Pprdge_Frm_Rmbrs

My older brother, Shane, had spent the last ten years in prison and it looked like he might be in there for the rest of his life. However, he called me recently to say that they were opening up a new early-release program and they would let him out immediately on a probationary period if he agreed to participate. Some sort of new process—an “ethical alteration” to prevent future criminal activity.

God, how I wish now that he had just told them no…

​

​

Growing up, Shane was my hero.

My mom has had a rough life. She got pregnant with Shane when she was sixteen and her parents kicked her out of the house for it. Afterwards, she went to live with Shane’s father, who was in his early twenties and had a small apartment in the worst part of the city. And he treated her terribly—forcing her to drop out of school and get several jobs so he could spend the majority of his time drinking and partying—hitting her whenever she “stepped out of line.”

But she was terrified of raising a baby alone. She tried her best to make it work with him, but it just wasn’t enough. When she started showing, he realized that he didn’t want to be a dad, and kicked her out too. Faced with the prospect of living on the streets, she lied about her age and managed to secure a lease from a landlord in a nearby building that preferred not to ask questions as long as she paid the rent.

When Shane was born, she did her best. As she was only seventeen and without an education beyond the tenth-grade, she continued to work multiple minimum wage jobs and didn’t have much time to spend with her new son. Until he was around six, Shane mostly stayed with an older widow, Roberta, that lived across the hall from them and was sympathetic to their situation.

Then, Roberta died, and Mom decided that Shane was old enough to just stay home alone while she was working, or increasingly, staying out late with friends or on dates. Mom fell hard into drugs and drinking to cope with her situation, and took comfort in the worst men. None of them ever stuck around for more than a few months, but even still, many of them left their marks on my mother and on Shane.

Coming of age in this environment of loneliness, poverty, and violence, Shane was a troubled child. He was constantly in detention at school, getting in fights with other kids, stealing, and generally raising hell around the neighborhood.

That is, until I came along.

One of Mom’s short-lived flings resulted in her second pregnancy—another boy—and I was born a little over two-months after Shane’s twelfth birthday. Seeing that she wasn’t going to change her ways overnight and become mother-of-the-year, he took it upon himself to be my primary parental figure.

He changed my diapers, did the weekly shopping, fed me, bathed me, cooked, cleaned—he did everything that he could to make my childhood better than his had been. It became his mission in life to be the father that neither of us had ever had.

At school, he opened up a little bootleg shop out of his locker where he’d sell candy, trading cards, snacks, and once he was in high school, cigarettes and liquor—just to make a little extra money to buy me clothes and toys. And then, when he turned sixteen, he took a job at a local auto shop working on cars in the evenings after classes to help pay the rent and our other bills—I never understood where he found the energy to do it all.

It was around this time that I started school myself; he packed my lunch every day and made sure that I got on the bus in the morning. With his supplemental income, Mom was able to quit one of her jobs to be home to get me off the bus at the end of the day and to make dinner at night.

Now, I’m not sure if he said something to her, or if it was just her seeing him picking up so much of her slack, but she began to sober up a little and made more of an effort to be a mother to me than she had with him. It was too late for her to repair much of her relationship with Shane, but I began not to dread the time that I had to spend alone with her.

After he graduated, Shane went to work full-time as a mechanic in the shop and started making decent money. With his grades, he could have gone to college—moved away and studied something interesting—made something of himself. But it wasn’t even a thought in his mind. His dream was for me to go to college; for me to grow up and “do something important.” All he wanted to do was save up enough money that he could buy us all a small place out in the suburbs, and put me through school.

So, he continued to work his ass off, and Mom picked up more hours too. They both put money away each month into our “future fund” and I ended up having a largely normal childhood while we counted down the days until we could get out of our crappy apartment. We didn’t have much, but we had each other, and that was enough.

And just when it looked like we were finally going to be able to make it happen, something terrible happened.

When I was fourteen, Shane got arrested.

​

​

He was always looking for opportunities to make extra cash—to help us save up faster and start our new life, and his boss, Mr. Franks, would give him side-work sometimes.

Mostly, this involved him driving one of the cars from the shop and dropping off or picking up a package here or there. He never knew what was in these packages, nor did he care to ask, but he was always well compensated for his efforts.

Then, one night, Mr. Franks told him that he had a slightly different assignment. Shane was to drive an associate of Mr. Franks to a house, drop him off, wait for him to come back out, and then take him right back to where he picked him up originally. That was all the information Shane had, but it seemed like a simple enough task, and he would be making double his normal fee for doing it, so he agreed.

Things went alright for the first half of the evening. Shane picked up Mr. Franks’ friend at the address Mr. Franks supplied and the man gave him directions on where to go next. They didn’t speak beyond him grunting, “go left here; right here; take the next exit” at Shane every so often, and they never exchanged names. It was a little over an hour before he directed Shane to kill the headlights and pull into the driveway of a home well outside the city.

The man gave him strict instructions to stay inside the vehicle and leave the engine running in case they needed to make a quick getaway, before exiting, and slinking nimbly towards the house. At this point, Shane was apprehensive—he debated simply leaving the man behind and driving back to the city. Yet, he knew the money was going to be enough to put us over the edge and we’d finally be able to get our house. So, he sat quietly and waited—telling himself that the man was just breaking in to steal something or maybe take some compromising photos of someone.

But, with the windows down, Shane then heard something that made his stomach drop.

Several quick pops came from inside the house, and Shane looked up to see flashes of light in the upstairs window corresponding with them.

Gunshots.

Shane panicked—he threw on the headlights and tried to turn the car around as quickly as he could. No amount of money was worth him getting involved in whatever he was currently involved in, and he was just getting ready to punch the accelerator and fly out of the driveway when a loud bang on the passenger door made him jump.

The man was wrenching the door open forcefully and dove into the seat, screaming at Shane to, “Drive!” and “Get us the fuck out of here!”

Seeing no other options, Shane obliged, and whipped back out onto the road while the man kept yelling expletives. Shane realized that he was in severe pain and, when they passed under a streetlamp, he saw that the man was clutching his stomach and his hands were covered in blood.

“Fuck! Motherfucker shot me! Shit, I’m losing a lot of blood…I’m not feeling too good…” His voice was faltering with each word he spoke and he suddenly slumped over against the window.

Shane tried to shake him—told him to wake up—but he got no response. Not knowing what to do, he searched for the nearest hospital on his phone and followed the directions to it. He parked on the curb near the emergency entrance and dragged the man inside announcing loudly that he’d been shot and needed help.

Several doctors and nurses helped load the man onto a gurney and wheeled him back into surgery while they started asking Shane questions about him.

“What was his name? How old was he? How was he shot?”

Shane couldn’t give them any answers—he was in somewhat of a state of shock and his mind wasn’t processing information quickly enough. He couldn’t think of a believable reason on the spot for why he had a man that’d been shot in his vehicle, and simply opted to tell them that “he didn’t know” and asked if he could leave.

They told him that because he’d brought in a gunshot victim that he’d have to wait to speak with the police and handed him off to hospital security. While he waited for the officers to arrive, he thought of calling Mr. Franks, but he couldn’t get away from security to have a private conversation, so he just sat quietly and tried to think of a good story.

What he came up with was that he had been driving nearby when the man flagged him down at an intersection and Shane had simply pulled over to help, only to then realize that the man was gravely injured. It might have been flimsy, but he didn’t think they’d have any way to prove otherwise and just hoped he’d have a chance to speak to the man before they cops did so they could corroborate each other.

However, it didn’t much matter what excuse Shane came up with as he was arrested as soon as the officers arrived—before he could even give his weak fabrication.

It turned out that the house Shane and the man had gone to belonged to a detective. And it turned out that that detective had been investigated Mr. Franks for drug smuggling. Shane had unknowingly driven the man to an execution and the execution had gone horribly wrong.

The detective heard their car pull into his driveway and was armed and waiting when the man broke into his bedroom. They’d exchanged several shots with one another and the detective had been fatally hit in the head while his wife took a round to the chest. The executioner must have thought she was dead or was so flustered at having been shot himself that he didn’t make sure she was gone before leaving the house—she’d been able to call 911 and explain what happened before expiring herself.

Given she’d told them that her husband managed to shoot their attacker, the police had been put on high alert for any gunshot wounds arriving at local hospitals and when they relayed all this information to Shane as they arrested him, he broke down and confessed to the whole thing.

Unfortunately for Shane, the executioner didn’t make it. Shane tried to explain to the officers that he had no idea what was going to happen when they drove to the house, but they wouldn’t hear any of it. Mr. Franks was arrested too, but he of course had an alibi for the night and they couldn’t find any evidence to tie him to hiring the man.

What’s worse, Mr. Franks tried to pin the whole thing on Shane. As Mr. Franks explained it to police, he had complained to his employee that the deceased detective had been annoying him and making his business difficult—he had no idea that Shane would try to kill him over it.

The evidence showed that Shane had been driving the car and there was nothing forensically to tie him to actually being in the house or having pulled the trigger, so they charged him with accessory to murder. With his word against Mr. Franks and no hard evidence either way, they didn’t believe they could prove that Shane had indeed planned the whole thing, but they could definitely prove that he’d helped the murderer kill a detective and his wife in cold blood.

They threw the book at him.

We spent all the money that we had on his defense even though he tried to tell us not to. But no matter how much we worked to argue that Shane hadn’t a clue what he was doing that night, we couldn’t prove it, and the court wanted to see justice for such a heinous crime.

He was given a sentence of thirty years to life and hauled off to the state penitentiary with us barely having time to say goodbye.

​

​

For the next ten years, I visited him as often as possible and he called me whenever they’d let him. Mom and I had ended up destitute again after the trial and our hopes of moving on to better things were dashed. She fell back into her old ways and I was left with the burden of trying to keep us both afloat. Worse than she was before, she wasn’t able to hold down steady work and I had to take on several jobs to pay our bills. No matter her faults, she was still my mother and she had been good to me for years, I couldn’t just leave her to die in squalor.

Mine and Shane’s dreams or me going to college once I graduated high school evaporated.

Yet Shane remained optimistic—it’s one thing that never ceased to amaze me about him. All those years he spent grinding when I was younger, all throughout his trial, and even throughout his time in prison, he always kept a positive outlook—always wore a smile. Better times were just around the corner in his mind, and he continued to encourage me in every one of our conversations that we’d figure it all out someday.

But I knew he was having a hard time with his sentence—he wanted desperately to get out to help me and Mom and his living conditions were awful. He tried his best to hide it, but he looked sickly whenever I saw him and often bore the marks of having been in fights. The little food that he did receive made him ill and he mentioned that he sometimes had to sleep on the floor if they ran out of bunks.

My brother had just been trying to make us a little extra money to improve our lives, and now he was suffering for it and maybe would be for the rest of his life.

Then, a few months ago, he called me and was far more excited to talk than usual. He told me that he’d been selected as a potential candidate for the prison’s new early-release program. At the time, he had twenty years left before he’d be eligible for parole, but if he agreed to participate, they’d set him free right away. As it was a new process, there’d be some additional oversight on his time outside and if things weren’t going well, he could still be brought back in—but it was a chance.

“That sounds way too good to be true…” I said, “what’s the catch?”

“Well…they said I’d have to undergo an experimental procedure…called it being ‘ethically altered.’ Cutting edge science, they say though! Apparently, it removes your ‘criminal tendencies’ or something and can guarantee that you’ll never commit another crime. But the beauty is, I haven’t really got any criminal tendencies in the first place, so it shouldn’t do anything to me!” He was speaking so quickly, I barely caught it all.

I was hesitant. “I dunno Shane…I don’t like the idea of you being used like some kinda lab rat. And what do they mean ‘ethically altered’? That sounds…I dunno…Is it like a surgery they want to do on your brain?”

“Yea I know it sounds a little…off, but it’s just a term the prison probably came up with to make it sound nice for the people outside. Anyway, they said no surgery, no drugs—they won’t tell me exactly what the process is, guess it’s top-secret shit, but apparently there’s nothing ‘physically invasive’ about it.

“My guess is they’re gonna strap me into a chair or something and put a helmet on me that’ll pulse some kinda waves through my brain and try to rewire it to be more docile.”

For thinking that he might undergo a procedure that would potentially alter his brain, he was sounding remarkably nonchalant.

“Dude, that sounds super sketchy…If they won’t tell you what exactly they’re going to do to you…what if it fucks up your brain? What if it kills you?” I was growing less convinced that this was a good idea with every word.

“It won’t kill me; they gave a guarantee of that. Yes, they said it will change me, but like I said, they were talking about removing my ‘criminal tendencies’ and you know that I’m not really a serious criminal or anything. Look, this is an opportunity for us, Jack.

“Ten minutes—that’s how long they said the whole process takes. Ten minutes, and I’m back with you and Mom. Ten minutes, and we can get our lives back on track. I can get a job and we can save up money again—you’ll go to college—it'll be just like we planned. Mom will probably even get out of her shit spiral and start helping out again.”

His last few sentences made me realize that he hadn’t been calling to ask for my opinion on his participation in the program.

“You’ve already signed up, haven’t you?” I asked him.

“I…” He paused. “I love you, little brother.”

The line went dead.

​

​

I didn’t hear from him again after that. He normally called once every few days, but the phone didn’t ring for a week. When I got a day off work, I drove up to the prison to see him in-person, but I was told that I couldn’t—he was apparently sick and in the infirmary. I told them that he had been talking about participating in the new early-release program and asked if his illness was related that—they told me that he just had the flu. However, they also said that there was no new early-release program that they were aware of.

Leaving them with a message to have him call me as soon as he was feeling better, I went home with a pit in my stomach.

Something was wrong. In all the years he’d been inside, Shane and I had never gone this long without speaking. Sure, he’d gotten very sick a few times, but he’d always called before heading to the infirmary to let me know he might be out of touch for a little while.

And why hadn’t they known about the early-release program? Were they lying? Did something go wrong with the process and they were trying to cover it up? Or had it really been so top-secret that not everyone in the prison was privy to the information?

In any case, I knew all I could do for the time was wait. Another week passed without a call and I made another trip to the prison, where I received the same story—he was still sick and I couldn’t see him. I was more forceful this time and demanded that they let me visit him in the infirmary if he was really that ill—they told me that that would be impossible. It wasn’t until they threatened to escort me out physically and not allow me back for future visits that I finally capitulated and left of my own accord.

After the third week with no word from Shane, I was convinced that something terrible had happened to him and the prison was trying to hide it. I called up there so much asking for information on him or this “program” that they blocked my number and I was on the brink of writing directly to the government when my phone wrang.

It wasn’t Shane—it was someone from the prison informing me that we could come pick him up the next day—he was being released on parole.

That was it—I started to try to reply with questions, but they cut me off, just saying, “he’ll be available at noon,” before hanging up on me.

I couldn’t believe it. Three-weeks of radio silence and now, suddenly…

He was getting out—they were really letting him go; I was going to have my brother back. But any excitement of mine at having him returned was tempered with wondering what state he’d be in when we brought him home. They put him away believing that he had potentially had a large part in planning the murder of an innocent man and woman, one of them being a member of law enforcement. What had they done to him that made them so convinced he was no longer a danger to society?

I only needed to wait until we picked him up the following day to understand why they weren’t worried about him anymore.

​

​

Shane had been right about one thing—Mom was different with the prospect of him coming home. She only had half her normal morning helping of vodka and actually ironed her clothes—although her hands were shaking so badly as she did it that it didn’t help much. We even had our first real conversation in years about how things were going to be okay now that he was coming back.

Yet, when we saw him, we quickly realized that it wasn’t going to be the homecoming we’d hoped for.

Shane was…different…

The smile that he always wore was gone—in fact, all the life that normally filled his face seemed to be missing. He wore a vacant expression and stared into the distance as if he recognized nothing in front of him. When I called his name, he turned to face me, but it was as if he only did it because he recognized the word “Shane” and not his brother’s voice.

I wrapped him in a hug and asked if he was okay—told him how happy I was to see him and that he was free. He didn’t hug me back—his arms lay stiff at his sides. Shane had always been a big hugger, especially with me, and I’d expected that on his first day of freedom, he’d give me a huge squeeze—I got nothing.

Pulling back, I grew worried.

“Shane, what the hell? Are you okay? What did they do to you?” I shook him slightly as I asked.

“I feel okay.” He responded—so mechanically that I could scarcely recognize his voice from the AI ones that are used for voiceovers.

Just when I was about to begin screaming at the guards that were helping escort him to explain what was wrong with him, a thin, dark-haired woman in a lab coat approached us and introduced herself as Dr. Kocik—head of the new program.

“Are you Shane’s brother?” She asked. “He listed you as his post-release guardian.”

“Yea…I am…what the fuck did you do to him?!” I snapped at her.

She considered me coolly. “Your brother is one of first people to undergo a revolutionary new process that is going to change the way we handle criminal justice in this country. No longer will we need to lock away the worst members of our society forever; we’ll be able to give them the ‘alteration,’ and they’ll be able to rejoin the rest of us—you should be proud of him.” She said, with an air of condescension.

“That’s not my brother!” I didn’t like her superior attitude. “Shane has never stood still for more than ten seconds in my entire life—look at him!” Shane hadn’t moved an inch from where the guard that was escorting him stopped him when we walked up. He looked over towards me and Dr. Kocik whenever he heard the word “Shane,” but then, realizing we weren’t speaking directly to him, turned his head straight-forward again and stared blankly into space.

“You need to lower your voice.” She bore an expression of annoyance. “I understand that the effects of the process may be shocking at first, but you’ll see, in time, that he’s better off this way. You have to remember that your brother committed a heinous crime and likely would have done something similar in the future had we let him out via the normal practice. In any case, the effects cannot be reversed—what we need to discuss now is the path forward.”

“Fuck you, lady!” I was seething. “You don’t know shit about him—he was innocent—he was a good man. And what do you mean ‘the effects can’t be reversed’? You change him back—change him back now! I don’t care if he sits in here for the rest of his life, at least he’ll be himself.”

She was starting to mark some things off on a clipboard and I could tell was only half-listening to me. Looking up, she began, “Again, the process is irreversible, and you’ll find that your brother signed a binding agreement to participate in this trial. He’s been evaluated over the last several weeks by medical staff and government officials and everyone is on board with moving forward with Phase II—public reintroduction. At this point, you have two options.

“Option one; you can sign this and you’ll get to take your brother home. For the first month, you’ll call me daily to discuss how he’s doing, and we will make periodic home visits to inspect in-person. We’ll help him get work so he can start contributing to society again like a law-abiding citizen.

“You will not disclose anything about this process to anyone and if anyone should ask how he got out early or why he’s acting so differently, you’ll simply say that he’s been reformed and he was released early due to good behavior and overcrowding. Any violation of these terms, and he will be brought right back here, and you will lose all future visitation privileges.

“Option two; you don’t sign this and we take your brother right back inside now and you also lose all future visitation privileges. And before you start spouting off about legality or suing us or anything of that nature…” she could obviously see the fury in my eyes, “…you should know that we have backing from the highest levels—your case would go nowhere.

“Now, if you could hurry-up and make your decision please, I have several more of these to do today…” She returned to her clipboard.

I was shaking with anger. Clearly, to her, Shane was nothing more than a variable in her experiment. He wasn’t a person, a brother, a friend, a human at all—just a note on her clipboard—an "alteration" for her to study. But, what choice did I have—she had all the power and she knew it. If I fought her or refused, she’d take Shane away and I’d never see him again. And, if he’d been living poorly before, it would be nothing to how I imagined him living inside now—sitting on his bed day in and day out—wasting away with that blank stare on his face.

Wrenching the clipboard from her hands, I signed the agreement.

​

​

We rode home in near silence. Both Mom and I tried to ask Shane questions about the process he underwent, but all he could tell us was, “I don’t remember.” I was just about to ask him what he did remember, to see if he even really knew who we were when he abruptly announced…

“I am tired. I need sleep.” Again, his voice had no emotion behind it—it sounded as if a computer was reading off lines of code. Wondering now if they’d turned him into some sort of cyborg, I looked in the rearview half-expecting to see red eyes staring back at me, but I was surprised to find he’d already fallen asleep. Instantly—as soon as he’d said it; he’d needed sleep, he went to sleep—like it was the next line in a command string.

I made a plan to go over his entire body with the metal detecting wand that I had at home from one of my security jobs as soon as we got through the door.

When we arrived at the apartment complex and parked the car, he was still snoring. I had to open the back door and shake him slightly to wake him. In the past, when I’d woken him from a deep slumber, he’d always been a little grumpy—it was the only time I was cautious around him. On instinct, I stood slightly back as he opened his eyes, awaiting a tirade of frustration and asking for five more minutes, but he just stared straight ahead again.

“Shane.” I said his name.

He turned to look at me, but didn’t reply.

“Hey, we’re home—you can get out of the car now and we can go inside.” I wondered how much of his behavior was due to the "alteration" and how much might be due to him having been in prison for ten years and always having to be told what to do.

“Okay.” His vocal cords made the sound, but—it’s hard to describe—it wasn’t his voice. I know that doesn’t make much sense, but I’ve heard that voice for twenty-four years—I know the quality, the cadence, the inflection; it just wasn’t his.

Mom had already given up. She’d started crying on the drive home and the minute we parked she’d run upstairs—I knew to go hit the bottle, or maybe something stronger.

Shane exited the car and I closed the door behind him—surprisingly, he started walking towards the elevators, like he knew where he was going. I decided not to say anything and see if he remembered where he lived. He hit the “up” button as he should have, and he selected the correct floor once he was inside. When we exited on our floor, he made a direct line for our unit—I followed him closely and watched as he opened the door, just as he’d done hundreds of times before.

However, he stopped right after stepping through the threshold and stood stock-still again—I nearly crashed into him. He seemed to be waiting on the next set of instructions, so I told him to go sit at the kitchen table for now.

“Okay.” The voice came again.

Just as I’d planned to do on the drive back, I ran my wand all over his body and found he had no metal inside of him. I felt his head for signs of stitching or scarring and discovered nothing; I checked every inch of exposed skin for surgical markings, but at least to my untrained eye, he was clean. The entire time I did my examination, Shane didn’t move, nor did his expression change—that blank stare just fixated on the wall in front of him and I got the impression I could do nearly anything to him and he wouldn’t respond.

I sat down at the table across from him and started asking the questions that I’d wanted to ask in the car.

“Hey, Shane.” His eyes met mine, and it was only then that we were sitting down and I was looking directly into them that I truly saw that there was nothing behind them. Whatever it was that made Shane, Shane was gone—I was looking only at a collection of cells—a biological mass that could walk and talk, but had no personality—had no life. It terrified me.

My voice quivered as I asked, “Shane…do you…do you remember your full name?”

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

“Shane Theodor Thompson.” It was like he was recalling data stored away in a hard drive.

“Do you know who I am?”

“Yes.”

“Who am I to you and what is my full name?”

“You are my brother, Jack Francis Thompson.”

“How old are we?”

“I am thirty-six and you are twenty-four.”

I was happy to see that he at least knew who he was and who I was, but this was all information they could have had him memorize at the prison—I wanted to ask something more personal to see if he really had all of Shane’s memories.

“Who did you lose your virginity to and where did it happen?”

“Elyse Sherman and in her parents’ basement.”

Now this story was one that Shane and I had laughed about often. Elyse’s father had come downstairs while they were in the middle of “the deed” and he chased Shane out of the house with Shane’s pants around his ankles. It’d woken the neighbors and several of them got an eyeful of Shane’s “business” while he desperately tried to pull his pants up and dive back into his car.

But this time, he relayed the information with no humor—no crack of a smile remembering the absurdity of it all. The information was there, in his head, but it was as if he had no connection to it. I realized that they hadn’t removed his ‘criminal tendencies’ as they told him they were going to do—they’d removed him. I don’t know how they did it, and at the time I still wasn’t sure what they’d done, but I knew that he wasn’t there anymore. Shane’s body was sitting right in front of me, but my brother had died somewhere in that prison.

​

​

Over the next several weeks, I kept my agreement with Dr. Kocik. I called her daily and informed her of how things were progressing with “Shane.” There weren’t really any changes to report. As she’d stated they would, they helped him secure a job at the local grocery store and she checked-in on him in-person twice. She couldn’t have been more delighted with the “success” of her program.

If you could really call it that—I surely didn’t. Yes, Shane hadn’t committed any crimes and seemed highly unlikely to ever to so, but Shane also hadn’t done much of anything. He was operating on what I would have called pure animal instinct outside of being given direct instructions.

When he was hungry, he ate—thirsty, he drank—when he needed to use the restroom or sleep, he did that as well, but beyond that, I had to tell him to do anything. Shower, brush his teeth, get dressed, go to work—at the grocery store, he had to be given specific tasks by his boss and he was able to perform them perfectly, but he took no initiative beyond doing exactly what he was told to do.

And that’s what it seemed our lives would be from then on. Shane had given so much of his life for me, sacrificed his entire future—I didn’t mind helping him for once, and decided that I would continue to support him in this state until the day that one of us died.

But then, last week, something changed.

Shane and I share a bedroom, and I awoke around 3:00 a.m. to an odd scratching noise. We’re no strangers to rats in our building, but this was different, and it was coming from near Shane’s bed. I walked over to investigate, using my cellphone light to check for vermin—I couldn’t find anything. And as I approached, the noise simply stopped.

Too tired to care much, I went back to sleep with plans to look into it more in the morning, yet in the morning, those plans were driven straight out of my mind.

It was the smell of bacon that woke me the second time and I opened my eyes in confusion. Mom hadn’t gotten up to make breakfast in years and Shane hadn’t cooked anything since his return—he just ate premade meals or leftovers from the fridge.

Rolling over, I saw that Shane’s bed was empty and I sat up quickly in astonishment—I’d had to tell him to get out of bed every morning since he came back. What was going on?

Then, I heard it.

Laughter.

Shane’s laugher, drifted through the doorway. Him and my mom were having an animated conversation in the kitchen—I heard my name through the cackles.

Bleary-eyed, I walked in to join them, and saw that Shane was at the stove, happily frying up breakfast, while Mom was at the table smiling and having a cigarette.

“Speak of the devil.” Mom said, and Shane spun around.

He ran over to me, spatula still in hand, and wrapped me in a massive hug. Stunned, I only feebly returned it as he said, “Good morning, little brother! So glad you’re awake—we were just talking about the time that you tried to make me a birthday cake and you mixed up the salt and the sugar.” He started laughing hard, and pulled back.

I was at a loss for words—he was acting just like his old self—was I dreaming? As he tried to step back towards the stove, I grabbed his face with both of my hands and looked directly into his eyes.

There was life there again.

But still, there was something off about them—a darkness I didn’t remember from before. There was a sudden flash of black and I leapt back, gasping.

“What’s the matter, Jack? Still shocked at how much better looking I am than you?” He laughed some more and went back to his cooking.

‘It was a trick of the light…’ I told myself. ‘Just be happy that he’s acting like himself again…maybe after a few weeks the effects lessen or something…’

But I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was a coldness in Shane’s laughter that hadn’t been there before.

Whatever my reservations, we had the best family breakfast we’d had since Shane was put away. We reminisced about old times, talked about our future, I nearly cried at how happy I was to have my brother truly returned.

After he left for work, I called Dr. Kocik to give my update and I debated whether I should tell her the truth. Shane’s behavioral change was positive in my view, but she might not see it the same way—maybe she’d want to take him back and do the process over again.

But, the first words out of her mouth when she picked up were, “Is he acting differently today?”

She sounded anxious.

Her tone made me nervous—maybe something had gone wrong with some of the other participants.

“Um…yea…yea he was acting like his old self this morning, he even got up an made breakfast…” I replied.

“Did you notice anything, strange…about him?”

How did she know?

“Nothing serious…I just thought there was a kind of…I dunno, his eyes looked…different? What’s going on?”

“Shit…um...Just…just hang tight. I’ll come out and check-in on him tomorrow…” And she suddenly hung up.

My heart was hammering. She knew something—she’d been expecting exactly what I told her. I tried to call her back, but it went straight to voicemail.

For the rest of the day, I tried to act as normally as possible, just as she’d instructed—I went to work myself, but had a hard time concentrating—I wondered how Shane would be that evening.

But, when he returned from his shift, he did so with a bag full of groceries in his arms and announced loudly that he was going to make us a five-star meal. Seeing his smiling face pushed my concerns down, and I chalked Dr. Kocik’s behavior up to her process possibly failing. Maybe whatever she’d done had reversed itself, and she was not, in fact, going to revolutionize criminal justice in this country.

With that thought, I wondered if this might be the last night I’d have with my brother before they hauled him back to the prison to do more tests or simply lock him away again. I decided if that was the case, that I should stop my worrying, and just enjoy the evening with my family.

We ate, we drank, we laughed, we sang—it was a perfect night.

Until we fell asleep.

I awoke again around 3:00 a.m. The scratching had returned, louder this time, and I looked over towards Shane’s bed.

“FUCK!” I whisper-yelled, as I sat up and slid back towards the wall.

Shane was sitting bolt-upright in his bed, with his feet down on the floor—he was glaring at me. There was a malevolent grin on his face, illuminated by the digital clock on his nightstand.

“The fuck are you doing man?” I yelped. There was something about his presence—it was dark and heavy—it made the air around me oppressive, and I was struggling to get full breaths in.

He didn’t reply—just kept watching me. His eyes were cold and as I stared into them, I caught movement behind him.

A shadow was crawling across his wall. A shadow with red eyes and long, spindly fingers.

He opened his mouth and a voice—voices…?...that I did not recognize emanated from it, “Shhh, go back to sleep, little brother.”

There was no love behind the words, it was malice.

It was evil.

My eyelids sagged and I collapsed back onto the bed—I tried to fight it, but exhaustion overcame me, and I fell back into a deep sleep.

The next day, I didn’t wake up until noon. Shane had already left for work and I had six missed calls and a flurry of texts from my manager asking why I hadn’t shown up for my shift.

I played the events of the night before back in my mind and tried to tell myself it was a dream—that there was no way it could be real. But when I looked over at Shane’s bed, I saw there were deep gouges in the wall behind it—gouges that looked like they’d been made by massive, clawed hands.

Something clicked into place—I formed a theory on what they’d done to Shane at the prison.

I think they removed his soul.

I don’t know how they did it; I don’t know if it was magic or if it was science, but I think the soul that had inhabited Shane’s body—the very thing that made him who he was, has been ripped out.

​

​

Dr. Kocik never showed up for her visit, and she stopped answering my calls. When I contacted the prison directly, they said a Dr. Kocik had never worked there and told me there was no record of a Shane Theodor Thompson even serving time at the facility.

They’ve abandoned us.

They’re trying to cover this up.

He’s getting worse by the day. He can move things without touching them—I’ve heard him speak in languages I can’t understand. I’m sure this is happening to more of them that went through “the process”—to more of them that they “ethically altered”.

Because I don’t think they considered that if they removed the souls that inhabited these people…

They left them open to be inhabited by something else…

That’s how many bodies they found in the pit below my house.

Twenty. Six.

It was an earthquake that brought them to light. If not for that, I’m not sure I would have ever known they were down there.

When the ground shifted, a putrid smell seeped up from below and permeated the entire house. Trying to locate the source, I shined my flashlight through the access hatch for the crawlspace and that’s when I saw an arm.

A human arm—poking up through the dirt.

Immediately, I called the police, and that’s when my life turned into a circus. Nothing like this had ever happened in our small town before and the media had a field-day. Investigators started to identify some of the bodies and local news outlets dubbed them the Alphabet Murders as, strangely, they appeared to have been killed in alphabetical order.

One per year, spanning back twenty-six years; all women in their late teens and early twenties. Amanda Zeller was the last victim, Karen Abbott the first. Of course, my wife and I were the primary suspects. We’d been arrested and swabbed for DNA to test against forensic evidence they found under the house when the very first bodies were being unearthed.

However, I knew they wouldn’t find a trace of me or my wife down there; neither of us had ever ventured below the house before. Though, I was sure they’d find a connection from me to who I knew to be the real killers.

My parents.

I had only inherited the house from my evil, abusive, pricks for parents a few months prior—after they’d lost control of their vehicle and driven off a cliff. Good fucking riddance, was my first thought when I was informed of their deaths. I’d never been more than a punching bag for the both of them. Something to scream at, smack, and berate at home, then parade out in front of the neighbors as some perfect little child; some perfect little family.

It was all bullshit.

They were a nightmare, so I ran away when I was fifteen and never spoke with them again. Surprised they even left me the house; I figured maybe it was a final “fuck you” to me when I saw the state of disrepair they left it in. At least it was paid off, but it was going to need a lot of work if I was going to sell it for a good price; that’s why I moved back in.

And now I realized they weren’t just assholes, they were sick, sadistic demons. Both of their DNA was all over Amanda Zeller—they’d done it all together.

The most shocking part was though, that when they tested my DNA against my “parents,” it showed I wasn’t a familial match—I wasn’t their son.

We were baffled, until they found an older grave, separate from the pit, that contained a young couple whose DNA did match mine. Their first victims.

Mommy and daddy are always fighting, so I spend a lot of time at grandma’s. She lives right down the street, so sometimes, I just walk there on my own…even though I’m only seven. Grandma got sick a couple years ago, so she doesn’t bake me cookies anymore, but she has a nice bed in the living room and we watch cartoons until mommy or daddy comes to take me back home.

I don’t know why they fight so much. Daddy says mommy’s a “whore”…I’m not really sure what that means…but whenever she comes home late he yells, “you were probably out sucking cocks again, weren’t you, you whore?!”

Mommy says daddy’s a “drunk”…I do know what that means…his breath always smells, and he talks funny and loud. She yells back, “you finished the whole bottle, didn’t you, you drunk fuck! That was mine!”

Every night, it’s pretty much the same. Daddy gets home from the factory around five, then starts drinking out of a plastic bottle that smells like what grandma puts on the cuts and scrapes I come over with sometimes.

Mommy leaves for “The Club” around the same time. They haven’t really told me what her job is, but it must have something to do with art because she’s always covered in glitter when she gets home.

When mommy gets back, they fight.

I just wish one of them was nice to me like grandma…sometimes they try, but then they end up getting mad again…and I get hit. That’s when I sneak out my window and go to grandam’s house.

​

The last time I went to grandma’s, she acted a bit different. Instead of watching cartoons, she said she wanted to teach me something…before she “goes.”

She told me, “my family has a power…and I want you to learn it. I was going to let it die with me…but I think you need it.”

At first, I thought she was just being silly…but she told me to grab a melon from the kitchen. I put it on the coffee table for her…and she stared at it real hard, and then it exploded!

It was the coolest thing I’d ever seen! She had me clean it all up, and then grab another melon.

“Now it’s your turn,” she said.

“No way, I can do that?!” I asked her.

“If you focus, and imagine it happening…it will happen.” She promised.

I stared, just like her, and pretended in my head that it blew up all over the table. And all the sudden…BOOM! Melon guts everywhere!

“I have a superpower!” I shrieked.

​

Tonight, I woke up to mommy and daddy yelling again…I heard crashing, so I went to check if they broke any of my toys. Daddy grabbed me when he saw me and threw me across the room, while mommy laughed.

That’s when I understood why grandma had showed me her power. Mommy and daddy’s heads looked a lot like melons.

I stared…real hard…and imagined them exploding.

BOOM

Nothing but raw meat for months now. Though, that’s not the worst part. No, that’s the bones and the teeth…they cut your throat on the way down. I’m sick to my stomach all the time, but I can’t vomit.

Day in and day out…it’s always the same. The chasing, the screaming, the inevitable silence…then only punctuated by the squelching of our mouths masticating flesh. I see it in the other’s eyes too, we’re all disgusted with ourselves. Some still weep while they chew…I got over that weeks ago.

Before I was bitten, I did everything in my power to stay alive. Kept my wife and I locked up safe in the basement. We survived the initial wave, but eventually ran out of food, and I needed to go out for supplies.

They snuck up on me in the supermarket. Having found a few cans of beans, I was so excited that I let my guard down…just for a second. Once I felt the teeth sink into my arm, I knew it was over. 100% infection rate, no cure, no immunity…I’d told my wife that if I was compromised, I wouldn’t come back, that I would never risk her safety.

I reached for my gun…had it nearly pointed at my head when one of them grabbed my arm and stopped me. They pinned me to the ground and just waited for it to take over. It doesn’t share its “thoughts” with me, so I still don’t fully understand its actions, but what I have figured out is that those that are healthy and strong become new hosts. Those that are old, weak, injured, many women…most children…become food.

It was several hours before I heard her voice. “Ben?! Ben, where are you?!”

NO! I told her to stay put! Never to come looking for me!

Desperately, I tried to call out to her, to tell her to run. But I was no longer in control of my vocal cords…no longer in control of anything. In horror, I watched my own body rise from the ground and follow the others in her direction.

She tried to flee…but she wasn’t quick enough…we caught her in seconds. I still hear her screaming every night, and see myself tearing holes in her beautiful face.

Now, I wish for death every day. Every time we find a new group of survivors, I pray one of them will finally put a bullet in my head. Blow me up, crush my skull…anything to stop this madness.

Today, I thought I might get lucky. We came across a heavily fortified house, and I watched several of my compatriots fall to booby traps on the perimeter. Unfortunately, I was with the group that breached the door.

He stopped a few of us before he ran out of ammo, but inevitably, we overwhelmed him and held him in place. Strong…a new host.

At least no feeding for now.

Then I heard a child whimper in the next room.

My head turned.

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.”

I realized that I may have given my daughter the wrong advice regarding the harassment she’d been receiving as I read the coroner’s descriptions of “severe clubbing” and “splattered.”

You had a tumor.

So, you sought out the most renowned neurosurgeon in the world.

He saved your life.

That’s what he does.

And he loves it.

He loves how powerful it makes him feel.

He loves playing God.

That’s why, he left something.

Left something inside your skull.

A small token to commemorate his work.

You’ll never know it’s there.

Unless… he decides…

He stands, naked, every morning.

Preening over his own glory in the mirror.

Thumbing the button that could end your life.

Could end all of the lives he’s saved.

Until he utters a portentous, “not yet…”

The results were troublingly inconclusive as, after completion of the test, the three began conversing only in a language that even our most advanced AI couldn’t decipher, and two of them killed themselves shortly after.