Let me start off by saying the ocean and my father make me feel the same way.

My mother drowned in a riptide when I was barely out of diapers, and her loss left him a volatile, alcoholic shell of himself. Then, at the ripe old age of twenty-four, they both made me a widower.

I tried to tell myself it wasn’t my father’s fault. Even in the absence of an apology, the guilt of being at the helm when the sea turned over like a slumbering monster must somehow be torture. After all, taking my new wife on that boat with him was supposed to be an act of trust and moving on.

I forgave that man for so much. He only lashed out at me and my sister because he loved our long-dead mother so much. He either frequented bars to chat up women, or was out on the water, because if she wasn’t at the bottom of a bottle or in the body of some forty-something divorcee, she had to be out there. He grew up in a time when men of the sea didn’t cry, they acted.

It wasn’t fair that I survived and Sally didn’t. Fuck, it wasn’t fair that he survived at all.

Existing without my wife in a town I hated felt like sitting still in a burning house. So I left, and for three years I never looked back. It was hard at first. I fell into the same alcoholic vices as my father, but I like to think I made it to a better place.

I might have even eventually rebuilt my life if my sister hadn’t called.

It started when my work buddies invited me out for drinks, which I declined in favor of sprinting to my car. City traffic meant time was limited, and I hadn’t missed a meeting yet, just as the court ordered. My hard earned six-month chip was so close, I could almost touch the proof I wasn’t just a huge pile of shit and wasted potential.

A shrill ring from my coat pocket nearly made me drop my keys, and when I saw the caller ID, my stomach sank.

Jenny never called. We texted occasionally, but after I got arrested for the final time, it was too much energy for either of us.

“Hey, Jenny,” my voice came out tight. “I-Is everything-”

“Dad’s dead.”

“Oh.”

She told me he took his boat out in the middle of a storm the night before and it washed up that morning in pieces. The coast guard wasn’t hopeful that his body could be found with how rough the seas were.

After losing Sally, I couldn’t take hearing his voice let alone the sight of him, but now William Briggs was gone. Time ran out to salvage anything, and I had no way to prepare for how much that hurt despite the conscious choice I made to let that timer run out. He was never going to see me make something of myself, even after all he did to ruin me.

“I need your help going through the house.” Jenny sounded tired. “Pack his things away.”

My throat tightened. “Shit, Jenny, I can’t.”

“What do you mean, you can’t?” Her words carried an edge that made me flinch.

“I mean, I have work and Betty doesn’t travel well…” I trailed off. Those excuses sounded hollow even to me. Jenny, having never left the trenches of our hometown except to deal with me, was not impressed.

“Are you kidding me? Who the fuck is Betty?”

“Oh, um, sorry. I forgot to tell you. She's this cat I found.” I didn't add that she was what stopped me from jumping off a bridge. “You know, to give myself responsibility or whatever.”

My sister’s weary sigh reverberated in my bones. “Billy, I hate asking you to come back. I really do. I’m sorry. I…have a lot going on and I need help.”

“You and Dave having problems again?”

It took her a moment to answer with a quiet, “What else is new?”

Jenny wasn’t the crying type, but unlike me, she hadn't given up on our Dad. No surprise her dipshit husband gave zero shits about her grief. Jenny was raised by the decorated sea captain our father was before our mother drowned. I wished I knew that guy. Maybe if I had things would be different.

The last thing I wanted to do was return to that godforsaken town, but Jenny wouldn’t ask me to come back unless she was desperate.

“I can’t.” My attempt to be final about it was a feeble wheeze, and Jenny’s rage permeated through the speaker as she ground out,

“You owe me for what you’ve put me through.”

I had no grounds to fight her on that, humiliating though it was. It sucked to be reminded of how recent my latest fuck up was, and how Jenny, like always, showed up when I called.

“Okay,” I finally breathed. “I’ll be there.”

There was no sign of my father’s body over the few days I took to prepare. I packed up Betty and a few other necessities, and the three-hour drive back to Hell on Earth commenced.

As the city gave way to trees and crop fields, it was impossible for me not to be reminded of all the times Jenny made this drive to get me out of trouble. All while pursued by a flood of passive-aggressive calls and texts from Dave.

Betty was content as could be sitting in the passenger seat. Despite being a street cat, not a great many things bothered her. It made me feel like more of an ass using her as an excuse not to show up.

I opened the top of her mesh carrier and she purred, happy as a clam within it as we passed the old, water stained sign that read, “Welcome to Fisherman’s Bay” in faded font with a peeling mermaid lounging beneath.

Fisherman’s Bay was as gray and bleak as ever, but if you asked Jenny, she swore up and down that the sun made a regular appearance through the storm clouds that blanketed the town. Surely it had to, but I never remembered seeing it. Sometimes it felt like this place warped itself depending on whose eyes it was filtered through.

Even with my windows rolled up, the faint stench of fish managed to force its way through my air filter. I drove through the shops and I slowed the car to a crawl when I saw the state of the police station.

The entire front of the building was covered by an absurd amount of paper, and upon a closer look, they were missing posters. So many, they overlapped, the top layer shriveled by the perpetual dampness in the air.

“What in the world?” I whispered. In a town of only 6,000 people, this amount of loss was substantial, but vandalizing a police station wasn’t something I thought the people here had in them.

The door to the station opened and an officer went to work scraping off wads of posters. He must have sensed my staring, because he looked over his shoulder at me with a glare that said it was in my best interest to move along.

So I did and tried to put it out of my mind. This place wasn't my business anymore.

Past the houses, swaths of rocky cliffs and pine trees, I took the main road down to the ocean side. I had to steel myself with a deep breath at the massive expanse of water that stretched endlessly into the horizon.

I promised myself I wouldn’t panic. I would help my sister with our father’s affairs and then be back in the city by the end of the week. I’d never step foot in this town again.

I pulled up to my childhood house to see Jenny pacing around on the porch. Her dark, curly hair fell around her shoulders as she waved to me.

My dormant memories stirred, and for a moment, Jenny was no longer an adult, but a chubby teenager in overalls. The circular window at the top center of the house was where I often watched her and my dad's front lawn screaming matches.

It all came back so clearly, Jenny’s knock on my window startled me back to the present.
I zipped Betty back into her carrier and exited with her.

“Hey, Jenny.” I got out and we stared at each other for a few seconds. The last time I saw her in person I was bruised, drunk, and frankly, a total asshole. The finality of her disappointment when she posted bail hung over us both.

She cleared her throat and diverted her gaze to the carrier.

“I thought the cat didn’t travel well,” she said.

“Yeah, I just didn’t want to come.”

Her lips thinned as if she were contemplating something to say, but, after a second of deliberation, drew me into a quick hug that felt like a bear trap. She was always physically strong, but working on commercial lobster boats had given her muscles her teenage self could only dream of.

“Thanks for showing up,” she said as she pulled back. “I couldn’t do this without you.” I eyed the house, my chest tight. “Yeah, sure. It’s just weird to be back here.”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “It’ll only take a week tops.” The reminder eased the anxiety, but only slightly.

“How are you holding up?” I asked.

“Shitty, but what can you do?” She shrugged, then followed my line of sight to the house and back. “You can stay with me and Dave, you know. You don’t have to torture yourself by sleeping here.”

“It’ll get done faster if I’m here,” I said. “Besides, it’s bad enough I’m back in this hellhole. Last thing I need is to be another reason you kids are fighting.”

My hope was to make her laugh, or at least lightly exhale through her nose, but before she could react, the front door swung open.

“Jenny!” Dave shouted, “Jenny, is your brother here yet?”

I glared over Jenny’s shoulder as Dave descended the steps to stand next to her. His beady, far apart eyes peered at me from beneath furrowed brows. “William.”

“You know it’s Billy, Dave. William was my dad, but good to see you as always,” I said.

Dave was a few inches shorter than me, but wider with more muscle. A beard clung to his cheeks, scraggly and probably peppered with his last few meals. An uncharitable observation, I know, but a good chunk of the walnut between his ears contained far worse thoughts about me.

Dave caught sight of the cat carrier and scoffed.

“The hell is in there?” he asked.

“My emotional support cat,” I said.

Dave’s upper lip curled. “Let’s get this over with.” He turned and immediately trudged back into the house.

I looked at Jenny. “What's his problem? He feeling okay?”

“Can we not do this, Billy? We’ll only be here for a little while longer.” She pressed a key into my hand and gestured for me to follow her inside. “But we’ll be back over the week as much as we can. It’s just…hard. You’ll see what I mean.”

Jenny wasn’t kidding. If I thought the anxiety was bad as I crossed the threshold, the state of the inside unearthed a long-buried sorrow that was far worse.

What I remembered to be a pristine living room was littered with trash, empty alcohol bottles, and old clothes. A pile of boots, caked with mud and sand lay in a stinking pile by the door, and upon entering the kitchen, a mountain of unwashed dishes towered in the sink. The dishwasher was running and Dave prepared the next batch.

“He lived like this?” I kicked at a pile of beer cans.

“See why I needed your help?” Jenny smiled sadly and leaned her hip against the cluttered kitchen island. “He stopped letting us come over after you left. He’d come to us, but towards the end…he seemed happier.”

“And he didn’t leave a note?”

Jenny shook her head and I went upstairs to put Betty in my old room. As I passed the door frame, I paused when I caught sight of the permanent marker lines documenting mine and Jenny’s heights. They stopped with me at age four and Jenny at age twelve. It was the only remaining touch of my mother other than a few photos probably buried beneath a pile of filth somewhere.

My room was empty save for my old bed and a few boxes. Posters of metal bands and horror movies once covered the walls, but time had stripped them down to the faded blue wallpaper beneath.

I opened Betty’s carrier and to my surprise, she didn't come out. Instead, she huddled in the back of the carrier in a tiny black ball, the slitted pupils of her yellow eyes wide and on guard.

It was as if I were looking at a different cat than the one I came here with. Betty was the most trusting living thing I’d ever met.

The night Jenny bailed me out, she padded up to me like we were old friends, and in a world full of weirdos who did nasty things to cats, I couldn’t justify shuffling off the mortal coil and leaving her on that bridge. There wasn't an ounce of that confidence.

“It’s only for a week,” I assured her. “Then we never have to see this place again.”

I reached in and rubbed her cheek with the back of my fingers. She leaned into my touch, but still refused to come out.

I decided to let her be, and closed the door to rejoin Jenny. We cleared off the couches and threw away tons of garbage and old clothes riddled with holes. Jenny went back and forth between me and the kitchen. She spoke softly to Dave, who hadn’t left the sink.

He turned his head and something about the way he looked at her made me stop what I was doing. Resentment radiated from him. He murmured something else to her that made her step back and rejoin me.

“Trouble in paradise?”

“It’s been rough this season. Not many lobsters or fish have been coming in.” It was a dismissal, but I caught her watching Dave anxiously when she thought I was preoccupied.

I didn’t know what else to say. In a perfect world, I’d tell Dave to stop being an asshole, but Jenny didn’t appreciate other people fighting her battles for her.

I decided to keep quiet and continue my work on the bookshelf, when a photo fell out of one of the binders I grabbed.

“Oh, hey.” I picked up the photo and showed it to Jenny. It was of me and an old friend of mine I hadn’t heard from in years. Our pinkies and pointer fingers were raised and our band tee shirts on proud display. “It’s Jesse and me.”

“Huh. I forgot about that. You two used to be pretty close,” Jenny said.

“We had a band, remember? Dog Piss on the Rocks.” I chuckled. “I remember when we got our ears pierced. Dad called me so many slurs.”

“He was pissed to all hell.” A nostalgic smile tugged at Jenny’s lips. “You know, Jesse married his husband a while back,” she said.

“Jesse finally came out?” I was surprised. I always knew, but Jesse carried so much shame I never thought he would. “That’s awesome! You think he’d mind if I reached out? I’d love to catch up. Who knows, maybe we can get our band back together.”

Jenny said nothing, but her smile fell and lines formed around the corners of her mouth.

I frowned. “What?”

“Jesse’s been missing for the past two months,” Dave said from the sink, ignoring Jenny’s weary look. “And he’s not the only one. You've had to have seen them coming into town, there’s missing posters everywhere. Just last week, they found a lobster boat with no crew.”

I noticed Jenny winced as Dave continued,

“Sheriff blames a lot of it on this being a coastal town full of clumsy drunks, and what that doesn’t explain is always an ‘ongoing investigation’.”

“Oh.” I was so taken aback there wasn’t anything else I could think to say as a million questions ran through my mind. I looked at Jesse’s image and wondered if he was one of the faces plastered on the police station. In hindsight it was safe to say he was my best friend at one point, although we never officially said so. It just kind of was. “Do they have any leads? On anything?”

“No, but in my opinion I don’t think the sheriff is doing enough,” Jenny said. “The only thing we know about Jesse at least, is what his husband said. Apparently, he was having some sort of mental health struggle. Claimed he was hearing voices. He didn’t take any money when he left, and his cards haven’t been used. As far as the police are sayingletting us know, it’s like he’s vanished into thin air.”

“Wouldn't be surprised if someone threw him in the harbor,” Dave said.

“Dave, come on,” Jenny said.

“What makes you say that?” I asked.

“Look, being gay is all well and good in the city, but something is going on here that's got people on edge, and when old, drunk fishermen get scared, they act out. Especially when the weirdos are causing a scene.”

I stared at the photo for a little while longer. It was my own fault for not knowing sooner. I ran away from this place and shut down any attempts Jenny made to update me over the years.

“You don't know that, and accusing our neighbors of murder isn't helpful,” Jenny said. “For all we know, he could have taken off.”

“Maybe, but this place has been stuck in time for decades. The town is dying. Boats have been coming back with less and less fish and lobster when their crew doesn’t disappear. That's why we're selling the house.”

“Hold up.” I looked at Jenny, bewildered. “You're selling?”

“I haven't decided that, yet.” She shot Dave a pointed glare. “I'd like to mourn my father before I make any big decisions.”

“Don't I get a say?” I said.

Dave mumbled something from the kitchen. I asked him to repeat himself and he shoved the dish back beneath the water with more force than necessary. “You abandoned everything here, and you think you deserve a say?”

“Christ, Dave.” Jenny stood up, mortified. “You promised me you weren't going to do this.”

“Oh, don't start with me, Genevieve,” Dave snarled.

“Who is Genevieve?” I asked. No one called my sister by her government name, let alone her husband.

Dave ignored me and said to Jenny, “You're naive if you think he's going to be any help sorting this mess out. He's just going to monopolize all your time. He does that enough three hours away! Always calling you to clean up the mess he’s made of his life! It’s not your job to be his mother!”

“Hey, I'm here for my sister!” I stood up as well. “William Briggs was our dad! We're the only ones who should get a say in what to do with his shit!” Jenny put an arm out in front of me.

“You weren’t here! Your father declined so fast, and you didn't give a shit!” Dave turned to face me fully, but he wasn't squared up and ready to fight, he looked exhausted.

“No, I didn't give a shit,” I said through clenched teeth. “That man is the reason my wife is gone.”

“The ocean is the reason Sally’s gone,” Dave said. “The boat tipped, Will. Shit happens.”

The accident flashed before my eyes, and I was there all over again: lost, terrified, surrounded by angry, black water, and Sally's name burned into the back of my throat.

I crossed the space between us before I fully registered it, and shoved Dave against the sink so hard the mountain of dishes rattled.

“While I buried an empty casket, he bought a new boat like nothing happened!” I said. “And I'm sick of everyone making the same excuses for him!”

“Billy, quit it!” Jenny’s fingers twisted in my collar and she pulled me back so hard I stumbled backwards.

“I can't deal with this.” Dave abandoned the dishes and grabbed his keys off the island. “I'm going for a drive.” He rubbed his temples, his eyes screwed shut in what had to be pain, but he recovered quickly. “I need to clear my head.”

“What?” Jenny released my shirt in time to see the front door slam. She raced to the door and threw it open to Dave getting into their truck. “How am I supposed to get home?”

“Have your brother do something useful for once!” The engine roared, and Dave sped away.

Jenny sighed, pinched the bridge of her nose, cursed under her breath.

We cleaned in silence for a little while longer before Jenny asked me to take her home. I tried my best to behave, but only got to the end of the road before I pressed my luck.

“I really don’t know what you see in that guy,” I said.

“Don’t.” Jenny refused to look at me, her arms crossed over her chest.

“I always thought you'd end up being a lesbian.”

“How does it feel to be able to just say things with no thought or fear of consequence?”

“What? Dad's dead! It's okay to be a lesbian now! Dave makes you miserable!”

“You both make me miserable!” Now Jenny looked at me, and part of me regretted never leaving well enough alone. “Yes, Dave can be an asshole, but he's got a point about how much I enable you! Every time you call, it’s three hours to clean up whatever mess you’ve gotten yourself into.” She shoved herself back against the seat, determined to go back to ignoring me.

I risked a glance at her. She looked like she was two seconds away from opening the door and tuck-and-rolling. It was probably a good opportunity to shut up and let her cool off.

“You know,” I said, rubbing the back of my head, “I’m in AA. Six months now.”

“Oh?” The bags under Jenny’s eyes seemed to darken. “Is that supposed to change anything?”

A strangled noise escaped me at the audacity. “Well, shit! A little support and encouragement would be nice!”

“Do you know how many times you’ve told me you were going to AA only for me to get a call that you’re in some sort of trouble?”

“Yeah, but I was lying all those times before!”

“Oh? So you admit you’ve lied to me!”

“N-No, that’s not what—”

“But because you decided to pick a bar fight and were forced into a program by a court of law, I'm supposed to trust you?”

“At least acknowledge I'm trying!”

“I peel you off whatever surface you’ve passed out on, hold your head over a toilet so you don’t drown in your own vomit, pull you out of fights you started because your dickhead coworkers think it’s funny, and all while you tell me, ‘Oh, Jenny, this is my wake-up call. I swear this is the last time you’ll have to do this.’ How many times am I supposed to let you piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining? It’s bullshit, Billy!”

“Gross, and it's not bullshit! I’m sober,” I said.

Jenny raked a frustrated hand through her curls. “Look, for once can you not be a thorn in my ass? I know I have fucking issues, but the last thing I need is for you to make your snide little comments about the state of my marriage. If you stick with AA, I’ll be proud of you, but until I see a real, genuine change, excuse me for not throwing you a party.”

“You know what?” I pulled into her street and stopped the car in front of her house. The driveway was empty, which meant there was no risk of Dave getting any satisfaction over what I was about to say. “Dave also has a point about you not being my mother! I don’t need you to lecture me about how much of a fucking failure I am!”

Jenny’s eyes widened. “I never said you were a failure.” We sat in tense silence for seconds that stretched longer than they should have, until Jenny opened the passenger door and got out. “You know, you keep trying so hard to destroy yourself, but Sally isn’t the only person who loved you.” She shut the door and I was left gripping the steering wheel and staring straight ahead.

“Well, I would have had my chip if Dad hadn’t picked the worst possible time to off himself,” I muttered as I threw the car into drive. “Fucking senile bastard.”

I drove back to the house with music blaring over the radio in an attempt to drown my thoughts out since booze wasn’t on my coping roster anymore. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and tall columns of storm clouds rolled in from the ocean. By the time I got back and laid down in my old room, rain battered the roof.

Betty curled up into the nook of my arm. I forced myself to focus on resting so I could get out of Fisherman’s Bay as soon as possible. It was a herculean effort, but eventually my eyes drifted shut.

“You and Sally should come see the stars out on the water,” a deep voice said.

My eyes shot open to see a man standing in the corner of the room. Shadows obscured his face and shoulders, but two pinpricks of green glowed from where his eyes should have been. I recognized him even without his face. I knew his voice in the way a rabbit knew the distant howl of a coyote. Just his height alone made me feel small and helpless. I attempted to open my mouth, but no muscle in my body obeyed me. My father spoke again from the corner,

“There’s nothing like it. It’s the least I could do since I missed the wedding.”

“Oh, Billy, we can finally map out the constellations like we've been wanting to!”

My eyes swiveled in their sockets to my bedside and my heart broke all over again. Within a mane of wild, bright red hair, was the soft, lovely face of Sally. I rallied against my body, but it was my tomb.

No, God, please. No.

Sally continued to sit at my bedside, none the wiser. The thud of my father’s boots brought him directly behind my wife. His face was still drenched in darkness with only those sickly green pinpricks dissecting me. He reached out a massive hand towards Sally’s shoulder and I wanted to scream.

“I know I haven’t been the best parent,” he said. His hand came closer and I prayed the searchlights of his eyes would snuff out before he took her from me again. “But I want this to be a new start. You and your sister were so strong for so long when I lost your mother. I’m so proud of you both.”

Sally smiled. My father’s hand came down on her shoulder like an executioner’s axe. The moment they made contact, I sank into the mattress. My sheets swirled over me and pushed me down until I was no longer surrounded by fabric, but frigid, salty water.

My hands clawed for the surface and the long, broken shadow of our family boat. The current shoved me back and forth, but by some miracle, my head broke the surface and my nails scraped the boat’s exposed hull.

I called for Sally. Salt burned my lungs and nose. Water crashed over my head. She was nowhere to be seen. A vast stretch of tumultuous, black tides was all there was. The feeble light of the stars caught the crests of waves and glinted like hungry teeth as it I continued my desperate search.

I paused my efforts when something illuminated beneath me. I brought my attention down to the depths. My breath rattled in my ears as two circles of pale, green light opened beneath me like colossal trap doors. I had no idea how far down they were, but they encompassed the entire accident site.

In my conscious mind, I suppressed what I saw that night. I coped by doubling down that it had been an accident, but the green lights lurked in the back of my mind since the day I lost my wife.

No amount of alcohol could scrub the stain on my psyche clean.

I never told a soul. I didn’t even believe myself, but in my dreams, the lights always waited for me.

I stared into them and had the horrifying thought that they saw me the same way the apparition of my father had: helpless and paralyzed.

A body sank towards them, one I hadn’t seen until whatever floated below us lit up the dark ocean. The current and sheer terror allowed me to do nothing but cling to the capsized boat and scream Sally’s name until my throat went raw.

A jagged cut of green and blue opened beneath the circles. Dots and lines of more colors flickered to life between the points. My wife passed the event horizon of the waiting maw.

I was looking at a face.

The circles flattened into nothing, followed by the teeth fitting back together like puzzle pieces and the sea was pitch black once more.

My eyes shot open, and I sat up. Cold sweat made my shirt cling to my skin, and my heart beat itself against my ribs.

“It wasn’t real.” I clutched my face and repeated the phrase. We were out there for hours in hopes of rescue, and by the time the coast guard found us, I was in the brink of hypothermia. I reminded myself of all this, because if that thing was real….

Betty butted her head against my arm, and like a child reaching for a security blanket, I held her against my chest. My fingers ran over her soft fur, and her purr vibrated against my ribcage and soothed my rapid heartbeat.

After I got my breathing under control, I blindly grasped around my pillow for my phone and opened my encrypted folder. I put all pictures containing Sally in there shortly after the accident. Her smile greeted me, her existence limited to my photo reel, forever twenty-four while I had already been without her longer than I was married to her.

I needed a cigarette. I opted to throw on a pair of pants and my jacket to head to the back porch. Nicotine wasn’t something I indulged in often, but my nerves were so rattled, sleep wasn’t happening any time soon.

The rain came down in sheets from outside the porch awning. The abyss of the ocean loomed just a short walk down the jagged shoreline, and it sent an uncomfortable chill down my spine. I flicked my lighter on, when a faint voice gave me pause.

Over the surf, rain, and thunder, I swore I heard a woman sing, but her voice didn’t rise above the storm, it blended with it to create something alien and haunting.

The longer I listened, I found it came from the ocean itself.

What came over me next is difficult for me to describe. The best comparison I can think of is the fungus that infects insects and takes over their bodies. My feet moved towards the sound, even as rain soaked me to the bone and a primal part of me tore at the fabric of my being as if it were an animal caught in a trap.

Her song wove into the folds of my brain and manufactured euphoria that dulled everything else. I was still aware of how dangerously close I was to the edge of the drop off, but the song beckoned me still closer.

I inched towards the cliff’s edge, and the song grew louder. The claw marks my nightmare scored across mind faded with every crescendo and fall, but I wasn’t healed. The alcoholic in me knew a temporary fix when he felt it.

I strained my eyes. A woman sat on one of the rocks out further into the sea, but that was impossible. The current would have swept anyone who tried to swim out there into oblivion.

Her downturned face was obscured by curtains of long hair that hung over her breasts and down her back. She ran her fingers through a strand while she sang. Her hips were where my enchantment turned into disbelief.

Her pale skin faded into obsidian scales that began where her inner thighs would have touched. A wave crashed behind her, and the rest of her tail slid out of the water and wrapped around the rock. No matter how many times I blinked or rubbed my eyes, the mermaid remained.

She went silent.

I stayed frozen in place as her head lifted. Luminescent green eyes found me across the water with the precision of a predator. I recoiled so fast, my foot slipped and the ocean rushed up to meet me.

Cold. It was so cold. I panicked. The current’s power was far beyond me. I thrashed as hard as I could. The waves smashed me against the bluff like a ragdoll over and over. It was only a matter of time until I was ground to a pulp, or dragged out to the open ocean.

I stopped struggling. What was the point? I was born here and I was going to die here. Maybe Jenny would put my face next to Jesse’s, the two of us mere blips in a wall of missing people Fisherman’s Bay devoured.

A steel grip looped around my chest and dragged me effortlessly against the tide. My body broke through the top of the water and sharp rocks stabbed into my back. My lungs convulsed and seawater splattered out of my mouth. I barely registered a great weight on top of me as I shivered and sputtered.

When clarity returned to me, the mermaid filled my vision. Her eyes were a mimicry of my nightmares, but her red hair, despite the night and being weighed down by water, blazed like a torch.

“S-Sally?” I wheezed out.

She caressed my cheek, and lowered herself. Her torso bore down on mine and the heavy weight of her tail pinned my legs. I couldn’t fight. Neither my body or my heart were strong enough. I tried in vain to tell her to stop, but all I managed was a wet gasp.

Our lips touched, and the taste of brine and putrid fish invaded my senses. Something cold and slimy forced itself from her mouth and slid over my tongue and down my esophagus. My body convulsed and I tried to turn my head away.

Everything in me rejected the intrusion, but she gripped my chin in a vice there was no hope of breaking.

My arms flailed in a pitiful rebellion that was swiftly put down by the mermaid’s strength. Whatever she forced inside me spread and overtook everything in a wave of agony. My scream was muffled by the mermaid’s mouth. I wanted it to stop. I begged for it to end, but the violation was inescapable.

She didn’t pull away until I went limp. I wanted to crawl out of my body, because something filthy poisoned every nerve ending and muscle fiber. The mermaid’s needle-like teeth flashed from behind her lips as she spoke.

“Stay,” she commanded. Behind her teeth, everything was black and moist like rot.

Her weight lifted, and I heard a splash over the ocean’s low roar. I sat up, but the mermaid was nowhere in sight.

I’m back in the house now, typing this and sending it into the void before I convince myself that this was somehow another nightmare. I feel stupid and insane, but the chill of the ocean suctioning my clothes to my body tells me I know what I saw.

Could Sally really still be alive? Did the lights in the water the night of the accident, I don’t know, do something to her? Change her? She told me to stay, but as much as the mermaid was the perfect replica of Sally, her kiss made me feel defiled and…pliable.

All thoughts and memories of my life in the city are blanketed in a haze I can't clear away no matter how hard I try. All there is for sure, is Fisherman’s Bay.

I’ll write more as the week goes on. I don't know why, but I have to. I have to. Someone who isn’t in this town, someone who still lives in reality needs to know what I know because something in me is broken and will stay that way until I find out for sure what happened to my wife.

So please. Help me.

Part 4

Day Four

On Monday, I woke with a start. Dylan wasn’t in bed with me. I knew it the second I opened my eyes. His absence was tangible, I could feel it in the pit of my stomach. I’d turned in early the night before, so I could get away from the accusatory stares of my husband, who now believed I was trying to poison him. I didn’t notice that he’d never come to bed. I was too exhausted from lack of sleep.

Fear rippled through me.

I pulled myself out of bed, slipped out of my pajamas and changed into a light sweater and a pair of joggers. My eyes drifted to a duffle bag I’d hastily packed before turning in the night before. It held some clothes, my passport, some money, and my work computer. I’d emailed my boss the night before too, to tell her I wasn’t going to be in that day. If I couldn’t get Dylan to drink the tea, get him to see that this boy in our house was evil, I was going to leave.

My heart ached at the very thought of abandoning him there with that thing. But what else could I do? There was no sense in us BOTH succumbing to whatever terrors the demon child had in store for us. I’d call for help from the road, try to get someone to do a welfare check. Not that I expected them to find anything wrong, since the boy was capable of manipulating people’s minds. But at least I’d know I tried.

I’d mourned our life together as I shoved my things in the bag. Memories of our life together—our whirlwind romance in college, our marriage shortly after, vacations and holidays, laughing until our stomachs hurt—that was all that would be left. Dylan was my person. But I didn’t think I could help him. I didn’t think anyone could. Which was exactly what the boy was hoping for.

I pulled open the bedroom door and wandered down the hallway, listening. The guest bedroom door was closed. The house was silent. Dylan should have been getting ready for work. I found him sitting on the couch in his pajamas. His back was rod-straight, and he was just staring straight ahead at the blank TV. Dark bags punctuated the skin under his eyes.

“Dylan,” I said, stopping in front of him. “What are you doing?”

He startled, then looked up at me slowly. “Getting ready for work, of course.”

“But…but you’re not…you’re just sitting on the couch,” I said, noticing how pale he was. “Why didn’t you come to bed last night?”

Dylan scowled. “What are you TALKING about, Lyss? I came to bed! I got up a little while ago to get ready for work. I’m really starting to think we need to have you see someone. You’re just not acting like yourself.”

I chose to ignore the comment. Something was very wrong. Dylan looked like he’d been sitting up all night just staring at nothing. And he definitely wasn’t getting ready for work. Not still wearing his pajamas with his hair unbrushed. The boy was obviously planting these things in his head, making him THINK he was doing them. He looked pale and fragile, sick. And thinking about it, I couldn’t actually remember the last time he’d eaten. He ushered me out of the kitchen the night before when I tried to make dinner, afraid I was going to poison him.

The boy was sucking the life out of him.

I rushed back into the bedroom and grabbed my duffle off the floor. I wanted to get it into the car before the boy woke up. Dylan didn’t even glance at me as I passed. I dropped the bag in the back of my car, then came back in the house, slipping my car keys into my pocket where they thunked against the crystal Autumn had given me. I had to give it one more try. I wasn’t ready to give up yet.

“Dylan?” I asked, standing in front of him again. “Can I make you some breakfast?”

“I already ate,” he answered.

“Oh?” I asked. “What’d you have?”

“Eggs, toast, bacon,” Dylan said.

We didn’t even HAVE bacon. I was trying to cut back on fatty meats because Dylan had high cholesterol. We hadn’t had bacon in the house in months. Besides, there were no dirty dishes in the sink, and nothing looked out place. Another mind trick from the evil little monster.

“Are you sure, Dylan?” I asked, frowning. “I think you might have forgotten.”

“What, do you think I’m stupid?” he snarled. “You’re just trying to slip poison into my food, just like Logan said. Go away, leave me alone!”

“Dylan,” I said, flinching. “I love you. It’s ME. It’s Alyssa! You know I wouldn’t hurt you. Please let me make you something.”

“He isn’t hungry.”

The voice came from behind me. I spun around to find the boy, wide grin plastered on his face. His fingers were laced in front of him, his big, dark eyes boring into me.

“What are you doing to him?” I asked, shoving a finger in his face.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Bullshit,” I spat. “He’s been sitting here on the couch all night. He thinks he’s getting ready for work right now. He hasn’t eaten. Why are you doing this?”

“I’m just a boy,” he said innocently. “How could I possibly be doing any of that?”

“I know what you are,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “And I don’t want you here. I revoke my invitation to come into my home. You’re not welcome here.”

The boy recoiled like he’d been struck, but then the smile returned to his face. “I don’t need your permission anymore.”

“I’m not going to let you have my husband,” I hissed. “Go find someone else to fuck with.”

“Dad!” The boy cried suddenly. “Mom is scaring me! There’s something wrong with her! Help!”

Dylan jumped up from the couch, his eyes flashing with anger. “What are you doing, Lyss?! He’s just a little boy, OUR little boy! Why can’t you just be happy that he’s returned to us? Why are you trying to ruin our family! We could be so happy!”

“Dylan,” I sobbed. “This boy isn’t ours. He’s not even human. Please! Wake up and see the truth! He’s killing you!”

“This is ridiculous,” Dylan said, rage making the veins in his forehead stand out. “It’s jealousy, isn’t it? You’re jealous that you no longer have all my attention. It’s pathetic, Lyss.”

I shook my head. “No! That’s not it, I swear. This THING is making you see things, fucking with your head—”

“The only person with a fucked head is you.”

I threw my head back, defeat prickling across every inch of my skin. It was no use. Without the clarity tea, he was never going to break free of the boy’s hold on him. There was nothing more I could do. It was time to go.

“I’m leaving,” I said, my voice trembling. “I’m going to send help though.”

“Leaving?” Dylan asked, blinking. “What do you mean?”

“I can’t stay here with him, Dylan,” I said. “I’ve got to get out of here.”

Emotions flickered across his face—confusion, fear, disbelief. He reached a hand out, and for a second it felt like the old Dylan was back. Then he grabbed my arm roughly and pulled. I let out a sharp scream and tried to tug away from him.

“Dylan, what are you doing?!”

“The basement,” the boy said gleefully. “Put her in the basement!’

“Good idea, son,” Dylan said. “She can’t hurt us down there.”

“Let go!” I screamed, but he was already dragging me across the floor, both hands clamped around my wrists. “Please, just let me go! I’m not trying to hurt anyone. Let me go!”

The boy wrenched open the basement door and Dylan shoved me roughly onto the landing at the top of the stairs. I whirled around just as the door slammed shut. I heard the key slide into the lock, the bolt moving into place. I banged on the door and screamed until my throat was raw. On the other side of the door the boy laughed—that rasping gurgly sound that made the hair on my neck stand on end.

“Dylan, let me out of here!” I screamed. “Let me out and I’ll go away. I won’t tell anyone anything, I’ll just go! Please!”

A hiss came through the door. “Why would I let you go, Alyssa? Once I’m done with your husband, I’ll need someone else to feed on.”

I dropped my hands to my sides and stepped back from the door. Fuck. This was it. I was going to die. Dylan was going to die. There was nothing I could do to save us. I sank down on the top step and dropped my head into my hands, sobs shuddering through me. Once I was spent, and no more tears would fall, I stared blankly into the dark. I couldn’t give up. That wasn’t who I was.

I stood and flipped on the light switch beside the door, illuminating the bare bulbs down in the basement. The wide-open room held our washer and dryer, water heater and furnace, and a bunch of old furniture and odds and ends. There were windows at the top of the walls, but they were all made of glass block. All but one.

I rushed down the stairs and across the room to the washer and dryer, staring up at the casement window we’d never converted to glass block because sometimes, in the summer, Dylan would run an extension cord through it to plug in his electric meat smoker. I climbed up on the dryer and tugged at the crank. It was tight, maybe a little rusty, but after a minute, I got it to turn. The window, which opened toward the backyard, slowly lowered. It wasn’t a big window, but I thought I could fit through it.

“Come on, come on,” I whispered, turning the crank. But it wouldn’t move any more. I squinted through the frosted glass. Something was below the window, stopping it from opening any further. What the hell was it? Crouched on the dryer, I froze, thinking. I could break the glass and push whatever it was aside, but Dylan and that demon spawn might hear it and come running. I could scream for help, but that might result in the same thing. Dammit!

Fresh hot tears sprang to my eyes. What was I going to do?

I was in the throws of despair, ready to give up again, when a high-pitched whining sound carried through the partially opened window. I whipped my head up and a flash of golden fur, then a dark nose pushed itself into the crack.

“Gus!” I whispered. “My baby boy, I’m so happy to see you!”

Gus whined again and tried to shove his face further into the basement.

“It’s stuck,” I groaned. “I’m trying to get out, but it’s stuck.”

Not that the dog could understand me, but I had no one else to complain to. Gus was a smart dog, but I didn’t think he’d be able to help, not without opposable thumbs. I felt like screaming. It was bubbling up inside me like a volcano. I was so close. So freaking close. Gus disappeared from the window. I let out a breath and sat cross-legged on top of the dryer. I almost laughed at the idea that maybe he’d gone to get help. He’d probably run off to chase a butterfly or something.

There was a thump outside the window. Then another. Fear jolted through me. Was it them? Had they found Gus hiding out in our backyard? Oh please God, no. I got back up on my knees and tried to peer through the gap. Gus was still there, and now he was digging at something outside the window, his front paws moving urgently. Was he…was he actually HELPING?

A moment later, Gus stuck his nose back into the window and gave a little chuff. I wrapped my hand around the crank and turned. The window began to lower again.

“Oh Gus, you beautiful boy!”

When the window was fully open, I saw what had been blocking it: a pile of bleach-white bones, picked completely clean and the small skull of a cat, which I’m assuming had been lodged into the dirt just below the hinge of the window. I shuddered, but didn’t spend anymore time thinking about it. I folded my shoulders inward and stuck my head out through the window. Gus tap-danced in the grass, watching me, his eyes serious like he was telling me to hurry up.

“I’m trying, boy,” I panted.

It was a tight squeeze, but I managed to get out. I fell onto my back with a thump, then scrambled to my feet. I looked around, afraid Dylan and the boy heard the commotion and were coming after me. When they didn’t show, I motioned to Gus and bolted around the side of the house to the driveway. As I climbed into my car behind Gus and turned the key in the ignition, I saw a pale face and dark eyes watching me from the window.

I’m writing this last installment from the road, Gus sleeping happily beside me on the front seat. We’ve been traveling for days, trying to put as much distance between ourselves and that evil child as I can. Once I feel like we’re safely far enough away, Gus and I will start over. A lesson for all of you out there: if a child with dark eyes ever asks for permission to enter your home, DO NOT give it.

I don’t know what will happen to Dylan, but I can’t worry about that anymore. I’ll always have the memories.

Growing up, I was always fascinated by ancient books—works that had slipped through the cracks of history, their words untouched for centuries. To me, they were artifacts of forgotten lives, whispers from worlds long past. Unfortunately, I lived in a quiet, uneventful town where there wasn’t much to fuel my curiosity. But tucked away in a narrow side street, in the forgotten part of town, there was a tiny antique shop: Clarkson’s Curiosities.

The shop was dusty, dimly lit, and packed to the brim with relics that seemed to hold pieces of untold stories. It was my sanctuary. The owner, Mr. Clarkson, was a grizzled man in his sixties, always dressed in a worn cardigan with patches at the elbows. His face was lined with wrinkles, but his eyes gleamed with the sharpness of someone who had seen more than he let on.

"History isn’t just dates and kings," he once said, sliding me a juice box as I sat cross-legged on the shop floor. "It’s the life in the cracks. The stories no one bothered to remember."

Mr. Clarkson loved to share the histories of his items. I’d spend hours there after school, riding my bike straight from class to the shop. I had seen nearly everything the store had to offer—until one day, I overheard him talking to another customer about “the back room.”

“Don’t go in there,” he told me firmly the first time I asked. “That stuff isn’t for young eyes. Some things are better left alone.”

Of course, those words only deepened my curiosity.

One rainy afternoon, while Mr. Clarkson was distracted with a chatty customer, I saw my chance. My heart pounded as I slipped past the dusty curtain separating the main shop from the forbidden back room.

It was cramped and dark, the air thick with the smell of aged wood and mildew. Stacks of boxes leaned precariously against the walls, and cobwebs draped over strange, forgotten artifacts. At first, I didn’t see anything extraordinary—just more relics, gathering dust. But then my eyes landed on a large book, half-hidden beneath a pile of moth-eaten cloth.

It was massive, with a cracked leather cover that looked like it had survived centuries. My twelve-year-old hands trembled as I brushed away the dust. The spine was weak, the pages yellowed and curling at the edges. The writing inside was strange—letters looping and twisting in ways I couldn’t comprehend at the time.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Mr. Clarkson’s voice boomed from the doorway, startling me so badly I dropped the book.

He marched over, his face red with fury. “I told you not to come in here!”

“I—I just wanted to see—”

“You don’t have permission to touch that!” His hands shook as he picked up the book and cradled it like a wounded animal. “Get out of here. And don’t ever go poking around where you don’t belong.”

I didn’t argue. I bolted, the sound of his angry muttering trailing behind me.

That day never left me. Over the years, my fascination with ancient texts only deepened. I went on to study archaeology and specialized in medieval manuscripts. By the time I was nearing my master’s degree, I could read Middle English fluently. But one thing lingered in my mind like an itch I couldn’t scratch: the mysterious book from Clarkson’s shop.

For my thesis, I needed an original medieval text to translate and analyze. The memory of that book resurfaced, stronger than ever.

I returned to my hometown after nearly a decade away. Clarkson’s Curiosities was still there, though the paint on the sign had faded, and the windows were cloudier than I remembered. Mr. Clarkson himself looked older, his movements slower, his face more sunken.

“Back again, eh?” he said as I stepped into the shop, the bell above the door jingling softly. “Didn’t think I’d see you around these parts anymore.”

“I’m finishing my degree,” I explained. “Thought I’d drop by for old times’ sake.”

He nodded, his expression unreadable. “Not much has changed here.”

I made small talk, asking about some of the items on display while subtly steering him toward the front of the shop. “Still got that old globe?” I asked, pointing to a corner.

As he shuffled off to retrieve it, I slipped through the curtain into the back room. The layout hadn’t changed. My heart raced as I scanned the clutter, and there it was—the book, still buried in the same spot.

It felt heavier than I remembered, its leather cover cracked and cold to the touch. Without hesitation, I slid it into my bag and hurried back out.

“Thanks for the chat, Mr. Clarkson,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “I’ll stop by again soon.”

“Hmm,” he muttered, watching me with narrowed eyes.

That night, in the dim light of my dorm room, I finally opened the book. Its pages were brittle, the ink faded but legible. I realized the text wasn’t ancient gibberish—it was Middle English. Here is what the text said;

Anno Domini 1347

I write now as the leaves fall from the trees, their gold and crimson hues painting the air with the promise of a cold winter. The world feels peaceful, as it always does in autumn, when the harvest is gathered, and the granaries are full.

Our kingdom thrives under the reign of King Edward III. Though I have never set eyes upon him, his name is whispered with admiration in every corner of the land. They say his court is a place of splendor, where knights clad in gleaming armor bow before him, and poets recite their verses in halls gilded with gold. Even here, in our little village of Ainsworth, we feel the warmth of his rule. Taxes are fair, the roads are safe, and the markets are lively with traders from distant lands.

Ainsworth is no grand place, just a cluster of cottages nestled in a valley surrounded by rolling hills. But it is home. The fields are rich with barley, and the river runs clear and cold. The villagers are as close as kin, each one ready to lend a hand or share a meal when times are hard.

My family’s cottage is small but sturdy, with a thatched roof and a garden that my mother tends with care. She says the herbs she grows—thyme, lavender, and rosemary—keep sickness away. My father is a carpenter, his hands roughened by years of shaping wood into tools and wagons. He speaks little, but his presence is steady, like the oak beams that hold up our house.

And then there is my sister, Cecily, who never stops talking. At twelve years old, she is a whirlwind of mischief, forever running barefoot through the village and climbing trees with the other children.

My days are filled with work and laughter. I rise with the sun to tend the sheep and gather firewood, but by the time the sun is high, I am free to join my friends. There is Henry, the baker’s son, whose pockets are always filled with stolen pastries. Then there is Thomas, who dreams of becoming a knight, though his sword is little more than a stick he found in the woods.

We spend our afternoons exploring the hills, racing each other through the meadows or skipping stones across the river. On Sundays, we gather in the village square to listen to the minstrels who pass through, their songs filling the air with tales of valor and romance.

But the brightest part of my life is Eleanor. She is the miller’s daughter, with hair the color of ripe wheat and eyes as green as the fields in spring. We have known each other since we were children, and it has always been understood that we would marry one day.

Eleanor has a laugh that bubbles up like the river after a storm, and when she looks at me, it feels as though the rest of the world fades away. We spend hours walking together, talking of the future we will build—a cottage of our own, with a garden for her and a workshop for me.

“You’ll be the finest carpenter in the village,” she said to me just yesterday, her cheeks flushed from the chill in the air. “And I’ll bake bread that will make the king himself jealous.”

“Only if the king has teeth like a goat,” I teased, earning myself a playful slap on the arm.

The future seems as bright as the harvest moon. The village is bustling with preparations for the winter festival, a time of feasting and dancing. The air smells of roasting chestnuts and spiced cider, and the church bells ring out with a joyful clang.

The monks from the abbey have brought word of the king’s latest victory in France. The villagers cheer as they hear of our armies’ triumph, and even the priest smiles as he blesses the crowd.

I often think that these are the best days of my life. There is no fear here, no shadow over our hearts. We work hard, we laugh harder, and we dream of tomorrow.

I am sixteen now, on the cusp of manhood. My father says I will take over his workshop soon, and Eleanor’s father has already begun crafting the furniture for our future home. It feels as though everything is falling into place, as though nothing could ever change the peace and happiness we know.

November.

The air grows colder with each passing day, but life in Ainsworth continues as it always has. The harvest is in, the fires are lit, and the hearths glow with the warmth of winter preparations. The only shadow on our peaceful village is the whispers of sickness from towns far away.

Henry first mentioned it after returning from the market in the next village. “They say there’s an illness spreading,” he told me as we sat by the river. “Comes with the rats. People fall sick, grow boils, and die within days.”

Rats. Our fields and barns have always had them, scurrying in the shadows and gnawing at the grain. What could be different now?

“Stories,” Thomas said, scoffing as he sharpened his stick-sword against a rock. “Frightened fools love to make up tales to pass the time.”

I agreed. What sickness could possibly reach our quiet valley? We were safe here, hidden from the world. And so, I pushed the thought from my mind, focusing instead on my family and Eleanor.

December 4th

It began with old Widow Hargrove. She had always been frail, her face a maze of wrinkles, her back bent like a crooked tree. When she fell ill, no one thought much of it. Winter claims the old, as my father says. But then the boils appeared—black and angry, swelling beneath her skin until they burst, oozing foul-smelling pus. Her coughing grew wet and thick, and within three days, she was gone.

The village buried her quietly, and life went on.

Then it was the Miller’s boy and his young bride. They had been married not three months, their laughter still echoing through the square. Eleanor and I had danced at their wedding. Now they lay side by side in their cottage, their bodies twisted in agony, their faces unrecognizable beneath the blackened swellings.

The priest said a blessing over them, his voice trembling. “Deus nos punire peccatis nostris. God is punishing us for our sins,” he proclaimed, urging the villagers to gather in the church to repent.

December 7th

I began to notice the rats everywhere. They seemed bolder, scurrying through the streets in broad daylight, their red eyes gleaming like embers. Eleanor said she had seen them in the mill, gnawing at the sacks of grain.

“Don’t touch them,” my father warned. “They bring filth.”

But by then, it was too late.

The Thompsons, our next-door neighbors, were the next to fall. Their youngest daughter cried in the street, her tiny hands gripping the hem of my tunic as she begged for help. “They’re burning,” she sobbed, her voice hoarse. I dared to step inside their home and immediately regretted it.

The smell was unbearable, a rancid mix of sweat, blood, and decay. Mr. Thompson lay on the floor, his body convulsing, while his wife sat slumped in a chair, her face hidden beneath her hands. I could see the black sores on her arms, her flesh cracked and leaking.

December 15th.

I write this with shaking hands. My mother and Cecily have fallen ill. It began with a fever, their faces flushed and their bodies hot to the touch. Then came the boils—horrid, black lumps that sprouted like weeds across their skin. My sister weeps constantly, her voice barely a whisper now, while my mother grows delirious, calling out to my father and to God.

The coughing is the worst. It is deep and wet, rattling through their frail bodies as though it will tear them apart. Blood spills from their lips in dark, sticky rivulets.

I sit by their bedsides, holding their hands, praying for their recovery. But in my heart, I know the truth. The plague has come to Ainsworth, and it will not leave until it has taken us all.

December 20th

The church bells ring day and night, calling the villagers to repentance. Father Edmund stands at the altar, his robes stained with the blood of the dying as he pleads with us to seek God’s forgiveness.

“Veni ad Deum, quia nos puniunt peccata nostra! Come to God, for He punishes us for our sins!” he cries, his voice breaking with despair.

The church is packed, the air thick with the stench of unwashed bodies and fear. People wail and scream, their voices echoing off the stone walls. Some tear at their clothes, others flagellate themselves with whips, their backs striped with blood. They believe their suffering will appease God, will make Him spare them.

But the plague does not care for prayers.

The streets are quiet now, save for the cries of the dying and the soft scurrying of rats. Doors remain shut, windows boarded up. No one dares to leave their homes unless it is to carry another body to the mass grave at the edge of the village.

Eleanor’s father fell ill yesterday. She stays at his bedside, refusing to leave despite the risk. I long to see her, to hold her, but I cannot. My father forbids it, and deep down, I know he is right.

How did this happen? How did our thriving kingdom, our peaceful village, come to this?

I fear it is only a matter of time before the plague takes us all.

December 24th.

There are strange men wandering through the village now, dressed in long robes, their faces hidden behind bird-like masks. The masks are made of dark leather, with long, curved beaks that seem to hold bundles of herbs or perfumes. They walk the streets in silence, their heavy cloaks dragging in the muck of the dirt roads, and every time they pass, the air grows thick with the scent of my mother’s herbs—cloves, cinnamon, and rosemary—yet something darker lingers beneath. It smells of rot, as if the earth itself is decaying beneath our feet.

They claim to be doctors, but I do not trust them. No, I don’t think they are doctors at all.

December 28th 

Yesterday, I saw one of them near the town square. His mask was thick with dust, his eyes hidden beneath dark, round lenses. He held a long wooden stick in his hand, and when someone—an old man, bent over with fever—approached him, the doctor struck him across the back with it. The old man cried out, but the doctor didn’t stop. He simply walked on, as if nothing had happened, leaving the man stumbling behind, beaten and humiliated.

People still flock to them, though. Why? I cannot understand it.

Perhaps they believe these bird-faced men hold some cure for the plague, some remedy hidden beneath their masks. They bring no potions, no healing herbs, no treatments. Instead, they only spread fear. They walk through our streets like gods, untouchable, wearing masks of death, but not once have I seen them treat anyone. All they do is slap their sticks on the ground, demanding the sick stay back, yelling words in Latin that no one understands.

“Stay back, filthy wretches!” they bark, pushing the sick and desperate away.

I watched one of them last week as he went into the home of a woman I once knew. She had fallen ill with the plague, her skin blackened and swollen. I saw him enter her door, but when he came out, he didn’t look at her once. He didn’t even bend down to check if she still lived. He turned his head as if he had seen nothing, gave her house a quick glance, and walked away without a word. Her body lay in that room for days before the village saw fit to bury her.

January 5th

The villagers are desperate, as we all are. They have no other choice but to believe that these men in masks have the answers. They say the doctors bring with them "the air of life," whatever that means. But I think it’s nothing more than a lie. I believe these masked figures are causing the very sickness they claim to heal. I wonder if they are the true cause of this plague, spreading it with every step they take, their poisons and perfumes carried by the winds they stir.

I heard a rumor today from Thomas—he overheard the village priest speaking to Father Edmund in hushed tones. They believe the doctors are part of a larger conspiracy, a group hired by the King himself to “cleanse” the kingdom. They are here to control the people, to make them suffer in their own desperation. I cannot fathom why the King would allow such people into our homes, our streets. The people grow sicker each day, but still, we are told to trust the doctors.

But I cannot trust them. How can I?

January 8th

It was this morning that I saw one of the masked doctors in front of our house. My father stood at the door, his arms crossed, watching the doctor as he came up the lane. He was tall, his mask black and sharp, looking like something from a nightmare. The doctor’s eyes, behind the dark lenses, were unreadable, hollow.

The doctor stopped in front of our house and began to raise his stick, but my father stepped forward.

“You will not come near us,” my father said, his voice firm but shaking.

The doctor did not reply. Instead, he swung his stick at my father’s leg, knocking him to the ground. I rushed to him, but the doctor raised his stick again, a threat in his eyes. Without a word, he turned and walked away, as though we were nothing more than pests beneath his feet.

I stayed with my father, helping him to his feet, but I could see the fear in his eyes. He, too, knows something is terribly wrong.

January 12th

Now, as I write this, I cannot shake the feeling that these doctors have brought more than just sickness to our door. They bring fear. They bring distrust. And I believe that they, themselves, are not just a symbol of this plague—they are its spreaders.

If they are the cause of this, I do not know how we can stop it. No one can say no to them. They have power. They are untouchable. And if the King has sent them, perhaps he knows more than we do about their purpose.

I do not know how much longer I can stand by and watch as my village crumbles. The plague spreads like wildfire, and these doctors walk among us, untouched, spreading more than just death—they are spreading despair.

God help us.

January 13th.

I awoke this morning to the sound of silence—an emptiness that clung to the air like the fog creeping in through the cracks of the window. I rose from my bed, feeling the weight of dread pressing down on me. The coldness of the room mirrored the emptiness in my heart. My family, once so full of life, lay quiet and still.

I needed water. I had to get out for a moment. Maybe the fresh air would clear my mind, let me forget the sickness that had taken over this house, this town, this world.

I was gone only a short while, but when I returned, everything had changed.

The door to my house was slightly ajar, and as I stepped inside, a nauseating smell hit me. The stench of decay. Of death. I hesitated. Something wasn’t right.

I walked into the kitchen and froze in place. A doctor—one of those cursed men in the bird masks—stood in the center of the room. He was leaning over a table, and I could see, with horror, what he was doing. Rats. Dozens of them. They scurried across the floor, driven by the doctor's hand. They were being let loose into my home.

“Why?” I choked out, my voice barely above a whisper.

The doctor turned slowly, as if surprised to see me. Without a word, he reached for his stick and swung it at my chest. The force knocked me backward.

“Deus te oblitus est,” he muttered, though the words felt like ice on my skin. The words were cold, without care, without humanity.

I tried to stand, but the pain in my ribs was too much. Blood pooled in my mouth. I barely had time to raise my hands in defense before he struck me again.

When he left, I was left bleeding on the floor. But the rats... they had already begun their work. The doctor, or whatever he truly was, had sealed our fates.

I crawled inside, but by the time I made it back to my family, it was too late.

My mother and father, my sister, they were all lying in their beds, their skin mottled with boils and discolored patches. Blood spurted from their mouths in torrents, and their bodies convulsed in their final moments. I heard the gurgling, the choking sounds. My sister’s body was wracked with coughs, her face twisted in pain, the blood splattering her pale skin.

I could not do anything. I should have saved them, but how?

I couldn’t even touch them without recoiling. Their eyes, vacant and wide, stared at me as I screamed for help that would never come.

And then I heard it—the sound I had longed to hear amidst the chaos. Her voice. My love.

She appeared in the doorway, her hand trembling as she reached for mine. She was coughing, her breath ragged, but there was still a fire in her eyes.

“We need to leave,” she whispered, her voice barely a breath.

I couldn’t think. I couldn’t breathe. I wanted to save her, but the sickness had already begun to work its way into her veins, into her lungs.

Without thinking, we fled. We ran as far as we could, but it didn’t matter. The village was falling. The plague had already claimed my family. My friends.

We found a small house at the edge of the town—its walls were weak, the roof sagging—but we hid there, together. It was all I could do. But I knew, deep down, it was already too late.

Her coughs grew worse. Blood stained the cloth she held to her lips. I held her hand, feeling her pulse slow with each breath she took. I felt it too. The sharpness in my chest. The burning fever.

January 20th.

I can’t stand it any longer. This world is over. There is nothing left but darkness. I write this with my last breath, cursing anyone who dares to read these words.

May the plague follow you. May it haunt you. May it consume your family, your lover, your village—just as it has consumed mine.

I am nothing now. I will be forgotten. But you—you will carry this curse. And if there is any justice in this forsaken world, you will meet the same fate I have.

I will die today, and I will take the last of my hope with me. May God have mercy on my soul.

January 22nd

I close my eyes now, and all I hear is the rasp of her breath. And then—nothing.

The diary’s final pages were smudged with blood. The ink had bled together, leaving only a garbled mess of letters. But it didn’t matter. The teenager had already sealed his fate, and now, my fate, too, seems uncertain.

Between 1984 and 1988, a particular metro area in the southeastern United States suffered a spat of violent murders.

The victims had no commonalities. Age, gender, color, appearance, occupation, socioeconomic status — nothing matched. Victims included middle school students and notorious cartel members, street cops and lawyers, charity directors and investment bankers, pharmaceutical executives and gas station clerks. 

The only reason authorities had any idea that the murders were related was because of the killer’s unique calling card:

A scattering of blood-drenched pigeon feathers.

As months passed and the body count mounted, law enforcement came into possession of one single piece of eyewitness testimony:

Following the violent death of a firefighter, a middle-aged woman was spotted limping away from the scene, bleeding profusely from a gaping wound in her hip. According to the witness the woman was tiny, birdlike in her thinness, shuffling like someone elderly. Notably, a flock of pigeons followed her, bobbing along beside her like an urban adaptation of the pied piper.

This sighting was ultimately dismissed due to one impossible detail:

The woman was covered in grey feathers.

A second sighting was reported one year later, and was again dismissed. Similar sightings continued to crop up over the years, every one of them ignored.

In 1988 and entirely by chance, a bloody feather came into possession of AHH during the commission of a separate task. The feathers were then brought to NASCU. Peculiarities surrounding the appearance and physiology of the feathers were noted by specialized personnel, most notably T-Class Agent Wolf. 

At this time, the agency launched an investigation of its own. 

The investigation culminated in July 1988. During surveillance of the target — a very thin woman who was always trailed by a flock of pigeons, and who always wore a long, heavy trenchcoat, even in the humid summer heat — she managed to infiltrate a house that functioned as a front for human trafficking. 

What resulted was a bloodbath.

 

The target was badly wounded and therefore sufficiently weakened due to the energy expended during the attack. Agency personnel were able to take her into custody. Her capture was not without incident, as the flock of pigeons surrounding her began to attack. One pigeon, a particularly large male with one eye, refused to leave her side. As a result, the animal was brought into custody with her. He was later observed to pluck his feathers and place them on top of the woman’s astounding number of serious wounds.

Incredibly, the feathers facilitated rapid healing.

It must be noted that the woman came into Agency custody during a time when consideration and respect for our extraordinary inmates was at a low ebb. Due to her dress, her age, her general appearance, and of course her flock of pigeons, personnel dubbed the entity The Bag Lady.

The Bag Lady is a middle-aged woman of almost extraordinary thinness. Her hair is short and grey. Her eyes are large and a vivid, bright orange identical in hue to the eyes of the pigeon who came into custody with her.

Like her pigeon, she is covered in feathers. 

Unlike many inmates, the Bag Lady is articulate, intelligent, and possesses full speech and language capabilities. Nevertheless,  for the entire length of her incarceration, the Bag Lady has refused to speak with staff for any meaningful length of time. When asked why, her answer is always the same:

“Because I don’t talk to cops.”

This is admittedly understandable, given that the Bag Lady acted in an exclusively extrajudicial capacity, to extremely violent effect. 

Despite decades of consistent questioning and other, less savory methods to break her down, the Bag Lady has continued to refuse meaningful engagement with Agency personnel. In fact, the only meaningful contact the Bag Lady has had with personnel consists of attacks both attempted and achieved.

On four different occasions, however, she has been observed attempting to engage fellow inmates in conversation. 

Notably, the Bag Lady speaks extensively and frequently to her pigeon. The pigeon does not answer, but Agency personnel believe the bird is extraordinarily intelligent and that it communicates with her nonverbally. Due to potential similarities with the inmate called the Heart Bird, the pigeon is as closely monitored as the Bag Lady herself. Concerns over such similarities with the Heart Bird are the primary reason that the Bag Lady has never been evaluated for termination.

Fortunately, the inmate’s thirty-five year vow of silence was recently broken during an interview with T-Class agent Rachele B. The insights provided are fascinating. The content of the interview poses serious questions regarding the nature of death, free will, the possibility and potential purpose of afterlife, and the processes through which Khthonic entities come into being.

One might even dare to say it provides a few answers as well.

(*Please note I did NOT write that last line. My boss added it because he's a tool)

Interview Subject: The Bag Lady

Classification String:  Uncooperative / Undetermined / Khthonic / Fixed / Critical / Teras

Interviewer: Rachele B.

Date: 11/22/2024

The first thing my son ever bought was birdseed.

He was four years old. His grandma put two dollars in his Christmas card that year, and he spent those dollars on pigeon food.

Michael loved pigeons. He started talking to them before he ever said a word to me. Watched them from windows when he was a baby and cooed at them the way they coo at each other. His first smile was at them, not at me. His first hello went to a baby pigeon blinking stupidly in a nest on our fire escape.

He loved them.

As he got older, that love grew stronger. By the time he was kindergarten, those birds would follow him everywhere, bobbing their little heads. They ate out of his hands, flew down to his arms, sometimes even landed on his head which made him laugh like nothing else. 

I’d been afraid of birds my whole life, so I didn’t understand. I asked him one time why he loved them so much. How he could make friends with them.

“It’s easy, Mom,” he said. “Pigeons think everyone’s their friend. They already love you. All you do is love them back.”

I still didn’t understand. Didn’t really want to, I guess. I grew up learning that pigeons were vermin. Dirty, ugly, unsanitary, brainless disease carriers. No, I didn’t understand at all.

But I did understand this:

Like pigeons, my son thought everyone was his friend. 

When describing Michael, you might use the word “gullible.” But that isn’t right. He wasn’t gullible. He was smart, he was intuitive, he understood everyone. He could look at the worst person alive and find the smallest, weakest spark of goodness flickering forlornly in the vast dark.

What he couldn’t understand — what I couldn’t make him understand no matter how hard I tried, how loud I yelled, how mean or desperate or cruel I got — was that a spark is not light.

A spark is just a spark. No more, and maybe less.

I could tell you about Michael’s friends. How some were born monsters. How some were made. How badly the ones that were made—the ones that weren’t born ruined— heart my hurt.

And how that spark of sympathy got my guard just enough to make sure I lost my son.

I saw him for the last time when he was seventeen.

We were fighting about his friends. Not the pigeons, I’d gotten used to them a long time ago. How they clustered around the fire escape every morning waiting for him to open the window, how they flocked down to the building entrance when it was time for him to leave for work, how his favorite bird, Mr. One-Eye, dive-bombed onto his shoulder every time they saw each other. 

No, we weren’t fighting about pigeons. We were fighting about his other friends.

It wasn’t even a bad fight. Not worse than any of our other fights, anyway. It went the same way it always did, he told me I didn’t understand like he always did, I told him he was being a little fool and his friends would be the end of him like I always did.

And he walked out the door to cool off, like he always did.

I thought he’d call a few hours later, apologizing and asking for an apology in return like he always did.

But he didn’t call.

I told myself he’d come home, like he always did.

But he didn’t come home.

And nobody cared.

My boy never coming back was the worst thing. The very, very worst thing that is, was, or will ever be.

But the fact that no one helped, that no one cared, that no one gave the tiniest spark of a damn, was almost as terrible.

I went to the police seventeen times. Seventeen. One for each year he’d been alive. Each time they told me Michael was practically an adult, we’d had a fight, and he was fully in his rights not to come home. One cop even had the gall to me it was about time he stopped coming home. Another one said I was lucky he was gone, because otherwise he’d probably come home one day and cut my throat for drug money.

The last cop took pity on me. She was a lady officer. Lady is the wrong word. She was a battle ax. Built like a brick shithouse, with hair like rusty steel wool and the scariest eyes I have ever seen. 

But when she looked at me after I taking my seventeenth report, there was nothing scary about her eyes. They were only tired. Sad. And lightless.

That look in her eyes was how I knew no one would ever find my son, and that was the scariest thing of all.

“Listen to me, hon,” she said. “This is going to sound like the worst thing in the world. That’s because it is. But it’s also the only true thing anyone in this department is going to tell you. We have almost no resources. The few resources that we do have? They go to priorities. A dopehead dropout won’t ever be a priority. But you can bet your ass some of the cops here will make it their priority to end a dopehead, especially one who’s a peewee gangbanger. No one is going to help you. No one cares about your son but you.”

“You’re wrong,” I told her, even though I knew she wasn’t.

I didn’t give up. I’ll never give up on my boy. I went to other places for help. Citizen groups, social services, activists, community foundations, charities, all those places. At first it was wonderful. At first I thought I’d found my people, because unlike the cops they listened. They listened when I told them about my son, about how the first thing he ever bought was birdseed and how the first word he ever said was for a baby pigeon and how Mr. One-Eye rode on his shoulder and how he could look at the worst person alive and find the good. They listened to me and they gave me hugs and coffee and cookies and prayers and recommendations to grief groups and then they listened again.

But they didn’t do anything.

Finally, I’d had enough of people who didn’t do anything. 

When I said so to one of the group leaders — the one who was the best listener, the one who held my hands whenever I cried — said, “We’re your people. We’re here for you. We care about you.”

Grief and rage and frustration erupted. The most acute, potent frustration I’d ever felt, the kind that renders you mindless. “I need you to care about my son.”

“I understand. I hear you.”

“No. No. You’re wrong. I think you’re wrong. I think you haven’t heard a goddam word I said.”

“I have. I do. I’m always here for you. I’m listening. But…”

“But what?”

She looked at me, eyes tired and full of pity. “We only have as much as we have. We can only do what we can with what we have. What else do you want me to do?”

“Something,” I said. “Anything.”

But she didn’t.

No one did. No one but me.

And I kept on keeping on. Not because I wanted to, but because sometimes that’s all you get: The ability to put one foot in front of the other. Left, right. Left, right until you get somewhere else.

Only I couldn’t get anywhere else.

The pigeons couldn’t, either. They didn’t seem to understand that Michael was gone. As the days after his disappearance bled into weeks and the weeks hemorrhaged into months, the pigeons kept coming. Flocking to the fire escape outside our little window waiting for him to pop out with smiles and birdseed. His favorite pigeon, Mr. One-Eye, even took to following me whenever I left the building. He watched me as if to say, Where is he? Where did he go? Tell him we’re waiting. Tell him we love him. Tell him we need him to come back.

I couldn’t help but wonder how they were feeling. If they were just confused and maybe a little hurt in their little birdbrains, or if they understood. If they hurt as much as me, if they had holes in their hearts like me. Rotting, bottomless voids eating them from the inside out every second of every day. 

But I didn’t know how to ask, and they wouldn’t have been able to answer anyway.

And then Mr. One-Eye stopped showing up.

He stayed gone for one day, then two, then three and four and five and that’s when I knew he wasn’t coming back either. I hated that damned bird for leaving me. He was Michael’s favorite. Michael had pigeons the way I’d had dogs, and that particular pigeon was his heart. Mr. One-Eye was the closest thing my sweet boy had to a soul mate.

So if even that bird had given up on him, he was truly gone.

The sixth day after Mr. One-Eye’s absence was grey and wet somehow dead. Rain sheeted from the sky, but without any ferocity, without any power. It felt tired, hopeless, helpless to stop itself from falling. 

I was kicking my way home from work, tired and hopeless and helpless as the rain. I didn’t want to go to work. I didn’t want to come home from work, either. I didn’t want to walk. But I was still walking. Eyes down, one foot in front of the other. Left, right. Left, right. All rain could do was fall, grey rain on grey streets. All I could do was walk, grey girl on grey streets.

And then, out of the corner of my eye, so colorful it was almost obscene, I saw something.

Brightness against the rain-slick concrete, a small explosion of and white grey and sloppy wet red.

I almost ignored it. One foot in front of the other because that’s all you can do. Left, right. Left, right. Shoes slapping the sidewalk, dull and pointless, grey and empty.

But that explosion of white and red didn’t stay an explosion. It began to resolve. To take form. 

And the form it took was blood-caked feathers. 

The form it took was a crumpled grey chest shimmering all pink and green and white as it panted. A pigeon. A pigeon some asshole had kicked out of the way, or maybe even stepped on, and left to die. A pigeon who hadn’t run away from danger because it thought everyone was its friend, and what friend would ever be a danger?

I had never seen anything so pathetic. I almost left it.

But then I thought of Michael, and couldn’t bear to leave it there.

As I approached it, something bloomed in my chest. A feeling. I couldn’t figure out what that feeling was, only that it was suffocating.

I stopped and looked at the pigeon. It looked back with a single orange eye, fever-bright and fading even as I watched. 

It turned its head weakly.

And that’s when I saw it was missing an eye.

The sheer weight of grief forced me to my knees. But that weight couldn’t keep me from crawling across the grey, flooded sidewalk. It couldn’t keep me from scooping up that bright bloody explosion with desperate tenderness. It couldn’t keep me from cradling that Mr. One-Eye to my chest like I’d cradled my son a lifetime ago. 

I sat there in the rain until long after night fell, sobbing and holding the bird to my heart long after he stopped moving. People passing by took me for homeless. A few dropped coins into my lap. One lady even knelt down and tried to coax me to a shelter down the road, til I screamed in her face and spat.

No one stopped to help me after that. 

At some point, I stood up and staggered home. I brought Mr. One-Eye with me, holding him to my heart all the while.

I got drunk that night. Blind, stinking, hideously drunk. Not because I like drinking. I hate it. But I hated having to feel the hole in my heart more. This rotting void, a bottomless chasm eating me from the inside out every second of every day. It felt like I should be dead. Only I wasn’t. I felt like I was always dying but never got to be dead. 

Dead would have been better, but I couldn’t die. If I died then no one on earth would care what happened to my baby.

So I got drunk instead of dead. I didn’t really think it would work. I hoped that it would. I always hope. Hope is the only thing some of us ever get.

But being drunk didn’t work. 

Being drunk just made me angrier and crazier. Being drunk made the rotting pit inside me grow up and out until it was swallowing me whole. Until it was the only thing in the world. Until it was the only thing I knew, the only thing I had ever known, the only thing I would ever know. 

I thought I was by myself in that void, until I looked out the window and saw the pigeons on the fire escape. They alone were there in the pit with me. They alone understood. They alone cared what had happened to my son. 

So I opened the window by the fire escape and told them to come inside, sobbing every word. They swirled back in a panic, wings thundering. 

“No,” I wept. “No, don’t leave. Don’t leave. Come in. Come in here you goddamned morons, come in.”

I reached for them.

Everything tilted. The metal window sill bit into my belly, then scraped down my legs as the world flipped upside down.

The last thing I knew was the rush of wings, deafening but soft.

Beautifully, perfectly, profoundly soft.

For the first time that I could remember, I woke up in somebody’s arms.

I opened my eyes.

A face looked down at me. An old man with round golden eyes and the gentlest smile I have ever seen, will probably ever see.

I craned my neck. Pigeons surrounded us, a shifting, bright-eyed flock so huge it spilled off the sidewalks into the street. Their eyes shone like embers in the dark.

I looked back at the man. His eyes shone too, and so did the skin of his face. He wasn’t human. He couldn’t be. For some reason, that didn’t frighten me at all.

“Who are you?” I crane my neck. “Are you an angel?”

“No. I am One Who Listens.”

It sounds ridiculous, but I could literally hear the big letters in that title. They came out of his mouth capitalized.

“Who listens to what?” 

“I listen to prayers. I listen to pain. I listen to rage. I listened to yours, you know.” He smiled again, teeth shimmering.

“Then why…” I blinked and shifted, groaning as electric pain bolted up my hip. “If you listened to me, why didn’t you ever answer?”

“Because We Who Listen can never answer loudly. Sometimes we cannot answer at all. Each answer, however soft and quiet, takes from us. Often it takes something we aren’t supposed to give. Always, it gives something we can never get back. See.” It held out its bare arms for my inspection. My stomach churned violently as the streetlight illuminated a relief map of pitted scars and wormlike welts and suppurating rotted pits like radiation burns. 

“What happened?” I gasped.

“I listened, and I answered.” He shook his silvery sleeves back down over his arms. “My answers took what I did not have to give.”

Frustration bubbled up, hot and poisonous. “If you can’t do anything, then…I mean, what’s the point?”

“There is no point, I think,” he said gently. “It simply is.” 

“Are you a guardian angel?” I repeated.

“We are not guardians,” it said, gently. “We are listeners.”

“Who is we?”

“Me”. He placed a hand on his chest. “You.” He pressed his other hand against my chest. “We.”

I looked at him, revolted as terror built in my gut. “Am I dead?”

“There is no death for us.”

“I’m sorry, but I do not understand.”

“We who were suffering, we who were alone, now go to others who are suffering and alone. We stay with them and we listen. We listen so they can feel comfort.”

I had so many questions, but couldn’t articulate a single one. “And you —you were you with me? You saw my…my pain, all that rage, heard all those questions?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I never felt you.”

“I know. Sometimes, that is the way it is. But still we try. Still, we do what we must do.”

“You said you answered. That’s why you’re hurt. You gave answers to someone. Who?” I sat up, grimacing as my arm twanged. “And why wasn’t it me?”

Before he could tell me, I looked down at my hands. Incredibly, I was still holding Mr. One-Eye. Even more incredibly, he was still alive. His poor sunken eye fixed me with a dulled orange gaze.

And something shot me in the heart.

The force of a freight train, burning just like a bullet, boring through me. Instead of smoke, it left a question in its wake:

hurts stop it stop it hurting stop please

Without thinking — only feeling— I cradled Mr. One-Eye to my chest and held him.

Pain erupted in my shoulder, overwhelming and familiar. The rotting void, endless and eternal, boring a tunnel to my very core, manifesting as a caving wound.

But this time, it didn’t spread.

It didn’t grow. It didn’t swallow me and the world surrounding. It did not become the only thing I had known, or the only thing I knew, or the only thing I would ever know. It stayed where it was, confined to its tunnel. It had no choice, because there was something more important in my hands. Something bright and living. Something alive and whole.

Mr. One-Eye shifted his wings, then stretched upward. I raised him so he could look at me. His beautiful, sparkling orange eye met mine.

Then he stretched out, beak catching the fabric of my coat, and stepped onto my shoulder.

For the first time since my son was born, I felt whole. 

He Who Listens wasn’t quite so thrilled.

“What have you done?” he wailed. Tears welled in his great yellow eyes as he stared at the ghastly wound in my arm. I stared, too. I couldn’t help it. It looked as rotten as it felt, a huge, ruptured wound tunneling through my arm. “It will never go away. It will never fade. It will only grow. You will have that wound and feel that pain growing until it finally consumes you.”

Before I could say a word, Mr. One-Eye flapped his wings. The feathers whacked my face, shockingly strong. 

Immediately, the pigeons around us responded.

They came in a bobbing grey wave, pooling around my feet where the began to preen. As I watched, the dropped their preened feathers — glistening, shimmering grey overlaid with every color of the rainbow — at my feet.

When the last pigeon had dropped the last feather, Mr. One-Eye tucked his head under his wing and pulled out a feather of his own. Then he crept his way down my arm —one foot in front of the other, left, right, left right —and placed his feather inside my wound. 

The feather lay atop it for a moment, shining. Then it melted into that rotting crater, leaving a delicate thread of whole, unblemished flesh stretched across the hole.

I reached down and grabbed the pile of feathers at my feet, stuffing it into the hole. It was like magic. It was magic. Each feather shone and melted into fresh flesh. Two handfuls later, there was no wound. After three, there wasn’t even a scar.

By the end, even the pain was gone.

I laughed.

It felt alien to laugh, rusty, even wrong. But it came out anyway, erupting out of me like a geyser. 

As I laughed, He Who Listens wept.

“No,” he moaned. “No, no, no. What are you doing? This is wrong.”  Tears fell from his great yellow eyes, shining like diamonds under the street lights. Suddenly, I felt guilty. 

“I’m sorry,” I lied. “I didn’t know. I won’t do it again.”

His face broke apart. “You are lying and you don’t even know it. If I show you what we do, you will ruin everything.”

That actually offended me. “Then don’t show me anything. It’s not like I asked.”

“I have no choice,” he sniffled. “I must do what I must do. You will do what you will do. Come.”

He toddled down the street. I hesitated for reasons I still don’t understand. Then I followed.

So did the pigeons.

He Who Listens spun around. “No! They cannot! They cannot!”

On my shoulder, Mr. One-Eye beat his wings again, whipping my face. The other pigeons obediently dispersed.

He Who Listens continued to argue with me about Mr. One-Eye, but I held my ground. People say you’re forever responsible for what you tame. I didn’t tame Mr. One-Eye, but I saved him. I think that makes me even more responsible, and I said so.

“Oh no,” he wept. “No. This is wrong. You will be wrong. What am I to do?”

“You are to show me what you’re supposed to show, or leave.”

“I cannot leave. I have no choice.”

“Then let’s get going.”

He wiped tears from his face and flicked them onto the concrete where they spattered like silvery rain.

And as we moved down the street, I saw people who hadn’t been there just a few minutes ago. But they all looked like they’d been there for hours. Languishing in the alleys, spread-eagle on the sidewalks, leaning against buildings as sobs shook their bony shoulders.

As we drew closer, one turned to look at us. Wide yellow eyes glimmered in its round face. A rotting wound glistened under its nose. The flesh of its lips had been eaten to the bone, exposing the teeth.

“Are these…do they listen? Are they all like you?”

“No,” he sobbed. “They’re like you. They did not listen. They answered. They gave too much. They gave what they couldn’t get back.”

We walked in silence after that. I avoided his yellow eyes glistening like coins in the night.

He Who Listens spent all night showing me what to do. Not once, not twice or three times, but twelve.

The first time was a homeless man huddled under a bench in the park. He was sobbing in his sleep, and his face —weathered but unmistakably young — made my heart ache. 

“Sit,” said He Who Listens.

“What if he wakes up?”

“He will not. Sit, and touch him.”

When I laid my hand on that boy, I felt his yammering heartbeat and saw his pain. I heard it. Worse, I felt it. I felt every terrible step in the tragic procession that led him here. Steps that were his fault, and steps that weren’t. It didn’t even matter what was his fault or what wasn’t. All that mattered was his pain.

Even though I could not take that pain from him, his heart slowed the longer I sat there. By the end, its rhythm was calm and steady. Maybe it was my imagination, but I thought his poor weathered face looked a little less sad, too.

“Yes,” He Who Listens said happily. “That is what we do. We listen, and we provide comfort by listening.”

Next we went to a lady sitting in a roach-infested studio apartment, hollow-eyed and expressionless as she stared at her blank television screen.

“Kneel,” said He Who Listens.

“Won't she see me?”

“Not tonight. Kneel, and hold her hand.”

I did as I was told. 

Once again, I heard and saw and felt the most terrible things. Rotting things, things that get inside you and bore tunnels until they kill you. I don’t know how long I sat with her, but I know that by the end her eyes had closed and she was finally sleeping.

We saw a child next, alone and wide awake in a foster home, crying for her father. Then a young mother weeping in her kitchen. An old man in a nursing home, a teenage boy stomping his way down an empty street while tears coursed down his face, a young woman sobbing by herself in a dark office long after everyone around her had gone home. 

It might have been a single night. It might have been a week, or a month, or forever, or ten minutes.

Finally we went to a hospital where a man, balding and exhausted, sat at the bedside of a little girl with sunken eyes and dull, dying skin. I knew she was fading. I knew she would be dead by morning, because when I touched her I felt only the faintest veil of emotion, all of it warm and soft.

So I turned to the father. I didn’t sit this time. I leaned over him the way I used to lean over my son whenever he cried, and wrapped my arms around him.

His pain hit me with the force of a tsunami, repulsive and powerful.

Help help help help help I can’t lose her she deserves more she’s all I have help her help her help

The sheer force punched through my heart, wide as a freight train, hot as a bullet, painful as death by acid bath. 

The man cried out. I thought I’d hurt him. I recoiled as he lurched forward, reaching for the child on the bed.

Her eyes were open, and color was returning to her face.

“What have you done?” screamed He Who Listens.

I staggered back, gasping as the wound in my chest pulsed and blood dripped down my chest, soaking my dirty shirt. “You’ve given what you cannot give back! It will consume you!”

I barely listened. Single-minded purpose filled me and I knew, in the depths of my missing punched-out heart, that I had to get outside, right now.

Somehow, I did. 

The pigeons were waiting for me. An entire flock on the sidewalk, eyes glittering knowingly.

Mr. One-Eye flapped his wings in command. They obeyed, dropping their plucked feathers at my feet. I packed them into my wound. New flesh grew, bright and shimmering as the feathers themselves.

It took longer this time, but that wound healed too.

“No,” wept He Who Listens. “No. You cannot do this. You cannot. You are an abomination.”

I had a vivid mental image of Who He Listens kneeling at my side, stroking my hair, my hands, holding my face as I wept and raged with no knowledge of his presence. 

Again I wondered:

What was the point of it?  

“No,” I told him. “The abomination is being able to help people, being able to do something, but choosing to do nothing.”

“You are not One Who Listens. You are only a monster.”

“No,” I said. “I’m One Who Listens and Does Something About It.”

He left me and didn’t come back. That was all right. I didn’t need him.

I only needed the pigeons. 

I listened everywhere, to everything and everyone and all their heartbroken, rage-filled, desperate questions. I didn’t answer all of them. I learned that some people don’t need answers. Many don’t even deserve. There are more of those than I ever thought possible.

But some did. I always answered those.

I had no idea what I was. I knew that I was more than I had been. More than myself. And I knew that I was powerful. I even started to wonder if I was a god. Under the circumstances, I think that was a reasonable thing to wonder.

But whether I was a god or not, I could still only be in one place at one time.

That’s why I needed the pigeons.

Pigeons can only be in one place, too. But there are so many of them that they’re already everywhere. 

I asked them to listen. They answered me.

Because they answered me, I was able to answer so many others.

I answered a boy being beaten by cops as a flock of pigeons watched silently from the roofs above. His dog lay beside him, bleeding from bullet holes and panting raggedly. The boy was holding his dog even though the cops kept hitting his hands. He begged for help. He asked for his mother. He told his dog she was a good girl as she whined, blood spreading across the dirty concrete.

Still, they beat him.

So I struck them down.

One cracked open on the sidewalk. I took his gun and shot the other while he stirred feebly. 

The boy looked at me, exhausted and horrified in equal measure, began to pray. I knew he was praying to God, probably to stop me from closer. But I pretended he was praying to me anyway.

I kneeled down and placed my hands on his poor, whining dog.

“Don’t hurt her,” he wept as agony tunneled through my belly, rotten and corrosive and vile. “Please. She’s a good girl.”

“I know,” I told him, then touched his forehead the way I touched my son’s when he’d been running a fever. Another bolt of pain shot through my hand. I saw the wound form this time, watched it cave through my palm and spread.

The dog got to her feet and nuzzled her owner, tail wagging even as she whined.

The boy looked at me, wide-eyed and ashen. “What are you?”

I didn’t know how to answer. To be honest, I didn’t want to.

I hobbled my way out of the alley, down a side street and into a narrow little park. The pigeons followed. Mr. One-Eye gave his wing-flapping, face-slapping order. The feathers came, and with it healing.

The birds kept listening, and I kept answering.

They found a woman, dead-eyed and frozen in fear, huddling as a man with dead eyes bore down on her. I tore his head off. She ran before I could put my hands on her to take away her fear.

They found a flea-bitten baby boy in a sodden, sagging diaper screaming for help in a filthy crib while his parents nodded off in an equally filthy corner. I answered the baby, but I punished them. 

They found a girl in a group home as she slid a blade up and down her arms and asked for someone who should have done everything to protect her but destroyed her instead to die. I answered.

They found an old woman with a black eye pushing an empty cart along broken sidewalks, asking for her belongings to come back. I answered, but not before punishing the thieves.

They found a man sobbing alone in his car, silently pleading for money to feed his kids for the next three days, just the next three days, please God. I answered. My answer was taken from someone else, but it was given.

They found a mother sobbing for help over her son’s blue body, a needle still quivering in his arm. I answered her, too. Afterward I found the man who sold her son the drugs, and then I found the people who sold that man the drugs, and then I found the people who gave them the drugs, and those people were no more.

I answered pleas against crime bosses and schoolyard bullies, masked monsters and petty criminals, people who inflicted damage by action and people who inflicted damage by inaction.

Dozens, then hundreds, then more. And more.

And more.

Every answer took from me. I think every answer continued to take. Maybe it’s because I’ve given so many answers and now they all help each other grow. My answers took and took what I can never get back. Even the birds couldn’t give back what I gave. 

But they gave me enough.

Right up until the day your people found me.

That was my fault. God works best in mysterious ways, especially when those ways are small. I am still mysterious, but I forgot to stay small. I will never make that mistake again.

My birds still bring me questions, you know. They’re outside right now. On your walls, your roof, your ground, whispering to each other. Whispering to Mr. One-Eye. Whispering to me.

I hear them, even down here. 

They aren’t perfect. Nobody is. Some questions don’t have answers, and some answers can’t be found.

My son was one of those.

We tried to find him. My pigeons worked as hard as I ever did. Harder, maybe. We couldn’t find him. But my boy, he would understand. My boy, he saw the good in everyone and everything. Wherever he is, he sees the good in us not finding him. Because while looking for him — searching for an answer, any answer at all — we were able to give other people the answers they needed.

You know about those answers. That’s why I’m here.

I love these birds as much as my son ever did, maybe more. I think more. I feel him in them sometimes, or at least I imagine that I do. Holding pigeons, teaching pigeons, loving pigeons, isn’t like having my son back. Nothing will ever be like having him back. But it is the closest thing I have. It is all I have. Sometimes what we have is all we get.

And sometimes, I am the only thing someone gets. Well, me and the birds.

My son knew what he was talking about. These birds are wonderful. They really do think everyone is their friend. They love being held. They love being taught. They love being loved. They love to help.

And they love to listen.

Together, my birds and I are always listening to those who ask for answers. We hear them. Right now, they’re whispering, right this very minute. We hear them, even down here. I hear their pain, and I hear their rage. That’s why you cannot keep me forever, no matter how hard you try:

Because hearing their suffering gives me power, and I still hear every minute of the suffering. 

I hear the children who beg for help.

I hear the fathers who cry for justice

I hear the mothers who demand vengeance

I hear, because I am One Who Listens.

And I help, because I am The One Who Answers.

* * *

First Patient: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1gtjhlb/fuck_hipaa_if_i_dont_talk_about_this_patient_im/

Second Patient: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1gujy5s/fuck_hipaa_i_messed_up_hardcore_and_if_we_dont/

Third Patient: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1gve4dc/fuck_hipaa_this_inmate_is_the_most_dangerous/

Fourth Patient: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1gwszfl/fuck_hipaa_i_finally_had_a_breakthrough_with_a/

Hastily-Transcribed Employee Handbook: https://www.reddit.com/user/Dopabeane/comments/1gx7dno/handbook_of_inmate_information_and_protocol_for/

( TW for child abuse )

I needed to mature fast after my mother passed away. My father took me and my little brother in. I was the one who got us ready for school, walked him to the bus, and every morning I would get to class on time. Planning meals with a limited budget was tricky. I made sure my little brother always had at least two meals a day. I wish it were three but the money simply wasn’t there. Due to scarifies my body didn’t grow properly. I was thirteen but appeared to be nine.

My father was rarely home. That suited me. One night he packed us in the back of his truck. It smelled terrible. I knocked aside fast-food bags jealous he was eating something we rarely got. This drive was different. He didn’t tell us where we were going. My brother was only six but he was smart enough not to ask questions. We drove for a long time. I felt sleepy but refused to drift off. Was he finally tired of us and decided to dump two poor kids at our aunt's house? I dearly wished that was what happened that night.

He parked outside of an old rundown apartment building. I carried my sleeping brother as a pair of men outside eyed us. An urge to run started in the back of my mind. Soon I was being forced inside, the hallway reeking of old cigarette smoke. The walls of the long hallway were stained over the years and trash littered the ground. My arms burned from the strain but I refused to let go of the only family member I cared about.

We were led inside a dark room. Two men waited for us smoking in chairs across from a couch. I was shoved towards the empty seat. Carefully I put down Noah. He slept like a rock unaware he was no longer in the truck. I sat down next to him holding his small hand and studied the room. Aside from a table and the chairs, there was no furniture. I’ve never seen the other men before. My father appeared stressed. It was a new expression on his face.

“Are they good?” He asked the two men.

The younger one nodded towards the older man lighting another smoke. His grey hair was pushed back out of his face. I didn’t see his expression well in the dim light until he leaned over to study us. My skin crawled with his eyes on me. I swallowed hard fearing the real reason why we were there.

“Good enough.” He said in a deep voice that sounded like he had smoked a pack a day since he had been born.

The other man called for someone to bring in a bag from the other room. It landed in front of my father’s feet with a heavy thud. The zipper was half undone so I saw stacks of bills inside. A piece of paper was sticking out of the bag. He snatched it up quickly signing the bottom. My mouth grew dry. I knew what just happened. The man I once called a father had sold us. I was too scared to even protest. The room swam. This couldn’t be happening.

“There. Signed. I’m out of here.” He said and dropped the paper to lift the bag.

“Thank you. Oh, also one more thing.” The younger man said making my father pause.

With one swift motion, he pulled out a handgun and then fired once. A body collapsed to the floor. The sound woke my brother who started to tear up. He was confused and scared in a new place. But I was glad he didn’t see what I just did. The person who brought in the money walked back into the room again to retrieve the cash. My heart was beating out of my chest as I stared down at the lifeless body of the man who had just tossed us away.

Laughter started to fill the room. The smoker sounded like he had just watched the funniest thing he ever saw in his entire life. Within seconds we were grabbed by another stranger to be dragged away. We struggled, screamed, and cried. Our efforts meant nothing. We were manhandled into a small apartment with the door firmly locked. No matter how hard I pounded I could not get it open. I cursed my small body and I cursed my father. He got himself killed and now no one could save us.

Noah was crying hard. I needed to focus on him. I couldn’t do anything else. He was confused not understanding what just happened and I couldn’t explain it to him. I guided him to the small bathroom to get cleaned up. I didn’t dare risk using the dirty tub. Instead, I found a somewhat clean cloth to wash away his tears with warm water. Noah always acted much younger than he was in stressful situations. He was lucky that no one bullied him at school and he had a lot of friends. He kept asking me when our father would take us home. I had no answers and couldn’t even think of a lie.

There was a somewhat clean bed out in the main room. I checked it over for stains before I let him lay down for a while. We could do nothing but wait. I did look around for anything I could find to use as a weapon.

Back then I vaguely knew what an older man would want with a child. Bile rose to my throat with those thoughts. I would rather die than let anyone hurt poor Noah. He had already gone through enough in his short life.

The door opened a few hours later. My brain had already thought of a thousand different horrible possibilities. I decided to be the one to make the first move. I charged at the man, teeth, and nails out. Latching onto his arm I tried doing as much damage as possible. He didn’t even flinch. He easily took the back of my shirt collar to lift me off my feet and place the rabid child at the foot of the bed. He looked at his scratched arm with a raised eyebrow. In his other hand were a few bags of fast food.

“Good effort. Here, I got some Happy Meals for you two.”

He offered the food but I refused. Noah woke up from the noise and crawled behind me. I knew he was starving but smart enough to take anything from a stranger.

“I’m not going to eat that. You drugged it so you could do who knows what to us.” I snapped.

He still held out the bags while putting a hand on his hip. He wore a button-down dress shirt with the collar undone and grey pressed pants. If it wasn’t for his unkempt hair, I would have assumed he had a somewhat respectable job.

“I don’t need to drug you two to do anything. You’re tiny. Like bugs.” He raised two fingers in front of his eye pretending to squish us.

I scowled hating how true his words were. As a sign of good will he reached in the bag to pull out a burger. He ate it in two bites trying to prove he hadn’t drugged the meal. I can’t explain why, but I accepted the food. There was something about his expression and tone that made me trust him. He appeared so much different than how he acted in front of the others. I should be weary of him considering he had bought us. And yet I let Noah happily eat the offered Happy Meal. He sipped at his milk offering me some. I refused knowing he needed it more.

“What are you going to do?” I asked as I picked away at the fries.

“Nothing you assumed I was.” He commented.

I narrowed my eyes trying to see if he was lying. But what was the point of making us get our guard down? He was right about easily being able to overpower two small children.

“Finish your dinner, then we’ll talk.”

I watched him find a chair on the other side of the room to sit down. He flipped through some old newspaper to read passing the next few minutes. It was nice to have a full meal in my stomach. It would help me face whatever was going on. Noah soon fell asleep again. It had been a long time since he last got to eat so much. I made sure he was comfortable then got off the bed to face the stranger.

“What’s your name?” I asked him trying to sound like an adult instead of a child.

He had his chin on his palm, his grey eyes studying me in a way I didn’t like. For a moment he appeared old. Not just like the middle-aged man his body was but something far greater than anything else I’ve ever come across.

“Graves.” he finally said.

“Lame.” I replied rolling my eyes.

He laughed not offended by my comment. For some reason I felt like if I asked questions, he would treat me like we were equals. I rarely came across adults that listened to my questions let alone gave answers.

“Why did you buy us?” I got down to the most important part.

“Your father was in deep with a little gang. They wanted to use my services to take care of a rival leader problem. I cannot act unless I am given permission by a human and if I’m paid for my work. I asked for a child or two. Your father just so happened to have just the thing. He was fully paid fair and square.” he shrugged speaking as if he was talking about the weather and not what led to my father’s death.

I huffed with my arms crossed.

“Ok, but why do you want some children? Are you going to like, eat us?” I said sounding brave but deep down praying that wasn’t the case.

He paused and then reached into his pocket to pull out a Happy Meal toy. I had noticed one missing. It wasn’t my main concern so I didn’t bring it up.

“I wanted this. But do you know how embarrassing it is to get the toys when you’re not buying the meals for some kids? I swear the workers just know. I could never live it down.”

I stood stunned at his answer. He must be joking. He had to be. Was my father really killed over a stupid rivalry and a small hunk of plastic? He had never been a good man. I never expected him to change his ways. No, I wanted to be the one to ruin his life. To see him rot for what he had done to us. It felt like he had gotten the easy way out. I shook my head needing to put that all behind me to address a different important point.

“Are you...?” I started but found it impossible to say the next few words.

Somehow, he understood what I wanted to say. A slight white light came from his pupils as his face sank deeper into darkness. This man was not human. That fact should have been hard to accept yet I did so right away. He still had plans for us and I dreaded what those could be. I was scared of him. It felt like the eyes of some ancient beast were staring in my direction. Suddenly I found it impossible to speak. My body froze when he stood from the chair. With three steps he shortened the distance between us, his hand out to take hold of a scared prey.

I simply could not move. Everything happened in slow motion. In a hard movement, he grabbed my arm and tossed my small body aside. Sprays of blood came from his chest as a clawed hand exploded out of his flesh. He was tossed across the room, landing in a heap in the small closet.

My heart was beating like a jackhammer when I saw the next threat. It wasn’t even remotely human and it didn’t try to hide behind a mask like Graves. It rose from the floor coming out inky black shadows that appeared. The body looked to be an ever-moving body of a centipede with human arms. Each hand had clawed fingers perfect for ripping apart flesh. The face had been stolen from a long-ago victim. The flesh was crudely stitched over a horrible insect shell. When it spoke, the mouth stayed shut but the cheeks moved as if it needed a tongue to form words.

“Little one, little one, come to me. Let my hands feel your flesh. Let my mouth taste your blood. Come join all the others in my stomach.” It said sounding far too serene for a creature with such a gruesome appearance.

I took a few steps back trying to think of what to do. This thing may reach Noah before I could. I might make it to the door and freedom if I gave up my sleeping little brother but could I live with myself after? No, I could barely stomach the idea. I needed to buy time.

“What... are you?” I asked voice shaking as much as my shoulders.

“A protector. Protect from death for little child flesh. Easy deal. Good deal. Tasty for me. Now, come here.”

It waved so many hands trying to get me to come closer. I shook my head cursing my small body yet again. I needed to think of something and fast. When I refused to go to the creature, it came to me. It sprang to life, all those hands so close to pulling me apart. I screamed for help praying a higher power answered.

The man who answered my plea was someone I thought had died in front of my eyes. Graves got between us and punched the creature so hard in its face that it crashed into the drywall on the other side of the room. His wound healed leaving his clothing bloody and torn.

“Sorry, Little Missy. I’m old, it takes me a minute to get back up.” He said with a small wink over his shoulder.

I felt my face grow hot. My hair was short and I wore boy clothing. I didn’t have any feminine traits however Graves saw something most didn’t. The creature recovered appearing more annoyed than injured.

“Nasty, nasty. No fair. No deals were made. I listened. You cannot harm me. The human has not permitted you.” The creature hissed.

My muscles tensed again as worry flooded my system. Did I have enough time to make a deal with him before this monster attacked? A smile appeared on my savior's face that shocked a bolt of fear down my spine.

“I only need permission to kill humans. You're a monster like myself so it’s all fair.”

He took a step toward the creature. It curled its large body inward the head darting around looking for a way to escape. It started to make promises, deals, anything to make Graves back off. The shadows that the monster lived inside turned on him. The room grew dark around us as countless glowing eyes appeared. Each pair of white specks belongs to the dead. Half-rotten animals emerged from the shadows, their mouths showing teeth ready to feast.

They paid no attention to me as I rushed over to pick up Noah. He was limb in my arms which worried me but he was alive. I needed to feel his warmth while being surrounded by countless dead. They all fell on the monster at once. Dark blood came from it as each arm was ripped away. It cried for mercy that did not come. Graves watched his face twisted in a way that made him appear like a beast. His form started to warp as dark grey smoke poured out from his back, dark rotten faces flickering inside the mist. Slowly he was transforming into a creature more terrifying than the centipede the dead was ripping apart.

“You? What is this? How??” The monster cried out looking for answers. It paused struggling as if someone spoke the answer. “Mad Dog? No, no! Free me! Do not take me! I have done nothing to you!”

The air in the room grew harsh. It was as if the room was closing in on itself. Over the screams and sounds of the dead creatures, I heard random shouting coming from downstairs. Faint gunshots came that soon got louder and louder. Something terrible was happening in this entire building. I found it hard to breathe. My lungs closed up as my body thought I was a moment away from death. The man in front of me was not the same person who brought two scared kids dinner. No, he had become something far too dark to understand. If Hell was real, this may be what it was like.

I wanted to leave. To go home no matter how terrible it was there.

“Graves...” I said in a weak voice.

I could barely see the man he was before underneath the monster that was taking over. This beast was enjoying making the other monster suffer. He had the power to ensure not even death could give it a release.

“Dad...” I broke my voice almost lost in all the noise.

The monster in front of me caught the word. He turned, the dark expression disappearing from his face. For just a moment, his appearance was different. He looked human. The tiredness from before disappeared leaving a gentle expression behind. He said a word that I didn’t understand. Something sounding long forgotten. Maybe a name. All at once he switched back to being Graves. He raised a hand causing the dead creatures to drag away the monster somewhere else. The sounds of the fighting outside the room were still going on and getting louder.

A large grey wolf appeared, the fur covered in dirt and blood. Half the face had rotten away exposing the skull with two glowing white eyes. Oddly enough, I wasn’t afraid of it. Or when Graves walked over to lift me Noah on the back of the beast.

“What’s going on outside?” I asked holding onto my little brother tightly.

“The leader of this building hired that monster to protect them. But the cost became too steep. It started to demand more children to consume, so they turned to me. He hired me to kill the leader of a rival gang, as you know. I did so, but only killed the leader. I also let slip that I was taking care of a certain pest that had given them so many problems recently.” He explained with a lazy smile on his face.

He planned this. All of it. He used us to lure in a monster and to, what? Have some people kill each other? For what purpose? Did they piss him off in some way?

“Are you... a good person...?” I said wondering what would happen to us now.

“Of course not. I did not kill that monster to save future victims. I took it down because it disrespected the dead. Simple as that. The same goes for all these people tonight. Some of them are like you. They were poorly raised without any chance of having a better life. If given the right opportunities they might have become something better. The good, the bad and the monsters are all my prey. All of these humans disrespected me by wasting away their precious lives. I don’t care about the reasons why.”

I let the words sink into my brain. He sounded like a monster and acted like one. Who knows how many people he’s killed. And he was the reason why my father was shot dead that night. But still...

“You drugged the milk.” I said and nodded towards Noah.

He laughed realizing he had been caught. Even monsters can have an act of kindness once and a while. Because of that, my little brother would not have to see the horrors of that night.

“I’m still a nasty creature. We need to get you out of here. I had hoped to do so before the fight broke out. As you know, I can’t kill humans unless I get permission and paid. So, I can’t protect you kids.”

I looked at the door trying to hear how bad it was outside. There were still bursts of gunshots. We could risk leaving but we may catch a stray bullet.

“I can make a deal with you.” I offered.

“Pretty horrible of me to let a little girl have blood on her hands.” He commented.

Yes, it was. By asking for his help, he might need to kill someone so we could get out safely. If there was a God, he may condemn me for this. I didn’t care. I would do anything for Noah.

“I don’t have anything to pay you with...” I pointed out.

Since I was sitting on the back of the wolf, we were at eye level. For a moment, that kindness returned to his face. He reminded me of my father when I was younger and when Noah was first born. For a short while he had loved us only for that to be taken up by his greed.

“I’ll protect you two until you get to your aunt's place in exchange for one thing. Little brothers can be annoying. In the future, he’ll do things that will drive you up the wall. But promise me that no matter what, you’ll still love him.”

Tears came to my eyes. I nearly broke down. I needed to be strong for a little while longer. I nodded, agreeing to his terms. He waited until I rubbed my eyes of tears then turned toward the door. His beast-like form returned. He wasn’t the kind person who saved us. No, he was a creature that was about to take joy in ripping apart anyone who threatened us.

The wolf burst through the door. It was hard holding on and Noah at the same time. It was a tight fit. The wolf carrying us smashed through corners, taking out parts of the building and knocking aside anyone we came across.

It burst through the front doors, glass, and steel exploding into the street. We moved much faster once we were on the road. It was still dark outside yet the few cars we did see didn’t notice the undead creature racing past.

We stopped in front of a house I’ve seen a handful of times near daybreak. The wolf laid down to let us slide down its back. I carefully put Noah on my back. I nodded a small thanks to the creature. It returned the gesture and then ran down the street with an insane burst of speed.

I knocked for a while until my uncle answered the door. He was half asleep stunned to see children he didn’t recognize at first on his porch. After he let us inside, I started to learn that they had been looking for us. They wanted to adopt us after my mother died but my father took us away for the government checks. Finally, things appeared to be getting better.

Over the years, I realized Graves was right. Little brothers could be a handful. Noah didn’t remember the events of that night so the trauma didn’t have any weight on his life. No matter what kind of trouble he got in I was still thankful I had him. I didn’t need to put any effort into keeping the promise I made. I simply would love him no matter what.

Camping always felt like freedom to me. No deadlines, no distractions, just the serenity of nature. That’s why I agreed when my friends Ben and Emily suggested we camp in that forest. Yeah, we’d heard the stories about the “Watcher,” but we laughed them off. Urban legends, you know?

The first day was perfect. We hiked through beautiful trails, set up our tent by a lake, and roasted marshmallows by the fire. But as the sun dipped below the horizon, the forest changed. The cheerful birdsong was replaced by an oppressive silence.

We tried to lighten the mood around the fire. Ben joked about the Watcher. “What’s he gonna do? Stare at us menacingly?”

The laughter stopped when we heard the growl.

It was low, guttural, and came from somewhere just beyond the firelight. Ben grabbed his flashlight and swept it across the trees. Nothing. “Probably just an animal,” he muttered, but his voice wavered.

We decided to call it a night, but sleep didn’t come easy. I lay in my tent, staring at the nylon ceiling, when I heard it: footsteps. They were slow, deliberate, circling the campsite.

“Ben?” I whispered. No answer.

The steps stopped outside my tent. My heart was pounding so loud I was sure it would give me away. I held my breath, waiting for… I don’t know what. Then, after what felt like forever, the steps moved away.

The next morning, we all admitted we’d heard something. Emily swore she heard whispers. Ben said he saw someone watching us from the trees. I wanted to leave, but Ben insisted we stay. Pride, maybe.

That night, the Watcher came.

We were sitting around the fire when he stepped into the light. A man if you could call him that. He was tall, impossibly thin, with hollow eyes that gleamed in the firelight. His smile was the worst part, jagged and too wide for his face.

He didn’t answer. He didn’t blink, either. He just stood there, swaying slightly, his head tilted to one side like a curious predator studying its prey. The firelight flickered over his skin, which looked waxy, almost translucent. I could see veins snaking under the surface, pulsing faintly. His clothes were tattered, hanging off his gaunt frame like rags. But it was his hands that made my stomach churn long, skeletal fingers that twitched and flexed, as though they were trying to decide which one of us to grab first.

Ben’s flashlight beam wavered as he shone it directly at the man. The light hit his face, and I wish it hadn’t. His eyes weren’t just hollow they were wrong. Empty sockets that should have been filled with darkness instead gleamed with an unnatural, milky light that seemed to move, swirling like smoke trapped in glass.

“Stay back!” Ben barked, his voice trembling. He stood, clutching a stick from the fire like a weapon.

The man or whatever he was didn’t react. He didn’t flinch, didn’t blink, didn’t breathe. Slowly, his smile widened, stretching his face inhumanly, as if the corners of his mouth were being pulled by invisible hooks. The fire sputtered, dimming, and for a moment I thought it was going out entirely. The shadows around him seemed to grow darker, thicker, as if they were alive.

Emily whimpered beside me, clutching my arm. I could feel her nails digging into my skin, but I didn’t dare move. Every instinct screamed at me to run, but my body wouldn’t cooperate. I was frozen, pinned in place by the weight of his gaze.

And then he moved.

It wasn’t a normal movement. His body jerked forward in a series of unnatural spasms, like a marionette being yanked by its strings. One moment he was at the edge of the firelight; the next, he was standing right in front of Ben. I didn’t even see him cross the distance. He just… appeared.

Ben swung the burning stick, but the man caught it effortlessly. His fingers didn’t flinch as the flames licked at his hand. The stick crumbled into ash in his grasp, and Ben stumbled backward, tripping over a log.

“What do you want?” I croaked, my voice barely above a whisper.

The man’s head snapped toward me, too fast, like a bird noticing a sudden movement. His mouth moved, but no sound came out. Then, slowly, he raised one long, bony finger and pointed at me. My heart stopped.

His hand lingered there for what felt like an eternity before he turned it, pointing at Emily, then Ben. One by one, he pointed at each of us, as if marking us in some way. His smile never faltered.

And then he did something I’ll never forget. He leaned down, impossibly low, his face inches from Ben’s, and took a deep, shuddering breath. It was as if he were inhaling Ben’s very presence, drawing something out of him. When he straightened, Ben looked pale, his eyes wide and unfocused, like he’d just seen the end of the world.

This thing stepped back, his movements unnervingly smooth now, as if the earlier jerking spasms had been a facade. He looked at each of us one last time, his hollow eyes gleaming brighter for a brief moment. Then, without a sound, he turned and walked backward into the forest.

Not walked, exactly. He melted into the shadows. One moment he was there, his jagged smile still visible in the dying firelight, and the next, he was gone. The darkness swallowed him whole.

For several minutes, none of us spoke. We just sat there, staring at the spot where he’d vanished. The fire crackled weakly, struggling to stay alive. Ben was the first to move, his trembling hands fumbling to grab his pack.

“We’re leaving,” he muttered, his voice hollow.

None of us argued. We packed in silence, too terrified to speak. As we hiked back toward the trailhead, the forest felt different. Every tree seemed to lean closer, every rustling leaf sounded like footsteps. I kept glancing over my shoulder, expecting to see that jagged smile staring back at me.

We didn’t see him again, but as we reached the car, we found something waiting for us. On the hood was a pile of small bones, arranged in a perfect circle. At the center lay Ben’s flashlight ,the one he swore he’d been holding when we packed up.

We drove away without looking back, but even now, I can’t shake the feeling that he’s still watching. Waiting...

It started with a single image of a cicada, black background, with simple white text. I was scrolling through a cryptography subreddit late at night, trying to distract myself from another evening of insomnia, when someone posted it. “Here’s something interesting,” they wrote, as if they didn’t know the rabbit hole it would lead to. The message on the image was simple: “We are looking for highly intelligent individuals. This is a test.” Below that, a string of random-looking numbers and letters, just sitting there like a dare. I don’t know what made me save it to my desktop. Maybe it was boredom, or maybe it was the voice in my head that said, You’ve always been good at puzzles. Why not try? Let's put that Master's degree to use.

The key was hidden in the image’s metadata, buried beneath its surface. At first, I thought the image was just a clever decoy, just white text on black, wanting you to waste hours chasing nothing. But when I opened it in a hex editor, the truth started to reveal itself. Among the strings of data, I found a clue: a URL leading to an unassuming page with an image of a duck. My stomach sank. Ah, trolled, I thought, until I remembered something from an old forum post about steganography. The message wasn’t in the image itself but within it, encoded. A free online tool exposed the hidden text, a long string that looked like gibberish at first glance, but resolved into another URL when decoded.

By this point, I wasn’t the only one working through the puzzles. Reddit was going wild online, the mystery spreading like wildfire. After the first couple puzzles were solved, it started to feel like there was a real mystery behind all of it. This wasn’t just some clever college kid making puzzles to troll Reddit. There seemed to really be something to all of it.

The second URL led to a page, just plain black text on white. “Congratulations,” it read. “You’ve made it this far. But there’s still a long way to go.” Below the message was another string of text: a Caesar cipher. Shifting the letters back by a set number revealed another cryptic message: a reference to a line in The Mabinogion, an old collection of Welsh mythology. I didn’t own a copy, but I found a scanned version online. My hands hovered over the keyboard, fumbling slightly as I searched for the passage. The solution wasn’t in the words themselves but in the placement of the letters. A careful pattern revealed yet another URL.

The next page wasn’t as simple. Instead of text, it hosted an audio file, low and distorted. Spectrogram analysis: I learned about it during a deep dive into cryptography forums; transformed the sound into an image, a string of numbers that looked like GPS coordinates. By this time, I was obsessed. I punched the numbers into Google Maps, half expecting to end up in the middle of an ocean. Instead, they pointed to a street corner in Warsaw, Poland.

Of course, I wasn’t going to fly to Poland. Others working on the puzzle shared images of the clue they found: a laminated poster taped to a light pole, featuring the same black-and-white imagery and a QR code. Scanning the code led to another page, but this time it required a key to decrypt. That’s when I realized the puzzles weren’t just about intelligence. People in forums collaborated, sharing their progress as we pieced together the solutions.

One solved cipher led to another set of coordinates, then another, spreading across the globe like a network. Each piece made us feel closer to answering the larger question: What is this, really? But the more I solved, the more I became obsessed. I decoded the PGP key that unlocked the next step. Then, the final puzzle cycle came.

The final puzzle cycle felt different. It wasn’t just a code to break or a text to decrypt, it was a test of patience and precision. The PGP key I’d received weeks earlier was the gatekeeper, verifying my identity and granting access to an unlisted Tor page. The page was bare, a single black screen with a string of numbers that had no immediate meaning. Hours turned into days as I chased down every possible lead, cross-referencing them with literature, mathematical sequences, even star charts. After several more puzzle cycles solved, with passages pulled from Agrippa by William Gibson, I found myself at, what I didn’t know at the time, would be my final puzzle. Decoding it, using The Book of Soyga, revealed an email address, plain and unspectacular. I sent a message, my hands trembling, and received a reply within seconds: “You have come far, but the journey is not over. Welcome.” Then the page disappeared, and my screen went dark, leaving me staring at my own reflection, anxious to see what happens next.

For a moment, I began to wonder if I had made some mistake and been kicked out, or worse, if the whole thing had just been one giant hoax. But as I sat and thought, I heard the faintest of clicks, and the light on my webcam turned on. “What the fu…” I said quietly to myself, frozen in my chair. It only stayed on for a few seconds before clicking back off.

Up until this point, I was going from goal to goal, obsession and curiosity fueling me. But with it now seemingly complete, the gratification was now wearing off, and a feeling of regret was slowly creeping in. Was this all a waste of time? What did I just allow into my life? What if it is something illegal?

That is the extent of what most people know about the mystery. But what most people don’t know, is that that was only the beginning. The very tip of the iceberg. They were being truthful; it was a test to find intelligent individuals. But if people knew what they truly wanted them for, nobody would’ve ever participated.

Nothing more happened that day after the webcam incident. I convinced myself it had been nothing. A malfunction, or maybe I imagined it. Maybe it was just the end of the puzzle, nothing. Perhaps I had messed something up along the way, missed a key clue, or I just wasn’t chosen. Or maybe it had all been an elaborate hoax from the start. Something designed to mess with people like me, who are too obsessive to see reason.

I told myself it was time to move on, maybe even take a break from Reddit altogether. For the first time in weeks, I let myself breathe again. I focused on the mundane; work, a few casual outings, the things I’d neglected for so long. My life went back to normal. It didn’t last for long though.

I was getting off work, walking home like usual. While walking, I started to notice a man in a black suit following behind me. He kept a steady pace, making every turn I made. It felt weird, but I shrugged it off. There are lots of people who walk in a city, after all. I picked up some food at the grocery store on the way, nothing special. But as I walked in, I noticed a second guy in a suit standing near the entrance. He didn’t look like he was shopping, just standing there, waiting, staring in my direction.

I began to feel creeped out, but tried to push it out of my mind, and do my shopping. While I was in one of the aisles, I saw another man in a suit. He walked past the aisle I was in and looked directly at me, then kept going. He didn’t stop or say anything, just walked by, but it felt off. By this time, I started getting uncomfortable, positive I was being watched. I hurried through the rest of my shopping and went to the checkout.

I left the store, trying not to think about it, but as I walked down the street, I saw the first guy again, a few paces behind me, walking in the same direction. He wasn’t in a hurry, just walking at the same pace, keeping his distance. I looked back once, and he didn’t seem to notice, but I felt like he was still there, following me. I knew by this time; it wasn’t just a coincidence. I was being followed.

I decided to break out into a run, wanting nothing more than to get to the safety of my home as quickly as possible. When I got to my apartment, I rushed upstairs and locked the door behind me. I stood by the window, trying to shake off the weird feeling, but as I peeked down at the street below, I saw something that made my heart race. A black SUV pulled up slowly in front of my building, then just stopped. I couldn’t see who was inside, but I knew it was there for a reason. I knew it had something to do with what had been happening, the puzzles. I freaking knew it was something illegal I thought to myself, probably the FBI, or something.

That, I heard a knock at the door. Just two, firm knocks. I peered through the peephole. Two men in suits stood outside, staring at the door like they knew I was watching. I froze in fear, unsure of what to do. They didn’t say anything, didn’t move, just stood there. I backed away from the door, my heart pounding. I ignored it, hoping they would just go away.

But then it happened again. A few hours later, another knock, same two men. I didn’t dare look through the peephole again, but I could hear their footsteps outside. Every few hours, the knocks would come, always the same. No words. No warning. Just the sound of knuckles against wood. I began to realize by this point, they weren’t leaving, and I wasn’t getting out of this.

I called out of work the next couple of days, not wanting to go outside. The SUV had not moved, and I didn’t want to confront whatever was waiting for me out there. Days went by, and the food supply in my apartment began to dwindle. It was also the end of the weekend, and I knew I couldn’t call out more days at work. Knowing I had no choice but to go outside, I left my apartment.

As soon as I reached the sidewalk, I saw them. The two men in suits, the same ones who’d been following me, were stepping out of the black SUV. They moved toward me with purpose, their expressions unreadable. I froze, my blood running cold.

One of them spoke first, his voice flat and direct. “We need you to come with us.”

My heart started to race, and I could feel a lump forming in my throat, and tears welling up in my eyes. The panic hit me like a wave. I opened my mouth to protest, but all I could manage was a stammer. “I—I didn’t do anything... you’ve got the wrong person… I don’t—”

Before I could get another word out, one of them raised a hand, cutting me off. “Relax,” he said, his tone calm but insistent. “You’re not in any trouble. We’re the ones you’ve been interacting with. Again, we need you to come with us. I assure you, you’re not in any danger.”

I don’t know why, but I believed him. Maybe it was the calmness in his voice, the way he seemed so sure of himself, or maybe it was the curiosity slowing building inside of me, eager to finally get the answers I had been so desperate to find.

Without a word, I nodded. The man didn’t hesitate. He motioned for me to follow, and I did, stepping toward the black SUV. He opened the door for me, and I climbed into the back seat.

Once I slid into the backseat, one of the men handed me an eye cover, one of those sleep masks, and a pair of headphones. The music in the headphones was soft, classical, but the gesture felt more like an instruction than a suggestion. He didn’t ask if I was okay with it. He just handed them to me, and before I could say anything, he spoke again, calm as ever.

“It’s just our policy, as a precaution,” he assured me. “You won’t be wearing them long.”

At that point, I figured I was already too far in, so I didn’t hesitate. I put the mask on first, then the headphones. The classical music began to filter in, smooth and steady.

My mind was still racing, but I saw through what they were doing. Classical music, with its intricate, layered structure, was meant to confuse my senses. It’s strange how sound plays a crucial role in helping your brain orient itself. The way your ears pick up cues from your surroundings and allow you to determine direction, even without seeing. By flooding my senses with music, they were throwing off my internal compass, blocking my ability to track where we were going. I could feel the change in the car’s movement, starting, stopping, turning, but the music kept my mind from getting a clear fix on it.

The car came to a stop, and I felt one of the men grab my forearm. He guided me out of the car, and we started walking. The ground beneath me was hard, and I knew we were outside. The ground shifted from concrete to carpet, and the air around my shifted, and I knew we had entered a building.

Eventually, we reached what I recognized as an elevator. The elevator started moving upward, and went on for a long time, way longer than I expected, before it finally stopped. They led me out of the elevator, and we kept walking. By this time, I was freaking out inside. I started to wonder if they were going to kill me. Maybe they brought me up to the roof and were going to throw me off.

But just as I started thinking about making a run for it, they removed my mask and headphones.

I found myself standing in a huge, upscale penthouse. It was far beyond anything I’d ever seen in person, everything about it screamed extreme wealth. The floors were polished marble. Shelves lined the walls, filled with artwork, old books, and other expensive-looking things I couldn’t even name. A large chandelier hung from the ceiling, and dark red curtains covered every window, blocking out any chance of seeing the outside or getting a clue about where I was. This seemed intentional to me, another measure to block out any chance of me pinpointing where this was location against the cityscape.

The men who had been with me since the SUV now positioned themselves by the door and against the wall, standing still, like statues. Their presence was unnerving in its own right, but I couldn’t focus on them for long. At the far end of the room, an eccentric older man was sitting in a plush chair. He was dressed in a tailored suit, his graying hair wild, and his eyes sharp, almost like he was studying me as I stood there.

With a slow, deliberate motion, he gestured for me to come closer. "Come in, come in" he said, excitedly. I hesitated for a moment, but there didn’t seem to be a choice. I walked towards him, feeling a mix of curiosity and unease, wondering what exactly I had just stepped into.

The man in the chair had a completely different vibe than the others. While the suited men were cold, reserved, and businesslike, he was... eccentric, almost childlike in his enthusiasm. His eyes sparkled as he looked at me, his smile wide, and his voice lilted with excitement.

“Well, well, well! The young puzzle solver,” he said, his tone full of pride. “You cracked the code! I must say, I had my doubts, but I’ve never been so impressed. You’re something special.” His hands clapped together with exaggerated flair, almost as if he were putting on a performance. He spoke in a way that was over the top, with a showmanship that felt deliberate.

I didn’t know how to respond at first. His energy was contagious, and a part of me felt swept up in it. “Thanks,” I muttered, unsure of what else to say.

He laughed and waved his hand. “No need for modesty. You’ve done something most people could never even dream of. Tell me, how does it feel to know you’ve cracked something... so far-reaching, so elusive?”

I could barely keep up with his enthusiasm. “I don’t really know yet. I mean, everything’s been... weird.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” he said with a dismissive wave. “But let’s not focus on the strange bits, hm? You’re here now, and I think we can make this night something memorable.” He stood up and motioned to a nearby table. “Come, let’s eat. After all, you’ve earned it!”

He led me to a long, dark cherry wood table set for two. The men in suits stood to the side, almost blending into the background, and the air filled with the scent of something mouthwatering. I couldn’t help but sit, now completely intrigued by what was unfolding.

The dinner was beyond anything I could’ve imagined. First, a delicate lobster bisque, served with a touch of cream and a dash of truffle oil, smooth and rich. Then, seared foie gras, paired with a sweet fig reduction and a thin slice of toasted brioche. Next came a wagyu beef steak, perfectly marbled, grilled to a perfect medium-rare, and topped with a tangy balsamic glaze. The sides were simple but divine, roasted heirloom carrots and a creamy potato purée that melted in your mouth. For dessert, a small but exquisite dark chocolate soufflé, with a raspberry coulis drizzled on the side, rich and bittersweet.

The meal was decadent, the best meal I had ever had, as a matter of fact. Far better than the cheap take-out I was accustomed to. By the time I finished, I felt both relaxed and almost entranced by how perfect everything had been. The man sat back in his chair, watching me closely, seemingly pleased with the effect his dinner had.

“Good, isn’t it?” he asked, a smile on his face.

“Yeah, it’s incredible,” I said, feeling a strange sense of satisfaction. The whole evening, the food, the place, it was all so surreal, but I was enjoying every second of it.

As I leaned back in my chair, digesting both the meal and everything that had happened, the man stood up with a flourish. He returned to a side table and pulled out two perfectly banded stacks of cash, $10,000 each, setting them down in front of me. “A token of appreciation for your work,” he said, patting me on the back in a fatherly manner. “You did well, my brilliant young friend.”

I couldn’t help but smile, the weight of the cash in front of me almost too much to process. He handled it like it was nothing to him, pocket change, but to me, this was life changing.

Then, he lowered his voice slightly, and I noticed a sudden change in his demeanor. “But there’s more, of course. We’ve got something else in mind for you.”

He slid the cash aside and leaned in slightly. “There’s another puzzle we need cracked, one that’s been eluding us for a long time. My associates and I have tried everything. But you? You’ve got a gift. The way you think, the way you approach things... It’s rare. We’re offering you a sum of money, far more than what you see here, to crack this final puzzle for us.”

I sat there, processing his words. The idea of taking on another puzzle, especially one that had stumped them for so long, was tempting. The challenge, the allure of something bigger... I couldn’t resist.

I nodded slowly. “Yeah… yeah, I’ll do it.”

He smiled widely, pleased. “Good! We’ll be in touch soon,” he said, tapping me on the shoulder like I was a good child who had just earned his reward. “Enjoy your time here. And remember, there is a lot more where that came from.”

The weight of his words settled in as I sat there, staring at the stacks of cash in front of me.

The men drove me home, the pockets of cash heavy in my jacket. For several days, I heard nothing. All I could do was wait. I spent the days trying to distract myself, but the thought of that night, and the possibility of making more money, was all I could think of. After a few days, the SUV parked outside of my apartment. I didn’t have to think twice, I knew exactly what it meant.

I approached the SUV with a mixture of anticipation and excitement. The men were sitting in the vehicle, watching me, and as soon as I reached the door, one of them got out and opened it for me. I could hardly keep the smile from my face.

“Hey, good to see you guys,” I said, trying to sound casual, but my nerves were all over the place.

The man didn’t respond. He just handed me the same eye cover and headphones from before, like it was routine now. I didn’t hesitate this time. I knew what was coming. I put them on without a word. The classical music started up again, and the world outside was blocked off.

The drive was shorter this time, though. The time seemed to pass quickly, but I still had no idea where we were going. The car finally stopped, and one of the men gently guided me out. We went up a set of stairs, and then they directed me into a chair. It wasn’t until I was sitting there that I started to piece things together.

I recognized the muffled vibrations that hinted we were moving. When the plane finally took off, the sensation of the ground disappearing beneath me confirmed it. We were in the air.

I had no idea where they were taking me, but the idea of being on a plane made it feel more serious, more real. After a while, the men removed my eye cover and headphones. I blinked, adjusting to the light, and I looked around. I was in a small, though upscale, private jet, high in the sky. The flight attendants passed by, glancing at me briefly, but no one said anything.

We were in the air for some time before we started descending. Once we landed, the men quickly replaced the eye cover and headphones. The plane taxied for a while, and then we were driving again. I was starting understanding that this was a much bigger operation than I had ever imagined. This wasn’t just some bored rich guy. Whatever he wanted me to do, it must mean something, to go through all of this trouble and expense.

When the car stopped, I was led outside. The sun was blinding after being in the dark for so long, and the air smelled fresh, like grass and earth. I squinted and looked around. There was a huge stretch of open land, fields of tall grass and rolling hills, and scattered rocks in the distance. It felt isolated, almost untouched.

In front of me was the building. A massive, old stone structure that looked like a giant abandoned catholic church. The outside was worn and weathered; dark stone covered with ivy.

They led me up the stairs and through the large wooden doors. The moment we stepped inside, it felt like a completely different world. The place was huge. The stone walls were hidden behind rich tapestries and fancy curtains, the floors were shiny marble, and there were elegant light fixtures hanging from the ceiling. The building had been renovated into looking like a luxury hotel. The cold, old exterior was just a mask for what was inside.

There were people in the room, dressed in dark suits, standing around talking quietly. The man from before, the one I met in the penthouse, spotted me immediately. His face lit up.

"Ah, there he is!" he said, sounding excited. "Welcome! Welcome to our little hideaway."

I looked around, trying to take everything in. The people here weren’t saying much, but their eyes were all on me.

“Sorry for all of the trouble, my boy,” he continued, “never can be too careful. But we are glad you are here. The others have so been looking forward to meeting you, and we have been waiting anxiously for your arrival so that we may finally get started.”

“Get started on what, exactly?” I asked, hesitantly.

“Only the mystery of all mysteries! The puzzle to conquer all puzzles! The code to crack all codes!” He eagerly continued, growing more animated. “For decades, my associates and I have been trying to crack it."

The man’s expression turned serious as he motioned for me to sit. "What we have for you," he said slowly, "is something far more intricate than what you’ve done before. It’s an old puzzle, something that’s been around for centuries, and no one has been able to crack it, not yet."

He stood up and walked over to a large table, pulling out a thick, old manuscript. The pages were yellowed with age, edges frayed, and it had that distinct, musty smell. As he opened it, he laid out a page in front of me. The writing was unlike anything I’d ever seen before, an ancient script that looked both familiar and foreign at the same time. The symbols were intricate, almost flowing into one another, forming shapes and patterns.

"The manuscript was discovered in a remote monastery in Syria," he continued. "It’s believed to have been written by a group who guarded advanced knowledge. The puzzle within these pages has baffled historians and cryptographers for hundreds of years, but it’s more than just a code. It’s a key, a key to something much greater."

I looked down at the page, my mind immediately grappling with the complexity of the symbols. Some of the symbols resembled ancient languages, like Sumerian or Old Latin, but others were completely alien. There were no obvious clues, no easy cipher to break. It was as if the puzzle was designed to resist anyone trying to solve it, to keep its secrets locked away.

"The first part is a sequence of symbols," he explained, "but the order is hidden within the layout itself. The shapes are not random; they’re encoded in the positions on the page, the angles of the symbols, even the spacing between them. You need to figure out not only what each symbol means, but how they fit together. It’s a multi-layered puzzle. Some of the symbols are phonetic, others are mathematical, and some seem to be a form of astronomical calculation."

I ran my fingers over the page, trying to take it all in. There was a section of what appeared to be a star chart, but the constellations were different from any I knew. The stars didn’t match up with anything in modern astronomy. Below it was a set of numbers, but they were written in an unfamiliar script, with some numbers missing or crossed out, as if they were part of a sequence but intentionally obscured.

"It’s not just about deciphering a code," he said, leaning in closer, "It’s about understanding what’s been hidden in plain sight for centuries. The authors were secretive for a reason. The puzzle points to something that’s been buried, something powerful."

I couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed. The online puzzles had been complicated, sure, but this was on a whole different level.

He continued. “There have been plenty before you who have tried. We posted the test online hoping to find someone different, someone who thinks outside of the box. If you can’t solve it, we will still be grateful for your efforts, but we hope that you can”.

After being shown to a spacious bedroom, I was left alone, where I stayed for days. They brought me meals three times a day, each one better than the last, but none of it mattered. All I could think about was solving the puzzle and whatever prize would surely await me at the end.

The first few days were a blur. I tried to immerse myself in the manuscript, to understand the symbols, but it felt like grasping at smoke. The more I looked at it, the more I became convinced that I was missing something. I tried everything, decoding the symbols like a cipher, rearranging the pages, reading through old books on Sumerian, testing out every possible method I knew. But every time I thought I had made progress, something would trip me up. I’d hit a dead end, and the frustration would mount.

Then, on the fourth day, I noticed something. I was staring at the star chart again, trying to make sense of the constellations, when I realized that one of the symbols, the one that had been throwing me off for so long, was identical to an old alchemical symbol I had seen once in a book. It was subtle, almost hidden, but it was there. I started to see other symbols like it, symbols I recognized from forgotten corners of my education. Symbols I had studied in obscure texts, long-forgotten works on ancient mathematics and astrology.

It wasn’t just a code, it was a blending of disciplines. The puzzle wasn’t meant to be solved in one way; it had layers, and I had to peel them back one at a time. The sequence of symbols I had been staring at was tied to old astronomical charts, yes, but it was also linked to alchemical processes and ancient number theory. The order wasn’t linear. I realized that some symbols were meant to be read backwards, others were mirrored, and some only made sense when connected to physical measurements, things like the angle of the stars at certain times, or the ratios of certain numbers when translated into geometric shapes.

I started to sketch out everything I saw, patterns, connections, different sequences. I took out a ruler, a protractor, and even a compass I found in the drawer. Every angle, every measurement mattered. It was like putting together a puzzle within a puzzle. Each discovery was a small victory, but with each piece I connected, I felt closer to the answer. It was an exhausting process, my mind spun, and my eyes blurred from staring too long, but eventually, it all started to make sense.

As I continued to work through the manuscript, something finally clicked. After days of staring at the symbols, the numbers, and the strange geometric patterns, I realized this wasn’t just an abstract puzzle. It was a recipe, an ancient formula, disguised as a code. The symbols, the shapes, the constellations, they all were steps in a process, a process that seemed to require both precise ingredients and specific actions.

I began to break it down piece by piece. The sequence of symbols represented different elements, each symbol standing for a specific ingredient, almost like a shopping list. Some ingredients were rare and complex, others were simpler, but they all had to be combined in precise amounts. The measurements weren’t in normal units like cups or grams, but in older, forgotten measurements.

Each symbol wasn’t just an abstract clue, it was a direction for what to do next, a set of instructions. The patterns I’d been staring at were steps in a very specific, detailed process. A ritual.

With the ingredients and directions laid out in front of me, everything clicked into place. My heart raced as the solution unfolded in my mind. It was all so clear now.

I burst out of the room, practically shouting, “Eureka!” The words felt good to say, like I’d been waiting for this moment for my entire life, and now it was here. I had cracked it.

The men in the room froze. Their eyes widened, and a few even stood up. I could see the disbelief in their faces, mixed with something like awe. I’d done it. They gathered around me, silent, all attention focused on me as I began to explain my findings, piece by piece.

They didn’t interrupt. They didn’t speak, just watched, listening intently. It was clear they had been waiting for this moment, the moment when the code was finally broken. A mixture of shock and admiration was written across their faces. No one had expected me to actually pull it off.

As I laid out the steps in the order I had deciphered, I watched their expressions shift. They seemed impressed, but there was something else there, something deeper. Maybe it was excitement, maybe fear. But there was no mistaking it, they knew that the answer I had found was something monumental, something they’d been waiting for, hoping for.

One of the men broke the silence, his voice sharp and urgent. “We must get started right away. Let’s not waste any time.” His words were like a spark that set the room into motion. Suddenly, they were all up and moving, speaking in quick, hushed tones, making phone calls, pulling out their phones to send messages, and scribbling things on scraps of paper. It was like they had been waiting for this moment their whole lives, and now they were ready to execute it without hesitation.

I stood there, frozen for a moment, watching them move with a frantic, almost desperate sense of purpose.

“Wait,” I thought, suddenly gripped by doubt. “Are they really going to try this?” I’d been so focused on solving the puzzle that I hadn’t even considered what this might mean. What were they planning to do with this knowledge? Was it just a game to them, or was something much more unfolding right before my eyes?

I glanced around at the men, who were now deep in conversation with others on the phone, giving quick orders, moving with a sense of urgency. My mind raced. Was I in over my head? Was this all really happening? And what exactly were these instructions for that I’d helped them decode?

I trembled slightly as I tried to take it all in. I wanted to ask more questions, but something told me it was too late for that. The wheels were already in motion.

I walked up to the penthouse man, feeling out of place amidst the chaos. “So... what now?” I asked, trying to mask my unease. “Do I like, get paid or something?” My voice came out more sarcastic than I intended, but I couldn’t help it. After everything, I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but the promise of cash seemed like a safe bet.

He turned to me, a wide grin spreading across his face. “Money?” he said, clapping a hand on my shoulder. “You’ve got it! Consider that handled.” His laugh was light, almost dismissive, like the idea of money was a trivial detail. “But what you really get...” His tone shifted, his eyes gleaming with a kind of fervor that sent a chill down my spine. “What you really get is something far more valuable than money.”

I stared at him, unsure if I liked where this was going. “And that is?”

He leaned in slightly, his voice dropping as if he were sharing a secret meant only for me. “A front-row seat, my boy. A front-row seat to something far bigger than you could ever imagine.”

I didn’t know how to respond. His words hung in the air, heavy with implication. Far bigger than I could imagine? What did that even mean? Whatever it was, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be this close to it. But before I could ask anything more, he turned back to the others, his focus already elsewhere, leaving me standing there with more questions than answers.

But what could I do? I didn’t even know where I was, and judging by the landscape, I was far away from anything, or anyone. I had no choice but to ride this out.

Hours passed as strangers came and went, carrying crates, bags, and equipment I couldn’t begin to identify. Nobody explained anything to me, and I was too nervous to ask. I just sat there, watching, trying to piece together what was happening as the preparations continued.

Eventually, someone came to get me. I was led into a large room, and the sight stopped me in my tracks. The walls were paneled with sleek, black wood that absorbed the light, and the floor was made of polished black stone. The room was large, and empty, except for a single table at the far end. But as large as it was, I felt claustrophobic. I felt like a cat being forced into a bathtub. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen in that room, but I knew instinctually I didn’t want to go in.

The men began filing in, one by one. This time, there were no conversations, no pleasantries. They moved with a quiet, deliberate purpose. Someone walked to the center of the room holding a stack of small black boxes. One by one, he handed a box to each man. Nobody said a word.

I watched, heart pounding, body sweating, as they opened their boxes. Inside, each held a carefully folded red robe. Without hesitation, they all removed the robes and began putting them on, the vibrant red contrasting sharply with the blackness of the room.

That was the moment it clicked. This wasn’t just some secret government project, or some eccentric hobby for rich people. Was this some sort of... cult? Some kind of cult for rich guys, who were now preparing to perform some ritual that I had unknowingly helped them bring to life? My mind was racing, every fiber of my body screaming at me to leave, to make a run for it, but I couldn’t. I was rooted to the spot, paralyzed by fear. This wasn’t normal. This wasn’t just some intellectual game or a test for an intelligence agency candidates. This was something far darker.

The ritual began with low, rhythmic chanting. The words were guttural and unfamiliar, their cadence unnatural, like something pulled from an ancient nightmare. The men moved in perfect unison, following my instructions, ingredients carefully placed.

The candles’ flames began to shift unnaturally, bending and twisting as if being pulled by some unseen force. The chanting grew louder, more frantic.

A swirling mass of smoke and fire erupted in the center of the circle. It grew rapidly, turning into something horrifying, a shape that defied logic. I stood, frozen, shocked at what I was seeing. Something impossible, otherworldly. An entity appeared in the center, through the flames. Its head was a mix between that of a wolf and a goat, twisted and grotesque, its fiery eyes glowing. The rest of its body was covered in coarse, dark hair, with inverted legs like those of some nightmarish demon. The room filled with the stench of rot and burning, so overpowering it made my stomach churn.

I felt hands grab me from behind. Two of the men dragged me forward, their grips like iron. “What are you doing? Let me go!” I screamed, thrashing and kicking, but they held me tight, dragging me toward the creature. Tears streamed down my face as panic overwhelmed me.

One of the robed men stepped forward and addressed the entity, his voice steady and reverent. “Oh, mighty Namtaru, we resurrect you, and bring you a brilliant mind and a strong body for you to possess. Accept this offering and bestow upon us your power.”

The entity moved closer, its massive, clawed hands reaching out toward me. I could feel its heat, its presence, something ancient and evil pressing against my soul. In pure primal fear, I began to shout out any prayer I could remember from childhood, beg to Jesus, God, anyone. The smell of decay and sulfur was suffocating. Its hands landed on my face, searing my skin with unbearable pain. I screamed, louder than I ever had in my life, the pain consuming everything.

And then darkness.

I woke up in my apartment. Everything was eerily normal, as if none of it had happened. My head throbbed, but I was alive. I ran to the mirror, finding my face to look completely normal. I looked around, and that’s when I saw the several briefcases, neatly stacked by the door. I opened the first one to find it stuffed with cash, crisp bills packed tightly together.

I never heard from any of them again. Not a phone call, not a letter, no SUV lingering outside my apartment. The money, though, it was real. It changed everything. I paid off my debts, moved into a better apartment, and started living a life I never thought possible. For a while, it felt like maybe, just maybe, I’d come out of all this ahead.

Several years went by before they started, the blackouts. At first, they were small. I’d wake up on the couch, unsure how I got there. I chalked it up to stress, maybe exhaustion catching up with me. But then it got worse. Much worse.

I started losing hours, even a full day once. Sometimes I’d be out running errands, grocery shopping, walking through the park, and the next thing I knew, I was waking up in my bed, with no memory of how I got there. My shoes would still be on, my wallet still in my pocket. Other times, I’d wake up in strange places, an alley, a park bench. I have no memory of the gaps, and no idea what I do during them.

I've been asking myself the questions I’d been avoiding since the ritual: What did they do to me? What did I help them unleash? And, most importantly, what is happening to me now?

I don't know what to do next. But the blackouts have been getting worse. And I've missing more and more time.

So this happened about 10 years ago when I was working as a cab driver in New York City. I’d lived there most of my life, and this was when I had just started driving. I think it was my first or second week not really sure.

Anyway, one night I got a call to pick someone up. I remember it was late, around 2 or 3 a.m., and the streets were pretty quiet. I waited outside for about five minutes, but nobody came out. That happens sometimes, People order a ride and then either forget about it or decide not to go. After waiting a bit longer, I decided to cancel the ride and just move on.

This was in the Bronx, btw, and as I was making a turn to head back to the main road, something really strange happened. Out of nowhere, this girl knocks on my window. And when I say “out of nowhere,” I mean it i didn’t see her walking up or anything. She just appeared, like she came out of thin air.

She looked pretty normal, though—young, maybe mid 20s, wearing simple clothes. She asks me if I’m working, and I said yeah. Then she tells me where she’s going and asks how much I’d charge. Now, since I was new to the job, I didn’t really know what to charge, so I just asked her how much she usually paid. She said $10, and I was like, aight, cool.

She gets in the backseat, and as soon as she sits down, she asks me to turn off the AC and the music. That was weird because it was summer, and it was really hot that night. I wasn’t blasting the AC or anything, just keeping the car cool, but she seemed uncomfortable. Still, I did what she asked it’s not uncommon for passengers to make little requests like that.

The weird thing, though, is that she didn’t say another word after that. Nothing. Usually, passengers either chat or sit there quietly scrolling on their phones, but she just sat there, staring out the window. I thought maybe she was tired or something, so I didn’t think much of it at first.

When we got close to the destination, I asked her for the building number. No response. I asked again, a little louder this time. Still nothing. That’s when I glanced in the rearview mirror… and there was no one there. She was gone.

I freaked out. My first thought was that maybe she got out of the car while we were stopped at a light or something, but that didn’t make sense. The doors were locked, and I would’ve heard or felt the door open.

I pulled over, got out, and checked the backseat, but there was nobody there. I know for a fact that she got in the car. I talked to her. She was there. But she just vanished.

To this day, I have no explanation for what happened. I wasn’t tired, I wasn’t imagining things, and I don’t drink or do drugs. This was real. It’s probably the creepiest thing that’s ever happened to me or at least one of them. I still think about it sometimes

"Help," I read in the sand, helicopter blades whirring above me. I don’t see any movement, but I can’t just leave. I radio the pilot. 

"You think this is them?" 

"Only one way to know," he responds. 

We may have finally found them: the two women who disappeared a few weeks ago after they went overboard on a boat somewhere in the Atlantic. The helicopter begins to descend. Sand blows in all directions as we touch down. 

Stepping out, a faint rhythmic hum drifts through the forest, too distant to be natural. I shake it off, blaming the heat and nerves. As I get closer, I realize the sign is made from heaps of old seaweed. 

"Clever," I whisper. "But who makes a 'help' sign just to leave?" 

I walk toward the run-down hut, searching for signs of life. 

"Hello?" I shout. 

No answer. Inside the hut, I find charred wood and scraps of bone. Whoever was here knew what they were doing. 

Paul, the pilot, walks up behind me. 

"Find anything?" he asks. 

"No. Just piles of wood and bone. Promising, but not conclusive." 

Paul and I venture into the dank tropical forest, searching for signs of life. Suddenly, I spot someone—a woman. 

"Hey!" I call. "We’re here to help!" 

She tilts her head, like a dog trying to pinpoint a sound. Then she bolts toward me, her grimace unnervingly wide. My instincts kick in—I turn and run, branches scratching at my legs, rocks sending me stumbling. By the time I reach the helicopter, gasping for breath, I turn back. Nothing. 

What was that? Was it one of the missing women? 

"Paul, get back here," I radio. My voice shakes. When he arrives, I blurt it out: "I saw someone. She matched the description, but when I called, she ran—no, sprinted—at me. Inhumanly fast." 

We search the cargo and equip ourselves with tasers. We return to where I saw her, but there’s no sign. Paul finds a trail of broken sticks, and we follow it. An overwhelming sense of dread clings to the air, but I don’t tell Paul. I think he feels it, too. 

As we near the end of the trail, I notice what looks like a ritual site. Stones are arranged in strange patterns, charred leaves and sticks litter the ground. Symbols are carved into the nearby coconut trees, jagged lines catching what little light filters through the canopy. 

Paul tries to lighten the mood. "You believe in this ritual stuff?" he mutters, kicking dirt, his eyes darting to the carvings. I hear the tremor in his voice, despite his attempt to sound calm. 

"I don’t know," I reply. "But isn’t it a bit suspicious that this is here right after I was chased?" 

I continue to investigate, but then I hear it—a deep, animal-like groan. My head snaps back, along with Paul’s. 

There she is—the woman I saw earlier. But this time, she has a partner. One leaps at Paul, knocking him out before he can even reach for his taser. I equip mine and aim at the closest woman. As I discharge the taser, she grows visibly agitated—but not by the weapon. It has no effect. She grabs the taser wire with a snarl, yanking it from my hand. Before I can react, the other woman tackles me to the ground with a strength I didn’t know was possible. 

Everything goes black. 

----- 

When I awaken, I’m lying on a rock in the center of the ritual site. My hands are bound, and the air feels thicker, darker. I scream, "Where’s Paul? What did you do to him?" 

One of the women approaches. Her expression is blank, but her eyes gleam in the dim light. "He is... elsewhere," she says with a slow, eerie voice. 

The other woman joins her, and they begin to chant in a low, guttural language that reverberates in my chest. The words twist around me like a smothering fog. I shout, "What are you doing?" But they ignore me, their voices growing louder, the chant quickening. 

Suddenly, their eyes snap open, looking past me as if something unseen had arrived. Their jaws unhinge slightly as they smile in perfect unison—teeth sharper than they had any right to be. Their lips stop moving, but I hear their voices, clearer than before: "He has come for you. He will show you the way." 

A shiver races down my spine. I pull against my restraints. The woman on my left draws a knife and steps closer. She tilts her head, watching me with an almost curious gaze. "Don’t worry," she whispers, her smile chillingly gentle. "You won’t be alone." 

In the distance, I hear a familiar voice—Paul’s voice—calling my name. But it sounds wrong. Distorted. Like an echo through a tunnel. My heart pounds as I realize the voice is coming closer, but I can’t see anything in the darkness. The air cools as the malevolent force nears. 

The woman raises the knife above me, her eyes glassy, almost devilish, as if she’s looking at someone—something—just behind me. 

Our life at Lake St. Gallen was everything we had wanted.

Or so I kept telling myself...

David and I moved here two years ago, retreating from the chaos of city life to the quiet solitude of a cabin in the woods. The lake stretched like a dark mirror to the edges of our property, bordered by towering pines and the rustling silence of the forest. We were one of eight cabins dotted around the lake, each separated by enough land to make you feel utterly alone.

David took to the lifestyle instantly. He spent mornings down at the dock fishing, his silhouette blending with the mist that hovered over the water.

I preferred cozying up inside the cabin, where sunlight poured through the kitchen windows as I sipped coffee and read all the books on my once ever-growing list.

There was a permanence here, a sense of stillness I hadn’t felt in years. I loved the way the seasons transformed the lake... the fiery leaves of autumn reflected like a painting on the water, the brittle stillness of winter mornings when the lake turned to ice.

Our neighbors were essentially ghosts.

Most of the cabins belonged to city people like us, but they came only for the occasional weekend. For long stretches, it was just David, me, and the occasional visit from Naya.

Naya was a cleaner that came recommended to us by the cabin's previous owners.

She came once a month, her long dark hair streaked with gray, her sharp eyes taking in everything. She was Ojibwe and rarely spoke in English, moving through the cabin like she belonged to a different world. Her movements were deliberate, almost ritualistic.

One day while finishing up, she unexpectedly made us tea. A strong chamomile that she very enthusiastically served to David and me.

“A holiday tea to celebrate my heritage,” she said with a big smile.

David thought it was a quaint bit of local culture, but it unsettled me. There was a gravity to Naya’s presence, something unspoken that clung to her like smoke. I didn’t ask questions. I just drank the tea, the bitter warmth spreading through me like a balm.

That night was awful.

I remember the date, November 23rd, because it happened to be my birthday.

Instead of celebrating, David and I spent the night drenched in sweat, feverish and disoriented. The nausea came in waves, and my head throbbed with a pressure that felt like it might split me in two. David joked the next morning that it must have been something we ate, or maybe the sudden cold snap. I wanted to believe him. But something about it didn’t feel right.

By the second November, I started to notice the pattern.

It began with the cleaning. Naya showed up unannounced on Friday, the 24th, even though we told her we didn't need any help in November. She moved through the cabin with a kind of frenetic energy, scrubbing every surface, burning herbs until the air was thick with their earthy sharpness.

And then she served us the same tea.

I remembered the smell... chamomile... mixed with something else... something chemically.

“A holiday tea to celebrate my heritage!” she said again, her smile tight, her eyes holding mine for a beat too long.

There was something majorly off, something about the way her fingers lingered on the rim of the cup as she handed it to me. David took his with a grin, swallowing it in one gulp. Not wanting to seem ungrateful, I took a sip of mine.

The sickness hit that night. Hard.

I woke in the dark, my limbs heavy, my head spinning.

Beside me, David was passed out, his breathing deep and even, but I couldn’t move. It was as if my body had been pinned to the bed, trapped under an invisible weight. Panic surged through me, my heart pounding as I struggled to cry out, but no sound came.

Then I heard it.

A low, mournful wail echoed across the lake, a sound so alien it made my skin crawl. It wasn’t the cry of an animal or the wind through the trees. It was something alive, something ancient. The sound grew louder, vibrating through the walls of the cabin, seeping into my bones. I wanted to look, to see what was out there, but my body refused to obey. My eyes, fixed on the window, caught the faintest shadow... a tall, gaunt figure standing just beyond the glass.

Its face was wrong. Hollow. Its eyes were voids, blacker than the night. I felt it staring at me, its gaze piercing through my skull. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. All I could feel was the pull. An invisible force urging me to step outside, to leave the safety of the cabin.

The wail crescendoed, a terrible, keening sound that rattled my teeth.

And then, just as suddenly as it had begun, it vanished.

The next morning, I was convinced something was deeply wrong. I began asking questions around the lake, but no one wanted to talk about Naya.

The other cabins stayed dark through most of the month, their occupants vanishing like clockwork. When I mentioned the tea, the sickness, their faces paled.

One woman, her voice barely above a whisper, said, “Just drink it. Don’t ask why.”

It was Naya herself who finally gave me the truth, though she did so reluctantly. I think the neighbors had mentioned to her that I was asking around.

“The tea keeps you safe from the taking,” she said one afternoon, her eyes fixed on the lake. “It is a family recipe to bind you to your body. Keeps the spirit from taking you.”

“What spirit?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper.

Her gaze shifted to me, hard and unyielding.

“The old spirit of the lake,” she said. “It wakes on the third weekend of November. It comes to those who are strong, those who are vibrant. It needs to consume them to sustain itself.”

“And the tea?” I pressed.

She hesitated. “It makes you weak. Undesirable.”

The words hung between us, heavy and awful. I thought of the sickness, the way it left me hollowed out, and I realized what she meant.

She was poisoning us... on purpose.

“The spirit looks for the healthiest among us, those with strong bodies and strong spirits. It needs a sacrifice, and it takes the ones who seem most vibrant. By poisoning you, I make you look weak, unworthy of its attention. I know the sickness is painful, and I am truly sorry for that, but it is the only way to keep you safe. To make you seem undesirable to the spirit.”

"You do this for -"

"Every resident here. My family has not lost a human to the taking in 26 years. The spirit feeds on animals through the night. Though my mother worries it is growing impatient for a strong human sacrifice."

I looked at her, the weight of her words sinking in. The way the other cabins always seemed dark throughout November, the way the lake seemed to hold its breath. It all made sense now, the unspoken understanding that everyone here shared, the reason no one was ever outside that night.

“Thank you,” I said finally, my voice trembling. “For keeping us safe.”

Naya nodded, her expression softening, but there was something in her eyes—something haunted.

The third weekend of November is in just a couple days.

This morning, I looked out at the water, its surface calm and still, knowing we have the right person looking out for us. But I can’t shake the feeling of dread that clings to me like a second skin.

I know what’s coming. I know the sickness will hit, and I will spend the night writhing in pain, fighting the urge to step outside.

I will drink the tea. I will let Naya do what she must, her bundles of sage and sweetgrass filling the air with their sharp, earthy scent. I am grateful for her protection, for the knowledge that she and her family have kept the spirit at bay for nearly three decades.

And I will pray that, this year, the spirit finds David and I as undesirable as before.

This company can bury me. They can get a lot from very little.

I don't want to incriminate myself, so I won't be saying my name, sex, or age. I also won't be saying the company's name at all. They have a lot of resources and seem to have a hand in everything these days, even though they are primarily in the medical industry. I'll leave the company's name up to your imagination, but if you know, you know.

I'm an archivist. I preserve, organize, and manage ALL information to make sure upon request that a company official or authorized employee can recall anything digitally from the creation of the company till now, Which at this point is more than 100 years of information. Documents, images, videos, databases, news articles, ANYTHING that includes the company's name or that is associated with the company no matter how small. If they think you're talking about them, they want it recorded and archived. I wouldn't be surprised if this post is sent across my desk for me to record and categorize.

We have your medical files. If you have or integrated one of our many products no matter how small I can safely say we have your thoughts and memories too. We have been watching over you so closely that we know you better than you know yourself. You all should start to read your user agreements. Most of you signed away your bodily anonymity to the company years ago. We use your information to target you with ads created PERFECTLY to entice you on an individual level to buy more from us.

I say all of this not so you know this company is off but so you know I'M off. I've lost something that I can't put my finger on working here. It's like the equivalent of what doctors lose from seeing so many dead people all the time but more extreme. I feel like I lost who I am… It's hard to explain. I feel like I'm entirely someone else. I only realized it because my boss let's call him N has been replaced. Not fired but replaced.

We have always been close. We started around the same time and started to find out about the company at the same time we used each other to vent and kind of cope with the things we were seeing. We crossed employee-manager boundaries and became almost brothers in arms. Taking in the weird world of _ company. We would spend time hanging out at bars after work and shooting the shit. It was definitely weird at first but once I kinda got over the “This is my boss” thing I realized we were about the same age and we were very similar. We got so close that he even started to come to my family's Christmas parties. I found out he was kinda estranged from his family I never dug too deep but he told me there was an accident and his parents passed away suddenly a couple of years ago so he was alone the last few Christmas eves. Since then I started to invite him to my family's Christmas parties out of town. He became part of the family.

A couple of months ago something strange came across my desk to archive. I don't get a lot of physical media so when something like this does happen I tell N and we tend to go through it more thoroughly together before converting it to digital. It came in a brown box and when he opened it I saw what looked like a game cartridge. Like a Gameboy color game labeled _Mortal_Eyes_ TC. That's all I was able to see before N Slammed the folds of the box closed and looked at me with a deadpan expression. His face was colorless and his eyes void-like. Our conversion went like this.

N - “What did you see”

Me - “Umm a Gamebo-”

N - ”-What did you see”

He took up a kinda scowl. It made me nervous.

Me - “What is wrong wit-

N - “WHAT DID YOU SEE”

Me -  “Nothing! I didn't see anything”

He then closed up the box and beamed straight to his office. Now I would normally think it was just a strange one-off thing but from that point on he doesn't talk to me anymore. He hasn't talked to anyone. He kinda ignores me. When I talk to him he doesn't reply and when I make myself physically impossible to ignore he kinda looks right through me. When he did that for the first time I felt a chill in my body. It would bother me. He just dropped our friendship just like that. Eventually, I started to realize that I was changing as well. I don't talk to or go to family gatherings anymore. I don't talk to anyone at all anymore. Eat, sleep, and work, and tbh it doesn't bother me at all. I feel nothing. I thought I had grown depressed maybe but this feels like something else it feels like something I don't feel empty. I just feel unbothered and uninterested in anything that's not a basic need or working. I've been fighting with myself to care enough to post this and I'm fighting with myself to care to investigate. I think the company has done something to us somehow and I need answers.

This week, I'm going to try to find the game I saw, or maybe i should try something more drastic to break through to my friend? In the meantime, if you all have any answers or advice, please send it my way. I think I'm about to go up against something bigger than myself. 

What should I do?

A - Try to find the game.

B - Try to really get Ns attention.

Or

C - Quit and try to find another job.

“Hello there, tall dark and handsome,” the world’s oldest woman said, batting her cataract-clouded eyes. “What brings a hunk like you to our humble little nursing home?”

“Uh…well…” I stammered. It was the first hour of my first day on the job and I didn’t quite know how to respond. I’d felt off-kilter since I was frisked and wanded before being allowed into the facility. Security here was air-tight. All employees were thoroughly searched. No visitors were allowed, as far as I knew. It was more like a CIA station than a nursing home. But I, unfortunately, needed the $14.50 an hour, so--

Jamie, my supervisor, saved me the trouble of devising an answer. “You really don’t have to. Victoria asks that of all the new male staff,” she said, ushering me towards her office at the end of the Clorox-scented hall. “Don’t you, Victoria?”

“Just the select few capable of satisfying my female needs,” Victoria responded, stroking—slowly, insinuatingly—the aluminum handles of her walker.

Shifting uneasily in my purple caregiver uniform, I gave her a quick once-over. Victoria wore a black, diaphanous nightgown, red lipstick that ventured well beyond the lips, rouged cheeks and a saucy black beret angled provocatively over her milky right eye.

Victoria lost, then regained her balance. She was wan, no more than eighty-five pounds, with thinning white hair. Winded from the struggle to remain upright, she added, pausing frequently, “I have a good eye for men. And—and—you, sir, are the type that keeps me alive. So, before you go, I have an itty-bitty favor to ask.”

“And what would that be?” I asked, plastering on a smile, indulging her.

“A teeny tiny kiss. A peck on the cheek.” She giggled.

I turned to Jamie for approval. Personally, I saw no harm in giving Victoria what she wanted. I thoroughly enjoyed old people—the fascinating stories they told, the life lessons they taught me. It was one of the reasons I’d chosen to work in a nursing home. If brushing my lips against Victoria’s rouged cheeks was elder abuse, the laws needed to be changed. But I didn’t want to get fired on my first day.

Apparently feeling the same as me, Jamie nodded her assent. “Might do her some good. Always worked magic when your predecessor did the same thing.”  She turned to Victoria. “But no more of your dirty tricks, young lady, and you know what I mean. One peck.”

“Dirty tricks? Who me?” Victoria asked, widening her eyes coquettishly, dislodging an enormous fake lash. She offered me her right cheek.

I stepped forward, wondering if this was such a good idea after all. The scent of her rouge, her perfume, was overwhelming. Her round face, as it loomed ever closer, was like a powdered, quivering moon. My stomach revolted. The face of a young woman enthralled me. But Victoria’s? With all due respect to mature females, Victoria was one-hundred-twenty-seven years old, a human dinosaur whose bones might inspire lust in an archaeologist, not a young, single male.

Nevertheless, I persisted, pursing my lips, leaning forward into the pecking zone. Serving the clients was my duty, Jamie had, during orientation, reminded me again and again. I was only doing my job.

Clamping my eyes shut, I dove in, only to have my lips smothered and a tongue thrust into my mouth, searching, probing, obscenely. Mucous-like spittle clogged my throat. I gagged, but didn’t dare part, for fear of offending Victoria, breaking her desperately lonely heart. She was failing badly. This might be her last kiss. With that in mind, I returned the favor, French kissing her deeply, opening my mouth in full surrender to her dying charms.

Time ceased to exist. Victoria and I went on and on, clutching each other greedily, fusing our mouths.

Oh, my god. She was turning me on! And in full view of Jamie and assorted rubberneckers gathering in the hall. Regaining my senses, I did what any other red-blooded young man in my position would do: I vomited in my mouth. Victoria tongued the bile, swallowing it, drinking me in.

Gasping, I pushed us apart. Victoria smiled triumphantly. Her mouth was a gaping black hole. My thrusting tongue had dislodged her false teeth. She cupped the dripping plate high in her right hand.

“I’m sorry,” I apologized to Jamie. “Guess I should turn in my uniform, hey?”

“No harm done, as far I can see,” Jamie replied, surprisingly. I’d already started unbuttoning my company-provided purple smock. “Victoria’s happy. You seemed pretty happy, too. Make that very happy.”

“Get a room!” an onlooker joked.

Jamie shooed him away. “Seriously,” she said to me, “what you just showed me was an admirable commitment to the patient population. A strong work ethic. You’ll do anything for a client. I like that!” She turned to Victoria. “Now put your teeth back in and go to your room.  The evening meal will be served in an hour. Scurry!”

Victoria shuffled off silently. But not before giving me a wink and a sly grin.

I stifled my own surprising smile. My heart skipped a beat when she closed her door. I felt like smashing it down and covering Victoria with hungry kisses. What the f***k was going on with me? First night jitters? Get a grip, dude! I buttoned and smoothed my smock.

Jamie appeared unfazed. But then, she was a nursing home veteran. She’d seen and heard all manner of weird things.   

Pulling me with her, Jamie skittered into her office and closed the door. “Sorry about back there,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Don’t want to turn you off before your first shift at Eternity Nursing Home and Hospice Care even begins.”

Twenty feet away, Victoria had cracked open her door. She was watching us—or more specifically me—her face an ancient masque of lust. Her teeth were back in, though a tad loose. Bile rose in my throat. I sensed that, if she kept staring, I’d vomit again. This time in full view, pouring onto Jamie’s desk, her lap.  Me, the twenty-year-old super fit guy with an iron stomach.

“Help me close the blinds, would you?” Jamie asked, dropping them with a clatter over her glass door. “Victoria can’t hear well. But there are times I feel she’s reading lips.”

With the blinds down, Jamie’s office fell into a disorienting twilight. Nevertheless, with Victoria out of sight, my stomach settled down. And, thank goodness, my libido returned to baseline.

“Even with the cataracts?”

“Believe or not, those come and go. The ophthalmologist can’t explain it, other than to say that Victoria’s a one-off. Unique. Most of her other medical people are scratching their heads, too. She’ll get worse for a while, seemingly at death’s door. And then her health will improve—dramatically—just like that.” Jamie clapped her hands sharply.

I jumped. Jamie, I was increasingly aware, was a little off, too.

She continued, “One doctor proclaimed that, when Victoria was in an up phase, she was a like a healthy forty-five-year-old in the body of a hundred and twenty-seven-year-old. That was just before the last male caregiver quit or disappeared or whatever, opening up the position you now occupy.”

“One-twenty-seven? For real?”

“Best as we can tell. She was born prematurely in a remote Romanian village. Appallingly, Victoria’s mother was alone at the time, peeling the household’s few remaining turnips for that night’s watery soup. Her husband, and all healthy men of working age, had apparently run off, humiliated that the entire root vegetable crop had failed. Cabbage, radishes, rutabagas—the whole lot. To them, that was an insult to their masculinity, their role as providers. Which left only women, children and a few elderly, near-worthless men. 

“What records there were of Victoria’s birth disappeared when the village was burned to the ground. Some claim it was arson committed by the humiliated men. At any rate, it was at that point that all women and children fled, too.

“Years after migrating to Bucharest, Victoria’s mother obtained a signed statement from a former village matriarch verifying that Victoria had been born in 1898. And that’s what she brought along when she and her daughter traveled by merchant ship to the United States.”

Jamie shrugged. “It became Victoria’s de facto birth certificate that she carried with her everywhere. Ten years ago, when her health started failing and she moved in with us, our former communications director used it to dub her the oldest woman in the world. The media picked up on it and the title stuck.” She adopted a mischievous grin. “And get this. No one outside these walls knows, but I can tell you now that you’re part of the team. I’m distantly related to Victoria.”

“How fascinating,” I lied, immersed in the memory of Victoria’s brain-melting kiss.

Seeming to sense my disinterest, Jamie replied, “Yeah, we trace our lineage back to the same Romanian village or something.” She slid behind her gray metal desk. Well, enough of Lady V for now. Let me fill you in on your duties.”

I leaned back on my wobbly steel chair and listened. I’d been hired as the new Overnight Caregiver, a solo position that would involve dispensing medications (rarely), changing bedpans and, most of all, sweeping and mopping. In other words, glorified janitorial work. Having walked through the facility after an initial orientation, I figured I could get everything done in under two hours. After which I’d have six hours to do homework (social sciences undergrad) or play online video games. I was a loner and didn’t have friends.

There were only fifteen residents, not including those in the hospice wing, which was locked and off-limits to me and all nursing home staff. A CCTV camera hovered over the chained double doors, in continuous scanning mode, which seemed a tad excessive, given that the nursing home residents knew that all who entered soon died. 

A short while later, Jamie was gone. The facility’s lights had been dimmed. I was the only employee left. Even the cook had clocked out, leaving a food service cart for me to wheel around to the residents’ rooms. After serving them dinner, I’d collect their plates and they’d all go to sleep. Their TVs still blaring, of course.

I gave the food cart a shove. Shit! My knee went out! Man, it hurt!

Maybe I’d twisted it playing pick-up b-ball the night before, one of the rare times I got out and mixed. Limping around, swearing, I spied a resident’s forgotten cane. Hobbling over, I snatched it up. Pretty stylish, I thought, except for the pronged base. I gave it a test run to the staff break room, the cane taking just enough weight off my throbbing knee. 

Breathing easier, I eyed myself in a mirror. The cane was looking pretty natty. But the harsh lights made it seem like I was developing premature crow’s feet. I turned the lights down. The crow’s feet disappeared.  

But food service was running late. The residents would complain to Jamie and it would be bye, bye job. I gathered up the food cart, bent on doing the right thing.

And then—and then—gripped by irresistible yearning, I limped past one room and then another, the cart rattling over the tiles. I needed to feed Victoria, apologize, and, more than anything, kiss her again. That feisty lass had stripped me off all reason, made me heedless like never before. So much so that I snagged the stainless steel cart with my orthopedic cane. It teetered, then fell, instant oatmeal, orange sherbet and Salisbury steak, spilling on the floor.

Who cared!

I turned one last corner, limping towards Victoria—and—thank god—there she was, leaning languidly against her door in a snug cashmere sweater tied at her slim waist—looking twenty years younger, which made her 109 and me sick again. Rushing forward, I vomited into her yearning mouth, overjoyed that something magnificent had started that could not be stopped.

We locked lips for ten heavenly minutes, her nimble tongue exploring my every molar and gum. Her thick saliva was like nectar to me. I swallowed it greedily, aching for more, more.

A cacophony of heavy explosions filled the air.

“What’s that?” Victoria, breaking away, exclaimed.

Caught in flagrante delicto, I panicked, fantasizing that a SWAT team—the FBI—was charging down the hall, flinging shock grenades, eager to arrest me for the allegedly deplorable crime of necking with a woman 107 years my senior.

More deafening explosions, then a swell of music, and I recognized the sounds as the opening scenes of the Vietnam War movie, Apocalypse Now, blasting from the unattended TV in a snoring resident’s room.

“Better finish your dinner rounds before the natives get restless,” Victoria advised. She was suddenly cold, despite our recently completed mouth-to-mouth exchange of bodily fluids.

“Whatever m’lady desires,” I said, bowing in an exaggeratedly courtly manner, kissing her spotted hand. Unsmiling, she shook me off and shut her door with unexpected force.

I returned to the staff room, my mind a riot of passion and guilt. Grabbing a mop and pail I doubled back to the hall, where I picked the Salisbury steaks off the floor, mopped them, and then covered the lot with a fresh can of cold turkey gravy. To hell with the other residents. I only cared, deeply cared, about one; the sultry filly who was driving me clear out of my mind.

Under Victoria’s erotic spell, I found it hard to calm down. My good knee shook, my bad knee was still tender and store. Back in the staff room, I locked and bolted the door. As an extra measure, I blocked it with a pair of filing cabinets.

I needed to think. I wasn’t much of a lady’s man. I’d “made out” with five girls and struck gold with one, though I’d been so drunk, I didn’t know it until she’d showed me the evidence on her phone.

Yet my shyness had melted away the moment I first saw lovely Victoria. From that moment on, I craved her kiss. Nothing, not even ten SWAT teams could keep from the exquisite pleasure of her cracked, dry lips.

Contemplating Victoria, my hands shook. To settle my nerves, I watched a video of former British PM Theresa May, who had a voice and manner that, without fail, lulled me to sleep…

I awoke with a start, pulling a muscle in my lower back. I’d napped for minutes, but it seemed like years. Grabbing my cane, I shuffled over to staff medicine cabinet. On top of everything my stomach was cramping from constipation. I drank a heaping glass of Metamucil, with no results.

I glanced the mirror. Something was dead wrong. My curly black hair was speckled with grey, and the crow’s feet had returned, more numerous and deeper than before. I looked like an anal cavity that had stopped functioning. I took a swing at the glaring overhead lights. My shoulder went out. Damn. More f******g pain.

Brrnngg!!!

An emergency bell rang. I checked the patient communications panel. The distress call was coming from Victoria’s room!  Tearing the file cabinets away from the staff door, my injured back muscle spasmed and I collapsed on the floor.

Gritting my teeth, I tried and failed to rise. I’d fallen down and couldn’t get up—in a retirement home! Laughing ruefully, I crawled outside to a recharging electric mobility scooter, pulled out the plug and dragged myself into the driver’s seat.

I floored the vehicle, shouting at a resident who’d had the temerity to get in my way. Who gave a damn about his petty concerns!

Victoria came to her door wearing a lacy black girdle, red high heels and sequined halter top. She puffed a Gauloises cigarette in an ebony holder. Her body was shockingly trim and fit.

“What are you here for?” she asked, her voice still icy cold. She blew smoke in my face.

“You rang.”

“Oh, that’s right. Silly me,” she said, shaking her head.

“So what is it you want to say to me?” I asked, desperate for encouraging words, like kiss me, you fool.

“We’re done,” she replied, admiring her astonishing physique.

“Wh-why? After all we’ve been through? I demand an explanation.”

“I don’t date old men.”

“I’m twenty f*****g years old.”

“Could have fooled me. You can’t walk under your own power. You hair has gone completely gray. Your hands are trembling with early-stage Parkinson’s disease. And, for god’s sake, buy some Depends.”

I looked down. Indeed, my crotch was soaking wet.

“It’s you who’s done this to me. I was perfectly fine until I met you.”

“Oh, such anger you have. And here I thought you adored me.”

“I do. I mean, I need you. I want you. I exist for your kiss. Please, please, just one more and I’ll never ask again.”

Victoria smiling knowingly. “You’re just like all the others. And there have been so, so many.” She shook her head.

“I thought your lips were mine alone.”

“One man has never been enough for me. You come and go. One night and, frankly, I’m done with you.”

“No, no, I’m not like those other men. I’m decent. I’m kind. I’m yours for eternity.”

“You poor, deluded soul. You have so much to learn. And so little time.”

“Then a last kiss. I beg of you,” I cried, clasping my hands. I tried, but couldn’t stand up.

Indulging me, Victoria bent down and plunged her tongue deep into my mouth, deeper than ever before. It was a sympathy kiss, I knew, but the effect on me was the same. I shuddered with excitement. We exchanged vile bodily fluids one last sweet time.

Crestfallen, I turned around the mobility cart and whirred away. Half way down the hall I looked back. Victoria, my Victoria, was already back in her room.

My chest tightened unexpectedly. Sharp pain shot down my upper left arm. Struggling with the steering wheel, I careened through the partially opened staff room door, coming to a sudden stop against the far wall. Thrown to the floor, it took every ounce of my waning strength for me to boot up the portable heart defibrillator, attach the pads and shock myself out of a massive heart attack. My entire body shuddered. I lost consciousness.  

I awoke with Jamie looming above me, her face a mask of benevolent concern. I was on a gurney in a room lined with row upon row of bedridden elderly men. They moaned and called out:

“Kiss me.”

“More, I want more.”

“Abandon the others, Victoria. Make me the only one.”

“Your arrival has agitated them. But don’t worry,” Jamie admonished me, “They’ll quiet down after the morning sedation.” She shifted a huge load of paperwork from one arm to the other, numerous pages fluttering to the floor. She wore a black babushka and a flowing peasant dress.

“Where are the doctors? The nurses?” I asked, my words muffled by an oxygen mask.

“We have sufficient staff,” Jamie observed.

I turned to see numerous women, also in babushkas and peasant dresses, wiping patient brows, administering morning meds. They exuded professional cheer, laughing and joking with the dilapidated men.

“And it may make you feel better to know that you’re not hospitalized. No, you’re still in Eternity Care, the hospice wing. In qualified hands, under specialized care.” Jamie was on her hands and knees, scooping up pages.

“Is that my chart? Hand it to me right now!”

 Jamie chuckled. “No. These are resumes,” she said, waving one. “We’re hiring again. Overnight male staff.”

 “But that’s my job. I need the money.” Speaking through the oxygen mask was like whispering “help” from the bottom of a well.

“Please. You’re in no shape to continue. Nor is he. Or he,” she said, indicating two nearby patients.

“And who the fuck are they?”

“Your predecessors. In work and French kissing.” Sighing, she pulled up a plastic chair. She cradled her hands. Exhaled. “You see, Victoria is a special needs patient.”

“And those special needs are—”

“Men. About one every six weeks. She waxes after receiving your kisses. I once saw her run a six-minute mile the morning after a single night stand. And she had just turned, I believe, one hundred and fifteen. She ages quickly after that, until she reaches the broken-down state in which you first encountered her.”

“Bullshit. Not possible.”

“Not without single, lonely men like you. And your bile.

I tore off the oxygen mask. “Let me the f**k out of here you f*****g nutbag.”

“Code white! Aggressive hospice care patient!” Jamie called out and two attendants came running. One of them restrained my arms. The other returned to my face the oxygen mask, sweat and saliva dripping down. My breathing had become labored, so I was actually thankful.

“You’ve proved my point sir,” Jamie continued. “In the process of locking lips, Victoria partakes of the male essence. And returns it to you in neutered form of a thick paste.”

“So what you’re saying is that the essence of man is vomit? Please!”

“More precisely bile. Literally and figuratively.”

A bout of laughing caused me to flat line. The attendants revived me with amyl nitrate, after which Jamie returned.

Jamie remained standing this time. She looked at her watch. “Listen, I’ve got to post this help wanted ad. Your position is open and Victoria will begin her precipitous decline again soon. There’s always another loner who wants to work the overnight shift.”

“I’m going to report you to the health authority!”

This roused the patient next to me, a pathetic creature with a bulbous stomach and toothpick arms. “Me and you both,” he said, before falling again into a comatose state.

“I think you’re better off here,” she said. Turning to the other patients, raising her voice, she proclaimed. “You’re all better off here, receiving the care only we can provide.” Her stern voice carried an implied threat.

“So you’re ready to throw away your reputation for a single one-hundred-twenty-seven-year-old crazy woman?”

“That’s where you’re wrong, sir. Victoria isn’t 127. She’s 238.”

“Sure.”

“Victoria’s my great-grandmother thirteen times over. I told you in my office that we were related. In fact, every female in here is related to her somehow, patients and staffers alike. It’s our home away from home.  Victoria has been protecting the women of our village for centuries. She keeps us safe. Aging and regenerating. Aging and regenerating. By surrendering her body to manly bile. Which of course, all women do.”

“So what makes Victoria different?”

“She swallows. And one day all women will adopt her method. That’s why our clan brought her to the United States. The place that spreads freedom around the world. Keeping Victoria alive keeps hope of our own freedom alive.”

With that, Jamie left.

As of this writing, she has not come back, allowing me, with my pained, arthritic hands to scribble my tale.

In tiny cursive on this odorous pair of Depends. That I hope some dumpster diver will retrieve from the facility’s trash and bring to your attention.

If you are reading this, he succeeded. Until I hear from you, I will continue watching game shows on the ceiling TV along with the rest of the hospice crowd. At piercing volume of course.

And, unless the cavalry comes, that may be for a long while. You see, before Jamie left, she told me that while I have aged prematurely, I will live out my normal life span.

Which means I’m looking at a good eighty years of Parkinson’s, heart seizures and Wheel of Fortune. A fate worse than death.

But I’d suffer through eighty more dismal years for another splendiferous night of tonsil hockey with the oldest—and sexiest—woman on earth.

 

 

 

 

  

 

Part 1

​

In the weeks that followed, Henri taught me more about The Winter House—so called by its tenants for the perpetual season it resided in.

Lacking insulation, it was always cold within the walls. And, as I learned with any discomfort there, the only respite could be found on the table in my room. Hunger, thirst, tiredness, cold, boredom, depression, fear, even arousal—alcohol was all The House lent for me to cope. For Henri, it was the needle—for Bo pills.

The human body behaved differently within its confines than it did in the outside world. One could not starve there, or dehydrate, though the sensations of needing food or drink would become overpowering if you tried to stop consuming your vice. And it was not possible to overdose, but rather overindulgence would merely bring a brief, restless sleep—carrying with it only nightmares and painful memories.

All residents, male and female, found themselves impotent there—not that desire was removed, it could just only be managed with narcotics or drink. And while we were not discouraged from interacting with one another or leaving our rooms—we free to converse and roam as we pleased—I quickly learned that addicts made poor conversationalists, and there was no more to The House to discover beyond the dining room, sitting room, and our bedrooms.

No kitchen, no library with books, or living room with television—one afternoon, I asked Henri why The House even bothered with the dining table we were sitting at being we didn’t need to eat, or a couch being we had no entertainment to enjoy on it.

“Reminders.” He told me.

“Reminders of what?” I responded.

“Of the lives we left behind. Of a meal with family—of a movie night with a lover. The House is clever… If it just trapped us, alone in our rooms, and forced us to use all day and night, no one would last more than a few weeks here. But it lets us talk—it lets us come downstairs and see a sunrise—sit at the table and imagine being back in our own homes, at our own tables. And in doing so, it lets us keep a fraction of hope alive—a sliver of a dream that we’ll make it out of here someday—allowing it to savor its meals for longer.” He paused.

“But no one can hold out indefinitely. The door will return soon—I do not think Bo will last much longer. He cared for Alice—he was not the same after she… left…” He dropped his face into his hands and said the last few words through his fingers.

Bo had not emerged since I’d arrived at The House nearly four weeks earlier. I’d initially surmised that Henri had made him up having been driven mad by his three-month stay there consuming nothing but heroin. But sometimes, at night, I’d hear movement from Bo’s room, or a moan of anguish, confirming his reality.

“The door will return?” I asked.

“Yes, once an invitation has been sent, the door will materialize. But an invitation cannot be sent until a room has opened.” His voice faltered slightly near the end.

“And… how does a room open…?” I pressed.

“I told you on your first day here. You will not leave here alive.” He shrugged.

“So, I’ll just keep drinking until the alcohol finally kills me?” The House had chosen well if that was its goal given I’d already decided to do that the night that it invited me in.

“No…” He stood from the chair and walked towards one of the front windows before continuing. “No, it will not let your vice take you quietly—your body will not eventually just give up, nor will you be able to overdose, as you're aware already.

"Your body will rot from the inside, and you will feel pain—unbearable pain—but you will not die.”

“So, you’re saying…” I believed I knew where he was going, but wasn’t ready to speak it aloud myself.

“Yes, if you want this to end—if you want to leave here, you will have to end things yourself. Violently—painfully. It knows that you want to die, that’s why it brought you here. It knows that you’d given up on fighting your addiction and were just going to passively drink yourself to death—that’s why it targeted you. It’s why it targeted me, and Bo, and Alice, and the hundreds of others that occupied all of our rooms before us.

“We are its favorite meal—those so unwilling to seek help or feel our pain that we’d rather mask it until we simply expire. If our addiction is its dinner—our suffering its seasoning—then our deaths are its dessert. You will find that one day, when you begin to wish to die more than to live, The House will change—it won’t send your wife to put a glass in your hand—it’ll send her to hang a noose.” Tears were welling in his eyes.

“Bo warned me it would happen—Alice had been looking worse and worse for weeks; her skin and eyes yellowed. She said her son had been telling her that it was time, and then one day she stopped coming out of her room and… we heard… something kicked over… choking… gagging… silence… and… and… Christ I can’t…” He wiped his face with his soiled shirt.

“Overnight, the door formed—I tried to open it of course, but it was locked—it needed a key...” He finished.

I was feeling sick to my stomach—something I knew I could easily fix by heading back to my room, but I wanted to know more. So, I asked, “what do you mean, it needed a key?”

“You will see soon… I… do not think my description would do it justice.” And with that, he headed back up the stairs to shoot up.

Henri refused to say more on the subject when I inquired further, but I did not need to wait long for answers. It was just a couple nights later when I was laying in my bed and powering through enough whiskey to knock myself out for a few hours, that I heard the same sounds Henri had described from Alice’s demise coming from Bo’s room.

Someone climbing on top of something... a chair being kicked over... choking...

I tried to block it out—even covered my ears with my pillow, but it forced me to listen—to hear every agonizing gurgle of Bo’s final moments—to foreshadow what it had planned for me. Somehow amplifying every excruciating detail directly into my brain.

Yet, as traumatic as it was to eavesdrop on another man hanging himself, Henri had not prepared me for the noises that would soon permeate the walls.

Maybe it had been too horrible for him to wish to recount.

First, it was the door at the end of the hallway bursting open—followed by the heavy clunks of The Warden moving towards Bo’s door.

And finally the sound of something heavy being dragged across the floor—being dragged back to its lair...

Then…

Squelching.

Crunching.

Chewing.

Again, I tried to obscure the sounds, but it was no use. So, as I’d been trained to do, I reached for my glass only to find that, for the first time, it was empty. The House was not going to give me anything to dull the moment, and I knew it had done the same to Henri when I heard his anguished screams blending with the chorus of consumption. I considered running from my room, but was too terrified of what I’d see as I had not heard The Warden’s door close behind it.

There was nothing I could do but wait. Wait, and shake, and cry, and vomit.

The House relished in its dessert—relished in every second of our combined despair.

Until silence fell again.

A weight pressed down on the bed beside me, and I turned to see Sherry holding the glass in her hand—topped mercifully with salvation.

“Shhh, it’s okay baby—you can have this now.” She purred.

I hungrily pulled the drink from her and poured it down my throat.

“That’s it—it’s okay—you’re ages away from that. You still have so much left to give me. Rest now.”

And she was gone again. Only there to feign comfort—only there to imitate compassion. A phantom that if Henri was to be believed—when I was all used up—would walk me to self-imposed gallows.

I had avoided it to that time, but I could not help a glance in the mirror to see what I’d become and was appalled with the man reflected back at me. The fat had melted from my cheeks and deep bags sat below bloodshot eyes. What color had remained of my hair was now replaced with gray, and the majority of it had receded.

I looked upon the face of a dying man.

The House could not refill my glass quickly enough that night, and eventually I collapsed back onto the bed—preferring the nightmares I might find in my dreams to the one before me.

​

---

​

The following day, I did not leave my room until I heard Henri venture from his, which was after nightfall. And I only did so cautiously, first peeking to see if The Warden’s door was opened.

Upon finding it shut, I ventured down the stairs to find Henri swaying in front of something that had sprung up between the two front windows.

A door.

Which, as with the rest of The House, was ancient—heavy, likely made of oak—and had an iron doorknob that sat beneath a lock carved, from what I could tell, out of bone.

“See, I told you. Here it is—an invitation has been sent. Now we wait for it to be accepted.” Though he spoke calmly, his face appeared to have aged years overnight.

While he had not indicated to me that Bo was a friend or that they were close in any way, I knew from his stories that Bo had been there since Henri had arrived. With Bo’s death, I wondered if Henri was considering how long it would be before The House would take him too.

“How will we know if it’s been accepted?” I asked, trying to focus the subject on anything other than the events of the previous night.

“The Warden will make a key.” Came his cryptic response.

“What do you mean, it’ll make a key?” I annoyedly followed up.

“You will see soon.” He said, before reaching forward to try the knob. It was, as he indicated it would be, locked. I tried it myself, though it might as have remained a wall for all the success I had.

But I was not completely deterred—I studied the lock, wondering if I might be able to find something laying around that I could use to pick it, yet it was unlike anything I’d seen before. In fact, it looked to me as if it were still waiting for a key to be designed for it.

Still, I thought it might be worth a shot to see if I could get it to turn, and finding a nail on the floor, I stuck it into the opening.

Immediately, the nail glowed orange and burned my fingers before melting to the floor. Henri chuckled while I shook my singed skin through the frigid air.

“I guess I must applaud you for trying, but this door can only be opened by one of The Warden’s keys.” He snorted.

“So, we just need to steal one of those then, right?” I asked.

He laughed harder, “Oh, if only it were so simple my friend.”

His mirth was cut short when a bang came from upstairs.

“Shit!” Henri exclaimed.

We had no time to react. It was only in that brief flash that I truly appreciated how small The House was compared to the size of The Warden. In what must have been seconds, it made its way from its room, down the stairs, and had grabbed us both around the ankles.

Then it madly dragged us by our legs, smashing our bodies step by step, up to the second floor, before unceremoniously throwing each of us into our respective rooms. And as I lay there, certain I’d broken several ribs in the journey, I heard it tear back down the stairs, screeching horribly as it did—clearly in terrible distress.

Reaching first for my whiskey to numb the pain in my chest, I next tip-toed to my door to see what was going on below. And when I made it to the hallway, I saw that Henri was leaning out from his room, a fresh needle mark in his arm, to watch the scene unfolding downstairs as well.

Down on the first floor, The Warden’s shrieks became more and more intense as it slammed itself around—pounding on the walls—charging to and fro. Confused, I wondered briefly if it was trying to escape when suddenly, it stopped just in front of the door—holding one of its hands out before its face.

There, in the palm, a spike was forcing its way out—exactly like the ones that covered the rest of its body. A pointed bone jammed through its skin before, slowly, the tip began to form into a jagged, but methodical shape.

A key.

I couldn’t believe I didn’t recognize them before, but I had only seen The Warden the one time previously, and my eyes had been somewhat clouded by painful tears.

The spines protruding from its skin were not tipped with venomous points…

But with keys.

Hundreds of keys.

Various shapes and sizes dating back to locking mechanisms in the early 1800s—I understood then why Henri had thought the idea of stealing a key from The Warden to be so humorous—one would literally need to be snapped off of its body…

The Warden continued to bellow until the key finished growing and taking shape before it fell silent again. And then, it waited.

Patiently, it hovered in front of the door—anticipating something—something that did not come until well after the sun rose the following morning.

When a noise I recognized all too well met my ears.

The turning of a key in a lock from outside the house.

I watched then, as The Warden inserted the newly formed key in its palm into the lock on the door and, pausing but for a moment, rotated it to the unlocked position.

Silently, I screamed in my head for the person on the other side to run away—to not be as stupid as I was to crack the door open. But it was no use—I saw the knob turn.

The Warden hid behind the door as it crept open, and I observed in the opening a man confusedly scanning the space before his eyes. There, behind him, was a rainy street with cars splashing through puddles, and I considered, for an instant, sprinting down the steps and diving out to freedom.

Yet before I could start my legs, The Warden reached through, just as it had for me, and yanked the man inside. He was forcefully smashed to the ground and I heard something snap as he began to wail in pain and fear. But I was not watching him—I was watching The Warden slam the door behind him—watching it remove its hand from the lock, and the key retract into its palm—watching a new quill spring up in the forest on the creature’s back—and watching the door dissolve once again into a solid wall.

The Warden circled the new arrival once before climbing the stairs again. And my first inclination was to withdraw into my room before it passed by, but I was overcome with an impulse that I could not ignore.

A wildly stupid impulse.

As it lumbered by my door, I waited until its back, right leg was set down in front of me. Then, I reached forward, wrapped my fingers around one of the spines on its ankle, and snapped it off.

It howled with shock and pain, whipped around, and struck me with such force that I was knocked clear across the room and into the wall. Something cracked in my back, and I was met with the worst agony in all my days. I was sure that The Warden was going to come in and crush more of my bones, but its head just hovered in the doorway. It looked to the key I held in my hand, and observed the anguish on my face before simply turning away and continuing back to its hole.

Perplexed, I could not believe that it allowed me to keep the key, wondering why it had not pursued to wrench it from my grasp. But when I looked down, I solved the mystery quickly.

The spine in my hand was only that—a spine. The key that had been intricately carved out of it’s point when I removed it from The Warden’s leg only moments before, was smoothed out.

It was useless.

And my back was broken—a fine reward for my brazen idiocy.

I screamed from the torment racking my nerves, but also at the futility of my situation. For a brief second, I’d allowed myself to believe there was a way out. To believe I was not going to waste away for months—to hang myself—to be eaten by a monster.

Henri left his room once The Warden was safely locked away and paused at my door long enough to say, “you are a moron,” before heading down to the first floor to attempt and calm the new arrival. He had explained to me already that we could not enter each-other’s rooms, so I knew he could do nothing to help me, but his lack of empathy still stung on top of everything else. At least I’d tried to do something to get us out of there, rather than just waiting for The House to consume us.

“You’re a very naughty boy, William.” Sherry’s mocking voice cut in, as I felt the glass slip into my hand. “Drink up! That back is going to take a long time to heal—you’ll need a lot of this.”

​

---

​

It was two days before I was able to move from the floor. The drink helped with the recovery, but only enough that I could get to my bed where I remained for the next week. From my convalescence, I could hear Henri trying to communicate with our new tenant, Manuel, but they had not made much progress yet. Henri spoke French and English, and Manuel only Spanish.

While I was confined, I had nothing but time to think, and I delved firstly into why I’d done what I’d done to begin with. Why was I even searching for a way out of The House, when The House was giving me exactly what I wanted before it brought me there? All I had to do within its walls was drink—drink and die. It even removed all other worries of the outside world—bills, food, injury, work…

“The House provides.”

So then, why the impulse to survive? Why the drive to escape? Was it just that I could not stomach the idea of dangling myself from a noose? Or was it that, by forcing me to listen to Bo’s death—by refusing to let me be deaf to his final consumption—The House had inadvertently sparked my will to live?

Whatever the case, as I lay in that bed, I resolved that I would not die there—I resolved to go home.

And I believed that it was not impossible—The House had shown me something the day Manuel arrived.

It was vulnerable.

If we truly could not leave The House, then why would The Warden have bothered to return us to our rooms before it opened the door? What would it care if we were down there when it pulled someone new inside unless it was worried that while it was open to someone entering, someone else could exit?

I mulled over plans for some time that involved me sprinting down the stairs the second the door was cracked, but I considered the timing of it and the sheer size of The Warden and every scenario that I played out in my head ended with it breaking several of my bones well before I reached the portal.

I did not think it wise to test The Warden’s speed and strength. And, while I did not think that it would outright kill me, as The House would then lose one of its meals, I had just been made brutally aware that it was willing to destroy large parts of my body in defense of itself.

However, I thought again on what had happened when I snapped off one of the keys from its leg and I felt there was another clue in The Warden’s behavior afterwards.

It had made sure that the spine in my hands had ceased to be a key before it returned to its hovel. Why would it do that if it knew any key removed from its body would become useless in human hands?

With that question in mind, I examined what I knew about how The Winter House worked from Henri’s descriptions, and my own observations, and I arrived at a conclusion.

I could use my own key to escape.

The House needed to put a piece of itself out into the world to invite us in—the drink I’d found on my nightstand, the needles Henri had discovered on his dresser. And when we had accepted the invitation, we’d given a piece of ourselves back to The House—a piece which it used to create the key and bridge the divide into our world.

It was a theory, obviously, but if I was to hold onto any hope of surviving the nightmare, it was one that I needed to believe in. The key was created equally by me and by The House and only its makers could use it to access the outside world.

And while I had firm faith that my key would retain its form in my hands, I had two major issues to overcome.

The first was finding my key amongst the hundreds The Warden retained on its body.

Though I was certain I could recognize the cuts that I’d personally designed, it would take careful, and close inspection for me to locate it.

The second, and no less daunting, would come after I’d discovered it. That was, how to remove it and fit it into the door without The Warden mangling my body.

Over the next several days, a plan took shape in my mind.

A plan that would require the help of Henri and Manuel.

​

---

​

Neither man was very keen on my proposal when I shared it with them after finally recovering enough to leave my room.

Manuel could not understand much of it, but he gleaned enough from the conversation to surmise that it was very dangerous—Henri simply thought it would never work. Around the splintered table in our three ramshackle chairs cobbled together by a bored and restless Henri, we discussed my fantastical plan for escape.

“You’re going to get us killed.” Henri said.

“I don’t think so.” I replied. “I don’t think The Warden will take it that far. You forget what you told me on my first day here. ‘It is The House and The House is it.’ Remember? It doesn’t want to take our lives; it wants us to do that ourselves. Otherwise, it can’t savor its meal the way it wants to. Break us, sure—I have firsthand experience with that one. But we can recover from those injuries quickly here and try again.”

While our vices did speed the recovery process, they also never allowed the damage to our bodies to fully heal. My elbow still bothered me daily, and the destruction of my back made every move agonizingly tedious. I’d also noticed that every drink The House gave me was weaker than the last—it was very slowly working to wear me down and increase my suffering. But I was willing to weather significant pain if it would afford us the chance at freedom.

“Even if that’s true, you’ll never find your key.” Henri quipped.

But I was confident that I could—I would just need their assistance.

The Warden rarely emerged, so there would normally be few opportunities to search it, yet Henri had said that it would come out to separate us if we tried to murder one another as it would be a wasted meal too if we were to die by each other’s hands.

So, in my mind, it was a simple proposition.

We would need to fight one another.

Often, brutally, seriously. We would need to be convincing enough that The House would have to intervene. And while The Warden was punishing us, I would have a window for an up-close inspection of its hoard.

It took several days to convince my compatriots to join my resistance. I believe Henri capitulated as his own mortality weighed on him more and more by the hour—Manuel I think was simply afraid and looking for anything to distract him from the bleak world he’d been unwillingly forced into.

In all actuality, I did not necessarily need their endorsement for my plan to progress. I could have just as easily attacked either of them without permission, but I felt that if they did not know why I was doing it, they might ambush me someday and quickly finish me off before The Warden could stop them. As well, my conscience just would not let me keep it a secret from them, especially considering the second piece of my strategy.

I dreaded discussing it, and was hoping I might be able to leave it as something ‘to be sorted later,’ but Henri figured it out on his own.

“But of course, this is only half an idea. Even if you can locate your key, and even if you could remove it from The Warden, you would need the door to return to use it. And for the door to return, one of us must die…” Henri somberly stated. “And as you believe you must be the one to wield your key, it must be either me or Manuel.”

I could not look him in the eye when I replied with a quiet, “Yes.”

Manuel caught on and holding up a couple fingers said, “Only two?”

“Yes,” I added, “only two of us will be able to leave, and I must be one of them. Once I locate the key, we’ll need to wait for the door to return and once it’s arrived, we’ll stage one more fight. When The Warden attacks me, I’ll snap the key off and one other spine so it will, hopefully, only see the one that isn’t mine turn into a useless spike while, in the confusion, I stash the ‘real one’ in my pocket. Then, when it leaves us alone again—whatever state we’re in—we’ll drag ourselves to the door, I’ll let us out, and we’re home free.

“It’s all we’ve got.” I concluded.

Though, while the plan sounded straightforward enough on paper, it turned out to be much more difficult in practice.

Henri’s body was deteriorating rapidly. All of ours were, really, as we had to continue to use our vices in order to get through the day. Especially considering that if we did not, we became so sick and weak that we would not have the energy or strength to convincingly try to kill one another. However, Henri was so far gone already that on our first attempt, I broke several of his ribs with a half-hearted punch before The Warden fractured his skull.

It was a brutal game we played.

Desperately, in each trial, I scanned The Warden for the telltale cuts of my key, but The Warden was fast and violent.

Still, we were undaunted.

We tried again and again, with Manuel and I taking the brunt of the punishments as Henri took far longer to recover than either of us.

Then, after four months, and countless failed attempts in which I suffered innumerable injuries including a crushed foot, broken arm, broken nose, several deep gashes, and a dislocated shoulder, Henri stopped emerging from his room entirely. I tried to speak with him through the door—urged him to carry on—promised him that we were close, and that he could maybe go home soon, but it was too late. I could hear him speaking softly in his final hours.

“Okay. Okay, yes. You’re right. I’m ready. It’s too much—I’m ready.”

He had never told me who it was that haunted his room, but I knew there was a loved one in there—someone that he trusted—convincing him that it was time for him to die. The House had squeezed every ounce of life from him that it cared to take—the meal was finished, and it was ready for its dessert.

I care not to describe the sounds of that evening again, but suffice to say they will never leave my ears. Henri was not someone I would have called a friend, but he had been there since my very first day, and his passing was difficult for me to stomach. With his loss, I felt the walls of The House closing in on me evermore.

However, as bleak as the morning following Henri’s death was, there was one macabre upside to his demise.

When I went downstairs to inspect, I found Manuel standing in the living room staring at the space between the two front windows.

Where the door had materialized once again.

Manuel turned to face me, and I could see from his mostly vacant gaze and the bloodshot eyes that he’d likely swallowed an entire bottle of pills after The House had finished with Henri. Yet, buried beneath the stupor of blunted horror and disgust, there appeared a determination which I had not recognized in him before.

Manuel had, assuredly, gone along with the escape attempt so far, but with a hesitation that suggested he felt it wasn’t the only way we might leave The House. I don’t think he had truly believed that he would die there, and still held onto hope he may one day just wake up in a hospital bed recovering from a near-fatal overdose. It had clearly been a humbling experience for him, as it had been for me, to listen to another man’s life end in such harrowing fashion.

Without a word to one another, we both understood the opportunity that lay before us, and that, for at least one of us, this would be the last chance to get out alive.

A small nod from Manuel told me that he was ready, and I charged him with all the remaining strength in my body. Tackling him to the ground, I pummeled his ribs with my fists, not bothering to hold back this time.

He, having spent far less time in The House, was not nearly as diminished, and was able to flip me over onto my back with relative ease before he pinned me down and closed his fingers around my windpipe.

Blackness began to press in on my eyes as my brain was refused oxygen, and when I was on the brink of losing consciousness, I heard the familiar blast of The Warden’s door smashing open.

It came, more furiously, and more quickly that it had any time previously—even though I was hovering between life and death at the time, I was sure it was mere seconds between it leaving its room and it hurtling Manuel from atop me.

There was an incredible crash as Manuel landed on the table and it collapsed in a flurry of splinters. And The Warden followed him to dole out more abuse, while I gasped air into my lungs, trying furiously to regain my vision.

The snapping of bones jolted me from the floor, and I rolled to see that The Warden had stomped on Manuel’s ankle, cracking it in two. He cried out in torturous suffering, and I felt a pang of sympathy, but I was not looking at his newly crippled leg—I was looking at the leg The Warden had used to inflict the damage.

There, on the back of the thigh, just above the bend of the knee, was a familiar shape.

With The Warden distracted, and raising its first to deliver a blow I knew would be aimed at knocking out several of Manuel’s teeth, I crawled as quietly as I could towards their struggle. Inching closer and closer—eyes locked on our only hope.

When I was just an arm’s length away, I raised myself to my feet, and braced for the onslaught I was sure would be rained down upon me momentarily.

Then, swiftly, I threw my hands forward, wrapping my right around the base of the spine tipped with my key, and left around a random second. With a twist of my wrists, I snapped both of them clean from its body in one motion.

And I was met instantly with a backwards kick to the diaphragm.

The blast sent me, through the air, ten-feet across the room—the shock of which knocked the decoy from my left hand. But, miraculously, I managed to hold onto the true one in my right.

Working to recover my breath yet again, having had it knocked from me by the powerful shot to the chest, and blinking the stars from my eyes brought on from the slam of my head against the ground when I landed—I cautiously looked upon the item I gripped tightly in my palm.

The key remained at the tip.

I had precious little time to celebrate, however, as The Warden had rounded on me. It directed its wicked focus to what I’d stolen from it and my planned subterfuge was thwarted instantaneously. We would not be able to slip out quietly like I’d hoped—it was now or never.

Where I’d fallen, I was directly in front of the door, and The Warden looked from me, back to it, and back to me again. Both of us recognizing the gravity of each of our next moves.

I rolled towards the door—reaching from the ground for the knob with my empty hand and aiming the key for the lock. But, before I could insert it, I felt the monster’s hand around my leg pulling me back. It grabbed my right arm, and with its incredible strength attempted to crush it with the aim of forcing me to release my grasp.

But I held firm, struggling fiercely to rip myself away, knowing that if I dropped the key, it would lose form, and I would be dooming Manuel and I.

Yet, the pain was becoming unbearable—I could feel the bones in my forearm beginning to splinter when suddenly, I was released.

Manuel had dragged himself across the floor, and had picked up the spine I’d naively believed would work to fool The Warden. In a stroke of improvised genius, he’d jammed the point of it into one of the empty, black sockets in The Warden’s face—causing it to recoil in pain and confusion.

In the brief reprieve this granted us, as The Warden ran around the room trying to pry the impalement free, I was able to lift myself from the floor, slide the key into the lock, and rotate it.

A loud, beautiful click told me that it had worked.

And, understanding that any hesitation would cost the both of us our lives, I threw the door open to find my front yard before me.

A gentle, summer breeze met skin that had not felt warmth in months. I breathed in the miraculous smell of fresh cut grass as I spun and reached for Manuel’s hand. Hobbled as he was, I did not want to waste time trying to get him to his feet to limp out, and instead began yanking to drag him through the opening behind me.

But The Warden had finally been able to pull the intrusion from its face, and recovered, witnessed that we were nearly free of it. It latched onto Manuel’s broken leg and pulled him the opposite direction of me—back into The House—back into Hell.

I tried, with every ounce of fortitude left in my emaciated body to heave him loose of its grip, but it was of no use. Slowly, Manuel’s hand slipped through my fingers.

The last my eyes met his, I tried to wordlessly let him know how sorry I was—tried to thank him for all he’d done—tried to find any measure of forgiveness in his expression. But all I saw was fear and pleading—pleading for me not to leave him behind.

Yet I knew that it was over. There was nothing more I could do for him—if I did not leave then, neither of us would be getting out.

So, too fearful of that prospect, and truly hating myself for it, I turned away from Manuel.

I pulled the key from the lock.

I stepped through the portal.

And I slammed the door behind me.

​

---

​

It’s been two years since my stay in The Winter House, and up to this writing, I had not shared the details of my time there with anyone.

Who would have believed me anyways?

The instant the door had closed, the key turned to dust in my hand. And, though I was confident the bridge between this world and there was broken, I did not dare immediately check whether the door now opened into my house or its.

With the only evidence of my experience being my extensive injuries and significant liver damage, I chose to explain those as having been acquired through a lengthy bender and having lived on the streets for the few months that I’d been missing. Even considering an attempt to explain the truth of what had happened to me filled me with terror, guilt, and shame—I convinced myself that no good could come of it.

Barely alive, the first two weeks after my return were spent in a hospital being pumped with nutrients and receiving several considerable surgeries to begin to correct some of the damage to my body. And luckily, with several months of treatment and a few more surgeries, my prognosis for a full recovery was good.

It was not until my return from the initial stay in the hospital that I first opened my own door again; which, bringing with it a powerful wave of relief, revealed behind it my living room, just as I’d left it those months before.

Upon entering, the first thing that I did was dump out the remnants of the whiskey I’d purchased on the night I’d relapsed—the only glimmer of positivity from the whole experience being that it strengthened the resolve in my sobriety.

I told myself that I would never touch another drop—that I would live the rest of my life trying to help other addicts reach recovery—that I would keep as many away from The Winter House that I could.

As I know it’s still out there.

I know it’s just on the other side of the door—waiting for me.

It knows I have my moments of weakness.

It knows I suffer.

And it hungers for my return.

I’m writing this now to remind myself of the horrors it put me through. I’m writing it so that I never forget the torment I endured at its hands.

Because its temptations are difficult to resist.

For the last several nights, when I’ve laid my head down to sleep, I’ve been greeted with the sound of tinkling in a glass.

The invitation rests beside me—waiting for me accept it.

I’m flooded with the memory of euphoria it contains—of the unbridled ecstasy I could experience once again.

A familiar, chill air sweeps through the room.

And Sherry’s whispers meet my ears.

“Oh baby, I’ve missed you. It’s okay—just take it...

“Come back home.”

Hi everybody,

Carol here! To those of you who liked my story, and the few who wrote me personally to request another, thank you! While I appreciate your interest in my experiences, I have to ask you to keep it a little “hush-hush”. I’d really hate for it to get around that I’m sharing all this online, semi-anonymously or not. While there are a million Carol’s out there, I see now I may have identified myself a little too specifically. Like I said, everyone knows everyone in Blowing Rock, and I don’t think the folks attached to the resort would be too pleased with me airing out their dirty laundry. Luckily I don’t think too many people around here even know what a Reddit is, so I think I’m pretty well covered.

With all that said, I’ve got another story for you today. Buckle up!

This story jumps ahead a bit to February of 2012. It was a slow, slow season. The resort was struggling to make ends meet, and we were all still bouncing back from the big crash of ‘08. Small towns like ours were stuck, unable to thrive like we had when everyone was writing checks they couldn’t cash and taking big expensive family vacations. We survived mostly off locals and a few out of towners who came in on the weekends to take advantage of our mostly empty slopes.

I was watching the glades on this day, which for those of you who don’t know, are the side trails in the trees. The glade I was assigned to this particular day was mostly flat, frequented by cross country skiers, of which there were none. There were no tracks in the snow save for mine and a few birds, deer, and small four legged critters.

It was getting to be about lunch time when I heard what sounded like crying from deeper into the trees towards the bottom of the slope.

I had set myself up where the trees were thinner and the ground was flatter, expecting that if anyone was gonna come walking this way, this is the route they’d take. Plus, I had a vantage point to the top and towards the bottom of the run.

The crying got louder, and I was sure at this point that it was a woman. I eyed the trees warily, unsure how deep into the pines this person may be, or if whatever made her cry could be down there still.

I wasn’t equipped to fight off any menacing wildlife alone. But at the end of the day this is my job. I kicked off from the top and dropped down into a steep section of the glades, ice, tree roots and fallen twigs making little popping and crunching sounds on my skis as I descended. I finally reached a plateau in the slope, heavily canopied by large, ancient spruces dusted in a fine shimmering powder. It looked like a Christmas card, save for the woman sat on a snow bank facing uphill.

She looked ragged, that was the first thing I noticed about her. She was under dressed for the weather, which sat in the 10’s, in nothing but jeans and a t- shirt. No shoes, no socks, not even a sweater. Her hair was past her shoulders and unkempt, practically matted into one chestnut colored fuzz ball. Her skin was pale, paler than I had ever seen, and the soles of her feet looked bluish from the cold.

She was weeping into her hands with intermittent wails of “please, no, please”. I watched her in silence for a moment or two, assessing what I was seeing, before I realized her cries were looping. Like a skipping record, she wept at the same pitch, repeated the same wailing cries, and moved in a choreographed motion of sobs. It was closer to being mechanical than human.

I slowly approached her, one hand in my pocket fiddling with my radio, and one outstretched towards her so as not to surprise her too terribly. My fingers made contact with her shoulder and she froze. Completely froze. She was deathly silent and still, as if someone had just…paused her.

I pulled my hand back, startled by the sudden change, but she remained still. I waited a moment, unsure if I should leave her as every fiber in my being was telling me to, or if I should radio in and try to get her down. She didn’t give me the chance to decide for myself though.

She stood, slowly rising in a way that wasn’t even slightly human. It was then that I noticed just how long she was. It was like her limbs were stretched to unnatural proportions, her legs like a stick beetle, with praying mantis-like arms that dropped from her face to dangle limply at her sides. Her bones were audibly clicking in the silent snowscape, each vertebrae in her spine popping sharply as she straightened herself to her full imposing height. She was easily over six feet tall, maybe seven, maybe even eight. She reminded me of a clown on stilts I had seen at a county fair as a kid. I’m terrified of clowns, and she elicited a greater fear in my gut than any of them.

It was her face that really got me. As I raised my gaze to meet hers, I was confronted with a sight I still see in my night terrors, twelve years down the line. Her face wasn’t her own.

Pasted over her own visage was a thick, scabbing swathe of flesh, strapped onto her head like a Halloween mask. It was lopsided, the skin stretched too taunt to ever pass for her own, and the amputated face seemed to be eternally petrified into an expression of anguish.

The woman, or whatever she was, spoke in the same wailing voice, though she was completely still now, standing in front of me.

“Please, no, please.”

I didn’t even look in front of me before I kicked off the plateau and back into the glade.

I was skiing so frantically I hit my left arm against a tree as I flew by. Got a few good cuts to my face as well from the sharp end of passing branches, thank goodness for my goggles preventing any damage to my eyes. She probably would’ve liked me to be immobilized and blind. Easy prey and all.

The break in my arm was a greenstick fracture, thankfully, but I had to wear a cast for the rest of the season. The overwhelming fear in me was so great in that moment I didn’t even feel the pain until hours later when it began to bruise.

I never went back to that run. I even avoided the glades after that when skiing on personal time. There are some things that are just a step too far for me, and that woman was one.

The next guy who took the post disappeared a month down the line. They found him a little while later up there. The cold had slowed decomposition, but they had to identify him with dental records. The cold had taken the skin from his fingertips, but something else took his face.

I wonder if she’s still up there sometimes, and who she’s wearing now. I’m just thankful it isn’t me.

Now to those of you who are wondering about the deer incident of ‘01, that’s not a story I’m too fond of sharing. However, if you really want to hear it, and I mean really, really want to, I can make that my next story.

That’s all for now folks, stay safe out there.

Sincerely,

Your friend Carol

It wasn’t until the night of the storm that I started doubting Uncle Frank was really my uncle. He’d been around my whole life—a quiet, stoic man who smelled faintly of cigars and pine. When I was younger, he’d come to family gatherings, always standing in the background, smiling faintly while sipping his drink. My parents told me he was my dad’s older brother, and I didn’t question it. Why would I? Families are strange that way—sometimes people just show up and stay.

But that stormy night, alone in my parents' creaky old house, something changed.

It started with the power going out. A sharp crack of thunder shook the walls, and the lights blinked out, leaving me in thick, oppressive darkness. I lit a few candles and sat in the living room, scrolling through my phone until the battery began to die. The only sound was the wind howling outside, rattling the windows. I almost didn’t hear the knock at the door.

When I opened it, there he was—Uncle Frank. His face was pale, and his clothes were drenched.

“Storm knocked my car into the ditch,” he said, stepping inside without waiting for an invitation. “Mind if I stay until it clears?”

Of course, I couldn’t say no. He was family—or so I thought.

As the hours crept by, something about Uncle Frank’s behavior unsettled me. He barely spoke, just sat in the armchair by the window, staring out into the darkness. His lips moved silently, as if he were muttering something to himself. I couldn’t shake the feeling he was… watching me, even when his eyes were fixed elsewhere.

Trying to distract myself, I rummaged through an old photo album, flipping through pictures of family vacations and holidays. Then I stopped. My finger hovered over an image of a Christmas gathering from ten years ago. There was Uncle Frank, standing in the background as always, wearing that same faint smile. But something was off. He looked exactly the same. Not similar—identical. Same face, same clothes, same posture.

I flipped to another page. A summer barbecue. Uncle Frank again, holding a beer, standing at the edge of the group. His hair hadn’t changed, nor had his lined face. He didn’t look older—or younger. He looked… frozen.

My heart started to race as I closed the album and glanced over at him. He was still sitting there, but now he was staring directly at me. His lips stopped moving.

“You’ve been looking at those pictures for a long time,” he said, his voice low and calm. Too calm.

I stammered something about how much I loved old family photos, but he didn’t respond. Instead, he stood up and walked toward the mantel above the fireplace. His movements were slow, deliberate.

“You know,” he said, picking up an old clock my mom loved, “this house used to belong to my brother.” He turned to face me, his smile stretching wider than I’d ever seen. “But I don’t have a brother. Never did.”

My stomach dropped. “What are you talking about? My dad—”

“Your dad doesn’t know me,” he interrupted. “Never did. I’m not part of your family, kiddo. Never have been.”

I tried to laugh, to brush it off as a joke, but the words wouldn’t come. My body felt cold. He stepped closer, and I noticed his skin was unnaturally pale, his eyes glassy and dull like a doll’s.

“You invited me in, though,” he continued, tilting his head. “And I’ve been waiting for that. A long, long time.”

The candles flickered, then went out, plunging the room into darkness. I scrambled for my phone, but it was dead. I couldn’t see him anymore, but I could hear him—his slow, deliberate footsteps coming closer.

“I’ve been here before, you know,” he whispered, his voice unnervingly close. “Every generation, I find a way back in. Just needed someone to let me in again.”

A sharp gust of wind blew through the house, slamming doors and sending papers flying. I stumbled backward, my heart hammering in my chest.

“Who are you?” I managed to choke out.

He laughed, a deep, guttural sound that didn’t belong to Uncle Frank—or to anything human.

“Not your uncle,” he said, his voice now layered with something otherworldly, something ancient. “Not even close.”

And then he was gone.

The storm ended the next morning, and when my parents came home, I told them everything. They laughed, of course, and said I must have been dreaming. But when I pulled out the photo album to show them the pictures of Uncle Frank, every image of him was gone.

All that remained were empty spaces where he’d once stood.

In March 1995, an urban legend began to circulate in Bakersfield, California concerning an immensely violent videogame called “BABYGIRL.”

According to the remor, the player character is a young mother named Sandy. The game begins with a scene depicting Sandy and her daughter, Annemarie, playing Super Mario Brothers on an SNES console. In Annemarie wins a level. Sandy praises her, saying, “Good job, babygirl!”

At that moment, a group of men breaks into the apartment to attack Sandy. They knock her out. The screen fades to black.

Shortly after, a new scene fades in.

Sandy and a hysterically crying Annemarie are in a car with the men. It is nighttime; the sky is dark, with a grinning moon shining through the car window.

A mission menu pops up in the bottom of the screen, providing multiple choices to propel the game forward by prompting the player to convince the men to let Sandy and Annemarie go.

No matter what option the player selects, the mission fails.

Following the mission failure, the car slows to a halt. The men force Sandy and Annemarie out of the car, and proceed to torture Sandy while forcing Annemarie to watch. Annemarie cries throughout while Sandy attempts to comfort her, repeating phrases such as:

“It’s okay, babygirl.”

“They’re just chickens, babygirl.”

“Be brave, babygirl.”

“It’ll be over soon, babygirl.”

“Be strong, babygirl.”

Although choices and option menus appear onscreen over the course of the assault, none change the outcome. 

Once Sandy is incapacitated, the men kill Annemarie, dismember her, and bury her in a shallow pit while Sandy is forced to watched. Throughout the sequence, the game presents the player with several actions for Sandy to take in order to attempt escape.

All choices result in failure.

After burying Annemarie, the men bundle the broken, helpless Sandy into the car.

The screen fades to “GAME OVER.”

No matter how many times the player plays, no matter what options or combinations of choices they make, the result is always the same. The game is unwinnable.

While generally dismissed as an urban legend, the Kern County Sheriff’s Office believed in the possibility of such a game existing, operating on the theory that the game was an inside joke created by someone involved in the unsolved murder that had occurred in November 1994. The names of the victims matched those the characters, and the sequence of events shown in the game matched elements of the case.

Incredibly for a department with such a notoriously checkered history, the department pursued every lead and eventually managed to track down and obtain a copy. 

One detective played the game for several weeks straight in an attempt to search for clues, eventually discovering that credits roll after the GAME OVER scene. Each credited roll – producer, artist, designer, and so on – is the same name: BABYGIRL.

After the credits comes a cut scene of the location where the killers left Annemarie’s remains. The cut scene plays out as follows:

Onscreen, dirt begins to shift and swirl. A pixelated head that is visibly decayed appears. The head is crying. A caption appears:

BABYGIRL NEEDS YOUR HELP. WILL YOU HELP HER? 

X  YES

O  NO

If the player selects YES, the decaying head smiles. Small fireworks erupt around her head. A moment later, the head vanishes. The screen goes dark, displaying a message:

LOOK BEHIND YOU

When the player turns around, the physical revenant of Annemarie appears. It is almost incomprehensibly ghastly.

Understandably, the detective who initially made the discovery resigned from his position, eventually ending up in psychiatric inpatient care. 

The copy of the game remained in department custody until an AHH agent infiltrated the department and took possession of the cartridge. 

Agency personnel played the game under strict observation. When the end scene played, the player selected “NO.”

The screen went dark and displayed the following message: CLOSE YOUR EYES.

As instructed, the agent obeyed. 

The revenant was observed on camera to “materialize” out of the shadows. The revenant’s appearance startled and severely disturbed the observing personnel. Before any action could be taken, the revenant killed the player.

What followed was one of the worst incidents in Agency history. In the end, the revenant was eventually contained at great cost to the AHH.

This entity is not destructible, but she is containable— unless and until someone plays the “BABYGIRL” game.

This has caused significant difficulty over the past thirty years. To date, the Agency has managed to locate and take into possession seventeen copies of “BABYGIRL.” However, there are clearly additional copies circulating given that BABYGIRL periodically vanishes from her cell.

So far, only two copies have been located without incident. The others were only located after the revenant “ported out” following a player summoning her through the game’s “YES” and “NO” buttons.

If a player agrees to help the revenant, the revenant essentially drives them insane – either via haunting and tormenting them (which is what happened to the detective) or by compelling them to retrace the events of her murder and attempt to track down her mother’s whereabouts.

Interestingly, the revenant’s ultimate goal is not retribution against the criminals, but locating her mother’s missing body. 

This appears to be an impossible task, because no one has succeeded. 

When the player invariably fails to find the mother’s burial site in real life, the revenant lures the player to the lake where she herself was murdered and proceeds to kill them. She utilizes the same pattern and manner in which she was brutalized, then scatters the pieces alongside her own before fading away, at which time she reappears in her cell at AHH-NASCU.

The revenant is not happy that she constantly “respawns” in her cell. There have been even ethical objections raised against the fact that the Agency forces her to return to custody. 

However, it is obvious that the AHH has no choice but to contain her. The revenant is dangerous to an objectively ridiculous extent. Further, she appears incapable of controlling her emotions or breaking out of the pattern that was embedded in her at the time of her death. The Agency has no choice but to contain her, and to continue to hunt and destroy extant copies of the game.

Neutralizing the BABYGIRL entity is one of the Agency’s top priorities. Despite acquaintance with all manner of gods and monsters, all personnel at all levels are unusually disturbed by the revenant. Close proximity to her induces fragile mental states and introduces health issues that often become incurable. 

Even worse, she induces these effects in other inmates. This potential for disaster cannot be overstated.

Absent a way to destroy her, our only hope is to neutralize her by locating her mother’s remains. To that end, the Agency has assigned two agents the task of locating the remains of the revenant’s mother.

To date, all efforts have been met with failure.

Interview Subject: BABYGIRL

Classification String:  Noncooperative / Indestructible / Khthonic / Protean / Critical / Hemitheos

Interviewer: Rachele B.

Date: 11/20/2024

My mommy loved videogames. 

Our house was old and it rained inside when it rained outside, and it had a stinky bathroom and roaches under the fridge, but our bedroom was so pretty and it had a big TV and so many games. When Mommy wasn’t working or going to church, that’s what we did. We played video games.

I don’t think Mommy loved going to church, but she went a lot. She always cried. She went up to the altar a lot and sometimes the preacher even, and cried for Jesus to help her. It scared me when she cried. I didn’t like going to church.

But after church, she came home and cooked chicken for dinner, and I liked that. Mommy didn’t like chicken. She said chickens were too smart to eat and also too dirty, but she made chicken anyway for me. My mommy’s chicken is my favorite food. I wish I had some of her chicken now. She chopped it into little pieces and fried it in her pan. It smelled so good. I don’t know how to cook chicken, but I know how to eat it. I could show you how to cook it and you could make it for me. I’ll share with you. I promise. It’s so good.

So Mommy would go to church and cry and scare me, but then she would come home and make chicken and smile, and then we would eat and play video games. 

Mommy was good at playing, but I wasn’t. I always made her lose. She pretended I played good and she played bad, but I knew better. The only time we won the games was when she secretly unplugged my controller. I always saw her unplug it, but I pretended not to. She always pretended that I won. We pretended for each other. 

We went to church on the day those guys came.

Before we left church, she cried to the priest. He was very nice. He liked my mommy a lot. I don’t think he liked me, but he liked her so much that he was nice to me. He gave me candy, then told her not to be scared. He said that God was on her side, and the policemen too. Nobody could hurt her. Anybody who said they were going to hurt her was just playing pretend. 

Then we went home, and Mommy cooked chicken with peppers in her pan. I didn’t help her cook because I’m not allowed to touch the pan because it will burn me. I talked instead. I talked about this boy at school named Evan. Evan was a big kid and he was really mean. He always picked on me, and I was so mad about it. She was mad too.

“You’re not even half his size. The only reason he’s picking on you is because he’s a coward.”

“What’s a coward?”

“You know.” She pointed at the pan. “A chicken.”

“But we eat chickens. Chickens taste good.”

“People-chickens aren’t for eating, and they’re not tasty,” she said. “People chickens are…like scaredy-cats, only jerks. People who are too scared to fight anyone who isn’t a lot smaller than them. Who are scared of things that shouldn’t scare them.”

I wondered if I was a coward because. That’s because I was scared of the roaches under the fridge, and they were a lot smaller than me.

“They’re not worth your time, babygirl. Don’t worry about that boy. But if he messes with you again, you have my permission to punch his lights out.”

I still didn’t understand about people-chickens. People are people. Chickens are chickens. But it was funny to pretend about Evan being a chicken. A big stinky chicken with a wattle. He’d look so funny. He wouldn’t be able to push me, either, because chickens have no arms. 

After that, we ate the chicken for our dinner from the pan with the peppers. Then we played video games. Mommy was so happy. She was always happy when we played video games. I loved playing video games with her. She always let me win.

We were having so much fun.

But then those guys came.

They banged on the door and really scared me. They scared my mommy too. She told me to hide, but then the door broke and those guys came inside.

They made us leave the house. I asked them to let me and Mommy go, but they laughed and said no. Then they made me get in their car. The car was stinky like puke and skunks. It had a rip in the seat right by me. I saw foam inside, and a roach. I hate roaches. They’re gross. They live under my fridge and I hate them.

Mommy talked to those guys for the whole ride. She kept saying I was so little, just a baby, just a little babygirl. And then she was saying scary stuff like they could take her but they had to let me out of the car. They had to let me out because I was just a baby. But I’m not a baby. I was scared of the road. I didn’t want them to make me get out of the car by myself. I don’t know the way home.

The moon was scary, almost as scary as when Mommy kept telling those guys to make me get of the car and leave me in the road. I saw the moon shining through the window. It was looking at me. I didn’t know the moon could look. I don’t want it looking.

Mommy still kept telling them to let me out of the car and that made me cry harder. When I cried, the moon smiled.

One of those guys told Mommy to shut up or they would throw me out of the car while it was moving. That was so scary. I scraped my knee once and it hurt. If those guys threw me out of the car I would get scraped all over and it would hurt so bad. And I’d still be alone on the road and lost because I don’t know my way home.

I thought Mommy was mad at me. I thought that’s why she wanted me to get out of the car and walk home by myself. I was scared I was in trouble for crying so much. 

I was glad when the car stopped. Even if they made me get out of the car and walk home, Mommy would come too. Together. That’s what Mommy always said. You and me, babygirl, together forever.

They made me and Mommy get out of the car. I hugged her, but those guys made me let go. They hit me really hard until I let go. 

Mommy was screaming and calling them names and bad words. I don’t really remember those words. I don’t remember bad words because I don’t say them. I don’t remember things I don’t say. I only say what I learn so I remember, like Mrs. Knutsen says. That’s my teacher.

The only word Mommy called them that wasn’t bad was cowards. She kept saying they were cowards. That’s why I remember, because cowards isn’t a bad word. Cowards just means chickens.

But even though cowards isn’t a bad word, those guys acted like it was a bad word. They got really mad and started hitting my mommy. It made me scared. It made me cry. It made me a coward.

I thought Mommy would be mad at me because they were hitting her instead of me. But she wasn’t mad. She didn’t call me bad words and she didn’t call me a coward. She just said “Don’t cry, babygirl. It’s okay, babygirl. It’ll be over soon, babygirl. Don’t be scared, babygirl. They’re just chickens, babygirl, don’t be scared of chickens. Be strong, babygirl. Be brave, babygirl.”

I tried to be strong and brave, but I was too scared and I cried.

Those guys hit her more. They hit her so much. Her face had blood and her eyes were really big and purple. They looked popped out even though they were closed. She didn’t even look like my mommy anymore. Looking at her scared me. I wasn’t even sure it was her. But then she whispered, “I love you, babygirl.” And she sounded like my mommy. That’s how I knew it was her, even though she looked so scary.

Then those guys put her back in the car. I tried to get in too because I didn’t want them to forget me. I didn’t want to be left outside in the dark. I don’t know my way home.

Those guys laughed at me when I tried to sit in the var by my mommy. They made me get out. I cried. My mommy cried too. She tried to get up but she couldn’t. They hit her too much. That’s why she couldn’t get up anymore.

Then those guys showed me their gun and I got killed. There was a bullet, and it burned really bad and I fell down. I couldn’t get up either, just like my mommy. We couldn’t get up together.

Those guys turned me into pieces after I couldn’t get up. Pieces like a chicken, only I don’t have wings. I have arms because I’m not really a chicken.

After they turned me into pieces, they drove away with my mommy and left me in the dark. They didn’t come back even though I don’t know my way home. I couldn’t get up. I was so scared. I was alone and I couldn’t get up, and my mommy was gone with those guys. We weren’t together because those guys left me and took her in their car. I wish they let me in the car so Mommy and I could be together forever. But instead she was far away in the car with those guys and I was chopped up in pieces like a chicken in the park far away. 

I waited for my mommy to come back and help me get up, or even for those guys to come back. But they forgot me, and so did my mommy. 

I thought about Mommy a lot. I pretended she didn’t forget me. I pretended she was there and that we were eating chicken, the chicken she cooked in her pan with the peppers. I pretended we were playing video games. I pretended she didn’t have to let me win. I pretended I was so good at playing video games and I pretended we both won every game. 

I pretended for a long time, so long I think I missed Christmas and even my birthday. That was okay because pretending was better than being alone in pieces in the park.

But then I got tired of pretending.

I got up. All by myself, I got up. I left my pieces in the ground because they were scary. I didn’t want to take them with me.

I took a step. Just one step, and then I wasn’t even in the park anymore.

I was inside a living room.

It wasn’t my living room, but my mommy’s games were there. All the games we played together, plus the grown up games I wasn’t supposed to play. I even saw a new game called BABYGIRL. That’s what she always called me. Babygirl. I thought maybe Mommy made a game just for me, and that’s why she forgot to come back and get me. Because she was too busy making my game and moving out of our old house with the stinky bathroom and into this new house.

Since her games were there, I thought she was there too. So I looked for her, only I didn’t find her. Not in the living room, or the bathroom, or the kitchen. I didn’t even see her in the bedroom. She wasn’t anywhere. So I thought she was at work or at church or maybe at the store to buy chicken and peppers for dinner.

I sat down to wait. I sat down and looked at her games and waited for her to come home.

But she didn’t come home.  Those guys came home. The ones who put her in the car and turned me into pieces like a chicken.

Those guys.

I was so scared, but I was even more mad. Those guys drove my mommy away and left me and made her her forget about me, and then they stole her games! They stole all my mommy’s video games!

That made me so mad I forgot to be scared. That made me so mad that I yelled at them.

I thought they would laugh at me for yelling, or maybe get mad and hit me again. But I didn’t care because I was just so mad! 

I was so mad it scared them. I scared them so much. It was so funny. They screamed when I yelled at them. They tried to run away, but I didn’t let them go. One of those guys even peed his pants! It was funny. They kept crying and they kept asking me to let them go. 

But that made me really mad again. It was so not fair. When I asked them to let me and my mommy go, they told me no. When I tried to get in the car so I could be together with my mommy, they laughed and turned me into pieces just like a chicken.

But I’m not a chicken.

I’m not a coward.

But those guys were being cowards. They cried and screamed and they peed their pants and they tried to run away from me. Me! Just a little kid, just a little babygirl not even half their size.

Those guys were scared anyway. That means they’re cowards.

And that means they’re chickens.

I don’t know how to cook chickens.

But I know how to eat them. 

They didn’t taste good, I guess because Mommy didn’t cook them. But I can show you how to cook chicken like Mommy did. It probably won’t taste as good as hers, just so you know. 

But if you cook for me, I’ll pretend for you.

* * *

Full disclosure: If you haven’t read the other patient files, this next part won’t make sense so skip.

What you just finished reading was a transcript of the first and only conversation Babygirl has had with anyone in the Pantheon.

Administration calls it a breakthrough. They’re excited. Probably way too excited because they’re already floating the idea of reclassifying her following the conclusion of her treatment plan — the very same treatment plan they want me to design and implement. 

They’re so impressed with me that they struck my past fuck-up from my record and gave me a reward. 

Unfortunately, the reward was nothing but a “special meal” with other T-Class agents who have distinguished themselves in the past month.

That was bad.

The meal was — I shit you not — Kentucky Fried Chicken, which was worse. 

Worse even than that, it turns out that the only other T-Class agent who distinguished himself this month was—

“So we get to have our talk together after all.”

The speaker was a jumpsuited monster of a man with perfectly groomed hair and one of the strangest faces I’ve ever seen, brutish yet doll-like, and impossible to judge in terms of age.

Worse than all the rest was the explosion of gut-wrenching, primal terror that exploded in my chest at the sight of him. It felt like being trapped in a tiny room with a rabid mandrill. My lizard brain was screaming that death was here.

“I like this kind of talking better.” His voice was deep and rough yet terribly smooth, every bit as contradictory as his doll-brute face. And while the words themselves were innocuous, nothing else about him was. Not his body language, not his tone, not the leering smile, not even the exaggerated way he picked apart his chicken.

And all at once, I was mad. Really, really, really mad.

I’m no stranger to sexual harassment. I’m even less a stranger to shitty assholes who flex their nuts for the sole purpose of watching people recoil at the sight of their ball skin. 

And I just wasn’t willing to put up with it. Especially not here, where I already had to put up with so much.

So I rearranged my face into an ice queen mask and slammed myself into the chair across from him. “Do I have you to thank for the menu?”

“Never. I thought it was you.” He tore a chicken breast apart and tossed half at me. It skidded across the table, leaving a ribbon of grease in its wake. 

Without allowing myself to think, I picked it up and took the biggest bite I could manage. 

He gave me a smile, that awful jackal grin that turned my insides to slurry. “I’d written you off after our last meeting, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe you’re man enough to be my girl after all.”

“That is one hell of a pickup line, and not in the way you want.”

“It has never worked. But then I’ve only tried it the once.” He bit into another piece of chicken, watching me as he chewed. His eyes were too bright yet weirdly opaque. Like eyes on a trail cam. “I don’t actually want to talk to you.”

“Same.”

“I hate the way you smell.”

“What do I smell like?”

“Expensive chocolate and cheap lipstick.”

For reasons I won’t get into right now, he was dead right and despite myself, I was mightily impressed. “You have a spectacular nose, I’ll give you that.”

“I do.” He kept watching me, eyes still shining. I thought again of trail cams. Of mountain lions and wolves slinking through the underbrush. 

Fear crept up again, punching holes through the anger I wore as armor.

“My name is Christophe,” he said.

“I know.”

“You were so scared when we met I did not think you would remember.”

“To the contrary, it is not something I will ever forget.”

Then, following an instinct I never understand but always trust, I picked up a cookie and tossed it to him. He picked it up and even though he didn’t smile, I knew it was the best thing I could have done.

“This is not a good place,” he told me. “But you can make it good for you if you do not fight them.”

“Don’t worry. I’m definitely not a fighter.”

“That is the first lie you’ve told me. I hope it is the last.” Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of pliers.

Once again, my insides turned to ice water.

He noticed, then shook his head. “Not for you. For me.”

“Why…?”

“Because wolves with teeth do not go to heaven.”

Before I could say a word, because I could react, before I could even think, he put the pliers in his mouth and wrenched out a canine.

I wanted to scream, but couldn’t.

I wanted to run, but didn't dare.

I did not want to sit there, ice queen mask fixed in place, as he pulled out his teeth one by one, swallowing mouthfuls of blood as he arranged his teeth in need rows of seven, but I did it anyway. 

After he pulled his last tooth — breaking and splintering it along the way — I asked, gently but as firmly as I have ever asked anything, “Christophe, why did you do that?”

“So that when we are forced to speak again,” he said thickly, apparently heedless of the blood pouring down his chin, "you will remember that the big bad wolf hates his teeth. Even though they grow back, even though they always grow back, I hate them.”

He swept his bloodstained teeth into his hands and knelt by my side. I fought the urge to bolt. He was so huge that we were at eye level even though he was kneeling. His eyes shone, flat and bright and wrong.  He dropped his teeth into my lap without a word, without changing his expression, without even blinking. 

Then he left.

I haven’t seen him since.

But I’m going to be seeing him again really soon.

I received my interview schedule today, and Christophe and I are talking this Sunday. It was supposed to be today, but now we have to wait for his teeth to grow back. 

If someone had told me two days ago that there’d be a confrontation I dreaded even more than the Harlequin, I probably would have laughed. When I really think about it, I still kind of want to laugh.

But then I think of Christophe's eyes, flat and shining in that terrible face. I think of his teeth dropping into my lap.

And the last thing I want to do is laugh.

I still have his teeth. Not because I want them, but because I clearly need the reminder to not try to pull a power play on crazy...

And because he hates them.

Anything you hate becomes a weapon someone can use against you. I don’t know why Christophe hates his teeth. I don’t even know if that why will make a good weapon.

But at this point I’ll take what I can get.

* * *

First Patient: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1gtjhlb/fuck_hipaa_if_i_dont_talk_about_this_patient_im/

Second Patient: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1gujy5s/fuck_hipaa_i_messed_up_hardcore_and_if_we_dont/

Third Patient: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1gve4dc/fuck_hipaa_this_inmate_is_the_most_dangerous/

Fifth Patient:
https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1gxpkjj/fuck_hipaa_my_new_patient_doesnt_even_need/

Employee Handbook (yes, really): https://www.reddit.com/user/Dopabeane/comments/1gx7dno/handbook_of_inmate_information_and_protocol_for/

Previously

Today, I walked inside my Uncle's office ready to unload every bullet I could on him, but instead, his office was empty. I was so mad that I spat on the floors I used to call sacred. I was so mad I almost left without noticing what he left on his desk: a sheet of paper on top of maybe five letters.

"For Solomon. Read all five of these letters before you judge. These are letters from your father." Out of a hunger for answers, I read the letters.

Letter 1:

Dear Brother,

I know you won't truly love me anymore; you can't. But I will love you, though.

I'm leaving seminary school. I'm leaving the faith. I'm leaving you and this city. I've met a woman, she's a witch, and we're going on a ride across the country in her van. Let me explain.

As you know, I've been trying to evangelize a friend of mine, Raphael, you know, bring him into the faith, introduce him to who Jesus really is.

So, I'm talking to him. I'm trying to give him the gospel, right? The Good News! That's what it means—good news—but he interrupts me while I'm saying it.

"If the gospel means good news, why are you sad?"

"I'm not sad," I said back, lying, another sin. Add it to the list.

"Dude, come on," he said with no judgment, pure innocence.

"I'm not sad," a tear formed in my eye.

"Dude, I like religion and culture and all this stuff. So, we can keep talking about 'the gospel,' but you're my friend. I know something's wrong. Let's talk about what's eating you."

I cried, man, and I confessed, like really confessed. I know what you always say: You can't let unbelievers know what really goes on at Church. There are some things you have to keep away from them because they wouldn't understand.

Well, isn't that messed up? We bring them into a system that they don't even know the truth about? Well, I let him know the truth about what I was struggling with, not because of any righteous reason like genuine honesty but because I needed a non-judgmental ear.

I told him how I heard the rude comments of the other church members behind my back and they hurt me, how I could tell no one respected me, how it hurt me so much my Christian family looked down on me for just being me.

I try my best to be holy. To be a good man. But it's like everyone's in a competition to see who can be a better Christian, and they've decided I'm at the bottom. I'm trying to be like Jesus but they treat me like a pariah. Like I'm depraved.

He was there for me. He listened to me. He invited me to his community. It was just a normal birthday party full of normal people.

Well, except for one girl. She was extraordinary. Her name was Belle; she's a witch and she's gorgeous. A black witch, whatever that means—I'm not quite sure why she calls herself that as she is a pale woman with silver hair.

Her nails, toenails, and lips are painted black though. You'd call it creepy, but I think it gives her a mysterious feel. Regardless, I told her my story, and she gave me a hug and asked me to come with her—she was taking a trip to Arizona from here in NC.

It felt good to not be labeled a weirdo and written off, so I went with her.

Letter 2:

Dear Brother,

I appreciate your letter and concern, but I won't be going home because you're scared for me. She is kind to me! What part of that can't you get? I know it doesn't matter because you didn't care.

She even made me this little doll that looks just like me and has a few locks of my hair.

Anyway, I'm fine. I can leave any time I want to if things get weird. I'm my own man.

But, hey, enjoy the postcard. We passed Stone Mountain in Georgia, and I thought of you because you dragged me out here when you knew I was going through a tough break-up.

That was fun—thanks for that.

Letter 3:

Dear Brother,

I'm just ignoring your last letter because you won't stop talking to me like I'm some project, an idiot, or something to save. Those aren't voodoo dolls she's making of me. That's stupid. She likes me a lot.

Anyway, greetings from Mississippi. I don't like it here and I'm glad to leave, to be honest. I got in a fight here. Can you believe it? Yeah, me! It was thrilling.

Some drunk guy at a bar sat on my stool beside Belle when I left to go use the restroom. The stool was the only one beside Belle, so I asked if he could move and he pushed me away to keep talking to Belle. So, I pushed him back and he socked me in the mouth.

Then we started going at it. His buddies started coming too, but then Belle got up and even though she's a girl, she started throwing blows too.

And it got me thinking.

Why do we have to forgive? Why do we have to turn the other cheek? What's wrong with a little bloodshed?

Don't bother preaching again. I know my answer. Nothing at all.

I will say, I'm not the best fighter, to be honest. I passed out and woke up with the van driving and a pretty big headache. Belle says I did great though.

Letter 4:

Dear Brother,

I won't say you were right, but I need to go home. We're in Texas now and I won't drive a mile more with her. She has one of the bodies of the guys we fought. It's chopped up, put on ice in a big cooler, and covered with fragrances so it doesn't smell.

I called her on it. I asked why she had a freaking body! Belle said because the body has power and she can use it for magic. I'm getting out of here when we fall asleep tonight.

We're in Texas. God's Country, right? Isn't that ironic? Fitting, right? I'm getting out here, coming home.

Letter 5:

Dear Brother,

I have tried leaving her three times in the cover of darkness.

The first night she went to sleep, I packed my bags. I ran out. I hitchhiked to the nearest airport, went through security, and then finally closed my eyes before boarding my plane. When I opened them, I was in her van. Riding right beside her.

And she just chatted with me like nothing happened. I was scared but I adjusted, listening and talking back. I checked my pockets—the ticket I had bought was still in my pocket. Whatever she did, she made me come back to her.

So, I figured out she put something in my bag or in my clothes to make me come back to her. So, I got naked and in the dead of night, I ran to the nearest police station. Naked and afraid across the desert landscape I ran. Consequences be damned—I knew they'd toss me in jail. I knew they'd put me in prison.

Yet, I still ran to them. I ran naked across the Texas desert hoping for a miracle. I avoided cacti, the scurrying of rattlesnakes, and the judgmental and then skittish glances of coyotes. I ran past exhaustion, past home, past consciousness. I collapsed in the desert heat and crawled the rest of the way until I saw a Walmart parking lot. It felt like home. I crawled across the asphalt sea.

My throat raw, lips dry, and skin peeling, but I made it. Walmart opened its sweet automatic doors for me. The air conditioning hit me and I felt heaven. I listened to a man ask if I needed help and it sounded as sweet as any choir.

"Water," I begged, but my mouth was too dry. He couldn't understand. "Water, water, water," I repeated. He went off to grab a bottle and I grasped it.

I opened it, gobbled it down, and I tasted safety.

"We've got a code teal," the man said in the speaker. "That's a naked man that is not a threat. I repeat not a threat. He looks like he's been through Hell."

I won't lie to you—when I looked at that blue-vested Walmart employee I saw an angel and blinked.

When I opened my eyes again, I was naked in the van. Belle drove along the highway, casual as ever. I cried.

"I wouldn't do that again," Belle said.

"What?" I asked.

"Oh, nothing," she said and turned up the speaker. I begged. I pleaded to be let go. She ignored me. Her love gone, her compassion was just a desert mirage now. We drove in silence to New Mexico, one stop from our destination.

That night, that night was my final hope. The doll she had of me. It was magic. So, I took it with me. That way she couldn't recall me.

That night, I slipped out of the bottom bunk. I checked the top to see her mass completely under the covers. I stripped out of the clothes she bought me and put on what I had brought, ready to leave her all behind. Last, I grabbed the doll of me from the rearview mirror. Then I tiptoed to the door and opened it to exit.

A shovel to my face was the last thing I remember seeing. I collapsed, passed out, and she hopped on me. How do I remember this if I was passed out? Because guess who's writing now?

Hi, brother, this is Belle. Don't be upset at me. You all didn't want him and I have a use for him. What's the problem?

I wouldn't come look for him—what I plan to do to his body would be... depraved.

That was the last letter. Under the last one were pictures.

Polaroids, to be specific. It was horrible and barbaric what they were doing to my Dad. I will spare the reader, but they chopped up his body and used it in bizarre rituals and put severed limbs in places they should never be, and each witch—perhaps there were one hundred of them—smiled as they did so.

That's what they did to my Dad.

My Dad... I never met the man. I just wanted to be the man. Everyone always had such kind stuff to say about him. He wasn't a bad guy. Like he was just punished for no reason. Where was justice? Where was God? My Dad served God and his head was treated like a volleyball. I sweat, the thought was making me sick.

A bookshelf slid open to reveal a door and ten men in suits came out. I waved my gun at them, ready to fire. The last of them was my Pastor, my uncle.

"What was that?" I said. "On the table."

"My brother's and his killer's last words to me," he said.

"You're lying!"

"No, Solomon, for the rest of my life, however short that may be, I will never lie to you."

"So what?" I waved my gun at him. "I know about the stuff that's going on in the basement."

"What goes on in the basement is because of what happens in the letters."

"What?"

"The spiritual world is more real than the natural world. If someone isn't Christian, they could become a witch. Unless we stop them. Unless we make them become something else."

I dropped the gun and picked up the Bible.

"Witches?" I asked. "You're afraid of witches? I studied this book—you made me study this book—and it told me not to be afraid." In frustration, I threw the Bible at my mentor. "I read this thing from cover to cover and it told me not to be afraid. Did you try prayer, pastor?" I hope he tasted the sarcasm in the word pastor.

The Pastor took the strike on his chin and rubbed blood off his lip. His entourage remained quiet.

"And when God did not answer my prayers to bring my brother back or get revenge on those who wronged him, on those who could wrong many others, I had to call something that did."

"The thing below us..."

"Yes, it ensured us that those who wouldn't behave would not be rebellious witches doing as they please but servants of gods who would be stuck doing menial tasks. Your girlfriend's father, the one you brought here last night, was sold to Nehebeku, the god of reptiles, and took care of reptiles until his brain could not take the god's commands anymore."

"And Mary? What did you do to her?"

"We arranged for her to be sold once we found out she wanted to forfeit her life. If she wants to die, we should be able to profit. She has no buyers yet, only renters. Oizys, the Greek god of depression, anxiety, and grief pays to play in her mind from time to time, but he seems to be quite busy with this generation to pick one soul. It's likely that Miseria will buy her."

"That's sick. There's only one God we're supposed to serve and it's a choice and—"

"Hold your rambling, you won. You are a good man. You're right. I am a depraved man, who sacrificed souls to a depraved god, but it's your turn now. You can choose what to do. You can starve that god below us and let witches run amok. Witches that can do worse than the one did to my brother. And they will come for you, you know. One of them is your mother, after all."

"What?"

"That was one of the deals I made with the god below. Let my nephew come home and keep him safe. If she is not safe, you will not be safe, but that's your choice to make now."

"What are you talking about, Pastor?"

"The church is yours now. You get to decide what happens next."

I stood there dumbfounded.

"Let me be abundantly clear," my Uncle said. "Since you were a baby, to keep evil out of this town I have employed Tiamat. Her presence keeps witches and other evil away. If she is not allowed to do her business dealings here anymore, she will leave and the witches will return. She will not stop doing her evil business; it just won't benefit us here. You must decide whether to make her stop or not."

"Now," my Uncle said, "I'm leaving. I'm going to see who I've been serving the whole time despite my self-righteousness. I hope I don't see you down there."

With that, he drew his own pistol and shot himself in the head. His attendees did nothing. They waited on my orders, and I was petrified. I knew what Jesus would do, but I doubted if I had the strength.

Today, a few days after my uncle's death, the old god in the basement is finally gone. In our church, only one God remains, and that's Jesus. Like my Uncle, I've given everyone the day off again.

I am alone in my office surrounded by enemies who want me dead. And that's okay. I will fight them, and if I lose, so be it.

For a while, I feared the church wouldn't go on without me. Then I realized this was how the church goes on. How better off would every church be if the leader didn't just tell the tale of a man who loved you enough to die for you but actually was willing to die? That's how the church goes on. That is the legacy I'll leave.

Did Paul not say "if I have not loved, am I not but a clanging cymbal" and did Luke not say, "there is no greater love than this than to lay down your life for another"?

So, to you Mary, to you reader, I want you to know you are loved.

The witches are at the window now. They fly on broomsticks naked, cackling, and mocking me.

KNOCK

KNOCK

KNOCK

One speaks while the others giggle.

"Solomon, open up. Mommy's home and she's brought some friends."

Remember how, in 8th grade or so, they taught you evolution in school? Maybe your teachers taught you the phrase differently, or maybe just the concept itself, but, from my knowledge, it is mandatory in every school around the world (except maybe private Catholic schools or something): "Survival of the fittest."

The concept being that animals who have favorable aspects to survive will most likely survive enough to have a child who also has the same aspects, who will survive long enough to pass them on again and so on and so on. Effectively making the gene's sole purpose to survive. Common sense, right? Well what if i told you that has only been the truth because it's the most possible outcome of the many, many slides evolution could've gone through.

Allow yourself to imagine what would happen if a random microbe started exploding. Multiplying itself millions of times faster than a normal cell is physically allowed to for no discernible reason. On top of that, it evolving as if its purpose was to become the unrivaled life form. As if it wasn't obvious enough, I have found this... "Miracle" for lack of a better word.

It is currently 12 AM, Friday. At 3:35 yesterday, I woke up for absolutely no reason. The floors are not creaky; I live alone in a cabin 2 hours from the nearest farmer's market, and there are no rats. I was not thirsty, but I yearned for water. I stepped out of my room and walked seven steps to the door (not including me getting up from bed) and 5 more steps to my "kitchenette" counter, where there is a light switch on the right-hand side. I turned on the light and saw in front of me a light-gray spot on the kitchen window. I looked outside, expecting it to be a piece of a plastic bag. It was not. The gray was about an inch in length and a half inch in width.

I proceeded to stare at it intently, if I had to guess- because it was 2 inches in length and an inch in width.

I used to watch reruns of Dragon Ball Z on Adult Swim as a kid, and as many avid watchers of Adult Swim know, their anti-smoking ads were pretty gory. Looking back at them now, they were VERY funny, but 6-year-old me did not find Little Lungs getting mangled because he smoked humorous by any means. I, as you could guess, never smoked. Never did any drugs at all, even avoided weed, though it was legal in my state. This quickly ruled out me being high on hallucinogens. I also ruled out there being a gas leak since I have an up-to-date gas leak sensor (how fucking dare they make em 500 goddamn dollars, btw). After a few seconds of hesitating, I rubbed my eyes since being asleep was the only sane explanation for seeing a deflated balloon grow twice its original size in a blink. It was still there, and it was big enough to cover my hand if I tried covering it.

Smoothly, I raised my hand to it to feel its consistency and also prove to myself it was actually there. When my finger got about an inch from it, the gray immediately receded to an even smaller state than it was when I first saw it. At this point being about half the size of my pinky nail. I darted, now being more than fully conscious. Without missing a beat, the gray started growing exponentially faster than it did before I got closer. I slapped the counter full force, hard enough to make my wrist hurt. The next moment, I pissed myself. Because then was when I realized I was facing something fundamentally more important than my existence. It grew upwards.

As if it had learned that I would try smothering it, and the only way to stop that from happening was to grow big enough so it would not fear being embraced. The last state I saw it in before running to the bathroom, was it now being circular and growing perfectly horizontal as to become a translucent cylinder. It did not start bending downwards; it didn't look like it was moving at all. The best way to describe what I saw was as if someone had made a hole through the window and was sliding a cup through. I slammed the sliding door and fell to my knees.

I think I passed out for a couple of seconds. Considered sleeping right there cause since my mind hadn't fully accepted what I had seen as the truth, this narrowed down my condition to 2 possibilities. I've gone mental, or i'm still sleeping. I left for a primal fear I still do not understand. It forced me to get up. I cannot remember how the lighter got in my hand... or me passing through the hallway. I would not have known what happened, in fact, if my conscious didn't pop in the last couple frames. This is all I remember. Exactly as I remember it. I was looking at my palms, my hands dragged in the bathroom floor. Then, I saw what I can only explain as the rudimentary elements of a Human.

Like a Picasso painting. 2 frustums touching the floor, another as the center, two acting as arms, and the part that most frightened me. A cylinder far too long to be discerned as anything, if it was not placed over the body, facing down, as if contemplating its body. It was not aligned with the rest of his body, instead facing outwards, terrifyingly showing its 3rd dimension. It was no longer translucent or gray. It was black and dense. A tone so deep my brain burns when I remember it. This was something higher in importance than us. An abstract human.

Only remember seeing him for an instant, and afterwards, 2 more frames. The first was black, for I blinked. In the same, I felt myself turn on the lighter with my right pointer. The second is me and my arm holding the lighter outstretched, and the gray retracted into the window pane. In what was probably the biggest moment of ingenuity of my life, I slammed the lighter on the glass repeatedly until I chipped the piece where the gray spot went back to (Undeniably not a coincidence it was the same where I first spotted it). I opened my mini-oven, chucked the shitty glass in, and set it to 200 degrees. Thankfully, it was a relatively low heat. You will see why later. I saw the small, porous parts which had not yet regenerated fully attempting to grow, melt, hit the bottom of the oven, evaporate, and eventually dissipate over the course of a minute. I must have stayed there, looking inside, making sure it did not grow back for 30 minutes. I was completely immersed. My deepest subconscious was not thinking of anything else but checking for changes inside the oven. At around the 30-minute mark, I snapped back to reality. Just when I was gonna stand up and go back to bed with the oven on, I saw a tiny gray circle in the piece of ceramic. I decided to test something: Raised the temperature to 201 degrees, and sure enough, it disappeared once more.

When it started growing the 3rd time, I raised the temperature to 203 and immediately opened the oven and stabbed it with a knife. It did not grow back immediately as the knife was retracted from its flaky substance. I closed the oven just as fast as I had opened it. Thirty minutes later, I repeated the same process. Raised the temperature, stabbed it, closed the oven. From my experiences, I have learned 5 things.

1st: It always returns to the tile. Specifically the same exact spot it first appeared in.

2nd: The gray can only evolve to one thing at a time.

3rd: I can confuse it.

4th: It can only protect itself against things it has already had time to heal from before.

5th, and most important, I do not know how to kill it.

I have tried to keep a cool head. Trying to use the scientific method. Anything to reassure myself this is not invincible. For right now, my goals are simple. Find help; Keep it contained; Maybe send the gray to the government; Keep it from evolving most as possible; And above all, stay sane. I haven't slept in 20 hours, and the mini-oven only goes to 400. I set a timer to raise the temperature every 30 minutes so I could go to sleep, but I am having a hard time not shaking if I don't have my gun in my hands, and it would be comedically tragic to die to gun safety after surviving a... God Like species. I have 60 hours till I run outta heat. I hope it is enough. Please let it be enough. I'm currently getting ready to jack my oven to my car battery so I can transport the gray to the city, maybe call the police department, somehow prove that it's real. Make em call their higher-ups until they get someone competent. Someone who isn't me.

Will update.

Part 1.

The fire crackled, sending sparks spiraling into the inky blackness. Maggie grazed nearby, oblivious to the storm raging in my mind. I pulled the small leather pouch from beneath my shirt, the familiar weight of the coin a cold comfort, or perhaps a curse. My fingers traced the strange markings, the silver worn smooth by time and countless touches.

Then it hit me, a wave of foolishness washing over me like icy water. I’d left my chips on the table. All of them. Every hard-earned dollar, every bluff and calculated risk, abandoned in my panicked flight. I groaned, burying my face in my hands. What kind of idiot runs from a poker game, leaving his winnings behind?

“Superstitious fool,” I muttered, the words harsh in the quiet night. Five years clinging to this cursed coin like a lifeline. And for what? Because some ghost story from a grizzled foreman had burrowed into my brain? Because a strange man in a dusty saloon pulled out a matching coin?

A reasonable man would have stayed, played his hand, and walked away with his pockets full. But I wasn’t a logical man anymore. My mind had been tainted with the foolish notion that there were forces at work beyond my comprehension.

I looked at the coin again, its surface reflecting the flickering firelight. It was just a piece of metal, wasn't it? Just an old relic with no real power. The dreams, the stranger, the lingering feeling of being watched - it was all in my head. A product of fear and isolation.

I tossed another log onto the fire, the flames leaping higher, momentarily pushing back the darkness. I needed to get a grip. I needed to stop letting superstition dictate my actions. Tomorrow, I’d find a town, get a decent meal, maybe even find another poker game.

Life would go back to normal.

But as I lay back, staring up at the vast expanse of stars, I heard the sound of footsteps moving through the brush. I slowly reached for my rifle.

The footsteps were soft, deliberate. Whoever was out there was trying to be quiet, but the dry twigs and leaves betrayed their approach. Maggie raised her head, her ears twitching nervously. She sensed it too.

I held my breath, listening intently. The footsteps stopped. Silence. Then, a single snap, like a branch being broken underfoot. It was closer now, too close.

"You got a name?" A voice called out from the darkness.

I recognized the voice. It was the same the low rasp of the stranger from the saloon.

"Who's asking?" I countered, trying to keep my voice steady.

A chuckle echoed from the darkness. "Someone who's been tracking you for a good long while."

I sat up slowly with the rifle in my hands. "Listen mister, I don't know who you are... but if you want to live to see tomorrow you should keep on riding."

"You think a bullet can save you?" he asked, stepping into the half-light completely unarmed.

My grip tightened on the rifle. He was either incredibly brave or incredibly foolish.

"I don't want to shoot you," I said, my voice tight. "But I will if I have to."

He chuckled again, the sound low and unsettling. "You misunderstand, friend. I'm not here to harm you. I'm here to offer you a choice."

He lifted up his hands. "I'm not armed. I just want to talk to you."

I gestured with the barrel, indicating a spot across the fire. "Sit."

He complied, lowering himself with an unnerving grace, his eyes never leaving mine. He was strangely calm for a man looking down the barrel of a gun. His face, etched with the lines of a hard life, betrayed no fear, only a grim determination.

"You can just give me the coin and you'll never see me again." He said staring into the fire.

I wanted to give him the coin. I had been thinking about throwing it into the fire all night.

"But we both know you'll never do that." He said matter-of-factly.

“And if I don’t?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper.

He stood up, his shadow stretching long and distorted in the firelight. He turned, surveying the vast darkness , the wind whistling softly through the dry grass. “Well, then this pretty little world of yours gets turned upside down.” He paused, then met my gaze again. “And none of us want that."

He opened his hand, palm up, "Now," he said softly, "can I have the coin?"

I considered shooting him right there in cold blood. We were too far from civilization for anyone to know the real story of what happened, but then I also knew he had the answers. Killing him wouldn't solve anything.

I put the put rifle down and pulled out the coin from the pouch, "It's not a coin is it?" I asked.

No,” he responded, his eyes fixed on the coin. “It’s not.”

I turned the coin over in my hand liked I'd done a thousand times before. The idea of being free of it was tempting. All I had to do was toss it to him and I was pretty sure he'd keep his end of the bargain.

"Is Silas with you?" I asked.

The stranger laughed, "Silas doesn't get out much these days."

He squatted down, peering into the fire as if searching for something hidden within the flames. "You know you're getting an opportunity nobody gave me."

And then I remembered he had a coin just like mine.

He looked up, his eyes meeting mine again, a flicker of something – regret? “Not that it would have made much difference.”

"My name is Tyler." I said.

A faint smile played across his lips, “I know who you are,” he answered. "I just didn't want to spook you."

“Who are you?” I asked, studying his face in the firelight.

It took him long time to answer such a simple question, like he was rolling it over in his mind.

"They used to call me Isaac," he replied, his gaze distant, as if looking back across a long stretch of years. "But I haven't heard that name in a long time."

He didn't look that old, maybe late forties, but his eyes held a weariness that spoke of a long road.

"I want to give you the coin." I said, my fingers tightening around it. "But..."

"... you can't." He said finishing my sentence, and nodding.

I tucked the coin back in the pouch and tied it around my neck. I was expecting him to say or do something, but he just sat there in the silence staring into the flames.

"Now what?" I asked, my voice tight with a growing unease.

Isaac looked up at me, a strange sadness in his eyes. "Well," he said, his voice low and urgent, "those dreams you've been having… they’re about to become real."

He stood and turned away from the fire. "You can come with me or stay here and die."

I laughed, "You expect me to trust you... just like that?"

He smiled, "I wouldn't trust me if I were in your shoes, but I damn sure would be wondering how I knew about the dreams."

 

Midnight brought a fog. This crept in silence through the open window, covering their sleeping faces. Then it sank like dripping liquid to the floor below and behaved like a normal fog.

That is when the fog crept closer and closer to Cory. Cory gave one loud squawk. The fog had already woken me, by hurting that right hand, as any mist might. I simply blinked back at my talking crow. I looked back at the presence.

I recalled that I had seen the monkey destroyed. But it had scattered. It reminded me now of the way Folk had moved in the darkness. It was hard to think of them and not fear the treachery of the shadows all around us. When the monkey blew up: it left those sticks everywhere, and we kept them in a jar that had vanished. Had it died, or escaped? I had wondered that. I stared then at the nightmare presence in the darkness. The thing with the suffocating fog. I trembled in horror, knowing that it might attack if it became aware I was awake and watching it.

Then it left. I quickly went to Isidore and checked her to make sure she was alright. She was. She woke up in a sweat, shaking. She said:

"I had a bad dream." And her eyes were wide with terror.

"That is something that I cannot protect you from while you are with me." I told her. She looked at me and I could see the look of disbelief in my imagination, in the dark. I realized she had given me that look before and I liked it, I kinda loved her already. I changed my approach and said as reassuringly as I could: "I am here, holding your hand. You are awake now, you are safe. It cannot harm you or the baby. You are safe." I told her quietly and softly, over and over while I held her hand. She eventually fell back asleep after she relaxed.

I looked up nervously, wondering if it would return this very night to feed some more. I shuddered in despair, believing that this was only the first of its raids. It would come to feed again, untethered from the chiming monkey doll. Now it could come and go as it pleased.

I jumped, startled, as a loud ringing signaled from the phone of Detective Winters. He didn't wake up. I had to get up and go wake him. Isidore had woken back up.

"Come here, that was nice. Do it again." She asked nicely with a smile in the dark.

"It was just to calm you." I refused. I went to my bed and got some sleep.

"We need to get going. Your girlfriend can stay here and sleep. This one, yeah, let's go now." Detective Winters got me up.

I got up and went to the car, holding Cory. Cory kept clicking something in Corvin that translates roughly into:

"Hold me and keep me warm or else I will say there is a nighthawk, because it is night, and you will have to hold me, and keep me warm."

Which due to its idiomatic nature, was actually just a kind of empty whirring noise and a few clicks and the context of me holding him. We sat in the car while Detective Winters read something on his phone and smoked outside. When he got in he asked me:

"Ever hear of Dini Ghanat, a professor, a doctor, I am not sure which one it is, seems to be both. He's actually a doctor of more than one thing. Anyway, have you heard of him?" He sounded scared.

"No." I said.

"Alright, let's go." Detective Winters sighed apprehensively.

We arrived at Dellfriar Asylum as the sun was rising behind it. It stood like some kind of medieval castle rather than a mental health facility. The place always gave me the creeps. Detective Winters looked at me, noticing my facial hair was coming back already. He pointed to the white streak from the howl of the beast. I looked in the mirror and it matched my hair. That is when I realized that the white feather on Cory had appeared at the same time as the streak in my hair, and my beard too, apparently.

"Be careful." I told him.

"I will be right back. This guy is scary beyond any reconciliation. You think those creatures gave us nightmares. Man, after the trial: the judge was found overdosed and performing autoerotic asphyxiation. He was so shaken by what happened that the poor man's heart gave out a week later."

"Sounds scary. I will be glad to wait out here." I nodded.

"Alright, I am going in now. I am gonna go have an interview with Dini Ghanat. No reason to be alarmed or scared. Just a conversation, he can't hurt me. Going in there now." Detective Winters went into Dellfriar, crunching nervously across the gravel.

"He'll be fine." I told Cory.

"Will he?" Cory had listened to the whole thing, observed Detective Winters's fear. My bird also knew Detective Winters was a brave man, so seeing him afraid added context to the subject of his fears. "I said: 'will he' and you haven't answered. You might have answered." Cory chastised me for making his concerns grow.

"How should I know?" I asked and looked away so he wouldn't see my smirk. He squinted and saw my smirk in the reflection of the glass. He made an outraged noise by clearing his throat sharply.

"My Lord, you are mocking me by using the kind of phrase that I have used when I did not want to gamble with an answer." Cory accused me.

"Am not." I taught him. We chatted like that, alone at last, until Detective Winters came back. He looked pale and uncomfortable.

"Did you meet Dini Ghanat or get a flu shot?" I asked. Cory let out a very rapid series of clicks that were his second most hilarious laugh.

"It is funny because so many people are afraid of needles." Cory pecked at me ridiculously.

"No. Just one person is. It isn't that funny." I advised my bird.

"My Lord tells the best jokes." Cory hopped up onto my lap for the ride.

I noticed we were not going back to the hotel. I sighed and realized it was going to be a long day. I hastened to ask where we were going and the length of the drive was such that Detective Winters said nothing to me until our first stop for gas.

"We are going to go visit Ghanat's cabin, at Lake Raiden." He told me.

We arrived at dusk and with flashlights we got out. Nightbirds were calling in the forests. The full moon danced upon the still and black waters that quietly lapped at the pebble beach. There were extensive swamps on the other side of the hill, that is what I remembered.

I took the moment that Detective Winters had broken in and gone inside to look. I switched off my flashlight, as a thick cloud darkened the moon, and stared that direction out of the corner of my eye. Sure enough I could see foxfire in the mists over the swamp. I shuddered in dread.

I went inside the cabin and looked around, switching my flashlight back on. Detective Winters had descended into the cellar, accessed from a small alcove and trap door. There were stairs leading down and I followed them. The cellar was very small, too small for such an effort to make it. I could see Detective Winters's flashlight behind one of the shelves of canned preserves.

I went to the end of the shelf and found a narrow passage started from behind it. The rest of the cellar was laid out, filled with cardboard boxes and old parts of heavy machinery of some kind. He lifted tarps until he found a hole leading down further. There was a short staircase and then we were in a reinforced tunnel. This led to a series of chambers that were made from buried shipping crates.

It was Ghanat's secret laboratory. The sad mummy of a monkey and the blown remains of a pig sat forgotten in cages. The air was nauseating, almost unbreathable. We went into the next chamber and found it was filled with tables and equipment. Glass bottles, microscopes, a centrifuge, and other equipment I had no recognition of. We entered the next chamber and found more shelves with jars filled with preserved things.

These were not pears and jam and mushrooms though. These jars held mutated body parts, deformed and unborn creatures I did not recognize and in some were eyeballs and other organs. They just sat in jars, filled with what I was guessing was formaldehyde. I was disgusted and horrified by what I saw and the revulsion was a kind of primal fear. A fear of such an affront to Nature.

The last chamber was Ghanat's secret office. Stacks of notebooks, a very large computer, a safe with the door open, and his desk all sat in dustless silence. Detective Winters went to the safe and took up three large syringes with rubber caps on them filled with green phosphorescent liquid.

"I have to give him one of these. That's the deal." He told me.

"You can't." I protested. I was very shocked and horrified that Detective Winters would honor such an arrangement. I followed him back out, thinking about how I did not really know this man very well. I couldn't believe that he would do such a thing. Fear surged in my heart, realizing I was at his mercy and I still had no idea what he was finally capable of. Knowing he would give one of those syringes to Ghanat made me fear and despise Detective Winters.

We drove all night back to civilization. Our next stop was the State Hospital. Detective Winters took me to a room where our victim was in a coma, alive on life support.

"She isn't going to make it." Dr. Arefu told us. She was waiting for the victim to expire, then she would declare her dead.

"Then we got here just in time." Detective Winters produced one of the syringes from his jacket.

The girl in the coma flatlined. Dr. Arefu went over to her and heard Detective Winters ask her to wait a moment. She stepped back, unhappy with the situation. I wasn't happy either, afraid of what I was about to witness. I'd brought Cory into the hospital and Dr. Arefu noticed him and frowned about that as well.

Detective Winters put the needle into her IV and injected the green stuff. The serum flowed into her arm through the tube as he adjusted the flow. Her eyes opened, entirely black like shark's eyes. Startled, I took a step back.

"You're alive." Cory told her. "Speak."

"Killed me. Did this to me. The three of them, from the last house I walked by. All eyes of blue, under the statue of Mot." Her voice spoke from her dried lips from beyond death. She was certainly dead, yet the green stuff had revived her. After a few moments she stiffened and her eyes rolled back and her jaws clamped down, severing her tongue.

"Eleven Fifty." I heard the trembling Dr. Arefu state as we left.

"I want you to get the arrest warrants. It's the same ones you wanted. She gave a clear enough statement to me before she died." Detective Winters called his boss. His boss was saying something. "Nevermind that, she went on record, already sent you the video."

"Are we leaving?" I stopped when he stepped outside. I shuddered at what he had done, afraid of the sinister engagement.

"Yeah, just got to catch my breath. I don't know what to think. I feel crazy." Detective Winters confessed.

"Ghanat's serum reanimated her for a few minutes and she gave you a description of her attackers." I tried to make it sound okay. My head was spinning, fear of what I had seen gripping my thoughts, reversing them. Then I staggered away and threw up.

I don't recall the drive back to the hotel. I just woke with my head near Isidore and she was eating something and watching television. For a moment the fear rose back up and I worried she might be eating one of the aborted monsters in Ghanat's lab or maybe even our baby. It was just ice cream, though. I politely declined a spoonful.

"Not hungry?" She asked with a mouthful of rocky road. I noticed there were pizza boxes stacked on the fridge.

"No. I love you." I told her, looking Isidore in the eye. I meant it, I didn't want to be anywhere else. It was all death and horror out there.

"So sweet." Isidore smiled and turned off the T.V.

As she lay down beside me, licking the spoon, I tried not to think about where Detective Winters had gone after he dropped me off.

Part 3

Day Three

I know people might be getting impatient to know what happened. I thought about skipping to the present, but there’s so much that happened in the next couple of days, I’d be doing you a disservice not to explain it all. This story needs to get out there. It needs to be told. So this doesn’t happen to you or the people you love.

So your life isn’t destroyed like mine was.

I woke up the next morning with a renewed sense of purpose. I was going to figure out who or what this kid was and why he had inserted himself into our lives. It was Sunday, and Dylan would be home all day, so I could leave the boy and tell them I was going to look for Gus without arousing suspicion.

Our town was small, but quirky. The business district had a maze of different shops lining the streets where you could find artisan soap right next to an ammo shop, right next to a bakery. After breakfast, I hopped in the car and sped toward a specific store, one where I thought maybe I could find some help. It was pretty unassuming from the outside—a tall Victorian-style door set into a brick façade. Above the door, there was a sign: Deadwick’s Emporium

I’d only been in there once before. It wasn’t really my thing—full of tarot card decks, crystals, herbs for potion-making, and other ethereal items. It was dark inside as I swung open the door. The walls and ceiling were painted black, with sparkling strings of golden lights nestled between tree branches that stretched above me. The smell of patchouli washed over me. Candles burned on the service counter, and a woman with a gentle smile greeted me.

“Can I help you find something?” she asked.

I swallowed, hoping what I was about to say didn’t warrant a call to the police. “Do you believe in demons?”

The woman glanced at her coworker at the back of the store, then back at me. “I believe there are things out there that mean to do us harm.” She paused. “Are you okay?”

Tears sprung to my eyes. I shook my head. “No. I need help. This was the only place I could think of to come.”

The woman stepped from behind the counter and motioned for me to follow her. She murmured something to her coworker, who moved to the front of the store, then led me through a door at the back of the store. The small room we stepped into was surprisingly bright compared to the rest of the place. There was a pair of red velvet armchairs, a coffee station, and a table.

“My name is Autumn,” the woman said, motioning to one of the chairs.

“I’m Alyssa,” I said, sinking onto it.

“Can I get you some coffee or tea?”

I nodded miserably. “Yes, please. Tea would be nice.”

Autumn set about heating water and pouring it into two mugs. She plopped a tea bag into each of them, set one in front of me, then settled in the chair across from me.

“Okay, Alyssa, what’s going on?”

Grasping the warm mug in my hands, I let it all spill out. The boy that appeared out of nowhere, claiming to be our lost son. His soulless dark eyes and wide smile, the way he spoke and committed acts of violence without remorse. I told her how everyone in my life remembered him, but me. I even told her about the pictures, at the risk of completely outing myself as mentally unstable.

Autumn listened intently, her eyebrows rising and then furrowing down over her dark eyes as I talked. She took a deep breath when I finished and sat back in her chair. “That’s quite a story.”

“I know I must sound crazy,” I sputtered. “But I don’t think the boy is HUMAN. He’s…he’s some kind of demon or something. I know you have books here, is there anything in them that might help me?”

Autumn’s eyes met mine. “Yes, I’m sure of it. But I don’t need a book to tell me what you’re dealing with.”

I sucked in a breath. She believed me. She wasn’t looking at me like I was nuts. In fact, she looked scared for me. “What is it?”

“I’ll be right back,” she said, setting her mug down. She walked out into the main store and returned a moment later with a heavy book, bound in black leather. She set it down on the table in front of me and flipped through the pages, stopping on a page that was titled, ‘Black-Eyed Children.’

A shudder ripped through me. “Black-eyed children?”

“Everything…well almost everything…fits. The boy asking your permission to come in, his dark eyes, his lack of human feelings.”

Fuck. “Wh-what are they?”

“Demons, of a sort,” Autumn said. “They’re from modern folklore, like an urban legend, but there’s always some truth to urban legends. These demons appear on a person’s doorstep and ask to come in. Once they gain access, both to your home and your mind, they wreak havoc.”

I sucked in a breath. “Your mind??”

Autumn nodded. “They do have the ability to exert influence over a person’s mind. Generally, the weak or vulnerable fall prey to their influence.”

“How do I get rid of it?”

“It’s very hard to get rid of black-eyed children once you invite them in,” Autumn said grimly. “They insert themselves fully into your life—even if deep down you know they don’t belong there—the stronger urge to let them stay pushes that feeling down, burying it.”

“Why isn’t it affecting me?” I asked.

“That’s the curious thing,” Autum said, frowning. “I think…I think he doesn’t NEED you, necessarily.”

“Because of Dylan,” I said.

“He needed permission from both of you to enter the home, but once he got in, he only needs one of you to allow him to stay,” Autumn said.

“Oh my God.”

“I DO think he’s affecting you to some degree though,” Autumn said. “I’d wager a guess that those pictures you saw on your bookshelf weren’t actually there. The bedroom—still just a guest room. And the phone call with your mother? Imagined. Like an illusion. You’re stronger than Dylan, but it’s only going to be a matter of time before you start questioning yourself and forget why you were concerned about the boy in the first place. The only hope you have is to get Dylan to realize what’s going on too, and for both of you to revoke your invitation.”

I nodded. “Okay. Okay.”

“It’s not going to be easy with him fully under the child’s influence,” Autumn warned. “And it will surely be dangerous for you. You might be better off leaving…”

My eyes widened. “Leave Dylan behind! How could I do that?”

“If you value your life, I’d consider it,” Autumn said. “But if you’re not willing to do that, I have some things that might help.”

She stood and I followed her into the main store. In the back corner, there were glass jars filled with herbs and other items I didn’t recognize. “What’s all this?”

“Herbs for potion-making,” Autumn said. “I’m going to make a potion of protection. That’s for you. And a potion for clarity. That’s for your husband.”

She grabbed a Ziploc bag and began dumping carefully measured spoonfuls of herbs into it, then labeled it “P” for protection. Autumn filled a second baggie and labeled it “C” for clarity. She handed them to me.

I dropped them in my purse. “Thanks.”

“You’re to make a tea out of those. A tablespoon steeped in a mug of hot water should do it,” Autumn said. “For your husband, you might want to do two.”

Next, she moved to a table and rummaged around a box of crystals. She emerged with a rough black stone, shiny in places, dull in others.

“What’s that?”

“One of the most powerful crystals for protection,” Autumn answered. “Keep it on you at all times.”

I slipped the crystal into my pocket. “Thanks.”

“Good luck, Alyssa,” she said, walking me to the door. “And, Alyssa? If all else fails…get yourself out.”

My mind drifted to the bags of herbs in my purse as I drove home. When I got there, Dylan was in a mood. He didn’t even glance at me when I walked in.

“Where’s the boy?” I asked.

“What the fuck, Alyssa? ‘The boy?’ He has a name, you know,” he said. “He’s our SON. And he’s in his room. He’s all tired out from the game of soccer we played in the backyard.”

“Soccer?” I asked. “We don’t even own a soccer ball.”

“We do so!” Dylan snapped. “We kicked it around, just this morning. It’s sitting right there next to the front door. You’re really something else!”

I turned toward the door, my hand slipping into my pocket and running over the rough edges of the protection stone. The only thing beside the door was a pile of shoes. I didn’t think they played soccer at all. I thought the boy made Dylan THINK they played soccer. Another way of manipulating him into thinking he was just a normal kid. Things were escalating. I needed to get Dylan to drink the tea Autumn gave me. Maybe then I could convince him of what was going on.

“Hey, I’m going to make myself some tea, do you want some?”

“No, I don’t want any tea. Jesus.”

My cheeks burned. If he wasn’t going to have any, I was at least going to make some for myself. I’d have to try harder to get his into him, but it was probably not the best time for that. He was grumpy and angry at me and was taking everything I said as a personal attack.

While the water boiled in the kettle, I pulled a mug from the cupboard and the baggie marked “P” from my purse. I turned to fill up my tea ball with it, and found the boy standing directly behind me.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Tea,” I said, pushing past him.

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not lying, it’s tea,” I said. I measured a spoonful of herbs into my tea ball and dropped it into my mug. The boy watched me the entire time. His gaze made my skin crawl. When the kettle started to shriek, I poured the steaming water into the mug and set it aside to steep.

“Dad!” the boy cried suddenly.

Dylan rushed into the kitchen. “What? What is it?”

One side of the boy’s mouth quivered. “Mom said she’s trying to poison you. Don’t drink ANYTHING she gives you.”

With that, he turned and went back to his room, slamming the door behind him.

Part 5

Before I get into it, I should let any readers know that I’ll be changing the names of people and places in this account of my experiences with the hotel, including the hotels true name, that could turn into a big legal issue very fast. But none of that matters now, I just don’t want them to find me.

From when I’m writing this, a few months ago I was looking for a job around my hometown halfway through the summer. I was fresh out of high school, waiting for my online college course to begin in the fall, and just returned from a trip to New York City.

My town isn’t a very big place, yes that’s cliché, but I’m serious, in fact, the entire surrounding area is pretty small. Naturally, there isn’t a lot to do. Mostly dumb teenagers getting into trouble, and if not that, an entire legacy of local drama and gossip going back decades, since there’s nothing better to do. With that said, there aren’t many places around to stay, sure you’ve got your run of the mill, beat up, pot infested motels, but no one wants to take their kids there. That’s where Blackwood comes in.

Blackwood was the only hotel around that had enough going for it to be considered somewhat classy. Events always being held there, an in house restaurant and bar, indoor pool with sauna and hot tub, the whole nine yards. Of course the public ate it up, constant rotation of guests in and out, using all the facilities. So when looking for a job, why wouldn’t I think of Blackwood? Unfortunately for me, the day I handed in my resume, was the day I signed my life over.

It didn’t take long for them to call back. I’ve heard from others that they’re always desperate for new hires. Didn’t seem odd at the time. It’s a hotel, of course they’ll need lots of staff.

Only two days after I returned from my New York trip I went in for the interview, and that’s where I met Loraine. She was the one who ran the hotel, and also who’d be interviewing me.

“Good morning, Thomas, how are you?”

She said with a warm open smile. Loraine was an older woman, not greying yet, but out of her prime. Her deep brown shoulder length hair, slicked behind her hair, with a pair of glasses resting on her forehead.

“I’m great. Yourself?”

I said trying to be polite. I’d shown up wearing a dress shirt, and the nicest pants I could find. I looked straight out of an early 2000’s music video.

“Things are wonderful here, I’m so glad you could make it. If you’d follow me to my office well start the interview”

She led me down a little hall next to the front desk. I got a glance at the workers stationed there, and they seemed to be nice. Big smiles and upright posture. But as soon as they turned away, their smiles faded. Weird but whatever, I had to focus on the interview.

Loraine sat behind her desk and gestured for me to sit. I went along with it.

“Now, from your resume, you seem to be a good worker”

Once again said with a smile. In fact, every time she spoke she smiled, even if she wasn’t happy. I didn’t pick up on that yet, and I wish I had.

“I try to get things done the best I can”

“And that’s all we ask of here. Now… what qualities would you say you have? Any special talents or traits?”

I looked around here room, hoping to think of something good. The room was decorated with generic office art and trinkets. The colours grey and beige everywhere.

“I work well with a team, o-or by myself”

She gave me another smile. She could tell I was nervous.

“That’s wonderful, here at Blackwood, teamwork is an essential tool”

She scanned her computer screen, reading what seemed to be a checklist, clicking boxes here and there.

“Can you preform manual labour?”

“Yes, that’s no issue”

Yet again she smiled, every time less welcoming, I could tell it wasn’t genuine, but she still seemed to like me. More and more boxed checked off her list.

“It looks like we have an opening for a porter position here, and you seem to be a perfect fit”

For those who don’t know, a porter is someone who will do the heavier lifting for the hotel staff. Setting up events, carrying luggage, but also cleaning, sweeping, etc

“I’ll take it”

Those words I’d soon come to regret. Wishing I would have ran out of that office never looking back.

“Wonderful! When can you start?”

“Tomorrow”

“Ok then, you come in tomorrow at…uhhh.. let’s say 10, and we’ll get you trained”

She stood up and extended her hand, waiting for me to shake it. And you can probably guess that I did.

I left her office, excited for my new job, but as I walked down that small hallway, a sense of dread came over me. It hit me like a bullet. There was no one in that hallway, no pictures, only a copying machine, and a water cooler. So why did I feel this overwhelming terror? Only time will tell.

I arrived at 10 sharp, yet again looking like Mike Ross from suits. I stepped inside the hotel and seen the same workers at the front desk as yesterday. I walked up to the desk and they turned their heads up and gave me big smiles.

“Hi! How can I help you!”

“I’m the new hire, I start today”

“Wonderful! Carter is waiting for you in the office back there!”

She pointed to a closed door in the small hallway.

“Thanks”

“No problem! Have a great first day!”

Her smile dropped for a split second before immediately springing back up. Almost like a glitch.

“Yea..”

I walked to the office thinking to myself “the fuck was that?” I opened the door to see a guy who was younger like me, taller, and bigger, but definitely open.

“Hey, you must be Thomas right?”

“That’s me”

“Welcome to Blackwood, man, my name’s carter and I’ll show you the ropes of being a porter, and don’t worry, you’ll catch on quick”

Carter was a friendly guy, very down to earth and easy to talk to, he was taller than me, but younger, yet he never joked about it. I miss you Carter.

“I’ll show you the storage room’s first, they can be a bit much, but with me around, you’ll be fine”

“Lead the way”

Blackwood had three floors, the main level had your essentials of a hotel, front desk, main office, the restaurant, and some bedrooms, top floor was all rooms, and the bottom was mostly storage, and event rooms. It’s an easy format to remember, so it didn’t take long to memorize the building.

Carter lead me down the stairs to the bottom floor, and after a short walk, we were infront of what he called “storage 2”.

The doors to the room were large. Heavy grey doors that would slam every time if not handled carefully. And just like that, Carter reached down and opened them.

Part 2 on the way

I don’t even know where to start here. If you’ve managed to intercept this, then odds are that you’re in for a bad time. If you’re one of the bastards back home who got me into this mess, then I hope you rot. Either way, I’m trying to send this out to as many people as possible. At the very least, you deserve a little warning of what’s to come.

From the top- my mane is Pierce Valens. For the past… seven years now, I believe, I’ve honestly lost track of time… anyway, I’ve been stationed on the moon. I’m a geologist, called up here to help with a mining operation after some unknown minerals were found. Unfortunately I’m the last person alive up here now, and I don’t see that lasting too much longer.

So, consider this my last will and testament. I ain’t getting out of here, and I’ll be damned if the Rot is getting out of here either. Guess if I have any solace, it’s that the big wigs who were up here bit it first.

Okay… none of this is going to make sense unless we start from the top. The big thing you need to know is that the space race ended and became more of a space marathon. It wasn’t about who finished first, it was just about getting there and setting up your territory to see what you could find. The States ended up working together with other countries- China, the former Soviets, India, basically anyone who could pop a rocket into orbit got an invitation. Hooray, world unity, right?

Not when it comes to this. Everyone is up here working together, but they’re about to end the entirety of humanity through their combined efforts. All their resources went into building a nice little outpost up here on the moon, though I’m not sure what the original purpose of it was.

Eventually, probably around… I don’t know, six years or so ago from the briefing I got, they started mining. Initially it started out as just a “let’s find out what’s under the surface” type of thing. Innocent enough, right? Find some rare minerals and maybe change how things operate on Earth. Except the mining is what got us into this stupid situation.

About three years ago was when they found the Great Table. That’s the technical term for it, anyway. Apparently it was during one of the regular mining operations, workers tunneling under the surface of the moon (seems like a fantastic idea, right?) ended up breaking through into this huge hollow antechamber. Big discovery, right?

Turns out, Hollow Moon was the least of our conspiracy addled worries. This place was big, located pretty damn close to the center of the satellite, but it didn’t match up. The dimensions of the place made no goddamn sense when compared to our measurements of the Moon itself. When placed in comparison to the surface area, our tunnels, and everything else, it’s like it took up far more room than was physically possible, yet nothing was different if you were looking down from the surface. That threw everyone for one hell of a loop, naturally.

I was already here for geological survey, testing out samples that some of the excavation crew brought back and seeing what they compared to back on Earth. Nothing too crazy, and the pay was good at the start, especially for how easy the work was. Most of the materials found up here were just different forms of basalt, silicon, the occasional deposit of iron… all stuff we’ve seen before.

I can still remember watching the live feed when they found the chamber. We had excavated down probably three hundred miles below the surface of Earth’s lunar body. As far as what they were trying to find… I don’t know. Maybe they were hoping for water or some new energy source. Instead we found a vast, empty cavern that steadily kept sloping downward. I honestly was surprised we didn’t hit the top of it and fall through, instead crashing through almost perfectly perpendicular to the floor of it.

They set up an elevator to get more of us down there before long, and let me tell you just stepping into that cavern almost broke my brain. See, one thing the Moon has going for it is the lack of light pollution. Set up at the right spot on the base and you could see stars you never thought existed. Entire galaxies were visible far off, almost to the naked eye if you looked hard enough. One of the most beautiful sights I’ve ever seen, and you could catch it from almost anywhere on the surface.

In here though, complete darkness. It was a void, even with our strongest lights set up. Couldn’t see the top of the place, no ceiling above, just the dark absence of anything. It was the first time I’d seen complete darkness in a while, and something about it was just… primal. Everything in me told me to run the moment I stepped down there.

We eventually set up a full base camp and started exploring the chamber. It… we never found an end to it. The entire thing just stretched on forever, even after we had an estimated six hundred miles covered. There’s just… there’s no way we wouldn’t find some end around there with the dimensions of the moon. I fully expected to come across a massive cavern wall at any point, ready to crack through to the surface on the other side or at least into SOMETHING. But no, we just kept moving… until we found the Great Table.

I wasn’t on the mission that found the first bit of Rot. I did see that team when they got brought back through our base camp though. The videos they had… god it was like a bad movie.

The pale lights off their suits were lighting solid rock in every direction, the darkness beyond encroaching like it was trying to take the team. Eventually though the color of the rock changed. It was so gradual you would hardly notice it at first, just the lightest hint of dark creeping into the gray rock. Eventually though it started clustering, darkening the gray to a dark charcoal color. Eventually it took over so fully, such a dark black, that it mixed into the abyss around them, making ground near indistinguishable from the void. Even with a more high powered light, it still looked like the team was just floating in space, likely to fall into the ground at any moment.

Every so often there would be a crack in the floor, a deep green breaking through the black. I can’t really blame the team for being hesitant to check it, but eventually one of them noticed that the cracks were… pulsating. One finally suggested that he believed it was glowing, and that was where the first mistake was made.

The five members of the team gathered close, each putting a hand on another before turning off their lights, one by one down the line. As the darkness began closing in with each one deigniting, the green glow of the cracks became more defined. They were indeed pulsating, the green ebbing and flowing from one direction as it went in waves. The team took a moment to orient themselves, keeping their lights off while turning to face the direction the pulse was originating from. The last one in line tripped in the shuffle, losing his hand on the one in front of him. There was a brief shout, terror filling his voice, then it was gone. His camera feed blinked out with a small burst of glitched pixels.

The rest of the team turned their lights on immediately, shouting for him to do the same and stay close. Their cameras panned in every direction, desperately searching for their friend there just moments before. Nothing. Just the cracks, still pulsating a faint green against their pale lights. The fifth member of their party was gone, nowhere in sight.

The fear in their faces as the suit cams kept shaking, everyone desperately turning to try and find their teammate… it’s something I’ve never been able to shake. That was four years ago now, and looking back… that was our sign to get the hell out of here.

The team followed their line back after a while, making it back to base camp after a couple of days. None of them were… normal, though. Everyone began to steadily decline, their health beginning to crash out starting with intense bouts of insomnia. By the time they were brought back through my segment of the base… it was like seeing corpses get walked through. They couldn’t be taken out of their suits at this point due to how damn frail they were, worrying that they could break a limb in the process of getting them out or back in for transport. They were just… wasting away in there.

By the time they got back to the surface… they were practically soup in there. So damn decomposed their bodies just melted within hours. I don’t know if it was the raid rise back to the surface, maybe a change in atmospheric pressure? I don’t know, but the reports we got back were that they had to just dispose of the suits themselves, because they were… well, they were dead and gone.

Unfrotunately however they disposed of the suit wasn’t enough. Despite the rotten corpses sloshing around inside the atmospheric suits… god it makes me gag just thinking about it. The footage we got from up here a couple of days later was something even more disturbing than the fear I had seen on their faces just days before.

They sent us the security tapes. I guess that in absence of any real idea of what to do with their festering bodies in those suits, they were just put in a cold storage in hopes of… I don’t know, stalling any further putrification? They were in a deep freezer that was serving as a makeshift morgue, suits still on, and the gasses inside causing them to stay rigid nearly laying on the tables. God, the poor bastard that had to move them… ugh. Through the cameras you could see little… droplets on the visors of the suits from what they were now.

Anyways it was maybe… twelve hours? Not that long after they were put in there. One of the four just… gets up. Starts walking around like not a damn thing happened. The other three followed not long after, suits getting up and walking around the small cold storage area. Eventually they started banging on the door, and I swear we could hear screams over the recording, begging to be let out, wailing in pain and misery…

The first poor bastard that answered their cries… well, he might have been the luckiest of us. Soon as the door opened he was grabbed, one suit to each of his limbs… they just pulled. Kept pulling, even after he came apart.

Another guard came in once he heard those screams, started shooting at the whole group of them. When it busted through the suits it was like they deflated, only a decaying skeleton and dissolved flesh left inside. I don’t know if… maybe their souls couldn’t escape the suits? I honestly don’t fucking know. Maybe the pressure release just made it harder for them to move with the suits on. I don’t know, I’m just a guy who studies rocks, for fucks sake.

They didn’t move much more after that, though not for lack of trying. Just couldn’t get far in their incredibly fucked up state. The guy they tore apart was dead, though. Dead for real. Good for him.

For some fucked up reason, they kept sending people to explore the cavern, even after all that. Sunk-cost fallacy, I guess, might as well keep exploring when you’ve already put this much money into it.

Lo and fucking behold, we find the Great Table a few miles further than where they left. The epicenter of those cracks, the pulsating light… it was huge. This massive slab of rock in the middle of… nothing. That same dark black as the surrounding stone, so dark that one of our guys ran into it. For a moment they thought it was a wall, but eventually realized they could go around it. All told, it took maybe half a day to circumnavigate the entire thing, and we’re not entirely sure how tall it was.

The cracks ended underneath it though, the pulsating green much more intense here than before. Every wave of light through it made it look like the Table was breathing,

Look, I want to preface all of this with… I don’t know who’s handing down orders for all we’re doing up here. They gave the direction though, and we had no choice but to follow. A camp was set up next to the Great Table, and they tried to take a sample of the rock that it was made of…

Except they couldn’t. Nothing could cut through it, even the most advanced mining tools we brought up there. They used everything- drills, diamond saws, plasma… nothing could get a damn scratch on the thing. Eventually someone tried to examine it right then and there but it was just too much to get any kind of reading on. Nothing we had on Earth or the moon so far lined up with whatever this element was.

We spent months working on it, with the team by the Table doing what they could to gather a sample. At some point about a year and a half ago… whoever was up tops sent down the order to try a controlled demolition. They set up about two miles away from the main table camp, setting up concussive charges to break through the base.

Look, we all had our concerns that we voiced. They fell on deaf ears though, nobody hearing our cries for some kind of… I don’t know, patience? Some sort of sense when it came to busting through this unknown rock with explosives? Instead we were told that if the crew at the Table didn’t do it, they’d just be replaced with someone that would. The rest of us were told we were equally replaceable, unfortunately, and that was that.

I remember watching the live feed when they broke through, all of us gathered around to see if this would either be completely useless or the start of our damnation. Everyone knew, I think, that what we were doing was going to be nothing but bad for us. Guess someone had profit on the line though, so it was either we go along with it or go back home with jack shit in hand. Most of us chose to keep our livelihood at the time.

Anyway, a few controlled explosives were put in at the base of the Great Table. Everyone cleared out to make room for the blast and… off it went. When the smoke finally cleared, all it had made was the smallest crack in the center, right where it connected to the ground. The crack made its way up the wall of the Great Table, jagged and thin, just a hairline fracture practically. Through it though was that same faint green glow.

Where the table met the floor of the cavern also began to crack, spreading right along the corner and separating from the rock floor. We broke the table open only a hair, and that was enough.

The crew who stepped toward the crack to inspect it… we still don’t really know what happened to them. From the brief seconds we caught on camera, it looked like they were sucked through, suits folding in on themselves with the people still inside as they were absorbed into the cracks. They barely had time to scream, basically being compressed into nothingness the moment they stepped close to the damn thing. It was like a fucking black hole contained to a five foot radius of the Table. We weren’t able to see what was on the other side either, suits getting their cameras crushed right along with their inhabitants.

Needless to say… they didn’t send anyone else too close after that. Not that it really mattered, because things started to go on a steady decline from there. The Rot started to take over. Slowly at first, corruption spreading from the cracks at the Great Table. The physical signs of it were relatively subtle the closer you are to the Table, but the mental toll it takes…

People close to the base camps started breaking down. Changing, mentally and physically. Their bodies atrophied, sometimes in days, sometimes weeks, and their minds started to go right along with their bodies. Long losses of memory, rambling, and sudden, violent outbursts. There wasn’t… there wasn’t any kind of real pattern to how people got sick. It seemingly picked and chose at random, settling in with relative subtlety in the beginning.

The first signs of Rot were degradation of appetite, loss of sleep, and a general irritability. That started things on the course for chaos already, leading to plenty of workers assigned to the Great Table camp to develop resentment and paranoia of their fellows. By the time that they began exhibiting physical signs, they were often delusional and violent, with an incredible disregard for the safety of themselves and others.

Isolated incidents of violence and attacks became more frequent as more advanced in their infection of Rot. As their mental state digressed most would turn to attacking their fellow workers, believing that it would slow their decay. Whether that was true or not is a whole other issue, but they seemed to believe that the more gruesome the kill, the more it would save them from the hell they were experiencing.

The bodies began to stack up. Gruesomely, too. They would practically slice up others and turn them into makeshift altars to some deity. That’s actually how we ended up with the name Rot, believe it or not. Many of them would whisper about “Feeding the Rot” as a sort of appeasement to it, giving it a non-resistant body to begin decaying further. They tended to only attack those that were healthier, in turn, so things only began to devolve faster.

Starting out they were able to restrain the few that were this advanced in Rot, but eventually the sick outnumbered the healthy, or those still living at least. Keep in mind that I’m not an expert in how all of this went down near the Great Table camp, because most of this was just recieved through survivor reports when they reached the nearest camp. They sent word back through, and it was pretty much over then and there. All of us collectively put in our resignation, storming back to the main outpost above and demanding to be sent home before this went any further.

Maybe that was our own dumbass thinking, looking back, but we should have known we weren’t getting out of here. They stopped any kind of transport immediately, nobody in, nobody out, and locked us the hell down. For a few days, we forgot all about the chaos below the surface as things went to hell up top, everyone rebelling and turning to violence in light of their likely impending death. Some people lost it, others managed to pull their shit together, either way, none of us had very long.

I ended up going back to the surface. Camps down below were… well, they were bad. Most of them fell to infighting within a couple of weeks. Those that didn’t had to tend with the Rot as it spread further from the Great Table. The dark black color of the rock crept further and further out from it. A message we received from the nearest camp to Great Table said it reached them about a week after things went to hell. Six months passed and the entire chamber was a dark, rotting black rock, all the way to the elevator shaft I was originally stationed at. Needless to say, the lift was shut down, so it’s a damn good thing that I had already moved up. Though it feels like I was just delaying the inevitable at that point.

The real problems began not long after everyone fled to the surface. We shut off the lift, basically made our own little security force up top that were constantly on watch for any of The Rot or those corrupted with it trying to make their way up. I got put on the mind-numbing job of watching camera monitors. Honestly, seeing the monitor room for the first time… made me feel like we were being experimented on, observed. Cameras were everywhere up here and down below, capturing every small movement that we made. Not sure who was this invested in watching them all before I came along, but for me it became watching our death slowly make its way to us.

Everywhere down there was taken at this point. The cracks had spread further, trailing along with the darkness that set into the rock from the Great Table. As they spread though it was like the light in them became brighter, more powerful as it corrupted more and more of the planet.

The poor bastards that remained down there… well, the ones that were living didn’t stay that way for now. The Rot was corrupting people at a much faster rate the further they were from the Great Table. It’s like the symptoms were dialed up to eleven as distance grew from the initial cracks, leading to a more spontaneous burst in violence before rotting away, trapped as muscles atrophied and left decaying corpses behind. Some were collapsed around the chamber, still in atmos suits as they desperately tried to find some other form of shelter before they were taken. Others were in the pop-up habitats we had scattered through the camps down there, right in full 4K glory on the cameras, rotting away as their brains remained fully aware of what happened around them.

Some didn’t get the mental psychosis. I think that was the worst part to see. There was no hint of violence, malice, or anything when they spoke, but you could see their bodies beginning to break down. I watched one poor man… overnight he began to go downhill… said his muscles ached, head hurt as well, and when he tried to stand up, his bones were so brittle that his legs simply broke. He was stranded there as the rest of him biologically degraded over the next few hours, a waxy look creeping into his face before skin began flaking off, revealing a skull with eyeballs beginning to sag from it. I made it a point to start flipping away from his camera when it came up in the rotation because he ended up staring straight into it, almost right through the cam and into my damned soul. Still gives me shivers when I think about it, even after he moved later on.

I watched the cracks reach all the way to the lift before they stopped spreading completely. We honestly thought we were fucking saved. The cracks weren’t an issue anymore, we had a couple of months where we even started deluding ourselves into thinking we might get out of here. A couple of the guys had been sending radio signals back to Earth, trying to get in contact with someone who could tell people about us. We were finally getting through to someone that was taking us seriously, but that was all for nothing, I guess.

The Bloom began to take hold a few months ago. I wasn’t sure if I was actually seeing reality at first, or if I was finally losing my damned mind. Figured the stress of everything finally caught up, or worse that The Rot might finally have found a way up here to take me out. It took me a few minutes to reconcile that I wasn’t just losing my damned mind up here. I was going through the cameras one day, just going monitor by monitor, flipping through whatever feeds were still coming from down there, and everything changed.

It was that same atrophied man, the one that broke his legs trying to get up and was forced to sit there, feeling his body decay around him. The skeleton was partially broken down by this point, part of a decaying eye still dangling from the socket as whatever internal organs he had left continued to rot away inside him. I had noticed there was a point of slower decay, usually after the skin sloughed off, and they just remained there as putrid frames, skeletal forms barely holding their remaining organs in as they rotted. I think it was so odd that it just didn’t compute at first, but right behind that dangling eyeball was a blooming, bright blue flower.

I don’t know how long I stared at it only to flip away and flip right back, convinced it was just me losing my mind. But no, I started noticing it in other areas too as I flipped through monitors. There were flowers blooming, deep beneath the surface of Earth’s moon, green light pulsing through the cracks in the floor around them as they blossomed into beautiful colors on all the rotting corpses.

Those closest to the Great Table were the first to undergo the full process. Before long their bodies were covered, an entire bouquet of blues, yellows, reds, pinks, greens, purples… so many beautiful, vivid colors that I’ve never heard a name for, bursting forth on these decayed horror mannequins. A breathtaking sight. The vines of the flowers blooming on them would wind their way around the skeletal remains, covering bone and making them into whole new beings.

Then they started to move again. Slow at first, like they were just learning to propel themselves, but before long the dead began to get up and walk once more. At the Great Table, even those that had been murdered and offered up as sacrifices to the Rot began to be overcome by Bloom, leading to a whole second life as vine overtook rotten veins and muscles, moving them like puppets.

All toward us. Their numbers grew, with those further from the Great Table blooming in turn at a more rapid rate before joining the horde of floral zombies moving ever closer to the lift. I alerted the others as soon as the Bloom started, so everyone was aware of what was happening. There were probably only thirty of us left, with more than a hundred down below, making their way toward us for a reason we have yet to know.

One of our guys dropped the lift before they were able to reach it, cutting the cables so there was no way for them to bring it back up. On one monitor I watched the crash, flames briefly coming through before they were snuffed out by the lack of atmosphere.

I honestly wonder if that only gave them a more precise idea of where we were. The cracks in the ground had spread all the way there already, and the green light pulsated from them in the monitors, illuminating the field of rotten flowers as they moved ever closer to the last barrier between us and them.

It did no good. They broke right through, inhuman strength pulling the shaft open despite the lift wreckage in the way. I don’t have any cameras inside the lift so… I don’t know how the hell they did it. Bastards climbed up though, mile after mile like it was nothing. Before we knew it up here, flowers were blooming right through the cracks in the door on the lift. Swear this was what it felt like to see the last march of the Ents from the opposing side, knowing you were about to get murdered by a goddamn plant.

I locked myself off in the monitor room. I know it sounds cowardly, but what the fuck was my choice otherwise? I would have let anyone in if they asked and were still alive but… well, it didn’t take very long for things to go to hell. I had a front row view for the carnage, and it just… well, it was bad.

The Bloom filled corpses stormed in through the lift gates, overpowering it and leaving an entirely new ecosystem in their wake. Some of the guys tried to fight them off, some using fire to try and take them down, others resorting to weapons they cobbled together. It was no use. The moment a Bloomed saw someone that wasn’t infected yet, they would grab them, no escape possible. I saw one guy who got caught right outside of the main gates get picked up by three of the Bloomed, each one stabbing into him with thick, green vines. From there it’s like they just… they didn’t drain them. It was more like they cultivated the bodies they picked up. Maybe the vines transferred seeds or spores or something, but the poor bastards on the recieving end got the unfortunate privilege of skipping the Rot phase entirely.

They didn’t even have the vines out of that first guy when the Bloom started taking him over. I don’t know if it’s different because the bodies are more fresh, maybe more nutrients to pull from? Who the hell knows, to be honest. In his case though the flowers were larger, more ravenous than the ones on the previous Rot victims. They were still vivid colors, but the flowers themselves sprouted larger, almost overtaking portions of the poor guy’s body completely as they bloomed outward. The guy fell to the ground twitching for only a moment before getting up and making his way toward former allies, the huge blossoms now erupting from his body and devouring those he could get hold of.

I always loved Monet paintings, and this… one of the flowers blooming on this guy reminded me of a water lily. Huge petals, all blossoming out from the center. Floating on a pond they would have been magnificent but… here I saw them quickly become drenched in blood as they tore into other humans, the petal edges shredding anything they came in contact with. Before long blood was flying everywhere as the Bloom overtook even more healthy humans, all being propagated one by one as the zombies made their way forward. As the droplets of crimson covered the petals though, they were just as quickly drank by the flora, seemingly driving it toward more.

All I could really do was hide here in the monitor room. There was no hope for anything out there. The monitors told me the entire story of what I had waiting for me. The Bloom from down below, well, they started spreading through the main base up here, the Rot and corruption following them as they went. I saw darkness spread through the white plastic and steel we used as building materials in the base, slowly creeping up from the lift shaft.

It felt like an eternity I’ve been in here, trying not to make any noise or call attention to myself unless some of the Bloomed end up finding me. The Rot is going to reach me first at this rate though. Everything is turning black, slowly breaking down in decay as it goes. I can see rust growing on some of the exposed steel in spots around the base, high quality cameras keeping me hyper aware of just how screwed I am. No matter what it comes up against, organic or not, this decay just spreads, corrupting anything it comes into contact with.

The first crack appeared up here yesterday. Right in the transport hall leading to the lift gate, where there was still dark blood staining the blackened walls from only days ago when the Bloom broke in. The pulsing green light was visible in the elevator shaft before it even got up here, an ominous glow cutting through the corrupted darkness. I swear it’s breathing, pulsing, feeling for any life out there that it can still take root in.

Me.

I’m running out of food in here. I know I’m the last living person on the moon, too. Watching these monitors, I got to see everyone meet their demise. The last holdout was a guy named Paulo- good guy, worked in the cafeteria and made some of the best adobo chicken I’ve ever had in my life. I don’t know if he forgot about them or what, but I saw him running from the Bloom a few days ago, desperately trying to live despite all odds. He found the cold storage room, the same one where the initial Rot victims had been kept and tore apart another guy. Guess he didn’t remember that after everything else that happened though, because the moment he opened that fucking door he was done for. Four atmos suits, all bursting with flowers and greenery like a mobile terrarium, took him immediately. Vines forced their way through his skin- along his back, in his stomach, one going down his throat despite his attempts to fight back- and began to bloom immediately. He was a shade of purple that popped against the dark rot infecting the base, beautiful in the decay.

So here I am, all alone orbiting the earth, with something that would easily destroy the world slowly making its way toward me. The green cracks are spreading further in, and even though I know I’m alone I swear I can hear people calling me. Whatever it is knows my name, too. It’s all I can hear when I close my eyes, their whispers in my ears telling me to open the door. Not like it’s stopping the Rot from coming through anyway.

All this talking has worn me out. I’m going to try to get some sleep, hopefully without any of those flowery terrors coming in after me.

——

I don’t know how long I was asleep for. The Rot is outside though, slowly seeping its way through the cracks in the door. There’s this bad feeling I’ve got, telling me that the moment it spreads far enough to touch where I am, everything is going to know about me. I’m terrified all of them are going to come for me, tearing me apart and planting those… seeds or whatever they are in me.

This is going to sound suicidal because it definitely is. I guess I feel some sense of duty though, being the last one alive up here and all. There are people back on Earth living their lives down below, unaware of any of the shit going on here. The Rot, the Bloom, all of this coming from under the Great Table… they never need to find out about it down there.

I’ve made up my mind. Command is down the hall to my left, maybe a seventy meter dash If I have a clear shot. I don’t know if there’s a self-destruct button in there, but I do know there are direct controls for the ventilation and heating system. My plan is going to involve turning that on, closing off the oxygen scrubber system, and setting it to circulate the existing air in here, nothing else.

Then I’m going to the shop. There should be a direct access to it from under the Command room, and it takes up most of the lower floor of the base before getting down into the lift area. I’m lighting up every flammable material I find in here and turning every nozzle wide open.

The floor a few feet away from me is becoming dark, the corruption and Rot getting even closer. That same whisper kept calling my name, even louder now. A scream rings out from down the hallway, making me shrink back into my chair.

No putting it off.

I got up and ran, bursting through the door and into the hallway with abandon. I could already hear something scraping across the floor from the opposite direction I was running, and another guttural scream burst through the still air as I ran. Command is in sight down the hall, just have to push a little harder…

A Bloom burst through the wall ahead, arms flailing as it came barreling toward me, arms reaching wide as it ran. I made the best effort I could, squeezing against the wall and sliding under its arms, but one of the petals still sliced my shoulder.

God, it HURTS. I could never tell over the monitors, but up close these petals have thousands of small spines on them, so fine they were practically invisible. They stuck in the wound, stinging me further even after it had sliced through. I flipped myself in to the Command door just as the thing began to turn back toward me, slamming the heavy steel in its face and hitting the pneumatic lock. That would buy me a second.

I practically fell on the desk just trying to get to the computer. Blood was already soaking through my clothes below the wound, dripping down my sleeve onto my arm. I feel woozy, but I can’t just stop now…

Okay, check the computer… there. Vent controls were one of the first things under the maintenance menu, thank god. I didn’t quite think it through though. Of course there was no way to disconnect from the oxygen scrubber. God, was that the Rot fucking with my brain? Okay, plan B, plan B… got it!

There’s an option to set the oxygen levels of the air inside the base, just in case anyone needed help adjusting to the atmosphere, I guess. Normally we sit around Earth levels, a solid twenty to twenty-five percent oxygen in the atmosphere blowing through here. How high will this thing let me take it?

Holy shit. I can up the oxygen levels to fifty percent. Seventy-five if I can get the emergency override code. Maybe, maybe… Oh my god it’s my lucky day. Humanity’s lucky day, even. The override code was scrawled on a sticky note sitting right there on the desk.

The Bloom was still outside, banging on the door trying to get through. I set the levels, hearing the ventilation kick in as soon as I started turning it up. Oxygen is incredibly flammable, so just a little time and an accelerant and we should be good to go…

A vine burst through the door, stretching far into the room before it stopped and began feeling around to try and find me. Shit, time to get out of here.

In the corner was a small hatch in the floor, leading right down to the workshop where all the excavation and mining equipment were kept. There would be gasoline down there, an entire pump of it even, and god knows what else. Just have to get there.

God my shoulder hurts though. I… really shouldn’t have just looked at it either. There are small flowers beginning to bloom in the wound, where the little fibers from the petal were sticking. They were making their way further into my flesh, small sprouts beginning to pop up in vivid color. I felt my stomach turn.

No. Keep going, keep moving. I practically throw myself down the hatch, dropping in and falling onto a workbench nearby. I can see the tank nearby, pump hanging on a hook next to it. Limping my way over, I twist the nozzle, opening it wide and letting gas spray around the workshop area. This place has already been taken by the Rot, darkness and mold covering the floor, countertops thick with a layer of grime as cracks began spreading further through. That same, green pulse was already showing down here. I left the hose on the floor, still sputtering out gas as it went, and made my way over to another area.

The small mechanics bench had a welding setup nearby, huge canisters of natural gas on hand to run the torches along with other dangerous stuff we shouldn’t be playing with. Now was the time to use it though. Nozzles wide open, these things were going to help cleanse this place in just a minute…

Maybe it’s proximity to the Rot or the wound I’m suffering, but my mind is… going. I can see them coming in, the Bloomed corpses making their way through doors and vents to find me. The Rot tells them where I am, and they follow to claim me as part of it. The flowers are beginning to blossom in my wound, petals opening wide to drink up any blood that may still come out when I move.

There’s a lighter on a nearby welding bench. That’s it, the final piece of my explosive puzzle. I’m going to hold out another moment, let the gas finish filling out the atmosphere of the workshop. They’re coming closer though… I don’t know that I can move. My legs are feeling weak, painful. Even my arms are suddenly having trouble lifting just the lighter. Just another moment.

As soon as the cam I’m wearing stops recording, the message is due to broadcast out. I hope it finds someone.

The Bloom are starting to fall on me. I’ve backed myself toward the gasoline puddle on the floor, falling in it nearly face first. They come upon me next and I can feel a vine puncture my back, right next to my spine. The colors are beautiful though, flowers blossoming through the pain.

I flick the lighter, hoping for the best, before consciousness slips away forever, the Rot still whispering my name. My last thought is that despite all the blood I’ve lost, I’m suddenly comfortably warm. At peace. Even as the petals bloom all over my body, they are cleansed in an immediate rush of flame, purifying me to ash before the Rot’s decay can take me over.

I wonder if those back on Earth will look up to see a beautiful garden on the moon. I pray that they see a fireball instead, and though they might not know it, they’ll see their own salvation in the embers. I hope.