would need to take them back up to my room on the ninth floor.

I hit the steps two at a time.

I would hide out, glued to the TV.

Too much confusion!

Three hours passed. The news continued its coverage.

The walkers were killing specific people but terrorising everyone.

Reports were that murderers who had eluded authorities in one jurisdiction were being found by these walkers - who had marched across jurisdictions, to kill and dismember their own killers.

I thought of Emily.

Had she made the walk?

A thud echoed from the door.

“Who is it?”

No response.

Another thud.

“I said, who is it?!”

I raced over, put the chain on the door, and made sure the lock was latched.

I looked through the peephole. A hand removed itself, revealing her.

She was decayed. Waterlogged. Pale. A wicked smile emerged on her face as she stared back at me.

“You never said goodbye.”

This has been freaking me out for the past week. So every day on my way to volunteering at the elementary school I pass by my old dojo where I used to do karate that has an alleyway between it and the building next to it. A week ago when I passed by there I saw the Florida Bowman. There's no doubt about it, it was him, with all the pine needles and leaves covering his entire body and carrying his bow and arrows. I couldn't tell what he was doing exactly, but he was doing something with the leaves covering his face. And when I saw him, he saw that I was looking in his direction and immediately disappeared deep into the alleyway he was standing in.

The curiosity got the best of me, and so I pulled over and got out of my car just to look down the alleyway to see what he might have been doing. I couldn't help but continue to creep over, but as I did I realized that the bowman might've clocked me coming to see him and I imagined that he was at the end of the alley with his bow ready to shoot an arrow at me. The thought crossing my mind almost made me reconsider not checking and just leaving to go and do my volunteering, but I decided against that and took the brave choice of looking.

I slowly crept my head around the corner just in case so I could quickly get away if I saw him with an arrow pointing in my direction, but I was shocked to see no sight of him. I was super confused because there was no way out of the alley other than through the way I was looking in. The only thing I saw was a small but wide box at the very end up against the wall, but I could tell that there was no way that someone his size or any averaged-sized person could fit inside the box.

I was relieved, but honestly a little bit disappointed that he vanished into thin air. There wasn't even one of those ladders that are sometimes on the sides of buildings in the alley that he could have used to escape. Spooked by what just happened, I went back to my car and while on my way I pondered making a police report about what I just saw, but I ultimately opted not to since I had to get to my volunteering. Especially since I was now late for my morning duty at the school.

The whole situation has been stuck in my mind since then, and I can't shake the feeling that he likely disappeared from where he was to go kill another police officer. Knowing about the bowman beforehand despite living in Florida didn't really scare me all that much since I never thought that I would ever witness him, but I guess you never know what could happen.

Sarah hiked up the mountain in front of me, the air was cold and thin, I could barely keep up. It was turning into one of the worst second dates of my life. She waved down at me.

“Come on!”

I waved back trying not to double over. I hadn’t been much for hiking but when the pretty girl mentioned it over coffee you kinda had to go with it. Unfortunately she called my bluff and now I was halfway up some unmarked trail to a peak that only Sarah and her hiking buddies knew about. But I was too far into it now to chicken out, I’d see it to the end and then I’d make a polite excuse to never see Sarah again.

“Isn’t it breathtaking up here!” She said as I caught up to her.

“Uh yea it is.” She was right to be fair, the fall colours had turned the hills a mix of orange, yellows and reds.

“I’m so glad you decided to come, most of the guys I meet flake on me before I can get them on a good hike up here.” I smiled. “Most guys probably just lie to get into your pants.”
Surprisingly she laughed, it made me feel better about the situation, maybe I would give her a chance after this date, if you could call it that. The next kilometre of the hike brought us above the tree line and the terrain grew steadily more uneven and harder to navigate. My feet were aching as we climbed higher up towards the peak but Sarah’s feet didn’t seem to be bothering her at all. It was annoying having the girl out work you when you thought of yourself as someone who is in decent shape. The trail was unmarked up here but Sarah never referenced a map once.

“Hey you still know where you’re going?”
I called out, it echoed down the valley.

“Yes it’s all up here.” She tapped her head barely looking backward at me. “ It’s not long now.” Thank god I thought trying to summon a second wind. We progressed on for about an hour, while she grew ever more confident and I grew ever more nervous. The terrain grew more rocky and uneven, making a fall seem more likely than not. I sighed thinking about the decent back down. Just when my legs felt like they could handle no more Sarah called.

“There it is!” I looked up at the mound of pale stones grouped in a pile with a flag of some sort stuck between them waving lazily in the wind.

“Awesome.” I said as I collapsed beside the pile of rocks.

“I couldn’t wait to get you up here, I wasn’t sure you were going to make it but you proved more stubborn than most.” She unslung her backpack and started rummaging through it. Oh great, Sarah seemed nice enough but if she had some sort of weird romantic thing going on in her bag I was out.

“Listen Sarah.” But before I could continue Sarah sunk a foot long knife into my chest. I clutched at the end of it and looked up at her. I tried to speak but only a red gargle came out. Sarah looked down at me smiling.

“I’m so glad you decided to come with me, it makes me so happy to add to the pile.”

My strength was faltering but in desperation I reached out behind me for something, anything to use as a weapon. My hand pulled one of the rocks loose and I held it out in a defensive position. Sarah smiled.

“Yes that’s the idea.”

The bone slipped from my hand as the darkness closed in around me.

The world was a benignantly soft place full of smudged edges and forgiving shadows. 

The experiment began on a Canon AE-1 I picked up at the local pawn shop. Pointing the eye of the cool metal rectangle body towards the brick bakery across the street, I snapped a photo on that chill autumn morning in 1994. This lead to my persistent habit.

By winter I had drawers overflowing with glossy prints, that when lined up next to each other, were identical. Reality does not flaunt itself overnight, it breathes on a much larger scale I realized. 

I changed the interval. One photo every autumn. 

By 2004 the shift was undeniable, though subtle. The world was sharpening. The mortar holding the bricks of the bakery together looked less like blurred grey paste and more like individual grains of sand. I upgraded my now out-dated camera for a digital body. This had more megapixels, closer to the true resolution of reality. I thought technology was finally gripping the true picture of our existence that I was noticing, that the universe was rendering itself more clearly. The fog of creation was lifting. 

In 2014 I decided to change the intervals to every five years. The immense patience it took rewarded me with a staggering jump in clarity. Comparing 2014 to 2019, the textures had become almost hyper-realistic. The bakery’s window sill was no longer a white line, but I could see the microscopic paint chips across it. 

“The world is crystallizing.” I thought with both a sense of fear and astonishment in realizing I had been right for so many years. My hands shook a little as I filed the print away, anxious to see what the next five years would show me. 

By 2024 the process had accelerated greatly. Walking down the street became overwhelming. The leaves on the trees looked like green shards of glass, their veins pulsing with vividly sharp detail. The pavement was a high contrast jagged mosaic. Insects flew by and I could not only see every hair on their minuscule body, but I could make eye contact with them. At home, looking into a mirror, my own reflection was an intricate map of deep canyon-like lines. The stark silver hairs reached out like metal thread to touch my reflection. 

I waited anxiously for 2029. My body ached, feeling heavy with the weight of the years but my mind was fixed on the final evidence and confirmation.

The crisp October morning arrived and I stood by the window. The bakery was gone, replaced by a new modern cafe, but the geometry of the street remained the same. I lifted the camera with more of a struggle than I ever had. Looking through the viewfinder was even more of a struggle, the world outside had become strangely milky and dim over the last few years, a spiritual tax I assumed. The price my body paid for carrying the mental weight of a sharpening reality. The universe was drawing all its energy to focus on the pure hard lines of its grand design. 

*-Click-*

I loaded the RAW file onto my massive monitor, too excited to wait for it to print. I leaned in, my face inches from the glass.

There it was. Absolute perfection. The concrete of the new cafe wasn’t a flat grey, it was a microcosm of infinite pin-point black and white static, perfectly defined, etched into reality with razor sharp precision. The edges of the street lights cut through the space like knives. The world had finally finished fully rendering. It was flawless and horrifically beautiful.

I let out a long ragged breath while feeling a profound sense of peace. I had documented the awakening of existence. I closed my eyes just for a moment to rest them, letting the perfect sharp geometry of the universe burn behind my eyelids as I drifted off. 

Jimmy - 12/31/29, 10:41 PM
Dood, I was like three!

Carl - 12/31/29, 10:41 PM
J… You were 8 in 2000.

Jimmy - 12/31/29, 10:43 PM
Hey! Way to make a girl feel old.

Anyway I don’t even remember last new year’s. And I sure don’t intend to remember this one!

Haha. Cheers!

Carl - 12/31/29, 10:45 PM
I’ll drink to that.

Sam, what about you?

Samantha - 12/31/29, 11:01 PM
yeah i do actually. that was the night danny lost his eye.

Carl - 12/31/29, 11:02 PM
Fuck, really? Gee, I’m so sorry Sam!

Samantha - 12/31/29, 11:05 PM
heh, sorry for crashing the mood

it was pretty fucked. we spent all night in the er waiting. mom asleep snoring. dad oscillating between worried and fuming.

finally this oldass doctor comes pick us up. he takes one look at danny and he pulls out his tweezers. not a word. prolly hasnt given a shit since 1970.

and i just remember the smattering of the fireworks outside getting louder and louder. and then it all goes black. and theres just danny screaming.

when the lights came back on i see the doctor and he has blood everywhere.

and then i see danny. still screaming. and the tweezers lodged in his eye and twitching back and forth.

happy new year

Carl - 12/31/29 11:07 PM
Oh my god.

Fuck.

That’s awful Sam.

Jimmy - 12/31/29 11:09 PM
Jeezus fc… You’re messing with us? Right? You better be messing with us Sam.

Samantha - 12/31/29 11:12 PM
sorry j. if youre hoping for this to all be a nothingburger, you found yourself like the one person with an actual y2k experience.

bodes well.

so better get ready. you know “it’s the new deal of the 2030s. all open cards from here”

Jimmy - 12/31/29 11:14 PM
Come on. No way you believe this Y2K30 crap.

“No Secrets Society” - bet they think that’s real clever too. Buncha losers.

Carl - 12/31/29 11:17 PM
Tell that to the minister of finance. Ex finance minister that is. And the prime ministers of Poland, Sweden and Holland.

Sure they think this is all a hoax too.

Samantha - 12/31/29 11:18 PM
that weather guy on tv too. haha. freak.

Jimmy -** **12/31/29 11:22 PM
Those guys all had it coming to them.

Me, I got nothing to hide. I’ll go ahead and post my Pornhub history to Insta right this moment. Have it done with.

Samantha - 12/31/29 11:27 PM
okay. ew?

Jimmy -** **12/31/29 11:39 PM
You all know I’m a weirdo already.

Now, bubbly, and 10-9-8-7… Bla bla! See you on the other side!

answerman joined the group - 1/1/30 12:00 AM

Carl - 1/1/30 12:00 AM
Happy 2030 guys!!!!

Jimmy - 1/1/30 12:00 AM
LET’S FUCKING GO!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Samantha - 1/1/30 12:02 AM
heres to 10 more years of the late-stage-capitalist shitshow

glorious

woho etetera

Jimmy - 1/1/30 12:03 AM
Woah, easy on the optimism there hun.

Samantha - 1/1/30 12:03 AM
never

Patty - 1/1/30 12:05 AM
HEEEEY! Happy new year!!!

Jimmy - 1/1/30 12:05 AM
Look who’s arrived! Welcome to the thirties PeePee!

Patty - 1/1/30 12:07 AM
Yikes, I just scrolled back to read your messages from earlier.

Shit. That’s what happened to Danny, Sam???

answerman - 1/1/30 12:07 AM
No.